Theology is Contextual

In May I wrote a post about the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor and the "lie of context-less judgment." I had come to the conclusion quite a long time ago that it is impossible to separate completely our decision-making from our contexts. That conclusion had led me to realize that I had lied when I told my draft board - remember draft boards? - that I would have been a conscientious objector during World War II. Of course, the question was not a legitimate one as it assumed that one could know how one would have viewed military service having been raised in a very different time. Context isn't everything, but it cannot be ignored.

I have been reading the first volume - Thinking the Faith - of Douglas John Hall's trilogy, Christian Theology in a North American Context. In that first volume, Hall devotes considerable space to laying out the reasons why theology must be contextual, and the danger of assuming that it can be anything else. Like unacknowledged and unexamined privilege, unacknowledged and unexamined context is very dangerous. When we fail to realize that our theology is contextual we can fall into the trap of thinking that it is universal and, worse yet, final.

I will not rehearse here Hall's argument but I do recommend his books to those who want to explore further the thin tradition of Theologia Crucis. (Lighten Our Darkness: Toward an Indigenous Theology of the Cross was my introduction to Hall. The Cross in our Context: Jesus in Our Suffering World is the book that brought me back. Both are considerably more accessible than the trilogy. I have shared some of my thoughts about Hall and the theology of the cross in an earlier post.)

Although we have a desire for finality, for the kind of certitude which is absolute, theology, thinking about God, cannot have that kind of finality. It will always be provisional and contextual, rooted in the here and now. We make a mistake when we assume that medieval scholastic theology or the theology of the Reformation is timeless and isn't contextual. The mistake is a serious one, leading us to try to speak about God in our own contexts with ideas that can no longer convey Good News. But more importantly, simply repeating the theologies of the past won't work because the One about whom we speak is the Living God whom we have come to know as Emmanuel, God with us. Not God without us and not God with some generic us, but God with us in our particularity. The Living God who is on the move, whose work of reconciliation, of redemption is not finished. The decisive, pivotal act has been accomplished and the words of Jesus - "It is finished!" - are true, but the Last Day has not yet arrived and the missio Dei is still a going concern. As the angel said to the women at the tomb, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:5) With proper respect for those who have gone before us and with proper study of their writings, we are to be about the business of thinking and talking and writing about God in our own contexts, about God with us here and now.

CIVIL LITIGATION

When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous, instead of taking it before the saints? (1 Corinthians 6:1)

These words of St. Paul have, I would guess, been cited more often in the past few years than in most decades - or even centuries - since they were written. They are often cited by those who condemn as a betrayal of the Gospel civil litigation to resolve property disputes between Episcopal dioceses and congregations that have left the Episcopal Church. I do not think that resorting to the courts is, in fact, a betrayal of the Gospel for three reasons.

1. I respect the rights of those on both sides to seek to protect what they believe are their property. It is for them, I believe, a matter of faithful stewardship of the resources that have been entrusted to them. Although I think that those who have left the Episcopal Church do not have a right to Episcopal Church property, I recognize that those who disagree with me have every right to defend their position in court.
2. Unlike the Corinthians to whom St. Paul wrote, we can not take these disputes "before the saints," as there is no body within the Anglican Communion with the authority to settle these disputes. We can wish that there was, but there isn't, so we are left with the civil courts when negotiation fails.
3. The citing of Paul's admonition sounds hollow when done by those who have already in so many ways accepted the authority of the government in other matters of their organizational life. Unless I am mistaken, those who appeal to St. Paul belong to congregations and dioceses that are incorporated in their states and which have accepted gladly the tax-exempt status granted by the IRS.

I would rather have seen all the property questions settled without recourse to the courts, but I believe that they must be settled, in court or elsewhere. The properties in question were given to the Episcopal Church for the furthering of its ministry and its sharing in the missio Dei. Settling which parties have a legal right to these properties is important.

I COULD HAVE HAD MILLIONS!

