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Blending Salt and Spice, Joining Wisdom and Prophecy

We sat on benches made of wood planks laid over gallon paint cans. A single light bulb dangled from a thin wire in the middle of the room. Our Lady of Guadalupe gazed from a worn and yellowed picture on the opposite wall. My first experience in a Christian base community was with believers living in a poor neighborhood two hours south of Mexico City. Faces I had expected to impress me by their poverty were tired, but proud and alert. The strong hands of a potter held a Bible open to the Gospel of Luke. Limestone workers with dirty jeans listened as he read. The brightly embroidered dress of a child sleeping nearby gave color and dignity to the room. This was obviously a community that did not understand itself to be impoverished. When a grandmother suggested taking up a collection for the "poor people" in El Salvador, no one found it ironic.

What is it in the experience of Latin American Christians that allows such a community to celebrate wholeness in the midst of "deprivation"? Why are visitors from the U.S. always surprised by the hope they find among the poor? As Robert McAfee Brown, says, it is truly "unexpected news" that First World Christians discover in the faith of Latin Americans. These Christians are open to the totality of biblical experience in a way that has been lost to many of us. Given their consciousness of themselves and the world in which they live, they are able to join biblical traditions that would seem to us irreconcilable.

We find sharp differences, for example, in the biblical motifs of prophecy and wisdom. The one is usually associated with poverty, the other with wealth. Solomon seems to have little in common with Amos. The biblical metaphors that represent these two traditions are salt and spice -- an unlikely match. We are more accustomed to speaking of "sugar and spice . . . and everything nice." Yet, comfortable as that may sound, it simply isn’t consistent with our biblical inheritance. Third World Christians teach us about a much deeper connection between the salt of prophecy and the spice of wisdom.

Salt is often associated in Scripture with judgment, calling to mind the salty sweat and tears of the poor (Eccles. 4:1; Ps. 80:4). Paired with brimstone, it warns that the justice of Yahweh is forgotten only at great peril (Deut. 29:23). Salt, of course, is not simply a flavoring for one’s food, but the means of survival for those who labor all day in the heat of the sun (Eccles. 39:26) Gandhi made use of the image in his celebrated Salt March to the sea in 1930. He knew that the ministry of prophecy is always a salty one -- provocative, marginal, given to tears. It stands in solidarity with the disinherited.

By contrast, spice is associated in the Bible with wisdom and royalty. It speaks of extravagance, wealth and splendor (II Chron. 9:9). To be blessed with spice is to experience life in all its expansiveness, overflowing with abundance and largesse. Spice symbolizes the sacramental goodness of the world, the oils and fragrances of love (Song of Sol. 5:1 f.) , the beauty of an oriental garden with its blossoms and beds of aromatic herbs (Song of Sol. 6:2 f.) Spice, frankincense and myrrh represent a life comfortably rooted in the land, partaking of the opulence of the king. How, then, can such disparate metaphors -- the harsh simplicity of salt and the leisured elegance of spice -- ever interrelate?

The two form a necessary corrective to each other. Wisdom speaks to prophecy and prophecy to wisdom. Indeed, the two experiences sometimes intertwine. Marginal peoples, barely surviving, can be found reaching for beauty as well as justice. First World peoples like ourselves, in the midst of surfeited plenty, are drawn back inexplicably to the rudiments of a primitive wholeness. The fullness of human createdness demands attention to both the sublime and the elemental (see, for example, Walter Brueggeman, Living Toward a Vision: Biblical Reflections on Shalom [Pilgrim, 1982], pp. 27-36) .

Liberation theologies from Latin America, Asia and Africa have in recent years offered important and painful gifts of prophecy to Christians in Europe and North America. We have heard their clear witness to the Bible’s demands for economic justice, the self-determination of peoples and God’s preferential option for the poor. We have recognized the gospel in their lives and words. Yet we middle-class citizens, dependent upon shopping malls, mortgages and school board decisions, haven’t known how to understand our royalty and wisdom in light of these prophetic proclamations. We have felt a vague sense of uneasiness and guilt; we know we are not necessarily called to the mountain villages of Honduras, but we don’t know how to justify our experience of blessing and stability.

This is the great dis-ease, the sad irony, of Christianity in the developed West. Surrounded by so many social and economic benefits, we fail to achieve the wisdom they should engender. We lack the capacity to celebrate, or even to make good use of, all that we have. If Third World Christians are able to share the gifts of prophecy, one might hope that First World Christians could offer wisdom in exchange. After all, it is in the U.S. and Europe that the wealth and leisure necessary for reflection is possible for many. We have the governmental structures, financial assets, health care and cultural advantages that could occasion the triumph of wisdom, but have lost the capacity to find meaning and to take pleasure in any of these things.

This was also the case with Solomon in the tenth century before Christ. Solomon was blessed with all the appurtenances of wisdom, yet its full appreciation eluded him. The Preacher (Koheleth) came to recognize, in the unforeseen weariness of prosperity, that all was vanity. In the ancient world a paradoxical relationship existed between royalty and wisdom. The stability of the kingdom made possible the sages’ contemplation, yet royal values had a way of undermining the force of wisdom. Solomon the wise became known for his oppressiveness, his policy of forced labor, his self-aggrandizement (I Kings 5:13) . In the political corridors of Jerusalem, the international spirit of wisdom could be bent to the purposes of expediency and explotation. Court wisdom could degenerate into yesmanship, serving the centers of entrenched power. Knowing "who" could become -more important than knowing "why"; doing well could take precedence over doing good. Hence the dynasty of the wisest king of ancient Israel gave way to the political rebellion of Jeroboam (I Kings 11) (see James L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction, John Knox, 1981) .

