The Pope and the Poor

 

From an AP news story about Tuesday’s public appearance of Pope Francis:

“Francis said the role of the leader of the world’s 1.2
billion Catholics is to open his arms and protect all of humanity, but
“especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important, those whom
Matthew lists in the final judgment on love: the hungry, the thirsty, the
stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison.”  
I love this position of Pope Francis and find it the same as that of Jesus Christ.  You may wonder then why I do not count myself as a liberal social progressive advocating free health care, for example, for all.  The reason is that our liberal progressive social system fails to adequately protect the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, and the sick because of its insistence on trying to help everybody whether help is needed or not.  Just because the poor need help is no reason we all have to chip in to buy annual physicals, flu shots, and birth control pills for each other.
Instead of helping, our current system patronizes and enables the disadvantaged while frittering away taxpayer money assisting middle class and above folks who really don’t need assistance.  We have an expensive bureaucracy that depends on a large lower class and would crumble if the problems of poverty were actually solved.  In 1965 a “War on Poverty” was launched with approximately 15% of the population below some arbitrarily defined poverty line and almost fifty years and billions of dollars later we still have approximately 15% of the population in poverty.  And, because the system is designed in a way that perpetuates poverty, it is the children of the poor who are most likely to become poor adults.
It started in 1935 with Social Security for all and then compounded the error in 1965 with Medicare for all.  The current administration doubled down with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a government takeover of the health care insurance system for all when the focus should have been on a health care system (not insurance) for the poor.  The systems which are means tested, housing and food supplements primarily, ask little of recipients other than standing in lines and completing paperwork on a regular basis.
Social Security is probably the lesser evil because it does not distort markets and prices.  It just redistributes income from younger working folks, whether they can afford it or not, to older and disabled folks, whether they need it or not.  And, since the demographic destiny of the USA, absent opening the borders wide to immigrants, is a diminishing ratio of workers to retirees, the system is unsustainable.  Of course Social Security was supposed to be fully funded by our contributions to the system during our working years, but, unfortunately, that money we paid in advance was borrowed and spent and current payments to retirees all depend on current tax receipts from working folks.
The health care problem is much more serious because the isolation of patient from provider by third party payers including large employers, insurance companies, and government, with congress trying to micromanage the system under the guidance of health care industry lobbyists, has distorted the market and resulted in soaring costs, prices, and profits.  There is no competition and no price transparency, and patients have become pawns in a system that cannot be understood.  Health care has unnecessarily become unaffordable for all but the wealthy.
I suppose all of the problems are in some way related to the currently popular belief in equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity, the belief that no one should be singled out or insulted or made to feel bad, the belief that one lifestyle is as good as another and is no business of government.  The best descriptor for the system that has evolved is probably “politically correct.”
But, the fact is that, while personal loving assistance, face to face, from one person to another, expecting nothing in return, is Christ-like, provision of government handouts, though an impersonal and very expensive bureaucracy, to the poor, with no expectation of anything, not even an attempt at change in behavior, in return, is patronizing, insulting, demoralizing, and enabling.
And, the issue of assistance to the poor is complicated because of the entanglement of faith based organizations with government through acceptance of government funding, assistance that always comes with strings attached.  So, we find, for example, that a Catholic hospital that is required to provide and accept insurance under the new health care law must cover and provide services that are against its teachings.  Catholic hospitals in the USA are caught up in the same complex funding and billing system as secular institutions and serve the financially comfortable as well as the poor.
So, my suggestion is that Catholic hospitals sell their huge and expensive facilities, shrink to a more manageable size, stop accepting government funding, and focus all efforts on providing loving preventive health care, education, and counseling to the poor through a nationwide network of free medical clinics, funding their operations with donations only.  Leave the corrupt health care industry-government complex to the secular institutions.  I’d like to donate time and money to one of those Catholic medical clinics if they are established.  But I’m not coughing up anything voluntarily for these “non-profit” hospitals we now have.
Well, at least I think faith-based free medical clinics are a good idea, but I’m thinking the federal government Department of Health and Human Services might disapprove them if they were to become too conspicuous.
Just a final word on the system we have.  It obviously helps a lot of people but it also hurts a lot of people.  It’s well institutionalized and probably is not going to change much.  So I guess my primary point is that the Church cannot count our government welfare system as our obedience to the commandments of Jesus.  We have to do a lot more, and I suppose that is the challenge Pope Francis has put forward. 

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Christian Existence: Human Reality and Divine Mystery

Below is a short paper I wrote in May, 2002, to fulfill a requirement for a Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary course, Introduction to Theology.  The professor was Dr. David Yeago, prominent Lutheran theologian, who was always challenging us to do a better job of “unpacking” the texts we were studying or quoting and who must have been frustrated and disappointed with the short and simplistic essays we students wrote in response to his deeply challenging lectures and writings.  But, it was a privilege to sit in his class and see him at work.  There is an interesting sample of his work, The Catholic Luther, published in First Things, March 1996.

Christian Existence: Human Reality and Divine Mystery
Darryl K. Williams
May 6, 2002
HT252 – Introduction to Theology
 
