November 5^th, 2006

A Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Jon Smoot

 

I cannot wait until this Wednesday, November 8^th. I am so sick and heart-sick over the electioneering of fear, stupidity, pettiness, and meanness and well over two billion dollars spent in political ads. My choice for US Senator from Virginia is between an apparent misogynist and a clear bigot. Great! The powers that be are more worried about Mark Foley fallout than they are about genocide in Darfur. The ideological splits are deepening. Polarization is paralyzing public discourse and policy. 

I’m not going to launch into some political diatribe here. But I do want to spend some time with you reflecting on what it means to be in the world, but not of it, as Jesus tells us to be. 

 

As people of faith, how do we take our faith to school? To work? To the voting booth? There are two strong temptations facing us when we try to make sense of our faith in an increasing polarized, if not hostile environment. We can go the route of assimilation – because resistance is futile, or we can fall into agnostic despair – in short, we are tempted to either blend in with the crowd, or just drop our faith out of the picture. Neither will do.

 

About 60 years ago, Richard Niebuhr wrote a landmark book about faith and society, it is still searingly relevant today. It was called Christ and Culture. He presents different models of faith as it engages culture. The first is called “Christ Against Culture.” This model purports that God calls us to draw lines in the sand. Culture is seductively trying to destroy us. The world is a God versus Satan battleground. People and things are either good and right, or they are evil and dead wrong. The problem with this model Niebuhr says, is that it limits the realms in which the grace and truth of God are operative. It is also classic fundamentalist and reductionistic thinking. An example: After the Columbine shootings, Tom Delay told a bunch of ministers a story that he thinks sums up the whole moral problem with America: “I got an email this morning from a student that says it all: The student writes; ‘Dear God, why didn’t you stop the shootings at Columbine?’ And God writes back; ‘Dear student, I would have, but I wasn’t allowed in school.’” Now, I believe that this is a pathetic view of God and an even more pathetic view of human responsibility.

 

John C. Danforth, Episcopal minister and former Republican senator from Missouri, recently wrote an article entitled, “Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers.” Danforth writes: “In the decade since I left the Senate, American politics has been characterized by two phenomena: the increased activism of the Christian Right, especially in the Republican Party, and the collapse of bipartisan collegiality. I do not think it is a stretch to suggest a relationship between the two. To assert that I am on God’s side and you are not, that I know God’s will and you do not, and that I will use the power of government to advance my understanding of God’s kingdom is certain to produce hostility. For moderate Christians, however, living the Command to love God and love neighbors as ourselves may be at odds with efforts to encapsulate Christianity in a political agenda. We strongly support the separation of church and state, both because that principle is essential to holding together a diverse country, and because the policies of the state always fall short of the high demands of faith. Aware that even our most passionate ventures into politics are efforts to carry the treasure of faith in the earthen vessel of government, we proceed in a spirit of humility lacking in our fundamentalist colleagues.”

 

 

 Christ Against Culture – “my way, which is God’s way, or the highway” - is clearly not the way forward. No one has the corner on truth, and there are none so dangerous as those who think they do. Islamic fundamentalism is truly scary, but so is American fundamentalism and nationalism. There are clear differences between them, but they share this: both claim that God is commanding them to curtail freedoms, to limit generous thinking – and both seek to avoid personal responsibility for actions, saying that the Almighty is commanding them to do things, however destructive.

 

What about assimilation? Blending in? Niebuhr calls this “Christ is of Culture.” Adapt, fit in, blend in your beliefs with the lowest common denominator of everyone around you. This model has the merit of taking human culture and nature seriously, and can lead to compassionate involvement in human affairs.  But there’s a problem: when we see a direct correlation between Christ and culture, we fail to distinguish between Christ’s teachings on discipleship in the reign of God and American consumerist values. We put God on a leash – creating God in our image, instead of the other way around. We want it all: the security of faith happily compartmentalized, while we pursue real happiness through our ravenous economic and entertainment appetites. America is the consumerist economic machine, securing our happiness through endless consumption. And then we drag God into it, to bless our destructive choices. It is civil religion that preaches “God Bless America” – It is an uppity and distinctly uncivil religion that seditiously shouts instead, “America, bless God.”  

