A PARTISAN GOD John M, Buchanan
Luke 138-56 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
December Il, 1983 Columbus, Ohio

It is not the easiest assignment in the world to engage your mind with the
idea that there is a God who cares. We are far better at discussing God in the
remote and passionless language of the classroom. We call God the "first cause,"
and “ground of being," the “holy other." And then comes Advent and the remarkable
suggestion that God cares, that the “first cause" and "ground of being” is actually
better described in parental terms, that Ged loves in fact, that when it comes to
individual human beings and the whole lot of us together, the race, the human family,
God is definitely a partisan.

In the history of remarkable ideas, that is a peculiarly Hebrew suggestion,
That God has a heart, that God can't help responding to human need, that God always
favors the underdog and inclines his ear to the downtrodden, the weak, the poor,
is a Jewish contribution. The deities of ancient people were at best ambivalent
about the humana condition, A person who wanted some attention had to pound
away at the heavenly door, as it were or offer up persuasive tribute in the form
of sacrifices just to get a day in court. But the children of Israel, the Hebrews,
when they wrote about their experience as slaves in Egypt and their remarkable
deliverance told about Jahweh, the God who could hear the groaning of his people
in bondage, and who was touched by that groaning, and who was motivated to throw
in on their side and help them get out of there, The astonishing claim in the Exodus
story isn't that the Hebrews beat the Egyptian army across a swamp called the
Sea of Reeds, but that the Lord God of creation heard their cries and cared about
their plight. The God of the Bible, from the beginning to the end, is one who has
compassion, who responds to those in need, those particularly who know they are
in need,

Early in this remarkable story an anti-hero emerges. If Ged is partisan to
the needy, the opposite of the needy appears as a bit of a problem.) The anomaly
in the Bible, the one who is missing the point,is the one who doesn't need God or
thinks he doesn't need God. The Bible uses a series of catch words for these people:
words like "the proud, the mighty, the vain." Often it is those who are influential,
powerful, wealthy, who seem to miss the point and who end up out of touch, out
of the picture,

in the first century these ideas resonated deeply in the hearts of a people
who were under the thumb of Rome, whose streets were occupied by Roman Legions,
whose economy had been pressed into Roman service. In the Palestine of the first
century, God's partisanship for his needy, oppressed people was a powerful idea,

a4 by WS

So it is that heke ba peasant maid visits her cousin Elizabeth, and describes
her pregnancy in a wonderful hymn using very partisan language: “He has scattered
the proud, he has put down the mighty, he has filled the hungry with good things,
the rich he has sent empty away.” I fervently hope that Mr. Meese takes a few
minutes off from the important work of sharing his observations with the President
of the United States this Advent and reads the Mapnificat - in counterpoint, one
hopes further, with a recent report issued by the mayors of the cities of this country
which identifies hunger as the most pressing problem confronting us and national
disgrace.

Hy ’

~2-

The meeting between young Mary and her elderly cousin Elizabeth is a highly
stylized encounter, painted thousands of times, memorialized in the heavenly beauty
of J. 5. Bach's "Magnificat." Mary's hymn ~ "My soul magnifies the Lord" is one
of four interesting canticles in the opening section of Luke's Gespel, And many
believe that it was used liturgically by the early church,

It is beautiful poetry and it contains a clear expression of the remarkable
idea of God's passion, God's partisanship, The birth of Mary's son is presented in
a way that seems to advocate the cause of the downtrodden. You don't have to
read between the Hnes: there is no attempt to disguise the partisanship. With talk
like "scattering the proud and pulling the mighty from their thrones" in the air
it was no wonder King Herod was interested in eliminating the baby as quickly
as possible.

