Prophetic Elements In Social Change

March 23, 1986
Lakeland

On this day Christians all over the world observe Palm Sunday, the day on the Christian calendar when throngs greeted Jesus, waving palms and shouting hosannas. To most of those who sing hosannas today, Jesus is the Christ who, after his triumphal entry, will be tried [and] crucified, and then he will rise from the dead, completing the Christian plan of salvation for a sinful humanity which cannot save itself.

This story of supernatural salvation is not part of my beliefs. To me, Jesus is in the line of the great Hebrew prophets who spoke fearlessly about the human condition – what is was and what it could be.

My purpose today is to make the distinction between two kind of prophets; to emphasize the ethical prophet in one compelling example, Amos; and to remind ourselves that prophetic elements have been agents of sweeping social change. Or, to put it more plainly, “a prime factor in human progress is rebellion.”

One variety of prophet is one who predicts the future. There are many who believe ... that the Bible foretells the future, particularly using the strange books of Daniel and Revelation. In all peoples, curiosity about an unknown future has brought to prominence those who claim to know the mysteries of the future: seers, gazers into crystal balls, palm, tea, and card readers, and shamans innumerable. In all times, places, and among all peoples these seers are professed to unveil the mysteries of the future. Such predictors are not my subject today, because most predictors have been wrong in their specifics, and because to be primarily concerned with the future can foster a neglect of the present.

Rather, my emphasis is on the ethical prophet – the forth-teller, not the fore-teller. The ethical prophet who speaks to the “now,” not [one who] guesses about the future. They did not seek to unveil the future, but to fearlessly point out what was wrong in the present. Their enduring value resides in their example. One modern historian referred to the Woody Allen quip about whether you can see the human soul under a microscope: “Maybe, but you’d definitely need one of those good ones with two eyepieces.” The ethical prophets had those two eyepieces as they looked critically at the behavior and attitude of the people of their times.

The power of ethical prophecy is best shown by Amos. In the time of King Jeroboam of Israel, 755/743 BCE, there was prosperity in the land. But it was a prosperity where a few were very rich, but most people were poor and deprived.

Coming down from the hills, Amos, a shepherd, convinced that Yahveh had inspired him to speak to the people, not about a future Utopia where all things would be nice, but about a present made ugly by greed, selfishness, cruelty, and empty ritual. Amos was both poet and critic, gifted with astonishing poetic art for a shepherd-peasant. He was dominated by a vision of justice and righteousness. He not only believed thoroughly in the Covenant of Yahveh with his people, he was also completely convinced that the Covenant was two-way, and that human well-being was the responsibility of humankind.

Israel, the Northern Kingdom of the Ten Tribes, had broken away from Judah following the reign of Solomon (937 BCE). Israel had advantages of resource and space. As Rolland Wolfe (MEET AMOS AND HOSEA, p. xxx) observed, “Israel was no exception to the rule that prosperity is in reality the greatest hardship a nation is called upon to endure. The pomp of Israel and the accompanying luxurious living resulted in spiritual atrophy and moral degeneracy.”

Amos arrived in Samaria and was shocked at what he found in the capital city of Israel. His criticisms were not inoffensive generalities. He was scathingly specific.

He was not gentle with rich women who extravagantly displayed their wealth on festive occasions.

“Listen to these words,
You cows of Bashan,
Who are on Mt. Samaria
Who oppress the poor
Who crush the needy
Who say to your husbands,
Serve and let us drink.”

Well such criticism didn’t go over very well – any more than it would today, at say a gala ball in Palm Beach or Monte Carlo.

I have already read how Amos attacked empty ritualism thereby offending the priestly class.

He castigated the judges and the judicial system:

“They hate him who reproves in the gate,
And abhor those who speak truthfully. ...
Harassers of the righteous, takers of bribes
They even turn aside the needy in the gate.”

He blistered the merchants and business-men:

“Making the measure scant and the price high.
Trading dishonestly with deceitful scales
Begging out the poor for silver
And the needy for a pair of shoes.”

We do not know what happened to Amos. His ethical preaching was silenced – whether because of imprisonment, exile, or execution, we do not know. But his ethical preaching emphasized the prophetic elements in social change. Many of his attitudes have been reflected in some of the radical social changes that have happened in our own nation.

