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Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church The
Slippery Slope Transcribed from the sermon preached February 17, 2008 The Reverend Max Lynn,
Pastor St. John’s Presbyterian Church 2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705 Telephone 510-845-6830 Fax 510-845-6837 office@stjohns.presbychurch.net http://www.stjohns.presbychurch.net It is can be confusing to
figure out identity in this postmodern world. This doesn’t mean folks are not
working to create markers or symbols, or that the old ones have disappeared.
Whether circumcision or a tattoo, a skateboard or a Hummer, flag or a pink
sign, all of us want to be identified as somebody and with somebody. Solitude
can be refreshing; individuality is nice to a point. We seek solitude to get
recharged to once again be with people, in community. We seek individuality
because we want to be recognized by a group as somebody worth recognizing. In
our individualistic society, we hear much about the dangers of oppression and
loss of freedom. But there is a point of diminishing returns to freedom and
individuality. If we think too much on our own terms and abide by too few
social norms, we lose our ability to communicate and are labeled insane, dumb
or a stranger. This is not a value statement, just a fact. We
seek freedom and autonomy so that we can contribute to a group. As humans we
are social, and so we will always find a way to identify and associate with
others. We will make contracts and agreements and rules to join with others for
a common cause. Men and women join together to have children and create a
family. Families join together to form a tribe, village or city. Cities join
together and form states and here states joined together to form this nation. “We
the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and to ensure the blessings of
liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, do ordain and establish this
constitution for the United States of America.” Like
the Israelites, every nation or state develops myth, symbols and law to
solidify unity, territorial and philosophical identity. The Israelites had
father Abraham and we have the pilgrims and George Washington. They had the
symbol of circumcision. We have the flag. The Israelites had the Torah. We have
the Constitution. The
extension of our communities goes only about as far as our economic interests,
or as far as the economic interests of those who control our economic
interests. Thus even as we hope for some larger identity, based on our common
humanity, or life itself, attempts like the United Nations will likely fizzle
without enough worldly power. This
is not to say that the groups to which we belong do not make universal claims.
David’s scribes tell the story of God blessing Abraham: “I will bless those who
bless you, and curse those who curse you, and in you all the families of the
earth shall be blessed.” As
Americans we have heard it is our job to make the world safe for democracy and
freedom. Yet with WWII, the Nazis, the Viet Nam war and the Civil Rights
movement, movements for independence and justice for women and Native
Americans, we have been awakened to the fact that patriotism can easily be
idolatry; freedom for some has not meant freedom for all. The Canaanites and
the Navajo may not have felt so blessed by our blessing, or may have hoped and
prayed that our destiny did not manifest. Large
myths, meta narratives, have been shaken and in their place have stepped many
small myths, myths of groups and myths of individuals. Absolute truth has been
replaced by truth in context, rational systems with feelings. The extreme
ideological extension of truth in context is: “All truth is relative. And we
are all entitled to our own truth.” But this inclusive system runs into a snag
when we are forced to incorporate and include a worldview, which is exclusive.
We renounce our own meta-narratives or meta-myths, that of America and the
Church, though we do not quite relinquish the blessings of capitalist choice
and power in the market; for example, to live in Berkeley, or My Space, or to
buy imported art or strange sex toys. But
what in the world do we do with radical Islam? Dare we even mention it? We can,
I suppose, using our hyper capacity for self-criticism, point out our own
nation and its civil religion’s sins, which have contributed to this radical
reaction. We are good at that. But what about when it really starts getting
personal? I mean, when we realize radical Islam is also a reaction to our
freedom to do what we want in My Space or to purchase strange sex toys, when we
realize that lesbian women in a pink van would be burned or stoned to death if
we were in an Islamic theocracy, what are we to do and think? Can we hold the
relativist line? Can we say the right wing Christian and the Islamic extremist
have the right to hold their truth, when they make the claim that they hold the
truth and should hold the power, when their truth says our truth is not true,
that we should not have the right or freedom to live into our truth? Apparently in Berkeley many have been able to make the
ironic jump, to say that we will live in a city that excludes the exclusive.
