"The Poor Will Inherit the Land": Bert Newton's "Pastor's Pulse" at CCC with a call to action

You know how when texting, even with the modern tech that will give you the complete words, some people still like to use those abbreviations? I suppose maybe it saves time…but only if  the person receiving the text understands the abbreviations. Recently someone texted me and used the abbreviation RN. Do you know what RN means in a text? (someone answers). It means right now!....It took me all day to figure that out! It took me all day to figure out that RN means right now!...it defeated the whole purpose of using RN.

How we understand the text makes all the difference!

And this is my clever way of introducing the topic of biblical interpretation.

How we understand the text makes a whole lot of difference. I think we all know that.

I want to suggest that many of us instinctively know, or may be the Holy Spirit has nurtured this knowledge in us, that justice – social justice, racial justice, economic justice – Justice is important and is a crucial part of what God has called us to do.

I know this because of all the positions and actions for justice that we who make up the CCC have taken over the years. It’s impressive.

But I also sense that we, as western Christians, sometimes struggle to figure out how or where justice fits in with our theology, how or where justice fits in with the gospel message. That seems to be a problem in western Christianity.

And I want to suggest that part of our problem lies in reading an ancient text – the Bible – in a modern context. Some things get lost in translation.

Our first mistake is when we read  the Bible  as a religious text, understanding it to be a religious text.

Now it might seem the most obvious thing in the world to think that the Bible is a religious text, but that’s not necessarily how the texts that make up the Bible were understood when they were written.

And a major part of the problem is what religion has come to mean in our modern world.

Despite many of our best efforts, such as this gathering here today, despite many of our best efforts to bust biblical faith out of the confines of religion and make it relevant to all of life, the fact remains that in our modern world, our faith is understood as religion, religion is overwhelmingly understood as something separate from the rest of life and society, something contained within individuals and within religious institutions. We even have a whole separate religious vocabulary – which has its pros and cons.

But that’s not how it was in the ancient world in which the Bible was written. Back then, everyone understood that all of life and all of the world is spiritual. What we think of as religious institutions when we are reading the biblical text, temples and synagogues, were not thought of that way. They were government and community institutions.

Temples were built by and controlled by the government. They were institutions of power.

Synagogues in ancient Israel were the town governments. If we had more time, I could read you quotes from scholars who have studied first century synagogues and found that they were the place where the town came together to figure out their common life, adjudicate things, take on public works projects, and things like that. Things our city governments do…as well as do things we might consider religious.

Religion was not a separate category.

But given our modern context in which it is, we naturally read the biblical texts and misunderstand these things.

And the Bible is even translated for us into English that way, using religious words.

For example, the Greek word “dikaiosune” is usually translated for us as “righteousness.” But that is only one dimension of its meaning. It also means justice. But I’ve only found one English translation that translates it that way.

From what I understand, Spanish bibles do translate as justice, as justicia. But English Bibles almost always as righteousness.

And “righteousness” is a word that we rarely use outside of church. It tends to be a religious word.

Also, righteousness tends to imply the individual. Individuals are righteous. But justice is in the community or in the society. It is collective. That makes a big difference!

Let me give you another example:

Matthew 5:5, Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

What does that mean? The meek shall inherit the earth? That could be a very powerful poetic statement…but it could also be translated, Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the land.

(Anyone whose received an email from me may have seen that in my email signature; I have Matthew 5:5 in my email signature with that translation.)

Many scholars believe that Jesus, in that verse, was riffing off of Psalm 37:11, which says that the poor will inherit the land. It is a beatitude about land justice.

In those first four beatitudes in Matthew, Jesus is riffing off of the prophets and the Psalms and talking about justice, and when we understand that, we can then realize that it matches up really well with the version of the beatitudes in the gospel of Luke…you know those beatitudes, the ones we never read.

In those beatitudes, Jesus says, “blessed are you who are poor…but woe to you who are rich! They’re very clearly and radically about justice.

But when we understand what Matthew’s beatitudes are referring to and perhaps translate them with more ordinary language we begin to see that the beatitudes in both gospels align with each other!

What I have found is that when we begin to de-religiousify the Bible, it actually starts to be more coherent…and also quite a bit more radical…so proceed with caution.

When we begin to de-religiousify the Bible, it begins to have more relevance to all of life and we begin to see how central justice is to the Gospel message.

We begin to see that Jesus was the organizer of a movement for personal and collective salvation, personal and collective deliverance, personal and collective liberation from systems of injustice and oppression.

And then we are liberated to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, becoming organizers, each in our own way, organizers for God’s justice and liberation from modern systems of injustice and oppression.

This is why when CCC clergy have been standing at the front lines against ICE to protect our immigrant brothers and sisters, we are doing the work of the Gospel.

This is why when we have organized and advocated for housing justice, we were doing the work of the Gospel.

Recently when we advocated for the new affordable housing in East Pasadena, a part of the city which has had almost no affordable housing, CCC members showed up. And you should have heard Nayeli testify! She spoke so clearly and boldly, calling out the not-so-veiled racism and classism of some of the opposition speakers.

And she did that via Zoom…nowadays, technology has made speaking up for justice really convenient. You don’t even have to go in person to the meetings, you can do it from home! Which is good news to a lot of us that really can’t make it to the meetings in person.

We are speaking boldly and prophetically.

CALL TO ACTION

And we have more opportunities coming up:

There are two more proposals for affordable housing in East Pasadena. We are experiencing a harvest of affordable housing, but we have to be vigilant to make sure these things happen.

There will be opportunities to advocate for local streams of funding for affordable housing.

There’s a lot of good stuff coming up, a lot of good opportunities.

So the Housing Justice Committee of the CCC has created a short questionnaire. The QR code for it is on that quarter sheet flyer on your tables.

The questionnaire has four boxes that you can mark:

• · Notify me of opportunities to advocate for housing justice within Pasadena (or the Pasadena area) (If you want to be put on a list of people that we notify when opportunities arise to speak up for housing justice, mark that box)

• I'd like to help underinsured homeowners recovering from fires (e.g. painting, brush-clearing, etc.) (This is a grassroots effort, led by Pastor Len Tang. The idea is to get people in our churches involved in hands-on work, engaging in the work bodily, engaging the whole person, and also to build relationships with some people who have lost their homes and are underinsured. And then out of that there can be debriefs where we talk about the racial justice dimensions of this displacement crisis. So mark that box if you’re interested in knowing more about that.

• I'm interested in joining the CCC Housing Justice Committee (monthly meetings).

  (We only have two active pastors on our committee, and we’d love to have more, as well as any other church leaders or even followers, we’ll take anyone. If you’re interested in joining our committee, mark that box.

• I know someone displaced from the fires who is seeking affordable housing in Pasadena/Altadena.

  
  

(We are pursuing right of return legislation and it is helpful to know of people who have been displaced and need to be prioritized for affordable housing. So if you know someone, let us know, and we will be contacting you to get the full details and let you know about our right to return initiative so that you and your congregation, perhaps, might be able to participate.)

So please use the QR Code to go to the Google doc and complete that very short questionnaire.

And with this questionnaire, we hope to more effectively organize for justice from a place of being rooted in biblical faith and following in the footsteps of Jesus