Thursday 7 June 2007

Today we will enter the chapter "A Welcome for the Others" in "Mandate to Difference" by Walter Brueggemann.

This chapter uses as one primary text, Isaiah 56. It deals with the exiles in Babylon coming back to the city of Jerusalem. It is filled with hope and the reality at hand.
As they approached the future in the city, the returning Jews from exile immediately entered into dispute, a contest between various notion of the future. One claim in the dispute had to do with the constitution of the community. They asked who in fact now constitutes Israel, the restored community of the people of God. And that question pressed them to ponder, "Who is in and who must be excluded?" The people who undertook that dispute, moreover, were those who returned from exile and to Persian auspices. They are the ones labeled, in current scholarship, "the urban elites" who monopolized power and who thereby had the capacity to define the community and its constituents.

I find it important that the question that is held up here is the negative one. It is not "Who is to be included." That was not the issue. There were strong feelings about "them" and "us." It seems we always base the future of the world on what goes with me. It also looks like the elites of a society are the ones who have the ability to define who is in and who is to be out. It is in situations like this and in our own day that the voice of prophets must be lifted up. We will spend time looking at the words of the prophets within the next week. For now, it is important to take a look at how we "define the community and its constituents." We all do it - even if it is simply the community that is most closely drawn into our lives. This can be and is something as basic as family. The need to protect and care and help those who are like us and close to us is so very real to each of us. This is the primary piece of our lives that we consider when we look out into the future. How do we keep them safe? This question is often set within a world that is filled with "them." I just finished writing a short article about living together faithfully in the midst of our disagreements. This assumes that we are not all alike and we do not all agree on what is to be. I have found that it is most difficult for people to expand the circle of the community when there is anxiety about what could happen to my own - even if the speculation has no basis in fact or experience. It is at that point that we begin to see what we are willing to do to placate our anxiety. It is often a picture of projections and judgements that are not grounded in real life community. Rather than set up community with everyone inside so that we can actually live through life together and find out what is the truth about who we are, it is easier to exclude...shut the doors...keep our own close and untouched by others.

Connection: There are so many ways to open up the doors of our lives. Every time we do it, it is a risk - that is life. And yet, in that risk within even the smallest exchanges, we begin to have our world view opened. The risk is that we put ourselves out there and may be rejected. We also may find that there are some folk with whom we would rather not spend much time. All in all, we can still be a part of the same community.

O Lord who Gather Us In, you make us a people in your image and we long to have your love be the light of our life together. When we are afraid of this brilliant vision of life, be our courage and helps us open the doors or walk through into a new experience of the fullness of your Reign. Amen.