Those of us with children hope that they will be successful and happy in life. When they're young, we help them with their homework, and we encourage them to read and explore new things. As they grow older, we talk with them about colleges to attend and possible career choices. Along the way, we tell them what to look for in a spouse, and we hope that they find someone who will love them and treat them the way they deserve to be treated. Parents today may have different customs than parents three thousand years ago, but I'm sure that parents then also hoped and prayed for their children's success. People who are born into positions of privilege have a great advantage over those who do not come from families of power and influence. Ruth was born with two impediments blocking her path to success, and she willingly chose to erect a third. First, Ruth was a woman. In many respects today, women are still second-class citizens. They are often excluded from positions of power in politics, society, or religion. They receive less pay than men in comparable positions in the workplace. They are disproportionately underrepresented in executive positions. In short, women are frequently at a disadvantage in many of life's circumstances. Second, Ruth was poor. The detriment of being a member of the lower classes is evident even today. Regardless of states' claims to the contrary, it is evident that children from poor communities receive an education that is far below that of their counterparts in middle class and wealthy communities. Crime, particularly violent crime, affects the poor more than the rich. The lifetime earning potential for those who are born into poor households is considerably less than for those whose parents are middle class or wealthy. Sometimes, of course, those who are born poor are able to climb above their circumstances and achieve great things, but they are the exception to the general rule. The difficulty the poor have in transcending the circumstances of their birth was even greater in ancient times. Ruth, then, had two strikes against her when Naomi made up her mind to return to the land of Israel. Because her husband had died, Ruth was not legally or culturally bound to leave her homeland. The smart thing to do would have been to follow her sister-in-law Orpah and return to her parents' house, where the prospects of marriage to a countryman would have been greater. Ruth, however, chose to follow Naomi, abandoning both her people and her gods to enter the land of Israel as a foreigner. Being a foreigner was the third impediment that Ruth faced. Even in the days when borders between countries were much more hypothetical than they are today, being a foreigner in the land was to be at a disadvantage. Particularly in a small village, where everyone knows everyone else, it would be impossible to hide one's foreign status. What led to Ruth's decision to leave everything she had known behind to follow Naomi in the uncertain future is unclear from the story. What is certain is that Ruth felt strongly about honoring her commitment to Naomi, whom she regarded as her adopted mother. With three strikes against her--her sex, her poverty, and her social status--Ruth bravely chose to strike out in a new direction, and God rewarded her for it. What challenges are we facing today, and what opportunities lie before us? In the face of threats to our success, do we have "the courage to be as ourselves," as Tillich expressed it? Ruth provides a role model for those who are facing difficult, even potentially catastrophic challenges in their lives. Ruth was confronted with the possibility of retreat into the safety of the known, but she chose to charge forward into the challenges of the unknown. If we can muster the faith of Ruth, we can do the same.
A couple of months ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the Alabama chief justice could not erect a stone replica of the Ten Commandments and place it in the courthouse, because to do so violated the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state. Undaunted by this ruling, several municipalities in Georgia are now faced with groups that have placed copies of the Ten Commandments in prominent locations in various public places. These groups are relying on the power of the state to endorse the scripture of one particular religious tradition: Protestant Christianity (not Judaism or Catholic Christianity, since Jewish and Catholic traditions enumerate the commandments differently). Undoubtedly, many who support the display of the Ten Commandments on public property would be dismayed if the Catholic church in Los Angeles demanded the right to display pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe, or if the Muslims in Detroit advocated the display of verses from the Quran on public buildings, or if the Buddhists in Hawaii sought to place statues of the Buddha on courthouse lawns. The government should not be relied on to support religion, in part because the government cannot be trusted to interpret religion in accordance with the understanding of the leaders of various religious traditions (not to mention the common people). Governments will always be tempted to interpret religion in ways compatible with their own selfish desires to remain in power. During apartheid, for example, the South African government claimed religious sanction for the separation of the people into different groups. The Bush administration uses the theological language of good and evil to justify unprovoked attacks on sovereign states. The psalmist tells his hearers not to put their trust in princes, or in any other human beings. Even the best of them, those who rule in accordance with God's will, are mortal, and who knows who will replace them! Perhaps after long acquaintance with the foibles of human rulers, the psalmist offers a litany of acts that God does at which humans regularly fail. God executes justice for the oppressed, provides food for the hungry, feeds prisoners, gives sight to the blind, encourages the downtrodden, upholds the righteous, cares for refugees and aliens, comforts widows and orphans, and punishes evildoers. Of course, those with political power should do all these things as well, and Christians should strive to elect those who promise to do so and vote out those whose actions--as opposed to words--do not reflect this ideal. The temptations on politicians to show favoritism to campaign contributors and large corporate donors, coupled with the limited wisdom common to every person, mean that no one in power will fully live up to God's guidelines. For that reason, Christians must constantly examine their deeds and compare them with God's standard. We must praise them when they do well and challenge them when they stray from way of justice, as we understand it. Above all, we must commit all our leaders, whether we support them politically or not, to prayer, asking God to mold them into the kind of leaders whose actions reflect the mighty deeds of God.