True wisdom, then, is not guaranteed to those whose background may be most conducive to it. Third World peoples may be in a position today to teach us not only the rugged lessons of prophecy, but also the genteel and humane insights of wisdom. Only by getting outside of ourselves and our narrow consumerist vision can we discover the world of good that is ours. The genius of wisdom can never be fully realized apart from the critical discernment of prophecy.

This experience drove me to look more carefully at the biblical traditions of wisdom and prophecy. The more dominant prophetic tradition in the Old Testament is grounded in the experience of precariousness. This tradition concerns a faith in relentless motion -- on the road from Egypt, through the wilderness, out of Canaan and into exile, searching always, but never finding a home. Its God is a mobile God, leading with a fierce freedom and unexpected deliverance. This is a God who is free to answer the cry of slaves, speaking for those who have no other voice.

In Mexico I met prophets who had been beaten for their stand on labor rights, and others who had escaped from Guatemala to tell of incredible conditions on the coastal plantations. Theirs was a hope in the apocalyptic justice of a sovereign God. Their faith required a profound rejection of the world as it is, a longing for a kingdom not yet come. Like all prophets, they used poetry, the "psalmic language" of petition and lament. This is a language of brokenness, pointing to what is dying in their midst as well as what is trying to be born.

The tradition of wisdom does not contradict prophecy, but it views God and the world from a different perspective. It emerges from a context of prosperity, where the celebration of the good life looms more prominently than the distribution of necessary goods. In Israel under the United Monarchy and later after the return from Babylon, life was rich and full for many. They needed wise management and festive celebration. The wise sought guidance in the natural order of creation itself, in the visible workings of a stable world. Their theology was rooted in human experience and observation, attentive to the ways of nature and the solace of tradition. In Latin America, such persons have included those who tell of ancient Mayan greatness, old grandmothers with their colorful needlework and health-care workers who retain wisdom about the use of traditional herbs and medicines.

Wisdom does not look for another world to break into history; it accepts the present age. Its image of God is not the strong Father intruding into human affairs by his mighty acts, but is rather the nurturing Mother, Sophia, who embraces stability and enhances relationships (Wisd. of Sol. 7:24 f.) The language of wisdom consists of proverbs and precepts, riddles and wise sayings passed down from parent to child. To be wise is to be instructed in the folkways of the grandmothers and grandfathers.

At their best, these two traditions live in tension but not conflict. The creative imagination of the one requires the sober and joyous caveats of the other. Full access to the treasures of wisdom depends on a spare, prophetic simplicity; the power of prophecy draws strength from its vision of the good life.

An interesting story is told of Dorothy Day, a woman whose life was marked by prophetic simplicity, and yet who loved nothing so much as books, opera and the fine touch of knit wool. Someone once donated a diamond ring to the Catholic Worker community, and instead of using it to buy soup for a month or more, Dorothy gave it to an old woman who lived in a tenement down the street. She explained that the woman’s dignity was important. She could choose to use the ring to help pay her rent, to take a trip to the Bahamas, or even to keep for her own enjoyment. "Do you suppose," Day asked, "that God created diamonds only for the rich?" (Robert Ellsberg, editor, By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day, Knopf, 1983, pp. xl-xli) Jesus makes the same point in Matthew 26:6-13. The woman with the alabaster jar of spice had "done a beautiful thing," he said, in anointing the sweaty brow of a poor man on his way to death. Biblical faith insists that the sheer goodness of life is, ironically, most often discovered in the extremities of life.

Indeed, themes in wisdom literature appear with surprising clarity in the experience of the poor. One theme is the essential goodness of all created things. This is the constant refrain of Genesis 1, and it echoes through the rest of the wisdom writings. God looks at flowing streams, at the flight of an eagle and the way of a man with a woman and says, "I like it. It gives me pleasure!" The human capacity to take pleasure in these gifts, however, does not necessarily flow from their abundance. The deep Franciscan truth is that those who have least may be able to enjoy what they have the most. A lean crust becomes the bread of fatness in the tents of scarcity.

I expected to find utter despair among people living in La Estación, a squatter settlement near the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Cuernavaca. These people have nothing -- families live in one-room corrugated tin shacks alongside a creek flowing with open sewage. When going to sell flowers in the town square each day, a woman named Estella leaves her three young children on the piece of carpet they use as a bed. Yet Estella takes great pleasure in her children. They dance together. She puts flowers in her daughter’s hair, and is proud of her son’s ability to read. In a situation where I imagined only desperation, there exists an inexplicable hope -- an uncanny ability to value not only the basics, but even the little extravagances of life. One must not romanticize the poor, or imagine Estella is content with her lot. Yet the stunning truth is that she put me to shame by her capacity for expansiveness and joy. I went to Mexico to see the degradation of the poor and was shown instead my spiritual poverty. I had anticipated a powerful prophetic witness and was given a keen lesson in wisdom. This is in part what liberation theology means by mission in reverse: the evangelization of the rich by the poor.

