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Issue 024 <previous< Issue 025
Volume 5 No 6 December 1999 >next>
Issue 026 |
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Life Together: The Biblical Understanding of Community By William E. Hull
[Dr.
William E. Hull is University Professor at Samford University.
He is a frequent contributor to Christian
Ethics Today. This
material was delivered as a Bible Study to the General Assembly of the
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship meeting in Birmingham, Alabama, June 25,
1999.] The
most cohesive force uniting the People of God during their long journey
through Scripture was a tenacious sense of community. Over the centuries
their life assumed many forms: family clan, tribal confederation, national
monarchy, faithful remnant, holy congregation, sectarian commune,
messianic movement. They were led by patriarchs, judges, kings, priests,
scribes, apostles, and elders. Often challenged by external conflict or by
internal controversy, they nevertheless maintained continuity in the midst
of change because of an unshakable conviction that they had been chosen
and called by God. This
towering achievement despite the cruel vicissitudes of history speaks
powerfully to our modern yearning for community. In the public arena,
scholars such as Robert Bellah worry that American individualism may have
withered a concern for the common good so important to our nation's
founders.[i]
In the private sphere, such factors as restless nomadism and
spiraling divorce rates have shattered community and family solidarity,
resulting in what David Riesman described with poignancy as "the
lonely crowd."[ii]
In a day of congregational and denominational fragmentation, it is
no wonder that Daniel Vestal defined one of his highest priorities for the
fellowship as the nurturing of a robust sense of community.
For as T. S. Eliot put it: What
life have you if you have not life together? When
we turn to the Bible in search of the source of its remarkable solidarity,
we seem to confront only bewildering diversity. There is no recommended
model of connectedness, no formula for forging the blest "ties that
bind." Instead, we find many different patterns, each designed to
meet a fresh challenge confronting the People of God. Almost every
difference within and between various religious groups today is
foreshadowed in its pages. By other names we find there Charismatics and
Catholics, Fundamentalists and Formalists, Apocalypticists and
Accomodationists. But it is precisely in the struggle to understand this
complexity that we are able to identify those options best suited for our
time. So let us look at the seven major eras during which community
unfolded in the dialogue of the Biblical People of God with their history,
then ask how we may respond to our changing times in ways that
"nurture community" among Baptists.[iv] Our
story begins in the bleakness of a "house of bondage." Despite
divine assurances to Abraham and his descendants, the Israelites found
themselves enslaved in Egypt, without any protection or power or promise
for the future. But God intervened to deliver them from poverty and
oppression. Not only did he lead them through the sea, across the
wilderness, and into a land of their own, but he gave them their freedom
by which, in a voluntary act of self-determination, they entered into a
covenant with their Redeemer that forever shaped the character of their
community. Three convictions lay at the heart of this revolutionary new
relationship to God. (1)
The first was that-they owed their very existence to the divine
initiative. They were a chosen people, but he was the chooser. They were
celled to a new destiny, but he was the caller. Without his antecedent
grace and sustaining presence they would still be helpless in the
brokenness of bondage. Therefore they were to honor God as the supreme and
exclusive Sovereign of life. Note how their charter, the Decalogue,
begins: I
am the Lord your God, who brought you out of This
was not some theological refinement of monotheism but was a repudiation of
the dominant ancient myth according to which imperial rulers such as the
Egyptian Pharaoh were viewed as divine and their royal courts as the
earthly counterpart of heaven. In giving allegiance only to Yahweh, Israel
could not submit to any hierarchical power structure used to legitimate an
earthly ruling class. (2)
Second, these emancipated slaves realized that they had been delivered,
not because of any intrinsic merit on their part, but because their God
was a righteous judge determined to end their unfair treatment. After
groveling under Egyptian taskmasters for generations, they were permitted
to see that the greatest power in the universe is on the side of the
downtrodden, that the God who created order out of chaos is determined to
bring peace with justice to all the earth. Because God acted in holiness
to end Egyptian oppression, the beneficiaries of his intervention were to
embody that holiness in their corporate life. You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples . . . and
you shall be to me . . . a holy
nation (Exodus 19:4-6). This
is why the covenant soon became a Covenant Code with specific guidelines
to regulate behavior, why the Decalogue eventually included a
comprehensive list of commandments, why Torah evolved, not merely as a
legalistic compendium, but as an overarching effort to norm the culture of
the community by the righteousness of God. (3)
Third, the willingness of God to hear the cries of an afflicted people
(Exodus 3:7-8) was an expression, not only of his holy justice, but-of his
tender mercies as well (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). This meant that the community
was to be characterized, not only by a stringent standard of
righteousness, but by an openness and concern for all of God's family,
particularly the vulnerable such as strangers, widows, and beggars.
