Global Crises} Local Churches ¢

The Vocation of Neighbour-love in the Face of Structural Injustice: Luther for the Twenty-first Century THE AUGUSTANA DISTINGUISHED LECTURE FEBRUARY 2009 BY

Cynthia Moe-Lobeda Associate Professor in Theology and Religious Studies, Environmental Studies, and the graduate School of Theology and Ministry Seattle University WITH

Active Hope in the Midst of the Babylonian Captivity of the Rural AN ADDRESS BY

Dittmar Mundel Professor of Religion and Global and Development Studies University of Alberta, Augustana Campus Associate Director, The Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life

CAMROSE, ALBERTA THE CHESTER RONNING CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE 2010

Cynthia Moe-Lobeda

The Vocation of Neighbour-love in the Face of Structural Injustice: Luther for the Twenty-first Century _______________

Revised text of the Augustana Distinguished Lecture given at Messiah Lutheran Church, Camrose, Alberta, on February 6, 2009 ______________

I am honoured and delighted to be with you this evening, as we explore together how Luther might guide us in being faithful in public life today. There is so much that I would relish considering with you. It has not been easy to narrow down the questions. Let us begin with this: What does it mean to be the church of Christ in public life today? Lutherans maintain that the assembly of baptized believers sharing Word and sacrament is created and claimed by God in Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit in order to worship God and to proclaim and participate in what God is doing in the world. We see ourselves as part of the cloud of witnesses throughout the ages claimed, gathered, and sent by God’s grace to give thanks for that work of God, witness to it, and give it societal form. With these affirmations come dangerous questions! What does it mean to participate in what God is doing in the world? No, this question does not work. In the footsteps of Luther —contextual theologian that he was—the question must be 1

thoroughly contextual. What does it mean in our time and place to participate in what God is doing? Q Begin, if you will, by considering our time and place. Humankind today faces a two-fold moral crisis never before known. The human species, living in the manner in which you and I live, is a threat to life on earth. We are, in the words of John Cobb and Herman Daly, living toward “a dead end”, destroying Earth’s life systems, and building a soul-shattering gap between the rich and the poor. Here I have not time to argue that claim. I have done so elsewhere, and now simply illustrate it with the following voices. The Earth crisis: A 1992 “Warning to Humanity” issued by more than 1600 senior scientists, including a majority of all living Nobel Laureates in the sciences, advised that “human beings and the natural world are on a collision course . . . that may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know”. 1 Now, two and a half decades later, their warning haunts. While human life depends upon the health of Earth’s life-systems, “every natural system on the planet is disintegrating”,2 and the human species is the cause of it. Christian ethicist Daniel Maguire cuts to the quick: “If current trends continue, we will not. We are an endangered species.”3 The economic inequity crisis: A United Nations agency reports that the reigning form of economic globalization “is concentrat1

See .

2

Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce (San Francisco: Harper Books,

1993), 22.

The Moral Core of Judaism and Christianity: Reclaiming the Revolution (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 13 . 3

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ing power and marginalizing the poor”. 4 “The world’s richest 225 people have a combined wealth . . . equal to the annual income of the poorest 47 percent of the world’s people.” 5 For many, asserts Jesuit priest Jon Sobrino, “poverty means death”. 6 He spoke these words to a small group of United States citizens that I was leading on a fact-finding delegation to El Salvador. The implications became chilling as he went on the explain that his people were poverty-stricken not by chance but because “systems make them poor”. He was referring, Sobrino said, to the political-economic systems that secure the wealth of the Global North. Q With these contextual factors, our question has shifted. In this world characterized by ecocide and death-dealing inequities from which we benefit, what does it mean to witness publicly to the good news of God with us and for us in Jesus Christ? In response to this question, something new is asked of the church in the Global North. It is called to bring the gifts of Christian traditions to the great interfaith and pan-human work of our era: forging ways of human existence on Earth that are not toxic to our home and to the lives of neighbours far and near. The church is called to that inherently public work. I am utterly convinced that Lutheran theology and practice have profound, although of course partial, responses to this central question of Christian faith. 4 The United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 30–31. 5 The United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1998 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998 ), 29–30 , using data from Forbes Magazine ( 1997). 6 Jon Sobrino, Jesuit priest at the University of Central America, San Salvador, in conversation.

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For Lutherans, God’s covenant made with Her people in baptism leads the way, sketching the life of the public church. They know it well, as it is expressed in the Evangelical Lutheran Worship: “You have made public profession of your faith. Do you intend to continue in the covenant God made with you in Holy Baptism . . . to live among God’s faithful people; to hear the Word of God and share in God’s supper; to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed; to serve all people, following the example of Jesus; and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth?” 7 Ideally now we could probe what it means to be the church in light of these five marks of the baptized. But time is very short in a single lecture, so we focus on the last two. Q In Lutheran traditions, the call to serve all people and to strive for justice and peace is understood as an expression of the call to “love neighbour as self”. 8 Luther elaborates, identifying “two principles of Christian doctrine”. 9 The first principle is that Christ gave himself that we may be saved, and we are saved by no effort of our own. The second “is love . . . as he gives himself for us . . . so we too are to give ourselves with might and main for our neighbor”. 10 Luther insists on the inEvangelical Lutheran Church in America, Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2006 ), 237. 7

8 “Neighbour” is a fluid term in Luther’s writings, referring variously to all people on Earth, including our enemies, all Christians, and co-residents of a locality. 9 Martin Luther, “The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ— Against Fanatics”, in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989 ), 331 . 10 Ibid. Luther also refers to these as Paul’s two teachings. See Martin Luther, “Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity”, in The Complete

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separability of the two: they are “inscribed together as on a tablet which is always before our eyes and which we use daily”. 11 He preaches: “God makes love to our neighbor an obligation equal to love to himself.” 12 Many in the Lutheran church know this “second principle” as “faith active in love”. Luther would be pleased: “Faith”, he insists, “is not the human notion and dream that some people call faith . . . . O it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly.”13 This insistence that active love for others is central to Christian faith—present in Luther’s sermons, treatises, biblical exegesis, and catechetical writings—does not contradict his bottom line: one is not justified by one’s works of love or by any other form of “work”. 14 Human creatures cannot contribute to their salvation. That is God’s work in Christ. Rather, Luther’s insistence that all human relations are to be normed by neighbour-love reflects his understanding of what happens through God’s power when people are made righteous by God. In Luther’s words, God gives “two kinds of righteousness”. The “first” changes our relationship with God: we are totally forgiven and become righteous in God’s sight. As a “fruit and Sermons of Martin Luther, ed. John Nicholas Lenker (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2000 ), 8 : 278 . 11 Luther, “The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against Fanatics”, in Lull, 331. 12

Luther, “Sermon on the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany”, in Lenker 7 : 69.

13

Martin Luther, “Prefaces to the New Testament”, in Luther’s Works,

55 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–1986 ), 35 : 370 .

Luther goes on to say: “[This faith] does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them and is incessantly doing them.” 14 For example, see Martin Luther, “Lectures on Galatians— 1535 ”, in Luther’s Works 26 : 127–129 .

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consequence”15 of this first gift, God gives a “second kind of righteousness”.16 It is a change toward love in relationship with others. The second kind of righteousness is, Luther writes, a “whole way of living” that includes living “justly with neighbor”.17 “Faith”, he says, “is a divine work in us which changes us and makes us altogether different . . . .”18 That the church is called to love is simple enough to say. But what is meant by that tiny word is not. Love in the biblical sense is a wild idea. The faint of heart beware. Love is not what one finds on a Hallmark card! Tough questions spring forth. “Who”, to note just one, “is my neighbour?” “My neighbour”, in the biblical sense, is whomever my life touches or affects. Given the current realities of globalization, “my neighbour” is indeed a global concept and includes campesinos in Mexico who lost their livelihoods and homes owing to NAFTA, labourers in sweatshops making my clothing, and people of other lands poisoned by our toxic waste. Note five additional characteristics of neighbour love as a biblical norm. First, it serves the well-being of whoever is loved. It is a steadfast, enduring commitment to seek the good of who or what is loved. Next, the biblical command of neighbour-love is constructed brilliantly to presuppose the normativity of self-love: “you shall love your neighbour as yourself”. 19 Thirdly, it calls one to love as God loves—God’s 15

Ibid., 158.