A second theme in biblical wisdom is the celebration of beauty, particularly the artistry of subcreation. During the Solomonic enlightenment, the best Phoenician architects helped design the temple. Artisans who worked in stone and woodcraft were encouraged. Poetry flourished -- a word fitly spoken was compared to apples of gold in settings of silver (Prov. 25:11) One might take this thriving of fine arts for granted in a setting rich with patrons and time for leisure. Yet the creative impulse of the human spirit seems equally forceful in situations of wretchedness. Art forces itself up like ragweed through cracked asphalt. Jewish survivors of the Terezín ghetto in Czechoslovakia spoke of artists and musicians who continued their work under unimaginable circumstances -- forming musical ensembles, copying books, creating paintings. "Art in any form helped us to survive," said one prisoner. "I would go to the extent of saying that . . it was sometimes more important than food" (Ludmila Vrkocová, "Musical Life in Terezín Ghetto," Remembering for the Future: The Impact of the Holocaust on the Contemporary World, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 1730)

In the remote Nicaraguan community of Solentiname, a school of primitive painting developed during the last repressive years of the Somoza regime. An artists’ colony of peasants began painting firing clay and writing poetry as a way of reflecting biblically on their living conditions. Dwelling in thatched huts, having long and persistently cried out for land reform, these campesinos used bright colors and traditional folk patterns to sketch a landscape restless with hope. Anxious for the coming kingdom of God, they were already inspired to create its culture. They knew that art reveals the beauty inherent in justice (see Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, Orbis, 1976, 4 vols.)

Still other themes in wisdom literature find their parallel in the lives of marginal peoples longing for justice. These themes include the crucial importance of the family (Prov. 4:1 f.) , the artistry of speech prized by the oral tradition (Eccles. 10:12) , the poetry of love (Song of Sol. 2:8 f.) , even the symbolic significance of plentiful food (Eccles. 9:7) One is touched deeply by Latin American parents’ devotion to their children. The power of storytelling as a political act becomes obvious in Christian base communities: it awakens consciousness as it spins its verbal magic. Love poetry, woven with folksongs of political protest, forms some of the most poignanat music heard in Latin America today. The spirit of fiesta, the sharing of bounteous, if humble, food, is a promise of God’s awaited kingdom. All these characterize a people who know how to enjoy the life God gives. In their wedding of prophecy and wisdom, they offer us the wholeness that a liberating justice would bring to our lives.

Middle-class Americans need to be evangelized by those who are able to anticipate the coming, kingdom of God in the embracing of pain and in the dancing of hope. In the Old Testament, salt and spice were blended together to make incense for the altar, setting it apart as holy, a place for meeting God (Exod. 30:34-37) In the New Testament, the two come together in the sacrifice of the body of Christ. The same kind of spice given by the kings at his birth and poured over his head in an excess of love is later used to anoint his dead body. The salt that characterized his pungent words and marked his call to discipleship dripped from his brow in bloody sweat at Calvary. In Jesus -- prophet, priest and king -- we discover the final model for joining wisdom and prophecy. His is an invitation to abandonment and to merriment, to the pain of life on the margin and the joy of the kingdom breaking into the world at its center. In Christ we hear the fierce and ancient cry of Irenaeus: the glory of God is human beings fully alive! It is a glory discovered in the joining of salt and spice.

You Prepare a Table for Me (Psalms 23)

Yahweh is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

In grassy meadows he lets me be.

By tranquil streams he leads me

to restore my spirit.

He guides me in paths of saving justice

as befits his name.

Even were I to walk in a ravine as dark as

death

I should fear no danger, for you are at my

side.

Your staff and your crook are there to

soothe me.

You prepare a table for me

under the eyes of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil;

my cup brims over.

Kindness and faithful love pursue me

every day of my life.

I make my home in the house of Yahweh

for all time to come [Ps. 23, New

Jerusalem Bible].

"You prepare a table for me under the eyes of my enemies." This is "a marvelous sight" (Exod. 3:3) indeed, for both friends and enemies. It is something "no eye has seen, and no ear has heard" and what no mind can visualize (I Cor. 2:9) People enjoying such a feast would make themselves an easy target for their adversaries! Yet this is none other than an expression of the supreme wisdom and strength of God, whose foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and whose weakness is stronger than human strength (I Cor. 1:25) God’s vulnerability is stronger than human invulnerability. Through a banquet table -- not guns and warplanes -- God wills to transform us and our world.

When I learned that the Christian view of history is a linear progression, with a beginning and an end, I was deeply impressed. I was introduced to this interpretation in the contusion or postwar Japan. "What a powerful way to look at what has happened and is happening now!" I said to myself. I thought that this wisdom must have accompanied my Christian baptism. On August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally to Allied forces; in September, General Douglas MacArthur landed in Japan as one who had a higher power than the emperor; and on January 1, 1946, the emperor renounced claims to divinity. Living through this progression of events, I was convinced that history was indeed linear, and heading toward the end that God intended. I felt empowered by this overarching principle by which I could chart my position in the turbulence of history.

In time, however, I became troubled by this view. I began to suspect that the image of straight lines was just too simple, too efficient, to fit reality. I was particularly disturbed by the numerous straight lines that divide the African nations. Straight lines seemed to be an image of imperialism. I became aware that the love of God -- hesed, agape -- is more of a zigzag than a straight line. For the sake of others, love makes self-denying zigzags, displaying its power as it overcomes profound frustration.

The Indian Jesuit Samuel Rayan writes that the Christian experience of history is "best described in personal terms of interiority and relationship rather than in geometrical terms of lines and circles." The Christian "interiority" is embraced by the unfathomable hospitality of God. In the beginning was hospitality.

The image of hospitality is not composed of lines or circles. It is the warmth and security we feel as we find ourselves, through the son, "close to the Father’s heart" (John 1:18) In this spirit of hospitality, we can understand Archbishop Tutu and the South Africans who protest against apartheid as attending a messianic banquet in the presence of President Botha. They are urging everyone who supports legalized racism to share in the hospitality and generosity of God -- one who converts people by the powers of hospitality. We are filled with wonder and awe when we encounter such a power.

The table that God prepares for us culminates in the eucharistic table of the Lord. This sacrament is the ultimate symbol of God’s hospitality, demonstrated in full view of the enemy. Jesus "loved those who were his in the world, loved them to the end" (John 13:1) He did so knowing that the time of his martyrdom was near. The table was prepared by the very life of God.