Introduction
Christians realize they cannot understand and usually don’t question the miraculous work of grace God does in the hearts and minds and souls of individuals to bring them to salvation from sin, death, and the devil.  We accept that work of the Holy Spirit as a divine mystery.  We accept that God chose us, and we give thanks for it.  But it is a mistake to focus on that choice as bearing only on our eternal destinies and ignore what Scripture says about the responsibilities of Christian existence.
Just as there are both divine mystery and human reality of Christ, represented by His two natures, there are both divine mystery and human reality of Christian existence.  If we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life,”[1] how are we to know what those good works are, and how are we able to accomplish them? What is this “way of life” intended for the Christian, and what is the role of the Church in it?  It is the purpose of this short paper to give brief and superficial and incomplete, though hopefully not incorrect, answers to these questions which have occupied the minds of great thinkers and spawned volumes of brilliant writing through the centuries.
The Human Reality of Christian Existence
Salvation in the New Testament is both event and process, and source of both assurance and hope.  Jesus certainly talked to His followers about final judgment, a place in His Father’s house, paradise, and mansions, but He talked more about the reality of challenges of the Christian life.  He restated and explained the application of the Old Testament law to the daily life of the believer.  He also carefully taught the appropriate relationship between the believer and God in his instructions on prayer and worship.  For Jesus, the point was not to just hang in there hoping for escape from punishment and a great reward sometime in the future but to live an unselfish life of love and worship and service to God and fellow mankind.
Also in support of salvation as both event and process, St. Paul, in his epistles to the churches, wrote of believers having been saved[2], being saved[3], and hoping for
salvation.[4] Paul’s emphasis, like that of Jesus, was on the Christian life in the Church beginning with its starting point or initiation, baptism.  For both Jesus and Paul, Salvation begins “now,”[5] not at the time of death.  And with salvation comes a tension because the person is, as Luther wrote, “… at one and the same time righteous in Christ and sinful in his own flesh: simul justus et peccator.”[6]  That is a serious condition making the life of the believer into a battlefield and putting the believer at odds with the world.  The battle that rages is probably what Jesus referred to when He said:
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foeswill be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.[7]
Jesus said that He had come that we might have life and “have it abundantly,”[8] but He never promised that it would be an easy life.  His demands for change are echoed in St. Paul’s words to the church at Rome; “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”[9]  Certainly, the whole message of Jesus, confirmed in the writings of St. Paul, was about transformation of lives in the pattern of the change in the lives of His first followers from fishermen to
“fishers of men.”[10]
What did Jesus intend for the life of the believer?  From His word and example we know that Christians are to live lives of prayer and to love and serve and worship God and to love and serve each other.[11]  We are to subject ourselves to the discipline of study of scripture and to the discipline we learn from Scripture.[12]  Christians are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.[13]  Life should be better for all because we are here.  We are to tell the Gospel story and baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.[14]  We are to avoid judging each other[15] and let the weeds grow with the wheat until the time of harvest.[16]  Based on the example of Christ, we should associate with and witness and minister to the un-popular and the sinful and the disreputable as He did with Samaritans and lepers and tax collectors.   As citizens of Heaven and Earth, we are instructed by Jesus to “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”[17]
To live such a life is a challenge faced by every believer and a challenge that cannot be met under one’s own power.  St. Paul left a very personal written testimony about the human reality of Christian living, saying “I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate,” and concluding, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” [18]  Martin Luther described the human reality of Christian life in his famous phrase from The Freedom of A Christian, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.  A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”[19]  Luther makes it clear that motivation is the key and that the motivation for good works can never be for one’s own benefit.  “Man, however, needs none of these things for his righteousness and salvation. Therefore he should be guided in all his works by this thought and contemplate this one thing alone, that he may serve and benefit others in all that he does, considering nothing except the need and the advantage of his neighbor.”[20]  In Life Together,[21] Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the conflict that results from our desire for self justification.  That sinful desire leads us to compare ourselves to others and results, because of our self centeredness, in criticism of the others. By so doing, according to Bonhoeffer, we justify ourselves.  If only we realize that we already have the gift of justification by grace, we no longer have to justify ourselves by comparing ourselves with others and can accept others as creatures of God.  Only then, Bonhoeffer wrote, can we minister to them without judging.  Only then are we free to do what we want to do rather than what we hate.  Only then are we free to be “servant of all, subject to all,” as Luther taught.  These similar testimonies of St. Paul, Martin Luther, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer show that their common rescuer was the Holy Spirit whose ongoing presence is the divine mystery of Christian existence which enables all Christians to be victorious in the human reality of Christian existence.
The Divine Mystery of Christian Existence
There are two aspects to the divine mystery of Christian existence. First is the spiritual awakening, symbolized by baptism, which comes as a gift through the Holy Spirit.  The second aspect is the ongoing spiritual sustenance that comes through the Eucharist and enables the believer to live in a manner that is pleasing to God.
The first divine mystery of Christian existence is the work of the Holy Spirit in awakening the sinner to a realization of what God has done and of the justification that is a gift of God to the sinner.  St. Augustine came to that realization in a garden after reading a verse of scripture, St. Paul had to be struck blind on the road to Damascus, Luther had his “tower experience,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer suddenly realized he had not been a Christian is spite of being a theologian, and John Wesley had a strange “warming” of the heart.   All these theologians and Church leaders and others who have joined them through the centuries realized, through the power of the Holy Spirit, what God had done for them.  They were justified!  They had not made a ‘decision for Christ.”  God had made a decision for them.  But they did decide, as every person who realizes what God has done for them through the divine mystery of justification by grace must, whether,  in thankfulness and through the power of the Holy Spirit, to let the promised power of God flow through their lives or to deny that power and continue living in frustration and doubt.  Scripture leaves no doubt that believers are to claim that promise and accept union with Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  St. Paul wrote to the Romans “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”[22]  He had a more positive statement to the Corinthians, saying “…all of us…are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”[23]  So, according to St. Paul, it is possible, through the divine mystery of the presence of the Holy Spirit, for Christians to please God.
The second divine mystery, ongoing spiritual sustenance, comes through the Church which is the vehicle which God has provided for the transformation of the Christian life. It is easy, from a worldly viewpoint, to misunderstand the Church, seeing it, at its best, as a super civic club, growing, raising and spending money, doing good, and helping people, or, at its worst, as an exclusive private club or clique with strange practices and little interest in reaching beyond its doors or in inviting more people inside.  The New Testament is the story of the founding and early development and worship and practices of the Church, Heaven’s embassy in the world.[24]  From the founding of the Church by Christ in Matthew 16, with a dozen charter members, to the first Holy Communion prior to his crucifixion, to the promised coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the resulting expansion of the Church, to the worship symbolism in Revelation, the Church is the focus of the New Testament.  The Church is not a super civic club, nor is it an exclusive private club.  It is the body of Christ, of which Christ is the head, and is the location of the communion of saints.
Because the Church is the body of Christ, the life that is pleasing to God is life in the Church through which the grace of God and the power for Christian living are received in baptism which is cleansing from sin and Eucharist which is spiritual nourishment.[25]  Christ is the head of the Church, and Christians are the body of Christ.[26]  That means Christians are in union with Christ.  The job of the Church, in union with Christ, is to continue the work that Jesus began in the first century in Palestine, loving God and neighbor and delivering the Gospel message.  Being a Christian means being a member of the Church.
One way to think of the divine mystery of Christian existence is that there is a total disconnect between the benefits we derive from it and our ability to invest anything in it.  The student studies long hours and does well on an exam and gets a good grade.  The farmer toils in the fields and reaps a bountiful harvest.  The Christian, through the grace of God, receives a free gift of faith which results in justification.  With that justification comes sanctification, motivation and resources to do God’s good works. A fundamental problem for many Christians is that it is easier and more human to work hard on our own to do all the things we think Christ would have us do, as the student works for good grades or the farmer works for bountiful crops, than to open ourselves spiritually to the Holy Spirit and depend on the mystery of the divine guidance that is available from that source.  Simply striving to do better on our own, admirable from a human viewpoint, is “works righteousness” and displeasing to God.
It is also difficult for Christians to come to grips with a new concept of progress when thinking of Christian living.  It’s in our human nature to want to accomplish things and to be better.  One thing we cannot do in this life, even though enabled by the Holy Spirit, is make progress in reducing the infinite gap that exists between our worldly righteousness or good works and the divine perfection that is God.  The good works we do in the power of the Holy Spirit do move us forward, but just as, mathematically, an infinite distance minus 10,000 miles is still an infinite distance, we still have the same gap between what we do and what God would ultimately have us do.
Summary
Without the salvation that comes from God, life is either blissful ignorance or hopeless wallowing in sin and despair, both ending in death.  With that salvation from death, sin, and the devil, we enter into the human reality and divine mystery of Christian existence.
The human reality of that Christian existence is that we are at odds with the world, and the divine mystery is that we are able to win the ensuing struggle only through giving up our own egos and efforts and opening ourselves completely to the power of the Holy Spirit.
Thanks be to God for that power!  May He give us the strength and wisdom to rely on it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND OTHER SOURCES
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together: A Discussion of Christian
Fellowship, Translated by John W. Doberstein. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1954.
[1]Luther, M. 1999, c1957. Luther’s
works, vol. 31 : Career of the Reformer I (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H.
T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther’s Works. Vol. 31 (Vol. 31, Page 344). Fortress Press:
Philadelphia
Tappert, T. G. 2000, c1959. The book of concord : The
confessions of the evangelical Lutheran church: Philadelphia, PA: Fortress
Press: Philadelphia
Yeago, David S. 2001. The Faith of the Christian Church: A
Catholic and Evangelical Introduction to Theology. Columbia, SC.: Lutheran
Theological Southern Seminary.
Yeago, David S. 2001. Classroom Lectures for HT 252,
Introduction To Theology. Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, SC.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible. 1994. New York, NY.: Oxford
University Press.

