How Much Is It Going to Cost Me? (Rejoicing in God’s Justice)

Do you ever feel frustrated with the problems around us? Think of the way that Churchill has been cut off from the rest of Manitoba until the railway was finally repaired. For over a year, the community had no rail or other land link to the rest of the world, while the other stakeholders in the railroad argued over who should pay for repairs to the rail line. How unfair! How unjust – that the residents of Churchill should suffer because the owners of the rail line prioritize their own profits over the people they should be serving.

Perhaps you have experienced unfair family dynamics. Sometimes, when a beloved older member of the family dies, the younger relatives fall out over … who knows what? Behind the falling out, the breaking of relationships, there lies a perceived injustice. Someone has acted unfairly, and someone else feels the injustice deeply. My Dad experienced this dynamic when he lost his relationship with his sister for some years, following my grandfather’s death and the execution of the estate. They reconciled, but not everyone does.

Perception of injustice is a powerful force. We respond to many problems around us with a yawn, but when we see someone treated unfairly, when we see a manifest injustice, we often respond with outrage. One notes this dynamic in the way that companies respond to customer complaints. Consider the recent CBC headline: “Bell sorry for $788 bill sent to man displaced by Parliament Street apartment fire.” Bell billed the man for their equipment, because he could not return it after the apartment he lived in caught fire. He was not at fault in any way, but Bell only reached out to cancel the bill after CBC broke the story. This happens often: People respond with outrage to perceived injustice, and then the offender tries to make things right.

Why is this? Not just why do people respond with outrage – the answer to that is, I think, that a fundamental sense of fairness and decency is a deeply human trait, placed there by God. But why does the company wait until everyone knows about it to (as we say) “do the right thing”? I suspect that there are many reasons, not least among them is the awareness that not every customer who claims they have been wronged speaks the truth. That the customer is not always right! I think that a deeper reason (this is an unresearched hunch) is that acting justly may cost us. We wonder, “How much is this rail line going to cost me, the owner? How much is covering this customer’s loss to cost me?” In fact, the move towards justice is also itself the result of a cost-benefit analysis. For example, Stella’s Restaurants are revamping their corporate culture to become more just. Why? Because failing to do so will cost them more than doing so.

What about God’s justice? Do we struggle in the same way with issues of peace and justice around the world? Do we shy away from right actions, because we recognize they are going to cost us? Perhaps so, but our response should not just be to suck it up and do the right thing. Rather our response to our failures should be to seek God’s face and to be renewed by God’s Spirit within us. True justice flows out from the heart of God.  With these thoughts in mind we turn to Zephaniah 3 and to Luke 3.

Zephaniah 3: 14 to 20

Zephaniah was probably an early contemporary of Jeremiah. He sounds a lot like Isaiah and may have prophesied in the Southern Kingdom of Judah during the reign of Josiah. There still seemed to be hope that Judah would repent and follow God, a hope that had faded by the end of Jeremiah’s life. Listen again to the basic thoughts in the text.

•  In verse 14, the prophet calls on Israel to celebrate and rejoice.
• Verse 15 gives the reason for their joy – their punishment is over; God is with them, and nothing bad will happen to them.
• Then verse 16 signals that the anticipated freedom and joy has a decidedly future shape to it. The phrase “in that day” lets us know that the fulfillment of this word of hope belongs to “the day of the Lord”, the end of all things. In Christian thinking, we connect this day of the Lord with the second coming of Christ.
• Verse 17 connects their salvation with the Warrior God who delivers them from their enemies. We can hear echoes of Moses’ song after the crossing of the Sea, “Yahweh is a Warrior! Yahweh is his name!”
• God’s judgment is now ended, and therefore Israel’s grief and mourning is also ended. This linkage suggests that at least some of the misfortune in their lives is the consequence of their rebellion. Applied to ourselves, this suggests two points: 1) Our troubles do not necessarily come directly from our rebellion – sometimes illness or job loss or other misfortune comes as part of life in a fallen world. 2) Sometimes our troubles are our own fault. As the proverb puts it, “Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind” (from Hosea 8:7). We are responsible for the choices we make in life – good and bad.
• The reference to festivals suggests that a basic problem in the lives of the Israelites was connected to religious festivals. They worshipped God, and they also observed festivals and sacrifices to the gods of the land in which they lived (Baal, Asherah, and so on). Divided loyalties bring God’s judgment, and God’s judgment brings God’s grace.
• The last two verses remind us that final judgment and grace come “at that time”, when God inaugurates God’s reign in power and great glory. Zephaniah states that the Israelites are to live in their own time by the justice and peace of God that comes at the end of all things. God will come at the End, and God wants us to live now in light of the End.

