Sermon
The
First
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and
trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched
and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God
from the heart. Render service with
enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, knowing that whatever good
we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or
free.
And, masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them, for you know that both
of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality.
Finally, be strong in
the Lord and in the strength of his power.
Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against
the wiles of the devil. For our struggle
is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the
authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the
spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so
that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything,
to stand firm. Stand therefore, and
fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of
righteousness. As shoes for your feet
put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith,
with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil
one. Take the helmet of salvation, and
the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Second
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot
hold;
Mere anarchy
is loosed upon the world,
The ceremony
of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the
worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second
Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words
out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
A shape with lion body and the head of a
man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all
about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert
birds.
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking
cradle,
And what rough beast, its
hour come round at last,
Slouches toward
I heard a story this
week about a man who was walking across a bridge. As he crossed the bridge he saw another man
standing on the edge, about to jump off. He immediately ran over and said,
“Stop! Don’t do it!”
“Why shouldn’t I?” was the reply.
“Well,” said the first man, “there’s so
much to live for!”
“Like what?”
“Well ... are you religious or atheist?”
“Religious,” replied the man about to
jump.
“So am I,” said the first man. “Are you Christian or Jewish?”
“Christian.”
“Me too!” was the reply, “Are you
Catholic or Protestant?”
“Protestant.”
“Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”
“Baptist.”
“Wow!
Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or
“
“Me too! Are you Original Baptist Church of God,
or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?”
“Reformed
“Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God,
reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?”
“Reformed Baptist
Church of God, reformation of 1915!”
To which the first man said, “Die,
heretic scum!” and pushed him off the bridge.
I laughed when I read it the first time,
but after reflecting on it for a few minutes I realized the reason it was funny
was because it stands so close to the red-hot truth – too close for
comfort. Sectarian conflict has existed
throughout human history. From the time
of primitive tribes to the modern age of tribes we call nations,
religious differences have played a critical role in conflict and war.
The conflict between
We all know, of course, the role that
religion plays in modern day conflicts.
The 9/11 terrorists attacks justified themselves on religious
grounds. But we should remember that
before 9/11 the most significant terrorist events in American history were
motivated by, or connected to, home grown religious concerns – from the murder
of doctors who perform abortions to the bombing of the Murrah Building in
Oklahoma City – an event linked to the destruction of the Branch Davidian
compound.
The only thing that may be different
about the current wave of religious based violence is the number of new
religions – and I think that applies to the abortion clinic violence and the
wave of violence from Islamic fundamentalists.
Perhaps that’s surprising to you, but I think it’s true, because both
Christian and Islamic fundamentalism is relatively new religious
manifestations. What we think of today
as Christian Fundamentalism begins in the Victorian age, but doesn’t take its
present form until the 1920’s. Islamic
Fundamentalism is an even newer religious phenomenon. And around the world there are countless new
religious movements – not just hundreds, but thousands – too many to
count. Karen Armstrong, in her book The Battle for God – and others, have argued that we are in a second axial age, a second age
of profound and rapid transformation of the world – and both of these axial
ages have been characterized by the development of thousands of new religions.
The reason for all these new religions is
fairly obvious. The kind of change the
world has experienced in the last three hundred years – but especially in the
last hundred years – is earth shattering.
And I mean that literally, because one of the primary purposes of
religion is to give us a way of holding the world together, of making sense of
the world, with all of its conflicts, inconsistencies, and paradoxes. What we call religion is what keeps many
people from going crazy in the face of a reality that seems insane. Religion provides a safe shelter from the
chaos. It provides a way of defining
one’s ultimate values – ideas and values that most people objectify as
God. But change threatens all that.
This last summer I heard Rabbi Harold
Kushner speak on religion in American today.
Many of his remarks were directed to the issue of fundamentalism. Rabbi Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, is as far from
fundamentalism as I suspect most of us are.
But he challenged the audience to listen to the complaints of
fundamentalism and to take them seriously.
He did so because he said we need to recognize the legitimacy of their
concerns. In the last forty years
technological change has turned our society almost inside out. The technology of birth control alone has
permanently altered the purpose of marriage – and in doing so, permanently
altered the basis on which every human being relates to every other. Many people may find the changes comfortable
– but for others they are a threat to the existence of reality. I believe that’s what’s really behind the
backlash against abortion, and gay ordination and gay marriage. The biblical arguments are pathetically
weak. I do not believe they are adequate
to explain the explosion of anger – an anger which I believe reflects the fear
that the world itself – not traditional marriage – but the world itself is
crumbling around us. And just think what
will happen as new developments in medical science emerge.
In truth, I believe the old world is
crumbling. And with that disintegration,
the old religions are crumbling.
Religions that once offered solace and safety and a way of understanding
the paradoxes of existence just don’t work anymore. The result is hundreds and thousands of new
religions, new efforts to make sense of reality. It is the price of change. It is why a book like “Who Moved My Cheese” –
a book about change – can be a national bestseller – because the great
challenge we face today is change. But
for some people the solution is not a new solution, but an old one. It is the desire to turn the clock back. And that is what lies at the heart of all the
different types of fundamentalism we see in the world today.
Fundamentalism takes many forms and
appears in many different religious traditions, from suicide bombers to the backlash
and reaction against Civil rights. It
was and is the struggle that we see played out in a thousand different venues
around the world. And that backlash,
that reaction against change, is especially comfortable with the kind of
language found in our first reading this morning. “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear
and trembling . . ..”
