What Glorifies God? (Matthew 5:13-16)

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvj9cOrAOcg&t=160s

Sunday, June 7, 2020

            Am I a follower of Jesus?  Ask yourself that question.  Sit with it.

Jesus doesn’t want believers or admirers.  He’s looking for disciples.  He assumes belief and has no interest in flattery or admiration.  He wants followers. Do I believe Jesus is Lord?  Yes?  An I submitting all my plans, ideas, words, thoughts, and actions to Him?  With these questions, examine your own life. 

            Now, ask this.  What brings glory to the Heavenly Father?  In Matthew 5, Jesus is giving his most well-known message, the Sermon on the Mount.  In this message he says “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works, and give glory to your Father in heaven” (5:16).  What brings glory to God?

            In historic moments, like our current times, Biblical truth gets hijacked by partisanship and identity politics.  What brings glory to God?  Christians rattle off things they think don’t bring glory to God. 

            Antifa and violent protests and looting don’t bring glory to God.

            Police officers using deadly chokeholds against unarmed, subdued suspects, doesn’t bring glory to God.

            Abortion doesn’t bring glory to God.  Liberals don’t bring glory to God.

            Using the Bible for a photo op doesn’t bring glory to God.

            Shutting down the economy to prevent the spread of COVID-19 doesn’t bring glory to God. 

            Re-opening too quickly and risking everyone’s health doesn’t bring glory to God.

            I am pleading with you – don’t do that.  When we shine the light and see what’s going on, look for what does glorify God?  Please, don’t, with the efficiency of an auctioneer, list your personal political bugaboos, things you think don’t bring glory to God.

            We avoid opening our hearts to God and being convicted by His Gospel when we blame others are for failing to live up to Jesus’ teaching.  When our response to a question about God’s will or God’s glory is to immediately critique those with different politics than ourselves, we don’t allow the red letters – Jesus’ actual teaching – to be a mirror that exposes the ugly truth about ourselves. 

Let Jesus’ words be a mirror in which you examine your own soul.  He said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works, and give glory to your Father in heaven” (5:16). Where in the world today, in the public square, in our personal lives is God glorified?

Look for God in every news story you see.  Set aside the instinct to defend your identity and your national pride.  Chances are, the person you’re arguing against also believes in country, freedom and good.  Confronted by God’s word from the mouth of Jesus, allow yourself to be taken to uncomfortable places.  We squirm under God’s glare, but not because God isn’t loving.  God is love.  We squirm because in His light, we see ourselves, we see the world, and we don’t like everything we see.  And we know God doesn’t like those parts we don’t like.    

Stanley Hauerwas calls the Sermon on the Mount a description of the life of a people gathered around Jesus.[i]  Are you among the people gathered Jesus?  Before we talk about the devastation of 100,000 COVID-19 deaths, before we talk about the George Floyd choked in a humiliating, undignified, deadly way, before we talk about Breonna Taylor shot by police in her home, before we rush to defend the good police officers we know, before we condemn the bad actors who turn peaceful protests into violent riots – before all that; examine your heart.  When you imagine the life you’re living, are you a part of those gathered around Jesus?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and a giant among Christian theologians in the 20^th century.  He opposed Hitler and was executed in a concentration camp.  He could have fled to England or America.  But he stayed to confront evil and shine the light of Jesus in dark days.  God was glorified on the cross as his son took the sins of the world on himself and defeated them in his death.  God is glorified as a German disciple of Jesus hangs from a Nazi rope. 

In his remarks on the Sermon on the Mount, Bonhoeffer said “disciples are summoned to follow the crucified in the life of grace.”[ii]  The words we live by at Hillside are, “We follow Jesus, love others, and share hope.”  Considering that Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others that they may see … and give glory to [God]”, and considering that Jesus is the supreme example of glory in his death on the cross, we accept Bonhoeffer’s vision of discipleship.  When we pledge to follow Jesus, we put ourselves in eternal debt to the crucified one, and we commit to spend our lives walking the path he trod.  God was glorified when Bonhoeffer followed Jesus to the noose.  God is glorified when we do the same. 