As we hear the prophet today, I remind you of this basic truth: God will restore all things at the End, when Jesus returns, and God gives both judgment and grace as we show God’s justice and mercy in our lives, in anticipation of Christ’s Return.

Luke 3: 7 to 18.

The Gospel reading comes from the ministry of John the Baptist, as he preached in the dry desert-like countryside through which the Jordan River flowed. People came out from Jerusalem to hear and see this remarkable preacher; he seemed to them like one of the old prophets come to life. John gave a baptism of repentance to those who repented, and more and more came to him.

In the verses we read, he asks the people who came to him, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” He calls them a “brood of vipers”, which suggests that for many of them he was sceptical of their repentance. He adds, confirming this impression – “Produce fruits in keeping with repentance.”

The people recognize their shallowness and ask what they should do. John replies, with words that sound a lot like Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:

• Tax collectors: “Don’t collect any more than you are required to.”
• Soldiers: “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely – be content with your pay.
• If we knew what he said to each group, we would probably find the same basic theme. Live justly, in whatever you do.

 John continues with words looking ahead to the coming of the Messiah, one who brings the Holy Spirit and who also brings grace and judgment. His description sounds like Zephaniah’s description of the end of all things. In his first coming, Jesus inaugurates the Reign of God, even as we wait for the Second Coming to see the fullness of God’s Reign.

Two other points from John’s preaching: 1) He asks them, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” This is a curious question, and it suggests that God’s message comes to us through a variety of sources. 2) He reminds them that their Jewish ancestry counts for nothing in God’s Reign. “Do not say, ‘We have Abraham for our father.’” More than one person has thought that the commitments made in their past mean that they don’t have to do anything. John makes it clear that each one there must repent for himself/herself.

The same is true for us. My parents’ commitment to Christ was a good thing and has been good for me. But in the end, it is my own relationship with Christ that matters. My father’s obedience is good; but now God requires my obedience.

Our Sense of Fairness

Bring these two passages back to the question of fairness with which we began. We see that life is unfair, and that bothers us, as it should. We want things to be fair. We want life to be right. We want injustice and corruption to be rooted out and destroyed. What do our passages tell us in light of these deep human desires for justice? Further, what do these passages say to us in the season of Advent, when we remember the theme of justice as we wait for the coming of Christ?

One of the repeated themes of the Advent Season is that we are waiting: Waiting for justice, waiting for light, waiting in hope, waiting for God to come. One of my favourite Advent hymns expresses this waiting for God to come (#175 in the Mennonite Hymnal)):

O Saviour, rend the heavens wide!

Come down, come down with mighty stride.

Unbar the gates, the doors break down;

Unbar the way to heaven’s crown.

The fact that we are waiting means that we know full justice will not come today. Or tomorrow. When we complain that something is unfair, someone will remind us that life isn’t fair. The reminder is good: Life is not fair – neither now nor in Zephaniah’s time nor in the first century. This bit of simple realism can set us free from becoming bitter. We know that life is not fair, even as we work for justice. And we know that God will come and that when God comes, everything will be made right. This is not “pie in the sky by and by”; this is simple reality. Within this awareness this Advent Season, then, I make several simple suggestions for how we act as we wait:

•  Listen to John the Baptist. Our first step towards justice is to repent of our own injustice and live justly. If we want others to act fairly towards us, we must act fairly towards others. “Do the right thing” is a simple rule to live by; it’s also something we rarely do. We recognize that acting justly sometimes means that we are going to pay the price of justice. It’s hard to do the right thing when doing it actually hurts us. That’s why I asked the question in last week’s bulletin: “Living justly – is this going to hurt?” So this simple rule: If you want a just world, live justly, even when doing so hurts you.
• Depend on God for true justice. I can guarantee that, when you enter the political arena and fight for justice, you will lose even when you win. For example, when I was younger, the United States took steps to provide for poor people by building housing projects (nice apartments) for them to live. In the summer of 1969, I worked in some of those housing projects, holding Daily Vacation Bible Schools for the children. It quickly became clear that the political victory of providing housing led to longer-term failure, as the people in the projects had not learned how to care for the apartments. This basic factor – that even political victories lead to failure – has led many activists to give up. Instead, put your trust in God. Keep on working for true justice, but trust God; don’t trust your efforts or any other human efforts.
• Put these two together: Expecting and working for justice in world begins and ends in worshipping God. This brings us back to Advent. We wait for the Messiah. We pray and sing and worship, and we wait. This worship in waiting is the most profound action towards justice that we can take. Live lives of prayer. Live lives of hope. Live lives of anticipation for God’s coming. The old saying runs like this in Latin: Laborare est orare. In English: To work is to pray. [Compare the Benedictines: Ora et laborare (work and pray).]

