Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 15, 2017 (Second Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part two of a seven-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.
Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 49:1-7, Baptismal Covenant Question #3
Last week, we remembered Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River, heard about the implications of baptism for our own lives, and renewed the vows of our Baptismal Covenant. This week, we begin exploring the Baptismal Covenant in more detail. From now through the end of the season after the Epiphany, we’ll consider one question from the Baptismal Covenant each week, digging more deeply into the meaning of it and how we are called to keep that vow in our lives as Christians. We won’t be moving through the vows in the same order that they appear in the prayer book because I structured this series so that the question we’re considering each week connects with the scriptures from the lectionary for that day. So today, because the scriptures relate to the subject of evangelism, we’ll start by looking at the third question in the Baptismal Covenant:
“Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”
The first thing we must define with regards to that question is: what exactly is the “Good News of God in Christ?” What are we proclaiming? What is the message we are called to share with others? The passage we heard from Acts last week offers us a good summary. Peter says this to a group of Gentiles gathered in the home of Cornelius, a Roman solider:
“I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ--he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” (Acts 10:34-43)
That is the good news we are called to share: that Jesus was raised from the dead, that all the powers of this world and even death itself could not stop the message he came to bring. That message was not so different from what all the prophets throughout the history of Israel had taught: that we should love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves. But the one who brought the message this time was different than those other prophets who had gone before: he was the promised Messiah of Israel, the chosen one foreseen by all the prophets, and in him the prophecies of old were fulfilled. And his message reminded the people of Israel that God’s favor and mercy are available to all people, not just the Jews.
And although Jesus’s followers took that to heart in such a way that the Jesus Movement became primarily a movement of Gentiles rather than Jews, this message of inclusiveness was not new with Jesus. In fact, the Christian concept of our call to be a “light to the nations” actually comes from the Hebrew Bible, from the scriptures of the Jews before the time of Jesus. Today’s reading from Isaiah contains that phrase, a phrase that became one of the theological underpinnings of Christianity’s worldwide missionary outreach: God says to the prophet Isaiah, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).
"I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
In a context where the prevailing assumption was that each nation had their own god or gods, who were concerned only with the people of that nation, the idea that the God of Israel would care about the people of other nations was a revolutionary idea. This passage is one of several in Isaiah and in other writings dated to this period that represent a significant theological shift – from a view of salvation as being “all about us” to a view that included “them” as well – the other, the outsider, the stranger. No longer did the word “salvation” mean that our side had won, and to hell with everyone else. Isaiah – and Jesus after him – said that the goodness and mercy and blessings promised by God to Israel are available not only to Israel, but to all people. Israel’s role as a “light to the nations” is to share that goodness and mercy and blessing with everyone.
Unfortunately, the way both Jews and Christians have read and interpreted this passage has often presumed that only Israel – or in Christian thought, only the church, the “New Israel” – has the light. As we sought to be a “light to the nations,” we thought we were bringing “light” to “primitive” or “uncivilized” people who we thought were in darkness without us. I requested our opening hymn (#539 in the 1982 Hymnal; "O Zion haste; thy mission high fulfilling") because it has some of that flavor to it. That last verse:
"make known to every heart his saving grace.
Let none whom he hath ransomed fail to greet him,
through thy neglect, unfit to see his face."
-- the assumption being that without you, O Enlightened Christian, those poor peoples of the rest of the world will perish. Through our actions and our theology we asserted a belief in our superiority over other nations and peoples. We forgot the inclusive flavor that this passage had in its original context, and in many cases, instead of bringing light, we brought more darkness. Instead of inclusion, we brought rejection and condemnation.
So how can we be obedient to our baptismal covenant, to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,” without falling into the same mistakes that some of our forefathers and foremothers made? How can we share the good news so that it is actually received as good news, rather than as rejection and judgment?
Well, one way to do so is to follow the example of Peter and Cornelius in last week’s passage from Acts. Both Peter and Cornelius receive visions from God telling them to seek each other out. Peter receives a message from God that sends him to Cornelius, and Cornelius receives a message from God asking him to seek out Peter. The key here is that it is God’s initiative on both sides to bring the two people together. There have been plenty of cases in which Christians have thought, “God is sending me to bring a message to those poor, backward people and tell them how to live and worship correctly!” – but when they arrived, the “poor, backward people” weren’t so interested in hearing their message. Rather than paying attention to this, the missionaries pushed on, convinced they were right, that God was “on their side,” rather than trying to discern whether or not God was indeed behind their missionary impulse by assessing the situation among the people when they arrived. In contrast to that kind of stubborn one-sidedness, in the biblical story, Peter confirms first that God has been moving among the people he’s about to speak to before he launches into his “pitch” about why Jesus is Lord of all. He asks why Cornelius sent for him, and only after he has taken the time to listen to Cornelius’s experience and hear his story does he make that great speech in Acts 10, summarizing the Christian message.