Kosuke Koyama

Yahweh Is Generous to All (Psalms 145:8-11)

Yahweh is tenderness and pity,

slow to anger, full of faithful love.

Yahweh is generous to all,

his tenderness embraces all his creatures.



All you creatures shall thank you, Yahweh,

and your faithful shall bless you.

They shall speak of the glory of your

kingship

and tell of your might (Ps. 145:8-11).

One image of the universality of God is the shepherd who goes out in search of one sheep that is lost (Luke 15:3-7). The church experiences the universality of God, whose compassion is over all that God has made, not in the 99 sheep in the fold but rather in this searching shepherd. The God who comes to us through the crucified Christ is not a narrow parochial God. God’s love frees us from parochialism, too.

God’s tenderness and generosity is fundamental to the Christian faith. The holy God is a tender and generous God. This is the heart of the Christian sacrament.

The belief that God’s tenderness embraces all creatures gives more meaning to the words with which Abraham Lincoln concluded the Emancipation Proclamation: "And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God." In our world with which God is slow to anger and compassionate, we can always invoke two benedictions, one from God and the other from humanity. It is by the grace (tenderness and generosity) of God that there is such a thing as "the considerate judgment of mankind." (Racists may find it much easier to invoke "the gracious favor of Almighty God" than to invoke ‘the considerate judgment of mankind"!) The Emancipation Proclamation moves in the same direction as the healing universality of the parable of the lost sheep.

In 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City, Martin Luther King, Jr., invited us to repent before God:

We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

King saw clearly a connection between the events taking place 8,000 miles away and those unfolding on our own doorstep. Imperialism, by definition, ignores or rejects such a connection. Those who cannot discern the connection are not ready to embrace the painful situation. King was not fooled by the distance of 8,000 miles.

Christ embraces human community fully aware of the tragic contradictions in it, and he does so through the symbols of bread broken and wine poured. The one who embraces the contradiction is broken. In the sacrament of the Last Supper the broken Christ embraces all things.

In 1969, two years after King spoke at Riverside, humanity saw for the first time a color photograph of the earth, taken from space by the crew of the Apollo 11 spacecraft. Our planet itself is a Noah’s ark, navigating through infinite space. Though full of human tragedies and contradictions, God embraces this ark. God’s commandment is for us to have "love for one another" (John 13:35). Wherever this "love for one another" is found, there are disciples of Christ. "I have made you a light to the nations, so that my salvation may reach the remotest parts of the earth" (Acts 13:47).

May God Continue to Bless Us (Ps. 67)

May God show kindness and bless us,

and make his face shine on us.

Then the earth will acknowledge your

ways,

and all nations your power to save.

Let the nations praise you, God,

let all the nations praise you.

Let the nations rejoice and sing for joy,

for you judge the world with justice,

you judge the peoples with fairness,

you guide the nations on earth.

Let the nations praise you, God,

let all the nations praise you.

The earth has yielded its produce;

God, our God has blessed us.

May God continue to bless us,

and be revered by the whole wide world

(Ps. 67, New Jerusalem Bible).

He humbled you, he made you feel hunger, he fed you with manna which neither you nor your ancestors had ever known, to make you understand that human beings live not on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of Yahweh (Deut. 8:3).

Human beings cannot live by the produce of the earth alone. They must hear the word of God. In the constant tension between these two needs is hidden humanity’s peculiar dignity and tragedy. Buddhists would readily acknowledge that they need the produce of the earth and every word that comes from the mouth of the Awakened One. Similarly, Taoists would say that they need the produce of the earth and every word that comes from the Ultimate Tao. The great religious traditions of the world, without exception, have described the relationship between bread (the earth’s produce) and the word of God, because they are keenly aware of the tragic pull of earthly greed. Jesus asks, "What benefit is it to anyone to win the whole world and forfeit or lose his very self?" (Luke 9:25).

Our faith in the continuity of life is grounded in nature. But this continuity is often ideologized and politicized. Masao Maruyama, a prominent scholar of Japanese culture, speaks of the importance of the Japanese word that means "next-next." The crown prince is called "Prince Next." The basic philosophic thread running through all Japanese culture and religion is expressed in the phrase, "next-next-continuously-becoming-by-momentum." This "next-next" orientation may not be, by itself, a dangerous ideology. Yet when deified, the continuity of the imperial household produced an emperor cult that eventually destroyed the nation.

We are reminded of the great warning words of Hosea that have echoed throughout human civilization: "they have set up kings, but without my consent, and appointed princes, but without my knowledge" (Hos. 8:4). The words of Hosea may be paraphrased: "they have used nature, but without my consent." Nature is the environment in which we live. It is to be used, but it must not be misused.

Human sexuality belongs to this world of nature. It is a great gift which must be used with God’s consent and knowledge. The biblical God, who is the creator of human sexuality, neither engages in sexual acts nor has a spouse. This God enters into a covenant relationship with humanity, and keeps that covenant with unfailing steadfastness. God indicates the primacy of mutuality over sexuality. That is to say, the sacred meaning of sexuality is not located in sexuality itself, but rather in human mutuality. Sexuality is a mode in which human mutuality is expressed.

A similar observation can be made about racism. Racism gives prominence to particular characteristics that are biologically determined. In the beginning was pigmentation! Racism is not interested in individual morality or dignity. The ancient Buddhist tradition says:

No Brahman is such by birth. No outcaste is such by birth. An outcaste is such by his deeds. A Brahman is such by his deeds.

Because it disregards the inner person, racism is pornographic. "White only" restaurants in Johannesburg are porn shops. Being less obvious than those on 42nd Street in New York City, the porn shops in Johannesburg are far more harmful to the health of human community.

Nature surrounds us and we are a part of it. Yet we have a spiritual quality that transcends the dictates of nature. This quality must constantly be nurtured to avoid falling into a variety of idolatries. "The earth has yielded its produce; God, our God has blessed us."

I Am Jesus, Whom You Persecute (Acts 9:1-9)

Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing threats to slaughter the Lord’s disciples. He had gone to the high priest and asked for letters addressed to the synagogues at Damascus, that would authorize him to arrest and take to Jerusalem any followers of the Way, men or women, that he could find.

Suddenly, while he was traveling to Damascus and just before he reached the city, there came a light from heaven all around him. He fell to the ground, and then he heard a voice saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" "Who are you, Lord?" he asked, and the voice answered, "I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me. Get up now and go into the city, and you will be told what you have to do." The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless, for though they heard the voice they could see no one. Saul got up from the ground, but even with his eyes wide open he could see nothing at all and they had to lead him into Damascus by the hand. For three days he was without his sight, and took neither food nor drink (Acts 9:1-9, Jerusalem Bible).

In 1941, in the name of the sacred imperial ancestors, the Japanese emperor declared war against the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands. On August 6, 1945, a nuclear heat-light of incredible intensity blasted over the city of Hiroshima, incinerating 70,000 people. Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Powers. She was "discontinued." She fell to the ground.

A mysterious tranquillity and uncluttered silence descended upon the land that had been made a wilderness by incessant firebombing. A legion of unclean spirits, including the cult of the divinity of the emperor, which had led the nation into the way of the lie, was cast out. It was a moment of nationwide exorcism. I heard a distant echo from the Book of Jeremiah: ‘I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in the land not sown" (Jer. 2:2) To be defeated was in a way a deeply religious experience. In the abrupt stop that the events of 1945 forced us to make was hidden for me the mystery of the resurrection.

Abrupt stop. How are we to speak about an abrupt stop? Can we study the process by which we come to an abrupt stop? Can we schedule one? Does it come to us from God or from the devil? From a clean spirit or an unclean spirit? Is it a moment of benediction or malediction? Will it create renewal or decay?

An unexpected halt is a religious experience if it occasions a discontinuity in one’s identity. Discontinuity, whether spiritual or physical, presents a crisis, a moment of truth. Is not this what religion is essentially about? But not every sudden stop carries the same religious significance. In an abrupt stop, we may not hear the same voice. Saul heard, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting." Japan heard, "You are defeated! Know that you are defeated!" But from where does the voice come? From the universal God or from a parochial god? Are there two kinds of "Gods"?

"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." In these few words Jesus introduced himself to Saul. Then Jesus commissioned Ananias to Saul, telling him that "at this moment he is praying." Was Saul praying to Jesus, whom he had persecuted? The word "persecuted" hints of a relationship between love and suffering. If one loves one may suffer. The more one loves others, the greater may be one’s suffering for them. "I myself will show him how much he must suffer for my name," says the Lord Jesus to Ananias. Later the apostle Paul writes, "During my stay with you, the only knowledge I claimed to have was about Jesus, and only about him as the crucified Christ" (I Cor. 2:2) Paul, now a slave of Christ, almost adopted for himself those words of Christ that came to him on the way to Damascus: "I am Paul, whom you are persecuting." He wrote to the church in Corinth: "When persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we try to conciliate; we have become, and are now, as the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things." To the Galatians he wrote, "I carry branded on my body the scars of Jesus." His apostolic career began with the words that came to him in the vision on the road to Damascus:

"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."

Why are these words so important? They indicate the nature of God who comes to humanity. God does not come to us "breathing threats to slaughter." God comes to us as one who is open to be wounded ("vulnerable," from the Latin vulnus, wound) Why so? Because God is love, and love is vulnerable. The profounder the love, the greater is its capacity "to be persecuted," to suffer. With unfathomable love God embraces the world that rejects God. Thus Jesus’ words of self-introduction to Paul are central to apostolic Christianity. "Blessed are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you falsely on my account."

Nailed down to the cross, how could Jesus move even one foot? But this was not an abrupt stop for Jesus, His entire life was strangely summarized by the one who mocked him: "He saved others; he cannot save himself" (Mark 15:31) By not saving himself he "got rid of the Sovereignties and the Powers, and paraded them in public, behind him in his triumphal procession" (Col. 2:15) On the cross Jesus’ self-identity was not discontinued but fulfilled. This extraordinary fulfillment shook both the Jewish Saul and the Roman centurion: "In truth this was a son of God" (Matt. 27:54)

Paul will bring the name of Christ "before gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel." Christ who "emptied himself" and was crucified (Phil. 2:7) speaks to the world through "the refuse of the world." This is the sign that Christ represents the universal God. It is this "scandalous" message that will make the "scales fall away" from our eyes.

They are a Stiff-Necked People (Exod. 32: 9-10)

And the Lord said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people; now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them [Exod. 32: 9-10].

This is remarkable! God is criticizing God’s own people! This God is radically different from the war gods of Japan. They were never known to criticize their own people. In fact, the foundation of the war-time state ideology was that the Japanese gods do not find fault with the Japanese people but busily condemn people of other nations. The gods rubber-stamped whatever the Japanese militarist government wanted to do. May we send our imperial army to China? The gods responded quickly, "Yes." May we annex Korea to Japan? The gods replied immediately, "Go ahead!" For the 50 years preceding 1945, Japan was quite a religious nation!

But the God of the Bible criticizes God’s own people. If Israel is stiff-necked, God declares it so. This God has a universal vista. "You shall not show partiality; and you shall not take a bribe. for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous" (Deut. 16:19) The God who does not take bribes is a universal, impartial and just God.

