Remembering the Future
(Rutgers, May 24, 1998; 7th Sunday of Easter, Year C;
Memorial Day Weekend; Second Lesson from the 5th Sunday of Easter )
Psalm 33:8-12, 16-22 (OT, p. 560); Revelation 21:1-4 (NT, p. 282)
Memorial Day Weekend is a time for remembering.
And the lectionary
by asking us during Eastertide to read from the Book of Revelation
is inviting us, fascinatingly enough,
to focus not on remembering the past or the present,
but on remembering the future-the future that is
so evocatively symbolized for us in the biblical vision,
the future toward which God is drawing us.
Our Second Lesson from Revelation 21 proclaims
that in the glorious future
all of humankind will be God's peoples
and that God will dwell with us.
God's very home will be among humankind.
And God will wipe every tear from our eyes.
For, in that future, neither pain and crying
nor death and mourning will any longer exist.
The Book of Revelation intends for us to focus our minds
on these images of the glorious reign-of-God-to-come so that
we may gain the strength and courage we need to stand fast in
this present age, held captive as it is by humankind's sinful past.
And the Book of Revelation also intends for us
to remember the glorious future promised by God so that
the reality of our present age may undergo a transformation
toward that vision of God's future.
96 years ago, in 1902, at the very beginning of the 20th century,
a century that some have called the most evil in all of time,
a Polish-born English novelist named Joseph Conrad
published a novena entitled Heart of Darkness.
In it, he made the following striking observation: (quote)
"The [human] mind ... is capable of anything-because
everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future."
What a brilliantly provocative concept Conrad's is-
that the human mind, when held prisoner by a terrible past,
is capable of perpetuating the depths of darkness,
while that same mind,
when captivated by the vision of a transformed future,
can rise to new heights of enlightened justice and love.
In the exact same year that Conrad published Heart of Darkness,
good old 1902,
the Reverend Dr. W alter Rauschenbusch
became Professor of Church History at the
Rochester Theological Seminary in upstate New York.
Rauschenbusch was a Baptist minister
who had served a small immigrant parish
on the edge of Hell's Kitchen, on Manhattan's West Side.
His experience of the hell on earth existing in that neighborhood
kindled within him a passion for making God's future present,
a passion for helping God to transform society here and now.
In order to equip his passion with much needed knowledge,
Rauschenbusch went to Europe to study economics and
industrial relations.
He then returned to the U.S. to begin teaching and writing
in a way that would help American Protestantism turn
from its focus on the salvation of the individual soul
to a new focus on the salvation of society and its social structures.
In 1907, Rauschenbusch published his powerfully influential book
Christianity and the Social Crisis, in which he argued that
the industrial and commercial life of America was dominated
by principles antagonistic to the principles of Christianity.
Indeed he had come to the conclusion that it was so difficult to live
a Christian life in America that few people had ever really tried it.
As Rauschenbusch saw it, the church of his day had only two options:
either (1) to tolerate the world as it was and conform to it;
or (2) to condemn the world and seek to change it by helping
to make God's future reign present in the here and now.
He himself sought to persuade the church to make the second choice,
the only one he considered to be faithful to Christ,
namely, the choice to help make God's future present
rather than to tolerate a continuation into the present
of the past depths of human darkness.
At the end of the 20th century, I must sadly conclude, however ,
that most of the church through most of the century
must have been making the other choice, choosing instead
to tolerate the world as it has been and to conform to it,
rather than to help make God's future actual in the present.
For the social analyses Rauschenbusch offered 90 years ago
sound so disturbingly contemporary.
Listen, for example, to Rauschenbusch's 1907 reflections on
militarism and war memorials:
(from Ferm, Classics of Protestantism, p. 498, underlining added)
(quote) "... wherever militarism rules,
war is idealized by monuments and paintings; poetry and song.
The stench of the hospitals and the maggots of the battle-field
are passed [over] in silence,
and the imagination of the people is filled [instead]
with waving plumes and the shout of charging columns ....
If war is ever to be relegated to the limbo of outgrown barbarism,
we must shake off its magic.
