Jeremiah 29:4-7 | Matthew 5:14-16
Jeremy Richards
On June 1, 1886, the Second German Baptist Church in Hells Kitchen, New York ordained their new pastor, a recent graduate of Rochester Theological Seminary. His name was Walter Rauschenbusch. Rauschenbusch was the son of August and Caroline Rauschenbusch. August had come to the United States as a German Lutheran missionary, but later became a Baptist. Walter’s Christian upbringing was pietistic, focusing on the personal – personal faith, personal sin, personal salvation, and personal religious experiences. Despite the ways Rauschenbusch’s faith would change and grow as he got older, he never saw this as a negative thing, only as incomplete in and of itself. He said of his upbringing, “I was brought up in a very religious family, and I thank God for it.”[1] At the age of 17, after a rebellious period, he began to pray for help and, in his words, he “got [his] own religious experience.” This experience would stick with him for the rest of his life.
When Rauschenbusch decided to enter the ministry, it was with the goal of saving souls, the very same reason many other folx enter ministry, both then and now. But in the words of Dennis Johnson, who edited a recent devotional made up of Rauschenbusch’s spiritual writings, “He soon realized that there was more to be saved than souls.”[2]
Hell’s kitchen, the neighborhood in which Rauschenbusch’s new church was located, was overrun by poverty, unemployment, disease, and crime. Every day, Rauschenbusch saw the consequences of American greed and capitalism, and how it affected the day to day lives of those he ministered to. In addition to his Sunday duties as a pastor, Rauschenbusch spent his time advocating for those who couldn’t pay their bills, comforting the sick and hurting, and all too regularly sitting beside the beds of the dying. What affected him most were the numerous funerals he performed for children during this time.
These experiences shook Rauschenbusch, and caused him to rethink his theology and ministry. What did it mean to be a Christian minister in Hell’s Kitchen in the late 19th century? Was it enough to simply “save souls”? To quote Dennis Johnson again, “The young pastor recognized that the neighborhood was not ‘a safe places for saved souls,’ which convinced him of the demand for social salvation along with personal salvation.”
Rauschenbusch came to the conclusion that the work of the Gospel was not only to transform individual lives, but to transform the very fabric of society. This understanding of the Christian mission became known as the Social Gospel.
The Social Gospel took the nation by storm in 1907, when Rauschenbusch’s first book, Christianity and the Social Crisis, was published. For three years running it was the best-selling religious book in the country, eventually selling a total of 50,000 copies. It’s hard to overstate the impact of Rauschenbusch’s thought – both then and now. The great Baptist preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, a contemporary of Rauschenbusch’s, said the book “struck home so poignantly on the intelligence and conscience…that it ushered in a new era in Christian thought and action.”[3] Rauschenbusch’s influence would reach not only Harry Emerson Fosdick, a giant in his own right, but many other prominent figures in American Christianity and politics, not least of them Martin Luther King, Jr., who said that Christianity and the Social Crisis “left an indelible imprint on my thinking by giving me a theological basis for the social concern which had already grown up in me.”[4]
In many ways, Rauschenbusch serves as a model for us, not only of love of neighbor, but of the whole of our 2021 theme of love. We began the year with reimagining the love of God, then moved to restoring love of self, and are now focusing on renewing love of neighbor. To be fair, I don’t know that Rauschenbusch talked much about love of self, but he certainly began with love of God. Even as his commitment to social concerns grew, he never moved away from the spiritual center of his religious life. He never forgot that religious experience he had at the age of 17. In his own words, “…that religious experience was a very true one…it was of everlasting value to me. It turned me permanently, and I thank God with all my heart for it. It was a tender, mysterious experience. It influence my soul down to its depth.”[5]
Rauschenbusch’s social commitments grew out of his personal experience. His love of neighbor flowed out of his love of God. As Dennis Johnson says, his “passion for social transformation was the imperative of his deep spirituality and life with God. His social activism arose from his inner life.”[6] This has been my argument all along during the course of our yearlong theme on love: that our first priority is to love and be loved by God, and it is out of that love of God that we can rightly come to love our neighbors. That’s why Jesus says the first and most important commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and that the second commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself.