One way to deal with this perplexing and disturbing hymn is to transpose
Hterally, to see the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the vehicle of social upheaval and
revolution, And, in fact, the downtrodden, the poor, the oppressed have always
read themselves in this text. It is no accident that the Virgin Mary is adored and
venerated with extraordinary passion in countries where poverty and political oppres-
sion are the norm. You can't read the Bible, after all, from the perspective of
@ Foor person and not be interested at least in a day when "the hungry are filled
and the rich are sent empty away.” You can't hear these words from the perspective
of a political prisoner - Lech Walesa for instance - and not be interested in a day
when the mighty are pulled from their thrones. I have been told that there are
places in Central and South America where to read Luke 1:38-56 is regarded as
a subversive act. And it doesn't take much imagination to feel and understand
what the Magnificat means to the El Salvadorian peasant, absolutely poor, powerless,

working a plot of ground owned by a land lord who now Hves in a condominium |

in Miami Beach, whose acn has been murdered by government troops, trained in
the United States. You and I have to work at it, and it is not easy for us, but we
must understand that this Advent text means something altogether different when
it is heard in the context of Third World poverty and political oppression,

Much of the theology being written teday makes us uncomfortable, [t is called
Liberation Theology. Sometimes it sounds like Marxism. Sometimes that is what
it is. And sometimes it is the honest attempt of faithful Christian people to bring
the Gospel of Jesus Christ into dialogue with a culture characterized by injustice,
grinding poverty and hopelessnesa7A The government of El Salvader, to which we
are heavily committed, either cannot stop, or does not wish to stop the wanton,
systematic slaughter of its own people by Right Wing death squads: 20,000-30,000,
including priests, Archbishop Oscar Romero, American Aid officials, labor organizers,
people who attend the wrong meetings, talk to the wrong people, and, of course
four American nuns, When the relatives of the 36,000 victims hear the Magnificat,
they don’t need help identifying the proud, the mighty. And what we can't seem
to understand is that to those peopie socialism, Marxism if they know or even care
about them, aré mot threatening ideas, but appear to he hopeful alternatives to
being murdered. * The tragedy, the continuing tragedy is that we who know best
about human dignity and freedom have simply conceded the struggle for the hearts
of people to the Marxists in far too many places.

Kl Gul ih

pe

We must listen, We must try to understand what is happening in Chile, Argen-
tina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, One of the Liberation Theologians
Jose Miguez Bonino, an Argentine, put it this way: "God has chosen sides- he has
chosen to liberate the poor by delivering them from their misery and marginality,
and to liberate the rich by bringing them down from their thrones." Bonino makes

me very uncomfortable. He is a Marxist. He is also a Christian, {Theologians
in Transition, p. 172)

Now four observations:

One ~ We don't have to agree with that, but in that we're all starting from the same
text it would be foolish not to listen to it, to pretend that it isn't there.

Two - “We can't resign from the middle class." Harvey Cox, a Harvard Professor,
said that, by the way. Cox rather likes Liberation Theology but is honest enough
to acknowledge that he is who he is, namely a comfortable teacher at a very comfor
table institution,

Three ~ The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a "Five Year Plan for Redistributing the
Wealth." It is not about economics essentially, but about humanity in dialogue
with God. It is not simply spiritual - nor is it simply political.

Four - What the Gospel will do, if we bring anything more than superficial interest
to it, is force us to be honest about ourselves and to identify some of the myths,
the half truths, by which we are living. nt ene ee pee
When that honest self examination happens we usually discover that we're
not as comfortable, at ease, well off, as we like to think we are, Left to cur awn
devices we don't ordinarily come to these conclusions: It's the artists, the poets,
the writers, who keep raising the issue, questioning our myths. The Wasteland,
T, S. Ehot called our culture. Erich Fromm, in the classic The Art of Loving wrote
"Happiness today consists in ‘having fun.' 'Having fun,’ lies in the satisfaction of
consuming.-.The world is cne great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle,
we are the eternally hopeful ones - and the eternally disappointed ones." (p. 73)
Gertrude Stein said it with tongue in cheek, "When we get there there is no there
there.” One wonders if the parents who have engaged in physical battle in the aisles
of toy departments all over the country to buy thelr children a Cabbage Patch
doll find that “there is no there there when you get there." In her memoirs, Simone
de Beauvoir wrote "I think with sadness of all the books I have read, all the places
Thave seen, all the knowledge I've amassed. The promises have all been kept. And
yet I realize with stupor how much I was gypped.” (Hans Kung, Does God Exist?,
p. 693) And John Steinbeck whose nevel The Winter of our Discontent was presented
on television last week, wrote about the emptiness and dryness of the American
dream of riches and power and security.