I have told you in the past about our family’s time in a place of great peace: The Taizé Community in the village of Taizé, near Macon, France. The rhythm of life at Taizé centres on three times of prayer daily – at 8 am just before breakfast, at about noon just before lunch, and at 8 in the evening after supper. Each prayer time includes singing together, the reading of Scripture, sometimes a short word on the Scripture (the shortest homilies I have ever heard!), and then, most importantly, a ten-minute silence. When our family was there, I wondered how we could sit silently for ten minutes. By our last day, ten minutes felt like too short a time! The grounds and conversations were drenched in peace and prayer. It is truly the most peaceful place I have ever been to.

I don’t recommend the theology that the Brothers of Taizé have constructed; there is some good and some bad there. I do recommend their life of prayer, as well as the lifestyle that has grown out of that life of prayer. The Taizé Community is invested in justice ministries around the world. The community was born in Brother Roger’s vision. In the 1940s, he sheltered Jews caught in France during World War Two. Following the war, he sheltered former German prisoners who found themselves trapped in a France that was now hostile against them. Over the years, Brother Roger developed friendships with people like Mother Teresa, supporting the cause of God’s Reign wherever injustice was found.

A scan of the Taizé website reveals a surprising list of justice efforts that have grown out of their life of prayer:

•          Relief and reconciliation in Northern Lebanon and in Syria;
•          Working with war-affected children in Ukraine;
•          Working in Haiti;
•          Assisting refugees in Europe;
•          An eye-clinic in the Congo;
•          Schools in Bangladesh;
•          Caring for the sick in Cambodia;
•          Medicine for Cuba;
•          Humanitarian aid for North Korea;
•          Medical treatment in South Sudan;
•          One million Bibles printed in China;
•          Clean water and milk in Burkina Faso.

Wow! Several hundred brothers gathered together at Taizé have generated all that!

As Mennonites, we have a good track record working for justice. I fear that we do not have as good a record of grounding our work in worship. This Advent, I am reminding us all that “to work is to pray and to pray is to work”. We ground our search for justice in a patient waiting for God to come in. We ground our desire for justice in our desire for God’s Spirit to live among us. What I am describing is a complete re-orientation of our lives around the person of Jesus Christ, whatever that looks like for you:

•          Revival services and altar calls (as were important to me in my youth);
•          Prayer and meditation à la Taizé;
•          Personal devotions in the morning or evening;
•          Praying while driving your car – or your tractor.

We ground our very lives in the presence and worship of God who comes from Heaven in the baby of Bethlehem.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

16 December 2018, Third Sunday in Advent

Texts:

Zephaniah 3: 14-20

¹⁴ Sing, Daughter Zion; shout aloud, Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem! ¹⁵ The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm.

¹⁶ On that day they will say to Jerusalem, “Do not fear, Zion; do not let your hands hang limp. ¹⁷ The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. ¹⁸ I will remove from you all who mourn over the loss of your appointed festivals, which is a burden and reproach for you.

¹⁹ “At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you. I will rescue the lame; I will gather the exiles. I will give them praise and honour in every land where they have suffered shame. ²⁰ “At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home. I will give you honour and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your very eyes,” says the Lord.

Luke 3: 7-18

⁷ John said to the crowds coming out to be baptised by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? ⁸ Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. ⁹ The axe has been laid to the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

¹⁰ “What should we do then?” the crowd asked. ¹¹ John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”

¹² Even tax collectors came to be baptised. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” ¹³ “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. ¹⁴ Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely – be content with your pay.”

¹⁵ The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. ¹⁶ John answered them all, “I baptise you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷ His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” ¹⁸ And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.

Colonialism Lives! (Part Four)

Parts one, two, and three preceded this conclusion. Here I bring my thoughts together, and the meaning of the title of the series becomes clear.

Part Four

To summarize my argument so far:

Colonialism in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries included the assumption that the values of the Colonials were absolute, and that all subject peoples could and should be judged by them. We rightly rebelled against such totalitarianism and also rejected the idea of absolute values. [I think that these two steps moved in tandem, but I am not arguing that case here. I welcome the insights of those who can combine the field of social change with the field of philosophy and tell me if I am right or not – and to what extent.]

This relativism works when we apply it to the use of language. We must take the meanings of the speaker and hearer into account in order to communicate successfully. Such relativism does not work when we apply it to values, because we tend to elevate our own values to an absolute standard for all people. This is the movement that I have been describing with the image of leaving by the front door and re-entering by the back door. [I did not make the case for this elevation, except by implying it in the example of “Baby, it’s cold outside”.]

