I've been reading out of The Epistle of Barnabas lately. It provides a stark image for those seeking to promote social justice in manners so dramatic, I was surprised. It calls for people to act towards one another in the most dramatic and revealing ways. It demands we tear up unjust contracts and untie the knots of forced agreements, set free the oppressed. In other words, who in our society is oppressed? The poor, the disenfranchised. If the church were to take this seriously, it's call into action would be dramatic. Tearing up contracts. Mortgage corruption is one area I can see impacted. I read that bank robbers during the depression would destroy mortgage agreements which would prevent banks from repossessing poor people's homes. This excerpt would seem to make this a just action, just as MLK's spiritual voice challenging an unjust nation would markedly represent the forces of our community. I see great similarity between Matin Luther King Jr.'s prophetic fire (along with his spiritual success for today, Cornel Wes, Christopher Hedges, Lawrence Lessig, the late Aaron Swartz, Glen Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, and others fighting injustice in our communities) and this Epistle's emphatic message of opposing resolutely those unjust bonds that bind us in this life. We are compelled to not merely pray passively for their revocation, but to actively seek their remission or outright annihilation. They bind us and prohibit us from fully experiencing and participating in our Lord's plan for humanity, therefore, we must act fearlessly in opposition to these dark forces and challenge ourselves to act outwardly in full opposition of any and all unjust laws within our community, no matter the personal costs.
It compels each of us to become militant, nonviolent protestors and resisters of the unjust, and to clearly articulate it to one another and the world.
It also compels us not merely to passively feed and cloth the poor, but to directly take action in a way I think most of us would find unacceptable or extremely uncomfortable in the 21st century. We are compelled to "bring the homeless into your house, and if you see someone of lowly status, do not dispose him, nor shall the members of your house or family do so." Imagine the implications: when you pass a homeless person on the side of the road, you are compelled to accept them into your home. That's scary. That's extremely radical, but it also demonstrates the faith of a true believer, something I fear I am in short supply most of the time. People in my church are always talking about protecting oneself, but this would make it seem that it is G-d whom protects and that we must act fearlessly in opposition to the injustice of the world no matter the personal threat to life or limb. Whether it risks ourselves or our families, we are compelled to act for G-d promises to protect us and act tirelessly in this way as G-d does for us.
It would seem that Nietzsche was correct in his observations of the German people, "G-d is dead." At least, in our hearts and minds, for we do not believe. We do not act as though G-d were alive and dwelling among us. We act as though we were atheists. We lack conviction.
I remember watching a television story about a woman who was held up in her home and who had such faith in G-d that she cared for, blessed,and eventually eased the suffering of the man who had broken into her home, for he was greatly suffering, as do many, and took drastic actions. She had no fears, for she believed. Can we say as much of ourselves as this woman or the ancients?
Taken from chapter 3.
3 But to us he says: " 'Behold, this is the fast I have chosen,' says the Lord: 'Break every unjust bond, untie the knots of forced agreements, set free those who are oppressed, and tear up every unjust contract. Share your bread with the hungry, and if you see someone naked, clothe him; bring the homeless into your house, and if you see someone of lowly status, do not despise him, nor shall the members of your house or family do so.
4 " 'Then your light will break forth early in the morning, and your healing will rise quickly, and righteousness we will go before you, and the glory of God will surround you.
5 " 'Then you will cry out, and God will hear you; while you are still speaking he will say, "Here I am"--if you rid yourself of oppression and scornful gestures and words of complaint, and give your bread to the hungry from the heart, and have mercy on a downtrodden soul.' "[Is a 58:6-10]
6 So for this reason, brothers, he who is very patient, when he foresaw how the people whom he had prepared in his Beloved would believe in all purity, revealed everything to use in advance, in order that we might not shipwreck ourselves by becoming , as it were, "proselytes" to their law.
. . .
I am compelled by memory the fleeing of neighbors seeking aid from Mexico and the common homeless poor of Portland who are treated as less than human. Those who are still standing look to their suffering brethren as though they were less than human, less than living, breathing creatures of G-d's great mystery, less than even the rocks they with great care, placed so neatly in their vaults within complexes within deep holes in the ground. We are compelled to resist these injustices in whole and part.
