In the Sweat of Thy Face

A recent book, The Bible and its Influence, is designed to help people teach the Bible in public education. It notes the significant role that the Bible has played throughout American life and history. In my lifetime, Martin Luther King said he had been to the mountaintop and seen the Promised Land, a vision clearly based on Deuteronomy 34. Abraham Lincoln, whose natal bicentennial will come about the time you receive this issue, often peppered his speeches with biblical references. In his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln made reference to the sweat of Adam’s face (Gen 3:19) as he spoke the following words: “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.” With these words, Lincoln expressed his astonishment over the American institution of slavery which his Emancipation Proclamation would soon bring to an end. A new crack in another ongoing dividing wall of hostility (Eph 2:14) can be seen in the election of Barack Obama as the American President in 2008. So what issues would our writers want people of faith to sweat about today?

Dwight N. Hopkins points out that there are two major contemporary environmental movements, one stressing the preservation and conservation of the earth, and the other focusing on the struggle against environmental racism. While largely separate enterprises in the United States, they have been brought together in the World Council of Churches. Environmental justice advocates try to prevent locating waste facilities in working class and people-of-color communities. In some cases, environmental racism is part of intentional policy practices on the part of global financial institutions. The government of the United States penalizes at a much higher rate pollution-law violators in white communities than in people-of-color communities. Hispanic farm workers are intimately interwoven in pesticide production and application. Strong resistance to environmental racism comes from Black Environmental Liberation Theology. Dianne D. Glave is one of the foremost advocates of this theology. History and theology will be a spearhead for reform for African Americans embattled by environmental racism in the future.

Jennifer Hockenbery offers a meditation for Lent based on the thought of Hildegard of Bingen from the 12th century. Hildegard believed that if there was going to be any sort of afterlife for the soul, the body was going to have some share in it. Hildegard saw hatred of the world as hatred of its divine creator. The soul cannot perform its functions without the body. A belief in the fundamental separation between body and soul dominates the popular viewpoint today. People think of their bodies as worthwhile for the short-run, insofar as they are vehicles for the soul. Hiledgard affirmed that we are “human beings whom God formed from the slime of the earth and breathed life into.” A Christian ought to see herself as a person who is both body and soul. A Christian cannot ignore the needs of the world. The world is our real home. Loving the world means refraining from these things that keep us chasing shadows and deceptions and ignoring true beauty.

Jochen Teuffel asks whether the Book of Esther should be called God’s written word since neither God nor God’s word is mentioned in the Hebrew text of the book. The article notes the various helpful theological additions in the Greek version of Esther and the unsatisfying attempts by some to find indirect references to God in the Hebrew text of Esther. Similarly, evidences for divine providence in Esther are also not fully satisfactory or salvific. Rather, a canonical reading of Esther relates the preservation of that Jewish community to God’s election of Israel and God’s promise of deliverance in the Exodus. Scripture is therefore interpreted by Scripture. The faithfulness of God’s word of promise (Isa 55:11) is then experienced in this interpretation of Esther as well. The absence of God in the book of Esther often resembles our own situation where we have to apply the word witnessed in Scripture to ourselves so that it can evoke our own faith and joy.

George Murphy writes in response to the recent wave of popular atheistic publications and asks how things happen in the world and what do they mean. Scientific advances mean that phenomena in the world can be understood as if God were not given, and this has fueled the atheistic argument. Science and atheists have more difficulty with the questions of meaning and purpose. After reviewing previous attempts to justify religion in a scientific world, Murphy seeks to provide a theology that takes seriously the successes of science and an account of divine purpose which is integrally connected with the understanding of God’s action in the world. God created the world so that there would be flesh in which God could become enfleshed and unite all things with God. The crossresurrection event is the key to understanding how God works to accomplish the divine purpose for creation and bring it to its intended goal. The hiddenness of God in the world corresponds to the divine concealment in the darkness and God-forsakenness on Calvary.

Lawrence H. Williams observes that the weakness of the contemporary black family may be seen as a direct result of centuries of white oppression. The main difference between the independent black church and its white counterpart was its overriding belief in a theology of liberation and reform. In the black church a janitor could be a deacon, and a domestic worker head of the usher board. In the black church the lowest person was affirmed and confirmed. The present time is the first time in black history that in urban areas a generation of young people is growing up that knows nothing about the black church. The contemporary African American religious organization that is having success among the poor and marginalized is the Nation of Islam. The church has become the most homophobic institution in the black community. The black church still stands as a symbol of the best hope for nurturing and reinvigorating children and youth. Islamic and other religious groups of African descent need seats at the table as well.

L. Roger Owens notes that “participation” is making a comeback in theology. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s lectures on homiletics can help us begin to develop a theology of practical participation. For Bonhoeffer, Christ is the founder of the church, Lord over it, and Christ is the church itself. Christ’s existing as church is possible because of Christ’s pro nobis structure. Through the practice of proclamation the church is enacting participation in Christ. Through the church’s practice of proclaiming the Word Christ makes the church his own body. Proclamation is participation in the life of God precisely because the proclaimed word is the Logos of God who includes us into himself through the Holy Spirit. The Word’s assumption of humanity as displayed in the Gospels is the obedience of the man Jesus to the will of the Father. The contemporary truth of the church is revealed in that it preaches and lives the Sermon on the Mount and the admonitions of Paul.

The Bible recalls a time when nature yielded easily to human agriculture, but it also knew first hand a time when achievements on the farm came only with the sweat of one’s face. Most of us know more about mental and emotional sweat than hard physical labor and find in the routines of daily ministry more “calling” than Adamic curse. The ELCA slogan “God’s Work Our Hands” reminds us, however, that God’s achievements among us are often mediated through helping human hands, feet that hasten to bring glad tidings, and even the sweat of our own faces as we bear one another’s burdens. Here’s hoping that your brows are wet with such honest sweat.

Ralph W. Klein,
editor

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