B Reign
of Christ BFC 2015
November 22, 2015
Daniel 7:9-10,
13-14; John 18:33-37
As those
of you who raise children know, once a child likes a book, a recording, or a movie,
the whole family gets to hear it and see it not only once but several times
over. So Tracy reminded our family on
Facebook this past week of all the long trips in the car when Sophia would request
Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline.” As the first
CD was inserted, the rest of us would pull our coats up over our ears as Neil
Gaiman quoted that wonderful line from G.K. Chesterton which applies to fairy
tale and Bible alike, “Fairy tales are more than
true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us
that dragons can be beaten.”
At least, it was a wonderful line until I heard it on, I kid you not, twenty
straight car trips.
At every sitting you, as a parent,
hear, “Want to listen to that again, Dad?
Want to watch that movie again, Dad?”
Of course, sweetie. So what our
daughter has seen or heard over and over again, the whole family has seen and
heard over and over again.
As I have related in a previous
sermon, one of the movies I still find enjoyable to watch is Toy Story. For those of you who have never seen Toy Story, the movie is about a
community of toys owned by a little boy named Andy. Whenever humans are absent, much as we might
suspect, the toys come to life and fulfill specific functions within their toy
“world.” And again, some of my favorite
lines in the movie are delivered by the big, green, plastic dinosaur named
“Rex,” short for Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Representing the most fearsome of all dinosaurs, this toy Rex is a
rather neurotic fellow who can’t seem to find a bark or bite to go along with
his T-Rex reputation.
I think Rex’s two best lines in Toy Story are: “I don’t like confrontations!” and
“Great! Now I have guilt!”
These lines sound very reminiscent of
my life lived as the oldest of four children, feeling like I had failed my
parents whenever I was not the perfect child—which happened every day. Maybe that is why I like Rex so much. At one time in my life, I identified strongly
with trying to please people so much that I avoided all conflict. I also grew up with tremendous guilt if I
believed I was responsible for anyone feeling bad. If not within ourselves or within our history,
we probably all know someone like Rex.
Tracy suggested that is why the
writers of Toy Story made the
neurotic Rex a dinosaur. Those creatures
and communities which spend their time trying to avoid conflict, confrontation,
and guilt, well, they end up extinct.
In serving local churches for close to
twenty-five years now, these lines also sound like life lived in many
churches. We think we are doing well and
healthy if there is no conflict, confrontation, or guilt. We absolutely hate to make a decision that
would make someone feel bad. In fact,
many of the local churches I have served have gone out of their way to be
unhealthy so that they could avoid that conflict, confrontation, or guilt. We allow good, solid, and healthy ideas and
programs to be hijacked so that one person or a small group of people will not
feel bad.
In contrast, good fairy tales have
necessary conflict to reveal goodness and strength of character. The story does not start out with “And they
lived happily ever after” because then we would not be entreated to read the
story over and over and over again.
So too the whole of each gospel
seems to be about conflict. The central
conflict in the book of Daniel and the gospel of John is set before us in the
Scripture lessons for today. Each
Scripture lesson represents the clash of two worlds. In Daniel, it is the clash between empires
and their sovereigns over and against the Ancient of Days and the Human
One.
In the gospel of John, in first
century Rome, Pontius Pilate, a sub-governor of Judea was constantly in
conflict with the Jewish people. Pilate
survived as long as he did because he took care of those conflicts as quickly
as possible. He ruled with an iron
fist—crushing rebellions without mercy, executing anyone or any movement that
exhibited the least bit of resistance to Roman rule. In contrast to how the gospels portray
Pilate, the historians Philo and Josephus wrote of Pilate’s gratuitous cruelty
and brutal way of handling even unarmed crowds.[1]
The author of John’s gospel has the
conversation between Jesus and Pilate go the way of all conversations found
within its pages. Nicodemus, the woman
at the well, and now Pilate engage Jesus with an assumption that the world is
as it is because God has ordained it to be so.