When we comprehend how few wars have ever been fought
for the sake of justice or the people;
how personal spite, the ambition of military professionals,
and the protection of capitalistic ventures
are the real moving powers;
how the governing classes pour out the blood and wealth of
nations for private ends and exude patriotic enthusiasm
like a squid secreting ink to hide its retreat-
then the mythology of war will no longer bring us to our knees,
and we shall fail to get drunk with the rest
when intoxication sweeps the people off their feet."
(end of quote)-1907!
Sadly,
the nuclear intoxication currently sweeping India off its feet
is only the most recent example
of 20th-century martial intoxications too numerous to chronicle.
India is but one of the many nations, including our own, that
have failed to heed the wisdom found in our First Lesson, Ps. 33:
'' A king is not saved by the size of his army;
a warrior does not escape by his great strength.
The war horse is a vain hope for victory.
despite all its great strength it cannot save ....
Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord/"
It's an amazing technological advance
from the war horse of yore to the nuclear fission + fusion of today,
yet, lamentably, the capacity of the human heart
to trust in God alone,
rather than in the false god of military might,
seems in that same span of time
to have advanced very little, if at all.
Instead of allowing trust in God's future to lead us away from war,
we sinfully invoke the very name of God to advance the cause of
war, creating what Rauschenbusch called "the mythology of war"
or what I would call "the sacred language of war."
In the case of India, this "sacred language of war" is easy to identify.
For India has given to its project to harness nuclear energy's
destructive power the name "Shakti."
Shakti is a sacred term used in Hindu mythology to designate
goddesses who personify the divine creative power.
How obscene it is to use the language of divine power
to describe a program born of human madness.
And America has used the "sacred language of war" as well.
You may recall that the U.S. Navy gave one of our nuclear subs
the name "Corpus Christi."
which is the Latin term, used in the Roman Catholic tradition,
for "Body of Christ."
Yes, Rauschenbusch's 1907 reflections on militarism + war memorials
sound altogether too contemporary, as if nothing has changed,
and so, too, do his 1907 reflections on capitalism.
Listen also to them: (from Ferm, Classics of Protestantism, 498-499)
(quote) "In the same way we shall [also] have to see through
the fictions of capitalism.
W e are assured that the poor are poor through their own fault; ....
that the immigrants are the cause of corruption in our city ... ;
that we cannot compete with foreign countries unless
our working class will descend to the wages paid abroad.
These are all very plausible assertions,
but they are lies dressed up in truth.
There is a great deal of conscious lying.
Industrialism as a whole sends out deceptive prospectuses
just like single corporations within it. But in the main
these misleading theories are the complacent
self-deception of those who profit by present conditions
and are loath to believe that their life is working harm."
(end of quote)-19071
This analysis was framed by Rauschenbusch 90 years ago,
yet it could just as well have appeared on the Op-Ed page
of today's New York Times,
spiced up perhaps by a few references to conscious lying by the
likes of Kathy Lee Gifford, Disney, the Gap, Nike, Microsoft,
A&P, Loral, Trump, Steinbrenner-and all tobacco companies!
+ by a few references as well to the complacent self-deception
of the American middle and upper classes.
This sameness between the end of our century and the beginning of it
totally depresses me and seems to me yet another good reason
for focusing our remembering on God's glorious future
rather than on humanity's discouraging past.
In 1902, Joseph Conrad observed:
"The [human] mind ... is capable of anything-because
everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future."
It's true that the human mind, when held prisoner by a terrible past,
is capable of perpetuating the depths of darkness,
but it's also true that that same mind,
when captivated by the vision of a transformed future,
can rise to new heights of enlightened justice and love.
My prayer for this Memorial Day Weekend,
when we are called upon to remember both the wars of the past
and those who have died in them-
my prayer for today
is very much like that of Walter Rauschenbusch 90 years ago.
It is the prayer that humankind will choose to act on the basis of
the part of our minds that remembers
the biblical vision of the beatific future God has in mind for us,
the future wherein all of humankind will be God's peoples
and pain + crying and death + mourning will no longer exist-
it is the prayer that we will choose to act
on the basis of our memories of God's promised future rather than
on the basis of our memories of humanity's enacted past.
so that we may help God make that future
a reality in the present.
Let us pray.
O God, you revealed to John the Seer a vision of future peace and
love and well-being among all of humankind. Help us to remember
that vision, and use us to help make present that glorious future. In
the name of our Risen Christ, we pray. Amen.
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