Individual in Community, Human & Divine Based on: 2 Peter 1: 16-21 March 2, 2014 Rev. Ivan Marable I have been cautioned over the years and intentionally trained not to assume anything. That was especially true at the graduate level of my theological and pastoral training. But some of you may be aware that once we step away from our counseling mentors or education instructors we sometimes neglect or forget our training. Therefore I believe it is safe to assume many of you in our congregation are well educated perhaps lettered PhD s; MDiv s; EDD s; RN s; CSW s; MA s; DMin s; and a host of other intellectual properties. You probably offer great structure and stability in your respective venues, whether, it be in the home, office, or community. I believe it is safe for me to assume those things about you the congregation. But have you ever known failure? Have you ever missed a deadline? Have you ever had a serious situation in the home perhaps a domestic storm or two? Have you ever had a crisis in community? Perhaps you ve experienced some of the above I m not assuming now I m just saying perhaps. And if you have experienced some of the above failures, challenges, have you disclosed them, confessed them, brought them to the table of grace in the context of community and turned those burdens over to our Lord? I have. I m an individual in community. Sharing my accomplishments, burdens, with community and our Lord reveals my human vulnerabilities. The spiritual act of disclosure allows my divine nature to trust God s protection at the table of grace. During my first year at CRCDS I all but failed Christian Ethics of the Black Church. My final grade was a D. Failing Christian Ethics of the Black Church helps one assume that as a Black man I m not familiar with the morals and ethics of my own culture or religious institutions. That was hardly the issue. I did however commit a series of mistakes that led to failure and a designation of academic probation. My first mistake was taking an ethics course during my first year of graduate school, my second mistake was not spending enough time in my advisors office making sure my interest and the schools interest were being handled properly. My third mistake was the more critical. I entered the ethics class strong full of confidence chest stuckout exposing my visionary, idealistic, prophetic truth-telling divine side. That individual human side of Page1 1
me had already sized the class-up and decided I would make my first successful contribution to the school and personal accomplishment right there on Black Christian ethics church soil. Well I failed so miserably the ethics professor hinted that he might launch an investigation to discover how I was able to gain entry as an MDiv candidate! The problem was I did not allow room for human discernment or critical thinking at the graduate level. I needed to understand the context of the Black Church when Her ethics and mores collided with dominate culture in the context of religious conformity and political correctness; there was no room for spiritual discernment or pastoral care in an graduate level ethics class. Well I am no longer in graduate school I successfully earned my MDiv in May of 2004 with a 3.82 GPA. I took several more ethics classes and did well. Our text for today offers some interesting challenges for American Baptist spiritual and interpretive thought. On the one hand, the writer of 2 Peter 1: 16-21 allows the reader an opportunity to discern the spiritual evidence that Social Gospel theologian, Walter Rauschenbusch was so high on and wrote several papers and articles on personal experience. I am persuaded that the writer s argument that St. Peter testimony was that of eye witness evidence is valid. I believe our text as written in the NRSV may spark some dialogue in terms of who wrote the Epistle, St. Peter, or one of his disciples. I believe the text speaks of prophetic interpretation from a qualifying context of men and women on equal ground. I believe the text offers discernment of past failures and corrections with streams of resurrection theology. Finally, I believe the text speaks to the individual in community and offers reflections on human and divine interpretation. We have a lot to cover and little time to arrive at a reasonable conclusion. Therefore I have summoned the literary works of some friends for assistance. Biblical scholar and commentator, Richard J. Bauckham, scholar and professor of church history, Christopher H. Evans; theologian and former president of CRCDS, G. Thomas Halbrooks, and Catholic theologian, Leonardo Boff. Biblical scholar, Bauckham argued that if St. Peter wrote his 2 Peter Epistle he would have to have done so shortly before his martyrdom in Rome in 64/65 C. E. Most scholars, however, now believe it was written after St. Peter s death, with the writer following a literary convention of the time. I disagree with most scholars on this subject. I believe St. Peter wrote his 2 Epistle for two reasons (1) the first reason is that evidence of St. Peter s mountain-top experience is captured by writers of the three major gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke. (2) The second reason is the context of prophetic interpretation St. Peter gives creditability to in our text today. Page2 2
He argues that human will cannot rightly interpret prophetic scripture there must be a divine experience or experiences involved in concert with the Holy Spirit. What that suggests to me is that we might experience divine moments in our lives but may only recognize or accept the moment by trusting God and the power God s spirit in our life. I m not convinced that a writer following the literary convention of the time had been empowered to capture St. Peter s mountain-top experience in such precise detail. Moreover, St. Peter new a thing or two about failure and redemption. I believe his instruction to the emerging church and reader in verses 19-21 departs from his personal experiences. Informing individuals or an audience they would do well to be attentive to this as a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. For me a fiery arrow like that may only be lit and launched by personal experience, Allow me to share a brief illustration to add structure to my argument. In Dennis M. Doyle s book, Communion Ecclesiology Catholic theologian, Leonardo Boff is criticized for his scholarship and treatment of the Church over and against his treatment of Mary the mother of Jesus, and the Trinity. Boff s critics argue that strikingly little of the language of love, spirituality, intimacy, or relationality makes it into Boff s works on ecclesiology (or the church) when compared with his works on Mary and the Trinity. In Boff s treatment of the Church he works hard to get past the church s obsession about who makes decisions and how the structure of the church should be conceived. Boff positions the church as a living icon of social liberation and justice but struggles to move beyond the juridical abuses and power mines that explode in the church creating crisis for individual and community. The works on Mary and the Trinity, in