Hope

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  “Christ is all, and is in all” (Col 3:11 ) and has brought us together from every nation, language, and people as “one new people.” This doesn’t rid us of our Jewish or Gentile (or American, Korean, Australian, Chinese, Rwandan, Brazilian, Native American, etc.) cultures, identities, and unique contributions. But now our primary identity is in Christ and in that he has made us “one new humanity” in him (Eph 2:15 ; see Eph 2–4 ; Col 3 ; Gal 3; 6 ). The political culture has become more polarized than ever in recent years. Sadly, many American Christians participated in this culture of divisiveness and animosity. Misunderstanding, accusations, and disunity continue in the church, even after the 2016 election. It’s one thing to differ and engage in vigorous debate. But disunity, animosity, and division are another thing altogether. Much of this division is rooted in our sense of personal and corporate identities. But Jesus calls us to shape new identities as the new humanity in Christ. This new identity forges new allegiances and new social imaginations. It nurtures a deep commitment to grace, forgiveness, and love. In a world full of division and conflict, the church needs to embrace the ministry of reconciliation and peacemaking. God calls us to be a peaceable people who display unity in diversity under Christ. God commands us to show the world what it means to be a new humanity and new creation in Christ. So we are not primarily Tutsi or Hutu, German or French, British or Australian, Palestinian or Israeli, Chinese or Brazilian, Syrian or American. We are not primarily Republican or Democrat, conservative or progressive, urban or rural, rich or poor, white or a person of color. We bring all these identities and aspects of ourselves to our new humanity in Christ. We are primarily one people, united as one body in Jesus Christ. As a new creation and a new humanity, we are “a people on pilgrimage together, a mixed group, bearing witness to a new identity made possible by the Gospel.”1 God calls us to show the world what reconciled, redeemed, and restored humanity looks like. We must not root Christian identity in nationalism, ethnicity, partisan politics, sociopolitical-economic status, gender, and other such things. Instead we must root Christian identity in discipleship to Jesus Christ. This identity is formed through a vision of what it means to be a distinct people with an alternative ethic, politic, and life together. That people, formed by God for Godself—Jew and Gentile, women and men, rich and poor, black and white—shows the world an alternative way. Together as a new humanity we are made up of every tribe and ethnicity and language, valuing difference and particularity but united in our Christian identity. This new people roots its story in Israel, in Jesus, and in a vision of the new humanity and the age to come, when God will rule and reign.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  God calls the church to be a sign and herald of hope—to show the world what the world looks like in its reconciled and transformed state. The church has too often embraced a racialized imagination, a range of discriminatory practices, and a “whitened Jesus.”21 4. Practice peacemaking and nonviolence. A lot has been written on the themes of peacemaking and nonviolence. Jesus calls his church to be a nonviolent, peaceable people. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Mt 5:9 ). Peace is at the heart of the gospel. As followers of Jesus in a divided and violent world, we are committed to finding nonviolent alternatives and to learning how to make peace between individuals, within and among churches, in society, and between nations.22 Stanley Hauerwas says that nonviolence and peacemaking are the “hallmarks of the Christian moral life.” Nonviolence “is integral to the shape of Christian convictions.”23 We root our witness in the peaceable ethic of Jesus. “Nonviolence is a sign of hope that there is an alternative to war. And that alternative is called church.”24 In “Peacemaking: The Virtue of the Church,” Hauerwas unpacks the pastoral implications of nonviolence for the church. Peacemaking is a virtue, cultivated in community. Peacemaking is crucial to moral excellence and Christian witness. Christians can’t practice peacemaking in isolation. We need communities of forgiveness, peace, hospitality, and reconciliation. Christians shouldn’t despair of peace in the world. Instead we are to foster a peaceable practice and imagination. We pursue the peaceable kingdom. We embrace hope in the Prince of Peace. “Peacemaking among Christians, therefore, is not simply one activity among others but rather is the very form of the church insofar as the church is the form of the one who ‘is our peace.’”25 Peacemaking isn’t passive. It’s the active, courageous, and public exercise of forgiveness, love, and reconciliation.26 Martin Luther King Jr. preached nonviolence and peacemaking. He wrote, “World peace through non-violent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Non-violence is a good starting point. Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred and emotion.”27 Yes, we all indeed need to be voices of reason and to engage in peacemaking and nonviolent acts of resistance toward justice. Practices, Challenges, and Activities for Small GroupsHere are some practices and activities for your small group. These will help you explore and experience reconciled relationships. Consider and respond to biblical passages. Reconciliation is at the heart of the gospel and of the Christian faith. Read the following passages closely as a group, and reflect on what they mean for your ministry of reconciliation: Romans 5:10-11; 11:15; 2 Corinthians 5:18-20; Ephesians 2:14-17; Colossians 1:19-22. Brainstorm ways that you can respond to these passages practically in your community and your neighborhood. Work through Roadmap to Reconciliation. Read Brenda Salter McNeil’s book Roadmap to Reconciliation over eight weeks.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  Discipleship involves learning a myriad of skills through personal discipline and by immersion in community. We also learn a language—words such as faith and hope and love take form in our mouths and shape our hearts and minds. And, so, discipleship practices and new ways of conceiving and speaking about God and the world shape our life together. Together, we learn fresh discipleship practices and vocabularies. Nine Transforming PracticesThis book shows what it means to be the church, the new humanity in Jesus Christ, as Paul writes about in Ephesians 2:15. This is the biblical basis for our understanding of what it means to become new in Christ. The church shows the world God’s perfect design for humanity, which is a reconciled, unified, whole, multiethnic, peaceful, loving life together. As a beacon to the world, the church shows the world what God calls it to be. The church shows the world its destiny and future. In an era where Christian identities seem so enmeshed with race, politics, nationalism, and material goods, we need to imagine a different reality.8 In The Christian Imagination , Willie James Jennings has shown how the Christian social imagination is often diseased and disfigured. It’s wedded to racialized, individualistic, privatized, and rootless identities. We find ourselves in this place because of historical events. We need to confront this situation head-on and theologically if we are going to demonstrate a compelling witness and life together in the world. The church needs a compelling vision of a healed and whole Christian community (and a redeemed Christian social imagination). The church needs fresh practices before a watching world. Too often our theological or intellectual posture is one of power and control. We expect others (e.g., indigenes, marginalized groups, and outsiders) to be adaptable, but we refuse to be so ourselves. In our attachment to power and control, rigidity, superiority, and staleness grow. This diseased posture stops Christians from forming habits of humility, fluidity, embodiment, and engagement, which lead to transformation. Yet, as Jennings says, we live in hope: Christianity marks the spot where, if noble dream joins hands with God-inspired hope and presses with great impatience against the insularities of life, for example, national, cultural, ethnic, economic, sexual, and racial, seeking the deeper ground upon which to seed a new way of belonging and living together, then we will find together not simply a new ground, not simply a new seed, but a life already prepared and offered to us.9 Race relations is one area where the church and Christianity can offer hope and a new way of life together. Race is a modern construct and problem, and such disciplines as biology, genetics, philosophy, history, political science, economics, feminism, cultural and postcolonial studies, and more are examining it. We need to understand “whiteness” and how whiteness is a construct to subordinate others. Yet, strangely, Christian theologians have been largely silent about race. A theological account of race is profoundly absent.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  River City Church in Chicago invites everyone to worship at their church. It is a multiracial, multiethnic, and socioeconomically diverse church located in the Humboldt Park area on the west side of Chicago, known for its dynamic social and ethnic community. The church holds after-school programs for children and tries its best to help those in the surrounding community who are economically poor. The white senior pastor, Reverend Daniel Hill, fights against racism and understands how white privilege works to marginalize people of color. This church is living out the gospel and the Sermon on the Mount. When we put the vision of the Sermon on the Mount into practice, and when we completely rely on the grace and power of God to make it so, we weather the storms. We are wise builders, constructing a strong, steady, and secure house. Our strength isn’t in ourselves. We’re conscious of our powerlessness and weakness. We don’t need to fear the storms and waves—we have built our foundation on the rock. Practices, Challenges, and Activities for Small GroupsHere are some practices and activities for your small group. These will help you recover life together. Complete Baylor University’s six-week series on the Sermon on the Mount. Baylor’s Center for Christian Ethics has designed a useful six-week small group series on the Sermon on the Mount. It offers prayers, Scripture readings, meditations, reflections, discussion questions, and songs on the Sermon on the Mount. We encourage you to dig deeper into the Sermon on the Mount through using this six-week series.26 Write modern versions of the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. As a small group spend an evening writing modern versions of the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. If Jesus were delivering these today, how would he say these things? What other words would he use, and what other issues would he include? Be creative. Recently Pope Francis proposed six new Beatitudes for modern Christians:27 Blessed are those who remain faithful while enduring evils inflicted on them by others and forgive them from their heart. Blessed are those who look into the eyes of the abandoned and marginalized and show them their closeness. Blessed are those who see God in every person and strive to make others also discover him. Blessed are those who protect and care for our common home. Blessed are those who renounce their own comfort in order to help others. Blessed are those who pray and work for full communion between Christians. As a small group, have a go at writing Jesus’ Beatitudes in your own words. But also add some new Beatitudes that come directly out of Jesus’ words in the entire Sermon on the Mount (make sure your new Beatitudes are true to the things Jesus says in Matthew 5–7). Put the Sermon on the Mount into practice in your neighborhood. Here’s a way your small group can put the Sermon on the Mount into practice in your neighborhood.