 

[1]
Ephesians 2:10
[2] Romans
8:24
[3] 1
Corinthians 1:18.  It seems that Paul is
writing only to those already in the church and saying that they, along with
him, are in a process of “being saved.”
[4] 1 Thessalonians
5:8.
[5] 2
Corinthians 6:2
[6]Luther, M.
1999, c1960. Luther’s works, vol. 35 : Word and Sacrament I (J. J.
Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther’s Works. Vol. 35 (Vol.
35). Fortress Press: Philadelphia
[7] Matthew
10:34-39
[8] John
10:10
[9] Romans
12:2
[10] Matthew
4:19.  An example of language update gone
amuck is revision of  the KJV’s, ‘I will
make you fishers of men” to “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”
[11] Mark
12:29-31
[12] See
Hebrews 4:12 and 2 Timothy
3:16-17
[13] Matthew
5:13-16
[14] Matthew
28:19
[15] Matthew
7:1
[16] Matthew
13:25-30
[17] Matthew
22:21
[18] Romans
7:14-25
[19]Luther, M.
1999, c1957. Luther’s works, vol. 31 : Career of the Reformer I (J. J.
Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther’s Works. Vol. 31 (Vol.
31, Page 344). Fortress Press: Philadelphia
[20]Luther, M.
1999, c1957. Luther’s works, vol. 31 : Career of the Reformer I (J. J.
Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther’s Works. Vol. 31 (Vol.
31, Page 365). Fortress Press: Philadelphia
[21]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together,
trans. By John W. Doberstein (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954.
[22] Romans
12:2
[23] 2
Corinthians 3:18
[24] I liked
this explanation Dr. Yeago gave in class of why it is inappropriate to fly
national flags in churches.
[25] John
6:54: So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no
life in you.
[26]  Colossians 1:18 – He is the head of the body, the church;

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Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Minister

 

Looking through some old stuff from my seminary retirement hobby I found this paper on Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  It was an assignment for the History of Christianity course taught by Dr. Mary Havens.  Bonhoeffer is an especially interesting character because of the inherent contradiction of a minister with a reputation for pacifism both entertaining thoughts of suicide and conspiring to assassinate Hitler.  The paper includes Bonhoeffer’s views on self esteem and his provocative view that a member of a Christian fellowship “...is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him.”  The emphases of this paper are Bonhoeffer’s theory and practice of Christian ministry, a practice that continued until the day of his hanging.
_______________________________________________
DR. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, MINISTER
DARRYL K. WILLIAMS
MARCH 27, 2002
HT-102
HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY
Bonhoeffer’s Life
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born February 4, 1906, in Breslau, Germany, child of prosperous, intelligent, and prominent parents and brother to seven, and died April 9, 1945, on the Nazi gallows at Flossenburg after spending his last two years confined in the company of a small group of prisoners and jail keepers of Hitler’s Third Reich.  He lived an early life of comfortable privilege surrounded by the love and support of his family and the friendship and guidance of brilliant and influential mentors and associates but in a political environment steadily advancing toward the crisis which was to result in his imprisonment and youthful death.  Relatively unknown during his life and often misunderstood after his death, perhaps because of the incompletion of his life’s work, Bonhoeffer has, nevertheless, become one of the most widely read and studied and quoted theologians of the twentieth century. Bonhoeffer’s education started at home under the tutelage of his father, Professor Karl Bonhoeffer, chair of his department at the University of Berlin.
Professor Bonhoeffer was a man of dignity, self-control, objectivity, and clear speech and taught his children the same disciplines.  Although the Church was not a priority for the Bonhoeffer family, Dietrich’s mother, Paula, had a Christian education and took personal responsibility for the religious and musical instruction of her children.  Both parents taught the Bonhoeffer children personal responsibility and concern and empathy for others and did so in a home environment that developed their natural talents, built their self confidence, and instilled in them senses of humor.[1] The fruits of those parental efforts are clearly visible in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
The Bonhoeffer family was severely impacted by World War I, losing nephews and one son, Dietrich’s older brother, Walter, in military action when Dietrich was twelve years old.  The war experiences may have influenced him to pursue a career in theology because, at fifteen, he was studying Hebrew.[2]  He entered university at seventeen and pursued his studies vigorously without missing the opportunity to enjoy university social life.  He joined a fraternity which he eventually had to leave when it inserted the Aryan clause in its constitution.[3]  That was perhaps the first of his public anti-Hitler positions which were to become bolder and bolder eventually leading to Bonhoeffer’s execution.

There were two dramatic spiritual turning points in Bonhoeffer’s life.  The first had to do with his attitude toward the Church which was relatively unimportant to him until he spent a university term in Rome and attended St. Peter’s during Easter.  That visit, recorded in his diary as an experience which helped him begin to understand the Church, “made him conscious how nationalistic, provincial, and narrow-minded were the confines of his own church.”[4]  The second turning point occurred in 1933 when he, “discovered the Bible for the first time,” and concluded that he was, “still not a Christian.”[5]  By that time he had already served in his first assistant pastorship under the direction of a minister who apparently showed little interest in theology or religion.  There, Bonhoeffer seems. to have gotten a good look at what the Church should not be, strictly social and political in nature.He had also studied at Union Theological Seminary, had become involved in ecumenism and had become more political, even as Germany had moved closer and closer to crisis.  He had become a university lecturer, heavily involved in travel, seminars, church politics, and ecumenism.   He had also met and had become a friend of Karl Barth.  It was study, lectures, conversation with Barth, and self examination during those years that led Bonhoeffer to the second turning point.  He later confessed that he had finally realized that, “the life of a servant of Jesus Christ should belong to the Church.”[6] From that time, Bonhoeffer belonged to the Church and was focused on Christian ministry and on renewal of the Church, placing him in diametric opposition to Hitler who, in the same year, had become Chancellor of the Third Reich and had immediately begun destroying the German democracy and eliminating the freedoms of the citizens.  Bonhoeffer had ten years left before his arrest.

