VI. BIBLICAL REFLECTIONS
1. Rev. Shoji Tsutomu (Japan)
Now the tax collectors and the sinners were
all drawing near to hear him.
And the Pharasees and the Scribes murmured saying. "This man
receives sinners and eats with them".
So he told them this parable.
"What man of you having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them,
does not leave the other ninety nine in the wilderness and go after
the one which is lost, until he finds it?
And when he has found it he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
And when he comes home he calls together his friends and his
neighbors, saying to them "rejoice with me, for I have found my
sheep which was lost’
Just so, I tell you, There will be more joy in heaven over one
sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous persons who need
no repentance.
(The Gospel according to st. Luke Chapter 15 verses 1-7.)
For any of us it is impossible to talk about the
responsibility on the issues of race and minority without giving voice
to our personal convictions. They are always coloured by one’s place in
society.
My own background places me in the camp of the
discriminator. Although it may constitute a handicap to the ability to
clearly understand the depth of discrimination and oppression it does
not recall to me of my responsibility to try to understand.
With this recognition of limitation I would reflect
on the problem of discrimination against Burakumin, the outcaste in
Japan.
The executive committee of the National Christian
Council of Japan passed a resolution in January 1980, which is an appeal
to Christians concerning the problem of Buraku discrimination. The
appeal emphasized the following:
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Failure of the Churches in dealing with this
issue.
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The reality of discrimination in general.
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Our biblical understanding of the issue.
Finally, it states some concrete decisions on what
should be done. I would like to explain about the Burakumin
discrimination. There are 3 million Burakumin in six thousand segregated
areas of Japan.
"Although various forms of slavery and
untouchability existed in ancient and medieval Japan, it was the
Tokugawa Shogunate (1600-1868) which created a rigid four-tier caste
system for the sake of effective political domination. Through this
system, one of the aims of which was to control and justify the
exploitation of the peasant masses, those in power enslaved those
with certain "unclean" jobs and compartmentalized them into a
hereditary group outside the caste structure called the Eta (later,
Burakumin)."
In other words, the Tokugawa government established
class which is less than human, persons who are outside the human
sphere, communities which are outside society. The Christian Church as a
whole has been ignorant or indifferent to their plight in the modern
history. When the NCC Special Committee on Buraku Discrimination issues
started with the recognition of the failure of the church, it began to
seek a Biblical basis on which the church can develop real concern for
the issue.
First, the members of the committee felt that the
Biblical messages such as the image of God as the basis of human dignity
and his universal love to all human kind were those we could rely on. We
soon realised that the messages had been locked in the church for
centuries without affecting the churches’ attitude towards Burakumin.
Thus, we began to question Why the church was not affected by these
messages. After discussions, we realized that we should have taken into
consideration the real condition of human beings when we thought of the
message of the image of God and God’s universal love. When the oppressed
and the discriminated against depend upon these messages, these become
real basis for claiming their own human dignity and rights, thereby
becoming real weapons to fight discrimination. But when an oppressor
refers to the messages, they are used as a means of his remaining in
self-satisfaction for he feels he is loved by God’s unfailing love, even
though he is ignorant of the plight of his neighbor.
So if oppressor preaches God’s equal love to the
oppressed without changing his life, is it possible for the oppressed to
accept it? Never, I think. God’s love is never equal, when it was in a
concrete situation. God’s love is partial. He loves the oppressed and
the discriminated against first, directly and unconditionally. On the
contrary, God showed his love to the oppressor only in the form of
judgement. Jesus reveals this love through his life, death and
ressurection. Our Biblical understanding in the above appeal is
expressed in the following way:
"We have to confess before this Lord our own
part in Buraku discrimination and our own insensitivity toward the
suffering of the victims of discrimination. This is not simply an
elective subject of Christian ethics. It has to do with the essence
of our faith. As discriminators we stand under the judgement of God.
But his judgement liberates us from our inhuman, discriminatory
behavior against others. This judgement is a gracious invitation
which urges us to participate in the suffering of others and thus
knows the joys of a shared life".
You see this truth, for example, in Marks 2:14-17.
Let us recognise that though it is judgement, it is the grace indeed.
The appeal continues:
"While our Lord Jesus Christ was incarnate in
our history he stood on the side of those who were discriminated
against, the economically and religiously dispossessed. He showed
forth the love of God poured out upon such persons in particular. In
so doing he challenged the people who discriminated against the
dispossessed and ultimately he was executed on the Cross. But God
raised this Jesus from the dead thereby turning his struggle into
victory. Thus the life of Jesus, his death on the Cross and his
resurrection constitute the most fundamental kind of challenge and
judgement upon all forms of human discrimination."