We won’t all be executed, unjustly.  But hopefully, we all see where Jesus is.  Jesus was weeping with George Floyd, gasping with him, sustaining him for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.  As his followers, that’s where we have to be.  We confront racism, maybe by protesting (peacefully and forcefully), speaking out against racism, using our platforms to dismantle white privilege and empower others; maybe we do all these things; always, we show that in Christ, black, white, and brown are united as a family. 

From our church family, Tim Pressley, a former member, is committed to Jesus, and served honorably in his law enforcement career.  Carlin Jordan, husband of our former youth pastor, is a black man and a proud, committed police officer.  He honors God in the way he approaches policing.  While he may be known as Father, Husband, black man, officer, the way Carlin to be known is as a disciple submitted to the rule of His Lord, Jesus Christ.

When I insist that following Jesus means following the crucified one and following the crucified means we stand with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, with Eric Garner and Michael Brown, I am not damning the police.  Soldiers were among the people gathered around Jesus.  Pharisees, people with disabilities, and prostitutes were among the people gathered around Jesus.  From every corner of society, many ignored Jesus and mocked his followers, but a few turned to Him, gave themselves to him, and became disciples. 

We are among the disciples.  We obey him and thus shine our light.  Following the crucified one, we find ourselves embracing the downtrodden, and holding the hand of the executed.  One of the ways we announce the new age in the coming Kingdom is we fight injustice.  Because Jesus has come, a new reality is actually breaking in, invading our current fallen, dying world.

Attending rallies and writing a letter to a congressman are good works, social actions anyone of any faith could take.  We follow Jesus, and therefore love others, and in our love of others and in the promise of salvation, we share hope.  Our solidarity with the poor and the persecuted is Gospel work when we draw people to Jesus.

Within our community, we tell a story that’s better than the violent one news outlets constantly repeat.  Ours is a story of love, told in the ways we love each other, welcome others in, and help the world around us.  In this kind of story, we give extra love and attention to those who hurt the most. 

My family gave me sympathy and space and extra doses of kindness in the days right after my ankle surgery.  They didn’t do that because I matter more than other family members.  They did it because I was hurting.  Their love told a beautiful story.

Over the course of this past week, I reached out to my friends who might be especially hurt by what happened to Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.  I called, texted, or emailed friends who understand the pain more deeply than me.  I contacted a dozen of my black friends.  Some got back to me, happy that I reached out.  Great!  Some didn’t need to hear from or talk to a white guy at that moment.  They ignored me.  That’s OK too.  I was pretty sure I’d find Jesus in the tears of my black friends.  All tears matter, but Jesus sits in the tears of broken people.  I wanted to be near him so that’s where I went. 

Look around the world.  Look at our community.  Look at your life. 

Are you summoned to follow the crucified one?     

When the light shines, is God glorified in you?

Where do you see Jesus?  Will you join him there?

AMEN 

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[i] S. Hauerwas (2006), Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible: Matthew, Brazos Press (Grand Rapids), p.61.

[ii] D. Bonhoeffer (1963), The Cost of Discipleship, MacMillan Publishing Company (New York), p.129.

One Humanity (Ephesians 2:11-22)

Sunday, September 14, 2015

            Well … it has happened again.  This week a story was shared with me and it got me very upset.  A man in Minnesota was waiting for his kids to get out of school.  The school meets in a business park of some sort.  While he waited someone harassed him.  A nonviolent conflict ensued, police were called, and he ended being tased. 

            He had not broken any law.  He was a man waiting to pick his kids up from school and he reacted negatively as you or I would to being harassed for no reason.

            He is black.  All the officers are white.  Much of the confrontation was recorded.  I heard and watched it.  I was upset.

            This is the place where real life, your life and mine, and the Bible and the Holy Spirit of God collide.  It all comes together.