As we’ve been focusing on renewing love of neighbor the last few weeks, we’ve been widening the circle with each week. First, we talked about love of individual neighbors, then last week we focused on love for our neighbors within the church, and now we’re looking at love for neighbor within the context of our local community (or communities) outside the church. Next week we’ll focus on love of neighbor on a global scale.
Rauschenbusch began his ministry focusing on the first two “circles” of love of neighbor: love of individuals and love of his church community, but he soon found that he and his congregation lived within a wider circle, that of their specific neighborhood in Hell’s Kitchen, and beyond that the specific context of the United States at the turn of the 20th century. And beyond that, the context of the larger world: a truth that would be unavoidable in 1914, when the first world war broke out.
To go back to the quote from Dennis Johnson earlier, about the neighborhood not being a safe place for saved souls, Rauschenbusch realized that the wider context of the neighborhood outside the church affected the individual and communal lives of those in the church. The social context outside was a threat to the internal transformation happening within. In order for his church members to flourish, both individually and communally, the social conditions within which these souls lived must contribute to that flourish. And so, Rauschenbusch concluded, the influence of the each local congregation, and the larger church as a whole, must extend beyond its own walls to the city in which it is situated.
As our famous reading from Jeremiah this morning states, seek the welfare of your city, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. In this passage, Jeremiah warns the Jewish exiles in Babylon not to assume that they’ll be returning to Jerusalem anytime soon. Instead, they should seek to build lives where God has brought them, to put down roots, and to work for the good of the foreign city where they now live. If they want to flourish, the city they live in must also flourish.
Being a Christian in the world today is kind of similar, though in a different way. Of course we aren’t slaves to a foreign people, but there is a sense in which we are not citizens of the world, but citizens of the kingdom of God. The author of Hebrews says we are strangers and foreigners on the earth, and that we desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.
But, as Christians, we regularly pray the prayer as Jesus taught us, that God’s kingdom would come, and God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Our citizenship in the kingdom of God shouldn’t result in us retreating from the world, but to make our home in the world with the aim of making the world more like the kingdom Jesus preached about and embodied, one that is more just and more equitable, that is characterized by both physical and spiritual healing, and which prioritizes the needs of the poor and suffering, just as Jesus did.
The kingdom of God became the dominating theme of Rauschenbusch’s thought. The kingdom of God was to Rauschenbusch the just society that Jesus initiated and that was, over time, developing through God’s active work in the world. He saw the Church as the primary agent of making the kingdom of God a reality. That’s not to say that he thought we could simply roll up our sleeves and create some kind of utopia on our own, but the Church was to be instrumental in pushing society toward the kingdom. (See how this ties in with last week’s focus on the local church community?)
Now, I’ve been talking a lot about the kingdom of God this morning, but there have been some very persuasive arguments that we should no longer use this language of “kingdom” because it’s too hierarchical and colonial, too steeped in patriarchy and oppression. “Kingdom of God” brings to mind images of God as…a king, as a man on a throne with ultimate authority, and we, lowly people, are seen as peasants or serfs or maybe even slaves. Many modern theologians, especially those who come from marginalized communities that have suffered at the hands of Western “kingdoms,” from the colonial period to today, have argued that we should refer not to the “kingdom of God” but the “kin-dom of God,” emphasizing a familial, loving web of relationships over a hierarchical, political metaphor.
This argument makes sense. I love it. The Bible is full of familial language. God is called our Parent and Jesus our brother. We are referred to as children, and the early church often referred to each other as brothers and sister – so much so in fact that early opponents of Christianity argued that Christians practiced incest because they were always marrying their sisters and brothers!
But I think both “kin-dom” and “kingdom” language is appropriate. I love the idea of the kin-dom of God and the relationships it implies. In fact, this language better represents how I personally think of my relationship to God and to all of you.
But I think kingdom language is also important, because it carries with it a certain challenge. The kingdom of God stands as an immediate contrast and critique of the kingdoms of the world. One might be able to live in the kin-dom of God while also belonging to any other kingdom of the world. But to speak of the kingdom of God forces us to question if we can be loyal to that kingdom of God and other kingdoms.