The song banned by the CBC serves as a case study of this failure. At one level, it is a simple miscommunication. It is caused by hearing the lyrics as if they were written in 2018, with the meanings that would apply had it been written today. At one level, it is as trivial as someone imposing the meaning of homosexuality on someone 100 years ago referring to a gay time. If all that happened was that people misunderstood the song, I would not have written this column. It is the further colonial move of imposing our values that leads to these reflections.

The odd thing is that postmodernism seeks to set us free from such impositions of one group's values on another group, but it has actually served to force the values of the politically strongest group on the whole of society. Colonialism returns under the guise of doing away with colonialism.

I will not analyze this problem further here, but rather I make a few suggestions of what I would like to see (whether or not it ever happens).

1. I believe in absolute values. I suggest that the best way to establish what they are is to look for the values that cultures and religions in general have accepted. [What C.S. Lewis called the Tao, in his essay The Abolition of Man.] TheJosephson Institute of Ethics has worked at this kind of project for many years now.

2. Such a project will not validate any one culture. Our own society’s conviction that individual rights trump all other rights will not make the cut. A society such as China’s conviction that the right of the collective trumps individual rights will not make the cut. The bedrock shared values of societies in general – what we can call the Dao (to use a modern form of Tao) – is more basic than the specific forms people use to construct their own societies. [I add here that my own understanding of these absolute values relies also on reading and interpreting the Christian Scriptures. I do not make the search for Dao rely on any one religion, but acknowledge where I stand among the religions of the world.]

3. A general relativism that looks for what things mean in context is generally good. Making absolute values too broad is a quick road to totalitarianism. Chinese collectivism and Canadian individualism can both express the general values of the Dao.

4. When we condemn the words or actions of another person quickly, we are likely to have taken a colonial-imperialistic action. The problem with the conversation around “Baby it’s cold” is not the questions it raises – those questions and concerns lead to interesting and fruitful learning. The problem is rather the way that some people shut down both the song and conversation about the song by appealing to “Me Too” and date rape. Both issues are serious issues, and they deserve better treatment than restricting DJs from playing a 1940s song about sex.

5. Rather than condemning quickly – whether the conversation is about transgender rights, or Me Too, or missionaries in Africa, or Black Lives Matter, or any other of our current issues – our first step should always be to understand. There is a strong likelihood that when we dislike the other person’s statement (and therefore begin to dislike the person as well), we have not yet really understood the other. Miscommunication is amazingly easy, and imposing our values based on that misunderstanding is one way that colonial lives today.

In the above comments, when I refer to “we”, I mean all of us. We – all of us – engage in this kind of behaviour, and the winner gets to be the biggest colonialist. Which means that the winner loses along with all the rest of us.

Colonialism Lives! (Part Three)

Part One recounted my own beginnings in the colonial era and wander into the present). See part one here.

Part Two noted how miscommunication happens between cultures quite regularly. See part two here.

The problem, I argue, is that we carry the necessary relativism that applies to language over into values at the level of our stated philosophy, but then act on the basis of a new absolutism in practice.

Part Three

I have been considering these reflections for many years. A recent controversy sparked me to put these brief reflections in writing.

This past week CBC announced that it would not include “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” in its Christmas play list, following the lead of a number of other radio stations. “Baby” is a call and response song, in which the woman sings and the man responds. Here are the lyrics, with man’s voice in parentheses:

I really can’t stay (but baby, it’s cold outside)

I’ve got to go away (but baby, it’s cold outside)

This evening has been (been hoping that you’d drop in)

So very nice (I’ll hold your hands, they’re just like ice)

My mother will start to worry (beautiful what’s your hurry?)

My father will be pacing the floor (listen to the fireplace roar)

So really I’d better scurry (beautiful please don’t hurry)

But maybe just a half a drink more (put some records on while I pour)

The neighbors might think (baby, it’s bad out there)

Say what’s in this drink? (no cabs to be had out there)

I wish I knew how (your eyes are like starlight now)

To break this spell (I’ll take your hat, your hair looks swell)

I ought to say, no, no, no sir (mind if I move in closer?)

At least…

Heard today, the lyrics are problematic in several ways. I highlight two:

1) She said “No”. No means No. In the era of “Me too”, the man’s voice is asking for trouble.

2) “What’s in this drink?” sounds creepy in the aftermath of so many date rape situations.