It is the language of authoritarianism – and it is a natural
reaction. Because when the world is
crumbling you need something rigid and definite to hold onto. It is good to remember that the language of
religion gives us both the gentlest and kindest words we know – such as the
admonition of Jesus to suffer the little children to come unto him. But it also speaks of enemies and is ready to
transform those with whom we disagree into evil itself.
For our struggle is not against enemies
of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against
the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of
evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians
6)
The irony, of course, is that all this is
done that we might be prepared “to proclaim the Gospel of peace.”
I believe everything in the natural world
seeks a state of equilibrium, a status quo.
That is the nature of the world, to adapt and adjust into a kind of
steady state. It is the driving force
behind social order. Human beings seek
to find a status quo where everything is in its place – where God is in his
heaven and all is right with the world – and God help anyone who tries to upset
the proper order of the world. Because
when we associate God with how the world ought to be, any challenge to the
status quo becomes a challenge to God.
It is, therefore, no accident when God is invoked to justify resistance
to change. It is no accident that God
becomes the justification, for it is God himself or herself or itself that is
threatened by change. In the words of
the poet,
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the
worst
Are full of
passionate intensity.
Change – the kind of change the world has
been experiencing – is a challenge to every conventional notion of God –
leading us to what truly is a battle for God, a battle in which all innocence
is too easily drowned.
But the battle for God is more than the
battle we see played out in the public square.
I believe it is a personal battle, an intensely personal conflict, that rages in the heart and soul of every person –
because every person shapes and forms God in his or her own image – and it is
the inner conflict that I believe is of greatest importance. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The god of the
cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, of the merchants a
merchant.” The public conflict, the
public battle for God is but a shadow of the conflict that goes on within the
human heart. It is the shadow of the
conflict over what kind of soul a person will have. It is a battle that forces us to confront the
question asked by the poet:
And what rough beast, its
hour come round at last,
Slouches toward
I believe that is ultimately the great
challenge, the great question, that the battle for God
presents. What will happen in my heart,
what will happen in your heart, what is it that waits to be born, what is it
that we will become?
It is easy to see this conflict on the
national and global scale. It is in
headline news and television specials.
It is feature articles in national magazines and lurid photos on the
cover of the tabloids. And it should be,
for it is news. But I think the emphasis
on the public stories obscures the focus that needs to take place on the
personal and private issues we face. The
challenge of change is also about what happens in our personal lives, our jobs,
our families, and our church.
Anyone who is a parent knows something
about change. That first child changes
your life. That first child turns your
world upside down. For many people it is
a time of wonder and excitement. But it
is also a time when many people find their world destroyed. It is the challenge of caring for a person
who requires constant attention, who requires you to wake up several times
during the night, who confines you to your home.
There is the challenge of change in our
church. This church changed in a big way
just over a year ago when you called me as your minister. For some people that change is comfortable –
for others it is not. There is the
challenge of moving to another city, of leaving behind friends and families and
striving to make new friends. There is
the challenge of starting a new job – or perhaps of starting a new
business. The pressures of change take
one away from family, away from the comfort of the familiar.
Change – whatever form
it takes – challenges the world, it challenges us. Ironically, even change that seems to be good
can be challenging. I saw what was for me a particularly troubling example of this when I
was working as a chaplain in a hospital.
I was in the Hospital emergency room one day when a young child was
brought in with injuries. The child was
clinging to his mother. I’m not talking
about the ordinary clinging that children do, but an excessive clinging. I remember seeing the looks exchanged between
the nurses. It was a red flag to them of
child abuse. Medical examination soon
confirmed their fears. And years ago,
long before I became a minister – when I was a lawyer – I was appointed guardian
ad litem for three children who had been abused – horribly abused. It is not appropriate to describe the abuse
they suffered in this setting. The two
children who were old enough to speak insisted, however, that it was all their fault. They
wanted to stay with the parents and relatives who had mistreated them. One may not like being in an abusive
relationship, but the truth is that one can become so comfortable with it that
one will find change – even a change for the better – to be threatening. “Better the devil we know, than the one we
don’t.”
Such an attitude says something about the
nature of God. It says that the essence
of God is to protect the status quo. Hence the need for metaphors of war and battle when speaking of
God. Hence the reflex many people
have against change – even when the change is for the good, because we really
do prefer the devil we know to the one we don’t.
But
I believe this is what the battle for God is really about. I believe it is about rejecting the idea that
God is the guardian of the status quo. I
believe it is about rejecting the reflex to label anyone or anything that calls
for change as the principality of evil.
That doesn’t mean I am endorsing change for the sake of change. I believe that can be as destructive as the
rejection of any change. But I do
believe we need to be open to change and its possibilities. It’s what I told the couple I married
yesterday – that the only way their
marriage – or any relationship – can survive is through continual growth and
change. That’s why I believe in a God
that is not the defender of the status quo.
It is why I believe in a God that enables us to change, that enables us
to grow, that enables us to respond to a world that is not fixed, not stable,
but constantly changing. It is why I
believe in a God that doesn’t call for us to be obedient slaves or even
gracious masters, but rather a God that calls for us to seek what is good and
right and beautiful. It is why I believe
in a God that calls for us to change and grow.
And it is why I believe the battle for God – to borrow the title from
Karen Armstrong’s book – is a real battle – the battle for what your heart and
my heart will look like.
Amen.