Author: ppadmin

        Hahn’s book is 20+ years old but this reflection on the kinds of leadership required in the church was useful to me halfway through a 20-year pastoral assignment and now at the end of a part-time interim pastorate that called for an initial two months and has now extended to over ten years. While Hahn reflects biblical, theological and psychological perspectives, her major contribution lies in her reliance on concrete experiences and parish interview responses.

        Hahn identifies four sources of authority (authority: ‘the permission and/or obligation to act/, p 7): authority is given and therefore received; authority is an inner awareness of calling; authority is a personal assertion; authority comes from many sources integrated, and from G-d (pp 8-10). She names this ‘integrated authority’: a meeting of person, context, initiative and the transcendent’ (p 10).

        Authority is not a control mechanism; it is a gift for the community, not a personal possession to be employed for personal benefit. Integrated authority is ‘integration’, the mediation of expectations; it belongs to G-d; it doesn’t depend on control; it does not practise hierarchy; it honours the freedom of others. Integrated leaders invite others’ authority to be exercised: start with the people where they are; refuse to be others’ authority (during a real game the coach retreats to the sidelines); people are equal; others’ gifts, partnership and authority are invited. (The early church by the fourth century had forsaken Jesus’ vision of integrated authority and slipped back under control mechanisms: authority evolved into a bureaucracy.

        The World Council of Churches’ Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982) brought communion to the ecumenical fore, especially with the Anabaptist emphasis in the 16th century. “The eucharist is the pinnacle of the communion of the church and the Christian, yet its transcendent reality is affected by the rudimentary elements of earthly existence, bread and wine. . . . The eucharist forces us to think about communion with a spirit, unbounded in any way yet mediated by the earthbound elements of natural existence” (p. 25). “In Jesus G-d took flesh.” Rempel explores how the doctrine of the eucharist was developed by each of three radical reformers: Marpeck, Hubmaier, Dirk, keeping a balance between sacramentalism and spiritualism, being more than just an act of remembrance.

        Rempel stresses the commonalities of the three theologians: Christian life is primarily a life of relationship with G-d, i.e., a visible expression; connection between spiritual and material dimensions; the gospel of John was their major gospel; holding together faith and Spirit (Trinitarian emphasis) (pp. 199-201).

        Rempel also summarizes four contemporary Anabaptist theologians: J.C. Wenger, Gordon Kaufman, Robert Friedmann and Thomas Finger. Key quotations focus the issue. “The community’s action of sharing bread and wine is transformed into a sharing of the body and blood of Christ” (p. 222). Rempel regrets that for Anabaptists the Lord’s Supper has all to often been an isolated point of doctrine. Anabaptist ecumenical theology emphasizes the Lord’s Supper as reconciliation with G-d and with each other, a sense of community and mission.

        ‘The degradation of nature is not a problem with a short-term solution…. The ecological crisis is a spiritual crisis…. Most of us no longer have a sense of belonging to the earth, an experience of solidarity with plants and animals, such that we deeply desire for all forms of life to thrive along with us.’ (p xiv) With this as the prompting issue, Earth and Word presents a spectrum of sermons that force us to look again at the bible and its message to and for us. There’s a richness in the spectrum of presentations here; virtually none of the ‘sermons’ are superfluous: Wendell Berry (‘Christianity and the Survival of Creation’), Ted Hiebert (‘First Things First’), Cynthia Moe-Lobeda (‘Dry Bones’), Larry Rassmussen (‘First and Everlasting Covenant’), Rosemary Radford Ruether (‘The biblical vision of Eco-Justice), Joseph Sittler (‘The Care of the Earth), Barbara Brown Taylor (‘Rest for the Land’), to name only a few entries.

        It is impossible to summarize the riches of these sermons, but typical is Ched Myers’ ‘The Cedar has fallen: the Prophetic Word versus Imperial Clear-Cutting’; Myers traces the ecological disaster of the clear cutting of Lebanon’s cedars with a moving litany from the bible itself, with the political implications (‘there was blood on the cedars that figured so prominently in Solomon’s temple and his own royal house’ (p 217), the cedars a metaphor for empire itself. ‘The bible takes sides on behalf of the trees’ (p 222).

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

        Moral differences (on issues such as abortion, capital punishment, immigration and civil rights) make it difficult to seek the common good. The western world has been influenced by the examples of its Jewish-Christian past where the Hebrew prophets were seen as pointing to the identifying and seeking to correct social evils. In our pluralistic society, the prophetic method employs ‘the fiery rhetoric of indictment.

        These Jeremiads (identifying Jeremiah’s fiery denunciations) have been a major influence on public discourses (Martin Luther King Jr who used prophetic rhetoric to facilitate reform and reconciliation rather than revenge.’ True prophets believe they must do as G-d commands and condemn the practices G-d tells them to condemn’ (p 8). But is it possible to incorporate a lively sense of humility into the practice of the jeremiad?”(p 9).

        'The greatest danger associated with the practice of prophetic indictment is arrogance [and Kaveny] uses Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address for insight about how to combine a strong commitment to combating social evil with a vivid sense of the inadequacy of one’s own grasp of divine plans for dealing with that evil. [Lincoln] offers a lesson on how modern day jeremiads might integrate self criticism into their thought and speech.’ (p 9). Kaveny does a fascinating study of Jonah as one reminder to those who issue prophetic indictments when they know so little about G-d’s plan….and that the biblical tradition offers ample room for the cultivation of humility and self criticism’ (p 10).