I find it interesting that although Christian theology names Jesus as the “light of the world” (John 8:12), Jesus also says that we are the light of the world! In the Sermon on the Mount, he says to those gathered to hear him teach, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16). Jesus, the very light of the world himself, did not tell his followers that he was the only light, but taught them to see the light in themselves.
The true lights of this world do not judge the darkness, because they see only light. They see the light in others, and they help others to see that light in themselves. And as they do so, the light becomes much stronger than if it were proceeding from only one person or one group. To me, that is what it means to be a “light to the nations.”
So how can we keep our vow to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” We can live an authentic life of faith modeled on the teachings of Jesus, one in which our actions testify to something greater than ourselves. And when people ask us about it, when God sends them to us through God’s initiative, we can share with them the witness of scripture, passages like Peter’s speech in the book of Acts. And we can tell them our own story. We can tell them about why Jesus’s story and teachings mean so much to us, how the Gospel has touched our lives, and about any experiences we have had with Jesus directly or any moments we had when we knew God was truly with us. And rather than telling people we have the light and they don’t, we can affirm that we see light in them, too. We see it, we name it, we affirm it, and we invite them into a relationship with Jesus. And then, we wait for them to make their own decision -- and leave the rest to God.
Remember, we promise to do these things in our Baptismal Covenant only “with God’s help” – so we must take that to heart. We can’t keep these vows entirely on our own. It isn’t our job to “save” others. “Through your neglect, they will be unfit to see his face?” No. It’s not our job to save. It’s God’s job to save.
So, will we proclaim the Good News of God in Christ to the world?
Yes, we will – with God’s help.
Showing posts with label salvation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label salvation. Show all posts
Sunday, January 15, 2017
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Reading Scripture with people of other faiths
Sermon delivered Thursday, Jan. 10, 2013 (Thursday in the Week of the Epiphany) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN, during a Eucharist in which members of the Sikh community in Nashville were invited to be present to observe and/or participate in our worship, as part of an on-going interfaith dialogue. The scriptures appointed by the Daily Eucharistic Lectionary for this day were: Isaiah 65:1-9; Psalm 147; 1 John 4:19-5:4; and Luke 4:14-22.
It is an interesting spiritual practice to read the sacred texts of your religion with people of a different religion. When I have done this in the past, I always come away with new perspectives and insights that I don’t think I would have been able to see without the presence and perspective of my partners in dialogue.
There are inevitably excited exclamations over the similarities we find between our texts and the texts of others: at a recent clergy interfaith scripture study circle here in Nashville, some Christian pastors were describing the story in Matthew 25 – where Jesus says that whoever has fed the hungry, cared for the sick, visited those in prison, has done these things to Jesus himself – when an imam of one of the local Muslim communities cried out excitedly, “Yes, we have it too! Almost exactly the same story! That in serving others, in serving the poor, you are serving God himself.”
Given what I know about the Sikh faith, I might be bold enough to guess that our Sikh brothers and sisters with us here tonight may have found themselves nodding with recognition at some of the themes that emerged in our sacred texts for this evening: To love God we must love one another and obey the commandments that God gives us. If someone says they love God but treats their brother or sister unkindly, they are not truly loving God. And Jesus’s words in the Gospel today might have sounded like something Guru Nanak would have said: God’s spirit sends us out to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, freedom to the oppressed. It is a wonderful and exciting thing to hear the Word of God as you know it proclaimed through another religion’s texts. “Yes, we have that one, too!” we say, delighting to see God’s truth showing up in ways we had no idea it was showing up, to people we didn’t know were hearing it.