A bit of internet surfing, however, turns up women’s voices, warning us that in banning the song we may have overstepped the bounds of reason. They point out that she appears to have surprised him by dropping in on him in his apartment. They observe that her protests sound a bit like someone covering themselves from “slut shaming”, even as she makes it clear that she is as willing as he is. As one column [not by a woman writer, at least I don't think so] put it, “These legends of song skillfully and melodically wrung such laughs out of the song’s doth-protest-too-much dance of foreplay that it was surely clear even to a 1940s listener that these two characters were about to have a long night of fireplace-hot and — yes! — deeply consensual sex.” (From Variety)

The problematic line “What’s in this drink?” turns out to be a common line people used when getting ready to do something they weren’t supposed to do. (Although I heard another explanation: that women were often served alcohol-free alcohol and might protest at what is left out of the drink.)

Slut-shaming is bad, and I do not advocate consensual sex outside of a lifelong committed relationship. Those values, however, speak against a great deal of popular music, both from the last century and from our own time. Not to mention much-loved madrigal music from Elizabethan England: “Now is the month of maying, when merry lads are playing ….”

Where did the instant condemnation come from, leading CBC to ban the song from its playlist? I suggest that we have fallen into a habit of judging others by our standards – and, fatally, assuming that our standards are absolute. Colonialism and Imperialism redux. We expelled them through the front door, and they have returned through the back.

[To be concluded.]
Part Four brings a preliminary conclusion to these musings.

Colonialism Lives! (Part Two)

Read Part One (in which I recall my own beginnings in the colonial era and wander into the present) Here.

The rejection of absolutes, then, helped enable the setting aside of authorities and colonial structures. The divine right of kings from an earlier stage in English political history was replaced by the power of nobles, which in turn gave way to a broader democracy, elevating the right of individuals to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong. [I note here that I am positing a link between a political movement and a philosophical position. I invite those who know these fields better than I to evaluate that link, if it indeed exists.]

I take this broader political movement to be mostly good. Totalitarianism is, I believe, evil (at least on the stage of human relations). But I take the accompanying (and perhaps enabling) philosophical movement to be unsustainable. It opens the front door for us to expel the tyrant, and then opens the back door for us to put on the tyrant’s mask and re-enter the room.

To make my case, I consider the field of communications. We know that communication between people requires a speaker, a medium, and a hearer. [Of course, there are other forms of communication than speaking, but I must narrow the field to describe what I see happening.] Many problems in communication come from the communicator having one meaning in mind when he/she speaks, while the hearer has a different understanding of the same symbols.

We recognize such miscommunication when people speak from two different cultural perspectives. In colonial Rhodesia, one can see a situation in which an Ndebele worker might ask his European (English) boss for time off to go to a funeral, “because my father has died.” The employer gives the worker leave to go to the funeral. Two years later, the same thing happens again. The employer may assume that he misunderstood the last time, but he is surprised. When the worker asks for time off to go to his father’s funeral for a third time, the employer assumes that the worker has been lying.

Consider the meaning of father in Ndebele and English culture. Among the Ndebele, one uses the term “father” for one’s biological father and his brothers. In English usage, we use “father” and “uncles” to describe the same group of people. Because the Ndebele learned that the English colonialists did not understand Ndebele usage, they accommodated to our intellectual weakness and learned to say, “My father died” and then “my Uncle died”. But there is in the original scenario no necessary intent to deceive. The disjunction between Ndebele culture and English culture was responsible for the original miscommunication.

As evidence that my scenario above is not fanciful, I recall a conversation in 1992. I had asked an Ndebele elder in the church about the history of the Brethren in Christ Church in Bulawayo, my home town. He said, “Well, when your father Arthur was Bishop, we began the work there. Then when your father David was Bishop, we added more new churches.” He knew well enough that Arthur is my Uncle and David my father, but he used traditional categories – which would have confused me if I had not known what he meant.

Another simple example – quite trivial. When we read that someone in the 1920s “had a gay old time”, we do not assume homosexuality. Rather we recognize that language changes, and that “gay” has taken on a meaning today it did not have in earlier times.

Language is one obvious place in which meaning is relative. Relativism is a good doctrine in linguistics. Meaning is contextual – created within the time and place and community in which the text was created and interpreted within the time and place and community of the hearer. The problem begins when we assume that this same relativism works in relation to values.

[To be continued]

Colonialism Lives! (Part One)

The title is not quite fair. I want to discuss colonialism only tangentially, but the headline, “Colonialism Lives” is a fair one. My thesis is simple: Like almost everyone before us, we measure other people and cultures throughout space and time by our own values and on our own terms, however unfair that evaluation is, and we would understand our world better and that each other more rightly if we would stop doing so.