Lincoln Steffens, who exposed much corruption and injustice in his book SHAME OF THE CITIES, and various other courageous writings, remarked in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY, “I was not the original muckracker; the Hebrew prophets were ahead of me.”

This is not to say that the courageous leaders of social change in modern times were all biblically inspired. That would be a study in itself. But prophetic elements included aggressive criticism of specific conditions, methods which were seldom polite, a recognition that in the words of an old proverb, “those who preach patience never knew pain”, and a realization that to quote C. P. Snow, far more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than in the name of rebellion.” (Muller, p. 118)

Consider the women’s suffrage movement. Most of us are familiar, at least slightly, with such heroines of women’s struggle to secure the vote as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others. What we tend to forget is how obnoxious they were considered in their own time. The 19th Amendment in 1920 took decades to achieve. Half of the 19th century and two decades of the 20th were long years of protest, recruitment to the cause, dealing with establishment opposition, ridicule, slander, and apathy. As in these long years of struggle, women could not vote, electoral politics were ineffective, and had to be opposed by dramatic protests which sometimes meant jail and usually meant scorn.

Now, 66 years after, the 19th Amendment, for which courageous women sacrificed so much pursuing the dream of suffrage, is part of the status quo. That women have the right to vote seems unremarkable now.

Consider what we call the labor movement. The struggles of working men and women to organize is a history of courage, sacrifice, imprisonment, and for some, death. Nowadays, we think of organized labor as one of the institutions in our society. Like most enormous institutions, there is some decay at the top. The top labor officers are among the privileged. But it was not always so.

Labor organized because of specific criticisms of existing conditions. The ILGU, one of the stronger and more admirable unions, received much of its impetus when the Triangle Shirt Waist building in New York City burned and hundreds of young women lost their lives because of a lack of safety conditions and exits.

In many cases, strikes and other direct actions were caused in part because so many of the ethnic minorities could not vote. Consequently, any avenue of change through electoral politics was little help. They sensed, and many people still believed, that electoral policies of either of the two major parties is for the most part a bi-ennial or quadrennial legitimation of established structures of power and inequality.

The civil rights movement is within our memory. Again, there were the prophetic elements of specific criticism, public protest, sacrifice, death, jailings, beatings. Rosa Parks was specific when she refused to sit at the back of the bus. Those who integrated lunch counters were specific in their criticism of the existing establishment and held their place, notwithstanding verbal abuse and physical violence. Now, integrated lunch counters, buses, station waiting rooms and lavatories, are part of the status quo and few think of the struggles which achieved them.

Every one of these and other social changes that have happened have been characterized by ... prophetic elements – specific criticism and protest movements which were not polite. To steal a phrase from joggers and other athletes, “no pain, no gain.”

But one prophetic element that Amos recognized is still to be achieved. That element is a prevailing sense of the public good, a sense of civic virtue which encompasses “liberty and justice for all” - words we say so glibly in the Pledge of Allegiance. But, as we have discussed in our Wednesday night discussion, for considerably more than 100 years our nation’s politics have been negotiations between groups. An overall prevailing consensus has been lacking.

When people gathered for a national celebration in Israel in those ancient times, Amos addressed the people. First, he told them that because Damascus had been evil in war, Yahveh would destroy them. The listeners liked that – Damascus was a foreign nation.

Then Amos said that because of the cruelties of the Ammonites, they too would be crushed. Moab was singled out for its injustice. This pleased the crowd too; good show when one’s enemies get blasted.

Then Amos, in what was a masterpiece of oratorical psychology, said that Yahveh would punish Israel too for swindling the poor, for denying them justice, and [for] immorality. That, the crowd did not like. He had stopped preaching and started meddling.

Now while some of us are not convinced that God/Yahveh will punish us for our vices, injustice, and lack of a national and universal vision, events may do the job for Yahveh. We are not a nation exempt from self-interest, hunger for power, or fear of losing privilege.

The achievement of a prevailing vision or goal of the public good seems the most difficult, but also the most necessary goal for a nation and world.