Bonhoeffer became a parish minister in London in 1933 but returned to Germany in 1935 to lead an underground illegal seminary.  His experiences at the seminary are the subject of Life Together, [7] published in 1938.   After an unsatisfying attempt to escape the German situation by a move to NY, he returned to Germany in 1939 to, “share the tribulations of this time with my people,”[8] and joined the resistance against Hitler, eventually becoming involved in a plot to assassinate the German ruler.  He was arrested and imprisoned in 1943 and, after discovery of the assassination plot, was condemned and hanged in 1945.
Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Ministry 
In Life Together,  Bonhoeffer outlined his concept of ministry, linking the gift of ministry to the gift of justification by grace.  He argued that self justification forces us to compare ourselves to others and results, because of our self centeredness, in criticism of the others.  By so doing, according to Bonhoeffer, we justify ourselves.  If only we realize that we already have the gift of justification by grace, we no longer have to justify ourselves by comparing ourselves with others and can accept others as creatures of God.  Only then can we minister to them without judging.
Bonhoeffer listed seven essential elements of ministry, two that were inward focused and five that had to do with interaction with others.  The first essential element of Christian ministry, according to Bonhoeffer, is control of the tongue.  His strongest statement on the tongue is that, “…it must be a decisive rule of every Christian fellowship that each individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him.”[9]  The prohibition applies not to kind words spoken in private and in love to Christian brothers but to criticism spoken in public and behind the backs of the criticized.  Scriptural support is found in Psalms 50:20-21, Ephesians 4:19, and, perhaps most directly, in James 4:11-12:  “Speak not evil one of another, brethren…who are thou that judgest another?”[10]  According to Bonhoeffer, if that philosophy is adopted, “diverse individuals in the community are no longer incentives for talking and judging and condemning, and thus excuses for self justification.” [11]
Meekness is Bonhoeffer’s second, inward focused, essential element of ministry.  To put his advice in modern terms, those who would minister should give up self esteem.  Bonhoeffer’s actual words were that such a person should, “think little of himself.”  Romans 12:3 was cited as a scriptural basis: “…I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think…” [12] The purposes of meekness are to avoid the “sin of resentment”[13] and to be able to humbly serve others.  As Bonhoeffer asks, “How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?”[14]
Then Bonhoeffer turns to three specific things Christians should do in personal ministry to each other: Listening attentively, resisting the temptation to interrupt and take the center of attention, helping in even trivial matters, always being willing to be interrupted, and bearing each others burdens,  never sidestepping what others may impose upon us.  All three require a total selflessness and seem almost impossible.  How can one make a living and take care of personal responsibilities if always ready to listen to concerns of others, to be interrupted to help with menial tasks, and to share concern with whatever anyone else may be concerned about?  Such is possible only by the Grace of God.
Bonhoeffer further states that Christians are to proclaim the gospel and speak openly of Jesus Christ to each other.  Bonhoeffer is speaking of, “free communication of the Word from person to person, not by the ordained ministry which is bound to a particular office, time, and place.”[15]  In spite of our concerns about confrontation of Christian friends with the Gospel, we must do it because we are all sinners and, “have only God to fear.”[16]
Finally, according to Bonhoeffer, if we truly serve one another as ministers, we have the ministry of authority.  Believers should not confer authority on persons because of their physical or mental traits and characteristics and abilities but only because of their humble service.  He states, “The Church does not need brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus and the brethren.”[17]  These statements were not just intellectual affirmations but were intensely personal for Bonhoeffer, who in fact was a brilliant personality, charismatic, influential, and gifted, and who later confessed that personal ambition had once been a problem for him and that he had, “turned the doctrine of Jesus Christ into something of personal advantage.”  Certainly during the latter years of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life he qualified as a faithful servant giving humble service.
Bonhoeffer’s Practice of Ministry
The student of Bonhoeffer has the advantage of being able to assess the actual ministry of the always great and eventually humble theologian against his simple theory.  The personality and discipline required of a person making his or her mark as a theologian, ministering through writing and teaching and across distance and time, are different from those required of a person focused on face-to-face personal and immediate ministry to others. Bonhoeffer excelled in both areas. His writings are ample evidence of his significance as a theologian and have also become an ongoing ministry of great impact.  A Rabbi wrote to Bonhoeffer’s friend, Eberhard Bethge, that Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison had, “made him understand for the first time how one might be able to worship Jesus Christ.”[18]  But it is not just his writing.  Bonhoeffer’s life story includes many examples of selflessness in the practice of personal ministry.
Even as a student responsible for a childrens’ service at the Grunewald church, Bonhoeffer’s talent for personal ministry was foreshadowed in his invitations of the children to his home and in his initiation of discussion groups with the older children.[19] Later he took charge of an unruly confirmation class whose confidence and respect he won through personal involvement in their lives and through opening his home to them, even in his absence.[20]  His personal ministry matured during his leadership of an underground seminary at Finkenwalde from 1935 to 1938.  The seminary was an establishment of the Confessing Church, regarded as illegal by the Reich church government.  In Spartan surroundings, Bonhoeffer opened himself completely to the seminarians, installing his treasured library and piano in a common area for use by all and reading to them from his works in progress.  Initial German patriotism of the seminarians was overcome by Bonhoeffer’s teaching on pacifism.  Finally in 1935, when the seminary itself was officially declared illegal, Bonhoeffer called all the ordinands together and released them from their obligations to the seminary.  None left.[21]  It was of his experiences at Finkenwalde that Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together.
Finally it was the prison experience from April 1943 until his death which was the ultimate test of Bonhoeffer as a minister.  Initially in solitary confinement, forbidden conversation even with the guards, and without amenities even for personal cleanliness, he entertained thoughts of suicide, not only to avoid the risk of betraying his family or associates in conspiracy but, “because basically I am already dead.”[22]  However, after an initial interrogation period, Bonhoeffer was allowed to convert his cell to a study including minimal comforts from home and books and paper. He gained the respect and assistance of his jailers and was eventually able to smuggle out his writing uncensored.
Throughout his imprisonment, Bonhoeffer worked and worshiped and ministered, always maintaining a personal discipline and serenity that could not be ignored by his fellow prisoners and prison keepers.  It was not only in matters of faith and religion that Bonhoeffer helped.  Bethge reported that he drafted letters, provided money, helped with legal matters, and assisted in cases of illness and injury.[23]  Rene Marle[24] quoted the comments of one of Bonhoeffer’s fellow prisoners, a British
Intelligence Service officer: Bonhoeffer…was all humility and sweetness; he always seemed to me to diffuse an atmosphere of happiness, of joy, in every smallest event in
life, and of deep gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive…He was one of the few men that I have met to whom God was real and close.[25]
Another prisoner, one who occupied the cell next to Bonhoeffer’s, reported that, “…often he would slip into my hand a scrap of paper with a few words of comfort and faith from the Bible written on it.”[26]  Bethge reported that, at Christmas, he wrote prayers for distribution throughout the prison by the chaplain.[27]  In prison, it was not only middle class Christian church members with whom Bonhoeffer was associated.  There were people from all walks of life, and he was often impressed with the contributions to the community of those from outside the Church.[28]  Certainly it was no exaggeration for Renate Wind to write that, “In the emergency community of Tegel he gave and experienced solidarity.”[29]
Bonhoeffer was also active in leadership of worship among the prisoners including celebrations of weddings and christenings.  On his last day of which there is any record,
he was locked in a school in Bavaria on the journey to the extermination facility at Flossenburg.  At the request of the other prisoners, Bonhoeffer conducted a service of the Word.  He was about to begin a service with a second group when he was taken away for his execution. The inscription placed on Bonhoeffer’s memorial tablet at the church in the town where his execution took place said, “A witness to Jesus Christ among his brothers.”[30]
Thanks be to God for the life and witness and ministry of Dietrich Bonhoeffer!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bethge, Eberhard. Costly Grace: An Illustrated Introduction
to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Translated by Rosaleen Ockenden. San Francisco: Harper
and Row, 1979.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together: A Discussion of
Christian Fellowship, Translated by John W. Doberstein. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1954.
Marle, Rene. Bonhoeffer: The Man and His Work, Translated by
Rosemary Sheed.  New York: Newman Press,
1967.
Mohan, T. N.  Hanged
on a Twisted Cross, Written by Eberhard Bethge. 120 min.
Lathika International Film and Entertainment, Inc., 1996.
Videocassette.
Robertson, E. H. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Richmond, VA: John
Knox Press, 1966.
Wind, Renate. A Spoke in the Wheel: The Life of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Translated by John Bowden. London: SCM Press Ltd., 1991.

