METAS EDUCATIVA

The rise of the Hebrew nation is well chronicled in the Hebrew Bible, with its promise and possibility majestically prophesied in Isaiah (Isaiah 61, 42, 44). While the nation‘s rise and fall can be understood as a journey of unfulfilled promise toward God, it can also be read as God‘s continued determination to fulfil his side of the covenant promise. After various covenants collapse437 God then turns to Abraham and offers to make his promises for creation real through him. As Walter Brueggemann writes, this covenant becomes the Hebrew Bible‘s ‗central and defining theological affirmation‘.438

More than just a kind of contract,

The covenant is at the same time a theological idea, a liturgical practice and a durable public institution in Israel. In its largest sweep, the covenant affirms that the God of all creation has made an abiding commitment of fidelity to this chosen people, Israel.439

In many ways the early creation and covenant stories told in the Hebrew Bible intended to give some context to the reasons for the birth of the Hebrew nation. From the beginning, the Hebrews were founded, formed and shaped by God‘s promise to change the toxicity of evil in the world through a flesh and blood people and their land. Rather than destroy creation, God works to see the whole of creation‘s redemption. This can be seen in the bilateral commitment of God in covenants in Sinai (Exodus 19-24), as well as in unilateral covenants with Abraham

437 _{Adam and Eve‘s mandate to be ‗fruitful‘, ‗multiply‘ and ‗steward‘ creation (Genesis 1:28); Noah as a new}

representative of creation after the flood (Genesis 8 and 9) and the tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9).

438 _{Walter Brueggemann, Reverberations of Faith: A theological handbook of Old Testament themes (Louisville:}

Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 37.

(Genesis 15:7-21) and David (2 Samuel 7:1-16). The fulfilment of these promised covenants is especially embodied in the raising up of a nation from an unlikely family into an unlikely land. God‘s promise is enfleshed in Abraham and his descendants who come from God‘s explicit invitation and initiative. This can be seen in Genesis 12:1 where God calls Abram out of his own country to a new land with a new family so that ‗all the families of the earth will be blessed‘. With slavery under the Egyptians at one end and the captivity and exile of the Hebrew people at the other, only a small window of Hebrew freedom punctuates God‘s rule in Canaan. Yet from this tortured reality still comes the hope for a creation where evil is exiled for good. Christopher Wright notes that a triangle of integral relationships between God, people and land can be identified as a renewing remnant of the larger creation project between God, people and creation.440 The Hebrew nation was to be a smaller, healthy relational triangle between God, Israel and their land. From this small triangle, the whole world would be blessed. But these relationships were never only for the sake of the Hebrew people and their land. This small triangle would usher in a new, all encompassing triangle of the Lord, new humanity and new earth.

Yahweh‘s presence or glory is incarnated among the Hebrew people with the promise of more glory and presence. This can especially be seen in God‘s leading (fire and clouds, ‗anointed‘ kings and prophets), in the Torah (Psalm 119) and in the Temple (Shekinah glory of God manifested in the ark and temple). It is within this framework of the promised ‗new‘ that the hope in the panentheistic and covenant-making God can best be understood when examining the Incarnation in the New Testament. The Incarnation, which is the climax of God‘s enfleshment of hope, can also be seen as a new fulfilment of promise. Not only does Christ fulfil the promise given in creation and covenant but also in the expectation of a coming Messiah. The Christ event is consistent with the God revealed among the Hebrew people. As N. T. Wright notes regarding Jesus‘ final week, it focuses on the ‗two great incarnational symbols‘ of Judaism, the temple and the Torah, and Jesus ‗upstages‘ the first and ‗outflanks‘ the second:

440 _{Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s grand narrative (Downers Grove:}

Approach the incarnation from this angle, and it‘s no category mistake but the appropriate climax of creation. Wisdom, God‘s blueprint for humans, at last makes herself become human.441

After the Incarnation, then, nothing can be the same. God personified promises in the form of a human being. The significance of the Incarnation is that it is the fulfilment of God‘s promises in creation through the covenant made with the people of Israel in quite unexpected ways. The meaning and implications of such a central event to Christian faith will be explored further in the next chapter. Here we can simply note that the ongoing incarnating dynamic of the Creator God is not only found in creation, but also in Yahweh‘s covenanted relationship with Israel. What can these enfleshed promises given for Israel mean for the transformation of slums?

First, there is a precedent in finding hope in the God of promise. The suffering of the Hebrews was not only heard by God, but God acted to join with and liberate them. God took the initiative, chose the small nation of Israel, and empowered them to be his agents of change. In this relational and covenantal way, God promised and physically fulfilled the kind of change that can inspire and encourage those who are oppressed or alienated in slums today. The Creator God‘s very character is an active hope and love and thus can be trusted by those who are suffering in slums. What God has done in seeking out Israel and freeing them from Egyptian oppression, for example, God can do again for slum residents in their fight for freedom and in moving towards the way God intends their neighbourhood to be.