16

Ibid., 157.

17

Ibid.

18

Luther, “Prefaces to the New Testament”, in Luther’s Works 35 : 370–371.

Commonly held child development theory confirms that humans become able to love by being loved, and that healthy self-love is a requisite of mature capacity to love others. Feminist theory has exposed the damage done to women by the notion that other-love negates self-love, or at least 19

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love, in Christ, is the model for human neighbour-love. In fact the text that we often translate as “Love thy neighbour as thyself”, some biblical scholars say, is better translated as “Love thy neighbour as God loves you”. Fourthly, biblically-based neighbour-love implies a splendid mutuality. Not only is one called to serve the well-being of others, but also to receive that care from others. Jesus modelled the gift of receiving others’ loving care, as well as giving. And finally, where systemic injustice causes suffering,20 seeking the well-being or good of those who suffer—actively loving—entails challenging that injustice. Dietrich Bonhoeffer called this “putting a spoke in the wheel” of unjust power structures. This challenge may include seeing systemic evil for what it is and acknowledging it, resisting it, and pioneering 21 more just alternatives. 22 In short, the norm of neighbour-love includes the norm of justice. 23 This makes supersedes it morally. For a concise theological critique of the Christian ethical tradition that emphasized other-love to the exclusion of self-love, see Barbara Hilkert Andolsen, “Agape in Feminist Ethics”, The Journal of Religious Ethics 9 (Spring 1981 ). 20

And it does in nearly every dimension of social life as we know it.

The term “pioneering” alternatives is drawn from Diane Yeager in G.H. Stassen, D.M. Yeager, and J.H. Yoder, Authentic Transformation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 113–119. 21

Walter Brueggemann, “Voices of the Night—Against Justice”, in Walter Brueggemann, Thomas H. Groome, and Sharon Parks, To Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Humbly (New York and Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1986), writes that doing justice implies “relentless critique of injustice” ( 7 ); “envisions a changed social system” ( 10 ); and works toward “nothing less than the dismantling of the presently known world for the sake of an alternative world not yet embodied” ( 11 ). 22

Daniel Maguire, in The Moral Core of Judaism and Christianity, a?rms: “In the main biblical perspective, love and justice are not opposites but coordinates, manifestations of the same affect . . . . The various words for 23

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sense, given that Jesus was deeply rooted in his own scripture, what Christians call the Old Testament, the First Testament, or the Hebrew Bible. Often he cites it, especially the books of the prophets. Jesus stands in the historical trajectory of the Hebrew prophets before him, upon whom he often draws in his teaching. These prophets were some of human history’s sharpest critics of injustice perpetrated by those in positions of privilege and power. Here we arrive at a mind-boggling and gut-wrenching question: What does neighbour-love mean where systemic sin— structural sin—causes profound and widespread suffering? This evening, I propose to face head-on three vexing conundrums inherent in the call to neighbour-love in the face of social sin. All three derive from the uncomfortable reality that we are called to love in human society. Human societies are just that: human. That is, they are inevitably fallible and subject to sin, both the private sin of individuals and structural or systemic sin. This evening we address especially the latter. Q Before digging into those three problems, think for a moment about the nature of structural sin. The illustrative lens here will be economic life. I chose economic life in part because it is an aspect of public life about which Luther wrote widely and vehemently. Structural or systemic sin refers to systems of living created by humans that bene;t some people at undue expense to others. They may be economic, ideological, political, or other systems. Usually, this injustice is not visible to those not suffering from it. That relative invisibility is one of the most troubling characjustice and love in both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures are linguistically interlocking” ( 220 ).

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teristics of systemic sin. A second is this: systemic sin operates regardless of the moral goodness or badness of the many individuals involved. Chattel slavery in the U.S. was a vivid example. Slavery benefited the slave-owning class at terrible cost to those who were enslaved. Yet, for many slave owners, the injustice of slavery was not visible; they literally did not see it as unjust. Indeed, many of them were, in other dimensions of their lives, highly moral people, even intentionally serving the common good. Furthermore, the economic bene ;ts of slavery extended way beyond the slave owners themselves to industrialists and others who could purchase relatively cheap cotton owing to slave labour. Many of these, too, were moral persons striving against sin in their personal lives. Simultaneously, however, unwittingly, they perpetuated the terrible systemic sin of slavery. Martin Luther understood sin as grounded in the intense human proclivity to serve one’s own desires at the expense of others. He referred to this as “se encurvatus en se” (self curved in on self). The magnetic pull to be curved in around selfinterest pertains not only to individuals but also to societies. To illustrate: Our consumptive life-style in the U.S. produces 150 times the amount of greenhouse gases per person that is produced by people in many parts of the world. Yet the people who stand to suffer most from the global warming produced by those gases are impoverished people whose water sources are drying up, or whose low-lying lands stand to be engulfed by rising waters. Is this not a society “curved in on” its own desires and failing adequately to see the consequences? Q What happens when Christian neighbour-love encounters suffering that is caused by the sin of unjust social structures? 9

The response of Christian love in the context of slavery was not simply to bind up the wounds of the beaten slaves. It was to expose, resist, and dismantle the structural sin, the social system of slavery. In our Lutheran heritage, examples of neighbour-love seeking to dismantle or resist structures of systemic sin are innumerable. Lutherans of South Africa, encountering the structural sin of apartheid, were part of the movement to overcome it. Lutherans in Estonia, encountering Soviet totalitarianism, resisted, at great cost. Lutherans of Norway learned from Lutherans in India (Lutherans in that country being largely among the low social castes) that international bauxite companies were devastating many tribal peoples by forcing them off their lands in order to mine the bauxite. Those lands had supported the tribal peoples’ culture, health, and material needs for centuries. The displacement forced them into abject poverty. Part of the church in India, working at grave danger to halt this, contacted churches in the bauxite companies’ home countries, asking them to urge the companies to stop this practice. Norway was the first to respond. Systemic injustice tends to permeate human societies, even while those of us not oppressed by it remain unaware of it. The horrors of poverty in our world today call attention to economic injustice in many forms. What happens if we are called to love neighbour in a society and a world broken by economic injustice such that some people are terribly impoverished while others have too much, and the poverty of some is connected to the over-consumption of others? Q Luther had a lot to say about this. According to him, economic activity is intrinsically an act in relationship to neighbour, and all relations with neighbour are normed by one thing: 10

the Christian is to serve the neighbour’s well-being, while also meeting the needs of self and household. About this Luther was vehement and specific. He helped to establish a local social welfare system that provided material goods and created jobs for the unemployed. He theologically denounced certain aspects of the emerging capitalist economy that exploited the poor of his day and admonished preachers to do the same. 24 Do you recognize this statement of Luther’s? Speaking of the “free public market”, he writes: “Daily the poor are defrauded. New burdens and high prices are imposed. Everyone misuses the market in his own wilful, conceited, arrogant way, as if it were his right and privilege to sell his goods as dearly as he pleases without a word of criticism.” 25 Luther taught that widely accepted economic norms and activities that undermined the well-being of the poor ought to be rejected in daily practice. As alternatives, Luther established norms for everyday economic life that prioritized meeting human needs over maximizing profit as the central aim of economic life. For example: Christians, according to Luther’s economic norms, must refuse to charge what the market will bear when selling products, if so doing jeopardizes the wellbeing of the poor.26 Likewise, Christians may not buy essential See, for example, Martin Luther, “Admonition to the Clergy that They Preach against Usury”, Weimarer Ausgabe 51 : 367, cited in Ulrich Duchrow, Alternatives to Global Capitalism (Utrecht: International Books, 1995), 220–221. 24

Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism ( 1529)”, in Theodore G. Tappert, ed. and trans., The Book of Concord: Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959), 397. 25

Luther in fact argued that economic activity should be subject to political constraints. “Selling ought not to be an act that is entirely within your own power and discretion, without law or limit.” Civil authorities ought to establish “rules and regulations”, including “ceilings” on prices, he insisted; see Luther, “Trade and Usury”, in Luther’s Works 45 : 249–50 . 26

