Live Together Worthy of the Gospel

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Philippians 1:21-30

Revisiting again that study trip I took to the Bible Lands in my seminary days, I wish to reflect for a moment on that elusive, Loch Nessian, Sasquatchian rare sighting of a thing known as Christian unity.  You may notice my sarcasm bleeding through at points here over the next ten minutes of your life.  

Probably the most eye-opening reality for me on that trip was that even though it’s the Bible Lands, Christians were few and far between; roughly 5% of the population.  In the early 20^th Century, it was around 20%, but for some reason in the last 100, really 80, years Christians have emigrated to other parts of the world.  You do see churches in the Bible Lands but they are mostly very old basilicas and cathedrals being maintained by priests, monks, and nuns that are visited by Christian tourists.  There are still worship services in a good many of them, but you’re not going to find a congregation.  New church buildings with vibrant worshipping Christian communities are rare.  

In Jerusalem, Christians make up hardly 2% of the population.  This 2% consists largely of monks and nuns attending to the religious sites of Christian significance under the care of their particular denomination. There are also mission/relief agency personnel who are mostly immigrants.  As far as indigenous Christianity in Jerusalem and Israel in general, they are mostly Palestinians.  A goodly number of Christians have suffered in Israel in this past century not for being Christian, but for simply being Palestinian.  

In Jerusalem, there are a good number of significant Christian “Holy” sites that people pilgrimate to for a meaningful selfie.  And wouldn’t you know it, there is big business all around it.  There are lots of tour agencies, lodgings, restaurants, religious trinkets, and lots of little “come step in my little holy, prayer niche, light some incense, say your prayer, and leave a donation if you please” places. 

Of these “Holy” sites the most holy for Christians is The Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  (It wasn’t really that holy for me.  I was more moved by the synagogue ruins in the Galilean town of Capernaum which was probably Jesus’ home base once he started his ministry.  Everything is so religious in Jerusalem.)  The Church of the Holy Sepulcher claims to house Golgotha, the place where Jesus was crucified, as well as the tomb where Jesus was laid which became the spot of the resurrection.  Long ago the church was called The Church of the Resurrection instead of The Church of the Holy Tomb.  I’m sure there’s some interesting history and some profound theology in that name change.  You know, how it kind of changes the focus of Christianity's most holy site from resurrection and new life in Jesus to a dead guy and a grave.  There’s a big difference between saying “I want to go see where Jesus was raised from the dead” and “I want to go see where Jesus was buried”.

Now about Christian unity, you may or may not know that three Christian denominations have primary responsibility for overseeing The Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  One would think that this to be a great sign of Christian unity.  Well, let me lean in a little closer and give you “the details” on that.  The three main denominations are the Greek Orthodox, the Armenian Apostolic, and the Roman Catholic churches.  The Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox, and the Syrian Orthodox also share minor responsibilities.  You will notice there are no Protestant or Reformed denominations represented.  The Protestants have their own “Holy Tomb” spot a couple of blocks away that actually looks like a tomb in a garden.

The operating arrangement that the Catholic and Orthodox churches have is known as the Status Quo.  It was drawn up in 1757 by the Ottoman Turks (Muslims) who ruled Jerusalem back then.  An arrangement had to be made because disagreements, often violent in nature, broke out between the different denominations over worship times and places and cleaning schedules.  The Caliphate, a Muslim, very graciously brokered the deal but he decreed that a Muslim family would always hold the keys to the church itself because if one of those denominations happened to be granted the keys…, well, we know how that would go.  That Muslim family still holds the keys.

The denominations are still known to have their disputes.  Notably in 1902 ,18 Franciscan friars were hospitalized and a number of monks jailed when the Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox got in a dispute over who could sweep the lowest steps of one of the many chapels throughout the complex.  In 2002 on a hot summer day, a Coptic monk moved his chair into the shade from its agreed upon place. The Orthodox Ethiopians saw it as a hostile act resulting in 11 monks being hospitalized.  In 2004, on September 13 when the Greek Orthodox had a special celebration commemorating the relic of the Cross they have there, the Franciscans, (Roman Catholics) accidently left the door of their chapel open.  The Orthodox took that as an insult.  A fist fight broke out but no one was hospitalized.  In 2008, a big brawl broke out there on Palm Sunday because one of the other denominations removed a Greek monk from the building for some odd reason.  The brawl was big enough for it to make global news.  When I was there in 1995 standing in line waiting to have a moment inside the tomb, one monk started yelling at another and cuffed him on the back of the head.  A German tour group also cut in front of us.  Needless to say, though it seems that there is much unity involved in operating the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, it is just as well-known and maybe overshadowed by the fighting among its Christian caretakers.  

