My sources include Deutsche Welle, persecution.org, and The Daily Beast. You can find your Representative here, and your Congresspeople here.
Luke 21:5-19
When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down."
They asked him, "Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?" And he said, "Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and, 'The time is near!' Do not go after them.
"When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately." Then he said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
"But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls."
This is the Word of the Lord.
Luke is recounting, in this part of his Gospel, the final week before Jesus will be executed by the Roman authorities. At this point in history, Herod’s Temple is still under construction, and will be for a number of years to come. As we pick up the narrative, Jerusalem is packed to bursting with families that have come to take part in the feast of the Passover. And however much people dislike, distrust, even hate whichever Herod happens to be in power at a given time, there is no denying the beauty of this structure. From about any point in the city, one can look up and see the Temple, its white marble highlighted with gold decorations, smoke from constant sacrifice wafting through the air and to the heavens.By the time Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt, the Temple has been under construction for some forty-six years. Barely anyone alive would remember the Temple as it was when King Herod I undertook its renovation in 19BC. Most folks would have heard about it: small, rather run-down despite constant repair and expansion, maybe – just maybe – when compared to the beauty of the temples the Greeks and Romans built for their gods, a little embarrassing. No matter; that building was actually torn down as part of Herod's building project. But since the daily religious activities had continued without interruption, Herod’s Temple was still considered the second Temple, first constructed by the returning exiles in 515 BC.
The magnificence of this work in progress filled the hearts of every Jewish man, woman, and child with pride. Here, at last, a building which personified the Jewish people and the Jewish God, every stone and every embellishment dedicated to the One True God, who had led them from captivity in Egypt, and had brought them back from Babylon. And right there, in that tallest structure on the innermost courts, was the Holy of Holies – and while no one would admit believing that God actually resided in the Most Holy Place, still deep down, when you looked at the glory of the structure, witnessed the solemn dedication of the army of priests, and felt in your soul the beauty of the singing of the Psalms, it was hard not to think that this was the place where God lived.
But can God be contained in a building? Of course not, it’s silly to even pretend that it’s worth discussing in a sermon. So let’s change the question: can a people’s identity, can a faith tradition’s identity, be so closely identified with an architectural creation that it is, in effect, inseparable?
The Jewish people may have thought so. Thankfully, of course, they were wrong. I say “thankfully,” because only three years after the Temple was finally completed, in AD70, it was utterly destroyed. Not one stone was left on the other. As we've talked about in past weeks, the Pharisees were able to, in effect, save the Jewish faith from obsolescence when the Temple, the focal point of their faith, ceased to exist.
Long before that time, mere days from when Jesus utters these words in our reading today, he will shout, “It is finished!” and in that tallest structure in the Temple, the heavy curtain that separates the Holy of Holies from the rest of the planet will be ripped apart, torn from top to bottom like tissue paper.
Anyone who looks will be able to see that this most holy place, the chamber which once housed the Ark of the Covenant, the place where God lives... is empty.
As empty as Jesus' tomb on Resurrection Sunday.
From Easter morning on, God’s identity, God’s community, God’s activity will reside not in a building – even a beautiful building – but in people: men and women in every time and place. The Gospel isn’t a residence. It’s a journey, and since the moment the tongues of flame settled on the disciples’ heads on the Day of Pentecost, God's spirit has been loose in the world, and people have been moving.
Men and women found themselves at odds with the Roman authorities, arrested and killed for daring to refuse to worship Caesar, blamed for everything from foreign invasion to natural disaster, they knew, firsthand, what Jesus meant when he said, “they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.”
Imprisoned, tortured, and killed, still they refused to abandon their trust in the living God, their faith in the risen Christ.
I confess that I am doubtful if anyone in the United States today has any understanding of what it’s like to undergo true persecution. Yet there are places on this planet right now, today, where men, women, and children are being imprisoned, starved, tortured and killed for the crime of believing in Christ.
According to the German aid organization “Open Doors,” across the world some one hundred million Christians are undergoing persecution in 2013, in countries including North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. In Egypt, Coptic Christians are coming under increasing fire from the Muslim Brotherhood, which blames them for the ouster of Egyptian President Muhammed Morsi. In September, a Taliban suicide bomber killed at least 85 Christians in All Saints Church in Peshawar, Pakistan.
Syrian Christians continue to suffer at the hands of Islamist rebels and, according to one report, fear extinction if Bashaar Al-Assad falls.
Two thirds of Iraqi Christians have simply vanished, having fled the country or been murdered for their faith.
Yet even in environments where Christians are persecuted and killed, the faith grows. In India, despite a growing anti-Christian bias, some seventy-one million people, across all social strata, count themselves as followers of Christ, making it the eighth largest Christian nation on the planet.
Perhaps you and I don’t know what persecution is like. Perhaps it falls on us, then, to be the voice of those in countries who cannot speak up for themselves. It’s as simple as a letter or email to an elected official, calling on them to push for human rights in all areas of the globe.
It’s as simple as writing a check to a ministry or organization that works to support imprisoned and persecuted Christians, and, for that matter, any marginalized and neglected segment of the world’s population.
It is simple, but it is vital.
Kirsten Powers, a columnist for The Daily Beast, quotes Israeli author Lela Gilbert as saying that, while her Jewish neighbors are “are shocked but not entirely surprised” by the attacks on Christians in the Middle East. “They are rather puzzled, however, by what appears to be a lack of anxiety, action, or advocacy on the part of Western Christians.” Powers notes that, while American Christians are quite able to organize around issues that concern them, religious persecution appears not to have grabbed their attention, despite worldwide media coverage of the atrocities against Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.
In January, Republican Representative Frank Wolf penned a letter to 300 Catholic and Protestant leaders complaining about their lack of engagement. “Can you, as a leader in the church, help? Will you use your sphere of influence to raise the profile of this issue—be it through a sermon, writing or media interview?”
There have, according to Powers, been far too few takers.
Wolf and Democratic Representative Anna Eshoo sponsored legislation last year to create a special envoy at the State Department to advocate for religious minorities in the Middle East and South-Central Asia. While it passed in the House overwhelmingly, it died in the Senate. In January, it passed the House again, but the bill sits idle in the Senate, where there is no date set for it to be taken up.
Imagine the difference an outcry from constituents might have made. Is anybody listening? When American leaders meet with the Saudi government, where is the public outcry demanding they confront the Saudis for fomenting hatred of Christians, Jews, and even Muslim minorities through their tracts and textbooks? In the debate on Syria, why has the fate of Christians and other religious minorities been almost completely ignored?
Part of what Jesus speaks about in our reading today is the art of “speaking the truth to power.” He says, “I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”
We must speak. We must write. We must act.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the authors of the “Theological Declaration of Barmen” in our Book of Confessions, wrote, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” And Martin Luther King Jr. is quoted as saying, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Jesus has promised to give us the words to say. It is up to us to speak.
Showing posts with label Persecution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Persecution. Show all posts
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Nothing!
Thanks to the work of Dan Clendenin, David Lose, "Starters For Sunday," Mary Hinkle Shore, and Paul S. Berge.
Accounts of modern-day persecution across the world are taken from the website of International Christian Concern, persecution.org.
Genesis 29:15-28
Then Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?” Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah’s eyes were lovely, and Rachel was graceful and beautiful. Jacob loved Rachel; so he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.” So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.
Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” So Laban gathered together all the people of the place, and made a feast. But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob; and he went in to her. (Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her maid.) When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” Laban said, “This is not done in our country — giving the younger before the firstborn. Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.” Jacob did so, and completed her week; then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife.
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."
He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
"Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."
Romans 8:26-39
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This is the Word of the Lord.
No one is really sure how the church in Rome started. Catholic tradition holds that the Apostle Peter started it. Other scholars think that, on the day of Pentecost, some of those who responded to Peter’s message of salvation in Jesus Christ had been pilgrims from the Jewish neighborhoods in Rome. Returning home, they shared the good news of the Messiah, and the church grew.
Whatever the case, life wasn’t easy for these Christians. Already hated for being Jewish, they found themselves more and more distrusted by their friends and family in the synagogues of Rome. What’s more, they lived in the very heart of the Roman Empire, a culture which welcomed the religions of all people, with one stipulation: once a year, every Roman citizen had to offer incense in worship to the god Caesar. And while Julius Caesar himself had exempted the Jewish people from this act of idolatry, as the Christian congregation grew to include people from outside Judaism, these new members found themselves experiencing increasing persecution, increasing pressure to compromise their newfound faith in the one true living God, in favor of this one small act of conformity, the pinch of incense to Caesar.
A rich man could have bought his way out. After all, one simply needed a certificate signed by a priest of Caesar, saying the act of worship had been completed. But the Good News attracted those needing hope. Slaves. Women. The desperately poor.
What’s more, by the time Paul wrote his epistle to the Roman church, the Emperor Nero had assumed power, and it was obvious to anyone with a pulse that this Nero was a raving lunatic. Things could only get worse. Though these Christians didn’t know it, the horrible persecutions which would follow the burning of Rome were less than a decade away.
Imagine not knowing what to do. Quietly sneak out to the nearest temple of Caesar, make the offering, get the certificate, and hope no one in the congregation noticed? Or stand firm and wait for their master or some Roman soldier to take note of the lack of certificate, and face the terror of the Roman judicial system? Leave your family, already malnourished and scraping by day by day, without any means of support? How do you pray about such a thing? How does hope function in that place where it’s no longer an intellectual pursuit, but a matter of life and death?
It’s hard for Western Christians to comprehend, this idea of our faith being a matter of life and death. Believing in God is still socially acceptable, and, for many of us, the idea of attending church, the idea of being a Christian, is the expected norm. We tend to look at people of other religions, or no religion at all, in the same way that the average Roman looked upon the Christian during the first three hundred years of the Church’s existence – with suspicion, distrust, occasional hostility, and perhaps a tinge of fear.
Yet for many, many modern-day followers of Christ, many here-and-now residents of the Kingdom of God, worshiping Jesus Christ means risking exile, imprisonment, torture, and even death.
In Vietnam, the government continues to pursue “Plan 184,” a systematic process to persecute Christians. Montagnard Christians, particularly, continue to endure torture, imprisonment, beatings, and even forced renunciations of their faith and death at the hands of the Vietnamese government.
In Pakistan, some one hundred and fifty Christians are currently in prison for breaking harsh anti-blasphemy laws. Even Muslims who disagree with the law are in danger. The governor of Punjab province, Salmaan Taseer, was gunned down after denouncing the law. His killer was cheered and showered with rose petals as he was led into court.
In Iran, the Supreme Court has upheld a ruling which forces Evangelical pastor Yosef Nadarkhani to choose between renouncing his Christian faith or be put to death by hanging. His attorney, Mohammed Ali Dadkhah, faces nine years in prison and a ten year ban from practicing law for his efforts on Yosef Nadarkhani’s behalf.
On July 10, the All Christian Fellowship Mission church in Suleja, Nigeria was bombed by extremists as members were leaving Sunday service. Three people died in the blast.
It is to this that our Epistle reading this morning speaks three great words of enduring, eternal hope.
The first hope is the presence of the Holy Spirit, who is always present even in our sorrows because the Holy Spirit prays with us and for us to God. What’s more, the Spirit is active when we don’t know what we need… and even when we do not know we have a need! God knows, even when we do not!
The second hope is the hope of God’s providence. The idea of being predestined here is not about some being “in” and others being “out” – too many theologians have spent far too much time on this idea, coming up with convoluted explanations of things like “double predestination,” where those who are doomed to Hell go there no matter what, and the Elect are chosen whether they like it or not. Rather, the Word assures us that God is present in all the matters of this life. Our past, present and future are arenas of God’s action on our behalf.
The third hope is the reminder that God’s providential history is shaped by the cross of Jesus Christ. In the gift of the Son we realize that God is always and absolutely for us. The text does not deny that there are principalities and powers, forces that seem strong and sometimes destructive as well. People have been getting arrested, imprisoned, hated, beaten, and killed for the sake of Christ since Day One. But these powers can never separate us from God’s love.
You may have noticed that I am using the words “we” and “us” a lot, and in light of how I painted we who are Western, American Christians at the outset, it may seem odd. If this word is primarily for those being persecuted, or having to make difficult life decisions for or against belief in Christ, why not use “they” and “them?”
Hear the Word of God from our Epistle reading this morning: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.”
“…the firstborn within a large family.”
The message of the Kingdom of God is not one of a replacement of empire, not a new kind of governance or a different way of thinking. We are a family, all of us, and – even more than that – a body, bonded together in the deep and abiding love and grace of God in Jesus Christ. In this context of the Kingdom of God, we cannot, no matter how much we try, no matter how our denominations or creeds or doctrines or theologies differ, no matter how many miles are between us, no matter how many oceans separate us, ever be “us” and “them.”
When one of us is persecuted, be it in Pakistan or Turkey or Egypt or Mexico, we all are persecuted. When one of us is not free, be it in Saudi Arabia or China or Vietnam, none of us are free. When one of us is beaten, be it in Mexico or Nairobi, all of us feel the blows.
So when one of us is silenced, the rest must speak. When one of us is restricted, the rest must move on their behalf. Speaking the truth to power, acting in ways which enhance the lives of the downtrodden, forgotten, neglected and marginalized, these are all Kingdom actions! Suffering is not some kind of Stoic exercise in endurance, hoping that someday things will be better. No, that suffering is a call to action. After all, we are, as a body, as a cohesive unit, as a Kingdom, not simply called to be “more than conquerors,” we already are more than conquerors! This idea that Paul has talked about elsewhere in the Book of Romans, this concept of sharing in the sufferings of Christ, has a point to it! “To preach the Message of good news to the poor, …to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, ‘This is God's year to act!’” (Luke 4:18-19, Message)
But let’s be honest: maybe we don’t endure persecution. Maybe the closest thing to hate we experience is someone disagreeing with us over infant baptism. But we do suffer. Sometimes quietly, and sometimes everyone knows, but we hurt. And I know I cannot speak for you, but there have been times in my life where I have wondered if God still loved me.
If you take nothing else away from this sermon today, take this: the answer to that question, for me and for you and for everyone is a resounding, emphatic, enthusiastic “yes!” Nothing can ever separate us from God’s abundant, extravagant, effusive, ebullient, exuberant, overflowing, unconstrained, and unreserved love! Not death, not life, not angels, not presidents or kings or bosses or juntas, nothing in the present or in the future, not powerful people or things or thoughts or movements, not height, not depth, nothing anywhere ever no matter what, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Take that joyful Good News, and live in it… and give it out, all the time, out there, beyond these walls and that door, to everyone, everywhere.