 

[1] Eberhard
Bethge, Costly Grace, trans. Rosaleen
Ockenden (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), 17.  Most of the biographical details are taken
from this source.
[2] Ibid.,
26.
[3] Ibid.,
31.
[4] Ibid.,
34.
[5] Ibid., 57.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. By
John W. Doberstein (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1954.
[8] Bethge,
99.
[9]
Bonhoeffer, 92.
[10] NRSV
[11]
Bonhoeffer, 93.
[12] NRSV
[13]
Bonhoeffer, 96.
[14] Ibid.,
97.
[15] Ibid,.
103.
[16] Ibid.,
106.
[17] Ibid.,
109.
[18] Rene
Marle, Bonhoeffer: The Man and His Work,
trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Newman Press, 1967), 39.
[19] Bethge,
36.
[20]T. N. Mohan,  Hanged on a Twisted Cross, Written by
Eberhard Bethge. 120 min. Lathika International Film and Entertainment, Inc.,
1996. Videocassette.
[21] Bethge,
82.
[22] Ibid.,
116.
[23] Ibid.,
137.
[24] Marle,
39.
[25]
According to Marle, this quote was reported by Eberhard Bethge in his forward
to an edition of Letters and Papers from Prison.
[26] Marle,
38.
[27] Bethge,
137.
[28] Wind
115
[29] Renate
Wind, A Spoke in the Wheel: The Life of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1991),
115.
[30] Marle,
35.

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The (Holy) Bible and (Christian) Theology

Listening to the Gospel reading this morning from Mark 10 about the young man who went away sad after Jesus told him to sell everything he had and give to the poor inspired some reflection on the difficulties we have understanding scripture and formulating a cohesive theology from it.  A couple of things I learned in three years of seminary training are that there is a difference between Bible study and Theology and that either, carelessly done, can easily lead to questionable conclusions.
Study of the Bible, a compilation of writings of various genres produced over a period of a thousand years or so and covering a much longer time has to be done text by text.  In other words, if one desires to study a selection from the Gospel of John, one must focus on the earliest possible version of that text, and that text alone, in the original language, paying close attention to several factors:
  1. Genre, form, and structure of the text.
  2. Literary context: What comes before and after and why?
  3. Historical and cultural context.
  4. Key words and phrases and their meanings at the time of
    writing.
  5. Translation difficulties and uncertainties.
  6. Writer and audience identification, purpose of the writer
    and meaning to the audience.
  7. And, for persons of faith, what the application today is.
(One who wants to undertake such a study shouldn’t worry too much about that original language thing because there are excellent commentaries which thoroughly explore the translation issues and many versions of the Bible which lay out various translation options.)
It is failure to follow such a Bible study regimen that leads to theological errors such as applying Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Him…,” to personal and self serving accomplishment, seeing St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians 9 comparison of the spiritual life to that of an athlete as an endorsement of success for ones football team, or understanding the Leviticus sexual code as a good guide for behavior and punishment in the 21st century.  Sloppy Bible study tends to lead to emphasis on the Great Commission at the expense of The Greatest Commandments, or vice versa, focus on faith at the expense of works, or vice versa, and focus on the bye and bye at the expense of the here and how, or vice versa.  It almost always misses the big picture, the forest, due to excessive focus on the details, the trees, or weeds.
Theology, on the other hand, still uses but de-emphasizes the details of a particular text and, for Christians, seeks to identify broad themes running through the whole of Scripture.  What can we learn from The Holy Bible about God, creation, the universe, and humankind, about good and evil, about life and death and living and dying, about salvation and condemnation?  Are we to subscribe to a theology of prosperity or one of poverty, chastity and obedience, to a theology of just “me and Jesus,” or a theology of the Church as the Body of Christ, each of us members of it, to a theology of social justice and liberation or atheology of personal generosity and service?  Should our theology be one of “Focus on the Family,” or of focus on The Family of God?  Shall we depend on good works, or on our personal faith, or on the faithfulness of God?
Without informed guidance and prayerful study, even with a serious attempt to focus on the big picture, the forest, our theologies can easily beskewed in  wrong or overly simplistic directions by possibly well-meaning but misguided smooth talkers making logical or emotional appeals.  There are plenty of examples of that in recent history as outlined in Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion which I wrote about a few weeks ago.
Sometimes we mistakenly (Romans 12:2) look to societal trends to help us understand and tinker with our theologies.  But, with some scriptural support (1 Timothy 3:15) serious Christians often depend on the Church to interpret or help interpret the scriptures and keep us on a sound theological basis.
And, we sometimes find that the surprising answer from the Church to a difficult either-or theological issue is not one or the other but both-and.

Stinginess Not Only Alternative to Philanthropy

Note: The material below was posted originally on permanentfixes.com but seemed to be of interest also to all of us who give to and through our churches and take tax deductions for such gifts.  I have come to believe that is not a good thing and should be given up, along with other “sacred” tax benefits such as the home mortgage deduction in favor of lower marginal tax rates across the board on all  income, including inheritances, elimination of estate taxes, and much simpler tax returns.  Bottom line is that the federal government should  not be in the business of picking winners and losers, subsidizing some of us at the expense of others. More explanation of that here.
____________________________________________In a September 19 WSJ article, Geoffrey A. Fowler reported that more billionaires are signing on to the idea, promoted by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, of giving away large portions, at least half, of their money.  Well, it is certainly more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), but whether such largess is a better idea than investing the funds in new GDP-generating, job-creating, and government funding enterprises depends, in my opinion, on what they give it to, how well the recipients manage it, and what other options the donors have for investing the money.

