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As we
attempt to try to better understand and reach out to those who think differently from us (and in that
process take Jesus’ teaching seriously
by attempting to take his teachings literally:
last blog post), we can learn much by
considering how we as humans tend to exclude
those different from us. Once we do
that we will be in a better position to then embrace those persons in a life of reconciliation that heals rather
than continues to tear apart. An
extremely helpful guide in this journey is the book by Croatian theologian
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace (1996).
Before
we start, a warning. We enter here
perhaps the most difficult challenge of the spiritual journey. We move from a consideration of Jesus deeds
and teachings to the “theology of the cross,” which is the messianic pattern by which God chooses to deal with both human sin
and human reconciliation. In the words
of New Testament scholar, Luke Timothy Johnson, “All four Gospels . . . agree
that discipleship is to follow the same messianic
pattern [of Jesus]. They do not
emphasize the performance of certain deeds or the learning of certain
doctrines. They insist on living
according to the same pattern and death shown by Jesus.” [Quoted in Embrace,
24]
Jesus’s
death on the cross is God’s embrace of all of creation, including both those
who are victims of suffering and those who have caused that suffering. We tend to think
that the cross of Christ was just for faithful followers, for people who
believe and trust in him. Jesus tells us
otherwise, according to John 12:32: “’And I, when I
am lifted up from the earth, will draw all
people to myself.’” Notice that
he does not say believers, or followers.
He says “all people.” And you can
see the result of this embrace of all people immediately. A Roman soldier, standing by observing the
crucifixion, hears Jesus’ forgive the perpetrators of his crucifixion (‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are
doing.") [Luke 23:34], and by the time Jesus dies recognizes God’s presence in
Jesus: “Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he
breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’” [Mark 15:39]
We are
quite comfortable with the first part of this embrace (victims); the latter (perpetrators), not so much;
perhaps not at all. The refusal to accept the second part leads to a world without reconciliation and to a life of
anger, frustration, judgment and anything but the “peace that passes all
understanding.” [Paul]
So, to set the stage, I share how Miroslov
Volf begins his book. He was asked in 1993,
during the height of the war in the Balkans, to reflect on the struggle in his
homeland. He was presenting his ideas on
embracing one’s enemies, just as God had done in Christ, when he was asked by
his mentor, Jurgen Moltmann of Germany: “But can you embrace a cetnik?”
Now a cetnik was a Serbian
fighter who had gone into Croatia and raped and pillaged and burnt down
churches. Volf hesitated, and then
confessed: “No, I cannot—but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able
to.” [Embrace, 9]
So, first, the nature of exclusion and
then, in the next blog post, the dynamic of embrace.
The birth of modernity in the western
world was built on exclusion, as white Europeans conquered the Americas by
subjugating the indigenous cultures, driving them off their lands, forcing
Christianity on them, and beginning an endless process of breaking treaties. In addition, slaves were purchased in Africa
and brought to the “new world” to do the back-breaking work. Having lived in Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington DC, I have witnessed the way that back-breaking work continues to be done predominantly by the descendants of those slaves and the conquered nations of Latin America. Their exclusion has not disappeared. In fact, it is increasing right now for latino workers as we take their work but do not want to give them or their children the protection and benefits of citizenship. It is nearly impossible for a day laborer to obtain citizenship. (http://archive.lirs.org/DonateServe/advocate/StandforWelcome/mythbuster.pdf)
Now, for the Christian, Jew, or Muslim,
this cannot just be a matter of sociology or economics or evolution (survival
of the fittest, most clever, most ruthless, etc.). As Volf writes, “I reject exclusion because
the prophets, evangelists, and apostles tell me that this is the wrong way to
treat human beings, any human being, anywhere. . . . ‘exclusion’ does not express
a preference; it names an objective evil.” [68]
Volf goes on to explain that “an
advantage of conceiving sin as the practice of exclusion is that it names as
sin what often passes as virtue, especially in religious circles.” [72] Examples in Jesus’ day were the exclusion of
lepers, women, tax collectors, and Samaritans from the religious community [see post of 1/30/17: Compassion vs. Holiness]. Jesus turned this understanding upside down,
embracing these very people and labeling as “sinful” the system that cast them
out.