So think of the parable of the shepherd seeking the
lost sheep in Luke 15; "The shepherd left the 99 in the wilderness and
went after the lost one." By doing so, he showed what the 99 should
concentrate their concern on and what the nature of the community of 99
should be.
I think we had better omit the 7th part, because it
includes additional comment by the author of the Gospel which is very
much misleading. It emphasized the repentance of the lost one. But the
meaning and the point of this parable is not repentance. But it is what
the 99 should concentrate their concern on and what the community of 99
should be. If they ignore the one, their community is like a wilderness.
But if their concern is with the one, it is a really human and warm
community.
2. Rt. Rev. Bishop Lakshman
Wickramesinghe (Sri Lanka.)
The Bible guides us when we raise important questions
concerning us; to see insights in the Bible and how they apply to us in
our present situation.
I would like to share one or two questions I have had
to face in the context of the theme here and my reflections on the Bible
regarding them.
I am a minority here by the fact of being of few
people of the majority community present here today. I know minority
ethnic groups were oppressed in my own land. They were being denied
status and power in relation to the majority community. One had to side
with them in their grievances and in their struggle to achieve justice
and recognizing their selfhood and their self-determination. As we know
of the Bible, God is on the side of the oppressed, the marginalized, the
helpless. Even Christ himself made it clear by His life and ministry.
Options have to be made on the side of the oppressed, those deprived of
dignity.
The moral pressure on the side of the oppressed is
strong and compelling. I saw two faces of the majority community. That
of the oppressor and the threatened. They had co-habited with the
minority but their historical rule was threatened. Is there a
distinctive role of historical nations or ethnic groups within the
providence of God and within the concept of equal access to resources
and rewards within a common society.
The Bible makes it clear regarding salvation history
that nations and ethnic groups are unique within the creative and saving
purpose. Genesis Chapter 10. The new covenant with noah. 3 occasions in
Genesis. Chapter 10: Verses 5,20 & 31. So within the saving history
ethnic groups and cultural identity have to be respected as part of the
providence and redeeming purpose of God.
With this perception we get within Israel after the
experience of Moses and deliverance and the experiences of being called
to be the people of God. Two perceptions of conflict without being
reconciled.
OLD TESTAMENT
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Israel and Jerusalem, having a special position
in relation to the other nations. Psalms 122. Isaiah Chapter 60
verses one onwards.
Nations coming to Israel and Jerusalem with tribute.
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The role of nations being equal. Amos Chapter 9
verse 7, God calling all nations to take their role. Isaiah Chapter
19 verse 23-25. Clearest enunciation that all nations are equal in
the sight of God.
Israel and Syria remained unreconciled, and the worst elements of
Israelite history came out of the first conception of a special
position.
NEW TESTAMENT
The new testament, the outpouring of the Spirit in
Pentecost, it was in this that the distinctive aspects of each of the
nations within the mosaic of mankind is reiterated as they speak in
different languages of the wonderful works of God. A vision of a mosaic
of nations inspired and united by the one Spirit within the light of the
church and outside. It is in Paul and the last book of the Bible,
Revelations, that we find an attempt to reconcile those two conceptions.
You find the struggle for complete freedom for Gentile and Jew. In
Galatians Chapter 3 verse 26 onwards and in Chapter 5 Paul forcibly
asserts the freedom from the dominant consciousness of the Jews. So that
the gentile be completely free from the feeling of being alienated and
assert and experience and hold fast to the freedom in Christ. They are
not subject to any ethnic group but are free in Christ. Servants of one
another but in love.
Yet in Romans we find Paul struggles with the role of
Israel in the providence of God and His saving purpose. Paul in his
struggle makes an analogy. Israelites are the natural olive and the
Gentiles the wild olive. But there is a natural root from which all come
and to which all are drafted. Romans 9 and 10: 11-13. Taking Romans
Chapter 11 10 onwards, Paul sees a place for the Jews without denying
the equality of nations.
You find the same theme of reconciliation in the book
of Revelations. Chapter 21 verse 1 onward. The eternal city is named
Jerusalem. The Twelve Gates are inscribed with the names of the twelve
tribes of Israel. There is an equality of access and treatment and a
special place is given to Israel and to Jerusalem and the conflict is
resolved by spiritualism. This helped me to see that while there can be
a complete equality of access and status perhaps for a majority
community which has a sense of its own distinctive role within the land
space which it cohabits with minorities, there must be a recognition of
that distinctive role without denying equality, reconciling the
particularity of history with the universality of justice. The sense of
identity crisis in the majority community can be reconciled and given a
sense of assurance within that reconciliation of perceptions within the
Bible.