Because all members of the community shared a common origin in the
degradation of slavery, they were all equal in status. Paul Hanson has
well expressed the significance of this egalitarian impulse: "A
pattern of social construction thus arose in Israel that resisted the
dominant one in antiquity: here was a society constructed not by the
privileged and the elite, but by ordinary folk, by former slaves drawing
their guidelines from the example of a God who embraced the cause of the
weak against the powerful oppressor."[v] Application:
Like the Israelites of old, Baptists began as a tiny marginalized movement
on the fringes of society, their religious aspirations oppressed by
hierarchical structures of both church and state. Spiritually we were
slaves to a Constantinian myth enforced by punishment so arbitrary and so
cruel that imprisonment or even martyrdom might result. But with our
Puritan forebears we went into the wilderness seeking a new land of
freedom on foreign shores. Persecution continued in the colonial context
until the American revolution liberated us to achieve our destiny as a
free and faithful people. In gratitude we bowed the knee only to God,
repudiating every form of religious "establishment." We gladly
accepted the sterner disciplines of a "sectarian" morality and
became noted for our evangelistic fervor in reaching the so-called
"lower classes" of society. To be sure, this was a harsh and
demanding era, but it was one of strength and growth which made us
champions of that democratic experiment which finally shattered the
elitist structures of antiquity. But
now we are in danger of forgetting the house of bondage in which we were
born. Our worship in sanctuaries of affluence is far more concerned to
identify us as key players in the reigning establishment than as servants
of the God who is sovereign over every ideology and power structure in
modern culture. Since our religious freedom is-no longer suppressed by
kings or popes, we now use it to test the traditional limits of ethical
permissiveness, shrugging off inherited Codes of conduct as "petty
legalisms." So captive have we become to middle class culture that
we, mostly, sat on out hands through the civil rights struggle and now
find it hard not to act condescendingly toward three 'intellectual
underclass with only a high school education. Our last great generation of
denominational leaders came out of abject poverty (E. Y. Mullins, George
W. Truett, R. G. Lee, J. M. Dawson) and it remains to be seen whether we
can survive the prosperity that engulfed us once we left behind the Egypt
of our European and Colonial origins. Israel's
refusal to entrust its community to the leadership of a centralized
hierarchy soon put it at risk from neighboring kingdoms, especially of the
Egyptians and the Philistines. Fearful of their security in a land
surrounded by hostile forces, the people began to clamor for a king of
their own, a move bitterly opposed by those determined to have no
sovereign but God. The turning point came with Samuel, who reluctantly
agreed to the compromise of a limited monarchy in which the earthly ruler
would be appointed by God, his continuing rule would be conditioned on
approval by God, and his successor would be chosen by God rather than by
dynastic kinship. Nevertheless, the move was fraught with danger because a
community founded on equality for all, including the disenfranchised, was
about to take on the trappings of centralized authority and royal hubris
which had corrupted the societies of surrounding nations. Specifically,
who would police the king on behalf of God to insure his compliance with
the terms of limited monarchy? If, by definition, the sovereign was to
rule all of the people, then who could hold him accountable for a reign of
righteousness and compassion? The answer was that concurrent with the rise
of monarchy came the rise of prophecy. It was precisely the role of the
prophet, acting independently of all earthly authority, to measure the
king against the same standards as all other members of the covenant
community. This is why Samuel, the last of the judges, became the first of
the prophets when Saul was installed as king. His farewell address in I
Samuel 12:19-25 well summarizes the threefold mission of the prophet to
unceasingly "pray for you" (v. 23), So "instruct you in the
good and the right way" (v. 23), and to warn that "if you still
do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and
your king" (v. 25). Saul's
troubled reign, was transitional at best but, with David, the kingship was
greatly strengthened both politically, in response to a dire threat posed
by the Philistines, and religiously by his moves to make Jerusalem the
national center both of government and of worship. The king now became the
patron of a temple which served as his royal chapel where worship
celebrated not only the reign of Yahweh but the reign of his son, the
king, as well. Despite the freedom of the prophet Nathan to rebuke David
for his affair with Bathsheba, the throne soon passed by dynastic
succession to his son, Solomon, who confirmed the worst fears of those who
had opposed monarchy: consolidation of power, centralized control,
punitive taxation, concentration of military might in the hands of the
king, stratification of society with a wealthy class at the top and a
captive labor force at the bottom, pagan influences at court through
multiple marriages designed to facilitate foreign policy. As the kingdom
of Solomon grew in earthly glory, it became virtually indistinguishable in
the minds of the people from the kingdom of God. Most significantly, God's
conditional covenant with his people was reinterpreted as an unconditional
covenant with the king. This
dangerous excursion into the corridors of power, a move which collapsed
the critical distance between throne and altar, resulted in a time of
testing for the exodus faith of Israel. To borrow modern categories, it
seemed politically risky to maintain the separation of church and state, a decentralized tribal confederation
with local militia and multiple sanctuaries being no match for the
monolithic strength of neighboring foes. At the same time, it proved just
as religiously risky to attempt the union
of church and state and thereby confuse God's sovereign purpose to
establish universal peace through righteousness and compassion with the
petty intrigues that converged on an ancient oriental court. The prophets
were fearless in calling the kings to account, but their efforts to
penetrate a protective palace culture proved increasingly futile. It is
not accidental that the record reflects a conspicuous absence of prophetic
intervention during the reign of Solomon (II Chronicles 9:29). Application:
As
Baptists moved from the margins of society in Europe to the center of life
in America, they aspired to influence a culture beset by many foes.
Immigration brought "foreign" influences increasingly into play.
Industrialization created huge impersonal corporations, especially in the
cities, where materialism reigned supreme; The Philistines of secularism
infiltrated once godly colleges and universities with their scientific
naturalism. The stronger Baptists became internally, the weaker they
seemed to become as an influence in the public square. Meanwhile, ever
since FDR had used government to defeat the Depression and our Axis
enemies, it had grown more powerful than any agency in society, with talk
of an "imperial presidency" that would have made revolutionary
patriots shudder. If only we could form an alliance between church and
state--informal to be sure!--that would give us enough clout to defeat the
enemies all about us. A few Supreme Court appointees sympathetic to school
prayers, a constitutional amendment on abortion, voucher funds for
Christian schools--the politics would be messy but the results would be
worth it all. And
so we began to gravitate toward the centers of power in Washington, some
favoring the Carter Democrats and others favoring the Reagan Republicans.
