Gospel Sheds Light on What God Requires

Editor’s note: The 1999 National Seminar’s theme Scripture was Micah 6:8:
...What does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

The Rev. Traci C. West, Ph.D., assistant professor of ethics and African American studies at Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, N.J., led a series of three Bible studies with National Seminar participants. She turned to Gospel passages to shed light on the seminar’s theme Scripture.

Following are highlights of each of Ms. West’s three presentations written by Dana E. Jones, editor of response.

Welcome the Child

Then they came to Capernaum; and when Jesus was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all."

Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me." -- Mark 9:33-37

Mark 9:33-37 gives an example of what justice looks like, Ms. West said. To understand this example, she led a close look at the passage giving listeners a quiz:

• Is is true or false that the disciples, after a moment of silence, told Jesus they had been arguing about who was the greatest? Answer: False.
• List the three things Jesus did with the little child. Answer: Jesus took the child in his arms, put the child in the disciples’ midst and put his arm around the child.
• Did Jesus explain:
  A. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, or
  B. Whoever welcomes me welcomes one such child in my name.
  Answer: A.

"What we see is that justice means is to do the reverse of what we believe to be the most valuable in this world," Ms. West said. "Little children were literally nobodies in the ancient context. They were beings to be shaped and molded.

"So you see the reversal Jesus is proposing when he says we are to be taught by children. Imagine how insulted the disciples -- grown men -- must have been. They are told they are to show hospitality to a dependent, helpless nobody little child to be really important, great disciples."

Today we still understand children as people who must be shaped and molded by us, Ms. West said. Think what this means when we compare poor people to children.

"The idea of welcoming the child -- especially the poor child -- is more controversial than we think. We don’t want to welcome someone who talks back. We can romanticize the idea that everybody loves children, but that’s really not so true."

She pointed to recent changes in welfare laws and public response to high-school shootings that usurp hours of TV coverage as an examples of whom we do and don’t welcome.

"When debating welfare, everybody seemed to agree with the idea of cutting off teenage mothers," Ms. West began. "People testified that teenagers have babies for money. We decided they were prostitutes. These children were very, very unwelcome."

She compared this attitude to public outcry in the wake of shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.

"When I saw these shootings get so much press -- and I recognize the shootings as a real tragedy -- it was an important barometer of which children’s deaths are a national tragedy and which are not. Can you imagine CBS-TV stopping one day’s programming to show a poor Black or Hispanic community where a shooting has occurred?"

Ms. West challenged National Seminar participants to think about what it would mean to welcome children -- including poor children -- into their communities.

Like the seminar’s theme Scripture, which raises the question of what does the Lord require of us, Ms. West encouraged National Seminar participants to ask questions about what is required if we are to do justice.

"I raise tough, uncomfortable, specific questions to push us on the question of what justice requires of us," she said. "It requires us to focus on the details of what it really means for the last to be the first."

And it requires us to ask questions of each other and of God, she said.

"To have faith, to study the Scriptures, is to have questions, including questions for God," she said. "So often our prayers are like lists for Santa Claus. I’m not saying we’re not raising important concerns, but I am encouraging us to also have a place in prayer where we ask, where we open ourselves to God’s agenda. To have faith, is to be open to God’s leading."

Persistence for justice

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’

"For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’"

And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them...." -- Luke 18:1-8

Ms. West began her second Bible study by challenging an assumption she said is at the heart of Micah 6:8.

"One of the assumptions of Micah 6:8 is that we actually believe in justice," she said. "I’m not suggesting we have a problem believing justice is a good thing but whether we really believe justice is possible. We have to believe justice can actually come about. Sometimes that can be very hard."

Maintaining such a belief can be tough in the face of powerful forces of injustice. Luke 18:1-8 provides the story of a widow up against such a force. Jesus tells this parable to encourage the people, Ms. West said, adding it can provide us with encouragement also.

"Jesus makes the link between prayer and justice," she said. "Justice work is prayer. Look at this passage. Jesus talks about the need to pray always then he tells a story about a widow seeking justice."

Ms. West compared the widow to a gnat that pesters a giant until the giant can stand no more.

"Some of us can relate to this widow," Ms. West said. "There are systems in our nation, our cities, our communities, our church where we feel like a gnat pestering a giant."

Participants listed such systems including such things as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, multinational corporations, federal and local governments, tobacco companies, the National Rifle Association, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, health-care institutions, and school districts.