It is especially delightful to experience this when there are other parts of our sacred texts that would say it is not so, that God does not show up in other religions. Tonight we also read some texts that emphasize God’s unique and exclusive relationship with the people of Israel. The psalm appointed for today ended with the proclamation that God “declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and his judgments to Israel. He has not done so to any other nation; to them he has not revealed his judgments” (Psalm 147:20-21). In contrast to the delight we feel when we encounter similarities in the messages of our sacred texts, it is often uncomfortable to read texts like these in “mixed company.” How many of you felt comfortable saying these words just now while you knew there were people sitting with you who were not part of the nation or spiritual lineage of Israel? “God has only revealed himself to us, not you,” we basically just said to the Sikhs. And then we followed it with, “Hallelujah!”
The more exclusive parts of our tradition can be uncomfortable for us to address in interfaith settings. The temptation is to water things down, to only present the more inclusive parts of our tradition to those we are in dialogue with. But if we do that, we are only allowing our neighbors to see part of the picture. I believe that authentic dialogue happens only when we bring our whole selves and our whole traditions to the conversation – the open and the closed parts of ourselves and our traditions, our delights and the things that make us uncomfortable.
Unlike Sikhism, Christianity is at its heart a missionary religion: a religion that instructs its followers to actively seek converts. Jesus told his followers to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19-20). We call it the “Great Commission,” and it shapes how we understand our mission and purpose as Christians: we are called by God to share the good news of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ – that after being killed by the authorities, Jesus rose from the dead and inaugurated the start of a new creation that offers life and hope to the world. The New Testament contains many passages that insist that in order to receive salvation, one must believe in and follow Jesus. And so some Christians are convinced that no matter how many similarities we might find between Christianity and the ethical teachings of other religions, ultimately none of those similarities matter if the people of those other faiths do not ultimately decide to follow Jesus.
I have a friend named Valarie who grew up as a Sikh in central California surrounded by Christians who held this perspective. For years, she heard from friends and even teachers in school that she would go to hell if she did not accept Jesus as her Savior. These experiences were disturbing to her, but she always thought that these Christians were misinterpreting their own religion, that they were taking it to an extreme or denying the message of love and acceptance of all people that she believed was at the heart of all religions, since her Sikh faith had taught her that this was so. And then, as an adult, she actually read the New Testament scriptures for herself, during her time at Harvard Divinity School, where she and I were classmates.
When she read the Christian scriptures, she suddenly understood why all those friends and teachers had felt so urgently the need to convert her to Christianity. She read passages that said that those who do not believe in or accept Jesus are condemned. Even books like 1 John, which we read from tonight, that contain very inclusive passages like, “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God,” (1 John 4:7) also go on to say things like, “Whoever has the Son [that is, Jesus] has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). She was deeply disturbed, because she realized that Christianity did not have the same respect for all religious paths written into its sacred texts as her own Sikh faith did.
And so she called me, her Christian friend who was at the time just beginning to discern a call to the priesthood, to ask me how I understood these texts. “Now I understand why they wanted to convert me,” she said to me. “They were just doing what the book says!” She saw that these Christians were not acting out of an intentional mean-spiritedness, but were attempting to be faithful to the teachings of their own religion. She wanted to know how I as a Christian could advocate for a more open perspective, given the content of my sacred texts.
My answer -- and it is just my answer, not the answer of all Christians -- as I have come to articulate it over the years, has to do with different theological motifs in Scripture and in Christian tradition. I believe there are actually two main motifs that are in tension with one another throughout the Bible and the Christian tradition. One asserts that we are the chosen people, that those who are not part of the people of Israel and do not worship the God of Israel will be destroyed, that ultimately we are the only ones who will see salvation, and that we are justified in celebrating over the death and destruction of our enemies. The other motif asserts that God has created and cares for all people, that God in Christ has redeemed not just those who believe, but the whole creation, and that “God does not rejoice in the death of a sinner” (Ezekiel 18:32). I believe it is up to each one of us, both as individuals and collectively as a church, to choose which motif we will privilege over the other as we interpret scripture.
Because I am part of a Christian denomination that recognizes reason and experience in addition to Scripture and tradition as valid ingredients in crafting a theological perspective, I bring my own experiences with interfaith dialogue and interfaith friendships to the way I read the sacred texts. I cannot deny that I have seen God working in and through people of other religious traditions and that I have heard God’s word through the sacred texts of other traditions as well. I am reminded of what Jesus said to the Roman solider who came to him to ask him to heal his servant who was ill. “In all of Israel I have not found such faith!” Jesus says (Matthew 8:10), acknowledging in this “outsider,” who was most likely a practitioner of pagan Roman beliefs, a more authentic faith than many in Jesus’s own religious community. As I have met and gotten to know faithful Jews, Muslims, Baha’is, Sikhs, Hindus, and Buddhists through years of interfaith dialogue, I have often been moved to say, “Not even in the church have I found such faith!” I often see in my brothers and sisters of other religions a devotion and connection with God that equals or surpasses what I have seen in fellow Christians.
And although as a Christian I do believe that salvation comes to the world through Jesus Christ, I understand that to occur ultimately on a cosmic and communal level that transcends the individual, personal level. Although some Christians insist that in order to be “saved” and go to heaven, each individual person must accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and if not, they will suffer in hell for all eternity, I prefer another strain in Christian tradition which asserts that has Jesus in essence transformed the very creation itself, an act that is not contingent upon the intellectual belief systems of particular individuals. We are still called to put our faith in Jesus and to follow his teachings, and we still encourage and invite others to do so as well, but the salvation of the world is not contingent upon whether we do or not: the salvation of the world has already been accomplished by Christ, and in the task of evangelizing we are calling people to tap into that cosmic redemption that is already inherent in every aspect of creation. For me as a Christian, interfaith dialogue is an opportunity to recognize and celebrate all the ways in the redemptive work of Christ is moving and present in all of God’s people.
It is an interesting spiritual practice to read the sacred texts of your religion with people of a different religion. When I have done this in the past, I always come away with new perspectives and insights that I don’t think I would have been able to see without the presence and perspective of my partners in dialogue.
There are inevitably excited exclamations over the similarities we find between our texts and the texts of others: at a recent clergy interfaith scripture study circle here in Nashville, some Christian pastors were describing the story in Matthew 25 – where Jesus says that whoever has fed the hungry, cared for the sick, visited those in prison, has done these things to Jesus himself – when an imam of one of the local Muslim communities cried out excitedly, “Yes, we have it too! Almost exactly the same story! That in serving others, in serving the poor, you are serving God himself.”
Given what I know about the Sikh faith, I might be bold enough to guess that our Sikh brothers and sisters with us here tonight may have found themselves nodding with recognition at some of the themes that emerged in our sacred texts for this evening: To love God we must love one another and obey the commandments that God gives us. If someone says they love God but treats their brother or sister unkindly, they are not truly loving God. And Jesus’s words in the Gospel today might have sounded like something Guru Nanak would have said: God’s spirit sends us out to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, freedom to the oppressed. It is a wonderful and exciting thing to hear the Word of God as you know it proclaimed through another religion’s texts. “Yes, we have that one, too!” we say, delighting to see God’s truth showing up in ways we had no idea it was showing up, to people we didn’t know were hearing it.
It is especially delightful to experience this when there are other parts of our sacred texts that would say it is not so, that God does not show up in other religions. Tonight we also read some texts that emphasize God’s unique and exclusive relationship with the people of Israel. The psalm appointed for today ended with the proclamation that God “declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and his judgments to Israel. He has not done so to any other nation; to them he has not revealed his judgments” (Psalm 147:20-21). In contrast to the delight we feel when we encounter similarities in the messages of our sacred texts, it is often uncomfortable to read texts like these in “mixed company.” How many of you felt comfortable saying these words just now while you knew there were people sitting with you who were not part of the nation or spiritual lineage of Israel? “God has only revealed himself to us, not you,” we basically just said to the Sikhs. And then we followed it with, “Hallelujah!”
The more exclusive parts of our tradition can be uncomfortable for us to address in interfaith settings. The temptation is to water things down, to only present the more inclusive parts of our tradition to those we are in dialogue with. But if we do that, we are only allowing our neighbors to see part of the picture. I believe that authentic dialogue happens only when we bring our whole selves and our whole traditions to the conversation – the open and the closed parts of ourselves and our traditions, our delights and the things that make us uncomfortable.
Unlike Sikhism, Christianity is at its heart a missionary religion: a religion that instructs its followers to actively seek converts. Jesus told his followers to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19-20). We call it the “Great Commission,” and it shapes how we understand our mission and purpose as Christians: we are called by God to share the good news of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ – that after being killed by the authorities, Jesus rose from the dead and inaugurated the start of a new creation that offers life and hope to the world. The New Testament contains many passages that insist that in order to receive salvation, one must believe in and follow Jesus. And so some Christians are convinced that no matter how many similarities we might find between Christianity and the ethical teachings of other religions, ultimately none of those similarities matter if the people of those other faiths do not ultimately decide to follow Jesus.