• From From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (2019)

  The prophet Haggai is likely a priest, deeply attached to the liturgic life of the community. His utterance is a summons to the people now in Jerusalem who have been preoccupied with their own private destiny, to get engaged in the public good by sharing responsibility for the rebuilding of the temple that is still in ruins. It is telling that the oracles of Haggai are quite specifically linked to the dateline of Persian rulers (1:1; 2:1, 10). This suggests that Haggai was acutely aware of Persian oversight even to the extent of financing the new temple. Thus there is a profound ambiguity about the new temple. On the one hand the temple will be the place where YHWH is honored and Jewish identity is celebrated and enhanced (1:8). On the other hand it is a Persian-financed project that will likely serve Persian interests, perhaps as a tax-collecting venue. We may notice three points of emphasis in this brief book. First, Haggai anticipates that there will be a “shaking” of heaven and earth and all nations “in a little while” (2:6, 22). Nothing is specific in these utterances, and perhaps this subversion of the status quo had to remain somewhat guarded. The prophet anticipates an international upheaval that will overthrow the established power of Persia; everything will be changed and nothing will remain as it is! This prophetic hope is that the reordering of the international community by the power of God will create space for God’s people to live in freedom and security. Second, in the meantime, and prior to the great “shaking” that is to come, Haggai summons his listeners to obedience to the God of the covenant. Haggai observes that the present economy of Jerusalem has not been productive (1:5–6; 2:15–19). A series of rhetorical questions makes clear that agricultural failure is the judgment of God upon disobedience. Obedience will lead to blessing. The obedience to which Israel is summoned is of a priestly variety concerned with clean and unclean (2:11–14). Thus the prophet anticipates revival of a “holy people” devoted to the ancient requirements of cleanness, purity, and holiness that are the precondition of divine blessing and presence. Haggai delivers his third point of emphasis at the book’s end with a promise of a “signet ring,” an emblem of authority, to be given to Zerubbabel. He is the governor under Persian protection; but he is also the heir to the Davidic dynasty. Thus the oracle anticipates that with the international upheaval, restoration of the Davidic dynasty is in the offing. These three accents of international upheaval, renewed obedience, and Davidic restoration cluster together around the new temple as the emblem and expression of divine presence amid the community. The new temple will make evident God’s commitment to and presence amid the people who face a contested present but a wondrous future. The prospect for a good future is grounded in God’s own assurance:

• From From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (2019)

  Most of all, awareness of the dismal realities besetting Jerusalem during the prophets’ lifetimes—in the eighth century’s wars, in the despair of exile, in the troubles of societal reconstruction—may help Christians perplexed by today’s troubles. At several junctures, it must have been extremely difficult to maintain hope for Judah’s future. Yet ancient Jerusalem outlasted many great empires, and its faith evolved over the millennia into the Jewish faith of today. Out of Jerusalem’s faith also grew two other world religions: Christianity and Islam. The three Abrahamic faiths together total more than 3.6 billion worshipers. Like all change, religious change is both painful and inevitable. Yet faith in Israel’s God continues to grow and evolve today. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION What role did prophets play in the life of ancient Israel? How does the description of the prophets differ from your previous understanding? Name a person alive today you consider to be a prophet. What makes them deserve that title? Chapter 1 THREE MAJOR PROPHETS Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel We commonly refer to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel as “Major Prophets” because they are, in the Old Testament, big books. In fact, these three are “major” not only because of size but also for other reasons. These three books are a major act of prophetic imagination that constitutes a major assault on established political-economic Israel and an opening to a major new possibility for Israel. Beyond that, these prophetic books constitute a major resource for Christian thinking and acting in a culture that is manifestly out of sync with the purposes of God in the world. In order to consider the dimensions of “major” in these prophetic books, we will consider what is distinctive for each of these books and what is constant in all of them. The distinctiveness of each of these three prophetic books and the three prophetic personalities around which the books cluster is grounded in the particular traditions that each person and book is rooted in. Each tradition is very old in ancient Israel. And each tradition yields a quite different discernment and articulation of faith. ISAIAH The person of Isaiah and consequently the book of Isaiah are rooted in the religious tradition of the city of Jerusalem, its Davidic monarchy, and its Solomonic temple. This theology, with a distinct urban bias, portrayed the city of Jerusalem as the epicenter of all worldly reality to which God was totally and unconditionally committed. Isaiah had access to the line of Davidic kings, and Isaiah’s rootedness in Jerusalem is why Isaiah claims that his “call” to prophetic ministry occurred in the Jerusalem temple. As a child of Jerusalem who thinks in terms of temple and king (as Jeremiah and Ezekiel do not), Isaiah imagines the future to be shaped by king and temple, a focus that has made him amenable to Christian interpretations of Jesus as the coming king.

• From From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (2019)

  But along with historical attentiveness, these daring poets were fixed on God and how God’s life pertained to Israel. The theme of divine judgment leading to the destruction is an affirmation that God in holiness will not be mocked by Israel. The theme of divine restoration concerns the conviction that God in fidelity will not quit on Israel. The two themes—no mocking, no quitting—come in sequence for these prophets: first judgment, then promise. Both belong to the character of God. Taken logically, such a sequence may be impossible. But taken in poetic categories, that, of course, is how fidelity works: it defies other modes of logic. The implementation of judgment and restoration in prophetic language articulates a deep belief in God’s intense engagement with historical reality. The tragic historical reality that Israel faced in the sixth century BCE can also be understood otherwise on grounds of Realpolitik, or practical politics. These prophets, however, are not satisfied with such explanations. They believe, in the deepest ways, that God must be uttered into historical reality. They interpret the ending as judgment and the beginning as restoration. They defied established theological conviction that God would never allow Jerusalem to be destroyed. And they defied historical realism, which chalked up the sacking of Jerusalem to a simple reality of a stronger nation (Babylon) conquering a smaller one (Israel). Their words erupted and continue to reverberate from these pages into the ongoing drama of public history. CONCLUSION Our attempt to read these prophets with a contemporary edge requires some daring imagination. As the prophets pivot around failure and possibility, so we might read them around a pivotal crisis among us. It has occurred to me that the tragedy of 587 BCE, the year Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon and its leaders deported, might, in our moment of interpretation, be parallel to 9/11, a symbolic tragedy hugely disproportionate to the actual facts on the ground. 9/11 signaled the dramatic end of an illusionary invulnerability among Americans and an opening to savage social reality such as is experienced everywhere else in the world all too often. If we consider such an analogy, we might undertake, as they required in ancient time, a radical rethinking about out-of-sync living and alternative possibility. It may still be true among us that God will not be mocked, neither will God quit. Everything else about our lived experience is changed when we entertain such convictions. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION How did each book reflect a major criticism of ancient Israel, and how did each book express a major hope for Israel? What major lesson can we learn from these prophets today? Do you agree with the author that September 11, 2001, represents a similar pivotal crisis for the United States as the Babylonian exile did for Israel? Why or why not? 1. See the definition of “Zion” in the glossary of terms.Chapter 2 FIRST ISAIAH (Chapters 1–39)