Jesus has a different assumption.
Jesus engages their world, puts his world in direct conflict with
theirs, and seeks transformation of their world.
“My kingdom is not from this world,”
Jesus is often translated as saying in this Scripture from John today. Traditionally, we have read such Scripture
passages as Jesus speaking about some otherworldly, spiritual plane. “My kingdom is not from this earthly world,” is how we often hear
this Scripture interpreted.
Throughout the gospel of John, the
Greek word kosmos has been often
translated as “world.” Within its
context, however, the Greek word kosmos
is probably better translated as “system,” or “order,” or “a way we do things
around here.”[2]
Using this definition, Jesus is
saying, “My kingdom is distinct from this system, from this order, from this
way of doing things.” Pilate
participated in, was beholden to, and commanded a world or system of
domination. Who knows whether Pilate
even recognized any other ways of doing things besides his own? Maybe he thought that was the way the world
turned. Brute and raw force against
brute and raw force; Pilate, as the ambassador of the State, keeping peace
against the insurgents by quashing rebellion; Rome, establishing law and order,
over and against the terrorists, the barbarians, and the heathens. Would Pilate even understand Jesus’s world or
way of doing things, rooted in mutuality and healing, compassion and mercy?
“My world is not your world,
Pilate. My system is not your
system.” This Scripture is not Jesus
being anti- or other-worldly. Rather,
Jesus is being anti-establishment.[3]
It is those historical people within
the United Church of Christ, those Congregationalists during the 19th
Century who would not allow one to be a part of their communion if that person
owned slaves. The Fugitive Slave Law
declared that anyone who aided or abetted runaway slaves would be breaking
federal law and fined and/or imprisoned.
Congregationalists built “Safe Houses” to hide runaway slaves, believing
the gospel called them to do things in a different way. Their system, their way of doing things was
not the way of the domination system which surrounded them. It is those Evangelical Germans who recognized
that German immigrants and refugees did not have health care when they came to
this “new world” and formed a Deaconess movement to provide health care and
healing for those without resource. Their
system, their way of doing things, did not correspond with a too often brutal
existence. It is those Confessing Church
Christians in Germany who would hide and not surrender their Jewish neighbors
seeking refuge and safe haven. Their
system, their way of doing things, did not correspond with the ethnocentrism,
violence, and death of Nazi Germany. It
is churches like this one who found a way to surround and support refugees from
Hungary like Vilma Reich who now speaks with delight about what great neighbors
she has in the gay couple just across the street. Their system, their way of doing things was
not the way of the domination system which surrounded them. By their very lives, our faith ancestors
proclaimed a different world.
In the same manner, Daniel does not
believe what it means to be “human” corresponds with the unbridled power, arrogance,
and violence of empire. He does small,
everyday practices that show he does not participate in that world. His everyday kosher practice, as a
vegetarian, defines him as different as empire.
And every day, three times a day, Daniel turns his face toward Jerusalem
and prays. That is why Daniel is thrown
in the lion’s den, because Daniel’s prayers represent a loyalty and source of
power not found in the Babylonian Empire and its king
Jesus does not recognize Pilate’s
way of doing things as authoritative for his life. Jesus comes from a different world . . . a
different system. Every day he does
small practices of building community by sharing bread, tending to the ill and
infirm, and enjoining others to see “their neighbor” as bigger and broader than
many of his listeners could imagine.
Every day the early church practiced a radical hospitality and community
practice to welcome the stranger, share what they had in common, and blur lines
of ethnicity to say that they were not one and the same as the domination
system surrounding them.
The good news of this passage is that
the domination system which surrounds us is not the way of doing things in
God’s kingdom. So if there are ways the
system, as it runs presently, runs and grinds against us, then maybe we need a
new system. If there are ways the system
devalues life, fails to include us into community, and does not allow rest for
us, maybe we need a new system. If there
are ways the system tells us we will never measure up, we are good for nothing,
or we really don’t matter, maybe we need a new system. If
there are ways the system tells us that we should be afraid of people who are
not like us, then we need a new system.