Amen.
Accounts of modern-day persecution across the world are taken from the website of International Christian Concern, persecution.org.
Genesis 29:15-28
Then Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?” Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah’s eyes were lovely, and Rachel was graceful and beautiful. Jacob loved Rachel; so he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.” So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.
Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” So Laban gathered together all the people of the place, and made a feast. But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob; and he went in to her. (Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her maid.) When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” Laban said, “This is not done in our country — giving the younger before the firstborn. Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.” Jacob did so, and completed her week; then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife.
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."
He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
"Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."
Romans 8:26-39
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This is the Word of the Lord.
No one is really sure how the church in Rome started. Catholic tradition holds that the Apostle Peter started it. Other scholars think that, on the day of Pentecost, some of those who responded to Peter’s message of salvation in Jesus Christ had been pilgrims from the Jewish neighborhoods in Rome. Returning home, they shared the good news of the Messiah, and the church grew.
Whatever the case, life wasn’t easy for these Christians. Already hated for being Jewish, they found themselves more and more distrusted by their friends and family in the synagogues of Rome. What’s more, they lived in the very heart of the Roman Empire, a culture which welcomed the religions of all people, with one stipulation: once a year, every Roman citizen had to offer incense in worship to the god Caesar. And while Julius Caesar himself had exempted the Jewish people from this act of idolatry, as the Christian congregation grew to include people from outside Judaism, these new members found themselves experiencing increasing persecution, increasing pressure to compromise their newfound faith in the one true living God, in favor of this one small act of conformity, the pinch of incense to Caesar.
A rich man could have bought his way out. After all, one simply needed a certificate signed by a priest of Caesar, saying the act of worship had been completed. But the Good News attracted those needing hope. Slaves. Women. The desperately poor.
What’s more, by the time Paul wrote his epistle to the Roman church, the Emperor Nero had assumed power, and it was obvious to anyone with a pulse that this Nero was a raving lunatic. Things could only get worse. Though these Christians didn’t know it, the horrible persecutions which would follow the burning of Rome were less than a decade away.
Imagine not knowing what to do. Quietly sneak out to the nearest temple of Caesar, make the offering, get the certificate, and hope no one in the congregation noticed? Or stand firm and wait for their master or some Roman soldier to take note of the lack of certificate, and face the terror of the Roman judicial system? Leave your family, already malnourished and scraping by day by day, without any means of support? How do you pray about such a thing? How does hope function in that place where it’s no longer an intellectual pursuit, but a matter of life and death?
It’s hard for Western Christians to comprehend, this idea of our faith being a matter of life and death. Believing in God is still socially acceptable, and, for many of us, the idea of attending church, the idea of being a Christian, is the expected norm. We tend to look at people of other religions, or no religion at all, in the same way that the average Roman looked upon the Christian during the first three hundred years of the Church’s existence – with suspicion, distrust, occasional hostility, and perhaps a tinge of fear.
Yet for many, many modern-day followers of Christ, many here-and-now residents of the Kingdom of God, worshiping Jesus Christ means risking exile, imprisonment, torture, and even death.
In Vietnam, the government continues to pursue “Plan 184,” a systematic process to persecute Christians. Montagnard Christians, particularly, continue to endure torture, imprisonment, beatings, and even forced renunciations of their faith and death at the hands of the Vietnamese government.
In Pakistan, some one hundred and fifty Christians are currently in prison for breaking harsh anti-blasphemy laws. Even Muslims who disagree with the law are in danger. The governor of Punjab province, Salmaan Taseer, was gunned down after denouncing the law. His killer was cheered and showered with rose petals as he was led into court.
In Iran, the Supreme Court has upheld a ruling which forces Evangelical pastor Yosef Nadarkhani to choose between renouncing his Christian faith or be put to death by hanging. His attorney, Mohammed Ali Dadkhah, faces nine years in prison and a ten year ban from practicing law for his efforts on Yosef Nadarkhani’s behalf.
On July 10, the All Christian Fellowship Mission church in Suleja, Nigeria was bombed by extremists as members were leaving Sunday service. Three people died in the blast.
It is to this that our Epistle reading this morning speaks three great words of enduring, eternal hope.
The first hope is the presence of the Holy Spirit, who is always present even in our sorrows because the Holy Spirit prays with us and for us to God. What’s more, the Spirit is active when we don’t know what we need… and even when we do not know we have a need! God knows, even when we do not!
The second hope is the hope of God’s providence. The idea of being predestined here is not about some being “in” and others being “out” – too many theologians have spent far too much time on this idea, coming up with convoluted explanations of things like “double predestination,” where those who are doomed to Hell go there no matter what, and the Elect are chosen whether they like it or not. Rather, the Word assures us that God is present in all the matters of this life. Our past, present and future are arenas of God’s action on our behalf.
The third hope is the reminder that God’s providential history is shaped by the cross of Jesus Christ. In the gift of the Son we realize that God is always and absolutely for us. The text does not deny that there are principalities and powers, forces that seem strong and sometimes destructive as well. People have been getting arrested, imprisoned, hated, beaten, and killed for the sake of Christ since Day One. But these powers can never separate us from God’s love.
You may have noticed that I am using the words “we” and “us” a lot, and in light of how I painted we who are Western, American Christians at the outset, it may seem odd. If this word is primarily for those being persecuted, or having to make difficult life decisions for or against belief in Christ, why not use “they” and “them?”
Hear the Word of God from our Epistle reading this morning: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.”
“…the firstborn within a large family.”
The message of the Kingdom of God is not one of a replacement of empire, not a new kind of governance or a different way of thinking. We are a family, all of us, and – even more than that – a body, bonded together in the deep and abiding love and grace of God in Jesus Christ. In this context of the Kingdom of God, we cannot, no matter how much we try, no matter how our denominations or creeds or doctrines or theologies differ, no matter how many miles are between us, no matter how many oceans separate us, ever be “us” and “them.”
When one of us is persecuted, be it in Pakistan or Turkey or Egypt or Mexico, we all are persecuted. When one of us is not free, be it in Saudi Arabia or China or Vietnam, none of us are free. When one of us is beaten, be it in Mexico or Nairobi, all of us feel the blows.
So when one of us is silenced, the rest must speak. When one of us is restricted, the rest must move on their behalf. Speaking the truth to power, acting in ways which enhance the lives of the downtrodden, forgotten, neglected and marginalized, these are all Kingdom actions! Suffering is not some kind of Stoic exercise in endurance, hoping that someday things will be better. No, that suffering is a call to action. After all, we are, as a body, as a cohesive unit, as a Kingdom, not simply called to be “more than conquerors,” we already are more than conquerors! This idea that Paul has talked about elsewhere in the Book of Romans, this concept of sharing in the sufferings of Christ, has a point to it! “To preach the Message of good news to the poor, …to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, ‘This is God's year to act!’” (Luke 4:18-19, Message)
But let’s be honest: maybe we don’t endure persecution. Maybe the closest thing to hate we experience is someone disagreeing with us over infant baptism. But we do suffer. Sometimes quietly, and sometimes everyone knows, but we hurt. And I know I cannot speak for you, but there have been times in my life where I have wondered if God still loved me.