• From From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (2019)

  . . . take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the LORD; take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the LORD; work, for I am with you, says the LORD of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear. 2:4–5 ZECHARIAH The book of Zechariah is readily divided into two distinct parts, chapters 1–8 and 9–14. The first part, chapters 1–8, has close affinities to the book of Haggai and makes many of the same points Haggai does. Zechariah joins Haggai in the crisis that surrounded the building of the temple in 520–516 BCE. He has a priestly lineage and a priestly agenda, an agenda that he articulates on the wide screen of YHWH’s governance of world history. He sees this moment at the outset of Persian dominion as a decisive moment in world history that has immense implications for Jews. In the midst of that coming upheaval he sounds two familiar sounds: (a) a summons to Torah obedience and (b) a lavish assurance from God that Jerusalem will be restored to its splendor and prosperity as the place of God’s habitation. At the outset, Zechariah’s oracle summons the Jews to “return” (1:4). The reference is to “statutes” (1:6), and the verdict of 1:6 indicates that the prophet appeals to the old covenant tradition that blessing follows obedience and curses follow disobedience. Jerusalem got what it had coming! In 7:8–14 the oracle again begins with an imperative of “kindness and mercy.” Israel, however, rejected these requirements, and so Jerusalem is “scattered” in exile (7:14). That verdict is only the premise for Zechariah and not the message. The message is that it is now time to move beyond that sorry condition that Israel had chosen for itself. It is time now because YHWH has promised restoration (1:14–17; 8:4–5). That restoration will be led by Joshua, the priest, so that major attention is given to liturgical matters. But alongside the priest is the “Branch,” an allusion to the Davidic house. And since the governor, Zerubbabel, is of the Davidic house, it is clear that the prophet anticipates a restoration of full political power that will not be subservient to any foreign power: I am going to bring my servant the Branch. 3:8 These are the two anointed ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth, 4:14 Here is a man whose name is Branch: for he shall branch out in his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD. It is he that shall build the temple of the LORD; he shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. There shall be a priest by his throne, with peaceful understanding between the two of them. 6:12–13 The prospect is for a settled, secure, well-ordered community marked, as in earlier prophetic poetry, by “vine and fig tree”:

• From From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (2019)

  Although later scribes added their own interpretations to all four of these books, especially adding words of hope for people who endured the sixth century’s destructions, none received as many additions as Isaiah. Isaiah probably began its life as a book as brief as the others, which range, even with additions, from seven chapters (Micah) to fourteen (Hosea). But during and after the Judean exile to Babylon, Isaiah was augmented by the prophecies of several later prophets, becoming one of the Bible’s longest and most complex books. Because of its extensive words of hope and comfort, Isaiah also became one of the most popular books of Scripture, both for Jews and for Christians, who found its words bringing hope to subsequent communities. In Jewish literature (starting with later Old Testament books themselves and the documents of the Qumran community of Essenes) and in Christian literature (beginning with the New Testament and early church leaders), Isaiah is more often quoted than any other prophetic book. The later portions of Isaiah are discussed below. PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES Just as prophets became prominent during the Assyrian crisis of the late eighth century BCE, they regained prominence in the late seventh century as international upheavals again created political and social insecurities. Since we have access only to Judean and Israelite writings this ancient if they were preserved in Scripture, we don’t know how many other prophets might have been preaching in the intervening years. Perhaps some of their words were recorded on scrolls that subsequently disappeared without a trace. We only know from the biblical evidence that the words of Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the prophet known to scholars as Second Isaiah were kept. Nahum anticipates the impending defeat of Assyria at the hands of Babylon, which occurred decisively in 612 when the Assyrian capital of Nineveh was destroyed. Nahum’s punitive tone should be understood in light of the heavy suffering inflicted by tyrannical Assyrian emperors. Assyria’s downfall surely looked like divine justice to Nahum, who celebrated this turn of events as comfort for Judah. Zephaniah and Habakkuk are two short books originating from shortly after Nahum’s time, in the last decades before the Judean exile to Babylon. Like the eighth-century prophets, both oppose social and religious ills in Jerusalem and depict God as threatening punishment for wrongs. Zephaniah employs the motif of the Day of the Lord, a coming day of wrath, distress, and anguish. Like other prophetic books, Zephaniah ends on a note of hopefulness that was most likely introduced by a later writer. Habakkuk ponders the theme of trust in God in the midst of chaos and disaster. It is presented as a dialogue between the prophet, who asks questions, and God, who responds to the prophet. God’s responses, not always reassuring, draw Habakkuk into deeper questions and more profound faith struggles. In the end the prophet declares trust in God despite all competing evidence.

