Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church

Life's Tough Questions: Love of Self and Love of Other: Strong Identity vs. Inclusivity: Closed Mindedness vs. Relativism - How do We Find a Balance?

Transcribed from the sermon preached June 13, 2010

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Deuteronomy 20: 10-18; John 4:19-26, Proverbs 24:27-34

In our attempt to be inclusive, when do we become so diffuse and undefined that we can’t identify what is unique and important about ourselves and our values?

If other truths are valid, who are we? Why are we here? The question of balance between strong identity and inclusivity is perhaps the most important and troublesome question of our time. Dean Kelly in Why Conservative Churches are Growing says that those churches, which define themselves sharply against the world, are growing, while those with weak beliefs are shrinking. Stanley Hauerwas is a conservative theologian well worth reading. He is conservative in theology but not necessarily politically or economically. He claims that liberal values have lost contact with any authority or narrative from which they come. This leaves us susceptible to the whims of our desires, something the Capitalist marketplace finds awfully convenient. By teaching freedom as the ultimate goal, churches have joined with capitalist culture to promote selfishness, as if pursuit of personal desire leads to happiness and salvation. The high prevalence of dissatisfaction with life, despite unprecedented prosperity in our country shows how freedom as an ultimate goal has failed.

Hauerwas writes that as Christians, “we have learned that freedom cannot be had by becoming ‘autonomous’ – free from all claims except those we voluntarily accept – but rather freedom literally comes by having our self-absorption challenged by the needs of another.” In other words, true freedom is freedom from our self-absorbed desires. This type of freedom is only achieved in a community where we can be challenged by others.” (Nathan C. Clendenin. Christianity and Liberalism: A Call for Change from Stanley Hauerwas)

Now I want to acknowledge the these points, that the evidence seems to confirm that strong identity is important and that absorption in selfish desire is not what brings true freedom, happiness or salvation. Becoming part of a larger story, a narrative community gives us roots from which to grow, contribute, and be served. So the question becomes for the individuals and community of this church, is there a narrative identity, which we strongly proclaim and live?

As Christians we take our root in early Judaism. Scholars believe that the major world religions arose in response to the accumulation of power due to agricultural surplus in the great river valleys. Hunter-gatherer societies were relatively egalitarian and shared a communal, tribal identity. We can imagine at the very beginning of agriculture a fairly equal starting line, and due to luck, intelligence, physical strength and hard work some families and tribes prospered more than others. But it wasn’t long until surplus created the ability to pay or enslave workers and soldiers, and power was increasingly monopolized.

Dominant religions justified the status quo, showing how the gods had ordained those with power to have it, and those without power to serve them or die. The major world religions arose as a counter balance, lifting denial of selfish interest and love of neighbor as a moral standard.

Judaism in particular created a communal, revolutionary ideology. Humans were not created to slave after the gods and their representatives as the river valley city religions proclaimed. Humans were created to live in harmony with the one God, each other and all creation, and it was humans who broke with God’s intentions, started accumulating power, building cities and creating idols with which to control and kill others.

I         t was the genius of King David and his scribes around the tenth century BCE to unite twelve insignificant tribes to serve his nation state around a story, which told how even though they had been enslaved and oppressed, this was not the intention of the creator. In fact God actually sympathized with this poor and oppressed group and would liberate them and bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey – the land that just happened to coincide with that which King David wanted to consolidate. Now the religion of the Israelites was far from perfect, and as we see from the example of Deuteronomy this morning, when the underdogs gain power, their strong identity can be just as selfish and brutal as that of those they sought to be liberated from.

Still the genius and lasting element of this worldview was the idea that the powerful and prosperous did not control God, nor was it necessarily God’s will that they control other people. This religion provided profound and lasting hope regardless of the situation the Israelites found themselves in, and created the God anointed prophet revolutionary. At an even more basic level we see the ordination of critical thought and moral law independent of the earthly power source. Thus prophets would arise critical of Israel from within Israel. While religions of the East offer great lessons on this problem of dualistic thought, I find the contribution of the prophetic tradition within Judaism an aspect of our faith story I would find hard to live without.

Jesus of Nazareth follows from this stream of prophets, who, because of the strong identity they receive from this people in covenant with God, call the people to a higher standard. In the case of Jesus, this higher standard was the love and grace of God. Jack Miles, in his book Christ, notes in one of my favorite quotations that “One of the many implications of this epilogue to God’s life story has been that in the West no regime can declare itself above review. All power is conditional; and when the powerless rise, God may be with them… Every verse in ‘Sweet Little Jesus Boy,’ a black gospel tune sung at Christmas, ends with the wistful line “And they didn’t know who he was.” As his executioners nail him to the cross, Jesus prays: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Wherever lines like these or the ideas behind them have spread, human authority has begun to lose its grip on unimpeachable legitimacy. In the West, any criminal may be Christ, and therefore any prosecutor Pilate. As the abolitionist poet James Russell Lowell put it: ‘Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne – Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.’” (Miles, Jack. Christ. Knopf. NY. 2001. P.4)

In this morning’s passage from John, Jesus is talking to the woman at the well. She is a Samaritan. Samaritans claim that God is to be worshipped on one mountain; Jews claim God is to be worshipped on another in Jerusalem. Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father… the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

Like Israelite prophets before him, Jesus is making the claim that God is beyond our attempt to package Her. “The essence of the law is summed up in this, Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Now, unfortunately, it didn’t take long until Christians became powerful and made of Jesus another mountain, with the empire claiming only on him could God properly be worshipped. Then we set a horrible twist on our Deuteronomy passage written in the 8^th century BCE by those seeking to restrain and reform imperial wealth and power.  Nevertheless Deuteronomy 20 gives us the prescription for genocide, which the Christian Empire would be more than happy to follow. Peoples conquered from afar were spared to be exploited and converted, while those close, the Jews, were to be completely eliminated so that they couldn’t contaminate those faithful to Christ.

So here we are at St. John’s today to proclaim that if Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, then we are to take the log out of our own eye before we take the speck out of our neighbors. If Jesus is the only way then Jesus is not the only way. “Don’t call me good,” he says. “No one is good but God alone.” There will come a day, and the day is now here when we will no longer insist that God can only be worshipped on this mountain or that, only though Mohammed or Jesus, but true worshippers will worship in the Lord in Spirit and in Truth.

Now some may claim that ours is a weak faith, that we don’t have a strong enough identity for others to want to be a part of us, but I disagree. If you mistake our openness for lack of strong identity and disconnection from narrative, then you have a different understanding of the Christian tradition and narrative of scripture than me. If we risk death as a church if we claim our tradition of self criticism and democracy, if we risk dying because we claim that God’s love reaches beyond our own boundaries, if we risk death because we recognize that God just might be on the side of those we would exclude, oppress or kill, then, by the grace of God, let us pick up our cross and follow Christ. If it is more popular to proclaim beliefs opposing these, then let the popular be with the popular and let us be faithful to the God of all life. Whoever would save his life will lose it. And whoever loves his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?

Now if it is just about our self interest, just about doing what is entertaining and feels good, then this church may not be that great either. We have professionals, who work with us to lift our hearts toward God with music, and I work to produce a thoughtful, spirit filled sermon, but you can find better, more entertaining productions rapidly via multiple media outlets, or at any number of venues throughout the city. And sport and kids clubs abound. There are more productive things you could do with your time, things that would help you improve your knowledge or body or ability to prosper materially. There are lots of choices out there.

But our narrative tells us that there is a God who has created us and calls us toward a day when we live in harmony with all creation, a God who cares about justice and peace, a God who has called us to provide a center where a diverse community can find recovery from drugs or alcohol, where food is made rather than bombs, where children have loving care, where Palestinians and Jews sit down at the same table and dialogue toward peace. And if a synagogue comes and wants to hold worship, we place a quilt with the Star of David over the cross in our sanctuary and consider ourselves better, stronger Christians for doing so. Join us and we will go to make food for the homeless, we will plant olive trees with Palestinians, we will offer refuge and support for immigrants and refugees, we will support fair trade products and access to clean water in Bolivia, Nigeria and Berkeley, and promote health in Sacramento and Guatemala. We will sing hymns that proclaim people will know we are Christian, not because we are heterosexual, but by our love. We will visit the sick and sit with the dying and together be held up by the bold faith that nothing in all creation, not even sickness nor death can separate us from the love of God.

Personal peace and contentment might at first glance be better found at a spa in Napa. We here are dedicated to community, a community with some talent and resources, but a community of misfits, crickety old people, nerds, immigrants and seekers whose strong identity includes the recognition that we don’t have it all figured out. But, by the grace of God that doesn’t keep us from working for the most important truth the world has ever known, a truth that we and the world need more than ever to hear: God is love, and God is in you, whoever or wherever you are.