This God troubles us about the American flag, so frequently placed near church altars. The biblical God is deeply concerned about the well-being of people of all nations. God’s universality must be demonstrated in the church of Christ whose concern is human salvation. Any nation that symbolically claims special favor is attempting to bribe and domesticate the universal God. God cannot be bribed. We only bribe ourselves, damaging our spiritual and intellectual integrity in the process. When we bribe ourselves we become self-righteous.

Because God is not partial (Rom. 2:10) , God is especially concerned about those who go to bed without a cloak (Duet. 24:13) If God were partial, God would treat everyone with geometrical sameness. The impartiality of God can be applied to all people of all nations. "I have seen the Americans (or Germans, Japanese or Indonesians . . .) , and behold, they are a stiff-necked people." The saying may also be applied to religions. This universal God of the Bible could say, "I have seen Christians (or Buddhists, Hindus or Muslims . . .), and behold, they are a stiff-necked people." This God may say something outrageous, such as, "I have seen the afflictions of the Palestinians who are in Israel. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Israelites" (see Exod. 3:7,8; also Amos 9:7).

Humanity can benefit from studying the "failures" of Israel.. Through Israel’s failures -- stiff-neckedness -- -we can come to know the reality of human history and the nature of the universal God. When a people is stiff-necked, what should God do with them? "Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them." But Moses intercedes with God. He admonishes God. "And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people" (Exod. 32:14)

This is an astounding development in the narrative of the golden calf. God’s sincerity is completely free from bias and prejudice. It is awe-inspiringly universal. When God repents God reveals something of the mystery of our salvation. God becomes vulnerable because of God’s intense love for humanity. (How seldom do politicians and theologians repent!) That God "repents" means God’s love overwhelms God’s justice. It is never that God’s justice is overcome by injustice. God’s mind is agitated: "My mind is turning over inside me. My emotions are agitated altogether (Hos. 11:8 [Anchor Bible]) Yet God’s love refuses to be frustrated and defeated: "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it?" (Luke 15:4)

The mind of the biblical God is far from the Eastern ideal of nirvana, the condition of absolute tranquillity. God’s love makes God scandalous. The Pharisees and the scribes murmured, "This man receives sinners and eats with them’ (Luke 15:2) This is a picture of the salvific truth of God’s "repentance."

Personal relationship -- loving relationship -- is of central importance to this universal God. Therefore God is impassioned. "I, the Lord your God, am an impassioned god" (Exod. 20:5). God is neither absolute (without relationship) nor relative (settling for 99 sheep!) "God is love" (I John 4:8)

It is this God, universal because impartial, and vulnerable because passionately loving, who leads us to say: "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (Ps. 5 1:17) When we say this from the heart, we are healed of our stiff-neckedness.

 

 

Living by the Word: Speak My Word Faithfully (Jer. 23:28)

Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the Lord [Jer. 23:28].

Vatican II made important history when it acknowledged that other religions were not telling "dreams." Referring specifically to Hinduism and Buddhism, Vatican II declared:

The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She has a high regard for the manner of life and conduct, the precepts and doctrines which, although differing in many ways from her own teaching, nevertheless often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men.

We cannot apply Jeremiah’s contrast to our interreligious situation today by saying that non-Christian religions are only telling "dreams" and "the deceit of their own heart." Hindus explore "the divine mystery and express it both in the limitless riches of myth and the accurately defined insights of philosophy," says Vatican II, while the Buddhists testify "to the essential inadequacy of this changing world."

The Vatican position reminds me of Amos 9:7: "Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel?" says the Lord. "Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?" God creates the possibility of new life in each nation’s religious and cultural context (Isa. 19:24-25) Ethiopians, Philistines and Syrians share with Israel a ray of that truth that enlightens all men. The Book of Amos does not advocate what we today call relativism. It declares positively the steadfast love of God toward all peoples of all languages and histories.

God’s universal yet particular love derives from God’s freedom and sovereignty. "Am I a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar oft? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord" (Jer. 23:23-24)

In the light of the God of all peoples and histories, "what is true and holy in these religions" is related to "what is true and holy" in Christianity. "Do I not fill heaven and earth?" God’s "full presence" in heaven and earth, God’s sovereignty, enlightens everyone (John 1:9). No human can control that light. We are to learn to see all things "in thy light" (Ps. 36:9) Thus Christians are warned about their self-righteousness. Jesus expressed God’s sovereignty and criticized self-righteousness in the simple warning, "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged" (Matt. 7:1-2; see Rom. 2:1)

But this saying does not advocate an easy moral relativism. It does not, suggest that there is an artful way to make life smooth. It is different from the Hindu doctrine of karman, retribution. It says that it is ultimately God alone who can judge between false prophets who tell "the deceit of their own heart" and true prophets who have "my word." Yet we must work hard to discern the spirits. "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God" (I John 4:1)

This is a difficult task. How can we distinguish between deceit and the word of God when we may believe with complete sincerity that what we say is the truth? We may quite unconsciously speak a mixture, as it were, of our own deceits and the word of God. Is it possible that the word of God might be proclaimed through words that are unclean with our own deceit? (Isa. 6:5)

What shall we do when we are faced with the disturbing judgment of biblical faith that none of us, even with our great religious traditions and institutions (ecumenical councils, magisterium) , can claim that at all times we speak only "my word"?

Abraham Lincoln said of the two sides in the Civil War:

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.

Indeed, "let us judge not., that we be not judged" (see Matt. 13:29,30; ICor.4:5) Yet it is important to note that Lincoln also says, "It [is] strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces" -- let’s not believe every spirit.

