January 24, 2010

Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Salt, Light, Leaven, and Seed

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer

The body does not consist of one member, but of many

The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor

Psalm 19:1-14;   Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10; * I Corinthians 12:12-31a;   ** Luke 4:14-21

Some of the major theologians of our time have come out of Latin America. Their work wrestles with the tension of living the Christian faith in a world that is not yet the Kingdom of God. They challenge us not to abandon our hope for the coming Reign of God, and not to settle for the world as it, even while we anticipate eternity. They direct us to live the prayer that Jesus himself taught us, that the will of God be done on earth as in heaven, and this means living in a constant tension with the world as it is.

One of these theologians, José Miguez Bonino, describes this tension as a split of consciousness. The memory, the identity, and the hope of the Christian all have a twofold reference: “a total human reference and a particular Christian one, which in faith are confessed as one, but [in reality] are experienced as an irreducible duality.” The paradox of this duality, argues Miguez, is that if Christians seek to overcome their predicament at the cost of either their humanity or their faith, if they decide for one or the other, they lose both. (Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation, pp.154-55)

We have considered this tension on many occasions over the past thirty months, by affirming the universality of God’s redemption of the world in Jesus Christ, and the particularity of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. For the Christian, both are unavoidable, yet the temptation to opt for one or the other is always present. It is so much more appealing to be a disciple of Jesus Christ by claiming an identity over against the world. “I know Jesus Christ – very well actually. We talk often and we have a real understanding. What a pity you don’t. But let me introduce you to my Savior, and you too can be like me.” The air of superiority of such a stance is almost impossible to avoid, and it has been a source of great assurance here at West End to find it regarded with a great deal of suspicion, and rightly so.

 But by the same token, to opt for a totally human identity falls very short of Christian discipleship. Again paradoxically, such an approach often leads to a more thorough and explicit following of the teachings of Jesus, as Jesus himself acknowledged in the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25). While Christian disciples do feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisons, we are frequently outdone by people who are more dedicated, more effective and more informed, but who are also not particularly religious. This contrast tend to sting many of us who seek to be faithful Christian disciples, and we  react by immersing ourselves in neighborly good works, falling into the same trap of superiority, though this time over against other Christians rather than the rest of the world.

Last week we looked at the human side of this tension, and the mystery of a world that is not yet the Kingdom of God, and still struggling in its birth pangs. Indeed, the preponderance of what I have sought to bring you from this pulpit has been to stress the importance of these birth pangs, not least because coming to know Jesus Christ means being in them with him, sharing his passion for the redemption of the world, joining him in his anger at the suffering of little children, and his preferential option for the poor and the disadvantaged.

However, just as important for the Christian, indeed critically important, is the particularity of being his disciple, not over against the world, but on behalf of the world, not as an escape from the world, but as a commitment to the world, not as a means to privileged status, but as a responsibility with Christ in preparing for the birth of God’s New Creation. Will you join me in prayer?

Most gracious God, out of all the words that will now be spoken and heard, may it be your living word that stays in our hearts. Give us the grace to receive it, and give us the charity to let all the other words slip away. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen

The first and most important thing about Christian discipleship is that it is not something we choose. The initiative comes from Jesus himself, and our only part is to accept or decline. This is in contrast to the salvation that he offers to the world, as we noted last week in the two tracks to his ministry. To the people, he offered grace upon grace. He taught them, he fed them, he healed them, and he loved them, unconditionally, grace upon grace. The people responded by coming in droves, because they sensed that this was where they could be fed and healed and taught, and the same is true today. This is a world that is fallen, that is lost, that is seeking redemption, even as it is caught up in the alienation from God that is the condition of its lostness. The great anomaly of our fallen world is that human sin will always reject the very grace that offers its redemption through reconciliation with God, and any Christian who cannot show the scars of rejection by the world lacks true credentials.

Discipleship, by contrast, comes as an invitation from Jesus Christ, and to the extent we wrestle with the twofold identity described by Miguez, we too resist the invitation. I doubt there is anyone here this morning who has not initially spurned the call to discipleship. Yet the invitation persists, as God inexorably wears down our resistance to the zero-point of our human will, and we give in to the particularity of God’s grace in our lives. That is why all the great hymns of invitation in our tradition are hymns of surrender. “His love is mighty to compel,” wrote Charles Wesley, “His conqu’ring love consent to feel, Yield to his love’s resistless power, and fight against your God no more.”

There are those across the history of the church who have made dramatic surrenders to this grace, beginning with the first disciples, and notably the apostle Paul. But for most of us, this invitation has come gradually, even imperceptibly at first, as we have felt the claim of Christ on our lives, and have fought against the tension we knew it would bring. But then, perhaps in a worship service, perhaps in a Sunday School class, perhaps in an act of Christian service here in Nashville prisons, or abroad in Honduras or Haiti, we have come to the point of surrender that is truly the beginning of a whole new life, the life of faith, the life of walking with Christ in the world. Listen again to the words of Charles Wesley:

No one can truly say that Jesus is the Lord,

Unless Thou take the veil away and breathe living word;

Then, only then, we feel our interest in his blood,

And cry, with joy unspeakable, Thou art my Lord, my God.

