August 1, 2010
I was traveling in France when I got word of September 11. Stephen, my host that night and I watched the towers collapse on television. Carole, when I called home could see smoke rising from the Pentagon. I was slow to grasp what was happening. A weekend stood between that day and a visit with L'Arche friends in Wambrechies, northern France.
Carlos is a parish priest in nearby Belgium; his life and thought are among the finest I know. I wanted to hear his words that Sunday morning. He spoke from the story of the Prodigal Son, comparing the task of the prodigal's father with God's task. The father, he said, recognized his NEED to love equally his very different sons. Our Mother/Father has nearly seven billion very different daughters and sons to LOVE each one as much as the next. (and two-thirds of them are not even Christian.) Only God could take on a task like that.
Do I believe that God loves each human equally and that I should too? I often don't act that way, but YES, I believe I should aspire to that kind of love. I believe it because I have reflected a lot on ethical and theological measures that are used to judge human worth, and all seem inadequate. If God should ask me, I could only recommend deep understanding and compassion. You won't always see this reflected in my life, and sometimes it's hard to see in what I take to be God's participation in worldly life, but that's what I believe. Every person and every being in the earth community is equally loved by God.
What can I say about these 7 billion equally loved people? I've mentioned that about 1/3rd are Christian, they and all the others are immensely different, one from another, yet a modern genetic study shows that we are all descended from common great-grandparents who lived in Africa 60,000 and more years ago. We are all COUSINS. Another thing we know is that half the world's people are VERY poor, they live on less than the equivalent of $1,700 per year, many on MUCH less because $1,700 is right in the middle, the median.
During a brief trip to Central America in 1988, I met some very poor people. I came home “knowing” something that few people seem able to affirm. I came home “knowing” that simply by living my North American lifestyle, I exploit and oppress real people. I am not strong enough to to adopt a $1,700 life, so “knowing” makes me no less an oppressor. Perhaps you've heard me lament that in my personal and church experience, I've done little reaching out to the poorest of the earth. I feel I should confess it and work on it. When we become a confessing church, perhaps we can work on it together.
As some of you know I am uneasy with some parts of Christianity but I am a Christian. Baptized, Sunday-schooled, many years a member of the Eighth Day Community (though I am not right now) ordained by this community, less active now, but for many years a teacher. Among people known personally Gordon Cosby and Jean Vanier (founder of L'Arche) stand out as models; two men unquestionably shaped by Jesus. I too am somewhat shaped by my understanding of Jesus. Also perhaps, I am a Christian because Jesus taught that though I make mistakes, I can be forgiven.
Today, I will talk about three Christians whose writings help me reflect on how my religious heritage fits within the diversity of the world. These words of Walter Brueggemann express part of my concern.
“The great crisis among us is the crisis of the “common good,” the sense of community solidarity that binds all in a common destiny – - haves and have-nots, the rich and the poor … Mature people at their best are people who are committed to the common good that reaches beyond private interest, transcends sectarian commitments, and offers human solidarity.”
The world is fragile and under attack. Without it, there would be no place for us to live. Three who share this concern are Walter Brueggemann, whose words I just read, Ulrich Duchrow and Thomas Berry. They remind us in various ways that caring for the world and all it's beings must transcend other commitments. Likely I will talk most about Thomas Berry because I love so much his vision for our future.
A few weeks ago in her excellent sermon, Maria Barker introduced us to Walter Brueggemann and the concept of dominant and alternative consciousness. His classic book, Prophetic Imagination helped shape spiritual lives of generations of servant leaders here at the Church of the Saviour under Gordon's leadership. Recently at the Potter's House, I was struck by the title of Brueggemann's new book: Journey to the Common Good. In it, he continues to inspire with a framework of Old Testament themes that guide us toward a world shaped by justice and neighborliness and away from one motivated by power, wealth and manipulative wisdom. What's new to me and welcome is his alignment of the alternative consciousness with the “common good”; alignment with what is best for all the world and all it's beings.
Ulrich Duchrow is a religion professor at a German University who visits Gordon Cosby from time to time. I was pleased to catch some of his words at the Potters House a few weeks ago. Together with Franz Hinkelammert he published Property for People, not for Profit in 2004. These authors find us caught in a cycle where imperial powers and the global economy impose TERROR on all who stand in their way. Society is seen as the foundation of a reign of death while many of us play along by eating well and living well. The words are different and maybe the tone, but the image is rather like the dilemma described by Walter Brueggemann. Both books draw global capitalism supported by military states as devices that concentrate wealth in the hands of a few in ways that assure poverty and death for the common person. Those who are favored by this system (and I take many of us to be among them) are tempted to build bigger barns to store our surpluses. I've done it myself.
Some other points that stick with me;
Brueggeman cautions about making distinctions between levels of 'holiness', about finding some more worthy than most. Such distinctions can lead to hierarchies he says and away from the liberation intended by the God of Exodus.