If you take nothing else away from this sermon today, take this: the answer to that question, for me and for you and for everyone is a resounding, emphatic, enthusiastic “yes!” Nothing can ever separate us from God’s abundant, extravagant, effusive, ebullient, exuberant, overflowing, unconstrained, and unreserved love! Not death, not life, not angels, not presidents or kings or bosses or juntas, nothing in the present or in the future, not powerful people or things or thoughts or movements, not height, not depth, nothing anywhere ever no matter what, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Take that joyful Good News, and live in it… and give it out, all the time, out there, beyond these walls and that door, to everyone, everywhere.
Amen.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
God, Out of the Box
Thanks to Pastor Debye Swilley, who helped get me past a mental block concerning the Gospel reading. With my background in Fundamentalist Christianity, it's difficult sometimes to see beyond the apocalyptic language of the passage to the meat of what Jesus is saying to us today. Once again, it's Twitter to the rescue...
Isaiah 12
You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me. Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted.
Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
Thessalonians 3:6-13
Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone's bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.
For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.
Luke 21:5-19
When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down."
They asked him, "Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?" And he said, "Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and, 'The time is near!' Do not go after them.
"When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately." Then he said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
"But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Luke is recounting, in his Gospel, the final week before Jesus will be executed by the Roman authorities. At this point in history, what is known as Herod’s Temple is still under construction, and will be for a number of years to come. The city is packed to bursting with families that have come to take part in the feast of the Passover. However much people dislike, distrust, even hate whichever Herod happens to be in power at a given time, from about any point in the city, one can look up and see the Temple, its white marble highlighted with gold decorations, smoke from constant sacrifice wafting through the air and to the heavens.
By the time Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt, the Temple has been under construction for some forty-six years. Barely anyone alive remembers the Temple as it was when King Herod I undertook its renovation in 19BC. They’ve heard about it: small, rather run-down despite constant repair and expansion, it was actually torn down as part of the building project. But since the daily religious activities had continued without interruption, Herod’s Temple was still considered the second Temple, first constructed by the returning exiles in 515 BC.
The magnificence of this work in progress filled the hearts of every Jewish man, woman, and child with pride. Here, at last, a building which personified the Jewish people and the Jewish God, every stone and every embellishment dedicated to the One True God, who had led them from captivity in Egypt, and had brought them back from Babylon. And right there, in that tallest structure on the innermost courts, was the Holy of Holies – and while no one would admit believing that God actually resided in the Most Holy Place, still there wasn’t any arguing that, when you looked at the glory of the structure, witnessed the solemn dedication of the army of priests, and felt in your soul the beauty of the singing of the Psalms, deep down, it was hard not to think that this was where God lived.
But can God be contained in a building? Of course not, it’s silly to even pretend that it’s worth discussing in a sermon. So let’s change the question: can a people’s identity, can a faith tradition’s identity, be so closely identified with an architectural creation that it is, in effect, inseparable? We know, living on this side of the Resurrection, this side of 70AD, how Jesus, and how history, has answered that question. Yes, the long temple renovation will be finished, and it will stand completed… for three years, before being utterly destroyed in 70AD. As my friend, the Reverend Debye Swilley put it, “What ‘was’ has to fall, so that what ‘is’ can come.”
Here’s what that means: just days from the moment Jesus speaks the words in our reading this morning, the heavy curtain that separates the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple will be torn apart. The idea of God being contained in a structure will be forever destroyed, as anyone in the Temple courts will be able to look inside the darkened chamber only to find it empty.
Empty, like the burial chamber three days after they lay Jesus to rest.
The fact that Jesus arose and ascended doesn’t mean that those who call on the name of Christ are to sit idle, waiting for Jesus to return. From Easter morning on, God’s identity, God’s community, God’s activity will reside not in a building – even a beautiful building – but in people: men and women in every time and place. The Gospel isn’t a residence. It’s a journey, and since the moment the tongues of flame settled on the disciples’ heads on the Day of Pentecost, people have been moving.
From Pentecost onward, men and women found themselves at odds with the Roman authorities, arrested and killed for daring to refuse to worship Caesar, blamed for everything from foreign invasion to natural disaster, they knew, firsthand, what Jesus meant when he said, “they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.”
I confess that I am doubtful if anyone in the United States today has any understanding of what it’s like to undergo true persecution. Yet there are places on this planet where men, women, and children are being imprisoned, starved, tortured and killed for the crime of believing in Christ. Iraqi militants stormed a church and took worshipers hostage, killing fifty-eight of them. Since then, Iraqi Christian neighborhoods have been the scene of bombings and attacks by militants. In Pakistan, Asia Bibi, was arrested for sharing her faith in Christ and has been sentenced to hang for blasphemy.
This is not, by the way, simply a problem in Muslim nations. China, too, persecutes Christians, as does North Korea, Columbia, Cuba, and dozens of other countries. Yet in these places, Christianity thrives and continues to grow. Christians persevere.
Perhaps you and I don’t know what persecution is like. Perhaps it falls on us, then, to be the voice of those in countries who cannot speak up for themselves. It’s as simple as a letter or email to an elected official, calling on them to push for human rights in all areas of the globe. It’s as simple as writing a check to a ministry or organization that works to support imprisoned and persecuted Christians, and, for that matter, any marginalized and neglected segment of the world’s population.
Part of what Jesus speaks about in our reading today is the art of “speaking the truth to power.” He has promised to give us the words to say. It is up to us to speak.
Isaiah 12
You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me. Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted.
Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
Thessalonians 3:6-13
Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone's bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.
For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.
Luke 21:5-19
When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down."
They asked him, "Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?" And he said, "Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and, 'The time is near!' Do not go after them.
"When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately." Then he said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
"But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Luke is recounting, in his Gospel, the final week before Jesus will be executed by the Roman authorities. At this point in history, what is known as Herod’s Temple is still under construction, and will be for a number of years to come. The city is packed to bursting with families that have come to take part in the feast of the Passover. However much people dislike, distrust, even hate whichever Herod happens to be in power at a given time, from about any point in the city, one can look up and see the Temple, its white marble highlighted with gold decorations, smoke from constant sacrifice wafting through the air and to the heavens.
By the time Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt, the Temple has been under construction for some forty-six years. Barely anyone alive remembers the Temple as it was when King Herod I undertook its renovation in 19BC. They’ve heard about it: small, rather run-down despite constant repair and expansion, it was actually torn down as part of the building project. But since the daily religious activities had continued without interruption, Herod’s Temple was still considered the second Temple, first constructed by the returning exiles in 515 BC.
The magnificence of this work in progress filled the hearts of every Jewish man, woman, and child with pride. Here, at last, a building which personified the Jewish people and the Jewish God, every stone and every embellishment dedicated to the One True God, who had led them from captivity in Egypt, and had brought them back from Babylon. And right there, in that tallest structure on the innermost courts, was the Holy of Holies – and while no one would admit believing that God actually resided in the Most Holy Place, still there wasn’t any arguing that, when you looked at the glory of the structure, witnessed the solemn dedication of the army of priests, and felt in your soul the beauty of the singing of the Psalms, deep down, it was hard not to think that this was where God lived.
