Acts 7:55-60 (first published 24 April 2005)
We live in an age that is bent on revenge. People who are insulted
insult right back. People who are cut off in traffic engage in road rage
in an effort to pay back the offender. If our nation is bombed, our
leaders feel obligated to bomb somebody--anybody--so that the nation will
feel avenged. Of course, revenge is nothing new. The Old Testament
speaks of cities of refuge to which people who accidentally kill another
person can flee to escape the vengeance of relatives. The Law of
Hammurabi specifies the measures one can take when seeking revenge for a
wrong suffered. The lex taliones, or law of retribution, which
specifies repayment of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is
actually a moderating law, because it forbids someone who has been wronged
from taking escalating vengeance on the perpetrator. We all understand
the human desire for revenge that lies deep within all of us. What we
don't always remember is that Jesus commanded his followers to take a
different, more difficult, path, the path of forgiveness. At the end of
Stephen's sermon proclaiming Jesus as the fulfillment of the great Hebrew
saga, his hearers, incensed at what they had heard, rushed him outside the
city and stoned him. As he was on the verge of death, he offered a prayer
for his tormentors: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." Not,
"Lord, wreak vengeance of these enemies of mine!" or "Lord, you see how
these people have rejected you, so now punish them in accordance with the
greatness of their transgression!" Stephen understood something that too
few Christians today seem to get, the principle of forgiving those who
wrong you. The human tendency is not to forgive but to seek vengeance.
And if we can't actually get revenge ourselves, our typical course of
action is to hold tenaciously onto a deep-seated hatred of the person who
has harmed us. Texas executed yet another prisoner this week, Douglas
Roberts, convicted of murdering a man during a cocaine-induced assault.
Reports say that family members of the murdered man attended Roberts'
execution. I've often wondered why members of the victims' families
attend executions. Does seeing your loved one's murderer murdered himself
really bring peace of mind? I also wonder how I would react in a similar,
tragic circumstance. I can't honestly say that I know how I would react
after the initial pain and anger and rage had worn off, but I hope that I
would take seriously the words of Jesus to love those who hate you. Some
people, like Stephen, have been able to live up to the Christian ideal.
Too many Christians have not.
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 (first published 24 April 2005)
Medieval Japanese society, like many other traditional cultures, placed
a great deal of importance on the concept of shame. The group of people
who put the most emphasis on the concept were the samurai. Shame was of
such importance to the samurai that they would rather die than wear the
shame of a public failure, for example, the failure to serve their master
properly. Hagakure, the Book of the Samurai, says of samurai who
failed their masters, "If one felt that such a failure were a
mortification, it would be the least he could do to cut open his stomach,
rather than live on in shame with a burning in his breast and the feeling
that he had no place to go." Shame was such a powerful influence that it
could make itself felt even after this life is over: "Since a warrior's
daily frame of mind is manifested even after death, it is something that
can bring shame to him." The word haji, "shame," can be written in
Japanese by using a Chinese ideogram that combines the figures for "ear"
and "mind." Shame serves as a bridge between social (ear) and personal
(mind) expectations, and it shapes behavior with these two audiences in
mind. "In you, O Lord, I seek refuge; do not let me ever be put to shame;
in your righteousness deliver me," says the psalmist. The psalmist wants
to avoid the shame that comes from succumbing to the torments of the
enemies, whether physical (loss in battle) or psychical (illness). Any
Christian perspective on shame must include consideration of the words of
Paul from Romans 1:16--"I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it
is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes"--and 2
Timothy 2:15--"Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved
by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the
word of truth." We often equate shame with embarrassment, for example,
when we trip over our own feet or commit a verbal faux pas, or even
when someone else beats us out of a job that we felt sure we would get.
However, we need to think of shame on a higher level. Like the samurai,
we should have a commitment to our master that causes us to prefer death
to dishonoring the name of our master. How might we dishonor our Lord?
In many ways, but the citations from Romans and 2 Timothy suggest that
failure to speak the truth as we understand it can be the cause of shame,
because by not speaking out, we are suppressing the gospel of Christ.
There are plenty of people in the world who are more than willing to share
their perverse views on life with all who will listen, and we certainly
need to avoid presenting our version of the gospel in an obnoxious or
unnecessarily confrontational way. On the other hand, we shouldn't be
afraid to stand firm in our convictions, regardless of the opposition of
many around us. Standing up for what's right will not always make you
popular at work, in your neighborhood, at school, or even at church. You
may be ostracized for your views. You may even be verbally assaulted (or
worse). But if a samurai warrior was willing to give even his own life to
protect the honor of his master, can we do any less to protect the gospel
of Christ?
