In the CAC’s early years, Richard Rohr often shared his talk “Gospel Call for Compassionate Action—Bias from the Bottom.” Richard emphasized the Hebrew experience of freedom in the Exodus:
Something happened that allowed an enslaved group of Semitic peoples to go through a liberation experience and to be led to the lands we now call Israel and Palestine. The Exodus journey became an externalized and internalized journey, as true spirituality always is. It marked the beginnings of the creation of this people and the creation of a spirituality that includes both action and contemplation.
We know the man called Moses at the heart of this Exodus journey. The account begins with his early religious experience (Exodus 3:2–6). We know he is a murderer; that he escapes from the law and lives out in the desert, taking care of his father-in-law’s sheep when he has his “burning bush” experience of God. It’s a nature experience, which is very often our own first religious experience. There’s no tabernacle, church, temple, priesthood, or anything to do with formalized religion.
Immediately upon this experience, the voice Moses hears from the bush says: “I have heard the groaning of my people in Egypt and you are to go, confront the Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go” (see Exodus 3:7–10). The contemplative “burning bush” experience comes and immediately has social, economic, and political implications. There is no authentic God experience which does not situate us in the world in a different way and cause us to see things differently and act accordingly. [1]
Theologian Dwight Hopkins writes about what it has meant for Black Americans in poverty to read the Exodus story and discover a God who liberates:
Today’s poor African Americans struggle for freedom and encounter oppressed conditions similar to those in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. The Hebrew Scriptures reveal [YHWH] compassionately hearing and seeing the dire difficulties experienced by the least in society, in this case, the Hebrew slaves. When the poor today read the story of Hebrew slaves and their relationship to a liberator God, they can see that they are not alone in their cruel predicament in contemporary America.
The biblical stories of exodus feature an oppressed people (that is, the Hebrews) who suffered at the hands of brutal taskmasters; were accused falsely; were pursued by forces of prejudice; dwelled in the midst of a wilderness experience; went through periods of anxiety, fear, and doubt about the future, at times longing for a return to their former status in an inhuman system; and quarreled with their leaders while doggedly continuing along the way to freedom….
Moreover, the African American poor, reading the Hebrew Scriptures from their position on the bottom of American society, discover a whole new world different from the dominating Christianity and theology of mainstream American believers. The exodus theme does not end with harsh difficulties. On the contrary, the hope of deliverance cancels out the pain and gives today’s poor the strength to “keep on keeping on.” [2]
References:
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Gospel Call for Compassionate Action (Bias from the Bottom),” CAC Foundation Set (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2007). Available as MP3 download.
[2] Dwight N. Hopkins, Introducing Black Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 42–43.
Image credit: A path from one week to the next—Izzy Spitz, Everything at Once, digital oil pastel. Izzy Spitz, Wings, digital oil pastel. Izzy Spitz, Tuesday Chemistry. Used with permission. Click here to enlarge image.
Perhaps those on the “bottom” of our societies, like the bottom shape in the image, have colors those “on top” have never dreamed of, like corals, reds and yellows.
Story from Our Community:
I have been reading CAC’s Daily Meditations for a few years now. I’ll never forget the first time I read a reflection on “dying to your own will” in order to live through God’s will. At first, I was perplexed by this idea. I thought about it constantly. The more I began to meditate on what it meant, the more I began to understand exactly what “dying to my own will” meant and what it would look like. What I found would shift the deeply instilled judgment and bias that I had grown up with in the Protestant church. I came to understand that for me, it meant avoiding focusing on what everybody else was doing spiritually— and whether I thought it was right or wrong. As I let go of judgement, I began to have a more honest and healthy relationship with God. I feel like I am a better witness to the gospel that I was before, because I no longer feel the need to police anyone else’s spiritual life. I am so thankful for this understanding. It has changed my spiritual walk forever. —Stacey H.