            How many more times in our country must a black person be assaulted by the police who are supposed to protect us?  I read of someone who had been an American citizen for 4 decades.  She moved from Miami to Georgia and someone posted on Facebook, “make sure you bring your flag.”  The reference was to an unfortunate phrase, “Would the last America to leave Miami please bring the flag?”  The inference is that people who look like Cubans, whatever that means, are not as American as white people. 

            Then there is a video, a farce, where a white man, a jogger, sees another jogger, a woman with Asian features, in the park.  Both are stretching.  He says, “Hi,” and she responds.  Then he says, “Where are you from?  Your English is perfect.”  She says, “San Diego.  We speak English there.”  He says, “No, where are you from?  Where are your people from?”  He proceeds to ask dumber and dumber questions. 

            Then she turns the tables on him.  She asks this white guy, “Where are you from?”  He names an American city and she says, “No, where are your people from?”  He says, “Oh, well, I am just a normal American.”  But she presses him until he says, “England, I guess.”

            Aren’t we all just normal Americans?

            When I led a youth group in Arlington in the late 90’s, nearly every kid in the group was either Hispanic or Sudanese.  The Sudanese were actually born in Sudan or in refugee camps in Kenya or Egypt.  Every single one of those tan skinned Latino kids were born in Arlington, Virginia.  How much more American can you be?

            But they didn’t see it that way.  If they discussed a friend at school they might say, “She’s American.”  I’d say, “What do you mean?”  They’d say, “You know, white.  Not Spanish.”  I though not Spanish.  These kids had parents who were Costa Rican and Argentinian and Salvadorian, but some of the kids, Hispanic kids, could barely speak Spanish themselves.  Yet in their minds, a normal American is white.

            Sometimes,  I will meet a person who is Asian or Hispanic.  I will ask, “Where are you from.”  I ask the same question upon meeting someone who is white or black.  It is a way I show interest in the other person.  I want to connect.  Regardless of what they look like, I expect to hear “I am from Detroit or I am from Wilmington or I am from Georgia or I am from St. Louis.”  I see the other as American, but she responds, “I am Korean.”  She doesn’t trust that I see her as American.

            Why should she?  If she has been hit with subtle prejudice or outright racism over and over, why should she believe that this white guy will be a nice one who sees her as a beautiful human being, who wants to celebrate her uniqueness, who wants to hear her story?  Why should she believe my good intentions?  She’s been hurt too many times by people who look like me.

            In the case of the Hispanic youth group kids this is a matter of self-identity.  In the comedy video, it is how we see others.  In Miami, it is a matter of some people deciding that individuals who they think “look Cuban” and probably want to be in this country so much they fought to get here are somehow less American looking than those who had the fortune to be born here.  For the black man who was tased in Minnesota, it is a matter of extreme embarrassment in front of his kids and the unsettling reality that he cannot trust the police to be for him.  In the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the racism that plagues us as a people turned out to be deadly. 

            I said earlier, this where real life, your life and mine, and the Bible and the Holy Spirit of God collide. 

            Ephesians 2 is seen against the backdrop of divided people.  Those called “the circumcision,” the Jews were distinct.  Jewish males were circumcised.  Gentiles males, all men who were not Jewish, did not get circumcised.  Jewish people lived by the Law of Moses.  Those who were not Jewish did not live by the law.  The Jews observed Sabbath.  Perhaps this distinction was the oddest to the Gentiles around them.  Why don’t the Jews work today?  Everyone else does?  What makes today so special?

            These distinctions marked the Jews as separate, holy, the people of God.  But they also marked all non-Jewish people as being not included in the people of God.  Gentiles were vile, unclean, and cut-off.  The division was as dramatic and pregnant withthe danger of violence as are the divisions between people in our country today. 

