BLOG 12/15/17. “HEAVEN … EVERYBODY TALKING ABOUT IT . . .”

With all the ‘Bible-thumping’ politics taking place in these recent days, and when the proponents to all kinds of prejudices expropriate the designate the once noble word evangelical to give legitimacy to their misogyny, racism, animosity toward immigrants, economic injustices, not to mention often obscene behavior, … it reminds me of an old slave song that cut through the hypocrisy brilliantly:

Heav’n, Heav’n,
Ev’rybody talking ’bout heav’n ain’t going there,
Heav’n, Heav’n, …

There is something wonderfully insightful about those spirituals. There were the slaves in an enforced servitude to white owners, who so often professed to be Christian, who attended churches, and yet saw no contradiction in the inhumane treatment of fellow human beings, . . . didn’t even consider them human often. But the message of Jesus that they professed to believe was understood by the slaves, and the contradictions thereof. So, the slaves came up with their own musical protests, often not very subtle.

In more recent generations it was the black community that engaged the nation in the civil rights movement, and when the white politicians objected that what they were doing was unlawful, it was the eloquent Martin Luther King, Jr. who protested that: “I appeal to a higher law …”  We are taught in the Biblical records that God’s purpose in Christ is to create a new race of men and women in the image of Christ, i.e., recreated in knowledge, true righteousness, and holiness. The calling to righteousness is a calling to the patterns of behavior of God’s new creation in Christ, and that true righteousness encompasses God’s love for the whole of humanity.

It is obscene for those who seek to use their ostensible Christian identification as a reason to obtain votes, those who can probably quote John 3:16 in their sleep, and yet whose lives are contradictory to Christ’s compassion for humankind, Christ’s act of reconciliation by his blood shed, and his calling of all who are his to become ministers of that reconciliation, … to appropriate the designation of Christian or evangelical.

It is equally obscene for those in places of local and national leadership, and yet whose lives are captive to the vast control of mammon, of the forces of greed and self-interest to identify themselves as servants of God, what with their indifference to the helpless poor, the homeless, the sick, the immigrants and refugees, and those with whom Christ’s identifies himself.

Jesus taught that the human community/the world would know that men and women were his true disciples by their love and good works, by their new creation behavior. And when ostensible leadership is egregiously ignoring such, all their religious talk takes us back to the slave song:

Heav’n, Heav’n,
Ev’rybody talking ’bout heav’n ain’t going there,
Heav’n, Heav’n,
Goin’ to shout all over God’s Heav’n.

Our calling is to that of servant leadership. It is a calling to incarnate Christ’s words: “He who would be great among you, must be servant of all” … Our calling is to be the sweet aroma of Christ unto God, … not in church gatherings primarily, but in the “stink and stuff” of daily life, which includes the responsibility of civic and political engagement and leadership. Stay tuned …