• From From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (2019)

  The book of the Twelve, along with the big three, traces the rise and fall of Jerusalem as the epicenter of life and faith. Ronald Clements has voiced the outcome of such reflection in a succinct way: We must see that prophecy is a collection of collections, and that ultimately the final result in the prophetic corpus of the canon formed a recognizable unity not entirely dissimilar from that of the Pentateuch. As this was made up from various sources and collections, so also the Former and Latter Prophets, comprising the various preserved prophecies of a whole series of inspired individuals, acquired an overarching thematic unity. This centered on the death and rebirth of Israel, interpreted theologically as acts of divine judgment and salvation.1 This means that the prophetic collection, in its final form, describes the full drama of ancient Israel—an entry into a God-abandoned world based on covenant violation and anticipation of a God-initiated new start beyond the woes of the failed city. It is to be noticed that both the God-abandoned abyss and the God-initiated new start must have been, each in turn, deeply counterintuitive in ancient Israel and counterintuitive many times since. In the royal, priestly environment of ancient Jerusalem it was surely impossible to imagine being abandoned by God. The prophets, however, imagined it against all treasured assumptions. Conversely, in the context of destruction and displacement, it was impossible to imagine starting again. The prophets have as their task the utterance of possibility (“a new thing”) in the face of deeply voiced despair. It turns out, in the prophetic plotline, that God does cause endings and God does initiate new beginnings. That conviction is evident in the shape of the Twelve! In the very first chapter of Hosea, “Hosea” can voice the rejection of Israel by God: “Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have pity on the house of Israel or forgive them. . . . Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not my people and I am not your God.” 1:6, 8 That is how the Twelve begins! At the end of the Twelve, there is an anticipation that the long-gone Elijah will return with a new beginning. God will create newness (Mal. 4:5–6). Thus the return of Elijah is a nullification of “not pitied” and “not my people” of Hosea. The divine abandonment is transposed in such imagination to God-attentiveness. The ground of that divine turn that is voiced midway through the Twelve is this: He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency. He will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. Mic. 7:18–19