The article included a puzzling and blog-post-inspiring quote from Gordon Moore, 83 year old founder of Intel and author of the famous Moore’s Law:  “…it’s a good idea and has shaken loose a lot of money that otherwise would have been tied up for a long time.”  Well, only if somebody had it stuffed in a mattress somewhere or in a safety deposit box would it have been “tied up,” because otherwise the money was supporting some endeavor or enterprise already.
I have no first-hand information about this, but it is very likely that donations of Messrs. Moore, Gates, Buffett, and other billionaires are in the form of shares of appreciated stock, donated unsold to avoid capital gains taxes and estate taxes, to a foundation, which might continue to hold the shares and use the dividends from them to support its work.  So, the money would still be “tied up” in those shares of stock.  Or the foundation might sell the stock and use the proceeds from the sale in some new or existing charitable effort which might even involve hiring a lot of people.  In that case, somebody else will have to come up with money to buy the stock so that equivalent amount of money would still be “tied up,” having previously been “tied up” in something else.  Only if the overall transaction were so large as to result in a decline in the value of the stock would less money end up being “tied up,” and that would be a bad thing.
Don’t get me wrong.  I believe we are stewards and not owners of our financial assets and responsible for using them wisely, voluntarily and systematically giving to worthy causes and people in need throughout our lives and, when possible, being personally involved in the work of the organizations and persons we give to and through.  These billionaires are generous to want to give the money away and spend time managing the gifts, and generosity always trumps stinginess.
But, stinginess isn’t the only option.  If a wealthy person has a good idea for a new product or service that will be of benefit to humankind, investing money and time, hiring people, and taking risks to make it a reality, earning more money in the process, would not be less moral than giving away the money and would be better than irresponsible giving.  Such business development is no less important to the future than, and is a prerequisite for, philanthropy…and for tax revenues too, by the way.
As an example of the point I am trying to make, think of George Vanderbilt, wealthy grandson of Cornelius, whom I wrote about in a July14, 2012 posting on this blog.  Here is what I said:
“One bit of residue of the Vanderbilt fortune is Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, built in the late 1800’s, the “gilded age,” by grandson George. To many it seems to have been an extravagant indulgence (Check out this recent column by Mona Charen.), but he built a town to support the project, pushed the limits on technology, and employed thousands in the design and construction of it, artists and craftsmen and laborers, thereby revolutionizing the Western North Carolina economy. One hundred and forty years later, Biltmore Estate, a working farm and resort, employs 1700 people and hosts a million visitors annually from all over the world. Now that was a real jobs program!”
I’m not arguing that George was virtuous for building Biltmore but just that, while he didn’t live long enough to enjoy it, it was a worthwhile endeavor that paid off big for other people.  Had he just freely distributed the money to the citizens of Western North Carolina, he would have been widely celebrated and admired at the time but any positive effect would probably have long since disappeared.
Summing up the life of the infamously ruthless Commodore who made his fortune personally networking the nation with railroads and connecting its ports with steamships while driving down the cost of freight, I said this: “The Commodore lived into his eighties, rare for the time, but it’s too bad he couldn’t have had an additional productive hundred years. If he had, the United States rather than Japan would have been the leader in high speed trains and Amtrak would never have been created.”
A modern day Vanderbilt, smaller scale of course, recently introduced to me by a David Brooks column, is Elon Musk, entrepreneur extraordinaire, founder of Zip2, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and PayPal and a philanthropist who has signed on to the pledge to give away at least half his fortune.  I just hope he doesn’t give it all away before he runs out of ideas because he is a serious job creator and GDP generator.
Bill and Melinda Gates are apparently doing great work around the world in the fields of health and education.  Mr. Buffett is apparently giving much of his money to the Gates foundation.  If they all bring along their personal management skills with their money, I have no doubt that much good will be accomplished, many problems solved, and countless lives improved.  I thank and congratulate them.  But I would also be happy and offering congratulations if they had come up with another economy building, paradigm changing, job creating, idea such as MSDOS which launched the personal computer business and lifted far more people out of poverty than will ever be possible with charitable giving from their personal fortunes.
And here is another option to stinginess.  One curmudgeon billionaire quoted in the Fowler article, German shipping magnate Peter Krämer, said that individuals should not have the right to determine use of such large sums of money, that it should instead be taxed away and its use determined by the government.  I don’t like that idea either, nor apparently does Mr. Buffett since, although he has publicly announced support for a trivial increase in his income taxes, he is responsibly doing whatever he can to keep his vast personal fortune out of government hands which would disperse it completely in just a tad over one day.

 

Comment on Ross Douthat’s “Bad Religion”

Maybe it is the journey beginning in the Southern Baptist Church of my youth and early adulthood, progressing through middle age commitments to a couple of “mainline” churches, and recently moving to the Catholic Church, hopefully for my remaining senior years, that caused me to enjoy so much Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.  Or maybe it is just that I lived through and have some familiarity with almost everything he discusses in the book but have never knit all the pieces together in a continuous narrative, explaining the development of theological liberalism as he does.
Douthat is a magna cum laud Harvard graduate, a Pentecostal turned Catholic, and a lonely conservative columnist, the youngest ever, at the New York Times.  Don’t worry about him though, because, when it comes to the written word, he can hold his own with anybody. In Bad Religion, he has provided a well documented history of the US Christian Church from the 1940’s to today, producing a volume that should qualify as a textbook for a course in any Christian seminary and deserves a permanent place in the library of any person of faith.
His story begins in the post WWII glory days for the Christian Church in America, attendance, membership, and giving all increasing, Protestant evangelist Billy Graham, Catholic Bishop Fulton Sheen, and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., all receiving general respect and approval of the public and little criticism, except from segregationists, and none of them waffling on the traditional orthodox Apostles and Nicene Creed truths held by Christians since the early centuries of the Church.  It was a time when thirty seven mainline denominations could cooperate to establish a protestant presence in New York City, the National Council of Churches, have the cornerstone for their new nineteen story skyscraper laid by President Eisenhower, and get favorable comment and support from both the President of the United States and The New York Times.
But then the 1960’s brought the Vietnam War, the Pill and subsequent sexual revolution, increasing wealth, mobility, consumerism and suburban sprawl, globalization, theological relativism, and individualism.  And political polarization began to divide Christians and even complicate joint worship and prayer by “liberals” and “conservatives.”  Inclusion and accommodation became the bywords for mainline Protestant churches, and many formerly faithful members lost track of the reasons they had joined and worshiped there.  On the Catholic side, The American Catholic Church influence waned as Vatican II was miss-interpreted, liturgical practices suffered, and seminary discipline broke down.  And many formerly faithful Catholics and Protestants stayed home Sunday mornings and zipped up their pocketbooks.
And from that turmoil, according to Douthat, came Bad Religion, abandonment of the orthodox fundamentals of the Christian faith and adoption of heresies focusing on prosperity (Joel Osteen e.g.), narcissism and selfactualization (Eat, Pray, Love e.g.), and nationalism (Glen Beck e.g.).
You may be wondering how I can, with all that bad news about the Church, claim, as I did in the first paragraph, to have enjoyed Douthat’s book. I take comfort, first of all, in the promise Jesus made that he would establish his Church and that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it so I am not too stressed about the current state of affairs.  I see the Church not as a civic or social or political or self-help or even a social justice organization but a “place” of divine mystery and miracles, the embassy of Heaven on Earth, a place to be comforted and fed but also a place to be reminded that Jesus said that if we love him, weare to keep his commandments.
Douthat makes it clear at the end of his book that his objective was to make a “…case for Christian orthodoxy – defending its exacting moralism as a curb against worldly excess and corruption, praising its paradoxes and mysteries for respecting the complexities of human affairs in ways that more streamlined theologies do not, celebrating the role of its institutions in assimilating immigrants, sustaining families, and forging strong communities.” He closes by inviting his readers to Church.  I thought that was a positive note and one I can endorse and second.

Other interesting articles on Douthat’s book.
Interview with him.
A critical response to Douthat’s book.
A Douthat defense of the book.
Discussion and critiques of Douthat’s book.
An expert commentary by Fr. Robert Barron

It is obviously a book that has stirred up considerable interest and commentary.  Get it and read it.

