MLK Day

I'm not sure if anyone's noticed but I've been gone for awhile. I've mostly been recovering from hepatitis but also catching up at school, starting a new semester, working on my doctoral studies, playing my mandolin and, very importantly, spending time with my family.

I'm getting ready for another doctoral seminar at Fuller Theological Seminary beginning next week (watch for posts from Fuller) so I've been reading in preparation. A recent text I worked through is by one of the best theologians of our day, John Howard Yoder. In his book, For the Nations: essays evangelical and public, Yoder (not "Yoda" as my nine-year old assumed!) picks up his familiar themes of peace, reconciliation, servanthood and justice, but applies them directly to the church as it lives in tension with its American culture. He suggests that the church's role as an alternate community, faithfully living out a biblical witness as first presented in the Hebrews and then lived out and fulfilled in the person of Christ, has enormous implications for our contemporary situation. All of his essays are twenty to thirty years old but find new life in the twenty-first century.

One of the essays is relevant for this day, the day we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. In "The Power Equation, the Place of Jesus, and the Politics of King" Yoder points out King's ability to have the same kind of faith that the Hebrews would have understood. In the book of Hebrews we read that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (11:1). It is this faith that led both our ancestors of the Old Testament and King to believe that suffering will bring about good, though that good might not be immediately evident. One of the critiques of the American Dream is that in its current manifestation it negates suffering and replaces it with a type of utilitarian power that is righteously wielded by those who somehow know right from wrong. This is not what King had in mind.

King understood that the suffering at hand was not entered into because it would foster the outcome he hoped for in his lifetime, but because it was the right thing to do. Pondering whether suffering is worthwhile even when the sufferer sees no signs of success, Yoder writes:

What is the validity of our cause when we are not winning? Does it change the affirmation of the human dignity of the adversary when (in the foreseeable future) the adversary will not be won over by our suffering love but keeps on unrepentantly oppressing? Does it reverse the pragmatic ethical commitment of the activist to truth telling, to breaking the law only in very exceptional circumstances, and to rigorous nonviolence, when those tactics achieve less?

Yoder notes that King often referred to the need for love, nonviolent resistance and suffering even when no particular fruit was immediately evident (which is why he continued to opt for "the power of suffering" instead of Malcolm X's "black power"). King:

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. (Nobel Peace Prize acceptance, December 1964)

The cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tension-packed content and carry it until that very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering. (National Conference on Religion and Race in Chicago, January 1963)

Yoder continues commenting on this view of faith and suffering:

If the Lamb is worthy to receive power, then the only rational worldview, in a cosmos where we have no control, will be apocalyptic. ...The Lord's coming "to judge," i.e., to set things right, will be soon, but not right now. It does not bypass our ongoing struggle; yet the criterion guiding us in the struggle is not whether we win, not whether we can implement lesser-evil calculations to get there, but whether we keep the faith.

So, I would ask the church, "What does it mean to be a faithful people, or to keep the faith?" "Why do we oppose suffering, or at least put up with it only when we see the product of our suffering at hand?"  "When will we understand that repaying good for evil is not simply proverbial, but the way the Creator has designed the universe to work?" "When will the church become the presence and foretaste of God's kingdom with regard to suffering?" Or finally, "In an age of declining membership, might the church in America grow once again not through any growth strategy, but through suffering and sacrifice as all churches have under such circumstances?"

How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.
How Long? Not long, because the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. (King in Montgomery, March 1965)

Comments

[Ella]

Tim,

I'm so sorry you have not been well. Happy New Year to you. I had 11 deaths this year of friends and family. Ending the year with my Golden dying right after Thanksgiving.

I hope you recover soon. How awful to get that. I hope they found the cause. That happened here once when a lot of people feel ill after getting it at a local food chain. Yikes.

I'm recovering from food poisoning that combined with stress set some things off with me.

It's difficult to write when you don't feel well. I wish you and your family the best this year. I hope it is a better year for many. I haven't been popping into many blog's due to being so busy and under the weather.

Blessings to you,

Ella