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  As a redeemed people, embodying a distinct way of life that witnesses to Jesus and his realm, the church needs to cultivate its unique practices. This way its “body politic,” ethic, witness, and social forms are countercultural, missional, and glorifying of Christ. We are called to be “alternative people” or “another city,” people who practice a distinct, Christ-honoring life together. The church is salt and light, a “city on a hill.” As part of the church’s call to embrace a distinct social existence, we reject violence, relinquish power, pursue holiness, embrace ethics, cultivate meaningful community, embrace missional presence, respect free association, and imitate the servant nature of Christ. A faithful church abandons the reach for power, prestige, and effectiveness that we may often see in megachurches around the world. Rather, it imitates the foolish weakness of the cross. As we look at history, we see God’s sovereign purposes unfolding, including the formation of a new, redeemed humanity in Jesus Christ, as reflected in the church’s unified politic. One righteousness. This new people is made holy and righteous by God’s grace. God purifies God’s people and cleanses them from sin. God sanctifies them so that together they are God’s holy and righteous bride. This is all God’s work and all according to his grace, a righteousness by faith in Christ alone. We are now “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith” (Rom 3:24-25 ). The Messiah is righteous and makes his people holy, pure, and just through faith in him. Receiving this righteousness through grace and faith, the new humanity chooses to put aside greed, lust, control, division, prejudice, racism, sexism, and vanity. Together we defy and dismantle unrighteous borders, injustices, divisions, and enmities. Together we clothe ourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in Christ. We embrace unity, humility, self-sacrifice, love, honor, hope, forgiveness, peace, and reconciliation. All these are expressions of our righteousness in Christ (Col 3:1–4:6, 1 Pet 1:13-25 ). One peace. God calls the church to be a people of peacemaking and reconciliation. The Messiah is our peace, and he has abolished the conflicts and enmities that divide people (Eph 2:11-14 ). Peace and reconciliation are at the very heart of the new humanity in Christ. Jesus calls his church to express peace and unity, to be a peaceable community. He calls his church to be peacemakers in a world characterized by misunderstanding, war, hatred, and animosity. Jesus Christ showed us what peacemaking looks like by living a life of nonviolence, justice, reconciliation, and forgiveness. Not only did he say, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Mt 5:9 ), but he also showed us in his life and death what such peacemaking looks like.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” (2 Cor 5:18-20 ). Reconciliation happens at many levels. God reconciles humanity to Godself, but God also enables individuals, socioeconomic groups, races, and genders to reconcile, and humanity to reconcile with creation. Through this ministry of reconciliation, God shows the world what God intends the world to be. Revelation 7:9-10 puts it well. There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” This is a vision of a new community worshiping God. This reconciled community comes from every society, ethnicity, gender, class, nationality, language, and age, and it seeks to bring God’s peace and reconciliation to the world. This is a vision of human flourishing, of peace and shalom, of forgiveness and justice, of faith, hope, and love. Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice remind us that we need a Christian vision and theology of reconciliation. We need these deep roots so that our efforts to bring reconciliation reflect the person, work, and vision of Jesus Christ. A Christian vision of reconciliation cannot be conceived or sustained without the particular life of the God whom Christians confess, the living God of Israel who raised the crucified Jesus from the dead. The life and preaching of Jesus shape our lives distinctly in a broken world. Shaped by convictions about God, our faith and practice point us to a deeper vocation of hope, offering a vision of what the journey of reconciliation looks like in this world, where that journey leads, how people who enter that journey are transformed along the way, and how that journey relates to neighbors, strangers and enemies. . . . Christianity offers distinct gifts of seeing, speaking about, engaging and being transformed within the world and its brokenness.11 Katongole and Rice go on to offer ten theses that enable us to recover “reconciliation as the mission of God.”12 Reconciliation is a process and journey aimed at transforming all humanity and creation, which requires lament and memory, and which needs the church to truly be the church. Reconciliation requires a certain kind of just, courageous, and peaceable leadership. You discover this kind of leadership through the work of the Spirit, as God transforms your heart and mind. Or, as Katongole and Rice put it, “Imagination and conversion are at the heart and soul of reconciliation.”13 God wants to transform our desires, loves, and imaginations, and to fill us with a passion for reconciliation.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  These will help you apply the nine practices in your church and neighborhood. Questions for discussion and application are in appendix one. These will help you dig deeper into how to apply and understand each of the nine practices. The Nine Transforming Practices Accountability Form is in appendix two. This will help you keep each other accountable as you seek to live out the nine practices personally and together. Resources for recovering our humanity are offered in appendix three. These will help you to learn more about each of the practices and help you continue to grow. [image "Figure 2. Resources in this book" file=Image00004.jpg] Figure 2. Resources in this book With God’s help, we can recover our humanity and pursue love, peace, justice, and reconciliation. These nine practices help encourage us to transform a dehumanized world into God’s world. OneREIMAGINE CHURCHJ esus calls us to reimagine the church as the new humanity in Jesus Christ (Eph 2:15 ). This is about learning together and anew about injustice and division in the church and the world. It’s also about learning mutually and afresh what it means to be the new humanity in Jesus Christ. What Is “the New Humanity in Christ”?As a child I (Graham) had the opportunity to visit the junction where the Darling and Murray Rivers meet and join in New South Wales, Australia. These are some of Australia’s longest rivers. There’s a viewing tower at the junction. A huge sign declares, “You are at the junction of Australia’s Two Greatest Rivers.” From the tower you can see the distinct difference between these two great rivers. Surrounded by majestic eucalyptus trees and the laughter of kookaburras, you look down on these rivers. The Darling River stretches 915 miles. It’s a clay-based river and has a rich milky color. The Murray River is 1,558 miles long, and it flows through Australia’s highest mountains all the way to the sea. It’s a rich ecosystem of fish, turtles, shrimp, and platypuses, and it’s a vibrant blue. At the Darling and Murray Rivers junction, these two rivers become one great river. This is a stunning testimony to the God who creates, sustains, and restores all the heavens and the earth, and who makes the two into one. What does Paul the apostle mean when he speaks of the new humanity in Christ? Paul means that Jesus Christ has done away with the old divisions and enmities. He has united Jews and Gentiles as one new and undivided humanity in him through his death and resurrection. This is a new creation in Christ. God has made for Godself one new people out of the two. Christ has abolished the old divisions based on culture, politics, race, religion, law, gender, social standing, and so on.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  First, open chapter nine of this book, and also open to Matthew 5–7 in your Bibles. As you read through both of these in your small group, list all the ways you can put the Sermon on the Mount into practice in your local neighborhood. Make sure these things are practical. Make sure they make sense for your neighborhood and truly meet local needs. They may be things like this: Help bring peace between neighbors in conflict. Welcome people of different races, religions, or socioeconomic backgrounds. Give to families and persons in need. Sell assets and give to the poor. Welcome people into your homes for meals (especially neighbors you wouldn’t normally invite). Plant an inclusive community garden. If you want more examples of how to do this, look at the examples on the Parish Collective website or attend an Inhabit Conference.28 Start putting these things into practice in your neighborhood. Meet regularly to hold each other accountable, and to offer nurture, support, and prayer. EpilogueA Benediction and PrayerW e’ve covered nine key practices in this book that work toward healing our broken humanity. These practices revitalize the church and renew the world. The good news is that you don’t need to do these practices in your own strength. The Spirit will give you what you need to engage these practices fully. Thanks to the power of Jesus working within you, you can live differently, practice these practices, and transform a dehumanized world. Be encouraged! You can make a difference! You’ve taken the time to read this book and reflect on the practices. You’ve opened your heart, mind, and life to what God wants to do in and through you. Now, by God’s grace and power, you can go and live this out. Here’s our prayer for you: May the God of creation expand your heart and mind as you reimagine the church as the new humanity in Christ. May God give you endurance and encouragement as you seek to change your world, to live in harmony with one another, and with one voice to glorify God (Rom 15:5-6 ). May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope (Rom 15:13 ). May the Spirit of courage help you lament the past together, help you have the willingness to repent of white cultural captivity and the determination to confront racial and gender injustice. We pray that the Spirit would give you the strength you need to give up your privilege, self-interests, and power, and to strive to restore justice to those who have been denied justice. May God enable you to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain (1 Cor 15:58 ).