In his book Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr discusses the way Christians have viewed the relationship between Christians and the world they live in through the centuries. Some Christians have seen Christ in opposition to culture, others have seen Christ accommodating himself (and by extension his church) to culture. Some have seen Christ and culture in synthesis, and others believe that Christ and culture represent an ongoing paradox. Neibuhr, however, prefers to see Christ as the transformer of culture. Drawing on the idea of individual conversion, Niebuhr believes that Christ--or his surrogate, the church--is engaged in converting culture into the image of Christ. How does this conversion take place? The author of Hebrews discusses conversion as the result of a blood sacrifice. The former high priests, he says, offered the blood of goats and calves on behalf of the people, and that sacrifice was successful at effecting change, at least for a limited period of time. How much more, he argues, does the blood of Christ result in change, purifying us from dead works so that we are able to worship the living God. The idea of conversion is one that has connotations for both individuals and groups. Many Protestants, especially evangelicals, view conversion as primarily (or exclusively) an individual experience. A person accepts Christ at a particular point in time, and forever after the person is transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. Catholics, on the other hand, often view conversion as a group experience, and to the extent that it affects individuals, it is something that can happen more than once. This type of conversion involves the realization that one's attitudes or actions are wrong and the decision to make a change. The church itself is in need of conversion from time to time; examples include the Catholic church's realization of the need to address the problems of poverty and oppression prophetically (as at Medellín) and the conversion of most southern Protestant churches on the issue of segregation during the 1950s and 1960s. Conversion, whether individual or corporate, requires a death. The individual dies to her old ways and becomes a new creation in God. The group dies to positions of privilege and oppression and adopts new ways in a spirit of humility. Usually the deaths are figurative, but sometimes they are literal. Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Anwar Sadat, and Yitzhak Rabin are all people who gave their lives while attempting to effect a conversion of their people. Many lesser known people have given their lives, especially in a figurative sense, in order to change the world in a radical way. God calls on us to be willing to sacrifice our comfort, our familiar surroundings, and even our fondest plans in order to convert our corner of the world. We must give our time, our money, our sweat, and if necessary, even our blood, to convert the world around us. If we do so, we will only be following the one who set the ultimate example of personal sacrifice by going to the cross.
It is an interesting exercise to compare the gospels with one another when they relate the same incident, not for the purposes of harmonizing or conflating the accounts, but in order to see the contrasts among them. The differences in the way the stories are told often reflect the different emphases of the respective evangelists. Because we are so familiar with the similar accounts in Matthew and Luke, we often overlook the unique perspective that Mark offers in today's reading of the story of the Great Commandment. First, of the three Synoptic accounts, Mark is alone in noting that the scribe admires Jesus' answers to earlier questions. Perhaps the other gospel writers want to present the strongest possible contrast between the views of the religious leaders and of Jesus himself. In contrast, Mark paints the scribe in a positive light. Second, when Jesus is asked which is the greatest commandment, only in Mark does he begin by quoting the Shema, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one." Perhaps by quoting this additional statement, which immediately precedes the command to love God in Deuteronomy, Mark is honoring the Jews, who recognized the importance of this statement of faith already in the time of Jesus. Or maybe Mark is stressing the oneness of God and the consequent unity of all of God's followers. Third, Mark, followed by Luke lists four ways in which God's followers are commanded to worship--with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength (Luke reverses the order of numbers three and four)--in contrast with Matthew and Deuteronomy, which list only three items. It is possible that the inserted item, "the mind," represents a nod to Greek philosophy, which uses the term to denote the seat of intelligence. Fourth, only Mark preserves the scribe's reply to Jesus and Jesus' response. The scribe praises Jesus for his wisdom, adding that loving God and one's neighbor is more important than all the sacrifices that can be offered. Jesus responds by telling the scribe that he is not far from the kingdom of God. It is interesting to see in this passage in Mark the praise that the author gives to Judaism and to Jews who observe the great commandments. Unlike Matthew, who presents the question to Jesus as a challenge by the Pharisees, and Luke, for whom the question is that of an expert in the law who is seeking to justify himself, Mark presents a positive image of a Jewish leader. Even more strikingly, Jesus indicates that that person's understanding shows that he is nor far from the kingdom. This week I attended an interfaith conference attended by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and others. One of the speakers said that despite their differences, a Christian and a Muslim, for example, both of whom have a deep personal faith in and walk with God, are actually closer to one another than either is to a non-practicing adherent of their respective faiths. Far from condemning the Jew for having an inadequate understanding of the scripture, Jesus praises him with language he rarely uses even of his own disciples. Jesus saw real wisdom in the scribe's comments, and he praised his faith. Christians who are serious about following Jesus' example must replace blanket condemnations of adherents of other faiths with respect and an openness to learn from them. We will learn that there are ways in which we can approach the kingdom of God together.