3-19-17 Sermon by Rev. Jay Anderson
“I Dream of a Church: Christ’s Representatives”
That scene is a classic one in the genre of horror films, to the point
of being cliche. That which is haunting or threatening the protagonist
is actually coming from within their own house.
Bishop
Easterling pays homage to that scene when she uses that same line of
warning in the poem we just read. “Before it is too late,” she warned,
“may we understand that the call is coming from inside the house.” The
Bishop’s warnings about the use of fear, division, hatred, harassment,
neglect, hate, and oppression in the world does not exclude the church
of which she, and we, are a part. It is a damning warning that will cost
us our spiritual lives in horror-movie-slasher-style if we do not heed
it -
“the
Stench, Rot, Brokenness, Emptiness, Insecurity, Woundedness, and
Disease, is from within and not without,” she declares. They are part
and parcel of the spiritual forces of wickedness that I shared with you
last week that we vowed to renounce and resist, but that we allow to
incubate within us, as well as within the church.
How do we as the church recover from Bishop Easterling’s diagnosis?
What are we to do to stem the flow of blood, to stop the oozing of life
that has led to decades of decline in the church? What will it take to
make the church relevant again in the eyes of now two generations who
find this whole endeavor a bit suspect?
I don’t pretend to have all the answers - that’s beyond my pay grade,
as they say. Hundreds, if not thousands of books have been written on
the subject. But I have a couple of ideas, and Jesus gives us some clues
as well. Here’s something that many of us believe is a good place to
begin: Let’s start by not preaching hate in all its subtle forms in the
church anymore. That is, let’s allow the Good News given to all nations
and all peoples to actually be good news, to all nations and all peoples. The theology of division, just like the politics
of division, does nothing to help and everything to hurt. It’s not
working - not in the world and not in the church. Dividing people into
“us” and “them,” along political, theological, racial, ethnic, or sexual
lines, is unChristian, it’s unbiblical, it’s sin. It just won’t work.
Threatening people, judging people, blaming people, placing ourselves
above people, scaring people is not going to bring people into a
relationship with God, with Jesus Christ, or with the church. In fact,
it’s driving them away in droves. Understand, Christ is not going to let
us grow his church using sin as a tool, so it just has to stop.
I know, I know, some people think that this whole decline in the
church, this decline in the world, would stop if preachers would just
preach about Hell more! I know some of you think that about me. Well, do
you ever watch the Rod Parsleys and John Hagees and the other hellfire
and brimstone preachers on TV? They and others like them have been
preaching messages of condemnation and damnation for an awful long time,
and look where it’s gotten us.
It’s gotten them
big congregations, big houses, big fancy cars, but the larger church
has been devastated by it, and many of the young people who are outside
the church think that all churches are just like that - and they
have flatly rejected it. Yet, something has to change. What the larger
church has been doing for the past 50-60 years isn’t working, at least
not in the U.S. It is said that one definition of insanity is doing the
same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Well…
It’s easy to preach a message that blames people. It’s easy to point
fingers. It’s easy to play God and do our own separating of people into
sheep and goats based on what WE think is the right way to think, to
pray, to worship, to believe, to vote, to love. There’s a very important
scene in the film, “The Shack,” that addresses our human desire to play
God when it suits us. Many Christians, in other churches of
course, not here I’m sure, like to think that because they’re members of
the church that they’re somehow special snowflakes, or maybe
Cinderella, and that the glass slipper of salvation fits only on their foot. And some preachers like to preach that because it gets them a captive audience, and big house, and big cars…
But Jesus had something to say about that in our passage from Matthew 25 today.
Matthew 25 gives Jesus’ summation, near the end of his ministry, of
what it means to be a disciple, a true follower of Jesus Christ. He
shows us, on three levels, what living a Christ-centered life looks
like. At the first level, Jesus directs his followers to obey his
commandment to love God and to love our neighbor as ourself, what Jesus
said summed up the heart of the law. Where Luke’s Jesus uses the
unlikely Samaritan as an example of what this looks like in practice,
Matthew’s Jesus lists the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, and
the imprisoned among the neighbors his followers are called to love.
On a second level, disciples are called to imitate the vision of Jesus,
who dined with those labeled “sinners,” those on the outside. And it’s
important that we understanding what is happening in that act. Jesus is
offering forgiveness to them in his willingness to dine with them, EVEN
BEFORE any repentance on their part takes place. There is no
repent-first-forgive-later transaction going on here. The grace is on
the table already. Seeing others as God sees them means embracing in
grace those we would call sinners. It means not judging them, but
inviting them into redemptive relationship and the fellowship of grace,
and not excluding them simply because they sin differently than we do.
On a third level, Jesus tells his followers to perceive “the other” as
though he or she were Christ himself. Serving the needy should be
approached as though one were serving Christ himself. More succinctly,
they were to see in each person they encountered, Jesus himself.