Jesus’ last teaching to his disciples was, “Love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34,35).  This is what Paul was getting at when he told the Philippians to live your life in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ.  If they/we were/are going to make the proclamation that Jesus is the Son of God become human, the true Lord and Saviour, who was crucified and raised from the dead and that by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit his kingdom, the Kingdom of God is at hand, and that he will return to fully establish his very good reign in his very good Creation, then we ought to have something to show for it.  That something is our unity which Paul speaks of by saying that their life lived in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ shows up when they are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the loyalty to Jesus Christ that arises from the Gospel.  That’s a wordy way of saying “Everyone will know we are Jesus’ disciples by our love for one another.  

Now, I need to go Greek on you for a moment because there are few things in what Paul is saying here that very unfortunately get lost in the translation.  What we translate as live your life in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ in the Greek doesn’t say what we individually minded post-Modern Western culture types here it as.  When I hear those words, I immediately start thinking that “Me, Myself, and I” need to live my life in a gospel-worthy manner.  Ok yeah, but that’s not what it’s saying.  First, the verb incorporates the plural you.  He is not saying each of you live your own life.  Rather, it is y’all live your shared life, your common life together in a Gospel-worthy manner.  There are ways in Greek to focus on how we live as individuals, but Paul doesn’t use those ways here.  He pulls out a rather obscure word whose root word is the Greek word for city, which is polis.  What we translate as "live your life" is quite literally, “Let the way you do city (common life in a commonwealth) be Gospel-worthy.”   

To help you understand a little better.  Philippi was a Roman colony in which Roman citizenship was very important.  Rome turned a small mining community into a colony that would be a place where Roman citizens could settle down, like retire.  Being a Roman citizen was important.  In a couple of weeks, we will talk in a few weeks of how Paul tells the Philippian Christians that they are citizens of heaven.  In Philippi the civic life shared by Roman citizens was very important.  It’s also interesting to know that when Paul first visited Philippi around 49-50AD, he and his companion Silas eventually got arrested and beaten for “disturbing our city”.  He cast a demon out of a young slave girl that made her able to tell the future.  Her owners lost a means of lucrative income.  They were arrested and beaten and imprisoned all without trial.  They were released the next day, but Paul made it known that he and Silas were Roman citizens and refused to leave without some sort of apology.  The city magistrates all came and escorted him out of prison acknowledging their mistake.

Paul wrote this letter about ten years later from prison and was expecting that at any moment the order could come to put him to death.  This letter has a “last words” kind of feel to it.  Paul’s “last words” focus on unity.  The Philippian Christians also seem to be suffering some persecution as well.  Paul’s word to them is that their openly displayed love for one another, the Christ-like quality of the common life, their unity is the evidence of the Truth of the Gospel of Christ to those who are wronging them.  Love for each other, love for neighbour, love for enemy – these are the heart of civic life in the kingdom of God, the proof of one’s loyalty to Jesus Christ, the true Lord and Saviour.

We don’t really know specifically why the Philippian Christians were being wronged.  We can suppose that their proclaimed and lived loyalty to Jesus rather than to Caesar and the gods in a city full of people proud to be Roman citizens proved problematic.  Moreover, the egalitarian nature of their fellowship would have proved a disturbance to the order of Roman life that was very caste/status oriented.  Loving and treating everyone as if they were family – slaves, the poor, the diseased, refugees, even enemies – would have threatened to overturn the Roman way of life.

For us today, we are the body of Christ in a world that has grown to have apathy if not antipathy towards the Christian faith largely because of our unholy marriage to imperialism.  Jesus being Lord does not mean the Church is.  Sadly, the reputation of the Church centres on our disunity and judgmentalism more than for our unity in love, for living our common life together in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ.  There is a lesson we need to learn from monks fighting at The Church of the Holy Sepulcher over the silliest things.  

The world we live in and the Church’s place in it is not all that different today from what it was in the first century.  The early church grew in an oppositional environment because their love for one another backed up their message.  The love that people found in small Christian fellowships was the evidence that Jesus is alive and in their midst through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  We must do the same today – focus on our unity in Christ.  We don’t need petty fights about whose responsibility it is to do what.  We just need to get together as often as we can in loving fellowship centered on knowing Jesus and invite, invite, invite, and invite some more.  Most importantly, be that friend to all people, the friend who loves as Jesus has loved you.  Amen.