Inspire the living faith, which whosoe’er receives,

The witness in himself he hath, and consciously believes;

That faith that conquers all, and doth the mountain move,

And saves whoe’er on Jesus calls, and perfects them in love.” (UMH 332).

For those of us who have wondered whether our faith is sufficient,  needled perhaps by those who seem curiously confident that theirs is sufficient, these words of Charles Wesley provide one quick and sure answer. Anyone here this morning who can truly say that Jesus is the Son of God, anyone who can sincerely say, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer,” any such person is a disciple of Jesus Christ, has been born again, has received the Holy Spirit, and does have Christian faith. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Of course, the question then becomes, How do we live as disciples of Jesus Christ? How do we get to the point where, as Mary his mother said to the servants at the Cana wedding, we “do whatever he tells us.” A relationship that is so deeply personal is vulnerable to self-deception in a world that is not yet Kingdom of God. On the one hand there is the snare of seeking spiritual communion with Christ at the expense of following his commandments, and on the other hand being so caught up in following his commandments that we deprive ourselves of the very intimacy that is the promise and the peace of being his disciple. Put differently, how do we avoid the pitfall of a personal relationship with Christ that numbs and deadens the tension of sharing in the birth pangs of God’s New Creation?

For our Methodist forebears the answer lay in something that earned them not only the scorn of the world, but also the ridicule of many of their fellow Christians. Their answer was mutual accountability, something that smacks of legalism, has the whiff of boredom, and earned them the nickname by which we are still known. Yet they carried the nickname with honor, because they knew that you cannot just wing it as a Christian in the world. To live the life of a true disciple of Jesus Christ means discipline, as the name implies. It means method, it means taking the challenges of a fallen world seriously.

First, they acknowledged that a solitary Christian is an oxymoron. Trying to go it alone as a Christian  disciple runs contrary to the teaching of Jesus to love one another, and likewise the teaching of Paul that we are all part of the Body of which Christ is the head. Of course, our customer-oriented culture challenges this idea, but a Christian disciple must always ask “Who is my neighbor?”

Accordingly, our Methodist forebears accepted responsibility for one another’s discipleship. They met weekly in small groups known as class meetings, not for the purpose of fellowship, but rather to help each other with the challenges of the Christian life. In these groups they were mutually accountable, not in the sense of judging or evaluating each other, but rather in telling their stories, sharing their burdens, and rejoicing over their blessings. Then, having put the horse before the cart, they found a richness of love and support that transcended all their worldly challenges.

This in turn gave them a reality check. The times we spend with Jesus on the mountain top cannot be the sole measure of our discipleship. We must come down from the mountain into the valley, where most of our walking is done, and share with him the toil and the tension of worldly living. Indeed, given who he was and who he is, the one who most understood the reality of living in a world that is not yet the Kingdom of God was and is Jesus himself. The Son of God became the son of man. He was born of an earthly mother and suckled at a human breast. He was nourished by Jewish food, he sweated Jewish sweat at his craft, and ultimately he shed Jewish blood. He was fully part of this world, and since nothing has left this planet except bits of space junk, the atoms that he used for his earthly life are still with us. Well can we say at his table, “This is my body, this is my blood.”

The reality check of mutual accountability, therefore, is to ask ourselves whether we too are following the commandments of Jesus. As he himself said, that is the measure of whether we love him or not, and it is also the mark of being his disciple. By the same token, the General Rules that John Wesley wrote for the early Methodists were a guard against the loss of identity that comes from avoiding the tension of Christian discipleship, the tension that ultimately makes our walk with Christ in the world so rich and rewarding.

What, then, are the marks of a Christian disciple in a world that is in the birth pangs of a New Creation? We are the salt, light, leaven and seed of the coming Reign of God. As salt, we are the sign of God’s covenant to redeem the world. The world sees that our lives are not our own, that we are at the beck and call of a power greater than ourselves, greater than the world, completely beyond understanding. We signify what that means. We are also the light of the coming Reign of God, a light that West End has embraced as its own vision and mission, a light that exposes the sin and suffering of the world, but also shines with the promise of God’s future. We are the leaven of the coming Reign of God, the small explosive force that can take the reality of the world as it is and transform it into the world as it will be – not by our doing, but by the grace of God. And we are also the seed of the coming Reign of God, ready to give our lives so that God’s New Creation can emerge. The world may resist this for a season, but the Christ in us is ultimately irresistible. The Reign of God is coming, and nothing in all creation can prevent it. The world sees this in and through our discipleship, and deep down knows it.

The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius studied as a young man in Vienna, and had his piano tuned by an elderly man who one day mentioned in passing that he used to tune Beethoven’s piano. Sibelius records that, as he looked into the old man’s eyes, he was full of awe that he was gazing into eyes that had once looked at Beethoven. May the world see in us the eyes of those who have looked into the eyes of Christ, the Christ who has called us to be his disciples and relies on us to be his Body in the world until all things are revealed, and all things fulfilled.