Joe Martin and Liz Monk will be leaving us to become Peace Corps volunteers somewhere in Eastern Europe, so I thought I would take this occasion to reflect on the blessings and curse of our sense of mission.

          Our scripture text is another part of Paul's masterpiece of theology, the book of Romans. The main backdrop in Romans is the difference between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. And within this larger backdrop is the question, who will get to heaven and how? Some argue that there is a prescribed way to get to heaven and you must follow it exactly. For Paul's generation that prescribed way included the entire Jewish law.

          Jewish Christians were not the only group to confuse unessential cultural norms with the key to heaven. More recent generations of missionaries have brought their cultural laws with them as well. Examples from missionary history abound. Many missionaries to Hawaii were certain that you couldn't get to heaven in a loincloth, that you had to stop surfing and put on clothes, and start unloading cargo ships. Today there are all sots of conversations about who will ascend to heaven and who will be left behind. These Christians, too, apply culturally determined laws and norms as keys to heaven.

          But Paul cautions against worrying too much about meeting God in some future location and says, "The word is near you," on your lips and heart. Heaven isn't just out there, it's found here and now in our motives, words and actions.

          The heaven we have access to through Jesus Christ has less to do with how we argue theology and law, and more to do with the love from which we carry our words and deeds.

          Next in our passage we get to a part that makes some of us nervous, because instead of being good news it is often turned into a law that condemns. "If you confess that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that he was raised from the dead, you will be saved." In both its literary and cultural context, the intention of this statement is inclusivity. The way of Jesus Christ is self-sacrificing love and service, carried from a position of grace empowered self-confidence. Jesus was the master of love and grace. And by confessing the resurrection, we confirm that the love and grace, which Jesus embodied, is ultimate, more important than cultural and economic method, more powerful than political and military power and violence, stronger than our personal mistakes and sin. Love and grace may be put down for a time, but they will rise again. Jesus is Lord. Jesus Christ is risen.

          We see this grace and power in Hebrew culture before Jesus' time in the psalm. Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet righteousness, and peace will kiss each other. Whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or Marxist, it is possible to be faithful to the wrong thing. Faithfulness is only as good as what we have faith in. History is filled with examples of zealously faithful missionaries who share faith with arrogance. They bring faith without steadfast love. In the same way it is all to easy to be filled with a sense of righteousness without a peace; to be convinced we have the truth and that that truth must prevail by any means necessary. Sooner or later the means becomes war and violence. On the other hand peace is all too often accepted at the expense of righteousness. Like the Marxist stronghold on Eastern Europe, the strong force the weak to give up the fight and freedom is thwarted or unjust peace is established. But an unjust peace can also be established and maintained with much more subtlety, like subtle temptation of the Brave New World rather than the brutal authoritarianism of 1984.

          The psalmist tells us that in the way of God, righteousness and peace kiss, love and faithfulness become one. Certainly it is possible to confess that Jesus is Lord and neglect why we declare him Lord; to proclaim him risen from the dead without knowing what difference this proclamation is supposed to make. If we don't carry our proclamation with love and peace, then we don't carry the Good News of Jesus Christ. When we go to others with steadfast love and peace, we are ambassadors for Christ, and messengers with good news, regardless of whether Jesus is mentioned or not.

          In our postmodern world shaped by lessons in contextually of truth from anthropology and sociology, we wonder whether anyone should be sent at all. We may imagine a world where cultures exist by themselves, free from influence or interaction from outside imperialists or missionaries. Lamen Sanneh, professor of world Christianity and missions at Yale says, "The crux of the problem for cultural relativists is that in their concern to reject the unhealthy consequences of western cultural and religious imperialism, they reverted to a form of ethnocentrism in which other cultures are given license to be a law unto themselves, and thus to be ethnocentric, with the stage set for proliferation of plural cultural ethnocentrisms." In the postmodernist claim that the only basis for intercultural harmony is mutual recognition of cultural equality and tolerance for difference, "It is not entirely clear," says Sanneh, "whether such a basis, laudable in itself, is 'culturally determined.' In which case its converse, of prejudice and intolerance, could conceivably also be 'culturally determined', with no yardstick with which to adjudicate the matter: (Sanneh, Lamen. Encountering the West. Orbis 1993)

          The claim that each culture is entitled to its own truth is its own culturally determined truth claim, and therefore we must ask on what basis do we proclaim that it is better than prejudice or exclusivity? We find ourselves with weak weapons against the strong claims of fundamentalist Muslims, Jews, Christians, capitalists or Marxists whose truth claims tell them they have the only truth and everyone must accept it, move out of the way or die. On a more individual personal level, a culture of relativism gives no basis from which to argue, for instance, that gambling or pedophilia are better or worse than other ways of spending money or engaging in relationship.

          It is also ironic that such relativism fits so well with a capitalist society, where measurements of value tell us that $100 of Viagra is of equal value to society as $100 of food, and individual choice is the economic golden rule.

          Theologically, says Sanneh, we cannot escape the empirical dilemma of cultural relativism, namely, how in pursuit of progressive values we can move from what is to what ought to be.

          But if the Creator and God of all has sent a son whose divine embodiment promotes humility (take the log out of your own eye before you take the speck out of your neighbor's), open mindedness (the parable of the good Samaritan), forgiveness, love and peace, then perhaps we have reason both to send and go as ambassadors of love and peace rather than as representatives for imperialism and war. I am not sure what my country, the United States of America, means to me. I suppose it is not dissimilar to our allegiance to our city or school. For whatever reasons we find ourselves in covenant with each other, promoting mutual benefit. I would like to think that my allegiance to nation falls behind my allegiance to God, humanity, and the sustainability of the planet. Yet I am grateful that such thoughts have come through the cultural fabric of this nation and been passed on to me. I am grateful that I have the freedom to nurture, think and act on such thoughts, and I am grateful for those who have sacrificed for my right to do so. I went into the Peace Corps with a religious call of service, and to serve and represent my nation with self-sacrificial dedication in a way other than military service. But there was also personal joy and adventure of traveling to new places and meeting new people, and a convenient opportunity to avoid entering the competitive market place. People will go whether they are sent or not; they will carry with them a cultural and personal agenda whether they acknowledge it or not. So why not go with an agenda of love and peace? Why not in your adventures, try to do some good?

          It took me a while to begin to see the arrogance of North Americans. But eventually, in the Peace Corp, I discovered regardless of who we are; our agenda is not as self-sacrificial, not as loving and peaceful and good as we would like to believe. And more often than we might hope, our good intentions have unintended negative results. For example, inadvertently our self-sacrifice and humility may selfishly serve our arrogance by feeding our belief that we are winning moral brownie points with God for our humility and self-sacrifice. This arrogance separates us from the people we would like to serve and thwarts our ability to serve them, and thus our claim to moral and practical success.

          And, if we must humble ourselves before our God and our fellow humans of the foreign country in order to serve them, then by default, the sense of superiority over our fellow countrymen must go also. We are called and sent to serve, not because we are better, but by the grace of God, because we are called and sent.

          Thus true Christian service, any real service to others starts and ends with grace for ourselves. We are neither better nor worse than those at home or those to whom we go. We will not earn our way to heaven by things we say and do. As we discover God's grace for us, we begin to embody the good news of God's grace for others. In essence then, we journey toward salvation together.