Second, there is a warning to those who are oppressing and benefiting from oppression in slums. Given the inter-connectedness of urban slums within the global community this is a serious caution to all humanity. God is neither neutral to injustice nor distant from evils. Rather, God feels, sees and joins with the oppressed, ready to see real transformation occur as part of his concern for all creation. The theme of God siding with the oppressed as a precedent and as a warning is a characteristic theme of liberation theology. What God did with Israel, God can also do with residents from slums, freeing them from all kinds of our slavery.

Third, those in slums are part of a continuance of concrete promises that empower. Slum residents can join the story of what God is doing to renew and fulfil creation. Slum residents can be involved in seeing a new heaven and new earth come together in the ways that God has always intended. As we shall see, this was inaugurated in Jesus, but the promise of a New

Jerusalem which has no misery is the promise that those in slums can hold on to as well, just like the Hebrew nation. This promise of urban utopia is especially important in the face of today‘s rapid and unstoppable force of urbanization. The future location of humanity is not on a cloud in the sky, but in a neighbourhood of a city. Participating in the direction God desires for creation, rather than trying to vacate or flee from it, can be a source of authority and power for change.

3.0 The Creator Enfleshes Hope Through Raising Jesus from the Dead,

Inaugurating New Creation

It is God who raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 10:9) and so inaugurated the promise of new creation (1 Corinthians 15). A distinctive feature of eschatological Christian hope is that it is intrinsically linked with the resurrection of Christ. N. T. Wright, in his scholarly treatment of Christian origins, as well as in Surprised by Hope, makes explicit these links with Christian mission today. In the latter he writes that ‗The mission of the church must therefore reflect, and be shaped by, the future hope as the New Testament presents it.‘ For Wright this means that areas such as ‗justice, beauty and evangelism‘ should be understood in terms of

anticipation of God‘s eventual setting to rights of the whole world, we will find that they dovetail together and in fact that they are part of the same larger whole, which is the message of hope and new life that comes with the good news of Jesus‘ resurrection.442

The need for hope in the Two-thirds World has is especially taken up by liberation theologians, such as Jon Sobrino, a Jesuit priest from El Salvador. A recent collection of his writings edited by Stephen J. Pope is entitled Hope and Solidarity: Jon Sobrino’s challenge to Christian theology.443 As Vera Ivanise Bombonatto says, Sobrino‘s Christology is ‗inspired by the light of the resurrection of Jesus, which is an expression of the power of God, not only over death, but also over the injustices that produce so many victims. God raised-up the Crucified One; consequently there is hope for all the crucified of history‘.444 As a prominent theme in Theology

442 _{Wright, Surprised by Hope, 230.}

443 _{Stephen J. Pope, ed., Hope and Solidarity: Jon Sobrino’s challenge to Christian theology (Maryknoll: Orbis,}

2008).

444 _{Vera Ivanise Bombonatto. ‗The Commitment to Taking the Poor Down from the Cross‘, in Getting the Poor}

Down from the Cross: Christology of liberation, ed. José María Vigil (Cyberspace: International Theological Commission of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, 2007),

of Hope, however, Moltmann see these roles as actions informing hope in God in the face of suffering:

Christian hope is resurrection hope, and it proves its truth in the contradiction of the future prospects thereby offered and guaranteed for the righteous as opposed to sin, life as opposed to death, glory as opposed to suffering, peace as opposed to dissension.445

The theme of resurrection and eschatology is especially developed in Moltmann‘s writings. This can be traced to a formative event that occurred while he was at Duke University in America in April 1968. During an ‗International Theology of Hope Conference‘, with over five hundred theologians, the news that Martin Luther King had been assassinated rang out.446 Moltmann would reflect that eschatological hope is different from mere optimism.

For if God has raised the persecuted, forsaken, assailed Jesus, who was executed by the power-holders of this world, then he brings future to the persecuted, forsaken, and damned of this earth. Christ‘s resurrection is the promise of a new future for the godless and God-forsaken people and not least for the dead.447

God‘s past promises are central to understanding eschatological hope that can be trusted in the face of suffering. The resurrection of Jesus, not a modernist notion of progress, is the sign that can be trusted to find a new way forward. Slum residents then need to know not only that the Creator is present, but that the Jesus who suffered and has risen, who provides the promised life and destiny of all creation, is on their side, ready to act through them as agents of change.

We must insist that this framework of hope in the Creator God‘s promise and coming to ‗make new‘ the world and ‗put it to right‘ includes the ‗making new‘ and ‗putting to right‘ of urban slums. If the eschaton is inaugurated with God raising Christ from the dead (Acts 4:10), then the eschaton can be considered an essential part of an incarnational approach to Christian mission in general and urban slums in particular.

To counter death there needs to be a focus on the God of Life. This is also a constant and sometimes surprising theme taken up in N. T. Wright‘s theology. Is what happens when we die and when all earth is filled with God‘s glory worth reflecting on and informing what we do now

http://www.servicioskoinonia.org/LibrosDigitales/LDK/EATWOTGettingThePoorDownFull.pdf (accessed January 12, 2011), 41.

445

Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the ground and the implications of a Christian eschatology

(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), Kindle loc. 154-63.