 

So what’s left, if Christ Against Culture and Christ is of Culture, are not the best options for us as people of faith? Niebuhr posits a third way: “Christ the Transformer of Culture.” In this understanding we are agents of grace, points of light, true countercultural yeast – precisely because we choose to love God and to love people, at the same time.  Being a transformer of culture means having an identity, and having boundaries. It means maintaining what John Calvin called a critical distance from our culture. We are to live as disciples of Jesus Christ and members of Christ’s church within the structures of our common humanity, recognizing that all human structures, though essential to our existence, are also fallen. We are to live as resident aliens, critically discerning when to say “No” and when to say “Yes” to what culture serves up.  

 

This brings us to the story of Daniel and his three friends - the cream of Hebrew society, ripped from their beloved homeland and families. They become, overnight, international students against their will. Snatched from the royal courts of Judah and thrust into Nebuchadnezzar’s wild and crazy and utterly foreign Babylon. They were forced to learn a new language, and new culture, and required to eat certain foods from the king’s table. They were given new Babylonian names, which is a symbol of conquest – the final stripping away of your identity. Daniel was more than happy to take advantage of the free higher education Babylon gave him, but steadfastly refused to share the food from the King’s table. Why? Daniel did not fear ritual defilement from the food, but moral defilement: Daniel’s trial by vegetables was motivated by his awareness that to share the King’s table meant to enter into a covenantal relationship with the king. If they ate from the King’s table they became his courtiers, his shadow cabinet. The moral defilement arises from the subtle flattery of gifts and favors which entailed hidden implications of loyal support, however dubious the king’s future policies might prove to be. Daniel said “No” to the food fit for a king, because this would undermine him as a loyal servant of the king of kings. In Daniel’s “No” lay his own sharp focus, his own clear identity, and, as events proved, the key to Israel’s survival and identity in captivity.

 

 

Daniel’s act had the effect of setting him and his companions apart from the common run of aliens and other students in the Babylonian academy of wisdom. The refusal set out their individual identity in sharp relief, and because of their victory in the trial by vegetables, they became a distinct and special group. One commentator puts it this way: “Holding on to the trustworthiness of God at all costs, we learn from Daniel 1 to live vigorously, carry our trust into the very heartland of our oppressors, and with God’s help beat them at their own games of wisdom and understanding, by living both graciously and prudently. And above all, remember that in order to say Yes to this great challenge, you will have to say No to all the compromises that would blur your focus, co-opt you, and destroy a little bit of your true identity.”

 

All of this compels me to ask: When will we as the people of God stop running errands for a culture that does not know that it needs redeeming? The world needs a muscular and generous church – which means we are to be muscular and generous disciples of Jesus. The world needs the church because, without the church, the world does not know who it is. The only way for the world to know that it is being redeemed is for the church to point to the Redeemer by being a redeemed people. Do we at Bradley Hills at every turn, measure what we do by the fact that in Jesus Christ God is reconciling the world back to God? Are we doing what we must be doing as a beacon of hope and hospitality in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? Or we are caught up in doing only what’s safe and convenient? I don’t yet know you well enough to suggest what risks we are to take, but let’s start with these, which are risky and uppity enough…

 

Is your life a participation in the story of God? Do we have a distinct identity as the daughters and sons of God, by grace? Are our children and youth learning from us not just things about God but are getting introduced to God and want to follow God in Jesus Christ as disciples because we ourselves are committed disciples? Are we modeling a modest lifestyle? Do our actions demonstrate our commitment to hospitality and inclusion – our commitment to peace and justice? Can we learn to discern together the menu offered at our culture’s high table and know when to say Yes and when to say No? We will need each other’s help in learning this.

 

Let us start again today as we meet at the Table of the King of Kings, and taste the uncompromised and unencumbered Yes of the God of life. At this table of hospitality and hope we reaffirm our identities as daughters and sons of God, for the sake of the world. May this Table embolden us and strengthen us to be transformers of culture, agents of grace and hope, in our daily life of joyous discipleship.

 

Thanks be to God.   Amen.