 

 

Live for the New Day

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Romans 13:8-14

There’s something about sunrises that can be perspective changing with the coming of a “new day”.  My most memorable sunrise was again back in Seminary.  I was on a study tour of the Middle East.  I was on the Sinai Peninsula on Jebul Musa, the Mountain of Moses.  For centuries people have journeyed to the top of Jebul Musa to await the arrival of a new day. I was soon to join their ranks. This mountain as Christian, Islamic, and Jewish tradition has it is the mountain upon which Moses heard God speak from the burning bush; the mountain where God passed by Moses as he hid in a crack among the rocks; and most of all the mountain where Moses received the Law of God, the Ten Commandments. 

The morning started at 3 AM and the procuring of a camel to ride up most of the mountain.  It was not a very comfortable ride.  The camel’s saddle was nothing more than shaped wood covered by a blanket. To top that, the camel stunk and had fleas.  All that discomfort aside, the ride was quite soothing.  You see where the saddle is placed upon the camel’s back is actually a big mass of fat.  As the camel walks that mass of fat sends you forwards and backwards and side to side and around in a circle all at the same time.  All this swaying at three o’clock in the morning can make you sleepy. The only thing which kept me awake was this slight fear that the camel might decide to walk over the edge.  We really had to rely on that camel’s ability to see in the dark and that the man leading it knew the path.

Apart from the discomfort and smell, the mesmerizing sway, the fear, and this building relationship I had with that camel, I soon began to realize that I was on a journey, a pilgrimage along with hundreds of other people on our way to the top of Jebul Musa, to the spot where Moses heard the voice of God and I began to wander if God would in some way speak to me. There I sat on the back of this camel looking up at the stars.  It was very dark.  The only human light was the orange glow of the cigarette of the man leading the camel.  It was “dark as Egypt”, if you’ve heard that phrase actually referring to the Ninth Plague which was Darkness.  Never had I seen so many stars. 

As we bobbled and swayed for some reason I couldn’t get “How Great Thou Art” out of my head.  It was like I knew all the words when I didn’t.  Soon my thoughts turned to how it happened that I, me, was there in Egypt on the back of a camel riding to the top of the Mountain of Moses early in the morning. How did I get there? Why me? I did not deserve to be there. The feeling of awe which encompassed me moments earlier had changed to humble gratitude for I knew that nothing short of God’s special love for me had brought me to that particular point in my life - sitting on the back of a camel in Egypt riding to the top of Jebul Musa to watch the sunrise and to welcome the arrival of a new day.  What a gift!

As he did with Moses and I am sure with everyone else who dares to listen on this mountain, God spoke to me. By showing me the stars God told me that he was the God of all creation and when I took note of where I was, I realized that I was there only because this great God of creation loved me and thought me special. On the same mountain where Moses was overcome with the awesomeness of God and heard the voice of God proclaim God’s love for his people, I too was overcome with God’s awesomeness and his love for me. Where Moses heard the words “Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet.’’ I learned the lesson that the ability to love your neighbor as yourself comes from knowing God loves us each and regards us each as special enough to give us good gifts. 

Soon we arrived at the point where the camels could go no further and oddly enough, I found it difficult to leave this newfound friend behind. We then climbed some 1,000 steps to get to the top of the mountain and await the sunrise. There was a snack stand there and I got a candy bar and a cup of hot chocolate which unfortunately tasted like a camel. I huddled up with some friends and we kept warm while we waited for the new day.

As darkness faded and light filled the Sinai more and more people began to arrive. Italians, Germans, French, British, American, Japanese, and Korean - people from all over the world began to gather at the top. Soon the Koreans began to sing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” and the whole mountain became alive with this song sung in many different languages, a sort of Pentecost. As daylight approached and peoples from all over the world gathered around, I sensed that salvation was nearer to us than when we first believed. God was close to us on that mountain. In all those people from all over the world night was fading and daylight was already near.

There is something about the arrival of daylight, something about the rising of the sun each day that fills all who watch the sun rise with hope. There is no other time such as this when the beauty of creation becomes so evident. As the sun rose on Sinai the colors of the granite rocks blossomed from deep purple and blue to emerald green, to ruby red and blazing orange. All of God’s crown jewels were put there on display so that it might sparkle in the coming sunrise. 

When daylight came, a new day arrived. The experience of the camel ride though just hours passed seemed to be fading. Now that daylight had arrived all who had climbed the mountain in darkness now began to rush towards the pathway down. I was soon caught up in this rush to leave the mountain. Somehow I failed to ask myself this question: would the religious experience of God’s awesomeness and love experienced in the night which had just faded before me have any effect on the new day that was now here? How would I live in this new day having heard the voice of God just hours before? 