446 _{Jürgen Moltmann, A Broad Place: An autobiography (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), Kindle loc. 1334-41.} 447 _{Moltmann, A Broad Place, Kindle loc. 1319-26.}

in places like slums? Wright argues that when a person dies they go to sleep before they are resurrected with all creation when Christ returns in glory. The kind of body Jesus had post- resurrection was the inauguration of what new creation will be like. New creation then is not simply a far away spiritual place, but is heaven coming to earth. The new kind of flesh seen through the risen Christ looks to the day when all heaven and earth will be joined together. The hope found in Christ‘s prayer—‗Thy will be done on earth as in heaven‘—is about the world being put to right both now and forever. The dark spectre of death can be pierced through the risen Christ now, but will eventually be fully banished when ‗all the earth is full of his glory‘ (Isaiah 6:3).

What happens after death becomes extremely important for putting this life in perspective. Wright argues that when humans die there is first a kind of sleepful bliss until the final day when Christ will come and all will be raised from the dead and a new heaven and earth will be fully formed.448 Understanding this resurrected ‗life after life-after-death‘ is of crucial importance to the present for Wright. For what happens physically in this life is not simply thrown away in the next. All those activities done ‗in Christ‘ can live on in an enhanced way when the great day of renewal comes and that is for Wright ‗the logic of the mission of God‘.

God‘s recreation of his wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God‘s people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. It will last all the way into God‘s new world. In fact, it will be enhanced there.449

Such an understanding of life after death gives hope and purpose to life now, not least for those living and serving Christ in slums. Death is not the final word because this eschatology sees even death transformed (1 Corinthians 15:54-55). Nothing invested in the ‗least of these‘ is done in vain or wasted (Matthew 25:31-46; 1 Corinthians 15:58). On the contrary, it becomes meaningful in an ultimate sense because the faith, hope and love poured out by Christians remains forever (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Premature death is a real barrier to transformation in slums. Loss and grief are some of the most painful realities of being humans in a fallen world. Yet, when the young die, especially when their deaths are easily preventable as is often the case in slums, the tragedy is dramatically

448_{Wright, Surprised by Hope, Kindle loc. 741-45.} 449 _{Wright, Surprised by Hope, Kindle loc. 3298-3311.}

intensified. Something could and should have been done about the premature loss of any person made in God‘s image. The God of Life invites people to join him in completing the promise all people have.

Any adequate Christian response to urban slum and squatter neighbourhoods therefore needs to address issues of life, death and the inauguration of new creation. As we have seen in this chapter the promissory and anticipatory hope can be found in joining the Creator of Life. This is not least because ‗The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made‘ (Psalm 45:9). The goodness and compassion of the Creator God is an important source of hope that Christians can experience and then bring to the transformation process in slums. Without it, God‘s transformation remains far off, but with it God‘s renewal of all things is on its way and we can all join in on seeing all creation‘s promised fulfilled.

Chapter Eight

The Redeemer Incarnates: Following the risen Jesus into the

hidden life of urban slums

Jesus Christ, the Incarnate One, makes real God‘s promises in the world. Langmead‘s three-part definition of incarnational mission focuses on following Jesus as a pattern for mission450 and can also help frame a Christian response to slums. As Langmead outlines, a Christo-praxis centre can help Christians focus on what it can mean to embody Good News to the poor, share vulnerable love and follow the way of the cross.451 As we shall see, these incarnational dimensions are distinct to Christianity and have the potential to provide real courage and creativity in slum neighbourhoods.

If God has always had an ongoing, ‗incarnating dynamic of hope‘ in the creation and through a covenant with the Hebrew people, what, then, is the special meaning and importance of the Incarnation of the Redeemer? Perhaps the most explicit and developed use of the metaphor of enfleshment to describe the Incarnational event can be found in John‘s Gospel and the Johannine Epistles.452 Particularly important, and from where the very term ‗incarnation‘ is derived, is John 1:14:

And the Word (logos) became flesh (sarx) and dwelt (skenoo) among us, and we have seen his glory (doxa), the glory (doxa) as of a father‘s only son, full of grace and truth.

Four Greek words here—‗flesh‘ (sarx), ‗dwelling‘ (skenoo) and ‗glorification‘ (doxo) of the ‗Word‘ (logos)—can help inform in what sense the Incarnation can provide a motif of enfleshing hope in slums as especially seen in Johannine writings.

A Johannine use of sarx (‗flesh‘) here and elsewhere can be contrasted with the typical

450 _{Langmead, The Word Made Flesh, 219-220.} 451 _{Langmead, The Word Made Flesh, 49-52.} 452 _{See especially John 1 and 1 John 3 and 4.}

Pauline use. For Paul, sarx is a metaphor used fifty-four times, mostly describing base human nature, driving people to be in constant rebellion with God.453 ‗The flesh‘, then, is something Paul calls readers to resist by the grace of God (Galatians 6:8). For John, however, sarxis but one metaphor employed to describe the mystery of God‘s salvific purposes in Jesus Christ.