Thanks to Robert Perschmann for bringing attention to this link, sent out as a New Year’s gift by The People’s World, the newspaper of the Communist Party USA.
Robert sent the link as a part of a comment on Views from the Edge’s post from “Every Valley” from Handel’s “Messiah”. I responded with the following reflection, slightly edited here.:
“Robert, the valleys and mountains, and the rough places a plain, or level place, are so clearly (biblical) metaphors for the coming of economic just. “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.” The hearer is transported into a vision and hope that can only be voiced and heard in poetry. It is the day of the lion and the lamb, the end of violence and sorrow, the end of the disparities of the sated and the sorrowful.
Josef Hromadka
“Josef Hromadka, Czech theologian and “father of Christian-Marxist Dialogue” during the Cold War, always said the church’s unfaithfulness to its calling was responsible for the atheism of communism. In Czarist Russia there were, on the one hand, the Czar and the Church, and, on the other, the peasants, the poor, the suffering who were oppressed by the throne and consigned to perpetual poverty by the church that taught them to be patient in their hope for another world. Hromadka called for the church to confess the sin of abandoning it charter and its hope. He saw in communism the re-awakening of the original grand hope for the coming of the Kingdom of God.
“Hromadka was a much-beloved professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary during the 30s and 40s. My father studied with him and remembered him fondly as a great teacher. When Hromadka left his secure teaching position in Princeton in 1947, many of his Western friends and colleagues were deeply disappointed and highly critical. They viewed him as naïve, a communist, or communist-sympathizer. Hromadka returned to create in Czechoslovakia and the wider Eastern bloc a dialogue that would contribute to the hope for a more humane and human society in both the church and the society..
“Thanks for the link. So interesting and rather mind-blowing that the newspaper of the Communist Party USA would choose Beethoven’s 9th as a New Year gift. I’ll listen with new ears.”
Princeton Theological Seminary Professor Charles West’s “Hromadka: Theologian of the Resurrection” offers an in-depth look at Hromadka’s life and witness as seen by a faculty colleague in the West. Here are some excerpts from the article:
Hromadka rejected both liberalism, with its shallow view (of the human crisis, and conservatism, with its allegiance to old structures which had lost their moral power. “We are living on the ruins of the old world, both morally and politically,” he concluded. “No one single element and norm of our civilization can possibly be taken for granted.”
With this faith which he continually translated into political judgments, Hromadka made the choice to return to Czechoslovakia in 1947, to accept the Communist coup d’etat in 1948, and to work as a Christian within the framework of a Marxist-dominated socialist society.
“I am in no sense a Communist,” he wrote, “but I take part in this revolution from the point of view of my Christian faith which sees the work of the forgiving grace of God in the midst of changes that are coming about.”
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“Black Sheep Lemming” reprinted with permission of Just Outside the Box.
There is no real cliff.
The only cliff is the one created by the imagination of the lemmings now running toward it.
“Just Outside the Box” published a cartoon of a group of lemmings running toward the cliff. One of them has turned back to run from the cliff. One of the lemmings asks, “Why’s he going in the opposite direction from us?” to which another replies, “Don’t worry about him. He’s the black sheep in the family.”
There never has been a real fiscal cliff. The likelihood is that “the cliff” will disappear before the lemmings reach the brink. If the lemmings that created their cliff don’t all become “black sheep”, they’ll all be in big trouble with their constituents back home.
Maybe the partisan brinksmanship will end up serving a different purpose. If it does, it may turn out to have been one of those “teaching moments” when the light bulb goes on among the students in the classroom.
The United States of America is a representative democratic republic that places the art of compromise for the sake of the common good at the center of the nation’s life. If the perception of a “fiscal cliff” calls the electorate back from the precipice created by ”one-issue, my-way-or-the-highway, lemming politics“, the cliff that never was will turn out to have had the good effect of a new civility.
Gospel according to Luke 2:8-14, Revised Version, NRA Bible:
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them,
“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is announced this day the gift of armed guards in every school. And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find Joseph standing guard over an innocent child in Bethlehem.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
“Glory to guns in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men.”
” Fear not, I bring you good tidings of great joy! – NRA Christmas Message, December 21, 2012
This sermon, originally titled “Rejoice!”, was preached last Sunday following the tragedy in Newtown, CT. It turns to the biblical tradition and the classic Greek and Shakespearean theater for a different perspective in the aftermath of unspeakable violence and horror at Sandy Hook.
“Sandy Hook was a symptom of the American tragedy: our worship of safety — arming ourselves to the nines — turns out to be the death of us. The idolatry of safety is the worship of death itself.” – guest commentary, GCS, MPR (91.1 FM, Dec. 20, 2012)
Click HERE for the entire commentary on safety and the worship of death aired yesterday on “All Things Considered” (Minnesota Public Radio, MPR, 91.1 FM) The page you will see includes an audio link to listen.
The MPR site also provides opportunity for readers and listeners to chime in with your point of view to generate further discussion of safety, guns, death, and American culture.
On the day the world comes to an end, thanks so much for choosing to drop by Views from the Edge for a definitive, final word from a completely reliable source of all wisdom and truth. Later this morning I meet with a group of students to discuss the Mayan Calendar hoax and the misreading of the New Testament Book of Revelation …assuming, of course, that we’re all still here at 9:30 A.M. Central Standard Time :-).
In that same vein – or is it “vain”? – last Sunday’s sermon at Shepherd of the Hill on the tragedy of Sandy Hook in light of the biblical tradition will go up on Views from the Edge. and the church website.
Views from the Edge 