{"id":7989,"date":"2022-08-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mwc-cmm.org\/jesus-message-of-resilience-and-liberation\/"},"modified":"2025-02-05T18:53:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T18:53:32","slug":"jesus-message-resilience-and-liberation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mwc-cmm.org\/en\/stories\/jesus-message-resilience-and-liberation\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus’ message of resilience and liberation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading: Matthew 5:3-20<\/em><\/p>\n

In June 1981, our family moved to Cochabamba, Bolivia, where my parents were to teach in a Baptist seminary that wanted more Anabaptist input.<\/p>\n

We arrived at a particularly raucous point in Bolivian history. In July 1980, Luis Garc\u00eda Meza, a commander of the Bolivian army, led a coup d\u2019etat, initiating a brutal Pinochet-style regime. Meza only ruled for about 13 months: due to pressure from the international community, he was forced to resign in August 1981. His friend and fellow army general, Celso Terrelio, succeeded Meza with almost an equally repressive rule.<\/p>\n

Like other dictators, Garc\u00eda Meza introduced a \u201cbanned book list.\u201d This move was an attempt to squelch that which could potentially influence people\u2019s thinking, which could also then challenge his rule. Interestingly, Meza included Matthew chapters 5-7 \u2013 the Sermon on the Mount \u2013 in this \u201cbanned list\u201d of books.<\/p>\n

The problem, of course, was that my father was supposed to teach the book of Matthew. This led to many significant conversations within the seminary. Would they listen to the government and therefore focus on another book of the Bible? Would they plan to teach Matthew but skip over these three chapters?<\/p>\n

They eventually decided to ask the foreigner to teach the course (including the Sermon on the Mount)!<\/p>\n

But this came with risks, especially as Meza\u2019s government actively silenced the voices of those whom it perceived as challenging the narrative that it sought to instill. In fact, Meza\u2019s chief repressor Colonel Luis Arce who served as the Minister of Interior cautioned all Bolivians who opposed the new order by saying that they \u201cshould walk around with their written will under their arms!\u201d<\/p>\n

Why would a dictator want to ban these three chapters? Why did he find these chapters threatening?<\/p>\n

There have been interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount that do not challenge power.<\/p>\n

When my wife and I served as youth pastors, The 700 Club, a weekday American television program made its way onto televisions screens in our little area of southern Ontario (Canada). Airing since 1966, it describes itself as \u201ca news\/ magazine program that has the variety and pacing of a morning show\u2026. It also features indepth investigative reporting\u2026[and] covers major events affecting our nation and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

One day, out of curiosity, I watched a program that focused on Matthew 5:13-16.<\/p>\n

What I found striking about the host\u2019s explanation was the way in which he interpreted the categorical statements of Matthew as though it was speaking to American Christians.<\/p>\n

\n

You are the salt of the earth\u2026 You are the light of the world\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Americans, he suggested, had an obligation to share about the American way of life. This Godordained American way of life, with its emphasis on freedom, economic prosperity and of course democracy provides an example to the rest of the world, according to the host. It offers, the host suggested, American hope that provides flavour and light for the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

This program demonstrated how easy it is to interpret the Sermon on the Mount, and the biblical story in general, as an expression of Manifest Destiny, which is itself a product of nationalism. The Western missionary enterprise, notes the late South African missiologist David Bosch, assumed the superiority of Western culture and that God has chosen Western nations as standard bearers.1<\/span> \u201cThe nation-state,\u201d he argues, \u201creplaced the holy church and the holy empire.\u201d2<\/span><\/p>\n

Kelly Brown Douglas \u2013 a Black, womanist theologian in the United States \u2013 depicts this mindset as \u201cAmerican exceptionalism,\u201d grown from seeds of the white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon myth. \u201cThe \u2018city on the hill\u2019 that the early Americans were building,\u201d she says, \u201cwas nothing less than a testament to Anglo-Saxon chauvinism,\u201d3<\/span> that shaped democracy though a particular perception as to how the country should be structured defined by race;4<\/span> the repercussions of which we continue to see today.<\/p>\n