The church has failed greatly to speak with prophetic fire on the matters of the suffering and our need to act justly. The level of fire contained in this short excerpt is far more compelling than anything I've seen written within my local community in some time? It is radical. It commands and compels us to resist injustice and inequity, but to also take an active hand in its revocation. The author continues in chapter 4:
We must, therefore, investigate the present circumstances very carefully and seek out the things that are able to save us. Let us, therefore, avoid absolutely all the works of lawlessness lest the works of lawlessness overpower us, and let us hate the deception of the present age, so that we may be loved in the age to come.
2 Let us give no rest to our soul that results in being able to associate with sinners and evil persons, lest we become like them.
It is at this point that I feel that I must stop and emphasize that we are not to despise those who commit evil acts, but to not allow our souls to rest, lest we become like or are capable in some way of knowing the minds of sinners. We are to be so good by our actions as previously stated that we are ignorant of their minds or dispositions in anything from a foeign construct.
3 The last stumbling block is at hand, concerning which the Scriptures speak, as Enoch says. For the Master has cut short times and the days for this reason, that his Beloved might make haste and come into his inheritance.
4 And so also speaks the Prophet: "Ten kingdoms will reign over the earth, and after them a little king will arise, who will subdue three of the kings with a single blow." [Daniel 7:24]
5 Similarly Daniel says, concerning the same one: "And I saw the fourth beast, wicked and powerful and more dangerous than all the beasts of the earth, and how to ten horns sprang up from it, and from these a little offshoot of a horn, and how it subdued three of the large horns with a single blow." [Daniel 7:7-8]
6 You ought, therefore, to understand. Moreover, I also ask you this, as one of you and who in a special way loves all of you more than my own souls: be on your guard now, and do not be like certain people; that is, do not continue to pile up your sins while claiming that your covenant is irrevocably yours, because in fact those people lost it completely in the following way, when Moses had just received it.
7 For the Scripture says: "And Moses was on the mountain fasting for forty days and forty nights, and he received the Covenant from the Lord, stone tablets inscribed by the fingers of the hands of the Lord."
8 But by turning to idols they lost it. For thus says the Lord: "Moses, go down quickly, because your peoplhim whom you let out of Egypt, have broken the Law." [Exod 34:28; 31:18] And Moses understood and hurled the two tablets from his hands, and the content was broken in pieces, in order to the covenant of the love of the beloved Jesus might be sealed in our heart, in hope inspired by faith in him.
. . .
I fail in my own way at this. We are all self-righteous. Yet, in America our self obsessed self-righteousness is contemptible. As suffering builds up by the day, as the homeless continue to file around doorways and dry places, as the bellies of our people go unfilled and the minds of our youth go empty and without challenge, interest, or guidance and understanding, many to be flung into corporate prisions for profit whereby they will be worked for a gentlemen's pocket money, we stand on the parapits of our self-obsessed glory, heaped up by luck and war, and profess to the world about our merits. As our children lay suffering in the streets before us in masses of blood, spilled in wars both at home and abroad, with what arrogance we speak. The gangs of our cibattlbattle for purpose, meaning, and a fighting chbatt. How similar they are to the young men and women who sign those seven deadly pages to fight wars abroad for the "protection of American freedom", freedom that amounts in the minds of the many who have fought to "the protection of the wealthy's right to plunder the Earth unresisted for their personal benefit. Interests opposed to the sacred order of people chosen in their stories to exemplify the highest charactet imaginable. In the process, our young sacrifice blood, sweat, and tears as their fallen brethren succumb to their wounds, not for lack of fearlessness or weakness, but by the ultimate betrayal of those sworn to uphold justice and Nature's Law in our world.
We are called by G-d to oppose these ultimately destructive forces in our waking lives. We are called out to deeply examine our world and to see it for the glory that G-d envisioned, not merely for our personal delusions. There is so much more to it than we could ever possibly imagine, so much more than the metaphors of science or religion can contain. Let us not succumb to the weaknesses of our age and instead transcend the material suffering of this life for the life that is to come by fulfilling a glimpse of that ultimate splendor here today? For, "All men are, by nature, equal and free: no one has a right to any authority over another without his consent: all lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it: such consent was given with a view to ensure and to increase the happiness of the governed, above what they could enjoy in an independent and unconnected state of nature. The consequence is, that the happiness of the society is the first law of every government." (“Considerations,” August 17, 1774, James Wilson.)