But can God be contained in a building? Of course not, it’s silly to even pretend that it’s worth discussing in a sermon. So let’s change the question: can a people’s identity, can a faith tradition’s identity, be so closely identified with an architectural creation that it is, in effect, inseparable? We know, living on this side of the Resurrection, this side of 70AD, how Jesus, and how history, has answered that question. Yes, the long temple renovation will be finished, and it will stand completed… for three years, before being utterly destroyed in 70AD. As my friend, the Reverend Debye Swilley put it, “What ‘was’ has to fall, so that what ‘is’ can come.”
Here’s what that means: just days from the moment Jesus speaks the words in our reading this morning, the heavy curtain that separates the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple will be torn apart. The idea of God being contained in a structure will be forever destroyed, as anyone in the Temple courts will be able to look inside the darkened chamber only to find it empty.
Empty, like the burial chamber three days after they lay Jesus to rest.
The fact that Jesus arose and ascended doesn’t mean that those who call on the name of Christ are to sit idle, waiting for Jesus to return. From Easter morning on, God’s identity, God’s community, God’s activity will reside not in a building – even a beautiful building – but in people: men and women in every time and place. The Gospel isn’t a residence. It’s a journey, and since the moment the tongues of flame settled on the disciples’ heads on the Day of Pentecost, people have been moving.
From Pentecost onward, men and women found themselves at odds with the Roman authorities, arrested and killed for daring to refuse to worship Caesar, blamed for everything from foreign invasion to natural disaster, they knew, firsthand, what Jesus meant when he said, “they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.”
I confess that I am doubtful if anyone in the United States today has any understanding of what it’s like to undergo true persecution. Yet there are places on this planet where men, women, and children are being imprisoned, starved, tortured and killed for the crime of believing in Christ. Iraqi militants stormed a church and took worshipers hostage, killing fifty-eight of them. Since then, Iraqi Christian neighborhoods have been the scene of bombings and attacks by militants. In Pakistan, Asia Bibi, was arrested for sharing her faith in Christ and has been sentenced to hang for blasphemy.
This is not, by the way, simply a problem in Muslim nations. China, too, persecutes Christians, as does North Korea, Columbia, Cuba, and dozens of other countries. Yet in these places, Christianity thrives and continues to grow. Christians persevere.
Perhaps you and I don’t know what persecution is like. Perhaps it falls on us, then, to be the voice of those in countries who cannot speak up for themselves. It’s as simple as a letter or email to an elected official, calling on them to push for human rights in all areas of the globe. It’s as simple as writing a check to a ministry or organization that works to support imprisoned and persecuted Christians, and, for that matter, any marginalized and neglected segment of the world’s population.
Part of what Jesus speaks about in our reading today is the art of “speaking the truth to power.” He has promised to give us the words to say. It is up to us to speak.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
What Does Faith Cost?
This has been an interesting week. I've been called out on a Fundamentalist blogger's website as a member of the "sinfully ecumenical" Emergent Church movement (which, as an active member of a mainline denomination, is a little strange, but OK). Strangely enough, I wasn't angered or insulted at all - I got mentioned in the same breath with my friend Jay Bakker, and it gave me something for a small part of the sermon - we Christians (at least in the West) persecute one another far more than we are persecuted from outside.
Here it is, not so much a sermon as an unresolved chord. Comments, criticism, etc. are welcomed.
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us." When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God, you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me." You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God.
Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.
Luke 4:1-13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'"
Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"
Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
Romans 10:8b-13
"The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
This is the Word of the Lord.
I want to say at the outset that this is not so much a sermon as it is a Lenten meditation. What's more, if you're expecting a well-constructed set of arguments with a neat and compelling conclusion, you're going to leave disappointed today. If I can use an analogy from a few weeks back, this morning's meditation is going to leave the chord unresolved.
This is not because I ran out of time writing, or because I just got lazy, but because our readings this morning ask us a question – and while much of Christianity is corporate and is to be understood and undertaken in the fellowship of believers and in the context of the Body of Christ as a whole, the question these texts ask is individual. Personal. Undeserving of an easy, quick, trite, prepackaged answer, and in any case, really unanswerable from any honest pulpit.
With that having been said, let's jump in.
There is nothing easy about the book of Romans. It is a complex and fairly systematic theological treatise, often controversial, and always instructive. Anytime a passage is lifted out of Romans, either to use as a prooftext or as a Lectionary reading, I wonder what was left behind.
And in our series of Lectionary texts this morning, it kind of stands out like a sore thumb. In Deuteronomy, the Israelites are instructed to bring their best – the first gleanings of the harvest – and surrender them to God. To forfeit the profit and forgo the benefit of their labors in order to remember that the source of their harvest, the foundation of their success, is God. That without God on their side they would be lost in the wilderness at best, and still enslaved to Egypt at worst.
In Luke, Jesus endures the harshest of tests, plumbing the depths of his soul and the limits of his humanity in preparation for the task before him – namely, our salvation.
Then here's Romans, saying if you think and say the right things, poof, you're a Christian, you get to go to heaven! Now, I'm no Horatio Caine, but either the band of elves that put the Revised Common Lectionary together is crazy, or there's more to the story.
Rome was an interesting place – well, not so much a place as an entity. Bent on world domination, the Roman Empire in the first century AD encompassed most of the known world. While whole cultures were assimilated, governed with an iron fist and heavily taxed, the Empire was remarkably lenient when it came to religion. You could worship whatever gods your culture offered, and were not at all required to acknowledge or accept Roman gods, with one key exception: once a year, every citizen and subject of the Roman Empire (with the exception of Jewish people) were required to burn a pinch of incense to the god Caesar, and to acknowledge Caesar as Lord. You then received a certificate which showed, in effect, that you were politically compliant and not a threat to the Roman Empire. To refuse to make the offering was to announce yourself as an opponent of and a danger to that Empire.
To say “Jesus is Lord,” rather than “Caesar is Lord” was to directly challenge the sovereignty and divinity of the leader of the Empire. It was, in effect, to declare war on Rome.
But there's more to it even than that. Every religious culture in the ancient world was an attempt to reach out to or appease some god or set of gods. Prayers had to be said precisely. Sacrifices had to be made faithfully. Altars and images occupied every corner of the house, the marketplace, the crossroads, and temples to an endless variety of gods and goddesses dotted the landscape. Any natural disaster, failed harvest, or invasion by a foreign army was seen as a failure to properly appreciate the corporate gods.
And while a careful reading of the Law of Moses will show that the God of the Hebrews never intended it to be this way, even the Jews had come to regard their system of laws and sacrifices in much the same way – an effort to reach a distant and sometimes disinvolved Creator.
Contrast this with a God who not only does not require strict adherence to law and ritual, does not require burnt offerings or blood sacrifices, but who has reached out to a disinterested and even openly hostile humankind for reconciliation. It was a completely foreign concept both to Jews and to the Gentile world!
It adds up to grace which is both free and costly. Salvation, a free gift to Jew and Gentile alike, could cost you your home, your family, and could very well get you tortured and killed.
This is the first Sunday of Lent. These forty days, not counting Sundays, commemorate Jesus' forty-day fast in the wilderness. These forty days are not the only time Jesus will be tested. These aren't the only days he will be hungry, will be in pain, will be alone. What is unique about this series of tests is, among other things, that Jesus confirms that there will be no shortcuts in the plan of salvation for humankind, that nothing about his life or ministry is about himself.