Part of the issue \u2013 as my students at university hear often \u2013 is the tendency to not take the socio-political context or the literary context into consideration when reading and interpreting Scripture. The host of The 700 Club, for example, assumed the \u201cyou\u201d in the \u201cyou are the salt of the earth\u2026 You are the light of the world\u2026\u201d to refer to him and\/or American Christians as Americans.<\/p>\n

But, if we pay attention to the text and the flow of Jesus\u2019 words, the \u201cyou\u201d refers to the final Beatitude: \u201cyou who are persecuted for my sake\u201d (Matthew 5:11). It is those \u201cyou\u201d who will function as salt and light in this world.5<\/span> It turns this passage into a revolutionary and subversive tool.<\/p>\n

Jesus is very clever in his preaching style. Note how Jesus highlights a different logic. Those who are \u201cblessed\u201d are the ones who typically would not have mattered in society (the poor, the meek, the merciful). They are the ones who do not first come to mind (those who mourn, those who are pure in heart, those who are the peacemakers).<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
Sunderland Mennonite Church, Dhamtari Photo: Supplied<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Remember that the type of blessing Jesus talks about is not something passive that one simply receives, but rather is active and impels people to get up and move. The Beatitudes highlight an alternative logic that moves away from the desire toward seeing ourselves as \u201cexceptional\u201d precisely because that would then replace God who is the very source of exceptionality, salty flavour and light in our world<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t seem as though Jesus encourages us to determine who is salt and who is not, or who is light and who is not. Rather, Jesus makes these categorical statements as a way to describe when someone serves as salt and light; when someone embodies Jesus\u2019 alternative logic.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Jesus\u2019 use of \u201cyou\u201d \u2013 \u201cyou are the salt of the earth\u2026 You are the light of the world\u2026\u201d \u2013 moves away from an individualized understanding and highlights the corporate nature of this claim. As New Testament scholar Douglas Hare notes, \u201cYou are salt, yes, but for the earth, not for yourselves. Likewise you are light, but for the whole world, not for a closed fellowship.\u201d6<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201ccommunity as a whole is challenged to fulfill its corporate mission of serving as salt and light for the world\u2026. It is one we must work at together.\u201d7<\/span><\/p>\n

When we adopt Jesus\u2019 alternative logic as our vision and embrace our communal walk to participate in it, we liberate ourselves from narratives that destroy, demean, exploit and exclude. In other words, we listen to the voices of those who are oppressed, poor and marginalized precisely so that we may hear God\u2019s cry. Things are not as they should be; we must continue to struggle to make things right. Jesus\u2019 logic challenges the clamour of other narratives that seek not only our attention, but our allegiance.<\/p>\n

In standing up to these other narratives, narratives that seek to maintain \u201cexceptionalism,\u201d cause injustice, and create systems of oppression we embody an emancipatory politics. This term from Jacques Ranci\u00e8re (a French philosopher) means a form of politics that ruptures and disrupts the \u201cwhat is\u201d with the \u201cwhat can be.\u201d In other words, it challenges systems that perpetuate death, exclusion and violence, exposing the contingencies on which they rest, and reasserts an alternative political agency that embodies the future God desires in and for this world.<\/p>\n

At the end of teaching the book of Matthew at the Baptist seminary in Bolivia, my father asked whether Luis Garc\u00eda Meza, the Bolivian dictator, was right in banning Matthew chapters 5-7. The students all responded with a resounding \u201cyes!\u201d These chapters provide the seeds of a revolutionary logic that would challenge Meza\u2019s \u2013 or any dictator\u2019s \u2013 rule.<\/p>\n

Jesus invites us to participate in a community called to resiliently embody Jesus\u2019 subversive and revolutionary logic of liberation in our world.<\/p>\n

\u201a\u00c4\u00eeAndrew G. Suderman is secretary of the Peace Commission, Assistant Professor of Theology, Peace, and Mission at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Pennsylvania, and the Director of Global Partnerships for Mennonite Mission Network.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Peace<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

1. David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004), 298.
\n2 David Bosch, Transforming Mission, 299.
\n3 Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2015), 10.
\n4 Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 10.
\n5 Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew: Interpretation (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 44.
\n6 Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, 44.
\n7 Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, 44.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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