In
some traditions this ideas is embraced in the term, Namaste, which says
that the holy in me sees the holy in you. In our context it would mean
“the Christ in me sees the Christ in you.” If Christ is present in us,
if we are Christ-centered people, then we are to acknowledge Christ in
the other. That, Jesus says, is what it means to be his follower.
So, in this last of Matthew’s parables of Jesus, Jesus redefines
righteousness for his followers in all ages. He doesn’t tell them that
their salvation comes because of what they thought or believed about
him, but by how what they thought or believed led them to act in his
name. Righteousness doesn’t come by following rituals or obeying
legalistic mandates; it comes in embracing the way of the kingdom, which
is to share love and grace to all the nations and all the peoples. God
always favors those who are most vulnerable and invites us to come
alongside those most at risk, regardless of where they come from or what
they believe. That is the grace of the kingdom of God.
But isn’t this just “works righteousness” you might ask? Isn’t this
saying I can earn my salvation by the things I do? No, it’s not, and for
a couple of reasons. First of all, Matthew had no concept of this idea
of “works righteousness,” that was a Paul thing and nowhere does Matthew
even suggest that that’s what’s happening here. Second, remember, in
the parable neither the sheep nor the goats realized it was Christ they
had encountered. Both of them asked Jesus “when was it that we did this,
or didn’t do this?” The point is that the action was not done out of
any expectation of reward or punishment. The righteous cared for those
in need because they saw need, and the unrighteous saw need and failed
to do the same. The righteous loved God by their love of neighbor, the
unrighteous denied God by their lack of love for their neighbor. The
righteous, in the spirit of namaste, saw Christ in the other and
responded as they would to him. The others denied the Christ, the holy,
in those labeled as other, and in turn, denied care.
Jesus’ parable tells us that grace is given freely without regard to
merit, but that obedience to the law of love is still demanded of the
faithful. Our care for the least is our care for Christ himself. It is a
natural outpouring or response to the love shown us. If we do not
provide care for Christ in all his many disguises, then how can we
expect him to judge in our favor?
Let’s approach this idea from a different angle for a moment. I invite
you to take a good long look at this image. This is an icon created by
Robert Lentz titled “Christ In the Margins.” An icon is a picture or
image used as a meditation tool to focus, in this case, on Jesus. We’ve
shared before the practice of lectio divina, where we read a passage of
scripture three times and listen for different things within the
reading. Well this is similar to that, it’s called visio divina. And
you’re invited to simply look closely at this icon, consider the
details, and then think about these things as you take it in:
-What resonates with you most strongly about this picture?
-What word, phrase, image, or emotion does this image trigger in you?
-What surprises, excites, or disturbs you about this representation?
One interesting thing to consider: the icon doesn’t make clear which
side of the fence Christ is on does it? Is he imprisoned or are
we? Through both our cultural institutions and our personal lives we all
place barriers between ourselves and true happiness. We and our
institutions, including the church, also try to imprison Christ in
various ways, to tame him and the dangerous memories he would bring us
of our goals and ideals, of what we aspire to, of who we say in our
baptismal and membership vows that we want to be. So, consider how
meditating on this icon might impact our understanding of this scripture
before us today.
Theologian Robert McClellan asks an intriguing question in considering
this passage. “Why,” he asks, “are so many ‘recovering Christians’
walking the earth, carrying with them painful scars inflicted by the
churches of their youth?” Recovering Christians…didn’t even know that
was a thing did you?
Our reading of the story today didn’t go to the end of the passage as
it is written in Matthew, because that ending is the part of the story
that is so often abused. “The story of the sheep and goats is a story
about us,” McClellan says, “but it’s not faithfully told when it is told
to incite fear. Fear, [as in “turn or burn theology,”] doesn’t move anyone into vibrant
discipleship. To make that part of the passage, that image, the [focus]
of the passage is a mistake and is to misrepresent what Jesus is
calling us to do and to be.”
And he goes on, “Fear causes people to fixate on the many things they
have not done or cannot do, obscuring their ability to see the
innumerable essential things they can do. With discernment comes clarity
about the simplicity of the tasks before us and our God-given
ability faithfully to fulfill them. Food, water, clothing, hospitality,
companionship: these are not only the most necessary elements for
communal life; they are also the most readily available gifts to give.
The lesson of the sheep and the goats is good news, because it
asks each to share precisely what each has. That is the true center of
this passage. Whether it is food or water, a compassionate ear or an
open heart, everyone has something to share.”
And we know that, right? In our food pantry ministry we give food and
drink and hospitality. Our free store ministry provides clothing,
hospitality, and companionship. In our community meal, we supply all
four of these - as we do in our Mustard Seed Street Outreach and perhaps
in the others as well. In our tutoring ministry, we provide
companionship and guidance. In our visitation ministries we bring caring
hospitality, a listening ear, and companionship. And we could go on
with each and every thing we do - this idea is not new to us as a
church. This is what we do. And that, McClellan suggests, should make
all of us - longtime members, casual attenders, and first-time visitors
alike - feel enlivened, not threatened by this passage, because it calls
us to serve in ways firmly within our grasp. These are things that each
and every person in the life of a church, young or old, rich or poor,
mobile or homebound, can do. This is a reassuring lesson from a story that is so commonly portrayed as frightening and threatening, and that is used to divide.