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commodities when price is low and sell when it is high, for so doing endangers the poor.27 Is not buying low and selling high central to economic life as we practise it? Certainly, in the case of anyone who owns shares in a mutual fund or stocks. Finally, Luther admonishes pastors regarding their roles and obligations in the face of exploitative economic practices. Pastors, he says, are to “unmask hidden injustice, thus . . . opening the eyes of the secular authorities for their mandate to establish civil justice”.28 Indeed according to Luther, neighbour-love, as the norm for public life, has at least three dimensions: — first: love manifest in service to neighbour, even if it may endanger self and family;29 — second: love manifest in disclosing and theologically denouncing oppression or exploitation of those who are vulnerable, where it is perceived;30 and Luther, “Trade and Usury”, in Luther’s Works 45 : 261, 247–51 . See also the entirety of “Trade and Usury” (in Luther’s Works 45 : 244–308) and Luther’s comments on the first, fifth, sixth, seventh, and ninth/tenth commandments and on the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer in the “Large Catechism”. 27

Heiko Oberman, cited in Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996), 116. See also, for example, Luther, “Admonition to the Clergy that They Preach against Usury”, Weimarer Ausgabe 51 : 367 , cited in Duchrow, 220–221. 28

See, for example, Martin Luther, “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague”, in Luther’s Works 43 : 115–138 . 29

Luther’s perceptions of injustice were limited by a number of contextual factors including: (1 ) his anti-Semitic, Constantinian, and patriarchal worldview; (2 ) his conflating the orders of society with the orders of creation; and ( 3 ) the nonexistence, in the pre-modern conceptual world, of the concept of organized social structural change. These factors—among others—led Luther to assume a divinely ordained social hierarchy and to align himself with the political powers that enforced it and embraced the 30

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— third: love manifest in ways of living that counter prevailing cultural norms where those norms exploit the vulnerable or defy God in some other way.

Loving in these forms, “we become”, Luther taught, “hands and feet of Christ, for the healing of the world”. 31 Q Let us return to the present: In my city live thousands of homeless people. Many are children whose parents are hardworking honest adults working full-time at jobs for companies that do not pay enough per hour for the adults to secure shelter. They and their children have been forced by low wages into homelessness. How does Christian neighbour-love respond? How does the church act to serve the well-being of the homeless, if we find that executives in those companies are in fact earning 400 times the minimum wage that these workers are paid? How does the church embody Christian neighbourlove, if products upon which we build our way of living come to us through economic systems that deny others the necessities for life with dignity? I could offer countless examples from the lives of people— African, Latin American, and North American—with whom I have worked, examples of the interface between our consumer new theology. Thus, in some arenas, Luther was aligned with injustice which he failed to challenge, as seen most clearly in his demonizing of Jewish people, and his denunciation of the peasant uprising and of the “radical” reformers. 31 The Diaconal Ministry Community of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, “An Epistle from the LWF Global Consultation on Diakonia” ( 2002 ), 1 . For further discussion of Luther’s sense of the power for neighbour-love given by God in the “second kind of righteousness” and in the eucharist, see Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Healing a Broken World: Globalization and God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002 ), ch. 4 and 5.

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culture and people whose livelihoods are threatened as a result of it. For now I share just two. The first is a Mexican strawberry picker speaking to a delegation of U.S. local elected officials that I was leading in Mexico. “Our children”, she declared, “die of hunger because our land which ought to grow food for them, is used instead by international companies to produce strawberries for your tables.” The second voice revealing connections between our wealth and others’ poverty is that of a Methodist Bishop from Mozambique with whom I worked briefly on a World Council of Churches (WCC) project at the United Nations. Early in the project, our small WCC team, representing Christian churches in many countries, gathered around a table to introduce ourselves to one another. When the time came for the bishop from Mozambique to do so, he spoke, in a voice of quiet power, only one sentence: “I am Bishop Bernardino Mandlate, Methodist bishop of Mozambique, and I am a debt warrior.” Later that week, when asked to address the United Nations Prep-Com meeting concerning the causes of poverty in Africa, Bishop Mandlate identified the external debt as a primary cause. “The debt”, he declared, “is covered with the blood of African children. African children die so that North American children may overeat.”32 The bishop was speaking of the millions of dollars in capital and interest transferred yearly from the world’s poorest nations to foreign banks, governments, and international finance institutions (most notably the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) controlled largely by the world’s leading industrialized nations. That money spent in debt servicing benefits our economy and Bernardino Mandlate, in a presentation to the United Nations PrepCom for the World Summit on Social Development Plus Ten, New York, February, 1999. 32

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is then not available for health care, education, or food and water security in the indebted nations. According to an Oxfam Education Report, “countries such as Honduras, Nicaragua, and Zambia have been spending four times as much on debt servicing as on basic education. In some cases debt service payments exceed spending on basic health care and education combined.”33 (Mozambique is among the few “heavily indebted poor countries” that since has qualified to participate in debt forgiveness programs. Many others have not been so fortunate. And even these programs fail to account for the true cost that these countries paid for years while under the yoke of debt.) Bishop Mandlate’s words ring a note of horror in the heart for those of us whose economies benefit from the capital and interest paid by the world’s poorest nations, and still being paid by many of them. The realities of economic injustice are gut-wrenching for people of relative economic privilege, including me and most of you. The pathos of our situation stuns. We may be people of deep compassion; we may seek to live lives that reflect God’s love. Yet, not by intent or will, our lives are wound up in and benefit materially from social structures that breed deadly poverty for many. Q In the light of structural injustice, I suggest that Christians who dare to take seriously the call to love neighbour as God loves, in the public realm, are faced with at least three enormous conundrums. The remainder of this talk will point out those three problems and ways in which Lutheran theology offers guidance through them. Bear in mind that these three problems 33

Kevin Watkins, The Oxfam Education Report (Oxford: Oxfam GB, 2000 ),

258 .

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and the Lutheran theological offerings do not pertain only to economic life; they pertain also to many dimensions of our life as a public church in the face of profound suffering caused by systemic injustice. First, what do we do with the hopelessness or despair that may accompany recognizing the magnitude of suffering caused by systems that may benefit us? From this kind of knowledge, human beings tend to flee. Not seeing—moral oblivion—is far more bearable. That failing, numbness may set in. Where numbness thaws, despair makes sense. It is sown by a sense that, regardless of our efforts, we simply cannot make a difference in the face of massive suffering caused by injustice. We may retreat into denial and defensiveness, privatized morality, overwhelmed exhaustion, or hopelessness. Holy outrage and lament are dead before born, and we hide from accountability for systemic sin under the comforting cloak of virtue in private life. Grave moral danger accompanies hopelessness. It drains the power to act for the sake of the world. These are dangerous times, and I do not mean because of the perils of terrorism; I refer to the danger of what happens to the church when caring and compassionate Christians retreat from public social witness into private morality or hopelessness. There is a terrible temptation to forget who they are and why they are created: that they are friends of God, empowered by God to receive Her love, and to live that justice-making mysterious and marvellous love into the world. Life, as Lutherans understand it, was breathed into us for a purpose. We were given a lifework: to receive God’s love, to love God with heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love neighbour as self. We are here to let God work through us, in us, and among us to bring healing from all forms of sin that would thwart God’s gift of abundant life for all. 16

Soul-searing, life-shattering destruction and death are not the last word, in this moment or forever. For Lutherans the last word is resurrection, life raised up out of brutal death. In the midst of suffering and death—be it individual, social, or ecological—the promise is that life in God will reign. God in Christ is restoring the Earth community and will redeem human beings from living as its enemies. God’s future for creation is life abundant for all. Nothing in all of creation finally can separate this splendid and broken creation “from the love of God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8 : 39). So speaks the resurrection. That is, where all reason for hope is gone, we in the church move forward, seeking “justice and peace in all the earth”, because we see this as the end of the story. We, as church people, are to proclaim in our words and in our very lives this good news, and to participate in it. Q This however leads to the second problem. We are to seek signs of God working amidst the beauty, confusion, and wreckage of history, so that we may praise God for that work, witness to it, and be, in Luther’s words, “the hands, channels, and means through which God” works. 34 But, how are we to know what responses to human suffering actually do reflect or participate in the justice-making love of God? Have mercy on us, Lord, but so often we do not know what you are doing in the world! How, then, can we participate in it and witness to it? Given the complexity and moral ambiguity of life, how are we to discern what God is doing in any given situation, let alone how we might most faithfully give social form to it? Again, this has been a question for the church throughout the ages. 34

Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism ( 1529)”, in Tappert, 368.

