Thanks, Jonathan.

One of the most brilliant ways to co-opt someone is to make a national holiday out of their persona; all the more reason to remember the sort of things King really had to say, like this:

Now of course all sorts of substantive disagreement exists about how and where God works in human history. But all three of these faiths agree that human history is nonetheless the canvas upon which a great story unfolds. “Redemption” is the theological term often used for this magnificent unfolding drama. Because it’s a “religious” sounding term, it’s off-putting to many, but the word “redemption” is just an old economic term, that means to buy someone or something out of bondage. So it is a good metaphor for the perennial hopes that surface time and again. In this drama, in the face of the insanities and oppression and diseases, we often find ourselves powerless, and life and history simply unmanageable. And often at the point of powerlessness, we resort to the notion that history is meaningless: as some of the characters will say in the songs tonight, “I don’t give a damn,” or “there’s no damn way.” These are echoes of having given up hope on any sort of new redemptive work.

In this light, so-called “faith” is not some sort of “religious” thing irrelevant to the real world, but a skill to read history correctly. Faith becomes a skill to interpret the magnificent drama aright. It becomes the skill of discernment, and the ability to hold onto the hope for something new in the midst of the old. As William Stringfellow taught us, “discerning signs has to do with comprehending the remarkable in common happenings, with perceiving the saga of salvation within the era of the Fall. It has to do with the ability to interpret ordinary events . . . to see portents of death where others find progress or success but, simultaneously, to behold tokens of the reality of Resurrection or hope where others are consigned to confusion or despair . . . . ”
And so tonight we look for such tokens, signs of hope and power at work in the midst of what may appear sometimes as merely one cursed thing after another. But we trust that the unfolding story is the canvas upon which the Author of All Things is working something New, in the midst of the Old.

Lee -

Can you help me make sense of John Yoder’s interpretation of the Temptation Narrative of Jesus in the desert?

I thought I had this clear in my mind, and was explaining it in our book club. However, a wise old Baptist preacher stopped me and said, “What’s wrong with being a welfare king? Sounds like something you and me both would advocate!” I wasn’t sure how to respond myself, nor was I sure what Yoder would say! As a Yoder student, how do you respond?

Peace -

Joe James

Hi Joe,

Jesus responded, “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” The problem with both capitalism and socialism is the reduction of political realities to mere economic exchange, without a true or full account of the whole of human life. To be merely a welfare king–to be simply a conduit of the doling out of bread–is to shortchange the fullness that is the Kingdom of God. There is obviously a place for “welfare,” in the sense of giving to those who have need; but the way of the church is the way in which such giving is not separated from a desire for the whole goodness of an individual human being; i.e., we give bread when needed, and without strings, but we are also present to give more (in the sense of a call to change and repentance and renewal, etc.) as it is needed and desired.

Or so it seems to me…

Peace, LC

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