But as R. B. Y. Scott, another scholar of the biblical prophets wrote, “The prophets do not and cannot prescribe political, economic, and cultural forms and institutions; they can and do insist, that whatever may be the apparent necessities of social order, its methods and principles are to be judged by their human consequences. It is the spiritual fruit of a social order which determines whether or not it will survive in a world where Yahveh’s ... righteousness is matched by his power. The prophets make plain to us that the onus rests on the defendants of any established social order, as it rests equally on those who champion an alternative structure, to show what they defend or propose is a society which is congenial to ethical religion and productive of human values and is the concrete expression of real community among them.”

Great Realities That Go Astray – Atonement

Palm Sunday (April 12), 1981
Port Charlotte

re-written from:
April 11, 1954
Bridgeport

The hosannas sounded then. They sound today. Amid the long days of Lenten solemnity, Palm Sunday erupts in a moment of triumph.

In the Christian scheme of salvation, the Palm Sunday pageant begins the week of climax with a joyous overture to a drama of courage, fellowship, betrayal, rejection, and defeat. The curtain falls – but the curtain rises on Easter Sunday, with the believers ecstatic with the assurance that their Lord has risen and that life is life everlasting.

The Christian worship of centuries has made the Palm Sunday procession a central part of the way God fulfills a divine plan. The predictions of the children of Israel, made hundreds of years before, are believed to have been fulfilled. This is not an ordinary victory pageant or a hero’s parade – this is God, who has foreordained these moments from the beginning of the world. In the atoning death on the cross, God, and in his incarnation as the Christ, the second person of the Trinity, saves all humankind from the sin of [the] Fall. So goes the plan of Christian theology.

As we see the religious advertising, look to the TV and radio evangelists, feel the emotion that seems to be at the core of the vast majority of Christian groups, we become aware that this doctrine of human salvation through Christ’s atonement is the central certainty of the Christian plan of salvation. “And I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men unto me.” Thus says the gospel writer speaking for Jesus.

Most Christians respond with a surge of enthusiasm as well as increased sense of their own guilt when they are reminded in forceful and picturesque terms that in Christ Jesus, very God of very God, is the only salvation for sinful men and women (that is, for those who believe in him).

Even though recognizing that this doctrine of the suffering servant who redeems every believer pulls at the heartstrings, nevertheless the scheme of the only human salvation through the atoning death of Jesus Christ is a reality that has gone astray. The scheme seems simple on the surface: [mankind] is depraved, the inheritors of the original sin of Adam. Because of this depravity, men and women are incapable of saving themselves, so God becomes man and saves his believers.

There is, first of all, the confusion that exists in the minds of the believing Christians as to just what this doctrine means. Few will actually discuss the hows and whys of this doctrine, central to orthodox Christianity. The truth is, there is no doctrine about which those who believed it differ more than the explanation of the atonement of Jesus.

In the early centuries of the Christian church, the church fathers generally held that by Adam’s sin, and by our own, all humankind was lost to the Devil. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, ransomed men and women from the Devil through the atoning death on the cross. But even though ransomed to the Devil for all humankind, the Devil could not hold him because God was sinless. The Devil was tricked and Jesus arose from the dead.

But this doctrine began to bother some thinking persons. It was a nagging theological concept to believe that there was a being, the Devil, almost as powerful, if not as powerful, as God himself. Such a conclusion amounted to believing that there was more than one God. It was just as disturbing to think that God, in cheating the Devil of his ransom, was guilty of the type of sharp practice for which a merchant would be [written up] by the Better Business Bureau.

Then along in the 11th century, Anselm, a noted scholar, formulated a new view which attempted to get around these difficulties. Anselm said that man owed a perfect obedience to God. But because the human was by nature sinful, because he was of Adam’s seed, he/she was incapable of perfect obedience. Therefore, men and women could not pay their just debt of perfect obedience to God. So God, in his yearning and love for the human family, became man and ... Jesus was able by his death on the cross to pay the debt of perfect obedience. “Not my will, but thine be done.... Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

This was accepted by many. It is still the basic atonement theory for some schools of thought. But again, when we look at this calmly, there are many objections. To each proposition, the question “why?” can be asked without a satisfactory answer. If God were all-powerful, every proposition of Anselm’s scheme seems a useless sort of thing, other than God was playing an amusing game with himself.

