I was on a call the other day with several pastors from around the country, part of a clergy cohort I’ll be facilitating in the next year. We talked about our ministries and why we need a group like this, clergy from all different denominations and places, and the theme that kept repeating over and over again was: there’s an urgency to this work now – the world needs the church to do its work. Enough of the church turning inward while it works out its issues over sexuality or who can be ordained or where the candles should be placed. There’s no time for that now: the world is in bad shape, and it needs us. And we’d better be stepping up.
Now that might just sound like clergy trying to make themselves feel more important about their work. But I’m not just talking about the work of the clergy – I’m talking about how the world needs all of us to step up. We’ve got what the world needs. And we need to be giving it out freely.
We just baptized three little children, saying that we will raise them up to the full stature of Christ and to support them in their lives. We made a lot of promises to them, and we reminded ourselves of our own promises to God and each other – the baptismal covenant we go through each time we have a baptism. We promised to stay engaged with our community, to work on our own stuff, to show God’s love, to look for Jesus in every person we meet, to work for justice and peace and to respect the dignity of every human being. And we promised to do it all with God’s help. Because we’re too honest to say we can do it any other way.
We’re honest like that because of scriptures like those we read today. Jeremiah reminds us, Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength…
And Jesus presents a set of teachings in Luke’s Beatitudes that turn the world’s values upside down and make our need for God crystal clear:
Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
We know, and when we come to church we’re reminded that we know, that this gospel life of Jesus Christ is not the same as what the world around us teaches. We know that being faithful Christians is not the same as being good citizens. We know that how God asks us to live means going against the grain and the groove of much of our society. We know how hard that all is to live out in our lives. And when we forget to do it, when we come to church we’re reminded of it all again.
And yet the gospel of Jesus is corrupted and perverted away from that all the time, warped into what we wish it said. In big ways and in smaller, more subtle ways. The big ways are obvious: Some turn the gospel into a message of prosperity – pray and trust in God, and you’ll have riches beyond compare, just send in your money right now and you’ll see, the faithful are blessed with diamonds and Mercedes Benz, oh, blessed be the Lord! Not what Jesus said.
The gospel is warped into a creed of American nationalism – that God gave this land into our care (white care) to build a city of the Lord, a place of godly values where families stay traditional, men rule, white people deserve the best, and all other faiths besides the flag-waving Christianity need not apply. Not what Jesus said.
And the gospel is made into a religion of power and domination – we’ll subjugate you and forcibly convert you, while exploiting your labor for our own profit; we’ll lift up a God of bulging muscles who tramples upon the weak and raises up leaders who will do the same, and if that makes you afraid, well, it should, because our God is an awesome God. Not what Jesus said.
We’re familiar with these corruptions and perversions. They are in our country’s history. They are alive at all levels and branches of our government, so very alive today. They are part of our media and our chosen celebrity idols and they are in the minds and hearts of many who would make this world into their image. And it is right to say, and say clearly, that these are heresies, they take the name of God in vain, and pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ when they do so.
And then there are the subtler warpings of Jesus’ words:
The petty ambitions and striving that we lace into our school systems and our parenting. The compulsions that propel us toward the bigger and better. The insistent demands of social media to present an ever glossier self. All that status stuff creeps in and takes us over, and it is so hard to resist – even here in church.
The secular partisanship that is our steady diet these days – Jesus would vote like us if he were here, the world can be saved if a particular political party gains control, those who vote differently are our mortal enemies. The gospel as political platform.
And the watered-down squishy thing one religion researcher labeled Moral Therapeutic Deism –God just wants me to be happy, and a nice person, and feel good about myself, and that’s really all that’s expected of me anyway.
None of these have anything to do with a gospel of self-giving love, the last shall be first, love your enemies, take up your cross and follow me; yet all of these persist while we go to church and call ourselves Christians. And when we let ourselves warp and twist the good news; when we allow the message of God’s sacrificial love to be washed out; when we pay lip service while destroying the planet and those whom God loves, well, it’s not just ourselves that pay the price. The world we are creating is a world of horror and woe. It’s a world none of us want.
The thing is, the stakes are high when we make promises like we have made today. I think we are seeing in the world around us what it looks like when Christians stop living like Christians. It matters what we do.
And that is why when we answer the questions on baptism days we say over and over, I will, with God’s help. That is why when we come to church we confess our sins, take an honest inventory of our week and ask for God’s forgiveness. That is why we come to the table to receive God’s grace, and acknowledge we can’t make it on our own. The psalm tells us that when we trust in the Lord we are like a tree planted by streams of water. Here at church we tap in again to God’s living water, to the community of other people who are trying to live God’s way, to a place where we can come serve to feed the hungry and care for the stranger. Reminded and nourished and strengthened here, we can go and nourish others with God’s love and truth. We will with God’s help. We can with God’s help.
It’s all a lot for three little babies and toddlers. It’s all a lot for all of us. In our weakness we can do nothing good without God. Which is why we pray as we did today: O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: give us the help of your grace. The way ahead is rocky and unknown; but with God’s help, we can travel safely.
There’s a famous quote from the Christmas speech of King George VI in 1939, a Christmas when the world was turning fast toward darkness and no one knew what the new year would bring. The king used part of a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins, who was an unknown labor organizer and faithful Methodist who had published a small book of poems – which somehow came into the hands of a young Princess Elizabeth, who gave the poem to her father. That little bit of poetry has become something that generations have recited to give each other courage and strength. (Right there, an example of how a faithful person, offering what she has, can give so much to others.)
The poem reads,
I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year
‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.’
With God’s help, we can do this. And so with God’s help, we will.