Can we, at the same time, belong to a peaceful heavenly kingdom and a worldly kingdom that spends $778 billion on the military? Can we belong to a heavenly kingdom that says blessed are the poor and a worldly kingdom that rewards greed and ruthlessness? Can we belong to a heavenly kingdom marked by mutuality and holding all things in common and a worldly kingdom based on capitalism? Can we belong to a heavenly kingdom built on forgiveness and restoration and a worldly kingdom built on retributive justice that incarcerates almost 25% of the world’s prisoners, most of them black and brown, and many of them for nonviolent crimes? Can we belong to a heavenly kingdom which brings together people from every nation, tribe, culture, and language and a worldly kingdom that continues to privilege those of white, European descent?
I could go on and on. You get the picture.
The kingdom of God critiques the kingdoms of the world – local, national, and global. Grant Park is located in a pretty nice neighborhood. It’s nothing like Hell’s kitchen 120 years ago. But, like Rauschenbusch, we too can see the devastating effects of unfettered capitalism. We can look to our right and see multi-million dollar homes, and look to our left and see a mother of 3 begging for change. If we are to partner with God in bringing the kingdom of God to earth, then we must challenge the kingdoms of the world, which say that that woman and her children don’t matter, that they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, that only those who make a certain amount of money deserve food, healthcare, and a safe place to sleep at night.
As a church, we have seen the suffering of those who are victims of capitalism and greed. We’ve asked, what can we, as a small church averaging between 20-30 people on a Sunday, do to love our houseless neighbors? And we’ve decided to partner with Family Promise and serve as part of a rotating shelter program, hosting houseless families for a week every three months.
This may seem small in comparison to the great need we see all around us, but it goes beyond simply giving someone a handout (which is good and necessary sometimes! I don’t mean “handout” in a negative way), and seeks to break the cycle of poverty. In addition to housing these families rent free, Family Promise provides resources for the adults to get jobs and find stable housing. Also, by opening up our space we are challenging the idea that there isn’t room for our houseless neighbors in our city. Who knows, maybe somewhere down the road we’ll be able to provide more long-term housing for those in need?
By sharing what we have, which is this beautiful old building God has blessed us with, we are hoping, in our own small way, to bring the kingdom of God to earth, to live in a way that is generous and hospitable in the midst of a world that says take what you can because there isn’t enough for everyone. We hope that others will see this and not only give glory to God (which we do want) but also be inspired to do their part to make the kingdom of God a reality today. (Which is really the best way they could give glory to God anyway, right?)
We don’t, as individual Christians and as a Christian community, exist simply for ourselves. We are a city on a hill, Jesus says. We are meant to spread the light of God’s love, healing, and justice to the world around us. Which is work, yes, but more than that it’s a huge blessing, a huge honor.
Let me end with this quote from Walter Rauschenbusch:
A life of service is a holy duty. Yes, and a blessed privilege too. How swiftly life spins away! And sometimes as I listen to the racing of the years, I feel a terrible catch of the heart, not at the coming of death, but at the passing of life. So much to be done, and as yet so little accomplished. I want to work, to serve in the redemption of the world from wrong, to help my Master save humanity. It is a glory, a privilege, and I want much of it. This life can be so full, so noble, so blessed to us, so useful to others. And so often it is empty, vapid, trivial, discontented, useless. Which is the real privilege, to serve or to idle? Which is the real burden, to live for self or to live for the kingdom of God?[7]
[1] https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/activists/walter-rauschenbusch.html
[2] Dennis L. Johnson, To Live in God: Daily Reflections with Walter Rauschenbusch, xvi – xvii.
[3] https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/activists/walter-rauschenbusch.html
[4] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/social-gospel
[5] Paul M. Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer, 17.
[6] Dennis L. Johnson, To Live in God: Daily Reflections with Walter Rauschenbusch, xvii.
[7] Dennis L. Johnson, To Live in God: Daily Reflections with Walter Rauschenbusch, 68.