I understand Colonialism as a political construct in which technologically stronger societies occupy technologically weaker societies and force the latter to live on the former’s terms. I grew up in a British Colony, Southern Rhodesia as it was then called. I was born in its near neighbour, Northern Rhodesia. Today these countries are Zambia and Zimbabwe. They run their own affairs, free of the colonial yoke, but they are not free of their colonial past. One can observe the negative results of colonization in modern Zambia and Zimbabwe in a variety of ways.

We live in a post-colonial age. I am not sure all the implications of this statement. I take it to be a reversal of the Euro-centric view of the world common to the North American academy of my youth. In my high school days, we were taught history as a construct of White European society, and especially a construct of White men. Today, we view history more fully, seeking perspectives from a variety of ethnic and political sources, and looking again at the old stories to discern women’s voices as well as other voices that were ignored in the old tellings of those stories.

I remember the way that the stories of the founding of Rhodesia were told in my youth. Because I am a White male, I heard stories about how “Europeans” and especially European men settled Rhodesia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The stories assumed that European society – which meant especially English society – was the pinnacle of progress within the evolutionary scheme. It was taken for granted that Black Zimbabweans (whom we called “Africans”) would want to become like us. Those White politicians of the 1950s who thought that Africans could join White society were seen as liberal, but of course their liberalism still assumed that White European Men should run the whole show.

The story of how the colonial period came to an end is a long story, which we can read in many other places. I note just one small piece of what helped to bring it to an end. The biggest piece, of course, was the fact that Black Zimbabweans knew that their country needed to be liberated from White dominance. Others have told that story at length, throughout the countries of what was British Africa.[1]

The smaller piece I refer to is the rise of what we call postmodernism, and especially the way that modernism and postmodernism combined to undermine belief in absolutes.[2] When I was a university student, the rejection of absolutes was in full flow. I went to a Christian College (Messiah College), which stood against that flow, but we all lived fully in the events of the 1960s, when the Baby Boomers sought to put the era of wars behind and to usher in the Age of Aquarius.

We sang songs like “All you need is love”. We marched against authority figures, feeling that they were destroying the earth. We preached an ethics of relativity, in which the seeking self stood above the fray of absolute values and absolute authorities, synonyms in our mind with totalitarianism. [All of this is, of course, potted history – my own impressions of living through that time – and I hope that I am not misrepresenting the picture too much.]

In the early days of the 1960s, John Kennedy could say, in his inaugural address, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” There was a great deal of idealism in our rebellion, and we responded – in the Peace Corps, for example. But there was also a great deal of simple self-centeredness in our rebellion. In the 1970s and 1980s, the call for love gave way to getting married (and divorced), pursuing careers, raising our own children, and generally living out the implications of having rejected absolute values.

Jean Twenge has described the results in Generation Me. Her concern is less with my note of absolute and relative values and more with the loss of other-centeredness in a self-centered age. My contention, however, is that, by abandoning absolutes in our worldviews, we have escorted imperialism and colonialism out the front door and they have sneaked again by the back door.

[To be continued]

[1] See the work of people like Eliakim Sibanda writing on the history of ZAPU, or Wendy Urban-Mead on the history of the BIC in Zimbabwe, or the writings more generally of Terence Ranger (as a historian of Zimbabwe) and of John and Jean Comaroff (social historians, setting missionary work in southern Africa in its colonial setting). I assume that the reader can google these sources and do not give further information here.

[2] There are many sources for understanding modernism and postmodernism. Within my own discipline, I can recommend Paul Hiebert in Transforming Worldviews.

Watching and Waiting

I love Advent and Christmas. The music and celebration of this time of year stir my soul deeply. Preaching at Advent and Christmas is a bit harder. You have heard whatever I might say more than once already. You may be sitting there waiting just long enough to recognize which familiar Advent sermon I’m going to preach, before drifting off to your happy place for the rest of the morning. Still, I have the sermon to give, and I am listening with you to see what I will say.

The conference resources give us some direction. Here is the overall statement in The Leader for Advent through Epiphany: “Advent is a time for us to remember where Jesus enters God’s story/our story, to remember what it means to live righteously, and to look to the future as we seek God’s plan for us as faithful individuals and faithful communities.” The next six Sundays are each given a theme: 1) Watching and Waiting, 2) Proclaiming, 3) Rejoicing in God’s Justice, 4) Blessing and Restoration, and the Sunday after Christmas and Epiphany 5) Love Revealed, and 6) Light.

Today: Watching and Waiting. We have two passages of Scripture: Jeremiah 33, and Luke 21. We reflect on these Scriptures and ask what they tell us this morning – without worrying too much about whether it is old news or not. It is good news. It is gospel! And that is enough.

