Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
For more features from the life of our diocese, check Diocesanlife....ONLINE; and Bethlehem
News.
Jesus Did Not Possess
Religious Clout
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Diocesan Life, December 2000
There are a number of thoughts to share with you this month.
Before all, I must say that it is a joy to greet you as we prepare
to celebrate our Lord's incarnation at the close of this Jubilee
Year. The celebration will feel a little different this year because
The Fourth Sunday in Advent is also Christmas Eve, something that
doesn't happen too often, and on that day we will have lots of
church. All the better to keep us focused.
Like many of you, I was deeply moved and also somewhat sickened
to learn firsthand from Bishop Manasseh of the seriousness of the
persecution of Christians in Sudan, and even more distressed to
learn that as far as the U.S. Secretary of State is concerned, "the
persecution of Christians in Africa is not marketable to the American
people."
As I write this, we still do not know who the next president of
the United States will be, but I am informed by an expert on Africa
that both Messrs. Bush and Gore have a much more positive attitude
about this issue. We need to work together to keep our government
aware of priority of just peace in the Sudan.
The infant Christ is called the Prince of Peace. I believe that
in our new-found relationship with the Sudanese church, we have
received an unambiguous call to do all we can to help peace come
to Kajo-Keji and the other dioceses of the Sudanese church.
The trustees of the Talbot Hall Fund have made a five-year commitment
to support a full-time missioner for children, a first for our
diocese. This person will also have the responsibility to lead
us in advocacy for children on the local and Commonwealth levels.
I speak for all of us, I am sure, in thanking the Talbot Hall trustees
for their willingness to try something new for the welfare of children.
One of the mistakes we make in reading the story of Jesus' birth
is in understanding the social status of Mary and Joseph.
Joseph was a "builder," not a "carpenter" in our modern sense
of the word. There isn't that much wood in the Holy Land to start
with, and most construction was done with other materials.
Joseph was not a middle-class business person, self-employed and
dealing in a service. The word the New Testament uses for Joseph's
occupation is the word for a very low-paid occupation, not entirely
above the subsistence level. In fact, ancient sources tell us that
it cost more annually to maintain a household slave than people
like Joseph would earn in that year.
Jesus did not enjoy upward mobility. He reports himself as owning
no real estate, and not even having a place to call home. Christ
walked among us with no "power" except truth, love, and faithfulness.
The people who have understood those tools have been the ones to
make a difference, and in our time we think of Gandhi, Martin Luther
King, Dag Hammarskjold, and Mother Teresa as people who have made
important changes in our society.
Jesus did not possess religious clout in the ordinary sense of
the word: our thinking about Jesus seldom includes the fact that
in the religion of his society, he was and remained a lay person,
outside the official circles of rabbis or priests.
This is why I grow nervous when people talk about imbalances of
power. Those words are usually invoked when judges want to short-circuit
the democratic legislative process or Christians want to operate
by principles that are essentially violent.
It is a serious error to turn one's back on the foundational principles
of one's religion for "practical reasons."
We have among us people who refuse to remember that when Peter
wanted to defend Jesus by force, Jesus not only rebuked him, but
cured the wound Peter had inflicted on his enemy. When Jesus spoke
of turning the other cheek he was in what must be termed dead earnest.
God came to be with us in a harmless and vulnerable infant, someone
of whom nobody in their right mind should have been afraid.
He never insulated himself against the realities of life or sought
to crush an opponent.
Christmas 2000 asks us if we will get the point and make it real
in our lives.
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