Born in Chicago in 1946, I graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1967.
I moved to SF/Berkeley in 1979 after one year at Rutgers Law School in Newark and half a year at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.
I was baptized at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in SF and was influenced greatly by Soren Kierkegaard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jurgen Moltmann, Dorothee Soelle, Eberhard Jungel, Leonardo Boff and liberation theology. When I lived in the Bay Area, I worked as a desk clerk at a small hotel in Berkeley and studied informally at the Graduate School of Theology in Berkeley.
As a Jewish-Christian, I see Jesus as the fulfilment and not the denial of Judaism. Hope distinguishes us from the rest of creation and enables us to go beyond everything past and present in the power of the coming (cf Moltmann, Theology of Hope). Jesus is the Messiah who unites past, present and future and is far more than a teacher and a prophet. Truth must well up within us and cannot be commanded with a cudgel (cf. Kierkegaard). We must be wounded to be healed (cf. Soelle). The church exists for the world and not for itself. Only those who say a word for the persecuted Jews can sing Gregorian.
Costly grace marked by suffering and persecution is worlds away from cheap grace (cf. Bonhoeffer). As liberation theology teaches, God identifies with the poor and makes their redemption and wholeness his cause. The God of the poor is the God who hides (Deus del pobles est Deus escondido) (cf Leonardo Boff).
Faith is a leap across seventy-thousand fathoms of water! (cf. Kierkegaard) God heals our prejudices and stereotypes if we are believing and trustful. “Without vision, the people perish”
(Proverbs). Vision guides the people as utopia motivates and inspires as a non-space and goal. The kingdom or reign of God is both present and future. God is before us and not only above us, an historical God and not a tribal God. The universal God had to become particular to become relevant. Israel was to be the light of the nations in the humble and misunderstood Jesus of Nazareth!
Unlike a chair, an idea can support a whole people! Education is the great transformer, said economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Before the sky, there are no fences facing, sang Bob Dylan. “We carry in our hearts the true country and that cannot be stolen. We follow in the steps of our ancestors and that cannot be broken” (cf Midnight Oil).
“Immortal, invisible God only wise. We blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree and wither and perish but nought changes thee.”(ancient Christian hymn)