Currents in Theology and Mission: Father of the year award?

I talked with a pastor recently whose son is contemplating studying for the ministry. Though the son is only a senior in high school, he is already--and appropriately--on the seminary's mailing list of prospective students. But what lingers in my memory from this conversation is the deal the pastor has cooked up. Every summer he invites his son to read a weighty and challenging theological book--and pays him for it! After all, the pastor remarked sagely, I pay him for carrying out the garbage. Why shouldn't I pay him to do something constructive?

Having served many years in the office of father--and now grandfather--I have heard of much worse ideas. In fact, I have published smaller ideas. Maybe the children of light are finally catching up in our generation with the children of this world. Since I give all my awards anonymously, I invite and welcome other nominations for "parent of the year."

James M. Brandt highlights the social witness of the famed 19th-century theologian and pastor Friedrich Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher rejected the death penalty, violent revolution, wars of aggression, forceful colonization, divorce, slavery, dehumanization of workers, competitiveness in society, and gambling. Schleiermacher's mature theology gives significant place to the active, ethical expression of the faith; his greatest impact on his contemporaries, politically and in other arenas, was from the pulpit. (In addition to his professorial duties, he was the senior pastor of a 12,000-member congregation. Of course, faculty committees had not yet been invented.... But I digress.) He inspired the church and the people to political activism in the causes of the liberation of Prussia and then its reform. Ironically, the activism eventually adopted by the church moved in a much more conservative direction than Schleiermacher advocated. Faithfulness does not assure effectiveness.

Paul Rorem writes about contemporary discussions of spirituality against the backdrop of Augustine's own views on the subject in his Confessions. The problem with much spirituality is that it often starts with our own "spiritual-ness" rather than with God. The core issue is on who God is and what God does. Augustine's ministry depended on God's faithfulness, not his own. A recent academic emphasis on "negative theology" is being used to destabilize all talk of God so that spirituality becomes a matter of private preference based on "irrefutable religious experience." But Luther argued that because God's transcendence is beyond us, we must look to God as revealed in Christ and as revealed on the cross. The essential emphasis is not on what we do or know or offer but on what God has done and offers us. What does this mean for pastoral practice? Should we call communion the Lord's Supper or Eucharist? Should we say the "words of institution" or the Eucharistic Prayer? Should we continue offertory processions or have processions after the Lord's Supper out the door into the world?

Mark Thomsen asserts that a theology molded by the 1 6th-century context has the potential for constructing a dynamic foundation for a contemporary vision of the mission of God. Mission outreach should focus on lay persons as they engage the world of home, work, and society in the name of Jesus. God is not only transcendent creator but is present "in, with, and under" creation. Only a church with the capacity for cultural change and adaptability has the potential for being an instrument of the mission of God. An authentic theology of the cross affirms that life and the transformation of life, not suffering and death, are the ultimate purposes of God. A theology of the cross for the 21st century will use the theme of dying and rising to speak of dying to personal, ethnic, and nationalistic dreams in order to participate in a mission rooted in God's vision of a new creation. Our love must be moved by the pain of the other and enter into the suffering of the other for the transformation of life. In the struggle against evil, God limits Godself to the power of noncoercive, persevering love. In relating to people of other faiths the church will denounce every manifestation of imperialistic Christendom and will be instead a serving and reconciling community. Limiting salvation to those who encounter the Jesus of the Gospels is placing Jesus in a very tiny theological package addressed to a small fraction of the human family within a small corner of the universe. We Christians may expect to be blessed by people within every other religious family.

Kosuke Koyama also wrestles with a definition of mission for our century. He affirms that the church exists for the sake of the world, not the world for the church. In the welfare of the world the church will find its welfare. Any claim to exclusivity or religious triumphalism will eventually run aground on the expansive vision of the biblical God. The apostolic message is that healing space was created through the Christ on the cross as God's response to human violence. Wherever there is violence, there is a false god. It is the church's task to imitate this extraordinary divine model of the self-sacrificing cross for the welfare of the world. There is no individualism in a global context; we live only in the context of the human family and human unity. We are called to participate in the creation of eucharistic shalom space for all people.

David Zersen tells the story of Mato Kosyk (1853-1940), a Sorbian (Slavic) immigrant to the United States, who is now regarded in his homeland as its greatest poet. Sorbs in this country usually called themselves Wends, but that term has acquired a pejorative ring in Europe today. The development of Sorbian identity and self-consciousness greatly influenced young Kosyk. Sorbian language has been forbidden in many centuries, most recently in Nazi Germany, where one could not write or sing in Sorbian. Before Kosyk came to this country he had edited more than two hundred Sorbian hymns for their hymnal and had written many poems. He studied at the German Lutheran Theological Seminary in Chicago Lawn, operated by the General Synod. After this seminary merged with what was eventually to be called Central Seminary in Nebraska, its legacy became part of LSTC in 1967. Kosyk served as pastor at a number of very small Lutheran congregations until he retired to a farm he owned in Oklahoma in 1913. Married in 1890, Kosyk had one son who drowned at an early age. He married again, at 85, two years before his death. He wrote poetry during three periods in the United States, often filled with longing for his native Lusatia and a desire to go home there, and also to heaven. His five volumes of poetry have not been translated into English. Unfortunately, during his lifetime, the diversity and idiosyncrasy he represents were suppressed, not prized. Concordia University at Austin has issued a call for papers to be presented at a symposium on September 19, 2003, on "Mato Kosyk and the Slavic Writer in the New World. (For a brochure write to dzersen@aol.com.)

Somewhere along the line, I hope the young professional reader of theology mentioned in the first paragraph above will become a true amateur, reading purely for the love of theology and for the love of the God unfolded in that theology. By that time his father will probably be a grandfather and can start recruiting the next generation and competing for my grandfather-of-the year award. Unless, of course, I have already retired that trophy by then.