The Salvation longed for in Jesus' hometown of Nazareth in 4BC, and the American experiment in democracy for the last 250 years, have much in common. We have a nation built on principles central to Christianity. Let's flaunt them.
The first Advent was about people longing for life. Freedom from oppression by a foreign regime was a dominant concern. It was military, and it was economic, not unlike the British Crown's domination of the colonies in the 1770's. The Roman-orchestrated exploitation of Galilee, where Mary's hometown was located, makes our nation's current economic problems look like a picnic. The government had little respect for an individual's rights to pursue meaningful life for his/her family.
Jewish farming families of Galilee in 4 BC suffered loss of their farmland. They could no longer depend on the traditional Jewish Jubilee, nor on Roman law, to guarantee land access for survival. Shrewd tax collectors and loan brokers, Jewish wealthy elite of Sepphoris, 3 miles from Nazareth, conspired with the Roman occupation to foreclose on these subsistence farmers. Land was converted into greater profit in the Mediterranean global market of purple, linen, and wine. It was profitable to pick up loan-default farmland, select managers to hire from among the landless peasant throngs, and add acreage to acreage (documented in Myers, Binding the Strongman.)
The rich got richer, and the poor lost their means of survival. Most children of farmers found it hopeless to follow their parents' livelihood; they lacked the capital. The best Galilee farmland became a playground of the rich. So insurgency and terrorism arose, as recounted by Flavius Josephus, the first century historian and recruiter for the insurgency in Jesus' time.
Previously successful farmers, probably including Jesus' earthly parents, were forced to join the newly landless multitudes of peasant families who struggled for bread, safety from robbers, release from jail, a place to lay their heads at night, and freedom from military or insurgent recruiters who kidnapped their sons for war. These landless poor were at the bottom rung of society. The stigma of mismanagement, fault, and sin were wrapped up in devastating poverty. Jesus and Paul in the New Testament, and Moses and the prophets in the Old Testament, continually refer to these people as needing Salvation.
It's from this stigma of sin=indebtedness to which our translation of the Lord's Prayer gets it right: "Forgive us our debts as . . ." Jesus, following John's example, focused on these multitudes burdened with real debt and its sin stigma, rather than on those who would reward him with riches for his miracles.
But let's go back a few decades:
Enter Mary, Jesus' mother-to-be, with an amazing announcement. Deliverance from the downtrodden comes from God through real flesh-and-blood human beings, most pointedly, herself.
Mary's "Magnificat," KJV:
And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden:
For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;
As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.
The most amazing miracle in Mary's body was not the undoubted miraculous conception, but the fact that here was a woman of "hunger" and "low estate" whose womb contained the very chosen Messiah of God, who would lead his people—in fact, all nations—out of desperate poverty into the very light of God. Mary got it right about her Son.
Maybe this Advent is a time to wonder: With such a powerful connection between the most conservative, original Christian understanding of Salvation, and our American democracy, why don't we flaunt it?
For over a hundred years Christian leaders have struggled needlessly over the argument between a "salvation gospel" and a "social gospel." In fact, Jesus' Gospel never separated the two, but prioritized the social component of Salvation as did Mary, Jesus' mother. Prioritizing a futuristic Salvation in life after this life came into vogue only around the time the empire adopted Christianity as the only legal religion, in the fourth century AD.
Mary's status in society made her a prime choice by the very God of Creation to bring forth his Son, to turn upside down a political/religious/economic order that had devastated her own family, and that of the multitudes of farm families in Galilee. This "preferential option for the poor" in Mary's song has enormous sanction from the Psalms, the Prophets, Writings, and Moses. In modern times, the Catholic church has led Christianity back to this most conservative theological bias, for the poor.
The Bible seems to have one package of God's acts of "Salvation" that does not differentiate between the current social/political trauma and desire for life beyond this current life. Often diminished by modern Bible teachers, it's the oldest and most original understanding. It includes the whole person, family, community, nation and the world in the here and now. It's in more than half of all the chapters in the Bible, so would be difficult to ignore were it not for the limits of the English language in translation from the original Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew. It's also thoroughly researched by Bible scholars representing all denominational perspectives.*
The modern definition is like the frosting on the cake, which reminds me of my grandkids and birthday cake. They focus on the frosting. Paul describes it as a profoundly important additional mystery of the Gospel.
Some authors and titles alluding this more comprehensive Biblical understanding of human sin and of its remedy, Salvation:
Dorothy Day, Selected Writings*
Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down*
Tayor, The Executed God
Carter, Matthew and Empire
Heschel, The Prophets
Romero, The Violence of Love*
Wink, The Powers that Be*
Stark, The Rise of Christianity
Swartley, Covenant of Peace
Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament
Crossan, God and Empire
Nolan, Jesus Before Christianity
Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist
Wengst, Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus Christ
McLaren, Everything Must Change*
Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation
Myers, Binding the Strong Man
Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity
Horsely, Jesus and Empire
Berrigan, The Kings and Their Gods
Padilla, The Local Church Agent of Transformation*
Yoder, The Politics of Jesus
Whiston, translator, The Works of Josephus
*Start with these
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David Graber
Hardin, MT
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
http://www.bighorncountynews.com/clergy.html
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