It is difficult for many of us in 21st century America to imagine the dangers of being a Christian twenty centuries ago. And while millions of believers worldwide are persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and killed every day for their faith in Christ, our own confession of faith rarely causes us hardship. Yes, some Christians in our nation, and even in our communities, have been disowned by their family for confessing that Jesus is Lord, but for the most part, the worst we endure is evangelical athiests like Richard Dawkins saying we are stupid or comedians like Bill Mahr making fun of us in a movie.
It is a sad, but quantifiable fact, that we endure more persecution from one another, across denominational and ideological lines within the Body of Christ, than we do from those outside the faith!
We don't have to bring our firstfruits to the Temple; we're encouraged to tithe our income, yes, but no one is inspecting the quality of our gifts, keeping track of percentages, or issuing certificates of compliance.
So what does it mean for you and I to “confess with [our] lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in [our] hearts that God raised him from the dead?” How does both the fact and the ongoing process of being saved change us? Challenge us? Inconvenience us or even put us in harm's way?
What does our faith cost us?
Let us pray.
Here it is, not so much a sermon as an unresolved chord. Comments, criticism, etc. are welcomed.
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us." When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God, you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me." You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God.
Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.
Luke 4:1-13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'"
Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"
Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
Romans 10:8b-13
"The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
This is the Word of the Lord.
I want to say at the outset that this is not so much a sermon as it is a Lenten meditation. What's more, if you're expecting a well-constructed set of arguments with a neat and compelling conclusion, you're going to leave disappointed today. If I can use an analogy from a few weeks back, this morning's meditation is going to leave the chord unresolved.
This is not because I ran out of time writing, or because I just got lazy, but because our readings this morning ask us a question – and while much of Christianity is corporate and is to be understood and undertaken in the fellowship of believers and in the context of the Body of Christ as a whole, the question these texts ask is individual. Personal. Undeserving of an easy, quick, trite, prepackaged answer, and in any case, really unanswerable from any honest pulpit.
With that having been said, let's jump in.
There is nothing easy about the book of Romans. It is a complex and fairly systematic theological treatise, often controversial, and always instructive. Anytime a passage is lifted out of Romans, either to use as a prooftext or as a Lectionary reading, I wonder what was left behind.
And in our series of Lectionary texts this morning, it kind of stands out like a sore thumb. In Deuteronomy, the Israelites are instructed to bring their best – the first gleanings of the harvest – and surrender them to God. To forfeit the profit and forgo the benefit of their labors in order to remember that the source of their harvest, the foundation of their success, is God. That without God on their side they would be lost in the wilderness at best, and still enslaved to Egypt at worst.
In Luke, Jesus endures the harshest of tests, plumbing the depths of his soul and the limits of his humanity in preparation for the task before him – namely, our salvation.
Then here's Romans, saying if you think and say the right things, poof, you're a Christian, you get to go to heaven! Now, I'm no Horatio Caine, but either the band of elves that put the Revised Common Lectionary together is crazy, or there's more to the story.
Rome was an interesting place – well, not so much a place as an entity. Bent on world domination, the Roman Empire in the first century AD encompassed most of the known world. While whole cultures were assimilated, governed with an iron fist and heavily taxed, the Empire was remarkably lenient when it came to religion. You could worship whatever gods your culture offered, and were not at all required to acknowledge or accept Roman gods, with one key exception: once a year, every citizen and subject of the Roman Empire (with the exception of Jewish people) were required to burn a pinch of incense to the god Caesar, and to acknowledge Caesar as Lord. You then received a certificate which showed, in effect, that you were politically compliant and not a threat to the Roman Empire. To refuse to make the offering was to announce yourself as an opponent of and a danger to that Empire.
To say “Jesus is Lord,” rather than “Caesar is Lord” was to directly challenge the sovereignty and divinity of the leader of the Empire. It was, in effect, to declare war on Rome.
But there's more to it even than that. Every religious culture in the ancient world was an attempt to reach out to or appease some god or set of gods. Prayers had to be said precisely. Sacrifices had to be made faithfully. Altars and images occupied every corner of the house, the marketplace, the crossroads, and temples to an endless variety of gods and goddesses dotted the landscape. Any natural disaster, failed harvest, or invasion by a foreign army was seen as a failure to properly appreciate the corporate gods.
And while a careful reading of the Law of Moses will show that the God of the Hebrews never intended it to be this way, even the Jews had come to regard their system of laws and sacrifices in much the same way – an effort to reach a distant and sometimes disinvolved Creator.
Contrast this with a God who not only does not require strict adherence to law and ritual, does not require burnt offerings or blood sacrifices, but who has reached out to a disinterested and even openly hostile humankind for reconciliation. It was a completely foreign concept both to Jews and to the Gentile world!
It adds up to grace which is both free and costly. Salvation, a free gift to Jew and Gentile alike, could cost you your home, your family, and could very well get you tortured and killed.
This is the first Sunday of Lent. These forty days, not counting Sundays, commemorate Jesus' forty-day fast in the wilderness. These forty days are not the only time Jesus will be tested. These aren't the only days he will be hungry, will be in pain, will be alone. What is unique about this series of tests is, among other things, that Jesus confirms that there will be no shortcuts in the plan of salvation for humankind, that nothing about his life or ministry is about himself.
It is difficult for many of us in 21st century America to imagine the dangers of being a Christian twenty centuries ago. And while millions of believers worldwide are persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and killed every day for their faith in Christ, our own confession of faith rarely causes us hardship. Yes, some Christians in our nation, and even in our communities, have been disowned by their family for confessing that Jesus is Lord, but for the most part, the worst we endure is evangelical athiests like Richard Dawkins saying we are stupid or comedians like Bill Mahr making fun of us in a movie.
It is a sad, but quantifiable fact, that we endure more persecution from one another, across denominational and ideological lines within the Body of Christ, than we do from those outside the faith!
We don't have to bring our firstfruits to the Temple; we're encouraged to tithe our income, yes, but no one is inspecting the quality of our gifts, keeping track of percentages, or issuing certificates of compliance.
So what does it mean for you and I to “confess with [our] lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in [our] hearts that God raised him from the dead?” How does both the fact and the ongoing process of being saved change us? Challenge us? Inconvenience us or even put us in harm's way?
What does our faith cost us?
Let us pray.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Twilight.... No, Not THAT Twilight!
This past Wednesday, the daughter of one of my parishioners passed away after a long illness. In a large church, one could be forgiven for sticking with the Lectionary text and letting the funeral do the talking for the loss, but in a church where, on a good Sunday, you'll see 25 people, that isn't an option.
So a few of you will read this and rightly accuse me of recycling an "old" sermon. While it hasn't been published on this blog before, I posted a version of it over on the "old" Circle Six Magazine forums sometime in 2008 or early 2009. By the way, give that magazine a look, I think you'll find it a really well-done piece of Internet.
I say all this because I don't like reusing sermons, and in fact my mentor and friend Rev. Dr. Doris Chandler was quite opposed to it - she never saved her old sermons, and only saved the children's sermons so she'd be sure to never repeat them. Yet when faced with the cold certainty of death, this is really the only thing I have: it's night, it sucks, and it's real... but the dawn is coming. I promise, it's coming.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.
For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
This is the Word of the Lord.