Other theories have made appearance. You would not want me to take time to speak of them at length. There was the so-called criminal law theory that god by his nature was forced to punish men and women for depravity and sinfulness. But God in Christ became a willing substitute and accepted the punishment which was deserved. Therefore there was no further claim on any sinner who became a believer.

But all of these and other various schemes of supernatural atonement have at least three serious flaws. First of all, they attribute to God a poorer character than we look for in a good person. A human being of honor does not kill the innocent so that the guilty may escape their just punishment. Neither does a just person exact punishment against the son for moral wrong committed by the parent. Are any of these complex, not to say, primitive ideas about the atoning death of Jesus any real credit to a god many think of as love? Sir Oliver Lodge, speaking years ago of an old theory of atonement, said, “none but a cur will ask for the punishment due him to fall on someone else, nor rejoice if told it had already so ‘fallen.’” (HIBBERT JOURNAL, Jan. 1914) For God to decree that Jesus must bear the punishment for my sins or your is just morally irresponsible.

The second flaw in these supernatural theories of the atoning death of Jesus is that the nature and character of [mankind] is misrepresented. Our generation needs no particular reminders that men and women are not perfect. They are guilty of enormous errors and evils. Certain gross burdens that humanity bears like war, treachery, and intolerance seem to be handed generation to generation. Yet to infer from such evidence that men and women are depraved by nature and incapable of achieving salvation is to conclude more than facts warrant. Children are born without moral stain. They are born with the urge to struggle for food and comfort; they are born with the urge to be loved and to love; they are born with physical, genetic inheritance that can be molded or led in many ways. But babies are not squirming bundles of original sin.

If the human family’s long history of misdeeds and the long list of persons who have bent toward evil is evidence for human depravity, what about the much longer list of good people – the “millions who humble and nameless the straight hard pathway trod?” There are more good people than bad people in every generation. Were that not so, human society could not have continued. So if it may be submitted that humanity’s many misdeeds are evidence for depravity, may it not also be submitted that the greater score of goodness is evidence for the essential worth and potentiality of the human personality?

The third mistake in all these miraculous atonement ideas is that they make all meaning to Jesus’ life conditional on three ideas: belief in his alleged miraculous birth, his crucifixion, and his alleged physical resurrection. It makes salvation dependent on belief in these three events. Only one of these events, the crucifixion, has probable historical truth. This third mistake is perhaps the most serious problem, because it separated Jesus’ death from his life. Jesus’ death is important to us only because of the kind of life he lived. It is doubtful Jesus ever said much about death. He said a great deal about life. “Which one of these sons did the will of his father? Go then and do likewise.” He healed the sick, he did not say you will be healed because of my atoning death which is to come. Is it not our verified experience in all the tide of events that make up our lives that it is not alone what we believe, but what we do, that changes things[?]

We know that people who accept the miraculous supernatural salvation schemes are not necessarily better for it. Many times persons will keep their religion in a tight compartment and never permit any religious principles to leak out and change the course of their conduct for the better. The so-called believer may be no more trustworthy in the everyday affairs of life than the person who makes no loud claims for his “saved” condition.

But even though these difficulties exist with the various atonement issues, most of us respond with the emotional feeling of considerable depth to this holy week. We feel the impact of the triumphal march into Jerusalem, we long to participate in the feeling of splendid fellowship that marked the last supper, the gloom and defeat of the cross of execution touch our hearts with sorrow, and the new life, the triumph of Easter cause Christians to affirm, “alleluia.”

We thrill at the events in Passion Week even though we are aware of the origin of the ceremonies. Our historic Christian worship is a blend of the Jewish worship and custom and the worship practices and customs of the Grecian-Roman-Asian world. The blending took many centuries. The Yom Kippur [CJW note: at a different time of y] was and is a Day of Atonement for the Jewish people. The Greco-Roman world worshiped many dying-rising savior gods. They observed the vegetable and plant life of the world of dying in the [season of] Fall. They were dependent upon this vegetation. When spring came and new shoots came through the ground, the people rejoiced. The god of growing things was born again. The[y had] vegetation gods, and they had various names for various times and lands: Osiris, Attis, Adonis, is to name but a few. The early Christian missionaries blended the Jewish and Pagan festivals into the new Christian religion. It was the melting pot brewing, just as the melting pot in America has blended many peoples and their customs.