            It cannot be so for we who are “in Christ.”  Paul would not tolerate two churches – a Gentile Church and a Jewish one.  He insists that in Christ Gentiles are “no longer strangers and aliens but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (2:19).  Were Paul to step onto the scene today, he’d tell churches that divisions are antithetical to the Gospel.  Even if our worship styles are different, we are to be one.  Even if my grandparents persecuted your grandparents, I am to confess and repent, and you are to forgive.  We are to be one in Christ.  Even if our peers don’t seek unity and love, as followers of Christ you and are I commanded to seek unity and love in Christ. 

            In Ephesians 2, Gentiles by virtue of being Gentile are separated from God.  “Remember,” we read in verse 12, we who are Gentiles, “were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”  However, in Christ, by the blood of Christ, we are now brought near.  Jesus, is our peace.

            This word peace is central.  I specifically wish individuals in law enforcement would have the inner drive to seek peace and the imaginative creavity to find peaceful solutions to conflicts.  I am sure in a confrontation a policeman feels disrespected.  And if they don’t respect him, he will lose the authority he needs to do his job.  I am sure that’s how he feels.  It is hard.  There is pressure.  I am sure he feels he must show his strength in order to be respected by. 

But, the effort to project strength is resulting in policemen and policewomen doing awful things like shooting unarmed teens and tasing Dads who wait to pick their kids up from school.  I wish more people wanted peace and worked for it.  In Ephesians 2, the word peace is mentioned in verse 14, 15, and twice in 17.

            Jesus is our peace.  “In his flesh, he made both groups into one and” broke down the dividing wall of hostility.  We cannot stop others from hating or giving in to fear.  But we can offer a new story.  We can help break down the wall of hostility through prayer and acts and words of love which include a willingness to listen as others tell the stories of when they were wounded by racism.  With humble patience we listen as much as the other needs us to listen.  What better act of love is there than to value another by affirming his worth as we listen to his story?

            We have to keep faith in Jesus at the center of this because He is our peace.  Without him driving our words, any steps toward peace come up short.  I know religion is a source of division in the world, but that is bad religion, religion built on the destruction of other.  In Christ, our posture is open, humble, inviting, God-focused, Spirit-powered, and aimed at love and unity. 

            This is why Ephesians 2 is so intent on destroying circumcision as a qualifying mark.  This is why Ephesians 2 insists in verse 15 that Jesus has abolished the law.  In the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and it is true.  Everything the law intended to accomplish in creating people who worship God and live with each other in peace is accomplished in and through Christ.  So in that sense, Jesus in fact fulfills the law completely.  But when the circumcision and the law are markers that identify some people as insiders and others as outsiders, then law and circumcisions no longer serve God’s purposes.  In that sense, Jesus does away with the distinctions. 

Therefore we see in verses 15-16 that Jesus “creates in himself one new humanity in place of the two, making peace and [reconciling] both groups to God in one body through the cross.”  The next verses insist that Jesus proclaims peace and peace means that we all have access to God.

In Christian faith we see this in Baptism and Communion.  Baptism tells a story that ends with an invitation: I was a sinner, I died in sin, Jesus rose from death, and because I am in Him, I will rise from death; and you can too if you receive Jesus into your life and follow Him.  He came that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life as children of God.  Communion is a share meal and the only requirement for coming to the table is the willingness to acknowledge sin and our powerlessness to defeat sin.  We come to the communion table as everyone comes to it: dependent on God for everything.

Our one humanity is not homogenous and I would not want it to be.  In other letters, Paul brags about his own Jewish credentials.  He is a Jewish man, not an everyman.  In Ephesians 2, he does not want Jews to stop being Jews.  He is not in search of the generic disciple.  There is no such thing.  Our relationship with God is always particular, always personal.  There is no general Christianity.  Christianity is always the story of you, an individual, walking with Jesus, living as his disciple.  It is even inaccurate to say, “The story.”  I cannot tell “the story,” but I can tell my story.

The world becomes beautiful when we hear one another’s’ stories.  I will never say, “Well, black people and Hispanics and Asians and whites – we’re really not all that different.”  We are.  We are beautifully different, but united in Christ. 