1 Peter 2:2-10 (first published 24 April 2005)
Shortly after Augustine, bishop of Hippo, got word in 410 that the city of Rome had been sacked by Alaric the Goth, he began work on his magnum opus, The City of God. Augustine was confronted with the difficult question: how could God allow the Roman Empire to be destroyed by barbarians, when it had been instrumental in promoting Christianity for almost the past hundred years, since the time of Constantine and the Edict of Milan (313)? Pagan Rome had endured as a republic for 500 years, and under the emperors it had persecuted the church off and on over a period of 300 years. Now that Rome's heart was finally right and it was being used as God's instrument, why would God allow it to fall? Augustine answered that there are two great cities: the Earthly City and the City of God. The Earthly City is characterized by love of self, but the City of God is characterized by love of God. The Earthly City is held together by bonds of nationality, language, or custom, but the City of God is held together by commitment to God. Like Rome, which Augustine considered the greatest city in the world, the Earthly City would someday fall. Only the City of God would remain. Therefore, he argues, Christians should place their allegiance in the City of God rather than the Earthly City. 1 Peter makes the same demand on believers: "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you might proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." Like many Roman Christians in Augustine's day, many Christians today take their citizenship in the Earthly City far more seriously than their citizenship in the City of God. Early in its history, nationalism might have been a liberating influence from the medieval feudal system, but today nationalism is an idol that entraps Christians (and people of other faiths) in worship of a false god. When two nations that claim to worship the same God go to war with one another, it is because they value their citizenship in the Earthly City more than their citizenship in the City of God. When we spend more money as a nation on military adventures than we do on meeting basic human needs, we are favoring the Earthly City over the City of God. When we refuse to provide low-cost or free medicine to the neediest people in the world because of pressure from big pharmaceutical companies, we are favoring the Earthly City over the City of God. When the austerity measures we impose on foreign countries like Ecuador or Haiti cause so much pain that the people overthrow their elected governments (whose rulers we didn't really like anyway), we are favoring the Earthly City over the City of God. When we ignore the calls from other countries and from the world's religious leaders to proclaim a year of jubilee and forgive the debts of the world's poorest nations, we are proclaiming loudly and clearly that the Earthly City, our particular manifestation of it, is more important to us than the City of God. It's time to re-read Augustine and understand what he understood. The Christian's citizenship is in heaven, and our loyalty to our brother and sister in Christ should outweigh our loyalty to any nation. Extending the analogy even further, our loyalty to any brother or sister of any faith--or of no faith--should outweigh our loyalty to any nation. We are "God's own people," and it is high time we remembered it.
In 73 B.C.E. a slave named Spartacus and a few dozen others escaped from their masters in Rome and fled to the countryside. Initial attempts to re-enslave Spartacus and his comrades failed, as the slaves, some of whom had gladiatorial experience, defeated those sent to capture them. Their initial successes led many other slaves throughout Italy to join them, and at one time their numbers swelled to as many as 70,000. It took several Roman legions to finally defeat the slaves. Most were killed on the battlefield, but as many as six thousand were captured, and they were promised lenience if they would identify their leader. In Stanley Kubrick's movie Spartacus, the slaves responded with one voice: "I am Spartacus." Their devotion to their leader was unaffected even when the Roman commander had them crucified alongside the road leading to Rome. The statement "I am Spartacus" was an affirmation that the former slaves identified with their leader, even to the point of death. When Jesus says to his disciples, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father," he is identifying himself with the Father, although not as the Father (the identification of Jesus with the Father, sometimes called Patripassionism, was condemned by church fathers such as Cyprian and Tertullian in the third century). Jesus expected his followers to similarly identify with him. One implication of Christians identifying with Jesus is that when others look at us, they should see Jesus in our actions and attitudes. I was reminded of this mandate a few days ago when I read about a Catholic church in Florida that held a special mass for Osama bin Laden. The man who paid for the mass said that he understood the evil that bin Laden had done but that it was our obligation as Christians to pray for all sinners and to forgive the sins as well. Needless to say, this attitude is not the dominant one in America at the moment, even in the circles of people of faith. I can understand why people might feel jubilant at bin Laden's death, because of the thousands of innocent people who died on 9/11, but if we claim to identify with Jesus, who forgave his persecutors from the cross, the church in Florida offers a better example for us.