Biography
Myron Augsburger is President of the Christian College Coalition in Washington, D.C. A former President of Eastern Mennonite College and Seminary, he is currently Professor of Theology there. He has somehow found the time from his busy lecturing schedule to write nineteen books, the most recent ones, The Peacemaker and Nuclear Arms, focusing on a major thrust of the Mennonite Church: peace in our time. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"The Redeemed Community in a Fallen World" 
One's purpose is more important than his position. With that awareness, you and I live in the world with a sense of mission to speak about what it means to be God's community. God's people in a fallen world is one of the most important topics that I can address.

The fallenness of the world is our condition, but not our confession. There is not only the problem of fallenness. There is the reality of the redeemed community. My interest in talking about this is to call you to join me in saying we will be a people of God in this world to demonstrate what it means to walk with Christ and to take Him seriously. The Christian Gospel is the message that God transforms society by transforming peoples.

The passage that Ken Wessner read a few moments ago (Ephesians 2:11-18) is that remarkable statement that Jesus came and took of two -- Jew and Gentile -- and made one new humanity, so making peace. That is the greatest social change that ever happened in history. It is the very central aspect of the Christian, faith - that grounded in the cross where God absorbed into Himself His own wrath on our sin -God removed the stain and the strain of our animosity and our hostility toward Him. In doing so, He removes our hostility toward one another. In this new relationship, we become truly a people of God.

In our society we have become obsessed with individualism, each one looking out for his own interest. We have become immersed in secularism. That's the narrow approach to life. As Bishop Pike said years ago, "There ain't any moreism. This is all there is ism." Secularism is not the broad realm as many people think; it is the narrow realm. As a Christian, I can permeate the whole realm of the secular like anyone else.

In addition to that, the realm of the spiritual in relationship with God, that is the broad realm. That is one reason I work with Christian higher education. I believe that Christian colleges have the major challenge of rot only permeating the secular realm of understanding, but in addition, the whole realm of spiritual reality, taking seriously what it means to walk with God.

We have also been obsessed in the last number of years with materialism, to measure everything by what we acquire. It is not only true of the world but, to our embarrassment, there are people in the Christian church who offer what I might call the huckstering of a gospel that is another gospel -a kind of American success gospel. As though God really, for some reason, wants to make all of us especially successful while so many in the global village suffer.

Materialism is far more empty than we realize because it does not enrich the character and the quality of ethical behavior in the life of the person who should be an honest disciple of Christ. There is a story I heard recently that illustrates how futile this materialism is. Three boys were arguing about whose dad was the richest. The one boy said, "My dad is rich. He owns the plant on the edge of town." The second boy chuckled and said, "That's, nothing. My dad is rich. He owns the bank in the middle of town." The third boy was the preacher's son and he laughed and said, "That's nothing. My dad is rich. He owns hell." The other two looked at him in amazement, "Owns hell, what are you talking about?" "Yes," he said, "he came home from the deacons meeting the other evening and said they gave it to him."

That is about how empty our materialism is. I would simply say that we are called to something better than this. I do not repudiate the value of the material. In one sense, Christianity is the most materialistic religion in the world because it takes all of life seriously; it takes a created order seriously; it takes work seriously; it takes business seriously. But, it calls you to work in these areas as a steward of God and His resources, as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

In talking about what it means to be a people of God in our society, I am asking the question whether we understand the priority of the kingdom of Christ what it means to be members of His kingdom present in the world, that is to be a presence for Jesus Christ in the world.

Eight years ago Esther and I went into Washington, D.C., and planted a church on the residential side of Capitol Hill on the corner of Ninth and Maryland, N.E. We were seeking to build a church - a community of disciples in the heart of a city like Washington, which is really three cities. There is the city you think of as the Federal Government There is the city of several hundred thousand people who are commuters from the surrounding areas and drive into the city and work there. You meet them day after day if you are in the city of Washington.

There is a third city and that is the city from six or eight o'clock in the evening until six o'clock in the morning. That is the city those of us who are pastoring in Washington know. It is the city that we live in and work with. It is the city in which there are many people trapped in the ghetto. There are people suffering the problems of violence and crime, people who are at the end of the line when it comes to the drug trade and they became the addicts and the users; people who need to understand that there is a caring community who loves them, who knows how to work, relate and to continue to share in their lot in life so that they may come to know what it means to share this new community of God's people.