While speculating about improvements that might be made, Brueggemann uses strong words to express his uncertainty about whether we North Americans are ready to give up military dominance in view of it's importance in protecting: protecting what? Protecting, in Brueggemann's words, the “sense of consumer entitlement that we and our children breathe daily.” (bis) I repeat these words because they seem to me to feed a rich reflection on today's Gospel passage. (Lk 12.13-21)
The Duchrow, Hinkelammert book describes well how generations of western philosophers following John Locke in the 17th Century have shaped human rights practices to actually deny freedom and ownership rights to groups and individuals who differ from the common beliefs and practices of their societies. I wonder if this habit doesn't help cause the high incarceration rates that justly alarm us here in the United States; high rates for people of color and immigrants.
The Duchrow Hinkelammert book also proposes and describes a modern Confessing Church that would proclaim and adopt practices that work against domination of the many by the few.
Thomas Berry
Now I will talk some about Thomas Berry and his beautiful vision for our future. Like other credible ecologists, he describes crises that are too difficult for me to think my way through to a solution. HE does it in an optimistic way that foresees an Ecozoic geological Era that will help us recover from damage we've done to the earth during the late years of the Cenozoic Era.
Thomas Berry (sometimes confused with Wendell Berry); Catholic priest, Eco-theologian, professor, historian, died after a long full life just about a year ago. He reminds us early in his writings that the Universe, the Sun, the earth, human beings and all else are not yet fully evolved, but rather still coming into existence across immense periods of time. We are each evolving over what I call a time-journey.
Sometimes Berry described himself as a geologian; one who studies the Universe and all of it's parts throughout the geological ages. Here's an example to illustrate what I call a time-journey: The earth split off from the Sun some 4 ½ billion years ago in the form of a mass of roiling, burning gases. It took most of those billions for the atoms in those gases to settle into becoming a suitable home for dinosaurs in the Mesozoic Era. Thanks to Walt Disney, we can visualize what the earth might have looked like then. Now, 65 million years after the dinosaurs disappeared, earth has become the wonderful and terrible place where we humans and millions of other species live. Scientists predict that the Sun will keep shining for another billion and a half years, so lots more surprises are in store.
Berry's earth is not just a ball of rock or chunk of molten iron that rotates around the Sun with the other planets. It's all of that plus the atmosphere that surrounds it and every living and non-living thing that is here. That of course includes us and other living species; WE ARE PART OF THE EARTH as are all living plants and the deposits they leave behind, such as oil and coal. For Berry the earth (and other natural parts of the Universe) are spiritual organisms with certain god-like (numinous) characteristics. Limited self-healing is one of those characteristics. In my religious tradition, this idea of earth-with-spirit takes some getting used to. Berry's evolutionary thinking helps bring me along.
So earth is the home of every human, more than a million other species and innumerable things such as mountains, rivers and seas. Berry notes an imbalance in the earth's governance: limited only by nature itself, HUMANS MAKE ALL THE RULES. We tear down mountains, dam rivers, pollute the atmosphere, rivers and seas. Often, we act without much consideration of harm done to other inhabitants and nature itself. We feel free to destroy dangerous and troublesome species and we modify genes. Many, maybe most scientists believe that animal species are being extinguished at faster rates than at any time in geological history. This threatens diversity which in turn weakens the integrity of the world community. Strength and self-healing through diversity are major themes in Berry's writings.
Perhaps Berry's greatest lament stems from dominance in western thinking that the world's resources are given by their creator for the beneficial use of us HUMANS. He examines development of this idea and how it has combined with science to create technologies in the 20th and 21st centuries that make it possible to destroy in years or decades, life systems that evolved naturally over millions and billions of years. (to destroy, e.g., by global warming, gene modification, over-fishing, ozone depletion, and always the threat of nuclear war or accident.)
I am not a geologian, but time passes and to some degree, I learn from it. So, I can look back on a personal time-journey of sorts. If I look especially at the part that started when I moved to this area in 1958, and more especially at the years of my association with this church, I am reminded that cultural and racial diversity enrich my life in ways that hardly seemed possible when I was a college boy. It has not been a sudden realization, but rather one that grows over time – - and there is still room for growth. This experience helps me appreciate Berry's emphasis on strength through diversity. Racial diversity, cultural diversity, intellect diversity, religious diversity, gender diversity and more. Whenever any of these categories make me uncomfortable, I tend to resist, but I've come to believe that the whole of any body is stronger when all of it's parts are present and welcome.
The new earth community that Thomas Berry foresees to restore the endangered earth in the coming Ecozoic Era will welcome all of it's human and non-human parts, each will have roles to play, each will have rights, each will be a subject, not an object, and each will support all the other parts and nature itself. It will be a single yet differentiated community.
That's not the world we know today, some prodigious energy will be needed to animate these changes. Berry believes that the energy source has been, is and WILL BE the same mysterious energy – - energy that no scientist can explain - - the one that thrust the emerging universe into the void some 14 billion years ago, perhaps accompanied by a big bang.
Our Great Work, the one that lies before us is to create that kind of new earth community; I hope you will want to participate There is lots of guidance available among people in this community and in the Potters house bookstore.
Amen
Tom Brown
Books:
The Great Work, Thomas Berry, 1999
The Sacred Universe, Thomas Berry, 2009
Evening Thoughts, Thomas Berry, 2006
Journey to the Common Good, Walter Brueggemann 2010
Property for People not for Profit, Ulrich Duchrow and Franz J. Hinkelammert, 2004
The Journey of Man, Spencer Wells, 2002