Jeremiah 33: 14-16

The action in the book of Jeremiah takes place between 640 BC and 580 BC. Jeremiah’s life begins with Judah as an independent nation and ends with its exile in Babylon. At various points in his life, Jeremiah warned the Jews of coming catastrophe and called them to repent of their idolatry. The people’s response was to sink deeper into their rebellion and to try to shut him up.

Our passage describes a period when Judah was no longer politically independent. Babylon had deposed King Jehoiachin and established Zedekiah in his place. Zedekiah wanted to reaffirm Judah’s independence, and Jeremiah tells him to submit to the Babylonians, as a sign of his repentance for rebelling against God. Instead, Zedekiah fights against the Babylonians and puts Jeremiah in prison, confined to the palace and compelled to wait for the king to act.

Try to imagine Jeremiah’s state of mind: He is imprisoned. He knows that the Jews’ rebellion will end badly. He calls people to repent, and they refuse. No wonder he is often called “the weeping prophet”; his life was filled with tears. Then in the middle of all of this, he says this:

¹⁴ “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will fulfil the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah. ¹⁵ “In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. ¹⁶ In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Saviour.”

He speaks of hope and salvation and righteousness – that is, justice and peace and all that is good. The repetition of “in those days” points to the End – not “Now” but “Coming”, not only at the End of all things, but in moments prefiguring the End itself. You know that I love Zimbabwe. I grew up there and I lived there for many years. Over the past 20 years, I have watched Zimbabweans suffer under political and economic corruption. Ten years ago, they went through a period of economic hyper-inflation almost beyond description. Shop-keepers would go around the store in the morning and mark the price on their goods. Then they would go around late morning and repeat the process with new prices, and again in the afternoon. Prices normally doubled from one day to the next. At its height, economists estimated the rate of inflation at something like seven million percent!

Today, Zimbabwe has re-entered a period of economic uncertainty, with goods disappearing from the shop shelves and fuel for their vehicles unavailable. I have seen videos of queues for petrol (gasoline), a line of cars stretching out more than kilometre long. The politicians who run the country make sure that they are provided for, and the people suffer. I can imagine Jeremiah in Zimbabwe saying, “A day is coming when all that is good will rule here in Zimbabwe. You will have enough cooking oil and flour and enough fuel for your cars, and everyone will have a job. The Lord, our righteous Saviour, will do it!” People would just laugh at him!

I know people in Steinbach who struggle as much with life as people back in Zimbabwe do. A marriage gone wrong – a spouse dying – a job lost – a future that seems bleak and hopeless. We all know people who can’t see any light ahead. Jeremiah speaks to them and to us: I have promised you life and all good things, and I will give them to you. You are crying now, but you will laugh and celebrate then! Again, not always at this moment, but certainly coming. How can this happen? Turn to the gospel reading with me.

Luke 21: 25-36

In response to a comment on the beauty of Herod’s Temple, Jesus described its coming destruction (which took place in 70 AD). Herod’s Temple was 40 or 50 years in the building, on the spot where Solomon’s Temple had stood. Made of green and white marble stones, one contemporary writer said that it shone on the top of the hill where it stood, so that the hill looked like it was covered with dazzling snow. And then the Roman Emperor Titus destroyed the city of Jerusalem, including the Temple, to punish the Jews for rebelling against the Roman Empire. The Temple had been completed for less than a decade when Titus destroyed it. You can see that human endeavours are fleeting and bound to die. The fate of the Temple is the fate of all human efforts. We build and celebrate our achievements, and then we die.

Jesus continues, describing the troubles that the disciples will face, scattered after the Romans’ attack on Jerusalem. Then come the verses we heard earlier:

²⁵ There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. ²⁶ People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. ²⁷ At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. ²⁸ When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

The real meaning of their distress, then, is that God is coming to save them! What seems to be for their destruction is actually for their salvation.

Jesus continues:

²⁹ Look at the fig-tree and all the trees. ³⁰ When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. ³¹ Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near. ³² Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. ³³ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. ³⁴ Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. ³⁵ For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. ³⁶ Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.

All of these troubles are signs of God’s coming, Jesus says. He tells his disciples that they themselves will see God’s reign coming in power – as they did in the resurrection and in the wonderful “acts of the Holy Spirit” in the book of Acts. We can respond in two different ways to the troubles we face, Jesus says: We can give into the cares of life and drink ourselves to death, or we can “watch and pray” and commit ourselves to God.