In coming into that city, one of the things I affirmed comes from I Corinthians 10:32 where Paul talks about Jew and Gentile and the people of God, a third people.

So, I began expressing the fact that there is a third way - neither rightist conservative nor leftist liberal -but a third way, the way of the kingdom of Christ by which you can select from right or left if it is consistent with the will of Jesus. That means we refuse to simply put people in little pigeon holes and we refuse to allow ourselves to be put there.

The Christian church in the American scene has often been put into little pigeon holes. People play games with the term "born again," not understanding at all that it means to have a new beginning in a new relationship with God; a new membership in a new kingdom and all of life being made new. As Paul writes, "If anyone in Christ, he is a new creature."

We play games with this. We play games with Far Eastern religions. We have a new movement in our society called the New Age movement. I have spent some time in India on numerous occasions - three months at a time in ministry. What we have in America in this so-called movement is radically different from the roots from which it claims to come. In India people who talk about this matter of reincarnation, going through cycle after cycle, see it as a weary experience in which they want out - so peace, nirvana and heaven finally come when you achieve a level where you don't have to keep going through this cycle any more. Then it can be over. What have we made out of it in America? As though reincarnation is another chance, another trip and we have glorified it. But we have missed the dynamic of the Christian Gospel. We fail to understand what it means to be created in God's image - created in and for community, created as a people who can share fellowship with Him and to be a part of a kingdom that never ends and to understand the meaning of resurrection.

My congregation smiles when I repeat this because they have heard it so often. But I really believe that fifty billion years from now, I'll be a young man living on with God and it will be me, redeemed through Jesus Christ, living on with Him. As I think about this new community, it is a people who knows what it means to identify with Him.

There are several things then that I suggest for you in your thinking if you would reflect with me on what it means to be authentically a people of God in our society. The first one is that vocation, as a Christian, means that we do not separate the sacred from the secular. We bring the sacred to bear on the secular and bring these two together.

When I use the word "vocation," I must interpret that. We tend to use the word "vocation" in our everyday parlance as though it is synonymous with occupation. From the Biblical standpoint, the Bible talks about vocation as a calling from God, a calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Your occupation is what you work at. You decide that occupation and the character by which you work in that occupation grows out of your sense of vocation. You are a disciple of Jesus Christ. This is why I am saying that we do not separate the sacred from the secular. Christian faith is not simply a sacrament that you engage in at the eleven o'clock hour on Sunday morning. All of life becomes sacred; all of life is a sacrament; all of life is to be lived in the will of God; all of life is to be an expression that we have been reconciled to God and now we are out to reconcile others to know what it means to fellowship with Him. To say then that vocation as a Christian holds the sacred and the secular together means that there is no area of life in which you and I are not responsible to bring to bear upon that area of life the higher values of the Christian faith.

All one needs to do is look back in the history of the Christian church for a few moments and reflect on the way Christianity has impacted society. For example, in the first centuries it was the Christians who built hospitals. It was the Christians who looked out for orphans. It was the Christians who took care of older people. It was Christianity that elevated the role of women in society instead of letting them be second-class citizens, man's plaything. Now she is made on a par with anyone else in society, both alike, men and women, heirs together of the grace of God. It was the Christian faith that arranged protection of children; that began planning for education for all children alike; that began working for the education of rich and poor alike. These are Christian values that were brought into society. They have been a transforming influence and all people have benefitted from them.

On the other hand, we also have things that are not so good that have been a part of the institutional expressions of religious faith - some of the most violent things in history; some of the violent wars and violent struggles have carried on under the rubric of religious identifications. What a tragedy! Even today if you speak about what has happened in Lebanon, or what is happening in the Middle East, in Ireland, or in South Africa, the tragedy is people name the name of Jesus and do not understand that He is the Prince of Peace who calls us to be one new humanity.

Listen to the text again from Ephesians 2: "For He Himself is our peace, He is made of two, one new humanity so making peace." I turn then to a second affirmation. Christian vocation, understood in this sense, means that all believers walk with God as a presence of the kingdom, wherever they work. Wherever you live, you are a presence of the kingdom. If as a disciple of Jesus Christ you walk with Christ in daily life, then you become what Jesus called "a salt to the earth and a light to the world."