But politicians do not like divided loyalties, and soon the electronic
evangelists taught us how to have (so they imagined) to have even more
clout by aligning ourselves unambiguously with only one party. Before long
the wall of separation was breached and the great defense of its validity
by George W. Truett, delivered on the steps of the U. S. Capitol in 1920,
was eventually dismissed even by his successor in Dallas. A .few prophets
among us have resisted the siren song of governmental support but it is
hard to hear their voices above the clamor of those who insist that,
without the help of political leaders, America might be lost as a
"Christian nation." Consider what an amazing anachronism James
Dunn has become on the eve of his retirement as almost the only lobbyist
in Washington pleading for less governmental favors for his constituency
rather than for more! One
of the deepest ironies of Israel's history is that the nation fell apart
at precisely the moment when it appeared to be most unified and powerful.
Solomon had carried tire consolidation process to a point of almost total
control, but no sooner did he die than his empire split into a Northern
Kingdom under Jeroboam and a Southern Kingdom under Rehooam. For the next
350 years, Israel in the north and Judah in the south paid a heavy price
for their misadventure into power politics. Hereditary kingship bred
endless corruption at the very core of public life. Jeroboam did evil
above all that were before him, provoking God utterly to consume his house
"as a man burns dung until it is gone" (I Kings 14:9-11).
Rehoboam led Judah to commit more sins than all their fathers had done,
introducing male cultic prostitutes into the land (I Kings 14:22-24). As
the Biblical text marks the end of each dynastic succession, a steady
refrain is heard: "he did evil
in the eyes of the Lord, just as his fathers had done" (e.g. 11 Kings
13:2; 14:24; 15:9; 15:28; 17:2; 21:2; 8 23:32; 24:9).
This
institutionalization of evil at the highest levels of society called forth
the classic age of Hebrew prophecy beginning with Elijah's titanic
struggle against Ahab and Jezebel. Voices such as Amos and Hosea in the
North, Micah and Isaiah in the South, called the power structure to
account and the people back to a God-centered religion of righteousness
and compassion instead of a king-centered religion of presumption and
exploitation. A few reforms were attempted, climaxed by the Deuteronomic
reform under Josiah, but corruption was too entrenched for these
well-meaning efforts to succeed. The old diseased body,
wracked by centuries of compromise, would have to die so that a reborn
community might take its place. And die it did, first under Assyria in the north (722 B.C.), then under Babylonia in the south (586 B.C.). The land was ravaged, Jerusalem was sacked and its temple destroyed, while the nation's leadership was deported into captivity. Jeremiah had seen the cancer of kingship and the sickness of religion so clearly that he knew a terrible calamity would overtake the community of a broken covenant. But even though it grieved him deeply, Jeremiah realized that God could use self-inflicted tragedy to give a new heart and make a new covenant with those who had forsaken him (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Once the cruel events of history confirmed the deepest forebodings of the weeping prophet, out of the abyss of exile Ezekiel seized on Jeremiah's hope for a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26-27) that would literally bring dry bones back from the dead (Ezekiel 37:1-14). His own contribution was to understand this happening through a restored Zadokite priesthood and a rebuilt Jerusalem Temple (Ezekiel 40-48) that would return purity to the land, an idea that was to have enormous consequences in the centuries that followed. But
it was the Isaiah of chapters 40-55 who, more than any other prophet,
redefined the role of the exilic community. He dared to announce in the
darkness of defeat that a new era of salvation was about to dawn (40:3),
led not by earthly kings but by the Sovereign Lord (40:10, 17, 23). At the
heart of this renewal was no royal entourage but a righteous remnant of
the poor and needy whose mission would not be to "raise up the tribes
of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel" but to be "a
light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the
earth" (49:6). Freed by political defeat from the agenda of
competitive nationalism, Israel could now forsake every form of religious
triumphalism and recover the dependence on divine strength which had led
them as slaves out of Egypt. If only the exiles could grasp a vastly
enlarged vision of God's majesty, they would realize that they had not so
much lost a narrow strip of land in Palestine as they had gained the whole
world as an arena of witness! The
supreme symbol of this transformed mission was expressed in the shocking
image of a servant. Four songs, in particular, described- one who was the
very antithesis of kingly majesty (42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12).
But notice carefully that not once do any of these poems engage in
victimization, as if the servant's humiliation were the fault of his
enemies and so deserving of retribution. Nor is it the case that the
servant merely personified the collective predicament of the exiles as an
exercise in self-pity. No, these songs were not saying "Look how
cruel are the Babylonians," or "Look how wretched are the
Israelites." Rather, they depicted a servant who suffered for the
suffering exiles: Surely
he has borne our griefs What
does it mean that the servant suffered for them?
Had not everyone in exile already suffered more than enough? It is not
sufficient to say that here, in the depths of affliction, we encounter a
concept of vicarious suffering which would, in the death of Jesus
centuries later, give rise to our doctrine of atonement. What the Servant
Songs were saying to their own day was that there are two ways to suffer.