The call of this Scripture passage is
for us to engage the world, or the system as it is, with the love and
compassion of God, to transform systems and structures so that they may be
life-giving, community building, and Sabbath taking. The call of this Scripture passage is for us
to engage the world, or the system as it is, so that we will know there is
enough grace to hold us, that we are precious and cherished by God, and that
all of us hold some gift that makes us the Body of Christ entire.
Now I need to be honest in sharing . .
. that if we don’t like confrontations,
or seek to avoid conflict, or are preoccupied with our own guilt, this
transformation will not take place. Too
often we have been taught or find ourselves teaching that everybody is supposed
to be “nice.” Conflict and confrontation
have historically been understood as a manifestation of original sin.[4] So we will not only have to come into
conflict with the powers and principalities of our day (the Pilates of our
time), but we will also have to begin seeing conflict as a healthy part of our
life lived together as a community of faith.
As the conflict of worlds and systems did in Jesus’s conversations with
Nicodemus and the woman at the well in John’s gospel, so we embrace conflict
and confrontation as healthy, we then hold out the possibility for
transformation. Nicodemus and the woman
at the well begin with a conflict of
worlds and transform to become part of Jesus’ movement.
In Walter Wink’s book, Engaging the Powers, he writes, “I
consider conflict to be an inevitable consequence of human freedom, and thus
would expect it even in the reign of God.
Conflict is thus not an expression of human sin, but of the inevitable
rub between a variety of interpretations of good.”[5] And I believe that variety of interpretations holds out the possibility we all
might be transformed by one another.
The only way, however, we will be able
to engage the world, the systems and the structures as they are, and continue
in that struggle, is if we have at least one foot in that different world or
system. We must, as Ghandi said, we must
be the change we want to see in the world.
For if we are that change, if we live in that alternative system, we
have the opportunity to receive the goodness and the life that way of being
offers. We will need that goodness, that
bread from heaven, to walk in the wilderness of the way the world is. We will need everyday practices, however
small they are, that remind us we are not part of a domination system.
I also believe very strongly that the
strength we need to be in conflict, to confront the world as it is, to challenge
the system and rage against the machine, requires others to walk with us. That is why we are all here. Church is the radical notion that we can
transform the world because others accompany us in mutual love and support.
So I exhort you, dear sisters and
brothers, to not just become another cog in the machine, a part of the
system. The call is before us to engage
the world as it is, to confront the evil which lashes out seeking domination,
and, as we do so, to begin walking in another world. The Bible is often true not because it tells
us that evil systems and structures exist in the world. The Bible is true because it tells us that
evil systems and structures can be overcome—by a community of people who are
not afraid of engaging the ensuing conflict, have values in another way of
being, practice daily stepping outside the domination system, and partner with
God to transform the world.
Evil systems, like dragons, can be
beaten. Let us begin.
People get ready
For the train to Jordan
Picking up passengers
From coast to coast
Faith is the key
Open the doors and board them
There's room for all
among the loved the most
For the train to Jordan
Picking up passengers
From coast to coast
Faith is the key
Open the doors and board them
There's room for all
among the loved the most
Amen.
[2] Walter Wink, Engaging
the Powers: Discernment and Resistance
in a World of Domination (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1992), pp. 51-59.
[3] John H. Elliott, 1 Peter: Estrangement and
Community (Chicago: Franciscan
Herald Press, 1979), p. 52, as quoted in Wink, Engaging, p. 52.
[4] George Weigel, Tranquillitas
Ordinis (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1987), p. 329, as referenced in Wink, Engaging, p. 385, n. 25.
[5] Wink, Engaging,
p. 385, n. 25.
No comments:
Post a Comment