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The baptismal vocation of “striv[ing] for justice and peace” is fraught with vexing ambiguity. The task of faith-based moral discernment is called to the fore. In a world in which evil masquerades as good, in which all alternatives to an unjust situation may themselves be tainted with injustice, in which what brings well-being to some vulnerable people may bring damage to others, and in which the pernicious presence of sin invades human good—in such a world, the call to dismantle injustice as an act of Christ-bearing love is a summons to the di ?cult and daring art of faith-based moral discernment. In venues from interpersonal to international, how are we to discern what God is doing, through whom, and where, so that we may align ourselves with it? Lutheran theology offers invaluable clues. It assures us that human beings cannot know with certainty what God is doing in the world; yet, paradoxically and in the face of uncertainty, we are to act in accord with God’s mission and activity based upon faithful discernment regarding it. Said differently, we disbelieve any claim to absolute knowledge of God’s ways or will, as well as any claim that God’s people are, therefore, excused from seeking to live in congruence with it. The next clue is unsettling, perhaps unwelcome. From a Lutheran theological perspective, knowledge of how we are to live is inseparable from knowing God. A Lutheran theology of the cross counsels that the work and ways of God are revealed most fully in Jesus Christ, and—in some way beyond full human comprehension—that this One is known most deeply in places of brokenness and suffering. Thus, we will glimpse more clearly what God is doing when we are present in profound solidarity and compassion where people and creation suffer most.35 Dietrich Bonhoeffer said as much. Seeing, he wrote, 35

The term solidarity is overused and misused. The many problems

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“from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled—in short, from the perspective of those who suffer” is “an experience of incomparable worth”. 36 With whom we see will determine what and how clearly we see. For Christians in positions of “privilege”, moral discernment is fatally flawed if it does not begin with—and otherwise heed—the cries, claims, and constructive proposals of those on the “margins” of society, especially people whose survival, dignity, or human rights are at risk in whatever situation is at hand. Theologically, to ignore or minimize the voices of those on the underside of history contradicts what we know of God in Jesus. The arts of faithful moral discernment, practised by our church, would include asking: What are the lenses through which we are seeing? Whose struggles and knowledge are heard, and whose are erased in our churches and in the dominant public discourse? Who is absent from the table of deliberation? Q Having tools for discerning how to act in neighbour-love and the hope to do so, presents the third problem. Wherein lies the courage to seek justice and peace—that is, to live according to justice-making neighbour-love—when so doing de;es the expectations of one’s culture? The risks and dangers involved in serving a God of justice-making love in a world of injustice and violence are great. One ELCA bishop, in a discussion of what it means to be a public church, said: “I would like to be more with it are not easily seen from eyes of privilege. Yet, to lose the norm of solidarity would be a great loss. Problems with this concept and responses to them are sketched in Moe-Lobeda, Healing a Broken World, 118–223. 36 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, trans. Christian Kaiser (New York: Touchstone, 1997 ), 17.

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engaged as public church.” When asked what it would take for that to happen, his beautifully honest response was, “courage”. Yes, fear is reasonable for a church that claims as central to its being and purpose an “execution stake”. 37 What might happen when one who was executed for his faithfulness to God says “take up your cross and follow me”, and says it while he is on “the way” to that execution, as we read in Mark’s gospel? What might happen when we heed this call? Jesuit priest Phillip Berrigan once noted that if you want to follow Jesus, “you had better look good on wood”. It would seem that denial of the call and fear of its implications would keep us from following Jesus’ call, render us powerless. Indeed it may. Truly following Jesus, throughout history, has been dangerous. It requires courage. Again, for clues we turn to Luther. According to him, the most powerful courage known to humankind is generated by the Spirit and Christ living in the faithful. In his sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, he speaks of the power, strength, and courage that may be imparted to the faithful by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.38 The Spirit brings into its human abode “true courage—boldness of heart”. “The Hebrew word for spirit”, Luther preaches, “might well be rendered ‘bold, undaunted courage’ .”39 He goes on to declare: That “bold, dauntless courage . . . will not be terrified by poverty, shame, sin, the devil, or death, but is confident that nothing can harm us and we will never be in need”.40 This empowering courage is, according to Luther, greater and more powerful than any force on Earth. In first-century Palestine, the cross was an instrument for executing rebels against the Roman Empire. 37 38

See, for example, Luther, in Lenker 8 : 277 .

39

Luther, in Lenker 8 : 275 .

40

Luther, in Lenker 8 : 275–276 .

20

In another sermon, Luther declares: “The Holy Spirit streams into the heart and makes a new man, one who loves God and gladly does his will . . . . [The Spirit] writes a fiery flame on the heart and makes it alive . . . a new man is made who is conscious of a reason, heart, and mind unlike [what] he formerly had. Everything is now alive . . . he has . . . a heart which burns with love and delights in whatever pleases God.” 41 Elsewhere Luther a ? rms: “This is the Holy Spirit’s o ?ce: to rule inwardly in the heart, making it burn and create new courage so that a man grows happy before God . . . and with a happy heart serves the people.” 42 “[T]he Holy Spirit inspires new thoughts and creates a new mind and heart . . . . In addition to the grace by which a man begins to believe and hold fast to the Word, God rules in a man through his divine power and agency, so that he . . . makes daily progress in life and good works . . . . [He] essentially becomes more able to serve men and countries in that his life and doings become God’s.” 43 Q The church understands itself to be the body of Christ on Earth. As such, its members are called to participate in God’s work on Earth: to proclaim the gospel in word and deed, to serve all people in the manner of their Lord Jesus Christ, and to seek justice and peace in all the Earth. Being church—at least in the Lutheran mode—is not a private affair. This is a public calling. We people of the church—as all people—also are utterly human, fallible and finite! And so we are subject to the three profound challenges touched on in these minutes together tonight: the problem of feeling hopeless or helpless in the face

42

Luther, “Third Sermon for Pentecost Sunday”, in Lenker 3 : 316–31 7. Ibid.

43

Ibid.

41

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of the suffering caused by systemic sin, the problem of discerning what ways of acting in the world indeed cohere with God’s liberating love, and the problem of fear. Therefore we are led to give great thanks that the power that calls, frees, and sends the church into the world for the sake of the world, also will open our eyes, guide us, and bring us courage. This should not surprise us, because that power is the very love of God, given to us in Jesus Christ and God’s Spirit so that we might praise God and serve God’s mission of justice-making love in this splendid and suffering world that God created and loves beyond human understanding. How God bestows that gift is mystery. We put reason and words to it, so that glimpsing it less dimly, we might receive it more fully.

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Dittmar Mündel

Active Hope in the Midst of the Babylonian Captivity of the Rural _______________

A signi; cantly revised version of a two-part address given to the “Rooted in Faith: Celebrating Rural Churches in Community” Conference, Lloydminster, Alberta, October 15−17, 2009* _______________

In spite of, or because of, the decline of rural communities, rural parishes are in a privileged position. They experience ;rst hand the con
23

settings from Portland, Oregon to Edmonton, Alberta to build or re-build neighbourhood communities and to care for the land within the cities and around the cities. My point is that you who are members of rural parishes should not bemoan the fact, but celebrate the gi= and calling of living rurally. Walter Brueggemann tells us that the role of those who are parish leaders—and by extension of all of us who want a living faith—is to cultivate a prophetic imagination. 1 We have to learn to see our piece of the world with prophetic eyes. But, he does not mean that we simply nurse and express our rage against governments and other power-brokers who are not creating the world we want. We do have to learn “prophetic criticizing”, but that can only be done if it is rooted in doxology, that is, in awe and praise before the Creator of Life, otherwise our criticism becomes simply another ideology. 2 Rather than impotent rage, a more appropriate expression of prophetic criticizing is grieving, since grief connects us to life: even if it is the lost life of our community, our land, our people. In our time where so many people are immersed in either apathy, or, the sensitive ones, in despair, a primary role for parishes would be what Brueggemann calls “prophetic energizing”. 3 We have to be rooted in faith. But no faith is genuine if it does not hope for renewed life. The purpose of this address is to invite us to look at our con
2

Ibid., 25.