This reading may be familiar to you as one of those that is most often read at funerals. And while it’s appropriate for funerals, it's also true that I Thessalonians 4:13-18 is brimming with reassurance for every time of life – expectation, joy, and hope. Maybe it isn't the traditional Sunday-after-Christmas reading, but I think you'll agree that it's one we need to hear, especially today.
Certainly, the first-century Christians for whom this Epistle was written would have needed all the joy and hope they could get. It’s an understatement to say that they let a very difficult existence. They were, for the most part, very poor people; servants, slaves, laborers, with a few people of means in their midst. They met in small groups in people’s homes, surrounded by a culture that most often despised their very existence.
The Roman philosophy of governing, you see, was built on a theocracy. The emperor, or Caesar, was regarded as a living god, but even in Roman culture he was one god among many. The Romans, like many polytheistic societies, had gods for every detail of life, from the successful conquest of war to the abundance of harvest, to the opening and closing of doors. The Romans assimilated gods from other cultures as well, and allowed people relative freedom to worship whatever or whoever they chose to… as long as, once a year, they burned a pinch of incense as a sacrifice to the god Caesar.
The Jewish people were exempted from this practice, and were hated for that exemption. Jewish Christians held the same exemption, at least until they were expelled from the Jewish fellowship in the 80’s AD, but for Gentile Christians, the first Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me” flew in the face of honoring Caesar as anything more than a human being. Many people gave in to the pressure to sacrifice to Caesar, because those who did not give in risked loss of property, employment, home and family, freedom, and even their lives.
Add to this the fact that, in any social philosophy based upon religion, any misfortune that society suffers is generally blamed on those who do not hold the same religious worldview. Famine, drought, earthquake, attack from outside enemies, all of these were at one time or another blamed on Christians who, since they would not worship the gods of the culture, were regarded as ‘atheists.”
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the persecutions that these Christians were threatened with and subjected to every day, but I want to offer one example taken from the reign of the Emperor Nero.
In 64AD a fire started under mysterious circumstances and raged through Rome, destroying much of the city. Suspicion immediately fell on the Emperor Nero, not only because he was a complete fruitcake, but because he had made no secret of wanting to tear down much of the city and rebuild it on an even grander scale. Nero needed a scapegoat, and quick, and he settled on a much-hated Jewish sect called “Christians.”
No one knows how many Christians Nero put to death, but we know that he wasn’t satisfied to just kill them. He wanted them to suffer for the entertainment of Rome. Nero had some Christians sewn into animal skins and torn apart in the Circus Maximus by dogs and wild animals. Others he had dipped in wax, suspended from cages and burned to provide lighting on Vatican hill while he raced his chariot.
So you can see that it was not only unpopular to believe in Jesus, it was deadly.
When Paul wrote to the young church at Thessalonica, it was probably only about 20 years since the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There would have been many people still alive who remembered Jesus, perhaps had heard him speak or seen him heal, and quite a few with firsthand knowledge of the Resurrection. Still, many members of the church at Thessalonica would have been Gentiles, experientially and geographically removed from the Resurrection, the event that defined their faith. Not so different, in other words, from you and I.
It’s no wonder then that this letter, the earliest written document in the New Testament, makes a point of reminding the Thessalonians that, no matter what, Jesus had triumphed. It’s a reminder we all need to hear, and often, I think.
We live, after all, in an odd, twilight time. It’s nothing new; we’ve been living in twilight for about 2,000 years. We know that Good Friday was not the end. We know that this Christ, whose birth we celebrated this week, utterly defeated death and conquered the forces of evil, ascended to heaven and sits in triumph at God’s right hand. We know that the Kingdom of God has been established in power.
Yet if all of this is so, why does so much evil persist in the world? How could centuries of persecution, as bad and even worse than Nero’s, have been allowed to occur, and why does persecution of Christians go on, around the world, even today? What about the evils of Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and Darfur, just to name a few? Why do people still die? Is this Kingdom of God real, or are we the biggest fools in the universe?
The easiest answer, the most obvious one, anyway, is to say that the Kingdom of God is not yet here, that Christ’s final victory over sin, suffering, injustice and death will not come until the history of the world itself ends.
And since we can find evidence for both views in Scripture – the Kingdom of God has come, the Kingdom of God will come – somehow, both statements, though apparently contradictory, must be true. But how?
The late theologian and teacher Shirley Guthrie offers this story as explanation:
On June 6, 1944, at 6:30 am, Allied forces mounted the single largest invasion of all time against Nazi-occupied France. D-Day signaled the utter defeat of Nazi Germany and the absolute triumph of Allied forces in World War II. Yet the hostilities did not end until almost a year later – May 7 and 8, 1945, VE day, when Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered.
The Germans fought a number of desperate fall-back battles all across Europe. Many lives were lost and a lot of damage was done before the final surrender. Yet with that decisive battle in Normandy it was clear that the war was won, even if it was not yet over.
The decisive battle of human history took place when, in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God “invaded” the world, and conquered the ruling forces of evil. The Cross is a completed work, so the war has been won. Yet we await the final triumph of the risen Christ at the end of history. So between the times, in this twilight, the deadly battles continue, even though the outcome is already assured. We remember what God has done and therefore can have hope for what God will do.
I’ve used that word “twilight” several times now, haven’t I? I want to be absolutely clear on what I mean by this word, which is by the way Shirley Guthrie’s word. It applies in so many ways to the Kingdom of God, to our personal faith journeys, and especially to the life and ministry of Fairfield Highlands Presbyterian Church, this family of believers who is sharing this week not only in the celebration of the birth of Christ but in the grief at the loss of Evelyn's daughter. It applies, ultimately, of course, to life itself.
Because when I talk about the twilight we are living in, I don't mean the kind of twilight that comes right before the darkness of night falls, cold, silent, and impenetrable. That kind of twilight spells the end, and it's a twilight we're all too familiar with – we as a human race have been there, and done that... and in Christ, God has said “enough!”
Back when I was a youth director, I'd take a group to the summer conference in Montreat every year. Several of the regular conference attendees had a tradition on the last night of the conference. Everyone who didn't have to drive home the next day would stay up all night, and in the early morning hours a group would set out in the darkness to climb to the top of a nearby mountain. Saying it that way makes it sound like a harder climb than it really was. In reality it was a fun journey; there was a lot of stumbling and giggling and dropping flashlights and such. The goal of the trip was to reach the mountaintop in time to see the sky go from black, to purple, to steadily lighter shades of blue until the sky erupted into loud “hosannah's” of color as the dawn broke over the Blue Ridge Mountains.
That's the twilight I'm talking about – when the first rays of dawn are just beginning to color the eastern sky. Night is as good as over, the darkness is conquered, and we see the promise of a new day!
“For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died… For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever!”
This is why we hope. This is why we believe. Despite sickness and crime and evil and persecutions, despite economic downturns and foreclosures and layoffs and political uncertainty, and even in the face of the ultimate night, the closed casket poised over the open grave, we hope!
Because, yes, Christ has died.
But Christ has risen!
And Christ will come again!
This is our amen!
So a few of you will read this and rightly accuse me of recycling an "old" sermon. While it hasn't been published on this blog before, I posted a version of it over on the "old" Circle Six Magazine forums sometime in 2008 or early 2009. By the way, give that magazine a look, I think you'll find it a really well-done piece of Internet.