It is God alone who can decide, ultimately, between the false and true prophets. Yet we are called to participate in the "testing of the spirits." If we neglect this important human task, we will soon be controlled by the unclean spirit.

Professors at Union Theological Seminary in New York are asked at their installation to declare their intention to serve the church and the world by learning, piety and enlightened experience. The occasion is a moment in which the ancient words of Psalm 5:17 become extremely significant: "A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." It is "a broken and contrite heart" before God that prepares us to "test the spirits" and protects us from prophesying our own dreams and deceits. It is such a heart that seeks to say, "in thy light do we see light."

If You Give a Feast, Invite the Poor (Luke 14:7-14)

Instead of inviting our friends, kinfolk or rich neighbors, we are to invite "the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind." Mission schools and hospitals should be run primarily for the poor and disadvantaged who cannot pay the fees. We are called to get past society’s balanced 50/50 arrangement. "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. . . . But love your enemies, and do good, and lend expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great . . . . Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:32-36)

Our society, even the religious community, works on the basis of mutual invitation. Methodists invite Methodists. Lutherans invite Lutherans. Episcopalians invite Episcopalians. Buddhists invite Buddhists. Hindus invite Hindus. As long as we conduct ourselves in such a way, we have the convenience of speaking our own religious and cultural language. Intellectually and spiritually, we live comfortably. This, too, is a 50/50 arrangement. But Jesus is not enthusiastic about it. The real meaning of hospitality is found in inviting someone who cannot repay you, someone who is unfamiliar to you. Then the concept of invitation -- hospitality -- receives a Christ-related meaning. Christ is the Hospitality of God toward us. He invites all of us, from all languages and cultures, to the great feast, the Lord’s Supper, the feast which none of us can repay.

Christian mission hospitals that specialize in meeting the medical needs of the poor are doing what Jesus commanded. The free distribution of food, clothing, shelter and medicine in areas devastated by war, famine and earthquake is what Jesus was talking about. One of the main projects of Tenrikyo. religion, which sprang up in Japan in the 19th century, is a modern hospital, providing the best possible medical care for the poor who cannot pay the fees. These all point to Christ, who invites us as the Hospitality of God. "He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn is exalted in honor" (Ps. 112:9)

Christians often divide humanity into two sections: Christians and those who are not Christians (somewhat derogatorily called "non-Christians") Behind this division there may be the dramatic story of Elijah (I Kings 18:17-40) Today, however, there are millions of people who do not belong to either the Elijah group or the Baal group. It is important to take this third group into account. Who are the people who constitute it?

(1) Some 312 million Buddhists are neither the "Elijah" type nor the "Baal" type. Their great concern is the destructiveness of human greed. (2) People who advocate the use of nonviolence as a force in society to achieve social justice, represented by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., "scandalously" (I Cor. 1:23) attest to the invincible power that emanates from being "vulnerable." (3) Many human rights advocates, from the writers of the Magna Carta in 1512 to the composers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, do not join the company of either Elijah or the prophets of Baal. (4) The people who, embodying the best heritage of the European Enlightenment, gave to the United States its Constitution in 1787 and to postwar Japan its Constitution in 1946, were able to fashion a government that would check its own power. Such an achievement is not to be found in the influence of either Elijah or Baal. (5) There are many people today who are influenced by the classical thought of the Buddha and Confucius. Although both the Buddha and Confucius rejected the idea of a supernatural "God" (or "gods") as confusing and profitless, they were not fools (Ps. 14:1).

Should Christians invite people of the third group? Yes. Buddhists? Taoists? Marxists? Atheists? Yes, since they cannot, figuratively speaking, repay Christians in the language Christians know. Sincere dialogue with people whose convictions are different from ours would broaden the horizon of our spiritual commitment to Christ. Then Christ would receive a larger doxology from humanity.

The final expression of Jesus’ admonition to invite those who cannot repay would be his commandment to "love your enemy." The enemy gives us a strong self-identity. In the reign of God our strong identity must come from loving our enemies.

"When the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly, this man was the Son of God!’ " (Mark 15:39) Lifted high on the cross, Christ invited a Roman centurion to his messianic feast. It was this Roman soldier who made the first ecumenical confession of the Christian faith. He, too, might have been of neither the Elijah nor the Baal type. He saw that "this man" loved his enemies. This simple word "saw" carries cosmic weight. When we invite those who cannot repay, we may be able to enter the place where we can see the "marvelous sight" (Exod. 3:3). The event of "loving enemies" is also the moment of seeing "the resurrection of the just."

So They May See My Glory (John 17:24)

Father, I want those you have given me

to be with me where I am,

so that they may always see my glory

which you have given me

because you loved me

before the foundation of the world

[John 17:24].

From love comes glory, not vice versa. Glory which is not rooted in love tends to be a false glory, the glory of Molech, the Canaanite god of fire. Molech demanded human sacrifice to maintain its glory. This ideology keeps imperialism alive. Daniel gives a vivid description of the spirit of imperialism:

Peoples, nations, languages! Thus are you commanded: the moment you hear the sound of horn, pipe, lyre, zither, harp, bagpipe and every other kind of instrument, you will prostrate yourselves and worship the golden statue set up by King Nebuchadnezzar [Dan. 3:4-5].

This is totalitarian. All peoples, without exception, are required to worship the golden statue that represents Nebuchadnezzar and his imperial glory. Here glory is violently monopolized. This violence is inherent in glory that is divorced from the common good, love. Nebuchadnezzar obviously found delight in prostration politics, preferring an automatic reaction to a thoughtful response to the imperial command: "The moment you hear the sound of horn, pipe, . . . prostrate yourselves!" Don’t think deeply about the meaning of the command! Just do it quickly! This imperial command has been heard in every civilization in the past and present.