Our text this morning asks this same question of us. How are we going to live in this new day? All of us have been in darkness of one form or another. I don’t think that I would be exaggerating to say that all of us at times have been strangely awakened to the awesomeness of God. Nor would it be a lie to say we all have been struck with gratitude at knowing that we are where we are by the grace of God who loves each of us deeply. God has never left us. He has always taken care of us. God has been with us when it was night. How will this affect how we live each new day?

I said a few minutes ago that the arrival of a new day, the rising of the sun, can fill us with hope.  This Cooperative Ministry formed a little over eleven years ago and was a ray of hope.  I can’t imagine what would have happened to each of these four churches had you not listened to the Holy Spirit’s prompting you to join in ministry.  A new day was upon us.  I wondered why more churches in the Presbytery didn’t join with us.  Three years in we went from two ministers to just me and some dedicated pulpit suppliers particularly Joel Jongkind.  We adjusted and then Covid hit.  The churches that made the news during Covid weren’t making it for the myriad of creative ways they came up with to continue to show love for one another and their surrounding communities.  Nevertheless, the Pandemic put a pall of darkness over, a form of mass depression that lasted a couple of years.  Now, just as that pall had begun to lift and life was getting back to normal, we find ourselves facing an inexplicable trade war with our former best neighbour.  We had just begun to recover from the Pandemic induced economic crisis and now we’re wondering how much worse it’s going to get.  And I won’t depress you with the state of the church today especially here in Grey and Bruce Counties.  Where’s the hope?  Where’s the sunrise?

Well, what Paul said to the Roman Christians back then speaks to us still today, especially today.  Paul here focuses hard up front on loving each other, loving neighbour as yourself.  But then he says, “Besides this, y’all know what time it is.  How it is already the hour to wake from sleep.  For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.  The night is far gone.  The day is near.”  We know what time it is.  I apologize for going Greek on you, but the Greek word for time there is not the one for tic-toc on the clock time.  It’s the word for an age, an eon, an epic.  We are in the age when following the Creation changing event of Jesus Christ, his resurrection, and God’s pouring out the Holy Spirit making alive those who follow him.  We are the sunrise.  We are the new day.  

Even though it still looks dark outside with the way things are, our God is the God who deals in resurrection - new life.  The way we always did things as congregations, well there’s only a glimmer that those ways will find their way out of this present darkness.  If God in his great love for each of us has touched us and awakened us to his awesomeness, his faithfulness, his love for us, then we gotta get up and live this new day shining with the good news that God has not abandoned humanity.  When it’s dark out, it’s the worst that humanity has to offer that seems to be running the show.  But the darkness fades, flees from the light of the truth of God’s presence and love. 

We know what the time is.  We know the sun is rising because Jesus the Son has risen.  The night will come to an end as we each take the time daily to sit with God and pray and read some scripture.  Day comes as we each show our loyalty to him by loving our neighbours, our literal neighbours.  We may not be able to get people through the doors of the church for worship, but we can be kind and befriend the person in front of us in the checkout line at the grocery store.  Be kind and someone may eventually ask you why and there’s your chance to give account for the hope you have.  So here and now while darkness lingers, get up and be light.  Live for the new day.  The sun is rising.  Amen.

What's Wrong with Christian Nationalism?

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Romans 13:1-10

I ask your pardon up front for talking about things American at a time when our economic well-being here in Canada has been attacked and the sovereignty of this nation has been trifled with by executive order of the President of United States and, if the polls are right, his actions are applauded by about 1/3 of the general American populace.  These actions were taken for no valid reason.  The resulting betrayal of trust has terminally injured what once was the fairest and most productive trade relationship between two sovereign nations that there has ever been.  As an American living in Canada I’m struck with disbelief, anger, and disgust as I powerlessly watch the reputation of my homeland become that of being the poster child for betrayal, unreliability, and corruption.

Since there is no valid or reasonable why behind these actions we may move on to the next question of how this has come about.  Well, it is no secret that the current president would not have been elected if he had not had the support of a large block of voters professing to be Christian and who voted for him because they believed he was God’s man for the task at hand, which was to make America Christian again.  Regardless of the man being morally unqualified according to standards the same block of voters have put to every president since the 80’s, these Christians put him in office.  How?  He played into one of America’s foundational Christian heresies – Christian Nationalism.

