Reformation in the global context: the disturbing spaciousness of Jesus Christ

"Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile; and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (Jer 29:7).

In his "Theses for the Heidelberg Disputation" (1518) Luther writes: "Without a theology of the cross, a human misuses the best things in the worst way." (1) The word "misuse" is familiar and relevant to us. The message of the Reformation calls us to emancipate humanity from the "misuse of the best," the misuse of the name of God. I see a connection between the ancient advice of Jeremiah to the exiled people of Judah and Luther's discovery of the gospel as he was pondering over the Epistle to the Romans. Both are concerned with the renewal of the quality of community life. Jeremiah affirms the wholesomeness, shalom, of the community, not that of a person or particular group. Luther affirms the righteousness of God that is actively at work among people. The spirit of the Reformation is focused on the building up of a universal blessed community. Hence, its message is relevant to us today, though it needs to be interpreted and translated.

The Buddha, meditating under the tree, maintained his mobility. The Christ, crucified upon the tree, lost his mobility. Mobility is basic to human dignity. Space is only meaningful when we can enjoy our mobility, whether spiritual, intellectual, or physical. When our mobility and space are happily harmonious, we experience salvation. The word "spaciousness" speaks to me more meaningfully than the word "salvation." At the time of my baptism I realized, though vaguely, that from the one who had lost his mobility on the cross came the broad space of new life for humanity. This is a striking paradox--a "scandal" (1 Cor 1:23). This image of paradox comes to me when I hear today Luther's expression theologia crucis, "theology of the cross."

My own version of a theology of the cross began emotionally, without any definite form or understanding, when I was 15 years old. In the morning following the midnight carpet bombing of March 10, 1945, in Japan, I saw the sun rise as usual, as though nothing had happened in the human world. The light and warmth of the sun embraced both the dead and the living. The sun quietly erased the distinction between enemy and friend. I became aware that a strange quietness had descended on me. I heard, or felt, the words of Jesus, that God "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous" (Matt 5:45). Those words have come back to me from time to time for nearly sixty years since that morning. When I was baptized during the war, the minister told me that God loves everyone, Americans as well as Japanese. I was baptized not into the religion of the enemy country but into the God of all nations.

How are we to speak about the connection between this healing universality of God and the line of the great hymn "0 sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down"? This has been the theme of my ecumenical theology.

The advice of Jeremiah, "Pray to the Lord on Babylon's behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare," is in harmony with the New Testament idea of the kingdom of God. "The Reign of God is a universal reality, extending far beyond the boundaries of the Church.. . . It is the fundamental 'mystery of unity' which unites us more deeply than differences in religious allegiance are able to keep us apart." (2)

Martin Luther King Jr. writes in a similar vein from the Birmingham City Jail: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. (3)

There is no church outside the world. There is no salvation outside the world since the church is in the world. There is salvation in the world because "Christ is hidden everywhere in the mystery of his lowliness." (4) And there is salvation outside the church because "In her sacramental mysterious existence the Church surpasses canonical measurements." (5) Extra ecclesiam nulla salus (The slogan "outside the Church there is no salvation" does not originate in the scriptures) is not consonant with the abundant generosity and spacious catholicity Christ created on the cross. Catholicity is, theologically speaking, a more fertile word than universality, because it does not suggest uniformity or imperialism. It is the universality expressed through the image of the "sacred head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down." It is a self-giving universality (Matt 16:24). The God of catholicity cannot be confined in the temple (1 Kgs 8:27). The biblical God is a boundary-breaking God. "Any claim to exclusivity or religious triumphalism will eventually run aground on the expansive vision of the biblical God." (6) The Holy Spirit moves where it wills (John 3:8).

Christ is the head of both kosmos and ekklesia (Col 1:15-18). In human life the sacred and the profane coexist. (7) We are asked to pray for the welfare of the enemy city, "for in its welfare you will find your welfare." When the kosmos suffers, ekklesia suffers. When kosmos is honored, ekklesia is honored (1 Cor 12:26). There is a sacramental communion between the two. This is the astounding design and operation of God's hesed/agape (loyalty/love) in God's creation. Kosmos is being transformed to ekklesia and vice versa. This grand ecumenical message is addressed to twenty-first-century humanity.(8) It is good for us to note with appreciation the teaching of theosis (deification) of the Eastern Orthodox Church.(9)