Would the city that spawned the free speech movement limit the speech of those
they don’t like, exclude those who would exclude? Would the liberal church not
offer salvation to Republicans? We become fundamentalist humanists and liberals
and demand that folks circumcise their patriotism. We stand on the same
slippery slope as our enemies. Dare
we, in our little truth, become a law unto ourselves? The first order of
business is to admit that we fall short of our own law. Even in a world where
God with a capital G has become a god with a small g, we still need Grace with
a capital G. Relativism is not relative, but makes a meta-narrative truth claim
in its own right: to relativism the claim that all truth is relative is the one
truth that is not relative but universal. And this claim uses propaganda,
judgment and enforcement as any other. Are our judges any less human? From
where does the enforcement come? Don’t
get me wrong, I am not arguing against inclusivity, just for humility that
acknowledges the sin under girding the privilege for moral outrage. I went to
the demonstration before the city council meeting on Tuesday and stood on the
pink side, and held a pink sign that called for an end to the war in Iraq. And
I also held an American flag. I don’t want those in favor of war to be the only
ones holding the flag. Neither the flag nor the nation is my God, but like
circumcision for Abraham and the Israelites, it represents a covenant I was
born into, an act of faith by our mothers and fathers. I
doubt there is a person in this room who does not have a family member who has
served in the military. And if there is, they are likely a child of privilege,
and therefore are not any more pure from the social sin of our nation. And if
there is a pure pacifist, I applaud you, and am jealous of your lack of moral
ambiguity, and would hope and pray that you, like our Christ, remain resolute
in a time or place where you were afforded less privilege and peace. For the
rest of us, the sacrifice we ask our military personnel to make is not only to
die for us, but also to sin for us, to prevent even more evil; we ask them to
limit the freedom of others who would seek to eliminate our freedom; we ask
them to kill to prevent more killing. In this social contract we agree not to
call it murder, to forgive them, for we are in essence, forgiving ourselves.
But we are also on a slippery slope. Our law and forgiveness is relative. We
need the forgiveness that is rock-solid that comes from the one without sin.
For war is murder, it is sin, as the mental anguish of combat veterans, and the
anger and grief of their victims' families testify. No law can make that truth
go away. There is no difference for those who are circumcised and those who are
not; whether with a smart bomb or a dirty bomb, under the stars and stripes or
a crescent moon, the result is death. This is not a relative truth, but the law
of the Creator of the universe: thou shalt not kill. And to the degree we have
contracted with our military to kill, we are accomplices to killing. It is by
God’s grace that we acknowledge such truth, and yet, in a certain context, dare
to ask our young men and women to go to war. And it is by God’s grace, that we
dare acknowledge when the leaders we have elected have made poor judgments, and
repent, and call our nation to end a war, or radically change the manner of
execution, and stop sending our young men and women to kill and be killed. In
respect and honor for our soldiers, our sons and daughters, we ought not call
nor send them to fight easily. Today are more who would volunteer to be a
suicide bomber than before we went to Iraq. We are creating more enemies than
we are eliminating. So
if it is a time for wisdom and humility in the city as in the nation, it is
also a time for drastic action. It is time someone stood out and risked looking
a little naïve in order to stop this naïve war. For that I applaud the city
counsel. Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven. And
still, after all this complicated rambling, I feel a bit like Nicodemus, or
Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, who despite all his searching and
rationalizations stands before the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ. And Jesus
says, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again…” I can’t seem
to reason my way into that, into being born again. But I can’t quite stop
trying to either. Clearly, I need some help. But Jesus says it is not a reason
thing but a spirit thing. Clearly we need help from the spirit. Lord Jesus,
give us faith. Blessed are those who iniquities are forgiven. |