3

Ibid., 13.

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optimism the captivity creates, we can hear how the prophet 4 who speaks in Isaiah 40–55 awakens an active hope, a waiting on the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, that renews the strength not only to imagine, but also to prepare for a “return” from exile and a rebuilding of a community that views the land as the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. communities and parishes in babylonian captivity The nature of the captivity. A=er a ;rst deportation in 597 bce and then a massive deportation of all but the least powerful people of Judah to Babylonia in 587 bce , the “people of God” found themselves in captivity. For two generations their lives were shaped by forces beyond their control: the Babylonian Empire, its military, and its advanced civilization. Hopelessness and with it apathy became a common spiritual disease. They asked themselves: What can we do in the face of such powerful forces that are holding us captive? The gods of the Babylonians obviously are more powerful than our God. How can our God whose temple is in Jerusalem see us or hear us when we pray? Isn’t our way disregarded by the Lord? (Isaiah 40 : 27). Let us use this story to look at our time. Could we too be living in a “Babylonian captivity”? I am discerning at least four aspects to a captivity that contributes to apathy or despair in the face of the decline of rural communities and the health of the land. The ;rst one I will call captivity to global corporations. In a “relearning community event” (a ;ve part series of workshops in Viking, Alberta)5 a professor of sociology asked the farmers, For the purpose of this talk, it is irrelevant whether you call the prophet Deutero-Isaiah, as many scholars do, or Isaiah. The context of the Babylonian Exile is the key to hearing the prophet correctly. 4

“Relearning Community: A public gathering to talk about the place of our community in a changing world”, Viking, Alberta, January 24, 31, February 7, 5

25

local business people, and community leaders to list all the areas in which large corporations in
/514Relearning%20Community%20Brochure.pdf> (accessed January 23, 2010). 6

“The Farm Crisis and Corporate Pro ;ts”, in Farm Crisis, November 30,

2005: (accessed October 10, 2009).

26

the event was about 58, they still had a memory of the independent or largely independent family farm, at the very least from the story of their farming parents or grandparents. Behind this corporate captivity lies the captivity to an industrial paradigm of agriculture and an industrial growth economy. Captivity to a paradigm means that we are caught in a way of seeing, and responding to, the world. In an industrial paradigm, we see even farming as an industry. If farming is an “agro-industry”, then the way farms, farm families, and rural communities are looked at—and we o=en internalize this— changes. We view them not as “land, people, and community” that are intimately connected, but as factories, mining operations, or sites of production of agricultural commodities that can be sold anywhere in the world. Agricultural policies are not measured in terms of whether they increase the health of people, of their land, and of their communities and strengthens their connections, but rather whether the farm is “e ?cient” and produces more and more with less and less human labour and more and bigger machines and technologies. The cost to the fertility and tilth of the topsoil, the health of the waterways, the quality of the groundwater, the coherence of the farm families and their villages does not get calculated in economic measures of “e ? ciency”. (Is “e ? ciency” even a proper measure when what we are dealing with is nurturing, preserving, and using the means of all of humanity’s life? We don’t measure parenting by “e ? ciency”. So why would we measure farming by this industrial standard?) Ongoing expansion is a measure of success in the industrial paradigm. “Growth” is what our economy requires and measures, even though it is both mathematically and ecologically impossible to keep on growing within a ;nite planet. Translated into farming. the “growth model” of the economy meant “get big or get 27

out”. Competition between industries, in which fewer and fewer can win until there are only a few industries le = which span the globe, is a key element in this paradigm. As a result farmers who had co-operated for centuries are now thrown into a win–lose competition with each other. Smaller family farms lose regularly and the winners get bigger and fewer in number. In “The Agrarian Standard”, Wendell Berry, who as a farmer and Christian writer has spent his time articulating the di :erence between using an industrial and an agrarian paradigm to look not just at farming but at human life in urban areas as well, summarizes well what the industrial paradigm as a way of seeing and interacting with the world is: The way of industrialism is the way of the machine. To the industrial mind, a machine is not merely an instrument for doing work or amusing ourselves or making war; it is an explanation of the world and of life . . . . Because industrialism cannot understand living things except as machines, and can grant them no value that is not utilitarian, it conceives of farming and forestry as forms of mining; it cannot use the land without abusing it. Industrialism prescribes an economy that is placeless and displacing. It does not distinguish one place from another. It applies its methods and technologies indiscriminately . . . in the United States and in India.7

Once we interact with our land and community and our own household and economy industrially, we can’t help but become captives to the giant corporations that produce ever Wendell Berry, “The Agrarian Standard”, in The Essential Agrarian Reader, ed. Norman Wirzba (University Press of Kentucky, Shoemaker and Hoard edition, 2004) , 24. 7

28

new and bigger machines or technological devices and household gadgets from doing chores to entertaining ourselves. We enter into a cultural captivity, a captivity to a global consumer culture. Industry produces commodities—including processed food commodities—and we consume them. Our culture and identity gets shaped around what we “have” and “consume” (whether on credit or not), and not what we are as creatures of God within farming communities. Aside from the fact that machines have replaced the work of many of the members of the farm family and that farms have been in an ongoing crisis for the last forty years so that many parents dissuade their children from relying on farming, another reason the next generation moves to the urban centres is that it is easier to gain the money to consume what all other “self-respecting” young people in our consumer culture consume. The city seems closer to consumer paradise. Behind the corporate, industrial, and cultural captivity lies the captivity to the god of “material progress”. It was not only in Babylon that the gods seemed stronger and more impressive than the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the Judges, the Prophets, et al. Our way into captivity was laid out at the beginning of the Modern Age. As José María Sbert puts it: With the rise of the modern world, a distinctly modern faith—faith in progress—arose to make sense of, and give ultimate meaning to the new notions and institutions that were now dominant. Our deep reverence for science and technology was inextricably linked up with this faith in progress . . . . And increasing conformity with the rule of economics, and intensi;ed belief in its laws, are still shadows of this enlightened faith.8 José Maria Sbert, “Progress”, in The Development Dictionary, ed. Wolfgang Sachs (London: Zed Books, 1992), 192. 8

29

To modern man, and to those who want to share his identity, rejecting faith in progress is unbearable. Modern man is de;ned by progress. His self-esteem is rooted in it and it is his deepest justi;cation for the ruthlessness he displays towards his fellow man and nature.9

Regardless of what we think in our head about our religion or what or whom we profess to believe in, what our heart is devoted to to give it meaning is, in Martin Luther’s phrase, “properly our god”.10 So faith in “material progress” becomes the spiritual foundation for our modern age, that is, the idol that holds us captive and allows the abuse of God’s creation, creatures and communities to continue. The spiritual impact of captivity: hopelessness and false optimism. It is only natural that when we live in captivity to a god of material progress, its culture of consumerism, an economy of ongoing industrial growth, and its human rulers of place-less and o =en face-less corporations, we shall be invaded by hopelessness. The addictions and suicides of farmers as they lose the farms which belonged to their families for generations are only the most dramatic expressions of this hopelessness. 11 The more widespread hopelessness is the one shared in urban and rural Ibid., 195. Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism”, in Concordia or Book of Concord, translated by F. Bente and W. H.T. Dau (St Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950), 169. 9

10

This is happening not only in rural Canada but in record numbers in India among those farmers who had joined industrial “modern” agriculture through the green revolution. When input costs go up dramatically and the commodity prices stay level or go down, the indebtedness increases, let alone when there are several years of bad harvests. See Prachi Pinglay, “No let up in Indian farm suicides”, BBC News, Mumbai, 5 May 2008 : (accessed January 12, 2010). 11