But back of the social origins of the spring festivals of dying atonement and living resurrection, there is a reality. When we lose touch with this reality we may lose touch with what is both wonder-full and poignant in the affairs of human beings.

This is the reality – that whenever persons are made redeemed [CJW note: made better], whenever good is made to flower from evil, whenever persons are made whole and more honorable, there is always suffering and sacrifice by those who are the keepers of the dream. Always when there are human beings who have sought to free persons from the chains of ignorance, or the slavery of tyranny, or the dungeon of low ideals, or the post-house of selfishness – these saviors of humankind have always generated conflict, hatred, and bloodshed. The persons who seeks to bring light of knowledge and to extend the hand of justice – it is he or she who is crowned with thorns and lynched on the Calvarys of the world.

John Murray Atwood always emphasized that “anyone who undertakes to teach or advocate new truth, running counter to traditional doctrine, always encounters opposition. If he/she persists and is faithful, opposition becomes bitter; first there are attempted bribes, then threats, and if he/she still persists the outcome may be death.”

It has always been so. We may predict with some assurance that it will always be so. Four hundred and fifty years before Christ there lived in Athens a poor, homely, fat man. He was a teacher and he tried to impart to his students the inquiring mind. He taught them to ask questions. He asked questions. He questioned the tyrants of his day who demanded complete and unquestioning loyalty. And so he was silenced: he was ordered to die in the fashion of his time. So Socrates died with creeping paralysis caused by the cup of hemlock. Yet his sacrifice, his atonement, if you please, is one of the reasons why our civilization has had the great advantage of the gains that were achieved by minds that were free.

Look at the saviors of humankind – the have suffered for you and for me. They have atoned for us. When the Swiss confederation was seeking its political independence, in a day when political independence was unknown, they had much to overcome. The armies of the Holy Roman Empire were well-armed and well-trained. The Swiss had few arms and smaller armies. In one battle the Swiss were armed only with axes and they marched toward enemies who came towards them armed with long lances. It would seem that the long lances would cause death and defeat before the brave Swiss could get close enough to struggle hand to hand. Then one of the Swiss patriots suddenly dashed forward and gathered into his one body a number of the lances. The line was breached, the Swiss were able to close in, and win this battle for their freedom. Arnold von Winkelried was a savior for his nation. In his death, his countrymen were freed. He atoned.

So with Jesus. He came into the city whose welcoming cheers were to turn to shouts of “crucify him.” He was the same man, whether applauded or stoned. He was faithful to the vision he saw and tried to make it real by his personal example and his teachings. Throughout the bitterness of the mockery that was called a trial, then along the painful way to the cross, he did not forget his family, his friends, his ideals, or his God. His was the nobility of all the faithful who perform sacrifice that humanity may be healthier, better, and live in a more just society. This was sacrifice of a man who remained true to the best. By his sacrifice, he like another later savior, Lincoln, “belongs to the ages.”

How much more moving is this real atonement of human beings to whom life is sweet. There is no sorrow or tragedy if an all-powerful God merely comes to Earth and Judas, Peter, and Pilate are but puppets being yanked hither and yon playing their pre-determined roles. The old idea just does not identify God closely enough with the moral struggle.

The reality for us is in seeing that the atonement, whether by Jesus or any of the other great friends of mankind, is actually a disclosure of unconditional caring working in and through human efforts.

The reality of the atonement is that suffering has moral power, when a great cause demands suffering.

[CJW note: King: “unmerited suffering is redemptive.”]

We live in an age which is making what may be a great and tragic mistake. So many slide into the rut of thinking that religion is for the purpose of curing little pains, of making people feel self-satisfied and comfortable. The reality of the atonement is that the cross is not merely an exciting word for people who let religion get to their emotions. [CJW note: pre-empted meaning] The cross is the symbol of the inescapable way that the world is made better by the willing devotion, faithfulness, trust, and sacrifice of humankind’s known and nameless saviors. The reality for them is that they become aware of what atonement really is – at-one-ment with the moral fiber of the universe, at-one-ment with the God they worship, or at-one-ment with the difficult but necessary goals of justice, mercy, and love.