3. Bishop Manguramus (Philippines)
We want to remind you of the problems of our people
in the province of Asia. The message is sharing burdens with others, as
in 2 Corinthians Chapter 1 verse. We felt hopeless, but God raises us
from the dead. He saved us and we have hope that He will help us again.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in
all our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in
any affliction, with the comfort which we ourselves are comforted by
God.
For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings,
so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
If we are afflicted it is for your comfort and
salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you
experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.
Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as
you share in our sufferings you will also share in our comfort.
Even if the Christians are a minority, or even
treated as foreigners by the majority, still this minority can reach out
and help. We have thousands of people in our respective countries,
treated shamefully, abused, the rights often trampled, their ancestral
land destroyed. They are displaced just because they are a minority or
because of racial prejudice.
The Church today is called to carry one another’s burden. The burden the
Church has to answer is when it sides with the oppressed. When the
Church sides with the oppressed, the oppressor always asks the Church
"what is your alternative to what we are trying to do for the majority?"
To me it is not so much the alternative that matters,
but it is the programme like dams, mining, taking over of land, which
replaces human beings. When the people are treated like pieces of rocks
or trees, cut down, pushed, burnt and destroyed, then what other
alternative is called for? No matter where he is, man is a beautiful
creation of God and the fullfillment of his creation, therefore, he must
be respected and given a place that he can call his own.
In my country when the government plans projects in a
given area, building of dams or plantations, authorities promise new
relocation areas to have the people start a new life, build new houses,
giving them lands for new farms, giving them schools, roads and even pay
compensations for the losses. No one denies improvement is good. No one
can say development is bad in itself. Unfortunately, much of these
promises are fulfilled to the extent that no one really gets what has
been promised. Thus, many in those relocation areas are now suffering. I
know one place where people are given home with 10 by 12 feet where the
whole family should stay. They have to pay no less than $1,000 for it in
the next two years. They are not allowed to expand it, they are only
allowed to stay in it.
The other alternative they have is to voice out the
sentiments. Often they are silenced by force. Out of this experience,
when the government starts new projects and people get affected, no one
believes in these promises made. The government is forced to go on with
the project because the money is borrowed. It had to use forceful
persuasion. And when force is used, a counter force by the people
naturally comes. Then other elements to take advantage of the situation
by inciting rebellion which aggravates the situation.
There is a song of people’s cry for help and love for
land;
A song of love and the land
This land of beauty is given by God our father
full of mercy, Its loveliness being intended for all the people and
everyone, and each one claims its rightful portion a piece of land
he’ll probably own. This heritage so full of promise, this land was
proposed for us all, The selfish people and not mindful will, the
few will claim the land to own, Deprive the many poor and needy who
live in want and always suffer. And when this happens there is sure
conflict, for hate and bitterness prevails. Relationships will be
found wanting, Happiness will pass them by --
This song is a cry of anguish, a song of people
crying for help. It reminds us how man and earth are inseparable. At
this time and age value is placed on production and Gross National
Income, rather than giving man his right to the land.
This is a burden that the Church must share with the
minority and the majority as all our children of God. The right of the
people to education, the right to be free, the right to share thoughts
with one another, even political freedom. This is a cross, a nail
piercing the very soul of the millions in Asia, Latin America and even
Africa.
I come from a minority tribe. I return to my people.
In spite of the work of the Church the people are disappearing. The land
being taken away. I myself feel helpless. This is my burden; not only
must I preach salvation, but I must also minister to their physical
need. They must be heard to have a place in the sun.
Let us carry this burden then. We must not escape
this. As Christ carried our burden on the cross we must bring them to
the throne of the Almighty God.
4. Rev. Batumalai (Malaysia)
Exodus Ch. 3 verse 7-8. Gods call to Moses.
The Lord said, "I have seen the affliction of my
people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their task
masters; I know their sufferings.
And I have come down to deliver them out of the
hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of the land to a good
and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the
Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and
the Jebusites.
The people were treated badly and cruelly in Egypt.
God had knowledge of their suffering. God helps the oppressed.
The Egypt of Exodus can be any community today. God’s
people, my people are in the plantations and urban areas of Malaysia.
Compared to the housing scheme in Malaysia the workers live in estate
labour lines in the plantations. They are referred to as coolies, live a
degraded life. Though Malaysia is developing and considered to be one of
the economically progressed countries in Asia, the plantation workers
have no basic amenities, like water and electricity and they live in two
rooms of 10 x 12 for 10 people. I have heard them cry out for self
determination, dignity and education in the nationalised schemes.