The world's way is to suffer in a seething bitterness that leads to
vindictiveness and retaliation. Psalm 137 pictures all too vividly the
feelings of those exiles who wept by the waters of Babylon: O
daughter of Babylon, you devastator! But the prophet offered a diametrically different pedagogy of brokenness: from within their midst God would be pleased with those who deepened their agony by taking the festering enmity of the community upon themselves, who drew the sting of hostility against every foe by lodging it in their own hearts, who made themselves accursed by refusing to practice the politics of revenge. For only as Israel was thus purged of its venom would it be able to witness to every nation with glad and generous hearts. Application:
Do I need to explain to anyone here what it means for Baptists to have had
their kingdom divided and to have been driven into exile? Riding the crest
of a post-war religious boom, we launched Bold Mission Thrust with the
most ambitious goals in all our storied history. Even Solomon in all his
glory could not have surpassed that achievement if only it had come to
pass. But instead, when our leaders least expected it, we suddenly found
ourselves split along ideological lines which had long been tolerated
until we started playing national politics. For at least two decades we
tried one "reform" after another--witness the futile exertions
of the so-called SBC Peace Committee--but it was all too little and too
late. A few prophets tried to call us back to our founding principles, but
most folks paid little attention because they were too busy choosing up
sides for a fight along party lines. Now that the battle is over, and the
family has been divided into winners and losers, a central question is
whether we are ready and willing to learn the hard lessons of exile. At
least three responses seek to evade the key issue: (1) Some seem willing
to succumb to apathy, remorse, or even despair, as if God is not great
enough to overcome our-brokenness by giving a new spirit to our dry bones.
(2) Others are eager to forget the past and strike out on a new course as
if nothing had ever happened. (3) Yet others are itching for a chance to
get even with their enemies and recapture Baptist Zion from the
Babylonians. But none of these approaches faces squarely the question of
the servant, namely: What shall we do with our frustration over losing
institutions in which we have invested so dearly, with our indignation
over having our most sacred beliefs questioned and held up to scorn, with
our perplexity that so few seem to understand or to care what the issues
really are? There is a great deal of talk about what we suffer from,
but the servant songs ask us what we are willing to suffer for. Who among us will vicariously bear the burden of our bitterness
in their own lives so that we will not visit it upon our enemies? What
Isaiah 40-55 is saying to us today is that, even after we have broken our
covenant and divided our kingdom, we can still save our battered community
if only we will accept the mission of being God's light to a darkened
world. All of us, on all sides of Baptist life, continue to talk as if
that is our highest priority. But the prophet knew that we cannot truly
proclaim God's peace to the Gentiles if all we are doing is projecting our
own internal strife on them. We need not go half-way around the world to
take the light to Nigerians and Indonesians if we cannot walk in the light
with charismatics and fundamentalists and liberals who live across the
street. The hard truth of exile is that we
cannot love all nations if we cannot love all Baptists! What, then,
shall we do with the head-bashing impulses of the past twenty years? Who
among us is willing to be despised by
us, and lose our esteem
(Isaiah 53:3) because they ask us to give up the poisons of defeat that
our hearts may be purified to serve a wider world? We now have more than
enough winners and losers in our fratricidal strife. What we desperately
need are more suffering servants! We
have seen thus far that the Biblical People of God sought to build
community around covenant, kingship, and mission. By the time of the
exile, however, the original exodus covenant had been hopelessly
compromised by the disobedience of those upon whom prophetic condemnation
fell. The kingship had been toppled by foreign powers with no possibility
of restoration in the foreseeable future. And what of the bracing call to
a worldwide mission set forth in Isaiah 40-55? The servant role proved too
idealistic for a battered and broken community to implement in the harsh
climate of post-exilic Palestine. Instead of fading away, however, the
legacy of exilic Isaiah became a visionary tradition that went
"underground" as a living option to be claimed in the future. We
see it surface in writings such as Joel, Ruth, and Jonah, with their
counter-cultural plea for an other-directed inclusivism that would
transcend the inner-directed exclusivism of post-exilic life. Meanwhile,
three alternative approaches were developed that sought to build community
around a restored Temple, a living Torah, and a heavenly Triumph. We may
call this the strategy of multiple responses: when shattered and helpless,
try several things in the hope that at least one of them will work! (1)
Picking up on the legacy of Ezekiel, the Jews who began returning to
Jerusalem reasoned thus: The monarchy is gone and our overlords, the Persians,
will never let us have a king. So let us restore our worship center as the
one institution in which home rule is permitted and look to its priests as
our community leaders. The prophets had warned that God would allow us to
be taken into captivity because of our corruption, hence our best hope for
regaining divine favor is to major on purity and become a "holy
nation." This was both a rational and a pragmatic response to their
precarious condition as an impoverished vassal state -- after all, the
liturgical activities of a few priests in their pathetic rebuilt Temple
would hardly concern the masters of the mighty Persian Empire. The only
problem was that when the priests began to fill the political vacuum left
by the fall of the king, this unleashed an internal power struggle between
competing parries which resulted in the Zadokites seizing total control of
the Temple and reducing the Levites to the status of minor clergy with
menial duties. Unable to prevail over its enemies abroad, Israel created
enemies within who could be conquered by intramural warfare that ruptured
the harmony of the beleaguered community. We
need to pause over this seldom noticed partisan strife long enough to
trace its consequences for the spirit of the community. Paul Hanson has
expressed it well: as contending groups "focused primarily on their
own partisan interests . . . in the heat of polemic, human authorities
thus became confused with the ultimate authority, and Yahweh was clothed
in the ideologies of the striving parties."[vi]
"God was no longer revered as the universal creator and redeemer . .