30

areas alike, in the o=en partly unconscious sense that there is no real meaning to progress since there is no measure of “better” or a “better life” than more of the same, i.e., more goods to consume. Anxiety and apathy become constant companions of us, the captives. It was re < ecting on this passivity and non-engagement of people in the second half of the last century that made Erich Fromm ask of this age that is dedicated to the machine and technology as our saviour: “Do we have to make people sick in order to have a healthy economy . . . ? ”12 We can answer: Our idol of progress and its growth economy has made people, land, water, air, and communities sick. The consumer paradise can only be reached by doing violence to the essence of being human. Humans are creatures designed to live by faith, hope, love, and courage within communities and the land on which they depend for sustenance. We have made people both spiritually and physically sick in the name of industrial progress. An almost more dangerous form of hopelessness than the partially conscious despair is false optimism, since it hides its passivity and its nihilism, that is, that it has given up on the search for any deeper meaning to our life in society and nature. A common form of this false optimism is expressed in the phrase: Our scientists and inventors will ;nd a technological solution. This, currently, is how we deal with the ecological threat which the development of Alberta’s tar sands presents. Whether it is carbon capture technology or any other heralded break-through, the point is: We don’t have to change our ways; we don’t have to examine the costs of progress. The technology that caused the problems will be relied upon to solve the problems: just in time, since right now we don’t have Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 2 (emphasis in original). 12

31

the solutions yet. Anyone who wants a good object lesson in the silliness of this way of arguing should go and visit the Giant Mine in Yellowknife which contains 237,000 tons of arsenic trioxide, which is so toxic it can’t be moved. When the mine was at its peak with gold-feverish exploitation on everyone’s brain, the issue of the toxic tailings was always deferred. Once the exploitation was done, the company could not pay the cost of clean-up, nor was there a way to clean up. Ultimately the Giant Mine became a responsibility of our federal government and thus of us, the citizens and taxpayers. And still there is no solution to the pollution, only harebrained schemes such as permanently “unto ages of ages” mechanically freezing the arsenic trioxide in place. Let us look at a rural example. Farm income is in crisis. The solution: bigger and better equipment, now with GPS guidance systems, will allow for a more e ?cient and precise seeding and harvesting. This will give farmers the edge to make a living in adverse times. This optimism prevents one from examining why farms and farm communities are in crisis, or more accurately: how they are the canary in the mine-sha = which shows us that our global consumer cultures are in ecological and social crises. False optimism is expressed in the words of so many of our politicians, in the slogans of so many advertisements, and in the pronouncements of such a variety of experts that they seep into the way many people, even in rural communities, think. “You have to adjust to the global realities, or be le = behind.” “There is no alternative”, so you better join the “getbig-or-get-out” bandwagon. Here is an o = repeated story of this internalized false optimism from the farming community: A farmer works on his family farm for thirty years and has some good o:-farm income. The desire to work only on the 32

farm lets him be convinced by a corporation to build a few gigantic ; nishing hog barns. He has to leverage everything he owns to do it. He hurts for his neighbours who are about to go under in the ongoing rural economic crunch. However, he is convinced that “the real world” dictates that they will just have to go under. He repeats the mantra that “Only those of us who are big enough and e ? cient enough will survive.” When asked about the chronic volatility of the hog market in relation to the huge debt he has just incurred in building the barns, he says: “I don’t have to worry about that. The corporation I raise my hogs for guarantee a market. I just feed the hogs for them.” Three years later that hog corporation goes under together with 25% of the other large and small scale hog producers in Alberta. False optimism expresses itself in the blind belief that the next generation, the future, the free market, or a new technology will solve our problems. So, while we can be very busy, we are basically passive: passive in terms of freeing ourselves from the dependencies that destroy us and our world. This passivity is a clear symptom that these optimists are not living in hope. Genuine hope, as we shall see shortly, always a ? rms life and liberates from captivity to life-destroying dependencies. Many churches too peddle false optimism and thus perpetuate apathy toward the plight of rural communities, because they have a totally spiritualized or dis-embodied hope. In this view, it doesn’t matter what we do to the land, people, and community, as long as you can go to heaven or, in one variant, are not le = behind in the rapture. There are many churches of all denominations who have a spiritualized hope in the herea=er for which the soul, divorced from the body and its intimate connection to the earth, is being 33

prepared. In such a view, our captivity is not an issue. In fact, it is not polite to raise political, economic, or environmental issues in sermons or study groups. The deeper reason: we are so invested and committed to our rural-community-destroying economy that we cannot a : ord to become aware of it as a captivity. Salvation by faith in Jesus gets pitted over against concerns about what is happening to nature rather than being seen as intrinsically linked to it, as in an early Christian hymn that states that Jesus is “the ;rstborn of creation . . . in whom all things hold together”.13 Paralysing despair for some, apathy, false optimism, and an other-worldly hope for others, keep us in our current version of a Babylonian captivity. We conform to the dominant patterns of a presumptuous culture that has a global reach. The ongoing damage is best described by Wendell Berry, who has closely watched it from the date his Unsettling of America was published in 1977 to twenty-;ve years later, when he was invited to write “The Agrarian Standard”: It [The Unsettling of America] remains true because the conditions it describes and opposes, the abuses of farmland and farming people, have persisted and become worse over the last twenty-;ve years . . . . Our farm communities are far worse o: now than they were then. Our soil erosion rates continue to be unsustainably high. We continue to pollute our soils and streams with agricultural poisons. We continue to lose farmland to urban development of the most wasteful sort. 14

With some minor modi;cations this also describes rural realSee the whole early Christian hymn recorded in Colossians 1: 15–20. Christ is both the ; rst-born of creation as well as the source of the reconciliation of the world with God. 13

14

“The Agrarian Standard”, 23.

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ities in Canada and thus can serve as a summary of the consequences of our captivity and resultant apathy. the r evolution of hope The nature of hope. It is in a context of apathy during the Babylonian exile that the prophet known to us under the name of Isaiah cries out to his compatriots in the following words: Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel: “My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God”? Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40 : 27–31.) 15

These are revolutionary words to a despairing and hopeless society: they call for a revolution of hope, a revolution of “waiting upon” the Creator who is present in the midst of the captivity. Captive Israel is reminded that their unnameable God is not tied to a temple in Jerusalem, but is both the Creator of the ends of the earth as well as the Lord of history. 15

Holy Bible, 21 st Century King James Version (KJ21 Publishing, Novem-

ber 1994).

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Waiting or hoping for God is not passive. It allows those who hope to “walk and not faint”, even while still in captivity. It “renews their strength”. It allows them to prepare for a return to their land and community, even when they don’t know when or how it will be possible. Historically, the unpredicted and unexpected happened—we do not know how long a =er these words of Isaiah: Cyrus the Persian emperor conquered Babylon, ended the Babylonian captivity, and allowed the people of Israel to return to their own country. Similarly, while there are clear signs on the horizon that the Empires of global consumerism and debt cannot last, no one can predict accurately when or how they will collapse and what will replace them. Yet, the same message applies to us: we are not permanent captives to any economic or cultural determinism. In spite of all we have done, and are doing to our world, there is, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s words, “a dearest freshness deep down things”. The abused world is not spent, because “the Holy Ghost over this bent world broods . . .”. 16 If we today participate in a revolution of hope, we direct our lives not to the abstract future of empty material progress but to the future of life, concrete, embodied, earthly life that can break us out of the bonds of our captivity. Genuine hope, in the image that Erich Fromm gives in The Revolution of Hope, is like a crouching tiger. 17 Even when apparently motionless the tiger is very active, constantly looking, engaged, and ready to act, to pounce at the appropriate moment. Of course those who are engulfed in their hopelessness will neither eagerly wait for God’s future, if it means uprooting their lives to go into an unknown future, nor take any actions to prepare for this depar16

Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”.

17

The Revolution of Hope, 9.