Political parties and leaders of unions are too weak to respond. These
people have been treated as a fishing ground or as a commodity, but they
cry to be rescued, that is, salvation from dehumanization. We have
started small things in the field of education, but the cries are still
there all around us. Cries must be made known for the collective
response from Christians on local and international level.
God says "I know all about their sufferings." No.
This is more than knowledge, intimate and personal knowledge for me as I
was brought up in their context and have lived with them. Now they are
used as commodity for the economic prosperity of the rich nation. They
are just being utilised in rubber plantations, oil plantations, mining,
etc. And they are sent out of the estate when they have reached 55
years. After retirement there is no place for them in the estate. They
must leave to find shelter and employment, without pension scheme. The
suffering. This is not the case for sympathy but the case for empathy.
Who can feel with them?
Over half a million people in Peninsula Malaysia
work, live and die within the same environment which is effectively
encapsuled, and removed from the wider society. The plantation remained
the boundary of his existence. Does the Church know of this situation?
God says:" I have come down to rescue them from the
Egyptians to a spacious and rich land." They are looking for a saviour.
"Our God came and dwelt among us". As Dr. Koyama says, not templed but
tented. Ordinary arrangements.
It is not a Hindu concept of salvation that is doing
good and disappearing. Moses gave up rich privileges to identify with
his people. We must be challenged to go where the people are. It is a
great task to be an action oriented Church. We know of oppressors,
Pharoahs. We need a Moses.
5. Rev. Ruawai Rakena (New Zealand)
"Thus you are no longer aliens in a foreign
land, but fellow-citizens with God’s people, members of God’s
household. You are built upon the foundation laid by the apostles
and prophets, and Christ Jesus himself is the foundation-stone. In
him the whole building is bonded together and grows into a holy
temple in the Lord. In him you too are being built with all the rest
into a spiritual dwelling for God."
Ephesians 2/19-22
The Asia Minor region, in which the churches
addressed by the letter to the Ephesians were set, reflected a diverse
range of national, racial, social, political and economic interests.
Invitably there were sharp conflicts and divisions with those occurring
between Jew and Gentile being of particular concern to the writer of
this circular letter.
The letter, therefore, draws the attention of the
churches to and reminds them of certain basic realities implicit in
their acceptance of and commitment to Christ as God’s Word incarnate. In
their common life, their relationship to each other and their witness
they are called again to minor a community where Jew/Gentile differences
and divisions are transcended. In particular, Jews must cease treating
Gentiles as foreigners who must first produce a valid passport or
citizenship credential before gaining entry to a Jewish house.
Furthermore, the Gentile was to be received and accepted along with all
that constituted his or her essential identity, cultural and national
heritage.
We have in our New Zealand setting two distinct kind
of houses.
First, there is our traditional Maori house. It’s a
house characterised by a large rectangular room with just the four outer
walls and doorway. Most are capable of sleeping together upwards of a
hundred or more people. The house and land on which it stands are
tribally owned and used.
The second, which is now more common and numerous, is
our Pakeha (European/western) house. This house is characterised by the
number of small rooms it has, each partitioned off by walls to meet the
needs of individual members, parents, children etc. House and section
are individually owned and exist to serve the needs and interests of a
nuclear family.
The house/building analogy in the above verses brings
the image of these two houses readily to mind. As I’ve thought about the
nature of and possible future direction in which our Maori/Pakeha
relations in New Zealand might go, a reflection in terms of these two
houses has been helpful.
Nationally, over many years, official policy and
practise have dictated a relationship based almost exclusively on our
second house and the kind of social/cultural values and life style it
represents and fosters. For the Maori, of course, this policy has been
genocidal. Consequently, from now on any future relationship in which a
common citizenship and experience of belonging to the one household at
something of the level prescribed for Jew and Gentile, will demand of
the Pakeha, not just a fuller recognition and acceptance of our Maori
house and all it stands for but, in particular, a sufficient crossing of
the social/cultural frontiers existing between the two races so that
ultimately, the point is reached in the relationship where the two
houses and their respective life-styles cease to be exclusively the
heritage of either Maori or Pakeha, and become the inclusive inheritance
of both.
It is in terms of this kind of becoming
fellow-citizens and members of a national household that I envisage the
emergence of a new kind of house.
It is to be hoped that, whether at national or
regional level, our churches will be found to be so integral a part of
the whole process of growth, change and renewal that the will and
purpose of God will be mirrored to the communities and nations at large.