4

i. eek be else

Mary's hymn contains God's word to us because you can't receive a gift unless
you have some room in your life for the gift, can be pleased and delighted with
the gift, in a sense need what the gift represents. If you already have it all, the
exchange will be only as significant as the flower the little girl gives to the visiting
dignitary who, in one motion, receives, smiles, says a polite "thank you” and hands
it over to an attendant whose job it is to carry the unneeded gifts. You can't educate
someone who already knows it all. The miracle of learning happens somewhere
close to the acknowledgement of ignorance. In fact, a good education is always
at least in part a humble acknowledgement of the existence of beauty and truth
bigger than one which I do not own and can never fully own, and which I will always
need. You can't love someone so full of herself or himself that there is no need
for love to touch and no emptiness for love to fill.

~4-

The trouble with the mighty, you see - by Israel's lights, and by Mary's rhetoric,
is not the might, power and wealth, but the pride, the vanity, the sense that they
have, or are on the way to having, what they need. The trouble with mighty people,
in the Bible, is that they don’t know what in the world to do with a gift and that's
what God's love is. That's what is about to happen as Mary talks to Elizabeth,

i is not finally a matter of economics, Pride and vanity are indiscriminate:
humility, graciousness, receptiveness come in all income levels.

The word is that God cares deeply, is partisan toward his creation - bis people
The word is that God hears the cries of people who are oppressed ~+ in peasant
shacks in the Third World and in gracious homes in Columbus, Ohio. God hears
cries of people hungry for bread - and hungry for love: God hears cries of pain
- in Southeast Asia and in hospital wards in the USA; God hears and cares about
loneliness and alienation and bitterness and grief and every “winter of discontent."
God hears and responds in love and becomes an active participant in the redemption
and reconciliation and selection of those he loves.

Le Ney an ce de
What is required is honesty, acknowledgement of our needs, confession of

our incompleteness, What is required in order to hear the good news of Advent

is the courage to acknowledge the fact that all is not well, that we need, eve _

one of us, the love and salvation of the God who created us. Add We lagsedn bf

The partisan God wants to save us in love by calling a deep and passionate
caving out of us. That's where the sterility and emptimess and real poverty always
is - even in the midst of wealth. Those who need nothing ~ love little, care little,
risk Httle, and ultimately hve little.

And that's where the liberation is ultimately: the authentic joy and heavenly
Christmas laughter - in a passionate caring fer life, the world, one another and
the "little ones" - whoever they are: the poor here: the homeless here: the op-
pressed here. Philosopher Sam Keen writes very wisely: “If I answer the appeal
to become a lover, it is no general essence of mankind I am called to love, but
my self, my children, my wife, my friends, my community, my land, my people,
my world." (op. cit., p. 209}

God's passion for people is on the lips of a very young woman, frightened,
confused, and overwhelmed by her unlikely pregnancy, yet certain that the child
te be bern of her will convey God's love fer all, Those who have no need will net
notice bis birth much. Those who know their need will probably be found once
again this year weeping tears of joy and gratitude sometime in the next two weeks,

John Steinbeck borrowed the title for his novel from Shakespeare: the opening
lines of King Richard Hl "New is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer
by this sun of York,"

That's it! That's the Good News, That’s the word of God in Mary's strong
Maanificat.

Now ~ is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun.

This child to be bora, this child who will be called holy, this sen of Ged. Amen.