by The Rev. Dr. Max Lynn
SCRIPTURE READINGS Acts 11:1-18, Psalm 16:5-8, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35
Transcribed from the sermon preached on MAY 22, 2022
Most religions and most gods evolve from and speak to a particular culture. They are usually attached to a particular land, language, and culture. The enemies the particular people tend to be the enemies of the god and religion. The story of the religion tells of the acquisition of land and the sacred places on the land. And quite often, the language of the people is the language of the religion. So, Islam uses Aramaic and Hinduism Sanskrit.
Judaism has its particular cultural laws and made a covenant with God for the land. Before the destruction of the temple in 70 AD the temple was the locus, the center piece of the religion. After the destruction of the temple, the focal point become the Torah, the covenant and the laws contained within it, many of them delineating cultural laws and norms that distinguish the Jewish people from other peoples.
Early Christians are trying to discern what is essential to being a Christian, whether or not those who become Christian must adopt the culture of the Jewish religion. Do they have to speak the Hebrew language? Do they have to follow the dietary laws? Will they have to go to particular holy places to find and commune with God.
Pentecost is when the Holy Spirit is found among people who speak many languages, releasing the faith from being tied to one language. Now in today’s story from Acts 21, Peter has a vision and an experience which decides on the issue of dietary laws. He has a dream in which he is presented with many different animals and birds and told to eat. He refuses because he doesn’t want to eat anything unclean according to the law. But it happens three times. And a voice said, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
So, he travels with this group of six brothers to a house where the owner tells them he was visited by an angel who told them to invite them in. Peter begins to preach and the whole group is filled with the Holy Spirit. Peter recollects the revelation which said, John baptized with water, but you will baptize with the Holy Spirit. The event of these people receiving the Holy Spirt taught Peter that God was not constrained by a particular culture or language, that God’s grace through Christ would move across cultures.
Last week we experienced another horrific mass shooting, the murder of ten people, mostly black, by a white supremacist. The young shooter, apparently, felt threatened by changing demographics and the idea that the elite liberals are plotting to replace whites to win elections and gain power. Christianity, according to some of these racist nationalists is the property of white European culture and we have to fight to defend it. In From their point of view, white Christians have replaced Jews as the chosen people, and the United States is the land promised to us by God. If we keep letting in immigrants of color, they will overwhelm the whites and that will be the end of the nation. Or something like that.
Now the media has been quick to say that the replacement conspiracy is not true. But what almost nobody is saying is that the demographics do in fact show that whites are steadily decreasing as a percentage of the population of the United States. There are already more Latinos in California than whites. Our state is ahead of the curve but the whole nation is trending toward greater diversity and a time when white people are not a majority.
This demographic trend is not in dispute. The question is, it seems to me, what are the values of our nation we hope to pass on? and what is it about Christianity that makes it Christian, or Christ like?
Equality before the law, democratic government chosen by a majority of all citizens, peaceful transition of government, the state not favoring a religion, freedom of speech, the value of education, equal opportunity to pursue your and your family’s economic interests, the idea that hard work and production of good fruit – and profiting from your hard work, is a good thing, these are some of the fundamental values I hope that we as Americans, whatever we look like or wherever we come from will hold as precious and aspire to. These are values I think we should teach our children no matter their race, and I would be extremely disappointed when and where we deviate from holding them up as our aim.
When there are those who would raise their religion or race above the values of democracy and equal representation and opportunity, whether they are Muslim or Christian, white, or black or whatever, I would feel they are deviating from the legacy and people I hope to represent and the values I hope I and our decedents aspire to. In other words, I will count as my decedents those who hold up the values of democracy, equal opportunity, and freedom no matter what they look like or where they come from. It is my opinion that people need not know or experience these values before coming here, but no matter what culture or nation they come from, they should be taught them here.
Regardless of the sinfulness we may want to acknowledge and point out about our founding, particularly on discrimination and exploitation based on race, if we throw the baby of democratic values out with the bathwater of racism and economic exploitation, we will most certainly go down. On the left, I think we have to pull back some from the self-righteous claims which seek to prohibit viewpoints other than our own. The attempt by some to equate words as equal to violence is a mistake. Words can harm and they can have bad consequences, but they are not sticks, stones, knives, guns, or bombs. Non-physically violent disagreement, the freedom to disagree, is absolutely essential to preventing all out killing and chaos. An offensive joke is offensive, but it is not the same as a punch in the face. A protest at a capitol building where people say ignorant and mean things is not the same as breaking in, beating security, and hunting down people in Congress in order to kill them. Having someone speak on campus who is offensive to me is not the same as an me grabbing an AR-15 and shooting the speaker and those in attendance. Making fun and saying nasty things about Christians is not the same thing as going into a church and shooting Christians. You can make a philosophical argument that words can result in physical harm and that those words help shape a social structure that influences the direction of violence. This is true. But practically speaking, we are in danger of going from an eye for an eye to an eye for a word. A clear distinction is necessary. Freedom of speech is more important than whether we are offended.