There probably has never been a time in which the situation in which we live is, on the one hand, as complex and, on the other, as opportune. It is complex because we are a part of the global village. It is complex because of mass media, of travel, of engagements across cultures, across races, across national lines. In that complexity, we have a new term "pluralism." It's not a term or a reality I run from. Actually that pluralism calls us to be more understanding of one another, to hear one another's views, to respect one another out of our different backgrounds, then ask each other the question, "How seriously are we taking the quest to know and understand God?" On the other hand, the same things that make this an opportune time make it a very difficult time.

I live in the inner-city in Washington, D.C. I know something of the problems of violence, drugs, broken homes, battered wives and bruised children; something of the problems in which people misuse innocent children for their own advantage. In the Learning Center that we have at our congregation, there are ten computers and forty or fifty neighborhood children coming there regularly for their training. Can you imagine hearing a little eight-year-old boy come and tell you with pride that he ran drugs for his uncle for the reward of getting to hold his uncle's revolver? That is decadence. Can you imagine the travesty on children of child pornography? Then out of pornography, not just child pornography, but the whole range, there is a harvest of rapists in our society. I'm not speaking theory. I'm speaking out of a context in which I have prayed with and wrestled with and extended the arm of love to persons who have been violated and mistreated.

Just in the last two weeks I have put my arm around a woman who was violated intensely in a rape experience. I reminded her that God's Son was also violated on the cross and that He knows what it is like to be violated. That's a healing point. But I must tell you in all candor and honesty that I shared with her the anger about what it means to have a person violate another. Being one committed to the way of peace does not mean that I am passive; that I do not care about the evils in the world. It simply means that I wrestle with the question, "What is the approach? What does the Christian do?"

We had a member of our congregation with the State Department who was U.S. Consul General in Managua, Nicaragua for several years. He wrote me one day and he said, "Myron, the emphasis on peace that you teach us at the church in Washington looks awfully good from where I am at. But," he said, "sometimes the problem is such that I feel I would like to use some violence to straighten it out. 11 Then he added this line, "But I have learned you cannot be a little bit violent. May I repeat, I have learned you cannot be a little bit violent."

That's what Jesus has taught: violence begets violence. Somewhere it must stop. There must be a healing dimension of caring love that moves in, even willing to suffer with a person in the problem. I would not only speak to that dimension of what it means to be a people of God whose vocation carries us into society to be the salt to the earth and the light to the world. But I remind you, finally, that this sense of vocation means that we are agents of reconciliation in our society in its brokenness.

It is not an easy matter to be an agent of reconciliation, one who would identify with the whole Jesus, with the history of Jesus, with the Jesus who calls us to come take up the cross and follow Him. You must also know that you will not popularize what it means to take the unpopular route of the way of the cross.

Some months ago, I walked out of my office down to DuPont Circle and turned left down Connecticut Avenue to a bookstore. I was looking for a book written by Alan Paton on South Africa entitled, Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful. I wanted it because I needed to refresh my memory of a story that he tells. I thumbed about two-thirds of the way back in the book and I found the story. A black South African pastor had invited Judge Oliver to come and share in their Maundy Thursday service. That evening Judge Oliver knelt and washed the feet of a black woman and then kissed her as a symbol that he shared the spirit of Jesus in John 13, of loving persons unconditionally. There was a reporter there who witnessed this. He made quite a bit about it in the press and as a consequence, according to the story, Judge Oliver lost the opportunity to become the Chief Justice of Apartheidsville. The black pastor wrote him a letter. He apologized. He said, "I'm so sorry for what happened." He said, "Had I known what would have happened and the consequences, I would not have asked you to come. Please forgive me." Judge Oliver wrote back and said to the black pastor, ''For me to participate in the Maundy Thursday service at your church was more important than a Chief Justiceship in Apartheidsville. Think no more about it."

That's what I mean when I say one's purpose is more important than one's position. If in life the Christian church will dare to overcome the worldliness that always thinks we have to be the top dog, that wants to gain status and power but will discover that there are qualities of service that enrich and change others, then we can once again be, as I said earlier, the salt to the earth and the light to the world.

