A sermon for the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on October 21, 2012.
It’s a sermon in which he imagines what the Apostle Paul might write if he were to write to Christians in America in 1956.
I want to read an excerpt from it to you:
“For many years I have longed to be able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere. So in your world you have made it possible to eat breakfast in New York City and dinner in Paris, France. I have also heard of your skyscraping buildings with their prodigious towers steeping heavenward. I have heard of your great medical advances, which have resulted in the curing of many dread plagues and diseases, and thereby prolonged your lives and made for greater security and physical well-being. All of that is marvelous. You can do so many things in your day that I could not do in the Greco-Roman world of my day. In your age you can travel distances in one day that took me three months to travel. That is wonderful. You have made tremendous strides in the area of scientific and technological development.But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. Your poet Thoreau used to talk about "improved means to an unimproved end." How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood. So America, I would urge you to keep your moral advances abreast with your scientific advances.I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an unChristian world. That is what I had to do. That is what every Christian has to do. But I understand that there are many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to man-made systems and customs. They are afraid to be different. Their great concern is to be accepted socially. They live by some such principle as this: "everybody is doing it, so it must be alright." For so many of you Morality is merely group consensus. In your modern sociological lingo, the mores are accepted as the right ways. You have unconsciously come to believe that right is discovered by taking a sort of Gallup poll of the majority opinion. How many are giving their ultimate allegiance to this way.But American Christians, I must say to you as I said to the Roman Christians years ago, "Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." Or, as I said to the Phillipian Christians, "Ye are a colony of heaven." This means that although you live in the colony of time, your ultimate allegiance is to the empire of eternity. You have a dual citizenry. You live both in time and eternity; both in heaven and earth. Therefore, your ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to any man-made institution. The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God, and if any earthly institution conflicts with God's will it is your Christian duty to take a stand against it. You must never allow the transitory evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.”
(Read the full manuscript of King's sermon here)
Our faith and covenant sentence today reads: To this end we work and pray for the transformation of the world into the kingdom of God.
We are residents of another realm. citizens of another society. And we must never forget that. We mostly seek what seems comfortable.We mostly seek what seems safe.
But God calls us from our comfort and safety into what is true and good.
Lucy asks the beavers in the first Narnia book: “Is Aslan safe?” to which Mr. Beaver replies: “Safe?...don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
What’s safe is the comfort of being well-off and satisfied with modern conveniences when down the street your neighbor is cold, underfed, or overworked.
What’s good is not always safe.
“He isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
God is our king. Perhaps at this time in our history when people are worshipping and putting all of their hopes in one candidate and demonizing and relegating to the nastiest regions of hell the other one, it might be better to remind ourselves that God is our president. That God is the one who is and will heal the broken in this world.
But I don’t like president because president is too compromised. A president is too weak. God is king of the universe. God is the “emperor of eternity” in King’s words.
“although [we] live in the colony of time, [our] ultimate allegiance is to the empire of eternity” as King puts it.“[our] ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to any man-made institution. The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God.”
Now we get really nervous when someone talks like this. Because so many times in our day we’ve seen the scenario where the person goes on to say that they know exactly what God wants and God has told them to let nothing stand in the way of their divinely ordained mission -- not even human lives.
But let’s remember that Christians believe that God is king, God is the ultimate authority and then they go on to say scandalous things like, Jesus Christ is King, Jesus is Lord.
Christians believe that God was revealed in this Jewish carpenter.
And so all our notions of power encounter the one who served and healed and liberated and empowered others.
“I was fine with God not being safe -- I’m familiar with that kind of person, I’ve built up good defenses.”
But are we fine with God when God is a God who serves, who gives to the other? who does not resist? who longs with all of God’s big compassionate heart for the healing all people?
Now that’s the kind of not-safe that scares the heck out of me.
I’d rather God enter as a candidate in the election so I can mudsling against both Obama and Romney and feel all glorious by association in my campaign for God as president.
But who will elect a servant-king? How do you spin that on tv-ads? How do you win a debate with the one who gave no answer?
I think James and John wanted to elect Jesus for president. They obviously believed he could do a lot better than the incumbant Herod. And best of all: they’d work on his campaign, argue with their friends about how much better a candidate he is -- even use misquoting and caricaturing of his opponents’ position in order to make Jesus look even better and his opponent even worse.
And Jesus would naturally then give them good positions on his cabinet. They’d sit on his right and left side and oh wow, then the world become a better place.
But Jesus didn’t respond to James by saying “if you do well in this campaign I might have secretary of state lined up for you” and Jesus didn’t respond to John by saying “do you think you might be interested in Secretary of Defense?”
Jesus sees their safe and responds with good:
‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’
There are two truths to keep in mind especially in election seasons:
(1) we are broken through and through and
(2) all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will not be able to fix us; God alone can do that.
The grace that is life-changing is not safe. It’s uncomfortable because it causes us to realize our need and the needs of others. And in that moment when we are staring into the light of grace -- all of our self-sufficiency, all of our hard earned lifestyles and comforts seem a little like walls to keep God out. We don’t really want to be healed because we’re too comfortable with the brokenness, the pride, the violence of our identity politics, me vs. you, us vs. them.
I attended the Annual Meeting of the New Hampshire Conference of the United Church of Christ yesterday. The Rev. Gary Schulte preached on a text from the book of Revelation where John has a vision of a great tree:
He writes: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”
The Rev. Schulte reminded us that we are the leaves, nourished by the tree and the water of life. As we experience God’s healing in our lives through the Spirit, we can then be a healing presence to others.
The world will be mostly the same on Nov. 7 as it was on Nov. 6. Some people in some places will be patting themselves on the back while others will be contemplating moving to Canada or seceding from the Union.
Let’s not put our hope in an election, let’s not let the media and advertising lure us into worship of the man-made, of the endless charades.
Let’s put our hope in the healer, our God, whose tree of life has nourished us. Whose grace has given us the reality check which, though not safe, though not comfortable, was good and continues to be good. Let’s remember that we represent eternity in this colony of time and allow the Spirit of Christ to change us into those who seek not to be served but to serve, and to give our lives to the healing of a broken world.
May the healing grace of God capture our hearts and minds and overwhelm us with God’s goodness. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment