Acts 1:6-14; I Peter 4: 12-14, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11 May 8, 2005
So much for the church triumphant! We can throw that dream into the garbage heap.
Jesus has come among us—born to the strains of an angelic choir singing “Glory to God in the Highest;” He has performed wondrous signs—healing the sick and lame, casting out demons, feeding hungry stomachs and hearts with bread of life and words of life; He has met the worst his enemies could muster—taking their insults and their cross without violence—and overcome it all in the power of love, the power of resurrection. And then after forty days that must have seemed like four to his friends and disciples, he is leaving; returning to the One from whom he has come.
The disciples’ question to him just before his ascension was a logical one don’t you think? “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the Kingdom to Israel?” You’ve accomplished everything else you set out to do. Not exactly in the way we’d expected, of course; we weren’t anticipating having to hide out in fear while you went to a cross. But now that’s past. So will you now fulfill the hopes and dreams of Israel; the hopes and dreams that the prophet Isaiah expressed so well when he spoke of all the nations of the gathered around the mountain on which we worship, singing your praises having beaten their swords into plowshares? Is this the time when all our best hopes and dreams, the best hopes and dreams of all humanity, God’s own hopes and dreams for the creation are to be accomplished?
You can’t blame them for asking. You can’t blame them for hoping. We merely human beings need to believe—not just that we’ve found the principles, the method, the leader that will make everything right, but that their triumph is near at hand, just around the corner.
I’ve been teaching History of Christianity in the United States this semester. I was reminded once again that for much of our history, but especially in the 2nd half of the 19th century, after the Civil War, Christian leaders in the United States believed that things were getting better and better and that the Kingdom of God was just around the corner. After all, this nation was unique among all the nations in that it was founded not on the basis of blood kinship or ethnicity and the power of a King, but on universal principles, self-evident truths as Mr. Jefferson called them. And ironically, here where church and state were separate and religious liberty was respected, the church was thriving through a series of awakenings or revivals.
Some even went so far as to proclaim that individual perfection was possible and near at hand. So the holiness movement and utopian communities of various stripes emerged and thrived for a while with the promise of living in “sinless perfection.”
And under the power of the spirit of evangelical Christianity, people in the United States were putting every evil on the anvil of history, hammering away at them with the hammer of Christian righteousness. Once slavery fell, it seemed to many that everything was possible—the elimination of illiteracy and ignorance, child labor, poverty, the abuse of alcohol, even war itself. It’s hard to imagine now, but even Darwin’s theory of evolution was embraced by many as scientific confirmation that progress to higher and higher forms of life, both individual and social, was written into the laws of nature. So toward the end of that period of profound hope and confidence, even the most devastating war in human history, the First World War, could be construed as the “war to end all wars.”
It was not to be. It was not to be.
God did not restore the kingdom to Israel; the Kingdom of God did not come in America; World War I we now know was not the war to end all wars, but merely the precursor to an even more devastating World War. And one doesn’t have to be a Lutheran to doubt that few if any have achieved “sinless perfection.”
Such dreams die hard. There must be something in our nature that can’t give them up. So with the fall of the Soviet Union, some proclaimed the end of history and the emergence of a new world order of peace, prosperity, and human dignity. And even the tragedy of September 11 and the announcement of a seemingly endless “war on terrorism,” has not prevented President Bush—inspired by an evangelical Christian faith in the sprit of the late 19th century—from articulating among the most idealistic and hopeful visions of the future for America and the world ever seen.
And now the promise of sinless perfection for individuals is offered in various New Age spiritualities or by overzealous therapists impressed by the discoveries of Freudian or Jungian psychology.
And many or our Christian brothers and sisters, despite Jesus’ warning, believe sincerely that we are in the Last Days. Even more bold than Jesus disciples basking in the sunlight of his resurrection the do not ask, but proclaim, “This is the age Jesus will restore the Kingdom to Israel.”
I hope you will forgive me if I say, “I don’t think so.” It is not to be. It is not to be.
Our lessons today paint a much more sober picture.
It’s not just Jesus warning in Acts on the day of his ascension that ours is not to know the timing of God’s triumph. There is also profound realism and sobriety if you will in Jesus’ prayer for the disciples from the gospel reading. The setting there is the Last Supper from John’s gospel. And though it claims that God’s love is for the whole world and that Jesus has come that the whole world might be saved, here in the upper room Jesus prayer is incredibly low-keyed and reflects much less grandiose ambitions. “I have made your name know to those whom you gave me from the world. And they have believed the words you gave me. I am asking on their behalf, not on behalf of the world. A world that I am leaving, but in which they will remain.”
Or consider, the word from first Peter, maybe the most sobering of all. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings.” Good God, no imminent triumph awaits us, but a fiery ordeal! And we who would be his disciples are to rejoice because we are to share his suffering! What kind of a religion is this! Imagine the marketing campaign related to this revival, “Come join that people who rejoices in the suffering of a cross.” “That’s no way to discover the secrets of revivalism,” I hear the gurus of growth growl.
Our lessons today suggest that the task before us is not to prepare ourselves for the immediate triumph of the Kingdom of God, for the end of history, for the coming of peace, prosperity, and human dignity the world over; not to expect that we will achieve any sinless perfection the day after tomorrow.
Rather we are to steel ourselves for the long haul. The gift of the Holy Spirit, Jesus indicates to his disciples, will prepare them for witness “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” I Peter warns that such witness will require discipline and resistance because “like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.”
Witness, discipline, resistance. These are watchwords of our lessons today.
Those who would be Jesus’ disciples are called to be his witnesses. Our lives are to be a witness in Madison, in all the Piedmont and Virginia, and to the ends of the earth.