contrast, manifest the same strong focus on social liberation & justice, but captures more of the divinity of theological and devotional liberation by tapping more deeply into the depths of the Christian faith. Boff argues that Mary is the Mother of the Church and the Church is that portion of humanity that has explicitly accepted the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. In theological terms what this boils down too was that moment when the angel appeared to Mary and offered her the opportunity to conceive the Son of God through the Holy Spirit. Whether or not you believe that is not important the lesson here is that Mary was known to come in contact with a divine moment, was open to the Holy Spirit, and allowed the spirit to guide her faith and trust in God. In that moment and the journey that preceded Mary may be considered both human and divine. From a human perspective I believe her ability to love, cling to hope, & trust her faith in God, illuminated her humanity in a dark place she was engaged to be married and now with child that wasn t Joseph s, an illegitimate child. Page3 3
She was instructed to leave her community and stay with her cousin probably to minimize potential scandal. On the divine side Mary trusted God and should be known not only as the mother of Jesus, but given consideration as the spiritual host of the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Through divine intervention and spiritual discernment she tossed religious conformity and political correctness to the wind and accepted the consequences of her faith with joyous heart-felt testimony. I believe that was what St. Peter meant in his instruction to the reader that our spiritual light be illuminated as we await the morning star to rise in our heart. There s a saying in the Black Church weeping may endure for a night, but joy com-ith in the morning. Boff understood that level of spiritual endurance was evident in the faith walk of Mary but could not assign or credit that level of spiritual fruit to the Church. I am convinced that the Church of Christ with all Her extended branches throughout the world has experienced a multitude of divine moments and perhaps has been illuminated and liberated on more than a few occasions. Yet St. Peter writing in the First Century and Boff in the Twenty-First Century offers the argument that the Church as individual in the world in general and individuals in the churches in particular should take notice of the interpretation of scripture from a human and divine context considering the example of Mary. I believe there is a two-edge dimension that exists within the context of the individual: I m applying this argument to the individual in community and the Church as individual in the world. The first edge of the individual dimension is to nurture our relationship in Christ embracing our humanity, growing in hope, love, and faith training ourselves to embrace and commit to the fruits of the spirit, patience, love, self-control, joy, kindness, gentleness, generosity, etc. In that way we move closer to our divine-side through our humanity this is not an easy exercise it is by no means a walk in the park. Finally, in the second edge of dimension our spiritual light may shine in the darkest of places there may be divine opportunities for mission-work, social justice, prophetic risk taking, or stepping away from conforming properties that within our hearts we know to be wrong and unhealthy for individual and community. In this context we have something to measure religious conformity and political correctness against other than our humanity our divinity has been unlocked. G. Thomas Halbrooks writing the Preface of Christopher Evans Book, The Social Gospel Today argued that although his experience of reading A Theology for the Social Gospel took place almost fifty years after its publication, it was a transforming event. The Bible had always been authoritative for me, and no part of it was more authoritative than the life and teaching of Jesus. I had understood it to teach of individual sin and salvation. Christ came to provide the way of salvation from sin for all individuals who would repent of sin and believe in him. Page4 4
Rauschenbusch did not deny any of my prior understanding, but he did assert t it was a truncated understanding. Having seen the great needs as he served as pastor of the German Baptist Church on the edge of Hell s Kitchen in New York City, he set forth his clarion call for the movement in 1907 with the publication of Christianity and the Social Crisis. There and in his subsequent work, he argued that a gospel of individual salvation was only a half-gospel, for the gospel had social dimensions as well. He pointed out that Jesus continued the call of the prophets for justice and mercy by proclaiming the coming kingdom of God in which unconditional love would eventually triumph over all obstacles in society. Rauschenbusch called on the church to respond to Jesus call for bringing in the kingdom of God and to struggle for its realization. Such an understanding of the gospel was a revelation to me. As I prepare to close I believe St. Peter s words recorded in 2 Peter 1: 16-21 were revelation or selfdisclosure to him as well. Revelation and self-disclosure he shared with the Church and subsequently the reader. I believe St. Peter s instruction to the Church and the reader should remind us that the prophet Moses in Exodus 24: 12-18 was summoned to the Mountain by the Lord. Moses ascended the mountain, Joshua went part way with him Aaron, Hur and other elders remained in the valley. While Moses was on the mountain Aaron, Hur, the elders, and people of God witnessed the Lord in his glory as a devouring fire on top of the mountain. St. Peter s prophetic reflection perhaps reminded him of the moments James & John accompanied him on the mountain in the writer s account of Matthew 17: 1-9 during the moments of Jesus transfiguration. I believe the difference in the account of Exodus 24: 12-18 and Matthew 17: 1-9 was twofold (1) in Exodus Moses was alone with the Lord on the mountain I believe Joshua was close enough to experience that divine moment, but in contrast in Matthew 17: 1-9 St. Peter, James, & John accompanied Jesus on the mountain and witnessed the Lord s glory and the visitation of the prophets. In that context the elders in Matthew s account had better opportunity and different personal experience to help their humanity intersect with their divinity. (2) In Matthew 17: 10-12 after they descended the mountain St. Peter, James, & John asked Jesus why the people say Elijah must come first. Jesus answered, Elijah indeed must come first and restore all things, but I tell you Elijah has already come and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. Scripture records that exchange after the transfiguration experience. Only then did St. Peter, James, and John understand Elijah to return in the person of John the Baptist. When I read that I was intrigued and devoted part of my reflection to the concept of spiritual resurrection theology, the ways individual may appear in community human & divine! Page5 5