McClellan also suggests that that’s not the only good news in this
parable. The most frequent question he receives from parishioners, he
writes, is about belief. “What if I am not sure what I believe?” they
ask. “Christians have long concentrated on right belief, good teaching,
and proper theological understanding of how God works in the world.
Councils have been formed, creeds written, and wars fought to determine
how we are to believe in God,” he reminds us. And we know that is true
when we consider that there are, I think I read, over 10,000
denominations within Christianity itself who can’t agree on what is
right belief.
To be sure, what we believe is important, but probably not in the way
you think. It’s important, not so that we can be right and someone else
can be wrong; it’s important in that how we think about God is
inextricably linked to how we live our lives and interact with the world
around us. When we think of God as an angry, vengeful, judgmental God,
then our faith and our living tend to become angry, vengeful, and
judgmental at worst, or timid and fearful at best. When, on the other
hand, our belief about God is that God is loving, inclusive, and
grace-filled, then we too tend in our faith and our lives to be loving
and inclusive and grace-filled as well. What we believe matters, not
because there's some theology test upon which we have to have a certain
score to get into to heaven, not because we will be judged on whether
our answers are correct, but because what we believe shapes how we live,
and how we live shapes how we represent Christ in the world.
McClellan offers, “Doctrine can be helpful for guiding our lives, and
shaping our beliefs. However, belief can…be a stumbling block as well.
Often people feel somehow less Christian because they have trouble with
one of our tradition’s positions or statements. They feel somehow left
on the outside because they are not sure of their beliefs. As a result,
they feel less suitable for the work of the church, less likely to
engage in it, and thereby less likely to have the very experiences that
will inspire the faith they feel they lack.”
“What this passage provides is a relief from the pressure to have all
of the answers before being able to act. Where people [might] hesitate
at the sight of doctrine, they are quite willing to jump into action
when they see someone in need. Think of those who might be on the
margins of any worshiping community who spring to life when it is time
for the [big yearly mission or outreach event]. Consider the longtime
attendee who refuses to join on the grounds of theology, but who leaps
into action to organize meals for someone in need.
This
too, is faith, and according to this passage, is perhaps more blessed
than someone who believes all the right things, but then fails to put
that faith into actual practice. Moreover, in the same way right belief
can lead to faithful action, right action can also nurture and provide
context for our belief. [We all have] plenty of unsettled theological
questions - I do, you do, and we always will - but it’s in the moments
of the kind of service Jesus describes that I know that I feel God closest and my faith most unwavering.
If you look at the full context of this passage, Jesus seems to be saying that if there is any sort of “Final Judgment,” then the criteria on which we will be judged will not be what we know (or think we know) or what we say we believe,
but rather what we have actually done (or neglected to do) for the less
fortunate — specifically, whether we’ve helped feed the hungry, given
drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, and
visited the sick and imprisoned. To adapt Jesus’ words, “Truly I tell
you, however you treat the least of my sisters or brothers is how you
have treated me.”
Jesus seems to be promising — to those of us born centuries too late to
meet the historical Jesus in person — that the closest we can come to a
transformative face-to-face encounter with Jesus is to aid and be fully
present to the poor and the marginalized. What we do or don’t do for
them, is what we do or don’t do for him.
The
scornful glance at the panhandler on the corner becomes a scornful
glance to Jesus. The taking away of assistance to hunger programs for
the poor is literally taking food out of Jesus’ mouth.
Our action and our belief become so intertwined that the faithful
move through life, not as those afraid of a vengeful king doling out
eternal punishment, not as those riddled with guilt about what they can
or cannot profess about God, but simply and wonderfully as those changed
by the transformative Spirit and Word into Christ-centered followers
who feed, share drink, welcome in, and clothe the naked, and care for
the stranger, the sick, the hungry, the immigrant, the refugee, the
other. That’s the church that Christ dreams of - those are the people
who truly represent Christ in the world.
So how do we recover from that diagnosis found in Bishop Easterling’s
poem? One disciple at a time, one ministry at a time, and one church at a
time. Christ defines living faith as faithful living, and invites
believers to put into action the Prayer he gave us: that God’s kingdom
would come and God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. It
is those who respond in that way, he says, who are truly ready to
inherit the kingdom of God.
So, with all of that said, and with some of your minds blown, I want to conclude with this blessing:
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and
superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation
of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain,
rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to
comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.
May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.
And will you now turn to the neighbor on either side of you, and bless
them, saying to them, “The Christ in me sees the Christ in you.”
(wait while this happens)
Amen. (SING REPRISE OF SONG)
Reprise of Song
Make it so, make it so!
We pray for that day, make it so.
We dream of a world where Love reigns among us
and your will is done, O God make it so!
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