EYES WIDE
OPEN
Sermon on Sunday July 25, 1999
Vacation time is for getting away from it all; escape from
the routines of work, from the worries of the world. But
sometimes, even while on vacation, public events transpire
which we cant ignore.
During my vacation this month, Nancy saw me off Saturday
morning a week ago at the Roanoke airport. Upon checking into
the departure hall, several hundred other travellers, standing
in clusters before TV monitors. A sure sign that something big
was capturing their attention. They were learning, as I did, at
that hour of the disappearance the night before of the plane
piloted by JFK Jr.
That unfolding tragic story was to accompany the remainder
of my vacation as it was to impact upon the private lives of
millions of others.
****
As a Christian my faith in the God of our Lord Jesus Christ
forces me to seek Gods will, purpose and plan in historic
and public events. Thats not easy, however, but is
necessary if our understanding of the Gospel is that Jesus
Christ did not live and die mainly for me, or even you, and
certainly not for the Church, but as the Gospel of John puts
it: He died to save the world. If that is so I expect to find
signs of Gods grace in the world; I look to discover the
seeds, treasures, and catches of redemption which Jesus speaks
about in todays parables in the world.
A few times I have done found the Kingdom clearly working
Gods will in my times. I believe that the Kingdom seeks
to eradicate racism and so I have viewed the civil rights
movement of the US of the l950s and 60s, and the anti-apartheid
movement in South Africa, as pretty clear evidence of what side
of history God was working.
Some other movements, which I once embraced as Kingdom
inspired or Kingdom confirming, I have re-evaluated. I was
thrilled with the election of John F. Kennedy and his death
altered my life forever. I left one form of church ministry and
joined a form of worldly ministry, the U.S. Foreign Service,
because of Kennedy. And until a week ago I harbored, along with
a few million other liberals, that his son might someday give
me a second chance to vote for a Kennedy.
However, I view the deaths of neither Kennedy as either part
of Gods plan for the Kingdom, nor as the devils
plan. Tragic accidents and fatal errors of judgement can
ensnare the powerful, famous and promising as readily as
anyone. We do not require a theological explanation to explain
political tragedies and human accidents.
Theres a surprising twist at the conclusion of
Jesus half dozen parables on the Kingdom of God. So often
the disciples have not understood Jesus parables, but in
this instance, Jesus asks of his listeners: HAVE YOU UNDERSTOOD
ALL THIS? And, its reported, THEY ANSWERED, "YES."
I am open to insight to Gods plan for humanity in
happenings like the Kennedy tragedy, the Balkan horror, the
unending discord in the Middle East, growing evidence of
spiritual vacuums both in China and in America paradoxically
when the economies of both nations are arguably at their
zenith.
I realize that Kingdom watchers must be prepared for
surprises. For example, does it not seem odd to you that the
current spiritual threat to Chinese Marxism comes, not from the
Chinese Christian Churches, but from the Falun Gong which is a
mainly Buddhist inspired spirituality? But my insights about
the Kingdom are always qualified. It is far easier for me to
accept the Kingdom of God in a parable than in real life.
One thing I do expect, however, from my church is that it be
sensitive, at least now and then, to my desire to hear
reassurance of Gods loving actions amidst the flotsam and
jetsam of human error, sin and tragedy.
And so last Sunday I went to church expecting to hear some
word of reassurance in the context of the Kennedy sadness. I
even enticed my non-church attending brother to accompany me
because he was sufficiently upset by the Kennedy news to be
willing to make one of his exceptional appearances at
church.
We checked out the yellow pages with hundreds of church
advertisements and chose the University Methodist Church: it
had a big advertisement, offered three different hours of
worship, and its self-naming as University suggested that the
preaching and worship would be of a relatively high
intellectual order.
We were to be disappointed. It turned out that the
University in the title meant more physically located near the
University of Las Vegas than of the university millieu. And the
self-description of the l0AM service we attended as
"contemporary" meant informality and enthusiastic singing but
no other link up with the modern world.
Dont get me wrong: it was a well planned and executed
service and the love of God was preached to the persons
present. But the main reason we went, to hear some reassurance
in light of the nations sadness, went unaddressed. The
Kennedy loss was not mentioned; in fact, there were no prayers
at all or for anyone. The love of God was restricted to the 200
persons present and, frankly, to hell with the world. I thought
it strange, too, that in a service premised exclusively upon
the love of God for everyone, I was the sole person to approach
and speak with a black couple seated in the rear of the church
during the exchange of the greeting in Christ, and that though
my brother and I lingered and were the last to depart from the
sanctuary, not a single regular worshiper approached us.
But really not strange at all because when a congregation
limits the grace of God to personal salvation, and when we
diminish Kingdom theology to simply feeling good in Sunday
worship, we have reduced public worship to merely personal
pietism. And when that happens we will soon not need corporate
worship at all for each person can pray and read the scriptures
at home in private if the only message from God is personal
salvation.
The trouble with that, other than not being biblical, is
that at the end of the day we dont need public worship
for personal pietism. We can say our prayers privately anywhere
and read our bibles at home.
****
While Jesus steadily counselled his disciples to go easy on
reading the signs of the end and jumping to conclusions about
the Kingdom of God, his teachings in Mathew as with our other
two texts of today do give guidelines about Kingdom of God
theology.
One principle which runs through Jesus parables in
Matthew is that Gods will and purpose as they are
disclosed in the emerging Kingdom of Heaven show forth in life,
hope, new growth and are not linked with death, decay and
denial. God loves life, not death; God is love, not hate; the
Kingdom bursts forth in growth, not decay. I think the Kennedy
and Bissette families showed remarkable sensitivity to Kingdom
faith in proceeding quickly with the last rites even as public
sentimentality called for prolonging the tragedy.