Like a lot of others I receive a lot of SPAM each day. I decided that a SPAM filter wasn't always a good thing when e-mails from our daughter and from a staff person at the Episcopal Church Center got caught in a filter. I ignore most of the SPAM, but I find that I can't ignore those that are fraud attempts. For a while I reponded to some of them, urging the senders to stop what is not a fitting pursuit for one who bears God's image. Recently, however, I started forwarding them on to the various internet service providers that the criminals use. A number of those ISPs are very good about closing down the e-mail accounts that are being used for fraud attempts (msn.com, yahoo.com, gmail.com, and hotmail.com are good at closing accounts that violate their terms of use agreements.) Unfortunately a few ISPs don't have a way to report this abuse and now some ISPs are refusing any e-mail from me. The internet is a useful tool, but I think stopping crimianls from using it ought to be a goal of all ISPs. Sadly it isn't.

JUST AS HE WAS

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. (Mark 4:35-36)

Just as he was.

Even though I had read or heard this passage many times, I had never noticed that phrase until a colleague pointed it out to me. Reading back to beginning of Mark 4, I saw that Jesus had begun his teaching sitting in the boat near the shore and so this little phrase that I had overlooked for so long simply meant that he had remained in the boat until he was finished teaching and the disciples set out for the other side with Jesus sitting just where he had been all day.

But I don’t want to leave it at that, nor do I think Mark wanted to. At the nursing home where we celebrate the Eucharist each week, we sometimes sing “Just as I am…” and I rejoice that Jesus invites us just as we are. But isn’t it also true that Jesus invites us to a relationship with him just as he is?

The problem, of course, is that we don’t want him just as he is. We want a different kind of savior. One of my friends has said that we want an ATM savior. We ask and out pops the answer that we want. Or we want a Rambo savior who will mow down any obstacle or enemy in our path. Whatever kind of savior we want, we hardly ever want Jesus just as he is.

As the story in Mark 4 continues, we hear that a storm blew up and the disciples feared for their lives and chided Jesus for sleeping. After he had rebuked the wind and the waves, he chided the disciples, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Faith, not belief in a set of propositions, but trust in Jesus. Perhaps what the disciples had not yet grasped was that Jesus wasn’t what we might call a meteorologist savior, one who would show us where the storms of life were so that we could avoid them. I don’t think Jesus wants us to avoid all of life’s storms, but he promises us that he will be with us always, even when the winds and waves threaten to capsize our boats.

Someone has observed that we really don’t want a savior who was crucified, dead and buried, and then was raised to life again. We want a savior who avoided death altogether. We want our lives storm-free. We like smooth sailing. But that isn’t the kind of life to which Jesus has called us. We are called to bear witness to God’s love in the world, and that means that our lives will be stormy at times. The world doesn’t really want to hear that God’s love is freely given to rich and poor alike, and that wealth and prestige and power are not what matters. And when we challenge the world’s values, when we proclaim that what matters is sacrificial love, the world may decide that we are crazy and, perhaps, dangerous.

One of my favorite hymns, a hymn about those fishermen who became Jesus’ disciples, ends with these unsettling words, The peace of God it is no peace but strife closed in the sod. Yet let us pray for but one thing - the marvelous peace of God.

Schadenfreude

I follow several blogs written by folks who are very critical of the Episcopal Church. While I don't find Schadenfreude (pleasure at the troubles of others) in the bloggers' posts, I do detect it in the almost gleeful comments of visitors to these blogs. Every piece of negative news about the Episcopal Church is recounted with what I see as smugness.

I do not count myself as a paragon of virtue, but during the past five years I have been thankful for the successes of the Anglican Chapel that was organized by some of our parishioners who had left us after the 2003 General Convention. The Chapel's Rector is a friend and I was glad when one of the Chapel's members was ordained to the diaconate - a better candidate would be hard to find.

Why shouldn't I rejoice when another congregation grows? Why should anyone rejoice when any Church, not just the Episcopal Church, loses members? Our parish planted some seeds in the lives of those who left us; the Anglican Chapel watered those seeds; but it was God who gave the growth. For that we should all rejoice and be thankful.