Returning Thanks

If our power grids were to fail and our fuel supply chains were to be destroyed, we would, in just a few days, become a hunter gatherer society, foraging for food and drink, probably even without cash since the bank computers and ATM’s would be out of commission.  We would stop obsessing about obesity, and we would learn what hunger really is, all due to failure of the fragile infrastructure we have created and come to depend upon to feed more than 300 million people.  For a hint of what it would be like, just pay attention, next time there is a hurricane warning, to the speed with which store shelves are emptied of bread, milk, toilet paper, and wine, the essentials of American life.
Of course a few would have followed Glen Beck’s advice and stockpiled sealed containers of wheat or other such staples and would sit at home behind locked doors, blinds closed, armed, locked, and loaded, feeling smug and trying not to let their neighbors see how healthy they are, but that would not be sustainable.  The supplies would run out or “cabin fever” would set in or thieves would break in and steal and all but employees of US Government Health and Human Services, which would be charged with confiscation and distribution of all available food and water, would end up hungry, though hopefully not starving.  Expect lots of peanut butter.
All of which makes me think of the simple acts of giving thanks for or asking for blessing of our food.
I don’t recall our family, during my youth, having a consistent tradition of prayer before meals, but my maternal grandfather, Oscar Shelly, at family gatherings, always called on Uncle Andy, his pastor son-in-law, to “return thanks.”  I don’t remember anything about Uncle Andy’s prayers except that he had a preacher’s voice and prayed with confidence, but that phrase, “return thanks,” has stuck with me.
The basis for our Christian tradition of giving thanks for our food is two instances in the New Testament, Jesus feeding the 5000 and the Last Supper at both of which, scripture tells us, Jesus gave thanks before serving (See verses below).  There is also an instance of St. Paul, suffering shipwreck, encouraging the crew members to eat.  After urging them to eat, “he took bread; and giving thanks to God in the presence of all, he broke it and began to eat.”  I assume the others eventually helped themselves.  They probably even gave thanks to their gods, considering their precarious positions.
There are two instances also of Jesus “blessing” bread or food before serving, at an earlier crowd feeding and at the feeding of his disciples on the road to Emmaus where Jesus was “made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”  I didn’t find accounts of Jesus giving thanks or blessing the food when he ate with Pharisees or when he received water from the Samaritan woman at the well, though he may well have done so.
I’ve never been comfortable initiating giving thanks publicly in restaurants and other public venues since I tend to be self conscious and it always makes me think of Jesus’ warning about making a show of praying in public.  Meaningful prayer to God seems to demand losing consciousness of one’s surroundings and one’s self and focusing only on God, a difficult task for me in noisy and crowded restaurants and mixed company.  But, I can handle it just with immediate family at our own table.
Of course I am always ready to pray when asked to do so and will bow and listen respectfully when others pray, even if I find myself somewhat out of tune with the prayer.  And, if you see me staring down at a plate of food in some public place, don’t assume I am trying to figure out what it is and whether to eat it.  I am probably saying, “Thank you Heavenly
Father for this food,” trying to be mindful that Jesus, and not that wonderful stuff on the plate, is the “Bread of Life.”
I am truly thankful for the abundance of food in so much of the world and pray for those who do not enjoy such bounty.  And, I am thankful for our incredibly complex infrastructure which serves us so well, and a bit worried about it.
To end on a humorous note, take a look at this old clip ofJimmy Stewart as Charlie Anderson giving thanks before a family dinner in the movie Shenandoah, a depiction of pre-infrastructure days.  It is probably a pretty accurate glimpse of the culture of the Scotch-Irish ancestors of a good part of today’s US population.  Had President Obama been at
the table, he might have said, “Charlie, you didn’t do that.  The US Government let you settle here, and God provided that soil and rain and sunshine.”  And they both would have been partly right.
_______________________________________________________________
Theological Note:  Many Christians see a clear link between the mass feedings by Jesus, the offering of his own body and blood at the Last Supper, Eucharist or Thanksgiving, and his claim to be the “bread of life”
and then, after the resurrection, his disciples recognizing him on the road to Emmaus “in the breaking of the bread.”  The whole story, even back to the feeding of manna to the crowds in Exodus, is pulled together in John 6. 
 
Matthew 14:19  Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.
 
Matthew 15:35-36  Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground,  36 he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to
the crowds.
 
Matthew 26:27-28   Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you;  28 for
this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
 
Mark 6:41  Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all.
 
Mark 8:6  Then he ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the crowd.
 
Mark 14:22-24   While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.”  23 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it.  24 He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
 
Luke 22:17-20  Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves;  18 for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the
kingdom of God comes.”  19 Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”  20 And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
 
Luke 24:30-31  When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.  31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.
 
John 6:11  Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.
 
John 6:53-56  So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day;  55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.  56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.
 
Acts 27:33-35  Just before daybreak, Paul urged all of them to take some food, saying, “Today is the fourteenth day that you have been in suspense and remaining without food, having eaten nothing.  34 Therefore I urge you to take some food, for it will help you survive; for none of you will lose a hair from your heads.”  35 After he had said this, he took bread; and giving thanks to God in the presence of all, he broke it and began to eat.
 
1 Corinthians 11:23-24  For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread,  24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Church Labels and Modifiers: Liberal, Conservative, Etc.

A Ross Douthat column in the July 14, 2012, NYT is titled, “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?” It includes interesting data on trends in membership of the Episcopal Church and how those trends may be related to shifting positions on theological and social issues. The bottom line is that, while there is no proof of cause and effect, as the Episcopal Church has relaxed its emphasis on theology and given in to current societal trends and pressures, its membership has consistently declined. The article points out that other mainline “denominations” are suffering from the same disease and that some of the apparently more successful “conservative” churches are emphasizing health and wealth rather than the theological depth of the New Testament.

It seems to me there is no reason to save a Christianity that can be categorized and adequately described by any of today’s political descriptors such as “conservative” or “liberal.” If Christianity does not completely transcend and confuse and render meaningless such simplistic categories, it is redundant and neither needs nor deserves any defense. There will always be political and economic liberals, conservatives, socialists, libertarians, etc., squabbles among them, and strong defenses of and condemnations of them. But Christianity as revealed in Holy Scripture and through the teachings of The Church is a different category entirely, a spiritual category, and one that certainly includes individuals with secondary interests in or loose allegiances with all those worldly categories.

Considering some major philosophical differences between “liberals” and “conservatives,” reasonable people of faith may differ about which functions are best performed by government and which by private individuals and companies. They may argue about the appropriate size of government and the best ways to raise revenue needed by government to perform its functions. They may and probably will argue about how much debt government should accumulate in the process of performing its functions, though I would hope that all would agree that bankrupting the nation is an immoral choice. Math, after all, is a gift of God not to be ignored.

Such reasonable people may also differ about the extent to which government should subsidize or penalize or even be involved in personal behavior. Should government play a role in marriage, deciding who may marry and establishing different tax rates depending on whether one is married? Should government play a role in home ownership, granting loans to those who cannot afford them and tax advantages to those who chose to bear the burden of home ownership? Should government play a role in sexual relationships, offering free birth control and abortion opportunities or encouraging or prohibiting either or both? From this group of “social” issues, it seems obvious that new life, even more than math, is a gift of God not to be ignored.

But aside from and much more important than such social, political, and economic considerations, the person who claims to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus, a disciple, has all those inconvenient New Testament truths from Jesus to be dealt with. We have to try and understand what our role is in his Great Commission and in his two Greatest Commandments. We have to try to understand and comply with what he really meant in claiming to be one with the Father, in telling us we have to be last if we want to be first and that it is almost impossible for a rich person, whatever that is, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We have to figure out what our sins are and confess them to each other for forgiveness. We have to deal with his statements that he was establishing his church and that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it, that he was sending the Holy Spirit to us, and that we must partake of his Body and Blood or else have no life in us. And he told us that if we love him, we will keep his commandments. Perhaps most challenging of all, he told us to “Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”

Well, at least if we get too frustrated or tired, we have his promises that he grants us his peace and that he will give us rest.