But the glory of the biblical God judges that of Nebuchadnezzar. God’s glory is rooted in God’s love. God’s glory is that God loves humanity. "I want those you have given me to be with me where I am." These are the words of love, therefore, the words of glory. "To be with God" is salvation in the ultimate sense. This is the content of the reign of God. This is "heaven," the most gloriously fulfilled state of human beings and of all creation. God assures the wandering Jacob, "Be sure, I am with you; I shall keep you safe wherever you go" (Gen. 28:15) In commissioning Jeremiah God tells him. "Do not be afraid of confronting them, for I am with you to rescue you (Jer. 1:8) Jesus is called Emmanuel, "which means ‘God-is-with-us’." (Matt. 1:23) According to John, he is so called because "the Word was with God." (John 1:1) Salvation is not to possess something externally. It is to live "with God."

The psalmist sings:

For he is king of the whole world; learn the music, let it sound for God! God reigns over the nations, seated on his holy throne [Ps. 47:7-8].

God sits on the "holy throne." Holiness in its fundamental nature, separates itself from the unholy and the profane. Yet love expresses itself by coming to the unholy. There, the holiness and the love of God are in tension, but united. This tension-filled unity is at the heart of the Christian faith. The holy God in Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.

The holiness of God is the awesome primordial dignity of God. The love of God is the unfathomable mystery. God’s love is real and profound because God is holy. "Learn the music!" This is not a totalitarian music. It is a doxological music. Christian theology and ethics draw their inspiration from the unity of the love and holiness of God.

The holy Jesus established his sovereignty by being crucified between two thieves. He became the center of salvation in the extreme periphery. The one who has experienced this periphery now is seated on the holy throne. It is in the extreme periphery that holiness and love express themselves in unity. This is where we see the glory of God. What a message! "The message of the cross is folly," says the apostle Paul (I Cor. 1:18) It is through this message, however, that "God reigns over the nation" (Ps. 47:8)

He Had Compassion (Luke 10:31-33)

Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him he had compassion (Luke 10:31-33).

The situation is both ancient and as contemporary as can be. In the ancient tradition of Buddhism we read of the young prince Siddhartha, the future Buddha, taking outings. Outside his palace he sees the human conditions of old age, sickness and death. One day he sees "an aged man as bent as a roof gable, decrepit, leaning on a staff, tottering as he walked, afflicted and long past his prime." On the next outing he sees "a sick man, suffering and ill, fallen and weltering in his own water." The sight grips him. Mentally he cannot "pass by." The Buddhist tradition traces its origin to this "parable."

Twenty-five centuries after the Buddha, I see similar sights in New York City. In the Times Square subway station I saw a black man who was not only old and sick, but who had "fallen among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead." The ruthless power system of our society, propelled by human greed, stripped him and beat him, leaving him half dead. But not all passed by.

Tragically, it is not difficult to make an endless litany of passing by on the other side. It may seem to us shocking and incredible that humanity "passed by on the other side" when Hitler attempted the total destruction of European Jewry in this century. But not all passed by.

A very serious ecological crisis is with us today. We are still trying to pass by on the other side of this crisis, though there is hardly any space that may be called the "other side" in this issue! But not all pass by.

Passing by may be called "keeping law and order" by the ruling class of a community. If the victims are kept invisible the newspapers and televisions can say that law and order have been maintained. The New York Times reports that in Brazil the top 2 percent of the landowners control 60 percent of the arable land. In Colombia 4 percent controls 68 percent, in El Salvador 1 percent controls 41 percent, in Guatemala 1 percent controls 34 percent and in Paraguay 1 percent controls 80 percent. The majority of the people are being "stripped and beaten." The job of the police and military forces is to keep the "undesirables" invisible from the affluent section of the community. But there are people who do not pass by. They make the poor visible. The Samaritan in the parable makes the victim visible. He is in the line of the "troubler of Israel" (I Kings 18:17)

In interreligious discussions Buddhism is often viewed as inferior to Christianity because it is not theistic. Such an argument makes me think of a giraffe declaring a zebra inferior for lack of a long neck. The giraffe will always win, if it is the giraffe who sets the rules of the game. I sense here a hint of the "passing by" psychology. But not all pass by.

In the Book of Deuteronomy we read an admonition to Israel that she should be compassionate (not pass by on the other side) to weak and insecure strangers sojourning among them because once Israel was "a slave in the land of Egypt." Israel, too, had an experience of being passed by in time of need. This terse admonition suggests the disturbing truth that victims can become victimizers in a different setting. But there are still those few who do not pass by.

Is it the "religious" people who usually do not pass by? Not necessarily. In A Theology for the Social Gospel Walter Rauschenbusch wrote:

Some become worse through their revival experiences, more self-righteous, more opinionated, more steeped in unrealities and stupid over against the most important things, more devoted to emotions and unresponsive to real duties. We have the highest authority for the fact that men may grow worse by getting religion.

Yet it is often "religious" people who do not pass by.

All civilizations are guilty of passing by on the other side of dire human need. It may be that they do so in order to prosper. Yet the tradition of the "troubler of Israel" has not completely disappeared’ from human civilization. "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Rom. 5:20)

By the grace of God a Samaritan appears. Not all passed by! "When he saw him he had compassion." He, who is considered to be religiously polluted, a nonchosen person, saw the victim as God saw the victim. "My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it," wrote Augustine. The Samaritan is considerate and responsible. He translated compassion into action. This is a mysterious moment of salvation for all -- the victim, the Samaritan and the community. The tradition of Pentecost is reflected here. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind" (Acts 2:2) "Son of man, can these bones live?" (Ezek. 37:3)