The practice of excluding continues
within many churches. Today it includes gays and lesbians, women, the poor, the
undocumented, and, in many churches, anyone different in ethnicity and
nationality form the predominant group.
Another way Jesus changed the strategy
for fighting exclusion was by locating evil not outside of a person, in impure
things or people, but inside the person, in the impure heart. [Mark 7:15] “Sin is here the kind of purity that wants the
world cleansed of the other rather than the heart cleansed of the evil that
drives people out by calling those who are clean “unclean” and refusing to help
make clean those who are unclean.” [74]
Volf goes on: “Consider the deadly
logic of the ‘politics of purity.’ The
blood must be pure: German blood alone should run through German veins, free
from all non-Aryan contamination. The
territory must be pure: Serbian soil must belong to Serbs alone. . . .The
origins must be pure: we must go back to the pristine purity of our linguistic,
religious, or cultural past, and shake away the dirt of otherness collected on
our march through history. . . .It is a dangerous program because it is a
totalitarian program, governed by a logic that reduces, ejects, and
segregates.” [bid]
Another aspect of this exclusion is a
rejection of the variety and differentiation created by God, and forcing those
different from us to “assimilate.” As
Volf describes, “You can survive, even thrive, among us, if you become like us;
you can keep your life, if you give up your identity.” [75]
Now, before we move to the dynamics of
embrace in the next post, the Bible from the very beginning recognizes the
dangers of exclusion.
God creates a world of tremendous
variety and beauty and places Adam and Eve in that “garden” world, with only
one rule: “You may freely eat of every tree of
the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not
eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” [Genesis 1:16-17] One way to interpret this passage is that God
decides what is good and what is evil, and the task of humans is to abide by
God’s vision. However, our “original
sin” is to reject and rebel against God’s way, and to take into our own hands
morality, defining good and evil according to our human desires.
So God goes looking for Adam, and
he tries to hide. God finds him and confronts him with his sin, and Adam does what
we humans find so very easy to do: rather than taking responsibility for his
sin, he blames it on someone else: Eve.
And then, when God confronts Eve, she does the same, blaming her sin on
the serpent. [Genesis 3:9-13]
The Bible says repeatedly that the
sins of the parents are passed down to
their children. It doesn’t take long for
this to happen. Adam and Eve bear Cain
and Abel, and Cain, like his parents, doesn’t like the world the way God
created it. He decides to “remake the
world in his own image,” which is a world without Abel. He gives in to the ultimate form of
exclusion, killing, taking the life of his brother.
Again God goes looking for the
perpetrator. Again, the sinner tries to
hide, refusing to acknowledge his sin. When he is confronted by God, rather
than confessing, he gets scared, because he immediately realizes that if he
could kill someone, someone else could kill him.
God, however, has already had
enough: MORE THAN ENOUGH. One killing is
too much! It must stop here! Once and for all! “And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no
one who came upon him would kill him.”
[Genesis 4:15]
Can exclusion ever be overcome? If so, how, and by whom? First, we humans need to quit finding
impurity outside of ourselves and acknowledge the way in which it resides
inside each of us. St. Paul minces no
words: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” [Romans 3:21] Luther understood this well. He located the dividing line between sin and
righteousness not between myself and “the other,” but down the middle of my
very being. I am, as he put it, saint and sinner at the same time. Sin continues to reside in me, but God
chooses to continually forgive me. Not,
however, as Paul argues, in order that forgiveness and grace may abound, but so
that we who have died to sin may quit living in it. [Romans 6:1-2]
Returning to Cain, we leave him
“protected in primal history; on Good Friday we will find him redeemed. Cain, the one who acted out the exact
opposite of an embrace . . . . .will be
drawn near and embraced by the Crucified.
Will the embrace of the Crucified heal Cain of envy, hatred, and the
desire to kill? . . . . the embrace of the Crucified will not heal him if he
does not learn to love the one who embraced him” and to set out anew to walk in
Christ’s footsteps. [I John 3:11-17] [98].
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