The Word That Redescribes the World: The Bible and Discipleship

9. Vision for a New Church and a New Century: Part I: Homework against Scarcity

Vision for a New Church and a New Century Part I: Homework against Scarcity The beloved James Muilenburg, my teacher and the teacher of us all at Union Theological Seminary, wrote in his chapter on Israel’s ethics: As the Holy One of Israel, [YHWH] consecrates his people to obedience and service and separateness from the ways of the nations; as King, he rules the world with justice and the peoples with his truth; as Father, he exercises his power and authority, yet with compassion and love; as leader on the way, he guides his people on its way through history; as teacher, he grasps the pupil by the hand and instructs him, and subjects him to his firm but merciful discipline. It is this God to whom Israel is urged to listen, the God who granted the inspiration and motivation to obedience in the glad good news of liberation from slavery and who provided the basis for allegiance and fidelity in the covenant at Sinai. Amidst all the feverish preoccupation with riches and power and comfort and pleasure; all the bustling commercial activity and the ever-rising prices; the building of fortifications for defense and of fine houses for the privileged; the elaboration of cultic observances with their sumptuous festivals and celebrations, their pilgrimages and rites, their music and choirs, and, withal, the syncretism with the cults of nature and prosperity—amidst all there was one voice that was stifled and repressed. It was the voice of Israel’s covenant-making and covenant -keeping God. But was it stilled? Not quite! For there were prophets in the land to sound the cry of protest and outrage, repeating with the urgency born of faith and memory and holy awe, God’s categorical and insistent “thou shalt not.”1 157 chapter nine 158 D The Word That Redescribes the World Muilenburg saw the matter of the economy clearly and theologically, as he regularly listened well to the text. It remained, however, for Norman Gottwald, student of Muilenburg and sometime teacher at Union, to initiate the critical conversation concerning the socioeconomic, political dimensions of what Muilenburg had seen so well and said so eloquently. It was Gottwald who saw clearly that Israel was an experimental social revolution in that ancient world, to see whether social relationships could be organized in human, egalitarian, communitarian ways. He made this case by his controversial appeal to Marxian categories of dialectical materialism, partly to expose and counter the unexamined idealistic theories of Durkheim that largely shaped the discussion. Gottwald has well argued that, propelled by YHWH, Israel is a material experiment in the world whereby neighborly solidarity between haves and have-nots is a form of normalcy. That vision and mandate were laid out clearly at Sinai where Israel, at the behest of YHWH, redescribed the world in all its neighborly potential. I But of course Israel did not come innocently to Sinai, nor did Israel begin at Sinai. Excluding for now the problematic of the ancestral memories of Genesis as founding tradition, it is enough to remember the rootage of Israel in Egyptian slavery from which it had been emancipated. It is enough to remember that in contrast to Sinai, in Egypt Pharaoh is the deciding force who defined the world. It is enough to remember that Pharaoh, in the memory of Israel, is famine-driven, always worried about lack of crops and loss of food, always gathering and storing to have enough—good technological procedure for a government that understood “food as a weapon.” It is enough to remember that that very Pharaoh , who disrupted the food chain in his clumsy acquisitiveness and in his bottomless anxiety, could never have enough. The slaves who became Israel remembered that they were at work building imperial granaries to abet the royal anxiety. It is of this Pharaoh that the narrative, already in Genesis 47, concluded: So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them; and the land became Pharaoh’s. (v. 20) Vision for a New Church and a New Century: Part I d 159 And then verse 26 inevitably and soberly adds, without a trace of irony: The land of the priests alone did not become pharaoh’s. This is the same pharaoh who later, in the book of Ezekiel, stated his arrogant illusion set deep in anxiety: My...