What does it mean to be an agent of reconciliation? A part of it is just sharing the Good News of the Grace of God. That Good News in my life is that forty-nine years ago, as a young boy, I gave my life to Jesus Christ. He gave me His forgiveness, His acceptance, His grace. I was just a boy then and that was a boy's level experience. I was eleven. At seventeen I had a young man's experience. At seventeen I knew more about my life. I could understand myself better. I knew more about my ambition, my pride, my ego, my sex drive, etc. I could commit all of this to Jesus Christ.

Now I have lived many years beyond that and each year I live I have discovered new things about what it means to walk with Him. But I want to say this very, very sincerely, I have never, never in my life been disappointed in Jesus Christ - the meaning, the joy, the fulfillment, the assurance, the satisfaction and the purpose that He brings into my life. At the same time, I have been wrung out by Him, by His claims, by His demands.

I do not offer you an easy sweet Jesus kind of life, not some namby-pamby easy kind of way of using God as a little cosmic bellhop servant. I am calling on you to commit yourself to be the kind of rigorous disciple that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran martyr under Adolph Hitler, talked about in Cost of Discipleship. I have seen this witnessed in other ways.

Let me tell you yet this story. Two years ago just now, Esther and I were in India. I was teaching for three months at Union Biblical Seminary in Poona. We were invited during November to come down to Madras to speak at the St. George's Anglican Church. That morning after I had preached in the St. George's Anglican Cathedral, we came walking out with Reverend Azariah across the grounds toward where we were staying. Suddenly he stopped and pointed ahead of us toward Cathedral Road and across the road on the sidewalk was quite a group of people. There were beggars; there were lepers; there was a man standing at the edge of the crowd with a small boy by his side. He said, "I want you to meet that man. I must tell you about him." He said, "That man and his wife raised three children. That little boy by his side is blind. He has two children in boarding school." He said, "There was a young girl left at their doorstep as a baby. They raised her. When she became a teenager, she left to find her mother and came back pregnant. They took her back in and dealt with her. He took his own little savings and paid the bill at the hospital; took her to church. She baptized the baby Kristen." He said, "He sits there every day on that sidewalk cobbling shoes and repairing umbrellas. On a good day he might make as much as twenty rupees." (That's $1.65 in our currency). He said, "One day I went to the staff here at the Cathedral and said, 'Let's take up an offering for our friend across the street.' We raised a hundred rupees. I walked over to him and said, 'We've seen you out on the sidewalk sitting here every day under the hot sun and on the sidewalk cobbling shoes. We've taken up an offering. We'd like to give you this hundred rupees so you can build a platform up off of the sidewalk and put a shade over your head to shield you from the sun.' The man said, 'Thank you, but no thanks. Just as soon as you lift me one foot above the sidewalk, my friends will no longer come and sit along side of me and talk.'"

I stopped walking. That's was a louder sermon than the one I preached that morning. I come from a community where we live to be lifted one foot above, slaves to power and status. Here's a man who says, "Once you lift me one foot above, my friends will no longer come and stand along side and talk."

I call upon you to join me in that spirit to be a presence for Christ in society.

Interview with Myron Augsburger
Interviewed by David Hardin

David Hardin: The Mennonite church with which you are so intimately involved is considered a peace church. What does that mean?

Myron Augsburger: The church was born in the sixteenth century in the Reformation as a free church. While Catholic and Protestant churches then were both state churches, the free church, or Anabaptist movement, took a position of free church. A part of that was the rejection of the use of violence, the sword and coercion. It was not a philosophical passivism; it was rather taking Jesus seriously when He said, "Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Go the second mile." As a peace church we are committed to work for non-violence and for peace in resolving human conflicts.

Hardin: As a society, what steps do we need to take if we are truly to bring about a world without war? We haven't been very successful in seeking that up until now.

Augsburger: Because of human sinfulness, power struggles and status seeking, we'll have war and violence but that doesn't mean that we as Christian people should endorse this. We should work for peace and human understanding. What should we do? We begin where we are to work at elevating the relationships of understanding, of love and acceptance. We begin speaking out against the violence that has become so much a part of our society. In fact, I think a lot of the entertainment and programming of our day needs to be rethought in terms of the way we actually educate people in violence. As far as knowing how, I think I could commit most any crime because I've seen it all. But somewhere there has to be a change in the heart so that persons really do esteem others as important and look out for their well-being.