And so Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to: a humble
mustard seed, yeast, a treasure hidden in a field, a merchant
seeking and coming upon superlative pearls; a net to catch fish
whose catch exceeds all expectations. These metaphors were in
Jesus day ordinary references since his listeners knew
all about the functions of a fish net, of yeast, and of the
mustard seed and everyone could fantasize about a search for
buried treasure and fine pearls. These Kingdom illustrations
have in common that the Kingdom of God takes place as the
ordinary evolves into the extraordinary: the humble seed
generates a huge weed as big as a small tree, the ordinary
yeast creates a hundred fold increase in the dough; the hopeful
net overflows with catch, and the illusive search for treasure
or a superb quality in jewels results in thrilling discoveries
beyond human expectations.
And yet Christians are tempted, when hit by a dramatic and
adverse development, to grow impatient with the Jesus
teaching that God takes his time in history. We easily despair
that the Kingdom grows slowly, silently like the seed, the
yeast; steadily and doggedly like the relentless search for
treasure and like Jacobs twice servitude to Laban. Since
God planned for Jacob to father twelve sons to form the nation
of Israel, why did he let Jacob waste so much time in getting
Rachel!
Gods love so often appears checkmated by human
opposition and divine hope appears held in bondage by evil
powers. Where is that vindication so often promised? How long
must the creation groan in its labor? God, if you would just
advance the Kingdom with despatch, our attention would not be
fixed so intently on the stubborn persistence of evil than on
the slow emergence of good. Have you not at times railed at God
like the sons of Thunder, James and John, did to Jesus: Lord,
give us the power to call down fire from heaven and consume all
evil doers. Instead they got Jesus parables on what the
Kingdom of God is like.
But when we are in a better and more scriptural spirit we
perceive that the realisation of human potential is more
important to God than the eradication of human faults. God
loves goodness more than God hates evil.
In the Greek tragedy that bears her name, Medea kills both
of her sons in revenge against her faithless husband. When he
asks how she could have done such a thing, she replies,
"Because I hated you more than I loved them."
For God the opposite is true: hate can never be a stronger
emotion than love.
****
Some developments in our common life and in our private
realms yield neither to rational analysis nor to easy spiritual
spins. When all the public gloss is removed from the loss of
JFK Jr. and his wife and sister-in-law, the two families
intimately involved are left with unspeakable tragedies that
must test their faith. It is trying times such as the Kennedys
and Bissettes have undergone that call to heart Pauls
wondrous passages WHO WILL SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF CHRIST?
WILL HARDSHIP, OR DISTRESS, OR PERSECUTION, OR FAMINE, OR
NAKEDNESS, OR PERIL, OR SWORD? No, Paul argues, in all such
adversities persons of faith are conquerors because God loves
us. Loves us with such completeness that NEITHER DEATH, NOR
LIFE, NOR ANGELS, NOR RULERS, NOR THINGS PRESENT, NOR THINGS TO
COME, NOR POWERS, NOR HEIGHT, NOR DEPTH, NOR ANYTHING ELSE IN
ALL CREATION, WILL BE ABLE TO SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF GOD
IN CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD.
In his memoirs, the Russian and Christian author, Alexander
Solhenizen, tells of arriving at a day, after he had spent l4
years of his life serving penal work in the gulag simply
because he was one of Gods wild weeds which the Soviet
system could not tolerate, when he came to the point of wanting
to give up and end his life. All he had to do was to sit down
on the work detail. The punishment was that a guard would
approach and ask once: will you get up and get back to work. If
the prisoner answered NO, or refused to answer, the proscribed
further response was for the guard to pick up the
prisoners abandoned shovel or pick and smash the
laggards skull in.
In his ultimate desperation Solhenizen thus sat down on the
job to await the routine yet deadly punishment. After a brief
spell, a shadow approached and hung over him and he awaited his
death blow. Instead one hand went to rest upon his shoulder and
the other reached to the earth drawing the sign of the cross.
Solhenizen looked up and saw the face of a much older prisoner
who had survived many more years in that hell than had he.
Nothing was said between the two prisoners, but Solhenizen
pulled himself together, got up and continued to do slave labor
and to survive and to bring his unique spiritual witness to the
world. THERE IS NOTHING IN ALL CREATION, NOTHING SO EVIL, SO
DESPAIRING, SO DEHUMANIZING, THAT CAN EVER SEPARATE US FROM THE
LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST JESUS.
Part of the mystery; of the unfolding of the kingdom of God
is how and why some like Solhenizen survive while so many other
victims do not. How is it that some families like the Kennedy's
can sustain their public idealism and service in the face of
awful setbacks whereas other families, visited by their own
tragedies, retreat into privatism. What is the source of
supernatural optimism, which credits Gods driving energy
as affirming us despite misfortune except the cross of
Christ?
We all know how resilient humans can be. God has made the
"bounce back" factor fundamental to human nature and survival.
And near superhuman endurance and survival need not wear the
armour of Christian faith. We Christians do not have a monopoly
upon the powers of the human spirit to endure and triumph.
But Christians do have the special understanding that faith
in God is the cornerstone of our resiliency. It is in the model
of Christ that we know we are both vulnerable and invincible.
True resiliency knows nothing of vacant, empty hope or giving
in to pessimistic fate. Nor does true resiliency rest on simply
a good mental attitude. Resiliencys cornerstones are
faith, hope and love in the biblical sense of those words. And
the greatest of these, Paul commented, is love because love is
Gods way to bring us home to him and to make right all
the groanings of this world when the final and peaceable
kingdom of our God comes in fullness of Christs time.