i did a mediation for our advisory board today and in it i tried to ground some of our working convictions about faith and culture. here it is, for your enjoyment (and comment!)
Meditation for the Yale Center for Faith & Culture Board Meeting
April 14-15, 2005
Chris Scharen
Hananiah and Jeremiah are in Jerusalem around the year 594, three years after the Babylonian military occupation and first deportation of the King and leaders of Judah into exile.
Hananiah prophecies that within two years The Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel will defeat Nebuchadnessar, King of Babylon, and return the all the vessels for the Temple, and the King of Judah and his court whom Nebuchadnessar had taken into exile.
This is the voice of the prophet of denial. Hananiah denies the legacy of disobedience, of sin before God. He denies, therefore, that God’s hand is behind the exile, and denies that God’s blessing has left Jerusalem. He offers the people left in Jerusalem the false promise that they are not to blame for the destruction of their city and the exile of their leading citizens. To those in exile he offers the false promise that they must resist and stay apart from their captors, anticipating a speedy rescue and return to Jerusalem. Hananiah says, in effect, we weren’t so bad as to deserve such mistreatment from God; it must be that this exile is not God’s will and so we should look for God’s hand acting to bring us quickly out of this suffering.
Into this situation, Jeremiah speaks a word of honesty that is at once sobering and yet because of such honesty also full of authentic hope.
Read Jeremiah 29:1, 4-11. [These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 4Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. 8For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the LORD. 10 For thus says the LORD: Only when Babylon's seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.]
When this letter was first read to the gathered people in exile, they must have been left with mouths hanging wide open in disbelief. The exile is God’s will? God himself has sent us into exile? And we are to embrace life here, building homes and planting gardens, marrying and working? We are to seek the welfare—in Hebrew, shalom—of this city that does not know the Lord Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth? And most improbable of all, God’s restoration of Israel will come from such an embrace of life in exile rather than our strong rejection of this worldly city?
David Kelsey, one of Miroslav’s senior colleagues in systematic theology here at the divinity school, preached in chapel this past Monday. For his text he drew on 1 Peter. His theme was the Christian life as a life in exile. Just imagine, he suggested, the Christian life lived between the suffering of Good Friday and the resurrection and joy of Easter. There, in that long Saturday, we live out our Christian lives as aliens, as exiles in this world. We know Jesus, the firstborn from the dead on that first Easter morning. Yet we know a world still wracked by sin and suffering. We experience life as not as perpetual joy, but caught between the twin realities of suffering and joy, between sin and salvation.
What ought to be our position in the world, given the image of the Christian life as a place of exile, or as Jesus put it, the image of the Christian life as “in, but not of, the world?” One prominent answer is that we circle the wagons to preserve our holy calling in the midst of a hostile world. Our true home is in heaven, and our life here in the world is to be endured, resisted even, for the sake of preparing ourselves for eternity with God. This strain within the Christian tradition is a powerful one. One hears in this strain in the prophecy of Hananiah. One hears it in the words of prophets today. And if we believe the testimony of Jeremiah, it is an approach that misses our true calling as God’s people in the world.
Some years ago, Miroslav wrote a paper that is basically a long theological meditation on 1 Peter. He called that paper “Soft Difference,” by which he meant that we are not to become some sort of separatist sect to preserve our holiness as aliens. Rather, he wrote, the Christian community is “to life an alternative way of life in the present social setting, transforming it, as it can, from within.” At the Center, I think, we’ve chosen to face our life in exile, to build houses in the midst of the godless city and live in them, to plant gardens in exile and eat of them. We’ve chosen to take as our mission to seek the welfare of the city, to pray on its behalf, because we believe with Jeremiah that in its welfare we will find our own.
Our founding responded to a sense that rather than serving as a light on the highest hill in New Haven, the divinity school had managed to place a bushel basket over its light. It served to foster the wellbeing of the communities of exiles, that is, the churches. But it had not lived up to the challenge of building houses in the midst of the city, and seeking its own welfare in and through the welfare of the city. Our aim, promoting the practice of faith in all spheres of life, requires that we build dwellings outside the community of exiles, in the midst of the city, and that we seek our welfare there so that we make known God’s promise of shalom for all creation.
We are on the edge of one of the world’s most prominent research university and we are building houses in the midst of Yale so that in seeking its welfare, we make known God’s promise of shalom for all creation.
We are on the edge of one of the world’s most dynamic business hubs, New York City, and we are building houses in the midst of the city so that in seeking its welfare, our witness to God’s promise of shalom shines forth.
As we listen to God’s call to faithfulness, and as we faithfully embrace life in exile, we trust the promise that God has plans for us, plans for our welfare and not for harm, to give us a future with hope.
Let me now allow you to respond, in whatever ways you are moved, either to the Jeremiah reading, my meditation, or other thoughts that have been sparked as you listened.
Recent Comments