Magyar Egyház, 1992 (71. évfolyam, 1-5. szám)
1992-01-01 / 1. szám
10. oldal MAGYAR EGYHÁZ aged and he blundered, he was happy and he felt forsaken, he was kind and he was bitter, he laughed and he wept, he gave thanks a thousand times and he repented another thousand times, and he also missed opportunities of both. The things that are revealed from his life belong to us: his long years of service as pastor and leader of the Hungarian community wherever he labored for his people with Word and prayer and with ingenuity to find a new place for them in a foreign land. But the secret things in his life belong to the Lord and it is not our business to search after what we do not know or understand. The regular channels of communication have stopped between us and him. No more exchange of words, no more interaction of deeds is possible anymore. What he was to us and what we were to him have become memories — many beautiful memories we dearly cherish: the love and dedication of his wife, the attachment of his sons and of his brother and of their families, the affection of his friends and the loyalty of his co-workers — as beautiful as they are, they are memories. Beyond them we can say nothing, we can do nothing. Kind words unspoken cannot be spoken now, burdens unshared cannot be shared now; there is no sense to say thank yous or 1 am sorrys. His earthly happiness or unhappiness, the sum of his victories and frustrations stand frozen where they were at the moment of his death. And whatever share we had in them frozen they stand too. Yet — it does matter a great deal to us what we had done or had not done to him and for him. Each one of us here has a kind of separate balance sheet of the assets and of the liabilities concerning our dealings with Gábor Csordás. This balance sheet must now be closed; no new fiscal year comes to amend it or to improve it. But our memory of relationship to him — as I said before —- should greatly influence our lives. We live in our Hungarian faith community where we shall have ample opportunities by the grace of God to live up to stronger faith, to greater love and to more sincere repetence. You will forgive me if I as a Calvinist will quote a sentence from Martin Luther. It runs like this: Non moriar sed vivam et narrabo opera domini. I saw these words in the Lutherroom in the Thiiringian city of Coburg. Luther scribbled them on the wall in 1530. In English they mean: I shall not die but shall live and tell forth the works of the Lord. So, maybe there is communication from Gábor Csordás to us. His entire life says: I shall not die but shall live and tell forth the works of the Lord. REFLECTIONS ON ROMANS Text: Romans 13:1-5. Being a Christian would be a simple proposition if it were strictly a matter of personal faith and individual devotion to Jesus Christ. Of course, when I say simple, I don’t mean easy. Jesus’ command to his disciples to love their enemies and return good for evil is very clear, but also very daunting. Few of us come anywhere near it in our daily practice, and we may be grateful that he came with a message of forgiveness and grace, rather than one of unrelenting judgement. But insofar as we chart our course as isolated individuals, the direction we are called to choose is plain. The trouble is, we don’t live our lives as isolated individuals. We live in a society that is shot through with sin, rife with prejudice, exploitation and violence. In order for such a society to function with some measure of peace and justice, governing authorities are needed who will “not bear the sword in vain.” Criminals must be apprehended and punished, not for the sake of vengeance, but for the protection of victims and potential victims. To illustrate this point on the smallest scale, I recall a twist one of my seminary classmates made on the story of the Good Samariatn. Suppose, he said, that the Good Samaritan arrived on the scene, not after the thieves had robbed and beaten their victim and departed, hut while they were robbing and beating him. How then would he show himself true neighbor to the man? Should he come forward with advice to the victim on the virtue of turning the other cheek? Should he stand by and lecture the thieves on the evil of their ways, and permit them to rob and beat him too, if it caught their fancy? Or should he use whatever means he had, including violence, to stop the thieves from further harming their victim? It is the function of government, in Paul’s view the Godgiven function, to apprehend and punish wrongdoers, using force if necssary; and the apostle does not doubt that force is sometimes necessary. But while government is designed in principle to carry out this task impartially, we know that governments are run by sinful human beings like the rest of us. On the other hand, this means it is improper for us to demand that the work of government be performed perfectly since there are no perfect people available to govern. On the other hand, it forces us to recognize that the machinery of government may fall into the hands of criminals who pervert its instruments of power to their use as thieves and murderers. In such cases Christians are not justified in waging private vendettas against the authorities. But they may be called to try to organize an alternative government, based on principles of justice and equity, and to support this alternative even in the face of brutal force by the established power. This is not an abstract case. It represents the approach of America’s founding fathers in their efforts to cast off the tyranny of the British crown. It represents the approach of the Hungarian patriots of 1956 who fought to maintain their government against the overwhelming brute force of the Red Army. It represents the approach of the elected officials of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as they seek to restore the functions of nationhood that were subverted by Stalin. There is one further point. Paul wrote at a time when the authority of the Roman Empire was, from the point of view of most of its subjects, practically universal. We live in a world of many nation-states, in which a fair percentage of those nation-states are governed by rulers whose methods