All the world is not a stage, as Shakespeare suggested. We are not actors on a stage; our lives are not the playing out of a grand drama. Rather, Jesus says, all the world’s a courtroom and we have been called as witnesses, his witnesses. And the measure of our lives is the effectiveness, the truthfulness, the consistency, the persuasiveness of our witness—on his behalf.
The task of a witness is to tell the truth, not in some abstract or speculative sense, but the truth as he or she knows it; it is to give testimony to what he or she has seen and heard, nothing more, and nothing less. “Just the facts, ma’am,” the famous detective of dragnet use to say as he collected testimony that might be useful to the solving of a crime. “Just tell me what you saw and heard. Just tell me what you know in your own experience. Not what you’ve heard from others; not what you think it all means. Just what you saw; what you heard. The jury will decide what it means. The jury will attempt to determine the truth. Just the facts, ma’am.”
[Are you the one? Tell him what you’ve seen. Is he the Messiah? All I know…]
Our task as his disciples, Jesus suggests, is to be his witnesses, just to tell what we’ve seen and heard. And this as a metaphor for our lives; not just our words, but our actions (which speak louder than words) are to tell to what we’ve seen and heard about him; to bear witness to what we’ve experienced in him; to give testimony to what we hope for because of him.
Doing this truthfully, doing it well, doing it consistently, persuasively requires discipline and resistance, doesn’t it? It requires discipline and resistance because there are other claimants on our lives than Him. There are others who ask us to bear witness on their behalf. There are other ways than His, other truth than His, others that promise life if we will but follow faithfully.
We would like to believe that giving our witness for Jesus is easy here—in the United States. After all we have religious liberty. No one will haul us off to jail or throw us to the lions because of our beliefs. Even more importantly, ours is a culture shaped profoundly over the years by the Christian values of our founders and of the Christian values of the vast majority of the peoples that have had greatest influence on its social habits. Especially here in rural Virginia, in a region that is usually identified as part of the so-called Bible belt, a region where people’s beliefs and manners and lifestyles are indelibly shaped by their familiarity with the Bible. Here, we like to think, no fiery ordeal faces those called to bear witness to Jesus in word and deed. No great discipline or resistance is required of us and for this we are thankful. We are thankful that our context, the courtroom to which and in which we have been called for witness to Jesus is so unlike the hostile one the early Christian community faced.
I fear that we delude ourselves. Witness, even here, especially here, still requires discipline and resistance, I believe. Our context is different than that of the first Christians, but it is no less challenging.
I’ve come to think of it this way. Our world—our courtroom, if you will—confronts of us with two choices; we face a fundamental option and maybe it’s always been this way: to live with open arms or to live with hands that grasp and turn to clinched fists.
Jesus gives us the possibility to live with open arms. As a forgiven people, as a people who have known the free grace of God in our lives, we have been empowered to live with open arms. Open to all that life offers and grateful for it; open to the gift that our neighbors are to us—in all their racial and cultural varieties; open and grateful for all the experiences—pleasant and unpleasant, comforting and challenging—that God brings our way in life. Open armed in our readiness to share the riches that are ours in his grace with our neighbors near and far. We are his faithful witnesses in the courtroom of the world when we live with open arms.
But much in the world around us, much even in the culture that shapes us, would have us grasp for what we need and to guard it with clinched fists. We are told to see this as a dog-eat-dog world, where you’d better look out for number 1 because good guys finish last. We are told that hope is to be found in the relentless pursuit of things for ourselves and for those we love. We are told see those who work for us as human resources to be bought at the cheapest market rate, not as brothers and sisters who require a living wage. We are told that those who are different from us are a threat to us, that those who are our enemies are uncivilized and only understand the threat of force, that the key to security and salvation in this world is strength. As if this is not God’s world, not a world whose Creator and Lord was one incarnate in the crucified and resurrected sage of Nazareth. As if there is no God, or no God like the One in Christ, the one in whom and through whom we have experienced grace upon grace.
And we are powerfully shaped by the world around us. Adopting its cynical, defensive posture of the grasping hands and the clenched fists is a profound temptation for us. Truth be told we are constantly wavering between life with open arms and life with clinched fists. We want to live with open arms and some times, in some moments, in some relationships we do. And our witness is faithful and true. But in other moments, in other relationships we grasp and clinch resisting the God-inspired inclination to live with open arms. We hedge our bets more than a bit, fearing that God’s grace cannot be trusted, fearing that living with open arms is naïve and foolish. And in so doing our witness is tarnished and in the courtroom of the world Jesus is found guilty once again for lack of credible testimony on his behalf.
Witness requires discipline. It requires resistance against all that would twist us into the posture of the grasping hands and the clinched fists.
After Jesus’ ascension and with their mandate to be his witnesses fresh in their minds, Acts says they returned to Jerusalem. More specifically it says they went to the room upstairs where the entire company of Jesus’ followers was staying. Isn’t this the so-called upper room of the Lord’s Super? If so, it suggests that the discipline and resistance necessary for faithful witness is found only in our constant and faithful nourishing of the gift of the Holy Spirit at the table where, in company with others who have heard his call to witness, we are reunited with him in the sharing of the bread and cup which is his body and blood.
“Did we in our own strength confide,” Luther wrote in that wonderful hymn which may have been his greatest gift to Church, “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing. Were not the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing.”
I have not the strength I need for discipline and resistance. I have not the strength I need for faithful witness. I have not the strength necessary to resist the temptation to live defensively with grasping hands and clinched fists. But Thanks be to God, among the promises to us is the promise that God in Christ is always with us and among us, making witness on his own behalf in and through us. Thanks be to God, he is ever at work among us giving us strength to stand up straight with open arms. In this is our hope. Praise God.
No comments:
Post a Comment