• From From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (2019)

  Third, it is possible to understand the prophetic literature in our contemporary context. One must be alert to the risk of moving to contemporaneity too quickly without sufficient attention to matters historical and canonical. It is not possible, in my judgment, to “apply” the prophetic utterance directly to our own time and place. Although, when we have done due diligence about history and canon, we can see how this ancient utterance helps us in our time and place to imagine alternatively when we are emancipated from the dominant assumptions of our culture. Thus contemporaneity concerning “prophetic judgment” may help us to see that our present predatory economy (that depends on racist ideology, male domination, and idolatrous nationalism) is unsustainable because it contradicts the purposes of God. Conversely we may see that while our present ideological passion seems beyond challenge, God is at work evoking, forming, and legitimating alternative practices of a neighborly economy that is multicultural in its horizon. We may of course deny that our present world arrangement stands under judgment. Such denial is likely when we absolutize our current ideology. We may of course despair that it could be any different; such despair is likely when we accept the legitimacy of our current practice and ideology. Our denial and despair, however, do not mean that utterances of coming loss and utterances of coming restoration are false. They only mean that we have not yet been emancipated enough in our practice of imagination to host an alternative that arises from the force of God’s faithfulness. These ancient utterances constitute a means whereby our denial and our despair may be countered. They are at the same time a resource for our truth-telling and our hope-telling that is grounded in the reality of God who is in, with, and under these ancient utterances. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am pleased that we can include in this study the essay by Patricia Tull as an introduction. I am abidingly grateful to David Maxwell for his work on this book, as on many of my publishing efforts. David is, of course, an alert, wise editor. More than that, he is a consummate educator and uses his gifts to the great benefit of many of us. Readers will be grateful for his prompts in this book. Walter Brueggemann INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETS Patricia K. Tull The Old Testament prophets are among the Bible’s most misunderstood figures. This is partly due to the reputation they later acquired—the idea that their concern was the far future, centuries after their own and their audiences’ times.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  How being drunk got increasingly hard, and being not drunk felt impossible. In Odyssean terms, I’d wanted to be a hero, but wound up—as Mother did—a monster. But because of you, I couldn’t die and couldn’t monster myself, either. So you were the agent of my rescue—not a good job for somebody barely three feet tall. Blameless , the Greek translators call it. That’s what Odysseus wished for his son, Telemachus: to live guilt free. As a teenager myself, reading how Odysseus boffed witches and fought monsters, I inked the word blameless on the bottom of my tennis shoe. And my favorite part was always when he came home after decades and no one knew him. As you get older, you look at me more objectively—or try to. As I become strange to you in some ways, you’ve become more familiar to yourself. Maybe you could loan me some of the shine in your young head to clear up my leftover dark spaces. Just as you’re blameless for the scorched parts of your childhood, I’m equally exonerated for my own mother’s nightmare. Maybe I can show you how I came to peace, how she and Daddy wound up as blameless in my story as you are. Before you left the other night, you added—in the form of afterthought—what was, to me, the most dramatic news I’d heard that night: after the tape of your grandmother, you’d read nearly fifty pages of my own memories. You added, I’m gonna use that and some footage of Grandma for my documentary class. I watched you disappear down the stairs and wanted to call you back but thought better of it. Your girlfriend was with you, and you were so loaded down with bags and equipment. And something about those orange boxers with their cartoon fish—they draw from me such a throat-clenching nostalgia for a younger version of you—an image at odds with the man you are. You’re disembarking now, I can see it. Maybe by telling you my story, you can better tell yours, which is the only way to get home, by which I mean to get free of us.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  Bruce Milne writes: In today’s context of in-your-face diversity, it is time to revisit the heart of the New Testament, with its claim that in Jesus Christ a new quality of human relationships has arrived and that the gathering of his followers in Christian churches represent a unique possibility of bridging the gulfs that separate. . . . Christian congregations, everywhere, are called to be just that—bridging-places, centers of reconciliation, where all the major diversities which separate human beings are overcome through the supernatural presence of the Holy Spirit.3 God’s mission is to reach the whole world. Jesus poured out his Spirit at Pentecost on diverse peoples with diverse languages, traditions, hopes, cultures, and expectations (Acts 2 ). God works in and through racial, gender, linguistic, and generational diversity. God has given the gospel to all the nations, granting all peoples “repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:18 ). In our unified diversity, we join with God in God’s mission and welcome. This is the intercultural scope and embrace of the gospel. We reflect the extraordinary mosaic that emerges from God’s hospitality and love (Acts 17:26-27 ). God is reconciling the world in Jesus Christ. God is calling every ethnicity, and both women and men, to join in that ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:14-21; Gal 3:28 ), to be a multiethnic and redemptive community that shows the world what the world looks like in its redeemed state. This community joins together in mission, ministry, worship, and community. God calls the church to be a light to a divided and broken world, to witness to the world as it breaks down the dividing walls of animosity, hatred, fear, and discrimination (Eph 2:11-22 ). God is shaping the local and global church into the church of every nation, tribe, people, and language. One day we will all worship together as brothers and sisters before the throne of God (Rev 7:9-12 ). We seek to express this future in our life together today as we “put on the new self” (Col 3:10 ), both individually and corporately. Together we are renewed through the one in whom there is now no dividing distinctions, “but Christ is all, and is in all” (Col 3:11 ). Forgiveness, compassion, humility, kindness, gentleness, patience, justice, thankfulness, peace, worship, joy, and love, “which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Col 3:14 ), characterize our life together (see Col 3:1-17 ). We serve each other, caring for one another and honoring those whom the world may deem less honorable. Among God’s people those who have been neglected, marginalized, silenced, forgotten, exploited, and broken are treated with dignity, honor, love, and respect (1 Cor 12:12-31 ). As we embrace this theological, missional, and communal vision, we offer a compelling witness and life together in the world. We see this being lived out in churches around the world. When we think of New York City, we think of a cosmopolitan of diverse communities, ethnicities, and cultures.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  The Messiah unifies and renews his church through his divine life. “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (Jn 10:10 ). The Messiah doesn’t just offer the church new life—he infuses the church with his very life-giving presence and power. People from every nation, tribe, and tongue join to receive this life, made one in the Messiah. Colossians 2–3 contain warnings, promises, and commands. Persuasive arguments and empty ideologies are always trying to secure our allegiance and passions. These can be religious, political, cultural, or other types. But these are all empty deceptions that ensnare our hearts and lead to divisions, strife, and conflict among God’s people. These ideologies split the church, leading to judgmentalism, idolatry, legalism, immorality, greed, division, pride, fear, and brokenness. Instead Paul encourages us to lay hold of the Messiah, in whom all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form. In his life, death, resurrection, wisdom, and triumph is fullness of life. We have been buried and raised with him to new life—the full life only he can offer. We are called by the Messiah to lay hold of that life together, as one body. This is “putting on the new self,” personally and together, as a new people. Setting aside distinctions and divisions and empty arguments, we enter the fullness of life in God. We decide to live as a new humanity in which “Christ is all, and is in all” (Col 3:11 ). This life is manifest as a new way of being in the world—one of compassion, humility, grace, holiness, and hope. “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Col 3:14 ). One table. In Asian cultures, eating and sitting around the table is an act of welcome and hospitality. Sitting around the table is a vision of family, friends, and strangers coming together to share life together. The table is an important symbol of life, respect, and welcome. Traditionally in Korea, the table is usually low and round, and people sit on the floor around it. This means there is no need for chairs, so many people can gather around. If friends or strangers drop by, they are always welcome to sit at the table and join the meal. Furthermore, food is cut up into little pieces so that one can pick all of it up with chopsticks. There is no need for forks or knives to cut up the meat placed on one’s plate. The act of cutting up food while cooking also allows for visitors to come in anytime to join a meal. This is in contrast to the West, where families often need to know exactly how many people are going to eat in order to prepare the exact number of pieces of steak or chicken per person. In my (Grace) childhood in Korea, we all sat on the floor around the table.