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ture. We become so easily creatures of habit, especially when in captivity. A =er all most of us were born here, in captivity, and in spite of our condition as captives, we are relatively comfortable. All we have of the future is a promise contained in the biblical stories (such as those of exile and return) and the stories of alternative ways of being rural communities told to us by our parents, grandparents, and people in so-called developing countries. Hope is one of the three theological virtues; the other two are faith and love. That means they are gi = s of God to all humans regardless of what religion or culture they are born into. Without some kind of hope we cannot live. In a dingy hotel room that I once had in London, someone had scrawled the words across the wall facing the bed: “Tomorrow is cancelled due to lack of interest.” Without interest in life, in tomorrow, the tomorrow of God, the tomorrow of our children and grandchildren, in the tomorrow of our communities and the tomorrow of our land and water, we cannot live human lives. The false optimism described above capitalizes on our need for some kind of hope. However, while pointing us to the future, it does not take any real interest in life and the survival of all of creation. A primary task for rural parishes is to help members of their community to overcome their despair or apathy and “renew their strength” through hope, not in the likely success of their activities, but in the Creator of the ends of the earth. Two crucial tasks are given to us. The ;rst is to announce the end of our captivity maintained by the idolatrous faith in ongoing material progress, by opposing it with the presence of God in creation and in the Word made
can see and respond to our rural communities and the farm or ranch land as God’s creation. The second task is to support members of the community at large who are taking their ;rst steps out of captivity. We support each other by exchanging stories of what others are doing in similar circumstances to reduce their dependencies on life-denying forces and increase their connection to the social and natural communities within which they live. Rejuvenation by seeing creation as a presence of God. The prophet who spoke to Judah in its Babylonian captivity used his words in poems and songs to inspire hope in the Creator of the ends of the earth. It was his words that broke through the apathy and despair of captivity. They created new possibility and new hope. For us a major source of hope is being lost, if we lose the words “creation” and “Creator” as an alternative story to the stories of our dominant culture. This loss occurs when we frame the image of the world as God’s creation “scienti ;cally”, as the factual problem of intelligent design versus evolution. Spiritualized and other-worldly religion also loses a connection to our bodies and the earth 18 as God’s creation. Sometimes faith in Jesus is pitted against such worldly ecological concerns as the health of land, air, and water. However, in Christian theology, Jesus is the incarnation of God’s Word that lives among us. The incarnation points to concrete, bodily, human life on this earth, which God so loved, as a major point of encounter with God. Isaiah claims that if the captives trust in the Creator of the ends of earth they will renew their strength. See Wendell Berry, “The Body and the Earth”, in The Art of the Commonplace: The agrarian essays of Wendell Berry, ed. Norman Wirzba (Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2002), 93−134. 18

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Let us explore in what way viewing the world as God’s creation liberates us from captivity to alien ideologies and patterns of living and thereby renews our strength to act in new ways. Our North American world in its fourfold captivity tells itself a story that hides its captivity from itself. In this story, which George Grant named and analysed in “In Defence of North America”, 19 we have to master human and non-human nature for our survival and success. Within this story we see nature as resources that are there to be exploited for our bene ; t. Even the fruits of the earth are agricultural resources sold, and speculated upon in stock markets, as commodities. We treat the land as our property to be used for extracting as much ;nancial value as we can. The biblical story, prompting us to respect human beings, human communities, the earth and the fullness thereof as God’s creation, is a potentially liberating, hope-inspiring story. It liberates us by limiting us, and by putting us back into an overall, complex set of patterns which we did not make, but need to respect, if we want our communities, land, and planet to survive. In this story, it is presumptuous and destructive to play god, imposing our industrial economic, agricultural, and cultural model on the rest of the world with its diverse cultures and ecological regions. We are only limited “earthlings”, not gods. We acknowledge, for example, that we cannot make the complex topsoil from which we live, nor do we produce diverse living forests. At best we can maintain and preserve what the patterns of Creation have provided for us, as we use the land, the sea, and the forests for our survival. It is liberating to be allowed to be mere humans with limited knowledge who nevertheless receive the George Grant, “In Defence of North America”, in Technology and Empire (Concord, ON: House of Anansi Press, 1969), 13−40. 19

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gi=s and bounties that Creation holds in store, if we develop the necessary skills and wisdom to live within its dynamics. We don’t have to be specialists and university-trained experts, who know more and more about smaller and smaller parts of agroforestry realities. We can learn from those farmers, ranchers, and foresters who pay close attention to the land and the many complex interconnections with all that is in and around it. It is restraining and liberating to discover, in this story that sees nature and community as God’s creation, that we are not “free to do what we want”, not autonomous selves, not hyperindividualists,20 but creatures bound to one another, to the earth, and to the mystery of life that is beyond our knowing. It does take a leap of faith to see and respond to nature and community as God’s creation. But it is a leap into foolishness to see small segments of the strands of the complex web of life as objects that we can truly know and control by studying them and manipulating them in isolation from the overall patterns within which they cohere. Honesty would have us acknowledge that the conservationist John Muir was right, who is quoted as saying: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we ;nd it is hitched to everything else in the Universe.” 21 Creation, not as objective fact, but as sung and spoken Word, has the power of making the natural and social world of spiritual use to us.22 The natural and social world is of spiritual use This apt expression comes from Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (New York: Times Books, Henry Holt and Co., 2007), 96. 20

(accessed January 15, 2010). 21

This notion is derived from Luther who views the whole world sacramentally. He says: “Set aside the word ‘God created the heavens and earth,’ and I would like to see who would have a God or of what use [for the spiritual or inner person] he would be.” “That these Words of Christ, ‘This is my 22

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to us when it inspires con ;dence in the Creator, the inaccessible mystery of life clothed in the existing realities around us. As we develop trust in the Creator, we get orientated in life by God’s creation, its patterns, cycles, particularities, rather than imposing our will to mastery on the world. Our farming practices, as they do for the “new agrarians”, 23 try as much as possible to mimic nature, rather than modelling themselves on industry. Rather than being orientated to a future of material abundance through linear progress (technologically and economically), we rest in the natural cycles of birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. Nature and community received spiritually as God’s creation have the power to heal our souls (and o=en our bodies). While nongovernmental agencies and churches clamour that we should participate in the healing of creation, it seems to me that the primary role of parishes who announce and celebrate that the world is God’s creation is to allow God in creation to heal us. Nature in its rhythms, patterns, creativity, and unpredictability has a healing capacity which is experienced and expressed by such diverse groups as the English Romantic poets and Albertan back-country hikers. Community as the other aspect of God’s presence in creation is also healing, since it reconnects us to the human family. It is the real, complex, blemished humans that are God’s gi = and challenge to us. In both nature and community, we have to be healed, whether from presumption and from playing god with the world or from the apathy that sees no alternatives to the current desBody,’ etc., Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics, 1527”, Luther’s Works, vol. 37, ed. R.H. Fischer (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961 ), 88. See the many authors who contributed to The Essential Agrarian Reader as examples of the “new agrarians”. They are the ones who are committed to an “agrarian paradigm” for looking at the world and assessing the health of the current global economy. 23

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tructive patterns. We have to be healed to be earthlings, mere humans within the larger and complex web of life. Only as creation heals us24 can we truly participate in the “healing of creation”. We get exhausted physically and spiritually as we race to an endlessly regressing future of more stu : or as we isolate ourselves more and more as hyper-individualists in our pursuit of consumer happiness. Our strength gets renewed as we get reconnected to a community, within a speci ;c place, accepting our limits, including our limited span of life. We learn to pay attention to what the natural and social world is telling us as well as what it is demanding of us. Taking ; rst steps out of captivity. In our worship and study together as Christians, we shall discover anew how countercultural and liberating it is to view nature and our communities as God’s creation. As we see the world di:erently, we shall feel about what is going on di:erently and begin to act di:erently. Worship and study help our world-view or our paradigm to shi= from seeing the rural as an industrial production site for the wealth of corporations and a few farmers to recognizing it as a central part of God’s creation. Our treatment of the land shi=s from extraction of resources to nurture and respectful use. The evaluation of our economy shi =s from measuring it in terms of whether it “produces an ever larger pile of stu: to whether it builds or undermines community—for community, it turns out, is the key to physical survival in our environmental God’s other presence, according to Martin Luther, is in the Word made flesh. God’s presence as incarnate Word is there to re-create us, to re-connect us to earth, neighbour, self, and God. Thus our worship, preaching, teaching, confessions of sin all heal and re-connect us. See HansDittmar Muendel, “Indirect Communication and Christian Education” (unpublished dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA), chapter 3. 24