. but became the projection of one or the other party's self interest. The
actual nexus of-authority shifted from the nature of the God revealed in
the saving events of history to the nature of the leadership claims of the
individual parties .... Compassion ceased to be the open invitation
extended by the community to those denied the protection of its structures
and laws, and became a courtesy limited to members of one's own
party."[vii]
(2)
A second strategy was to consolidate the community around allegiance to
the Torah. To overcome the
dissension caused by priestly squabblings, Nehemiah shrewdly capitalized
upon the need of the Persians to strengthen their buffer states by
rebuilding the fortifications of Jerusalem, thereby introducing a measure
of order to an unstable and increasingly vulnerable situation. Within this
clearly defined compound, Ezra installed the Mosaic Torah as a
constitutional guide defining a dependable standard of righteousness at
the center of Jewish life. Neither of these efforts was in competition
with priestly reforms. Rather, the building program of Nehemiah
strengthened the centralization of worship at the Jerusalem Temple and the
interpretation and enforcement of the Torah by Ezra added enormous legal
clout to the claims of the Zadokites (Ezra 7:25-26). But
the protectionism inherent in these measures carried with it the seeds of
religious separatism that fostered withdrawal and isolation. In
strengthening the security of those on the inside, Nehemiah's walls
excluded "all those of foreign descent" (Nehemiah 13:3) on the
outside. Ezra's law came to be known as a wall guarding Israel from pagan
corruption. Both men strongly opposed mixed marriages with foreigners
(Nehemiah 13:23-25; Ezra 9:1-3) which they countered with a doctrine of
"holy seed" that made heredity an important criterion in
defining the identity of an Israelite. Obviously, the more that community
life was determined by pre-existing hereditary structures, and the more it
was regulated by immutable laws set forth in Torah, the less likely God
was to do a surprising new thing in the future. (3)
This does not mean that eschatological hope withered in the face of
pragmatic necessity; rather, the vision of messianic bliss was transformed
from one of bringing light to one of inflicting vengeance on the nations.
God was now portrayed as a divine warrior visiting punishment on Israel's
enemies. Already the pattern appears in Ezekiel 38-39, Isaiah 24-27, and
Zechariah 10-14, but nowhere more clearly than in the contrast between the
erpphasis of universal salvation in the exilic Isaiah 40-55 and the
picture of universal slaughter in post-exilic Isaiah 56-66 (e.g. 63:1-6;
66:15-16). All of the frustration and resentment and bitterness of the
struggling community was projected on that great cosmic battle which would
determine the ultimate outcome of the struggle between good and evil. Only
heaven itself could finally correct the cruel inequities of earth. Application:
For Baptists, Bold Mission Thrust was a noble attempt to open the life of
our religious community to everyone in the whole wide world but, like the
vision of exilic Isaiah, it proved too idealistic for the pluralism that
was fragmenting American culture in the uneasy aftermath of the turbulent
sixties and seventies. Afraid to throw our arms around an increasingly
strange world that seemed to be changing before our eyes, we did exactly
what post-exilic Israel did and fell into an internecine "preacher
fight" that wracked our denomination with deadly controvers.
Now we meet separately as Zadokites and as Levites, but the great
majority of laity on both sides of the squabble has yet to decide what we
shall do about these competing clergy groups. Perhaps we need a prophet
like Malachi who delivered God's judgment on the priests of his day in
words that were unspeakably harsh: And
now; O priests, this command is for you. If you will not listen, if you
will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, says the Lord of hosts,
then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings . . .
Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung upon your faces . .
. and I will put you out of my presence (2:1-3). Baptists began, and were until recently, predominantly a lay movement. In this century, however, the complexities of modern life have led to an increasing professionalization of the clergy which, in some ways, has served us well. But as we gradually lost confidence in our ability to engage the secular world, we not only turned to politicians for help, we also began to focus increasingly on the internal life of our churches. Laity caught up in the hectic pace of urban life, and only dimly-aware of our historic polity, began to cede power and authority to the clergy in a move that may yet prove disastrous for our denomination. It is astonishing just how close we have comeito replicating the mistakes of post-exilic Israel that left it religiously impotent for centuries. Our only hope may be to give the denomination back to the laity, if they will have it, and restore the role of the minister as pastor rather than power-broker. Let us heed the warning of God speaking through the prophet Zechariah: .
. . the people wander like sheep; The
three hundred year period leading up to the New Testament era is often
neglected in studies of this kind because much of its key literature was
not included in the Old Testament or its Apocrypha. But this is a crucial
chapter in our story, not only because it was a bridge between the
Testaments, or because it shaped the context of Jesus' ministry, but
because it illustrates the sharply differing responses that religion can
make to the threat of extinction. The Hellenistic culture diffused
throughout the Mediterranean world by the conquests of Alexander the Great
was forced upon Judaism by the Roman Empire, raising the danger that its
distinctive way of life would disappear through assimilation into the
dominant "One World" community organized around the civil
religion of the Caesars. Let us focus on four strategies for survival
which received definitive form during this time of acute crisis. (1)
The triumph of the Zadokite priesthood over the Levitical priesthood in
the Persian period was short-lived. .With the rise of Greece, the
pro-Hellenistic Tobiads began to fight with the pro-Zadokite Oniads over
the high-priestly office. Then when the Maccabees temporarily repulsed
Greek influence, their Hasmonean successors seized the high priesthood for
themselves, even though unqualified for this office by heredity.
Supporting this religious power play by the Hasmoneans were the
aristocratic guardians of the status quo in Jerusalem whom we know as the
Sadducees. What this rather sordid story tells us is that if clergy are
given too much authority, then those with a vested interest in
accommodating the established power structure will try to control them.