I pastored in Arlington for 9 years and I got into a group of friendships with single people or young couples prior to having kids.   Once kids come along and grow into school age you don’t hang out with friends very often.  Everything in life is geared toward baseball practice and orthodontist appointments and PTA meetings.  By the time it is all done each day, you can’t go out to clubs or sports bars.  For one thing, you’re too tired.  For another, it would be irresponsible to leave the house with your children in bed asleep and go out for beers. 

But, years ago, I did have that life and I had my crowd.  We’d go out to eat at Dupont Circle or go to movies in Adams Morgan.  One of the guys in that crowd is married to a woman who is not Caucasian.  I say it that way deliberately because for years, I did not know her ethnicity.  And I was scared to ask.  She is very outspoken, politically far, far to the left of me, and I thought if I ask, “What are you,” fiery laser beams would come out of her eyes and pierce my skull.  So I didn’t ask.

We were part of the same circle, though.  We all even traveled to Honduras together in 2004 when one of our group married a Honduran woman.  So I was around her a lot.  I now don’t remember the conversation, but I remember her figuring out that I had no clue about her ethnicity.  She liked that I didn’t know and that she knew I was uncertain of how to ask.  After teasing me a bit, she finally told me she was Korean.  She had been adopted by a Caucasian family in Ohio.  They had 4 boys and her mother wanted a daughter badly.  So they adopted a Korean girl.

If you go deep enough with people and listen long enough, you get past the uncomfortable issues that plague our world, like the race conversation.  People will find you are safe and they can share their stories with you.  And they do because we all want to share our stories.  And when they do, then the race conversation is no longer uncomfortable.  It is beautiful.

Janessa and I were friends and so when Candy and I were getting ready to adopt, I could talk to her.  I could ask, “Now you are an adult.  What is it like, your relationship with the parents who adopted you?  What do I need to do to make sure my children will want a relationship with me when they are grown?”  And she helped me. 

Maybe it sounds like I am way off topic here.  I have been discussing unity in Christ especially among people of different races and I have wandered off on this tangent about my old crowd in DC.  But this is the point! Janessa and I remained as white man and Korean woman, but as we listened to one another and came to that safe place in friendship, we became something more.  We became brother and sister in Christ, people who listened to one another’s stories and helped each other. 

This is the other story, the alternative narrative.  Ferguson, Missouri is a reminder that there’s a lot of hate in the world.  The body of Christ has another story to tell – the story of the gospel bringing us together, making us one. 

AMEN

Arrested for Blocking the Sidewalk

            I enjoyed a vacation to Cleveland this week.  If “vacation to Cleveland” sounds odd to you, try it before you knock it.  There are museums, restaurants, sports, and the waterfront.  The people were so friendly – at the ballpark, at the hotel, even on the street; I feel like it is as friendly a place as I have been. 

            So, I got back, and I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I was feeling relief from not dealing with stories related to Ferguson or police brutality or anything like that.  I have never had to face injustice, but I was fatigued just reading about it.  (My heart breaks for people who actually are victims of injustice).

Then I got home.   

Catching up on emails, I was reminded of the reality of white privilege.  And I was reminded of how sad and how scary the possibility of a police state can be.  A woman was arrested for standing on the sidewalk while she waited for her husband and kids to use the public restroom. 

Look at her photo.  She is a wife and mom.  Her only crime is she is not white.  What happened never would have happened to her if she were black.  Note in the story the lies the police tell her husband about women taking their husbands’ last names.  Yes, that does happen in the U.S., but a lot of women decide not to do that.  Many women decide not to take their husband’s last name.  For a policemen to say his suspicion was aroused because the husband and wife had different last names is a flat out lie.  The police terrorized a family – in New York City; in Times Square. 

What’s next?

http://gothamist.com/2014/09/03/nypd_sidewalk_arrest.php#.