I have a friend named Valarie who grew up as a Sikh in central California surrounded by Christians who held this perspective. For years, she heard from friends and even teachers in school that she would go to hell if she did not accept Jesus as her Savior. These experiences were disturbing to her, but she always thought that these Christians were misinterpreting their own religion, that they were taking it to an extreme or denying the message of love and acceptance of all people that she believed was at the heart of all religions, since her Sikh faith had taught her that this was so. And then, as an adult, she actually read the New Testament scriptures for herself, during her time at Harvard Divinity School, where she and I were classmates.
When she read the Christian scriptures, she suddenly understood why all those friends and teachers had felt so urgently the need to convert her to Christianity. She read passages that said that those who do not believe in or accept Jesus are condemned. Even books like 1 John, which we read from tonight, that contain very inclusive passages like, “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God,” (1 John 4:7) also go on to say things like, “Whoever has the Son [that is, Jesus] has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). She was deeply disturbed, because she realized that Christianity did not have the same respect for all religious paths written into its sacred texts as her own Sikh faith did.
And so she called me, her Christian friend who was at the time just beginning to discern a call to the priesthood, to ask me how I understood these texts. “Now I understand why they wanted to convert me,” she said to me. “They were just doing what the book says!” She saw that these Christians were not acting out of an intentional mean-spiritedness, but were attempting to be faithful to the teachings of their own religion. She wanted to know how I as a Christian could advocate for a more open perspective, given the content of my sacred texts.
My answer -- and it is just my answer, not the answer of all Christians -- as I have come to articulate it over the years, has to do with different theological motifs in Scripture and in Christian tradition. I believe there are actually two main motifs that are in tension with one another throughout the Bible and the Christian tradition. One asserts that we are the chosen people, that those who are not part of the people of Israel and do not worship the God of Israel will be destroyed, that ultimately we are the only ones who will see salvation, and that we are justified in celebrating over the death and destruction of our enemies. The other motif asserts that God has created and cares for all people, that God in Christ has redeemed not just those who believe, but the whole creation, and that “God does not rejoice in the death of a sinner” (Ezekiel 18:32). I believe it is up to each one of us, both as individuals and collectively as a church, to choose which motif we will privilege over the other as we interpret scripture.
Because I am part of a Christian denomination that recognizes reason and experience in addition to Scripture and tradition as valid ingredients in crafting a theological perspective, I bring my own experiences with interfaith dialogue and interfaith friendships to the way I read the sacred texts. I cannot deny that I have seen God working in and through people of other religious traditions and that I have heard God’s word through the sacred texts of other traditions as well. I am reminded of what Jesus said to the Roman solider who came to him to ask him to heal his servant who was ill. “In all of Israel I have not found such faith!” Jesus says (Matthew 8:10), acknowledging in this “outsider,” who was most likely a practitioner of pagan Roman beliefs, a more authentic faith than many in Jesus’s own religious community. As I have met and gotten to know faithful Jews, Muslims, Baha’is, Sikhs, Hindus, and Buddhists through years of interfaith dialogue, I have often been moved to say, “Not even in the church have I found such faith!” I often see in my brothers and sisters of other religions a devotion and connection with God that equals or surpasses what I have seen in fellow Christians.
And although as a Christian I do believe that salvation comes to the world through Jesus Christ, I understand that to occur ultimately on a cosmic and communal level that transcends the individual, personal level. Although some Christians insist that in order to be “saved” and go to heaven, each individual person must accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and if not, they will suffer in hell for all eternity, I prefer another strain in Christian tradition which asserts that has Jesus in essence transformed the very creation itself, an act that is not contingent upon the intellectual belief systems of particular individuals. We are still called to put our faith in Jesus and to follow his teachings, and we still encourage and invite others to do so as well, but the salvation of the world is not contingent upon whether we do or not: the salvation of the world has already been accomplished by Christ, and in the task of evangelizing we are calling people to tap into that cosmic redemption that is already inherent in every aspect of creation. For me as a Christian, interfaith dialogue is an opportunity to recognize and celebrate all the ways in the redemptive work of Christ is moving and present in all of God’s people.
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