Hardin: You come from Washington and that, of course, is the seat of power in this country. Do you have some thoughts on how our government might change a little bit of its approach to better serve the cause of world peace?

Augsburger: There are some wonderful things happening. I think President Bush and his emphasis on a more gentle people is a remarkable statement. I think there are things happening in the world that give evidence of change in this area, such as what has happened in Poland. and the different mood in Russia, and I have witnessed the change here. This is saying there is a growing consciousness of the importance of human rights and human relations. I think that our government needs to know where to tap in, where to put its support and emphasis, so that we can promote the better things that are happening. I applaud the good signs of what is taking place.

Hardin: Someone said not too long ago that World War III, the war with Communism, is over. It has been taken down and we are really into World War IV, which is a fight to save the planet. How do you feel about that?

Augsburger: I think there is a lot of truth in that. I think the mentality right now around the world is looking for freedom, democracy, liberty, rather than the fear we had a few years ago of socialism taking over in its negative forms. I am referring to the anti-God Marxist stance. This has become bankrupt and people are looking toward us. I would say that we must be careful that we don't have an arrogance that acts as though "we told you so" and to fail one of the greatest opportunities we have of really producing what it means to be a caring people who look at the needs of the whole world and not just our own interests.

Hardin: Clearly, we both know that the world is shrinking and that the needs of this planet are across national borders and the need for world community is growing. How can we, as followers of Christ, enhance that?

Augsburger: One thing we ought to do is to strengthen the network of fellowship around the world, of people who take Christ seriously. We must also transcend the self-interest that would use the environment and the resources for our own advantage, position or wealth and begin thinking in terms of what it means to be God's agents of stewardship of the created order for the next generations. I have got to be dreaming of my great, great grandchildren and their needs, not just my wants.

Hardin: What should be our view of people of other faiths in that context?

Augsburger: I have found, in a lot of ecumenical work between people within the Christian family, that it is important for us to recognize that Jesus Christ is Lord and that our differences may be symbols of the way we come to Him. In terms of inter-faith relations around the world, our responsibility is not to put other religions down but to lift Jesus higher and show them how that, as they reach for God as we do, the Good News of the Gospel is that God has already reached to us and has made Himself known in Jesus Christ.

Hardin: How should we respond to violence if we are exposed to it or involved in it?

Augsburger: That's a very difficult one. I have had to wrestle with what it means when someone is violated in my own circle and how to respond. The one thing I have found is that turning the other cheek is not a surrender; it is a strategy of operation. It is simply saying that I don't have to treat you the way you treated me. There are other ways of treating you. To take the way of non-violence is not a kind of wimpy stance. It is not a surrender; it is to say there are other things I can do and discover what those are. The Christian community needs to work more intelligently and more seriously at what it means to see love as action. Love is building bridges; love is holding people accountable for their behavior.

Hardin: The Dali Lama recently received the Nobel Peace Prize. He continually urges his followers in Tibet to have a non-violent stance toward the Chinese soldiers, even if they are being abused. I guess you would tend to agree with that.

Augsburger: I think that he and the late Martin Luther King, and Mahatma Gandhi, all demonstrated the importance of this kind of approach. It seems to me that many times in the Christian church we have not taken Jesus as seriously on this point as on some other points. So, I would appeal for that.

Hardin: I would like to ask you a little bit about the Christian College Coalition. Tell us what that is.

Augsburger: I have been working for the last year and a half as president of this group. It is 77 Christian colleges from across the country that take seriously integrating Christian faith with the total liberal arts education -- integrating a Christian world view with the arts and sciences -- and it is one of the most remarkable programs. Among these colleges of thirty denominations, plus those who are not in a particular denomination but interdenominational, we have ninety thousand students - that is a symbiotic university. We have about seven thousand faculty. We are impacting the nation with schools that take seriously the Judeo-Christian tradition and calling people to take seriously what it means to be disciples of Jesus Christ.

Hardin: You do this by visiting these colleges and getting the students involved?

Augsburger: Yes and we have a program in Washington, D.C. where students come for study. We have one in Costa Rica for overseas experience. We have seminars and workshops and programs in which faculty members get together to work at how to teach as a Christian.