"Agencies and organizations are not the only problem," Ms. West said. "There are ideas within the culture that replicate evil."

She pointed to a TV commercial for Honda Prelude as an example.

"A couple of years ago I saw a commercial that starts with a statue on the dashboard of the car that looks like a native Hawaiian woman," she began. "She sits on the dashboard and jiggles. There’s rock-and-roll jamming music. As the male driver speeds around curvy roads, the statue starts to come to life and she begins to look terrified. Her hair stands on end.

"At the end of the commercial, the statue of the woman explodes into pieces. It’s like the symbolic terrorizing of women of color is exciting, thrilling. It entices you to go out and buy this car. And it plants and reinforces an idea that this brown-faced, exotic woman is ours to control. The idea gets in our minds in terms of all kinds of policies like immigration. It desensitizes us."

Christians must speak out against such ideas that become like the unjust judge, Ms. West said.

"We have to be like the persistent widow who keeps coming back," she said.

Being persistent can be challenging for women because they do not hold power in our society, Ms. West said. Turning to models of our foremothers can provide us the stamina to stay the course, she said.

For example, she turns to Ida B. Wells for inspiration. Ms. Wells was an anti-lynching advocate and journalist who boldly pursued the untold stories of the lynchings of hundreds of African Americans from 1890 to 1917. Ms. Wells persisted.

Ms. West also advised National Seminar participants to stay the course for justice by working with other women.

"We must galvanize our spirits and find strength in our solidarity," she said. "We have to remember we are in this together. Too often, we are competing with each other. We compete over who had the worst suffering in our histories, over our victim status.

"But we don’t have to all be the same to work together. Just as the unjust judge has many faces, so too do we have many forms of resistance."

She advised:

"We must just keep coming back, keep coming back, keep coming back, keep coming back, keep coming back, because it is what the Lord requires."

Mary’s radical call

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph....The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you."

But she was much perplexed and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus....

Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."...And Mary said,

"My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God’s servant....

God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

God has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty....

Luke 1

Mary, mother of Jesus, meek and mild -- it’s a familiar image but wait. It’s not the image that emerges from Luke 1, said Traci West in her final National Seminar Bible study.

"We have seen Mary in Christmas pageants and in art museums and stained-glass windows," she said. "We associate words like gentle, young, beautiful, poor, serene and caring with her, but that doesn’t represent what’s depicted in the biblical text."

The passage emphasizes Mary is called by God -- a call she first questions, then accepts, Ms. West said.

"Mary’s prophetic words of the Magnificat -- verses 46-55 -- begin with a call," she said. "Each one of us has to believe she is called into justice work. We lean back on a sense that God has called us forth to this work and we have answered this call affirmatively. That’s what happens in this Scripture. Mary’s words are rooted in her call from God."

Mary’s call and response is clearly political, Ms. West said.

"You can’t talk about the powerful without being political," she said. "We don’t image that in our Christmas pageants. We don’t image a redistribution of power and wealth. Mary’s message is very radical."

Following Mary’s lead can prove difficult, Ms. West said.

"We churchwomen want to be good girls," she began. "When we tell our little girls to be good we tell them to sit with their legs crossed being quiet. To be like Mary is to be a good girl. So we miss the tough prophetic message of sending the rich away empty. We miss that this pregnant, unwed Jewish teenager stands up and isn’t so nice."

The contrast between being nice and doing justice can challenge us as we try to live out Micah 6:8, she said.

"When we talk about doing justice, we can feel tension with loving kindness because we associate loving kindness with being nice," she said. "Somebody, or some part of ourselves, is going to say that what we do is not nice. When we prophesy, people will think we are weird, far out."

Knowing that the prophetic word and act come from God offers support, she said.

"God has already acted," Ms. West said. "We have a vision of justice that already exists. You can affirm you are called by God to announce this vision to our world."

When articulating the vision, it needs to take specific form if others are to hear and act upon it. Ms. West pushed National Seminar participants to write specific visions. She shared examples:

• "I have a vision that one day the rich people will come to City Hall to say the poor neighborhoods have had the incinerators long enough. They now want them."
• "I have a vision that one day white people will say they’ll take the forefront in combatting racism."

When we believe justice is possible, we can articulate even visions that seem impossible, she said. We can articulate that which the world thinks outrageous.

"It’s okay to be out of step," Ms. West said. "In fact, we are called to be out of step."

January 2000