But here is the problem. Christianity with a liberal slant, a conservative slant, a patriotic slant, a prosperity slant, or any slant at all is a deviation from or corruption of or at least a selective editing of the fundamental truths on which Christianity is based. It would be much better for liberals, conservatives, patriots, etc. to seek common ground in the Faith, leaving their ideologies outside the door, than for believers to drag the Church into the political and philosophical arenas. Like Jesus, the Church, the Body of Christ, the Embassy of Heaven on Earth, is to be in the World but not of the World. It is to transform the World, not conform to it.

And so, let us go to Church not for political or social activism, not for friendships and business relationships, not for entertainment and pleasure, not for coffee and donuts, but for divine M&M’s, mystery and miracles, including some glimpse of, some foretaste of, the Real Presence of Christ and the Divine Mystery of the Triune God. That is the unique offering The Church can make. And, if that is available, and we receive it, and allow it to show in our lives, people will flock to it just as they flocked to Jesus. And Christianity won’t need any modifiers such as the one used by Mr. Douthat.

Otherwise, churches risk becoming not much more than social clubs, service clubs, hospices, groups of people enjoying each other’s company, doing some projects, singing some hymns, getting some advice, and taking care of each other as they die off, certainly all good things, but just missing the mark somewhat, it seems to me.

Gifts, Beatitudes, Fruits, and Happiness

I have been following some pastoral advice and meditating on The Beatitudes for the past few weeks.  I read Living the Beatitudes Today by Dodd and Heaven in Our Hands by Groeschel. And I actually read The Beatitudes in Matthew 5 a few times. 
 
Immersed in today’s goal-oriented American culture, it is easy to read these verses as a sort of self improvement plan or a way to categorize ourselves.  If we want to be blessed, we need to become poor in spirit.  If we want to be shown mercy, we need to become merciful.  If we want to be recognized as children of God, we had better be making some peace.  Probably none will raise their hands for persecution.  Now, all who want to be blessed go to Table A.  Those who want to be shown mercy go to Table B. Etc.  There will be trained discussion leaders at each table.  
 
But it seems to me that the Beatitudes are more a description of the Church, it and its membersbbeing the recipients of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and yielding, as is natural, the fruits of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus was perhaps just stating facts rather than issuing challenges.  The gifts of course are free and there for the receiving.  And, if we receive them, we are changed and we are blessed and others are blessed through us and we are closer to the Kingdom of God and all those other good things, not perfect, but moving in that direction. 
 
So, maybe we need to relax and enjoy and receive the gifts and let the blessings flow through and just give up on the self-improvement activities as means of getting closer to God.    
 
 
It is probably worth pointing out some issues around interpretation and understanding of the Beatitudes.  One is that little word that for 400 years or so was translated into English usually as “blessed” but, in newer translations as “happy.”  There is no point in reinventing the wheel here, so take a look at this posting for a good explanation of how “happy” just doesn’t carry the weight of the original Greek or Hebrew.  As a long time pastor I once knew liked to say, “Happiness depends on happenings.”  The Peace of God, “blessedness,” does not.  
 
It is also worth noting that the beatitudes in St. Luke’s Sermon on the Plain are simpler, shorter, and fewer than those in St. Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount.  One could even say they are different.  And, St. Luke’s version includes those four troublesome woes immediately after the beatitudes.  Bible scholars have various explanations for these differences, all of which depend on our understanding and acceptance of the simple fact that nobody from CNN or Fox news was following Jesus around recording every step he took and every word he said for distribution on YouTube.  We also have to understand that the Gospel writers had different slants on the true teachings of Jesus depending on their audiences and situations.  And it helps to understand that Jesus knew Holy Scripture (Our Old Testament) intimately and that his message is often an expansion or continuation of it.  So, the answer to which version of The Beatitudes is correct is, of course, both of them.  And not only that, we can beneficially meditate as well on the twenty beatitudes found in the Psalms.  Click on these summaries for high resolution versions.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Love Means Having To Say I Am Sorry

As a recent Catholic convert, I’ve been thinking a lot about confession lately. It has been almost a year since being confirmed at St. Peter’s in Columbia, SC, and Catholic faithful “go to confession” at least once per year. I did it just prior to the confirmation, dumping on the priest a bunch of shameful stuff I have done over the decades, and that was about a year ago.

Of course all Christians believe in confession. How could we do otherwise, given 1 John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” For most of my life I understood confessing my sins to mean simply bowing my head in prayer and saying something like, “I did _______, and I am sorry. Please forgive me.” I’m not going to even suggest that God never heard or honored those confessions, but there is some challenging scripture that seems to suggest a bit more complexity about confession.

There is that instruction in James 5:16 – “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” There is often an interesting connection between healing and forgiveness in the New Testament. So, it became reasonable to me that we need to say those confessions out loud and within hearing distance of somebody else. And maybe we also need to pray for each other about those things confessed. But I don’t really know if this is a command or a law or just a bit of “fatherly” advice offered by James to his readers.

And there is the “Our Father” in which we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” additional evidence of the importance of person to person interaction as a part of confession, and indication that we should not only let others hear our confession but that we should hear theirs and forgive them as well. It is not clear to me whether that “as” means “while” or “in the same way” or “to the same extent?” In the Matthew version of the “Our Father,” Jesus offers some additional explanation in Matthew 6:14-15 – “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” There is no emphasis on confession here, or even any request for forgiveness, but I suppose they are assumed. I believe that “trespass” is a synonym for “sin.”

Finally, there are those instances in Matthew 16:19 and John 20:23 in which Jesus gives Peter and the Disciples authority to forgive sins. I guess that, before becoming Catholic, I always just assumed that meant we all have some limited authority to forgive sins, and we do, of course, or would not have been instructed to do so, but I’m thinking this authority he gave them, the so-called Office of the Keys, is a bit different. Even if so, I might have once argued that it applied only to those who received the authority directly from Jesus. But now that doesn’t make sense to me. I have come to believe that Jesus founded His church and left somebody in charge with the authority and responsibility to hear confessions and forgive sins and teach and interpret and perform other specific duties and to ordain successors and that that authority and responsibility continue today.

So, I am getting ready, and of course a big part of the confession process is the time spent praying and reflecting on one’s own life with the objective of determining what needs to be confessed. Overt and undeniable sins of commission, lying, adultery, theft, etc., would come to the top of the list. Hopefully, I don’t have many of those, but I have to be concerned also about the more subtle failures, the places I have fallen short, the things I ought to have done but didn’t. And it is easy, especially in a hedonistic culture that encourages self-esteem, to deceive myself, to convince myself I am a pretty good guy. In Leviticus 11:45, God tells the people, “You shall be holy, for I am holy,” and Peter quotes and repeats that charge to the early Church in 1 Peter 1:16. The gap between that and where I find myself is pretty wide. Thank God for the opportunity for confession, for forgiveness, for reconciliation, for penance, and for continuing conversion.