• From From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (2019)

  On that day, says the LORD of hosts, you shall invite each other to come under your vine and fig tree. 3:10; see Mic. 4:4 For there shall be a sowing of peace; the vine shall yield its fruit, the ground shall give its produce, and the skies will give their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things. Just as you have been a cursing among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so I will save you and you shall be a blessing. Do not be afraid, but let your hands be strong. 8:12–13 The specificity of Israelite identity and the temple as YHWH’s dwelling place keep in purview the nations. Thus Zechariah envisions the nations “joining themselves” to Jerusalem as the wave of the future (2:11–12). The nations will seek God in Jerusalem and count on their connection to Jews: Many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the LORD of hosts in Jerusalem, and to entreat the favor of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts: In those days ten men from nations of every language shall take hold of a Jew, grasping his garment and saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” 8:22–23 On the other hand, those nations that have abused Israel will be struck down: These are the horns that scattered Judah, so that no head could be raised; but these have come to terrify them, to strike down the horns of the nations that lifted up their horns against the land of Judah to scatter its people. 1:21 Both the positive attachment to Jews and the elimination of the abusive “horns” suggest a profound turn in world history. That turn will come when the God of Israel, resident in the temple, acts to restore Israel and to reconfigure the nations. While the pressing issue for Zechariah, as for Haggai, is the temple, in fact the agenda of both is much greater than that. They lived and worked in a time when return and restoration for Jews could only have been a modest possibility. It was indeed “a day of small things” (4:10). No one could have imagined how Jews could be free in restoration, let alone influential in that world. But Zechariah has faith beyond the facts on the ground. The wondrous promises he enunciates will be accomplished not by human ingenuity, but only by the wonder of God’s inscrutable power: Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, says the LORD of hosts. 4:6

• From From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (2019)

  The abrasive oracles of chapters 7–8 end with an ominous expectation: “they will look to the earth, but will see only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness” (8:22). But that is followed by the anticipation of a restored Davidic ruler after the long period of Babylonian control (9:2–7). The “darkness” in which the people walked (v. 2) is the oppression of occupying armies. The “great light” is the new Davidic king who will rule in “justice and righteousness” (v. 7), the very qualities that had been absent in failed Jerusalem (see 5:7). Isaiah 10:28–34 traces in poetic fashion the advance of an invading army as it moves through the countryside on its way to Jerusalem. But then comes the oracle of 11:1–9 that anticipates a new David who will employ wisdom and perform justice and righteousness for the poor. In each of these cases, the book of Isaiah is arranged so that there is always an afterward. That afterward is explicit in 1:26, right at the outset of the book: “Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.” Thus the dramatic movement of the whole is (a) a descent into disaster (hell!) due to disobedience, and (b) an ascent to newness in which God’s rule will be enacted with temple protection and royal governance that attends to the vulnerable. To read the book of Isaiah is to follow this poetic imagination into a season of profound loss, and then to wait for a new gift of historical possibility that is given here in prospect. Most dramatically, the poet in chapter 35 imagines a new road home (v. 8). It will be a highway so safe that the disabled will sing for joy: Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. 35:5–6 All will be on their way home in safety and in joy: No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. 35:9–10 But not yet! After chapter 39 the book of Isaiah makes us wait. There is no immediate rescue, no prompt homecoming. Those who perpetrated the failure that led to the demise are given no quick respite. It will be one hundred and fifty years before we can resume the book of Isaiah in chapter 40. The wait is one of anguish, but it is not a wait in despair. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION 1.What was Israel’s sin?How do you think powerful people heard this threat from the prophet?