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predicament and also to human satisfaction”. 25 These changes in perspective have very practical consequences. As members of local communities we come together to re-learn what it means to be a community and not just isolated individuals. An example of this way of supporting the rebuilding of a vibrant local community was the “Relearning Community” public gatherings in Viking, referred to above. We looked at ecological, economic, political, cultural, and spiritual aspects of the community: at both present realities and emerging alternatives. The same group that were easily able to identify all the ways that they were dependent on global corporations were also able to list many concrete ways some of them had started to move out of this captivity to a global economic system that cared little for the income of farmers, the health of rural families and communities, or the integrity of the land. Some farmers stated that they reduced their dependency on large petrochemical companies by spreading their hog manure on their ; elds. Fertility increased and the debt load on the farm decreased. Others shared how they were adding value to their farm produce by making their own jams and sausages that were being sold at nearby farmers’ markets. Someone shared his experiences of reconnecting the young people of his (ecumenical) youth group to the land by having them plant root crops on his farm, which upon harvest they brought to the poorest district of Edmonton. Many rural youths—let alone urban ones—no longer grow up intimately involved in growing things, so this activity of planting a hope garden served many purposes: reconnecting to the land and rebuilding community at the same time. The many small steps taken by the participants of the “Relearning Community” events all gave new value to the local, and thus moved away from the global juggernaut. 25

McKibben, Deep Economy, 2.

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While the majority of farmers present were still using the traditional forms of capital and equipment intensive farming, some had made a more radical change by using a “holistic farm management” approach. In this approach, concern for clean water, healthy soil, wildlife habitat, and an overall quality of life is combined with the need for a farm to be ;nancially viable. An Edmonton Journal article summarizes this approach as Don Ruzicka shared it with us at our event: “We decided what we wanted in life and linked it to a pasture-management production model. By using that simple framework, we opened our mind to new thinking. We now make decisions based on what quality of life we want and how we want our farm to look,” says Ruzicka, who has planted 30,000 trees of 16 di:erent species over the years, with over 200 birdhouses dotted along the fence posts.26

Don was moved to take these steps not only by a massive debt on his farm and a lot of personal stress, but also by his view of his role as a steward of God’s creation. Since making his changes that have kept many neighbours shaking their heads, he has become a mentor to others who want to make their life and farming more sustainable. Changes out of dependency on corporations or a globalized market do not only occur on farms, but also in town. For example, Yvonne Brown of Busy B Bargains shared how the three thri= stores and recycling centres in To ;eld, Alberta involve a hundred volunteers and contribute to many projects and the overall vibrancy of the community. The Busy B stores with all (accessed January 22, 2010). 26

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their volunteers have created a way of connecting people, from seniors to the disabled, with one another and with meaningful activities. Someone else described the “buy locally ;rst” campaign in their community. While it is o=en not possible to buy only locally—since so much production of goods has been moved overseas that you o =en can’t ;nd a “made in Canada” or a “made locally” option—you can, however, support local businesses and restaurants before going further a ;eld. Buying as locally as possible also means becoming aware of what our bioregion produces or can produce to feed, clothe, and house us. Rather than merely bemoan their captivity and its negative impacts, these participants in the public gatherings gave signs of a hope that healthy rural communities can be rebuilt in smaller or larger ways. The conversations showed that there is not one new model, either for farming or for local businesses, that can be imposed everywhere. Rather, each person and each community has their own distinct challenges and possibilities. Attending to the particularities of a situation is crucial. At the same time the exchange of ideas allowed for the participants to open themselves to new thinking that someone else had already put into practice. The small steps are not insigni ;cant, even when members of our communities feel that they cannot stand in the face of the massive power of global economic systems and global corporations. It is important for those who feel they are so small that they cannot stand, as the people of Israel felt in the face of Babylon, to hear about others embarked on their return from exile in other parts of the province, Canada at large, or in other countries. For example, there are a variety of ways that people have returned from the captivity to the global market. Selling your own produce “at the farm gate” makes sure that 45

you get an adequate price to cover your costs and your work. 27 Selling at the farmers’ markets also gives the farmers control over their prices as well as creating connections between the consumers and the farmers. Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) is another model, in which the consumer shares in the risk of crop-production by buying shares at the beginning of the season. As the produce is ready for harvest, the shareholders traditionally get a box of produce a week, depending on what is in season. In many cases churches have become central pick-up points for the produce (ranging from vegetables and fruits to eggs and meats). In some CSAs the shareholders also pay in some “sweat equity”, taking turns either in the ; elds themselves, or in the cleaning and packaging of the produce. In all these forms, a new connection is created between farmers, community members (a community that may extend to neighbouring cities), and the land that produces the food. There are also more conventional ways of moving out of the power of the global food industry, as practised by some grocery stores. For example, Thri=y Foods grocery stores on Vancouver Island and in Vancouver have as an objective to get more than half of all their fresh produce from farms that are organic and use sustainable farming practices. They negotiate a fair price directly with the farmer or a group of farmers. They state their reasons for focusing more and more on organics and justify the higher prices as follows: By purchasing organic products, we are: Showing support for farmers who practice sustainable forms of farming; This selling “at the farm gate” is easier for those who work in market gardens or in smaller scale meat production. It is more challenging for those who have specialized, e.g., in organic grains. 27

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Helping to protect our air, soil, water and food supply from toxic chemicals; Conserving natural resources by recycling natural materials as compost to build healthy, fertile soil; Encouraging an abundance of species living in balanced, harmonious ecosystems. 28

The increase in urban farming and the concern for local food security, as well as the presence of more educational farms, all help to show that many people are taking the ; rst steps to return from their lives as captives to seemingly invincible forces that shape our lives. It also leads more and more urban consumers of food to appreciate the role of farmers and rural communities in providing an essential service both to the consumers themselves and to future generations through the conservation of the land. Apathy would keep us trapped in the political, economic, or cultural captivity we find ourselves in. Re-learning to see our social and natural realities as God’s creation has the potential of awakening us from apathy and hopelessness in view of the state of the world. It awakens an active hope. Active hope renews our strength; it reconnects us to people, to community, and to the land. Active hope is ; rst an inner change. It also opens us to new thinking and enables us to explore new ways of acting in our communities. Rediscovering our interest in the well-being of our land, our communities, and our families is itself a step out of captivity into the bound-freedom of living in this world as God’s creation. In the following words, Wendell Berry beautifully delineates the key motive for “re-learning community”—to reignite our interest and joy in living: (accessed January 25, 2010). 28

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Only the purpose of a coherent community, fully alive both in the world and in the minds of its members, can carry us beyond fragmentation, contradiction, and negativity, teaching us to preserve, not in opposition but in a?rmation and a:ection, all things needful to make us glad to live.29

29

The Agrarian Reader, 78.

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Biographical Notes Cynthia Moe-Lobeda is a faculty member of Seattle University’s Department of Theology and Religious Studies and graduate School of Theology and Ministry. She holds a doctoral degree in Christian Ethics from Union Theological Seminary, and master’s degrees in social work and in theological studies. Dr Moe-Lobeda is the author of Healing a Broken World: Globalization and God ( 2002 ), Public Church: For the Life of the World ( 2004 ), and numerous articles and chapters in books. She is a co-author of Saint Francis and the Foolishness of God (1993 ) and Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship ( 1996 ). She has recently served as theological consultant to the Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband, Ron, a pastor in the ELCA, and two wonderful sons, Leif and Gabriel. Dittmar Mündel has been a professor of religious studies at the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta (formerly Camrose Lutheran College) for the past 30 years. As Associate Director of the Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life, Dr Mündel has been involved in various events in rural communities to deal with “relearning” community. After spending part of a sabbatical in Ghana, West Africa, he organized the Ghana Rural Development Program for students. From 1995 to 2005 he directed the Prairies–Mexico Rural Development Exchange in which Canadian and Mexican students spent one term each in rural Alberta and rural Mexico. He received his MA in Theology at the University of Göttingen and his PhD at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and has served parishes in Edmonton, Vancouver, and Wetaskiwin.

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