Red Bison Faith: Akbaakuxshé: Sermon, First Sunday after Christmas, January 2, 2022, "The pandemic as a portal"

Friday, January 21, 2022

Sermon, First Sunday after Christmas, January 2, 2022, "The pandemic as a portal"

C Christmas 2 Pilg 2021

John 1:10-18

January 2, 2022

In this socially distanced time, maybe your Christmas, like mine, was a procession of videos or Facetime calls from young relatives. With all the glee of a prison inmate, these forced confessions, or, I mean, expressions of gratitude, come to us with the gift prominently on display presumably so that “A” we know the gift did truly arrive and “B” the young person remembers what they are thanking us for. I imagine that when the communication to us is over, Aunt Beth’s gift is moved in front of the youngster and the process is repeated.

We may not get to see the joy of Kian or Eli opening their gifts, but I do appreciate my sisters and brother pushing their kids to do one of the not so glamorous but necessary rituals of Christmas. Our children should learn and practice gratitude—even when it feels like they are being tied to a chair to do so.

Unfortunately, our family also experienced some of the hard lessons of pandemic. A number of our family members made the trip to Florida, even went to Disney World, and somehow, in the mix, my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my niece all tested positive for Co-Vid. My mom actually ended up in the emergency room but probably due to her vaccination status was fortunate to only end up with a deep cough and fatigue. The Omicron variant is humbling even the fully vaccinated and boosted.

As we walk into another surge in this pandemic, I was reminded this week of the article written by the great Indian writer, Arundhati Roy, who observed in April 2020 that the pandemic was hitting some of the richest nations in the world the hardest, namely the United States. The language we were using to offset the pandemic, the language of war, was not working out for us. We would be prepared if our frontline workers had needed stockpiles of guns and bombs, fighter jets and submarines. We did not have the language nor the resources ready for care and healing. We did not have the resources or the language in place for care and healing. We didn’t seem to know how to requisition that.

Roy went on to write,

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.^{^[1]}

The pandemic is a portal—a choice between two worlds. The pandemic required and requires that we see all of us in this together. The old way pretended that we could build a wall, circle the wagons, or a gated community around ourselves and escape the horrors of the world. A new world needs to be imagined.

Our Scripture verse today is a foreshadowing of Holy Week when Jesus stands in front of Pontius Pilate, interrogated by Pilate, the local representative of the Roman Empire. Jesus responds to Pilate by saying, “My empire is not of this world. If my empire were of this world, my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Judeans; but as it is, my kingdom or empire is not of this world.”^{^[2]} The Greek word translated as “world” is kosmos and it is used in the first chapter of John when the writer seeks to define Jesus by saying, “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, and yet the world did not know him.”

That word, kosmos, is used over and over again in Biblical books influenced by what is called “Johannine theology.” Johannine theology is found as today, in the gospel of John, but also in 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation. Most classic translations interpret the word kosmos as “world” which has led to some unhealthy theology throughout the ages. Christian tradition has sometimes used that classic translation to bend away from embodiment and bend toward denial of the body, away from the physical world toward more of a concern for heaven and the afterlife.

But the late, great Biblical scholar, Walter Wink transformed the meaning of Johannine theology by recognizing that the more apt translation for the word kosmos was "Domination System." In Jesus's context, Wink might even agree with me that "Roman Empire" could be another good translation. Jesus tells us not to be of the Domination System or the Empire. Do not practice its ways or be like it.

Jesus always tells his disciples to not be of the Domination System or Roman Empire. Jesus is always telling the disciples within Johannine theology that we are born into the kosmos but we are not to participate in the ways or trade of the kosmos.

Jesus, before Pilate, in that Holy Week Scripture, is not saying, my kingdom or Empire is not of this earthly world, or is in heaven. Jesus is saying that his kingdom or Empire is not the violence and death, oppression and slavery of the Roman Empire. Jesus is not being otherworldly. He is being anti-establishment. The same is true in the passage before us today. Jesus was in the Domination System, born into it, yet the Domination System did not know him.

We remain in the season of Christmas—a time when the entrance of Christ into the world highlights how God’s order and way of doing things engages, confronts, and collides with Rome’s order and way of doing things. Too often, what I feel in the pull of a cultural Christmas, is to be more like the materialism and violence of Rome than the countercultural values of God born in Christ. That cultural narrative is so strong, so powerful. So strong and and so powerful that often I hear the Christian church touting the way Rome did things based on militarism, violence, domination, numbers, and commercialism. The Christian church then, without reference to who Jesus said he was or what he did, names those things Jesus and Christ and God to ordain a focus on militarism, violence, domination, numbers, and commercialism.

And I’m drawn to that cultural Christmas—the flash and buzz of it as I scurried around trying to make sure I had an expensive enough present for nieces, nephews, daughter, sons, and spouse.

Sometimes, even outside Christianity, there are echoes of doing things a different way. Maybe you’ve heard of one of those echoes.

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?^{^[3]}

Did it? Does it? Do the boring and mundane values of gratitude, mutual healing, care, the sharing of bread, love for God’s good earth, kindness, hospitality, and non-violence mean a little bit more –even when we might have to push our kids to make the video just to say another boring thank you?

The pandemic is a portal. It not only has told us who we are but given us permission to imagine a different way of doing things, another world. I was reminded this past week how different that world might be when I read this short and simple message from faith leader, Carlos A. Rodriguez, that reminded me of values that were about my family, my wider community, and who we are to be in this moment in time, praying for a new kosmos. Rodriguez wrote:

Someone is alive this week because you wore a mask last month.

Someone is healthy today because you followed the guidelines and kept your distance.

Someone is not hospitalized right now because you got boosted already.

Thank you for your kindness!

Keep loving.

I pray, dear friends, that your Christmas is one filled with the values of a kosmos that means a little bit more. We were born into a Domination System as Christ was. God, in Christ, especially during this season, calls us to imagine a whole new way of doing things. May we all have the courage to fight for it. Amen.