Ironically, Israel built up a hierarchical priesthood in the post-exilic
period to insure the purity of the nation under, local leadership, but
this very group ended up as the most corrupted
through political infighting and the most compromised through alliances
with foreign influences. (2)
Those who built community around Torah more than Temple responded to the
successive crises of this turbulent era with such deep devotion that they
became known as pietists, or Hasidim. In response to secularizing forces they stressed the
perfection and completeness of God's revelation from the beginning of
time. This orientation to the past enabled them to achieve great
stability, patience, and tolerance in the face of rapid and bewildering
change. At the same time, their skilled students of Torah, called scribes,
evolved an open-ended, dialogical method of interpretation which balanced
fidelity to the Biblical text with adaptability to changing circumstances.
Eventually their growing commentary came to be codified as Mishnah and
Talmud. It possessed all of the virtues of coherence, consensus, and
comprehensiveness, but lacked the spontaneity and unpredictability of the
prophetic temperament which was viewed by many as too risky for so
troubled a time. Nevertheless, this tradition, which we know as Pharisaism,
was the one that survived in post-Biblical Judaism. (3)
Of all the secularizing pressures of these centuries, the most intense
came under the Selucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes in 168 B.C., an outrage
so flagrant that Daniel described it as "the abomination of
desolation" (Daniel 12:11). In response, the Maccabees resorted to
guerrilla warfare that produced a measure of political independence and
reawakened hopes for a Davidic messiah. When Rome crushed this effort at
self-rule, terrorist groups began to spring up which eventually coalesced
into a movement called the Zealots. These were popular insurrectionists
who were "zealous" for the nationalistic and theocratic
traditions of Israel and willing to express their convictions with a
sword. By the time of Jesus, conditions under Rome had become so
intolerable that this form of fanaticism gained the upper hand and, within
a few decades, produced a revolt that almost destroyed the Jewish
community. (4)
A final group called the Essenes is of particular interest, not only
because of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, but because
its community combined in new forms elements from the other three. Like
the Sadducees, the Essenes were deeply committed to the centrality of the
Temple; indeed, they may have included Zadokites who fled to a desert
commune when Simon Maccabeus usurped the high priesthood in 140 B.C. They
totally condemned the current temple cult as hopelessly corrupt and viewed
themselves as the "New Temple" that would take its place. Like
the Pharisees, they were strict legalists with roots in Hasidic piety Who
devoted major attention to commenting on the Biblical text. The difference
was that at Qumran the Teacher of Righteousness functioned as the sole
authoritative interpreter of a highly selective understanding of
Scripture. Like the Zealots, they were readying themselves for a Holy War
between the Sons of Darkness and the Sons of Light, but they viewed this
struggle in apocalyptic categories as a cosmic cataclysm in which the
hosts of heaven would fight at their side. Application:
In
the present academic climate which champions "multiculturalism,"
this great diversity of religious movements within Judaism is being
interpreted positively as a "rich" expression of pluralism made
possible by such virtues as tolerance and freedom. From the tenor of this
discussion, one could easily infer that Baptists would somehow be
strengthened if only they permitted and even encouraged a similar
multiplicity of alternatives today. The problem with this
ideologically-based scenario is that these four rival groups fostered deep
antagonisms within Judaism that eventually reduced the community to chaos.
Far from creating a lovely flower garden with variegated blooms, they
became a jungle of warring factions openly competitive, critical, or even
contemptuous of each other. The ability of Baptists to proliferate local
church splits, or even whole new denominations, is well known, but it is a
misreading of the interbiblical situation to understand its religious
movements as examples of an irenic Jewish ecumenism that would support
similar fragmentation within Baptist life. This
issue is of great importance for interfaith relations today. Scholars are
aggressively condemning widespread "anti-Semitism" which they
find in the New Testament and in groups such as Baptists who closely
follow the New Testament in proclaiming salvation through Jesus Christ.
One would think from following this discussion that Christians have, from
the beginning, been guilty of a virulent religious prejudice of which
Judaism is wholly innocent. But what is now-called
"anti-Semitism" was much stronger within
first century-Judaism than it ever was between
first century Christians and Jews. For example, there are obvious
tensions between Christians and Jews reflected in the Gospel of John, but
they do not begin to compare with the outright hatred of Jews for their
fellow Jews found in contemporaneous writings from Qumran. Baptists have
doubtless been guilty of a_measure of anti-Semitism for which we should
sincerely repent but, as with our Jewish compatriots in the first century,
we have saved our harshest condemnations for our fellow Baptists! We
have just seen how the various religious "parties" in first
century Judaism represented competing interpretations of community based
primarily on different emphases drawn from the post-exilic heritage of
Israel’s storied past. That understanding prepares us to view the ministry of Jesus
as yet another way of calling forth the People of God in obedience to
their ancestral faith. The
validity of this perspective is confirmed by the evidence of the gospels
that Jesus was constantly embroiled in controversy with leaders of these
alternative groups over the distinctive ways in which he was building
community. Therefore, let us
look at four of the key underpinnings of his movement and ask how he
expressed them in ways that differed strikingly from similar movements in
the Judasim of his day. (1) First and foremost was a new eschatological orientation that rejected all forms of apocalyptic speculation with their scenarios of vindication for friends and vengeance for foes. Instead, in the free prophetic spirit of Isaiah 40-55, Jesus pr4eached that God’s new age of salvation was pressing into human affairs with such disarming nearness that signs of its arrival could already be seen in his ministry. But rather than coming suddenly and catastrophically from above, God’s kingdom would come gradually and unobtrusively from within, wherever it found faith, which meant that here was an “eschatology-in-process” that had now been inaugurated but not not yet consummated. Contrary to the pessimism reflected in Sudducean pragmatism, Pharisaic pietism, Zealot militancy, and Essene belligerence, Jesus dared to believe that the tide had turned, that God was beginning to do a new thing then and there which would permit his people to claim their right full destiny. (2) This breathtaking perspective meant that his followers were proleptically set in an eschatological context where the boundless grace of God was already offering forgiveness even to the outcasts of society. As his inaugural sermon on Nazareth indicated, Jesus had dome to offer “release to the captives” and “liberty to the oppressed” (Luke 4:18), which would be nothing less than a new exodus of slaves from their house of bondage. This radical openness to “publicans and sinners” shattered the wall of separation by which the Pharisees sought to maintain holiness through rigid observance of Torah. For Jesus, goodness could not be earned by human merit, even his own (Mark 10:18), but was the gift of God’s presence and power. Likewise, heredity was symbolized by circumcision was of no advantage, a key Jewish claim on which Jesus was completely silent. Instead, the decision of faith which he demanded shattered the solidarity of families that shared the same religious legacy (Matthew 10:35-37). (3)
In the most provocative act of his ministry, Jesus condemned the Jerusalem
Temple, not in an attempt to support some rival claimant to the
priesthood, but because it was not serving as a "house of prayer for
all the nations" (Mark 11:17). By constructing a series of walls to
regulate access to the inner sanctuary, the Jews effectively barricaded
Gentiles from God and socially marginalized them in the outermost court
used primarily to merchandize sacrificial animals. Prophetic hopes had
pictured the Temple in the new age as the center of a worldwide pilgrimage
to the mount of God, but Jesus found it to be a bastion of exclusivism
controlled by a hierarchical definition of holiness. In symbolically
shutting down worship even for an hour, he struck at the heart of that
sacerdotalism which had been central to Jewish life since the return from
exile. (4) By insisting that the Temple existed primarily "for all the nations," Jesus was falsely accused of trying to "destroy" it (Mark 14:58), and this became the indictment that eventuated in his death (Mark 15:29). The radical openness to outsiders which had been a hallmark of Jesus' ministry from the outset included Samaritans, centurions, and Syro-Phoenicians. Not only did he offer unlimited forgiveness to the despised within Jewish society, such as publicans and sinners, but he dared to teach that loving rather than hating one's enemies was the most God-like thing that his disciples could do (Matthew 5:43-48). Clearly the universal vision of exilic Isaiah had now been reclaimed, which is why the death which it provoked was understood by Jesus in servant categories (Mark 10:42-45). Refusing to fan the flames of Holy War being urged by neo-Maccabean zealots at his "triumphal" entry, he decided to take upon himself all of the hostilities festering in the hearts of his countrymen rather than urge them to wreak vengeance on the Romans in what he correctly discerned would be a suicidal conflict. Application:
Baptists have just been through what some consider to be a decisive battle
over the Bible, testing in what sense it is the Word of God for the People
of God. Unfortunately, some of the code words which became crucial in that
debate, such as "inerrancy" and "infallibility"
provedimpossible to define, but the consensus was that the Southern
Baptist Convention ended up with a "high" view of Scripture. One
major problem with that outcome is that it ignores the equally important
issue of how to interpret this ancient authority. All of the competing
groups in Jesus' day had the highest possible view of Scripture, but that
did not prevent them from
developing convictions about community that differed drastically from one
another and from Jesus. These differences did not root in any lack of devotion to
their sacred writings but were based on selecting strategies from various
parts of the Bible and giving them different emphases to meet the
perceived challenges of that day. In other words, the difference between
Jesus and his contemporaries was not so much doctrinal as it was
hermeneutical. Like
Jesus, we Baptists can adopt the "realized" eschatology of the
Chronicler, the "futuristic" eschatology of Daniel 7-12, or the
"incipient" eschatology of Isaiah 40-55. We can emphasize the
brokenness of Exodus or the holiness of Ezra. We can major on the
universalism of Jonah or the particularism of Nehemiah. We can decide to
be the saved remnant of Ezekiel or the saving remnant of the Suffering
Servant. In a very literal sense we can be modern Jesus-people, or we can
also be, as we often are, modern Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots, or Essenes.
It is not that some of these communities are "Biblical" while
others are "non-Biblical," for all are based on important
aspects of Scripture. Rather, we must decide, as did Jesus, which model
responds most effectively to the urgencies of our time. With the dawning
of the post-modern era, is this the time to be a community of yesterday or
of tomorrow? With every area of public life going global, is this the time
to build protective walls or to tear down restrictive barriers? With human
efforts at reconciliation underway in Vietnam, Ireland, and South Africa,
is this the time to harbor grudges against our enemies or to practice
radical forgiveness? The
central question dominating the final era of Biblical history was whether
the followers of Jesus would be able to implement their leader's
distinctive vision of what authentic community should be. It is fair to
say that, by the end of his life, Jesus was the only person on earth who
embodied his deepest convictions regarding eschatological newness, radical
forgiveness, universal openness, and vicarious sacrifice. Would the
reality of his resurrection do for his disciples what the exodus had done
for Israel and enable this community-of-one to become a worldwide
movement? Would the rolling away of the stone be like the parting of the
waters by which a new remnant would be delivered from the "house of
bondage"? Let us trace the answers to such questions as they unfold
in the experience of the early church. (1) From the outset at Pentecost, Peter left no doubt that for the nucleus of believers a new age had dawned (Acts 2:16-17). The first Christians were essentially a messianic movement within Judaism for whom the messiah had already come in lowliness but would come again in triumph. Already they lived in the power of the promised Holy Spirit but they were still harassed by the power of sin as a retreating foe. It was as if a new order of fulfillment had established a beachhead in the midst of an old order of frustration. Paul existentialized this eschatological polarity by suggesting that Christians were now free from wrath, sin, law, anddeath even though these threats were well entrenched in the world around them (Romans 5-8). The hopefulness generated by this futuristic orientation was sorely tested by rejection and persecution but never abandoned even when its fruits seemed modest indeed. By living "as though" the form of this world was already passing away (I Corinthians 7:29-31), the early Christians were able to focus their energies on ultimate rather than penultimate concerns. (2)
If the presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers was the
preeminent sign of the arrival of a new age, the forgiveness of sins even
to those who had crucified Jesus was the preeminent sign of its power. For
centuries, Judaism had conditioned the conversion of proselytes on
circumcision, Temple sacrifice, and Torah observance, but in one.
