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I’m not a big Bible reader — never have been. But something happened yesterday that got me thinking maybe I should be.
I found out about the work being done by Albuquerque Interfaith, an interdenominational group that works with various member organizations to develop leaders for public life. The 27 groups in Albuquerque Interfaith include Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Quaker and Bahai congregations as well as unions, schools and nonprofit organizations.
The 15 year-old organization’s uniting principle is that humans share more commonalities than difference, and that identifying those shared concerns by simply sitting down and talking about them is the best way to start addressing them.
Everyone has faith, say Albuquerque Interfaith members. Some people have deep religious faith. Some have deep democratic faith. And most people share universal concerns about good jobs and quality education and being treated with dignity.
Sounds simple enough — but Albuquerque Interfaith helps future leaders examine these issues and activate others through an analytic frame that includes social, political and economic justice — all within a community of faith.
What can one person do? Not a lot, unless they are linked with people of like concerns.
Over the years Albuquerque Interfaith has harnessed and developed the strength of countless employees, teachers, students, parents, clergy and others to help them ask for and help deliver better jobs, better education and more rewarding family life to society as a whole.
I thought that was pretty cool.
But what really piqued my interest about Albuquerque Interfaith is the way one very religious member is laboring to get secular and religious members to re-interpret a beloved piece of scripture as a manifesto for social and economic justice.
The Beatitudes, those easy-to-memorize verses from the Bible, are not the passively-constructed platitudes most people think they are, says Fr. Joel Garner, leader of the Norbertine Order in New Mexico and pastor of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Catholic community on Albuquerque’s West Side.
As part of his work with Albuquerque Interfaith, Fr. Garner, spoke last night to 72 leaders of member institutions about lessons of the Beatitudes that he thinks have been lost in translation.
The problem is that the Bible was translated from Greek and then into English, Garner told me. But Jesus spoke in Aramaic, and in that language, “blessed” means “to set yourself on the right way for the right goal; to turn around, repent; to become straight or righteous.”
That’s a bit different than the rather inert sentiment called up by a modern reading of the Beatitudes, which implies that people should feel a kind of benevolent sympathy for peacemakers and the pure of heart and those who hunger and thirst for justice.
“My argument is that (the Beatitudes are a) much more active call,” explained Fr. Garner. “ In other words, they’re saying ‘Let’s get moving here in terms of the values that are being expressed.’ It’s a call to the inner core of the community. Not everyone in the Christian community has a passion for justice and peace, but frankly, they should. It’s gospel. Clearly, Jesus was concerned about it.”
Fr. Garner said he sees the world as being dominated by factors that tend to pull people away from the basic teachings of Jesus — who, to use a modern metaphor, can indeed be considered world’s best known community organizer.
“In this world, our culture tends to move toward power bases — the economic base, the political base and the religious base. And that’s why those of us who are intentionally religious always have to go back to the original scriptures and check our behavior as to what Jesus’ original teachings were.”
Social and economic justice were as much a part of his teachings as anything else, noted Fr. Garner. Those lessons resonate even more these days as more and more Americans descend into economic hardship and some of the solutions proposed place the weight squarely on working families and the poor.
“It’s complex stuff,” said Fr. Garner. “We can’t just propose simple economic solutions… the moral considerations have to be paramount as well. And the springboard for a lot of the moral vision is the scriptures.”
“We have to be involved in the struggle that leads toward greater human rights and the dignity of humans and a concern for those are marginalized and forgotten in society. The Beatitudes are the Magna Carta, you might say, of the whole Christian doctrine.”
Like I said, I’m not religious. But listening to Fr. Garner gave me faith I’ve been lacking for a good long while.
