C Proper 13 18 Ord NH BFC 2019
Secret Book of James 6:7-8
August 4, 2019
Jesus said, “Be eager to be saved without being urged. Rather, be fervent on your own and, if possible, outdo even me, for this is how the father will love you.
“Come to hate hypocrisy and evil intention. Intention produces hypocrisy, and hypocrisy is far from truth.
“Do not let the empire of heaven wither away. It is like a palm shoot whose dates dropped around it. It produced buds, and after they grew, its productivity dried up. This is also what happened with fruit that came from this single root. After it was harvested, fruit was obtained by many. It certainly was good. Is it not possible to produce the new growth now, and for you to find it?”
Early Christian scholars often reference the project that Jesus was about, perhaps even the project that pre-dated Jesus, as the empire of God movement. As in the Secret Book of James text today, intentional Jewish writers would have substituted “heaven” for God, using the name of God a form of idolatry. The primary way to understand this countercultural movement is that the most widely known cultural reference in the First Century is the Roman Empire and its Caesar. The Empire of God movement takes Caesar off the throne, with Caesar’s values and priorities, and places God upon the throne, with God’s values and priorities. Assumed is that Caesar is not god, and God’s values and priorities are wildly different than those of Caesar and Rome.
That is a thoroughly Jewish notion. God was the distinct and different Sovereign for the Jewish people over and against every other Sovereign of other nations.
Movements are driven by their mission and their values. Decisions and actions align with those values.
But there is something unique about a term like the Empire of God. It references not only a movement but there is also a sense that it is institutional. Institutions are about holding something, providing longevity that holds content. Rev. Courtney Stange-Treager, Minister for Church Vitality in the Pacific Northwest Conference, shared with us at a continuing education event that United Church of Christ churches often flinch at being known as institutions. UCC churches are often like a beautifully, artistic vase that is dynamic and creative but has holes that do not allow the vase to hold much water, much content. Rev. Stange-Treager thinks the church can perform important roles as institutions. Good institutions may not be much on verve or creative design but they know how to hold water, hold content.
As followers of Christ, the Church is to be about the Empire of God project—the project that is both movement and institution. The teaching in the Secret Book of James reminds us that hypocrisy and evil intention are the great killers of the empire of heaven, the Empire of God. The teaching also lets us know that the Empire of God can be fragile, requires our care, nurture, and watchful eye, lest it wither away.
So I’ve been beating around the bush, providing the empty cup or vase in talking about the Empire of God as movement or institution without defining it. That’s what I want you to do. In a couple minutes I’m going to ask all of you what the content and character of the Empire of God is . . . either by discerning that from the life and mission and ministry of Christ. Or by discerning that in our common life together. What are the values and mission of this church? Or what should be the values and mission of this church?
And then to ask, how do we tend to the institution so that it can hold that content? How can we make the movement sustainable as an institution?
I ask those questions because I believe, in discerning their answers, we decide who we shall be as church, invested in the project of the Empire of God.
Let’s take a minute to lean back into the Spirit of God I believe functions in each one of you and collectively as a community to ask, “What are the values and mission of this church? Or what should be the values and mission of this church?” And then to ask, how do we tend to the institution so that it can hold that content? How can we make the movement sustainable as an institution?
(A minute of silence. Ask for answers.)
We live in a time where much of the Christian church is unwilling to define its values because we know to do so would show us to be hypocritical people of evil intent. So then . . . does Christianity deserve to survive when its sole values are survival and power over others . . . willing to bend and break any other value to attend to those two, carrying forward hypocrisy and evil intent? Perhaps it does not. But true Christianity has always existed authentically as a minority movement. Are there people who are willing to live with and by deep values, as a minority tradition, seeking to hold that content in a way that might infuse its wider culture? May we be those people. Amen.
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