One of the multiple problems with calling words violence is the issue of who gets to decide what words are violent to them? Who gets to be the thought police? Right now, we have people on both the left and the right who want to be the thought police. Either way it is a bad idea.
As a Christian preacher my aim not equal with our nation, nor is it my priority. For my concern is for Christians, and for those who hunger and thirst for the grace and love of God through Christ. No language, no land, no culture is essential to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We hold the Bible as authoritative because it is the closest thing we have of a record of who Jesus was, and the Hebrew scripture helps us understand the historical and cultural context in which Jesus lived.
But our Reformed or Presbyterian tradition does have something to say on who decides what right belief is and about how to get along.
Our Presbyterian Book of Order notes that “truth is in order to goodness”. That is, you cannot claim to know and represent Christ and go out and murder people because they are not white or Christian. If you do, you do not worship the true Christ, nor the truth of Christ. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Or as we hear from Jesus in John this morning:
34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
On the other hand, in any immediate context, especially when it comes to social policy or culture, it is not always easy to decide what the loving thing to do is. None of us are all good or all knowing, so what we think is the absolute truth of the given moment may be more or less true or more or less false. Therefore, our book of order leaves room for humility and difference of opinion.
F-3.0101 God Is Lord of the Conscience
a. That “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men 2 which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.”3b. Therefore we consider the rights of private judgment, in all matters that respect religion, as universal and unalienable: We do not even wish to see any religious constitution aided by the civil power, further than may be necessary for protection and security, and at the same time, be equal and common to all others.
In short, we have individual freedom of conscience and we don’t want our civil government to establish even our notion of the true religion.
F-3.0105 Mutual Forbearance
That, while under the conviction of the above principle we think it necessary to make effectual provision that all who are admitted as teachers be sound in the faith, we also believe that there are truths and forms with respect to which men (persons) of good characters and principles may differ. And in all these we think it the duty both of private Christians and societies to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other.
In short, a good Christian will be humble enough to assume people of good will may not arrive at the same understanding or solution to a given situation, problem, or matter of faith.
We can’t assume Jesus’ word of truth for our moment in history aligns with our political ideology or party.
But we do know this. Jesus does not need the United States. Jesus does not need white Europeans. Jesus does not need our culture. The Church ebbs and flows wherever the Spirit will take it. Christianity is not a white European religion. Right now, it is more South American, Asian, and African than European. Before it was European it was Middle Eastern and African, and before that just Judean. The Holy Spirit goes where it will. It is not constrained by culture, language or land. Any branch of Christianity that attaches those things is practicing a form of idolatry.
In the last ten years I have learned that despite our best intentions and hopes, despite our best efforts, history can and will go on and sin will continue to pop up, perhaps where we expected, but just as likely in ways we never anticipate. It pains me to think the great American values may be falling away, that in this chaotic and stormy sea of cultural and climate change and the sin of the world, we may have lost faith and hope and a sense of mutuality that will keep us moving onward and upward to live up to the true meaning of our creed. But nations rise and fall, and I suppose it is naïve to think we are an exception. But I would like to think, not yet.
Now the thing about John’s Revelation that is very hard for us to grasp is that the eternal perspective from which John receives his vision includes the present. The vast majority of John’s audience are the poor and oppressed. They are either from a nation like Israel that has been destroyed and subjugated by Rome, or poor peasants and slaves from the area around Modern Day Turkey. But John wants them to know that no matter what kind of pressure they are under to give up their faith, no matter what kind of prejudice or oppression, they have a God given freedom and calling that is tied into the cosmic vision of God that surpasses history. Winning then doesn’t necessarily mean winning in the politics or economics of the day, but staying true to the vision of Christ, to the vision of peace and love. So, when all this mess, confusion and violence passes away, our lives as far as they are dedicated to truth and love will continue on. This is the hope that defies the power of sin in the present. This is the hope that keeps us moving on today and everyday working for good. Even if the whole society goes the wrong way, we still know the way to go. Even though governments and great businesses or a divisive ideology may shape the course of our nation, all these things will pass away. We still know the God who was first will also be last.
“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
“It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.