:generation the first Christians swept aside these religious requirements
and offered God's grace to Jew and Gentile alike solely by faith in Jesus
Christ. This radical personalizing of redemption meant that those of every
race, nationality, gender, and cultural background were equally welcome to
experience, not only the forgiveness of God, but the fellowship of the
community. In response to the complaint of scoffers that the intended
transformation was not taking place fast enough, the early Christians
replied that God was not slbw in sending his son either for the first time
or the final time; rather, any apparent "delay" was really a
sign of God's patience in giving everyone as much time as possible to
repent and be saved (Acts 17:30; Romans 2:4; II Peter 3:9). (3) The religious apparatus designed to mediate forgiveness had long posed a barrier to those who were not Jews. But almost immediately after the resurrection, Stephen proclaimed that the one centralized Temple in Jerusalem had been a mistake (Acts 7:44-50). Paul took up the theme by designating each early Christian community as a true Sanctuary of God (e.g. I Corinthians 3:16-17; II Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:19-22). But believers were not only the New Temple, they were also its priests (I Peter 2:9), its sacrifice (Romans 12:1), its Jerusalem (Galatians 4:26), and its Mount Zion (Hebrews 12:22). This thoroughgoing spiritualization was designed to open worship to every person without distinction, thereby transcending the walls that made the Jewish cult unable to function as a "house of prayer for all the nations." The elimination of Temple, Torah, circumcision, and Sabbath from the center of the Christian faith in less than one generation testifies to the amazing sense of newness, forgiveness, and openness which characterized the movement from its outset. (4)
Even though God's future was becoming present at an incredible pace, the
early church still lived in tension between the "now" of a new
existence and the "not yet" of a world that had crucified its
Lord. During the New Testament era, two great crises tested its
willingness to become a servant community in the face of overt hostility.
The first was the Jewish War of A.D. 66-73, when Palestinian Christians
refused the Zealot option of responding to Roman oppression with a sword.
The secolid was the outbreak of persecution against Gentile Christians
under emperors such as Nero and Domitian. Once again the followers of
Jesus refused to retaliate, preferring to follow in Christ's steps and
"suffer patiently" than to fight a Holy War (I Peter 2:20-21).
Soon the threats escalated to martyrdom but the faith held fast and the
New Testament ended with an apocalypse that turned Jewish apocalyptic
thought upside down. Instead of picturing a warrior God dripping with the
blood and gore of Israel's enemies (Isaiah 63:1-6), the Revelation of John
describes all the hosts of heaven crying "Worthy is the Lamb who was
slain to receive . . . blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and
ever!" (5:12-13). Application:
Baptists have long sought to embody the essential characteristics of the
New Testament church in their
corporate life. Now we see that this involves both accepting and rejecting
different patterns of community presented to us in Scripture. But which
options shall we choose? Christ is the Lord of Scripture and thus his
choices are to guide our own. That is exactly the way in which his first
followers formed the apostolic church, by building the same kind of
community that Jesus had embodied during his ministry on earth. This
selectivity does not mean that we pick what we prefer in Scripture and
ignore the rest, but rather that we try to fashion a community so
compatible with the intention of Jesus that it is worthy to be called
"the body of Christ." How
may we describe the core characteristics of such a community? It is one
that opts for newness over sameness, that strives for fulfillment rather
than predictability, that faces the magnitude of evil with quiet
confidence rather than failure of nerve. It is a community that lives on
tiptoe, its nose pressed against the window-pane of the future, God's avant-garde
in a world of tired traditions and empty routines. It is a community
more interested in providing pardon for sinners than protection for
saints, a relational arena where grace overcomes not only divine
alienation but human estrangement as well. Such a place is safe haven for
the vulnerable, the forgotten and oppressed, a place where dignity is
restored to the beaten and humility is offered to the proud. Free from
political entanglements, it is a community that welcomes those of every
nationality and ideology, a body that honors and yet transcends all of our
earthly inheritances and affiliations. Where hostilities fester, it
forgives enemies and seeks to affirm the essential humanity in every
person. In a phrase, it is a company of the Jesus-people, those who give
contemporary expression to his mind and heart and spirit. That is the
"community" that we as Baptists are called to
"nourish" in our day. [i] Robert N. Bellah and others, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). [ii] David Riesman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950). [iii] T. S. Eliot, "Choruses from `The Rock,"' part II, in The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1971), p. 101. [iv] The Biblical analysis represents a summary and abridgment of Paul D. Hanson, The People Called: The Growth of Community in the Bible (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986). All applications to Baptist life are my own suggestions and fall outside the framework traced by Hanson. [v]Hanson, p. 66. [vi] Hanson, p. 267. [vii] Hanson, p. 259. Updated Wednesday, December 27, 2000 |
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