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August 18, 2008

Exile on main street

Imperative to love enemies takes on new meaning, Berkeley pastor tells Presbyterian Global Fellowship

by Jerry L. Van Marter
Presbyterian News Service

LONG BEACH, CA — The Rev. Mark Labberton says he learned an indelible lesson in loving one’s enemies from a feisty 85-year-old church member who was carjacked by a heroin addict in Berkeley, CA.

“When Doris was hijacked outside the church that Sunday morning,” Labberton — pastor of Berkeley’s First Presbyterian Church — told 1,000 participants attending the Presbyterian Global Fellowship’s third annual gathering here Aug. 14-16, “she realized that Danny [her captor] had a lot more problems than she did. She understood that to be missional is to love all people, especially those who don’t love us.”

And so, Labberton said in his Aug. 15 address, Doris engaged Danny in conversation, told him he was loved by Jesus Christ, “and told him that when he was finally busted for his crime, she was going to be in court insisting that he get the help he needed to overcome his addiction and promising to help him herself,” Labberton recounted.

Doris’ ability to reach out in such a way resulted from her innate understanding of shifting paradigms in contemporary life — a shift that mirrors the progression in the Old Testament “from Exodus to Exile,” Labberton said.

“Exodus is a paradigm of good guys versus bad guys,” he explained. “The options are pretty limited and simple — you either leave them behind or you kill them. The quest is for the promised land and when it doesn’t pan out where you are, you pick up and go somewhere else.”

Though much of the American ethos is built on the exodus paradigm, Labberton said, the Bible points to  a different paradigm — Exile — that seems to better exemplify contemporary American culture.

Rather than exiting from a land that turns out to be less than promised, the exile paradigm is marked “by being sent away because of our own failings, our unfaithfulness, which makes us enemies of God,” Labberton said, citing the prophets Amos and Hosea as proponents of that paradigm. “This is a vision that places people under the authority of enemies and then demands that they remain faithful even in that context,” he said.  

In such a context, loving one’s enemies is imperative, Labberton continued.  It requires “the realization that the Egyptians are not God’s only enemies … by our own brokenness and disobedience, we are God’s enemies also.”

This is what Doris understood, Labberton said. “God’s change will change our enemies and us … Doris said the issue is not getting mugged or not,” he said. “It’s what you’re going to do WHEN you get mugged. The capacity to be peacemakers is not there if we fear rather than love our enemies.”

The Christian church today is one of exile, not exodus, Labberton insisted. Therefore, he said, “The missional church is called to be those who in this context choose to love our enemies. It is in their shalom that we’ll fine our shalom.

“We seek the welfare of others because it is intrinsically in the heart of God to want that,” he concluded. “We all have opportunities to practice this and, like Doris, we should seize every opportunity.”

The Rev. John Huffman, pastor of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA and a member of the PGF board, introduced Rob Smith of the Agathos Foundation, which is seeking to implement a “peace plan” for Africa inspired by Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Orange County, CA, and author of The Purpose-Driven Life.

Warren was scheduled to speak to the gathering but an illness in his family forced him to bow out at the last minute.

Smith told of Agathos’ efforts to establish self-sustaining farm villages for the millions of African children orphaned by the AIDS pandemic. “The keys to the effort are African pastors and American businessmen,” Smith said. Agathos is also working on Africa infrastructure projects, such as  the “African Queen Project” to rebuild the ferry system on Zimbabwe’s Lake Victoria, a project that is essential to economic recovery in that deeply troubled country.