During
my college days I had the honour of being part of the Moody Bible Institute’s
Men’s Choir. Of all the songs we sung, one in particular resonates still to
this day. A classic Negro Spiritual, “Were you There.” The words were simple,
but the power of the song—it still touches me today! We had a slide show going
while we sang which contained various images of the cross. You could sense the
impact on the congregation as we sang.
Were you
there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you
there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Sometimes
it makes me tremble
Tremble
Tremble
Were you
there when they crucified my Lord?
I
trembled as we sang. I would often reflect on how, in a way, I was there.
Preachers would remind us that we were there. Our sins are what Christ carried
to the cross. My sins were there. And, it has often been said, I virtually
nailed him to the cross with my sins. Was I there? Yes, I was there. And I
tremble at the thought of how God carried my sins, died this ignoble death—all
for me.
Over the
years in my faith journey, God has given me the privilege of serving in his
church, and more recently, serving those on the margins of our society through
social service agencies. The journey has been one of constant discovery,
constant learning—and unlearning—as my faith deepens and my amazement at the
cross expands. Now, as an executive director of a nonprofit community-based
youth agency, I continue to seek to know God as he has revealed himself to us
through our crucified Lord, Jesus.
My jobs
have carried me to the margins of society. People are found on the margins of every
society. In Canada (and the USA), the margins are typically defined by various
factors, including race, identity, social status, education, and documentation
(to name a few). I have had internationally trained doctors whose practice in
their country of origin was profound, weeping in my office as they struggle to
gain the credentials needed to practice in Canada. I have lobbied for friends
to gain status in Canada and then be reunited with loved ones left behind. I
have witnessed first-hand the struggle and journey of youth coming to Canada
with gaps in their education, lonely for their social circle left behind, and having
limited capacity to communicate in English. And, most recently, I have
journeyed with those who experience the depravity of poverty, the insult of
racism, conflict with the law, and the despair of hopelessness. This 20-year
journey has marked me. It has pushed me to ponder the critical importance of a
diversity of voices as we learn about and worship God. And it has caused me to
critically reflect on the way the church has been formed, and our theological
reflection shaped, not by people on the margins of society, but for the last
1500 years, by people in the center of power.
Since
the late fourth century the theological enterprise has been conducted from the center,
defined, articulated and enforced by those with power—ecclesial, political,
economic. It is not the oppressed who gave voice to the creeds passed down
through the ages. These statements of theological belief were conceptualized by
those with positions that gave them the power to determine what was acceptable
as true and that which was to be rejected. It was not those on the margin who
determined what constitutes orthodoxy and what must be rejected as heresy.
These decisions belonged to those in the center, invested with authority and
capable of exercising power to enforce their decisions.
This is
not to say that what has been passed down through the ages is therefore to be
rejected. Far from it! It is with good
reason that we recognize the Gospel of John as inspired rather than the Gospel
of Thomas. Those who eschew the decisions of the historic church on such
matters seem to me to be advocating an anarchist approach to theology. Such
postmodern thought gone rampant leaves us with no sense of what we can believe,
deconstructing every decision and questioning anything determined by those with
the will to power. Just as the modernistic, enlightenment experiment leads to
hubris, so the unchecked journey down postmodernity leads to a wasteland that
is formless and void.
On the
other hand, postmodernity can bring a deeper perspective, especially when
understood as a correction to the hegemony of modernity. Postmodernity
challenges us to revisit the margins. It requires us to understand that
everything we say, every formulation we articulate, is the product of a
particularly set of experiences, at a particular time, by a particular person
with a particular understanding of the times in which these thoughts are being
made and codified in a particular language that itself bears witness to the
culture and era in which it is located. And this is important, reminding us of
some critical aspects of the Christian faith.
A key
distinguishing aspect of Christianity is the way God has consistently earthed
and enculturated his revelation. Each of the books of the Bible were written by
particular people at particular times in multiple languages. As Lamin Sanneh so
brilliantly explains in his magnificent work, Translating the Message, it is
the very fact that the Bible contains four languages in its original text—that
Jesus’ words themselves were translated from Aramaic to Greek in the writing of
the New Testament—that has led the church to affirm the need to translate the
Scriptures into the language of each of the cultures in which it is proclaimed.
And, by so doing, it invites each church to conceive of the gospel in a manner
that is relevant and speaks into their culture. Jesus himself, Paul reminds us
in Galatians, was born at a specific time, in a specific province, to a
specific family—all determined by God to be the ideal setting for his ultimate
revelation to humanity.
It was Jürgen
Moltmann in his work, The Crucified God,
who reminded me that “Were you There” was similarly composed and sung in a
particular time, by a particular people, and carried a particular weight for
them. I tremble to reflect on this as I remember singing the song. That song
was composed and sung by African slaves in the southern United States, dating
back to the 17th century. Singing the words of the verse, “Were you
there when they nailed him to the tree,” would have indeed made them tremble.
That song was written and sung by people who experienced loved ones being hung
on a tree, lynched and strung up for disobeying a slave master or seeking to
escape a life of abject servitude. Were you there? For the African American,
the crucifixion left an indelible imprint. Jesus was with them in their
suffering, and they were there, in his suffering. This shared experience made
the gospel come to life for millions of oppressed people. The sad irony is that
their oppressors claimed to worship the same God whose ultimate revelation of
himself was through our Crucified Lord.
The Holy
Spirit in Hebrews 13 reminds us that Christ himself was crucified outside the
city, as one marginalized by the powers of the day. So it is that, under the
shadow of the cross, those of us who have enjoyed the privilege of being in the
mainstream need to learn to listen to the oppressed, to the voices on the
margins. Christ himself was oppressed. The early church was oppressed. Our foundational
documents, the New Testament, were written by an oppressed people. And the
early understandings and practices of the church were born into a community
that was oppressed. To pursue a deeper understanding of the gospel, then, I need
to listen to the various perspectives of all who encounter Jesus through the
Spirit inspired word, especially those who know what it means to be oppressed.
They see the Scriptures from a different angle, an angle I am incapable of
comprehending without their guidance. This is not to make light of their
oppression, but to remember the deep seated value of each person who God has
created, regardless of his or her station in life. Each has the Spirit. Each
can lead others to see the vast wisdom of God in a deeper way. Only by allowing
ourselves to be humble enough to learn from the margins will we find ourselves
growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, united as one body
across all lines that separate humans from one another, exposing the various
compromises to our faith that invariably creeps into any human efforts to
embody the kingdom, and better enabling us to be all that God has called us to
be in this broken world.