Not everybody calling themselves Christian in the U.S. espouses Christian nationalism.  Most of the mainline denominations have in recent months written statements condemning it.  And, Christian nationalism isn’t just an American problem.  We have a milder version of it up here in the Great White North.  It made a resurgence back in Covid.  At our General Assembly this past June the Presbyterian Church in Canada released a statement rejecting Christian Nationalism asking that the document be discussed throughout the denomination in the hopes of weeding Christian nationalism out.  The document contained a couple of pages of background leading to this statement:

“Christian nationalism is an ideology that seeks to establish Christian cultural and political domination within a nation, claiming that a particular nation was founded as Christian and must remain ‘Christian.’  Such claims conflate religious and national identity and marginalize all those who are not Christian or who do not align with the particular values Christian nationalism promotes. This pursuit of cultural and political domination distorts the gospel and embodies teachings that do not reflect the love God showed to the world nor the ministry to which disciples of Christ are called.

We acknowledge that Jesus’ ministry began with his own rejection of political power and social influence (Luke 4:5–7) and that throughout his time of ministry and teaching he continued to eschew political power and influence.

We affirm that, as followers of Jesus, so too our focus should not be control over the social, political, and economic spheres of this world but rather, like Jesus himself, loving service to God through preaching and living the Word of love, caring for the marginalized, and ministering to those in need.

Since the church is called to faithful public witness to the gospel message of God’s love for the world, we therefore reject Christian nationalism as a sinful ideology at odds with the gospel and with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.”

Personally, as my biblical and theological education began among Mennonites at Eastern Mennonite University and Seminary, I am partial to a definition produced by a sister seminary, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary located in Elkhart, Indiana.  It reads: “Christian nationalism, in short, is a worldview where one’s theological imagination is coopted by state power. It exchanges the church’s loyalty to the Lord of Peace for a false god fashioned by the myth of American exceptionalism. In fact, Christian nationalism is a form of political idolatry that distorts our knowledge of God and neighbor through a xenophobic, racialized and militarized gospel that is at odds with the life and teachings of Jesus.”^[1]

Our passage from Romans is one that can and often does get used in support of Christian nationalism.  Historically, it has served as the biblical basis of what was long ago known as the Divine Right of Kings.  Back in the days of empires, kingdoms, and colonial empires Paul’s teaching here was co-opted to mean that emperors and kings ruled by God’s authority and therefore their actions were acts of God.  Paul taught that the authority to govern is part of God’s ordering of creation and that those who govern are God’s servants for good and that they wield the sword for the good of society.  We must therefore be subject to the governing authorities for to oppose them is to oppose God.  So also, we must do good because the governing authorities only come after those who do bad.  So, pay your taxes and tariffs and give respect and honour where due.  Unfortunately, Paul didn’t say anything about what to do if a government is corrupt and abusive.  It wasn’t until the 1500’s and John Calvin in the last chapter his Institutes of the Christian Religion boldly claimed that citizens had a right to overthrow a tyrant.  Hence, a wave of revolutions over the following few centuries leading to democracy and voting became the way to limit or peacefully oust a corrupt government.

I am confident here that Paul was not granting a divine, carte blanche, free ride ticket to the Roman emperor or any other governing authority.  They already claimed that power for themselves by the name of Zeus (Jupiter).  Paul instead was writing to Christians who were often socially outcast and bullied because of their confession that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour and Son of God (titles the emperors reserved for themselves) and because of their refusal to worship the Greek and Roman gods and because of their egalitarian (all folks are equal) fellowship.  At heart, this passage is Paul telling Christians throughout the Roman Empire to keep their heads down and not draw attention to themselves and their fellowships by resisting what they all knew was an evil empire bent on conquering for reasons of power-lust and greed.  The Roman Christians would have remembered very well the very perverted and cruel Emperor Caligula followed by Claudius and the then emperor Nero.  No Christian would have called any of those emperors a godly man nor thought of the Roman Empire as sanctioned by God.  So, Paul was not trying to claim the imperial rulers or the empire were God’s special appointees on earth to rule in his name the way American Christian nationalists do with their current president and America.

So, this passage was not ever meant to endorse a particular nation or leader as being specially sanctioned by God.  It therefore should not ever be used for that purpose today.  In fact, the early church would have not been looking to a particular nation or empire to be serving God’s purposes on earth.  They would have understood God’s kingdom coming on earth through the spread of the church which had no national borders.  The only Christian nation on earth is the church universal.  If we take the conversation Jesus had with Satan seriously when Satan was tempting him as well as Chapters 12-13 of the Book of Revelation, then we have to be warned that the political power embedded in nations at present is the domain of Satan.  If it is true that power corrupts and ultimate power corrupts ultimately, then when Christians try to take control of their nation, they will get corrupted ultimately.  Such is Christian nationalism.  I would invite those espousing Christian nationalism to revisit the role political power plays in your loyalty to Jesus Christ and as an American living in Canada I would especially ask you to give a good ponder to what the commandment means, “Love your neighbour as yourself.  Love does no wrong to a neighbour.  Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.”  Amen.