I say all this because I don't like reusing sermons, and in fact my mentor and friend Rev. Dr. Doris Chandler was quite opposed to it - she never saved her old sermons, and only saved the children's sermons so she'd be sure to never repeat them. Yet when faced with the cold certainty of death, this is really the only thing I have: it's night, it sucks, and it's real... but the dawn is coming. I promise, it's coming.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.
For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
This is the Word of the Lord.
This reading may be familiar to you as one of those that is most often read at funerals. And while it’s appropriate for funerals, it's also true that I Thessalonians 4:13-18 is brimming with reassurance for every time of life – expectation, joy, and hope. Maybe it isn't the traditional Sunday-after-Christmas reading, but I think you'll agree that it's one we need to hear, especially today.
Certainly, the first-century Christians for whom this Epistle was written would have needed all the joy and hope they could get. It’s an understatement to say that they let a very difficult existence. They were, for the most part, very poor people; servants, slaves, laborers, with a few people of means in their midst. They met in small groups in people’s homes, surrounded by a culture that most often despised their very existence.
The Roman philosophy of governing, you see, was built on a theocracy. The emperor, or Caesar, was regarded as a living god, but even in Roman culture he was one god among many. The Romans, like many polytheistic societies, had gods for every detail of life, from the successful conquest of war to the abundance of harvest, to the opening and closing of doors. The Romans assimilated gods from other cultures as well, and allowed people relative freedom to worship whatever or whoever they chose to… as long as, once a year, they burned a pinch of incense as a sacrifice to the god Caesar.
The Jewish people were exempted from this practice, and were hated for that exemption. Jewish Christians held the same exemption, at least until they were expelled from the Jewish fellowship in the 80’s AD, but for Gentile Christians, the first Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me” flew in the face of honoring Caesar as anything more than a human being. Many people gave in to the pressure to sacrifice to Caesar, because those who did not give in risked loss of property, employment, home and family, freedom, and even their lives.
Add to this the fact that, in any social philosophy based upon religion, any misfortune that society suffers is generally blamed on those who do not hold the same religious worldview. Famine, drought, earthquake, attack from outside enemies, all of these were at one time or another blamed on Christians who, since they would not worship the gods of the culture, were regarded as ‘atheists.”
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the persecutions that these Christians were threatened with and subjected to every day, but I want to offer one example taken from the reign of the Emperor Nero.
In 64AD a fire started under mysterious circumstances and raged through Rome, destroying much of the city. Suspicion immediately fell on the Emperor Nero, not only because he was a complete fruitcake, but because he had made no secret of wanting to tear down much of the city and rebuild it on an even grander scale. Nero needed a scapegoat, and quick, and he settled on a much-hated Jewish sect called “Christians.”
No one knows how many Christians Nero put to death, but we know that he wasn’t satisfied to just kill them. He wanted them to suffer for the entertainment of Rome. Nero had some Christians sewn into animal skins and torn apart in the Circus Maximus by dogs and wild animals. Others he had dipped in wax, suspended from cages and burned to provide lighting on Vatican hill while he raced his chariot.
So you can see that it was not only unpopular to believe in Jesus, it was deadly.
When Paul wrote to the young church at Thessalonica, it was probably only about 20 years since the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There would have been many people still alive who remembered Jesus, perhaps had heard him speak or seen him heal, and quite a few with firsthand knowledge of the Resurrection. Still, many members of the church at Thessalonica would have been Gentiles, experientially and geographically removed from the Resurrection, the event that defined their faith. Not so different, in other words, from you and I.
It’s no wonder then that this letter, the earliest written document in the New Testament, makes a point of reminding the Thessalonians that, no matter what, Jesus had triumphed. It’s a reminder we all need to hear, and often, I think.
We live, after all, in an odd, twilight time. It’s nothing new; we’ve been living in twilight for about 2,000 years. We know that Good Friday was not the end. We know that this Christ, whose birth we celebrated this week, utterly defeated death and conquered the forces of evil, ascended to heaven and sits in triumph at God’s right hand. We know that the Kingdom of God has been established in power.
Yet if all of this is so, why does so much evil persist in the world? How could centuries of persecution, as bad and even worse than Nero’s, have been allowed to occur, and why does persecution of Christians go on, around the world, even today? What about the evils of Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and Darfur, just to name a few? Why do people still die? Is this Kingdom of God real, or are we the biggest fools in the universe?
The easiest answer, the most obvious one, anyway, is to say that the Kingdom of God is not yet here, that Christ’s final victory over sin, suffering, injustice and death will not come until the history of the world itself ends.
And since we can find evidence for both views in Scripture – the Kingdom of God has come, the Kingdom of God will come – somehow, both statements, though apparently contradictory, must be true. But how?
The late theologian and teacher Shirley Guthrie offers this story as explanation:
On June 6, 1944, at 6:30 am, Allied forces mounted the single largest invasion of all time against Nazi-occupied France. D-Day signaled the utter defeat of Nazi Germany and the absolute triumph of Allied forces in World War II. Yet the hostilities did not end until almost a year later – May 7 and 8, 1945, VE day, when Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered.
The Germans fought a number of desperate fall-back battles all across Europe. Many lives were lost and a lot of damage was done before the final surrender. Yet with that decisive battle in Normandy it was clear that the war was won, even if it was not yet over.
The decisive battle of human history took place when, in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God “invaded” the world, and conquered the ruling forces of evil. The Cross is a completed work, so the war has been won. Yet we await the final triumph of the risen Christ at the end of history. So between the times, in this twilight, the deadly battles continue, even though the outcome is already assured. We remember what God has done and therefore can have hope for what God will do.
I’ve used that word “twilight” several times now, haven’t I? I want to be absolutely clear on what I mean by this word, which is by the way Shirley Guthrie’s word. It applies in so many ways to the Kingdom of God, to our personal faith journeys, and especially to the life and ministry of Fairfield Highlands Presbyterian Church, this family of believers who is sharing this week not only in the celebration of the birth of Christ but in the grief at the loss of Evelyn's daughter. It applies, ultimately, of course, to life itself.
Because when I talk about the twilight we are living in, I don't mean the kind of twilight that comes right before the darkness of night falls, cold, silent, and impenetrable. That kind of twilight spells the end, and it's a twilight we're all too familiar with – we as a human race have been there, and done that... and in Christ, God has said “enough!”
Back when I was a youth director, I'd take a group to the summer conference in Montreat every year. Several of the regular conference attendees had a tradition on the last night of the conference. Everyone who didn't have to drive home the next day would stay up all night, and in the early morning hours a group would set out in the darkness to climb to the top of a nearby mountain. Saying it that way makes it sound like a harder climb than it really was. In reality it was a fun journey; there was a lot of stumbling and giggling and dropping flashlights and such. The goal of the trip was to reach the mountaintop in time to see the sky go from black, to purple, to steadily lighter shades of blue until the sky erupted into loud “hosannah's” of color as the dawn broke over the Blue Ridge Mountains.
That's the twilight I'm talking about – when the first rays of dawn are just beginning to color the eastern sky. Night is as good as over, the darkness is conquered, and we see the promise of a new day!
“For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died… For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever!”
This is why we hope. This is why we believe. Despite sickness and crime and evil and persecutions, despite economic downturns and foreclosures and layoffs and political uncertainty, and even in the face of the ultimate night, the closed casket poised over the open grave, we hope!
Because, yes, Christ has died.
But Christ has risen!
And Christ will come again!
This is our amen!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)