Living It Out

As we bring these passages together, we observe that life can be hard, very hard. We do not face the threat of invasion like the Jews of Jeremiah’s time and of Jesus’ time. They were under a kind of pressure that we do not experience in our lives. Nevertheless, we do face dangers that can lead us to take refuge in carousing and drinking (Lk 21: 34). Something as wonderful as the birth of a baby can lead to postpartum depression. Then a family that everyone thinks should be happy struggles to make sense of life. A new job brings wonderful opportunities, but it also can overwhelm the worker, so that she struggles to make sense of life. Our lives seem to be a series of one step forward and two steps back. We wonder if we will ever get anywhere.

Then the words of Jesus sound in our ears: “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Jesus is talking about his return at the end of time, of course. Remember that Advent celebrates not only the first coming of Jesus as a baby, but also the second coming of Jesus in power and glory. The very problems that make us wonder if anything will ever go right turn out to be the signs that Jesus is about to break into our lives with God’s salvation, not just at the End of all things, but Now as well. This Advent season is the reminder of God’s great story of redemption, illuminating our own little stories of despair and God’s saving action.

How Can This Be?

When Jesus told Nicodemus that he needed a second birth, Nicodemus asked: “How can these things be?” It’s a good question. How can the problems we face bring in the righteousness and peace of God? How can these things be the sign of our salvation, our redemption?

In Jeremiah, the people of Judah had followed the gods of Canaan. Under Josiah’s rule, when Jeremiah was a young man, they repented and turned back to God, but it was a shallow repentance, and they soon worshipped the gods of Canaan again. Jeremiah prophesied judgment on their rebellion. God is not satisfied with a shallow turning that leaves our hearts untouched. In a similar way, Jesus calls the disciples to “watch and pray”, to depend completely and only on him. In short, Jesus wants the disciples also to repent of any other allegiance in their lives.

The description of conversion as a new birth is important. When a baby is born, we want to see the baby grow. If Lee and Rachel’s little girl stopped growing, they would be worried. Very worried. If Toni and Kayla’s girl also stopped growing, we would be worried along with them that some terrible epidemic was threatening all our families. Often, our conversion comes as a crisis in which the seeker “prays through”, as we used to say when I was young. Sometimes people think that this crisis is the whole of conversion, but of course it isn’t. Just as birth leads to growth, so the crisis of new birth leads to a daily giving up, a daily dying to self, a daily choice – as Jesus put it – to take up your cross and follow him.

To put it another way, conversion is not only a crisis experience; it is also a life time process of growing into the new life that God has placed within us. It happens that times of trouble are often the times that we grow. I think of my own experience. Ten years ago, I went through a time of darkness, which I did not expect or anticipate. Even now, I am not sure what triggered an episode that felt a lot like deep depression. [I have described this experience elsewhere (here and here and here) so I won’t explore more deeply in this sermon what was going on. I observe simply its basic shape.]

I remember having trouble sleeping at night. I would wake up and it felt like a heavy weight was on top of me. I had bad dreams – in the one I remember best I was slogging through a hot and terrible jungle, and I came out to a cliff and saw a valley below me from which it seemed the heat was coming. It was like a vision of hell.

The effect of this experience was to drive me deeper into my relationship with God and to reaffirm my relationship with Lois. With Lois, I felt safe, no matter what dreams I had. With God, I realised that I wanted nothing to come between us. In the time after the dreams and troubles, I knew that I wanted to walk with God more than anything else in my life. As so many people have discovered, I have found that the crisis of 10 years ago became my path into a closer walk with God. “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

An Important Twist

Sometimes Christians think that this closer walk with God is all that our Christian lives are about. These passages show us something else. The salvation that the disciples wanted was the righteousness and justice and peace of God to fill their world. The salvation that Jeremiah anticipated was more than a closer walk with God; it included making the whole world right.

This truth reminds us of what we are waiting and watching for. Do you want the peace and justice of God to fill our world? Then the peace and justice of God must fill your heart and mind. Do you want to see God’s ways grow in our community and country? Then God’s ways must take possession of your very soul.

I am reminded of a sermon that Ron Sider preached 40 years ago at the 200^th celebration of Mennonites in Canada, held (I think it was) in Waterloo, Ontario. His outline was simple: For world peace >> You need peace between countries >> Peace within your country >> Peace between communities within the country >> Peace within your community >> Peace between the churches of your community >> Peace within your congregation >> Peace between the families of your church >> Peace within your family >> Peace between family members >> Peace with God within yourself. We are waiting and watching for God’s peace and justice in our world – which begins with you, being right with God and at peace with God. When you are in trouble, lift up your heads! Your redemption draws near.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

2 December 2018, First Sunday in Advent

Texts:

Jeremiah 33: 14-16

Luke 21: 25-36