The Meaning of Jesus: A Vision for Christian Life April 15, 2007 – Rev. David Tinney Text: Matthew 5:13-16 Theme: As Christians we are called to act, look, love, and think like our Risen Lord. I heard a cute story this past week about a rather gossipy, know-it-all, judgmental matriarch of a small town. When Bessie got the goods on someone she let them know it and let them sweat about it for a long time. She was forever taking the innocent events of the town and turning them around into the worst possible scenarios and wreaking havoc in people’s lives. One day Wally left his pickup truck in front of the local tavern all night. The next day Bessie had rumors circulating that he was face down drunk in the bar and made a spectacle of himself. Later that week Wally’s truck broke down in the shady part of town and she made all sorts of assumptions about why he was there and what he was spending all night doing. Wally went to Bessie to ask her to quit but she would not let up. “Honey, I just report the facts and let other people fill in the details,” she said defending herself. So for the next week Wally left his pickup in front of Bessie’s house every night. By the end of the week Bessie had changed her ways. I tell this creative and funny story to show that many of us fall into Bessie’s trap of making assumptions that are based on the way things appear rather than on what they truly are. In fact we make assumptions on what a Christian life should look like based on media reports, or old sayings handed down in families, or trends that catch the headlines but don’t reflect the majority. For instance how many here heard the axiom “you can’t mix politics and religion?” Was that true of the way Christ led his life? Or how many have ever heard the criticism that you can tell if a person is Christian by their lack of joy, or by their judging hearts, or by being more concerned about who is getting into heaven than who is getting fed our housed? These are assumptions many make about Christians that are not true. This morning I would like to strip away some of our assumptions about Christian living and present a vision for what our lives would look like if we were to have a relationship with our Risen Lord. I will have to confess from the beginning that this vision is not mine but one that I have gleaned from the book that we have been studying in our Lenten Bible study. This is the final sermon series based on the book by Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright entitled “The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions” and I will have to say it has been a great class that has pushed our understanding of theology. It has produced some of the best debates and discussions that I have ever been a part of and since it was done in grace no one emerged broken and bloody. The book and class helped me shape my theology with even more clarity than ever before and to understand how much for me physical resurrection of Jesus is the bedrock of my faith. I think that was true of others in the class. As I said before the two authors often took very different paths – one holding to traditional ideas about major theological concepts like the virgin birth, the vocation of messiah, the death, and resurrection and the other calling them metaphors or more precisely history metaphorized by the first century Christian community. But in the end, as the two authors paint a vision of what a Christian life should be, they seem to be writing from the same script. So this morning I would like to highlight parts of their shared vision because I think both men offer a keen insight for how we as individuals and as the corporate body of the Church should be shaped by our relationship with our Lord Jesus. Let us start with the vision for the church. Too often we think of church time as simply the time we gather in the sanctuary to worship. Sometimes those worship experiences are energized and uplifting and other times they are dry and draining. There is a joke that has been making its way around the internet for years about a young girl who is standing in the narthex of her church looking at a wall of plaques. As she is trying to read them the pastor comes up and says, “These plaques are to honor those who have died in service.” The little girl quickly responds, “Which one the 9am or the 10:30 am service?” Hopefully our services do not fall into that deadly mold but church is more than about worship it is also about mission, teaching, small groups, connection, and encouragement. N.T. Wright said there is a balance that needs to be established in all churches between worship and mission. If a church leans too heavily towards worship and does not reach out in mission it becomes self-indulgent. If a church is very social justice oriented and spends all of its time on the street working for others and does not spend time in worship then the latter degenerates into various forms of do-goodery (his word not mine) and we miss the connection with Jesus.1 There are great examples of unbalanced churches all around us. There are churches that focus so much on individual piety and salvation they are unable to see the hurting world outside their doors. There are also very liberal, social justice minded churches who are so busy feeding the hungry and housing the homeless that they have no time or feel no need to connect to the source of compassion in worship. The architecture of the cross is a constant reminder of how our Christian lives need to be formed. The upward beam reminds us that we need to maintain that vertical relationship with God that comes in prayer, meditation, study, and worship. The horizontal beam reminds us that we need to be reaching out to our sisters and brothers in need. You need both beams to make a cross and you need both worship and mission to grow an effective church. Both authors stressed spirituality. Notice I did not say being religious. Spirituality exists beyond the boundaries and confines of religion and denominations. In order to be formed or transformed by the Risen Lord we need to first have a relationship with him; or in the case of Christians with any expression of the Trinity. Marcus Borg states the obvious but it is so obvious that we often overlook it. He says, “Spirituality is entering into a conscious and intentional relationship with God. I emphasize conscious because we are already in a relationship with God from our very beginning, whether we realize that or not; spirituality is becoming conscious of that relationship.” The truth of this statement lies in what is unspoken. Most of us in this room know that we are in a relationship with God but we don’t understand how much God wants to deepen that relationship. God is like frustrated lover trying to get our attention and trying to gain a commitment so the relationship can deepen. This is where the intentionality comes in. When God gets our attention then we intentionally find ways through our spiritual disciplines of prayer, worship, meditation, journaling, Bible study, small groups, fasting, etc so that transformation can take place. Spiritual transformation means that we change our identity. We become more and more like the one we claim as Lord and we are freed of our anxieties and preoccupations that used to mark and mar our former lives.2 Spiritual transformation awakens the compassion within us and we see all people and all of nature as creations of God to be cared for and tended to as God would do without the judgments and valuations imposed by culture.3 Not only does spiritual transformation open our hearts but the Holy Spirit then opens our minds to wisdom that surpasses that of surrounding culture. Up to this point the Christian vision sounds pretty good but now it gets dicey because once our hearts and minds are open to this new “alternative wisdom” we find that we are pushed into the role of social prophet and we are championing causes that we never thought we would take. As social prophets we passionately fight for justice for those who cannot fight for themselves, for those who are beaten down by the oppressive systems of the day and for those who are marginalized and can’t be heard. Both Borg and Wright agree on the need for Christians to put their faith in action and to take on Jesus’ role as the social prophet in our culture but Wright uses the “P” word and frightens me. You know the “P” word? It is politics. Wright says forget what you were told in the past that you shouldn’t mix religion and politics. That is garbage. Jesus was forever mixing the two. The early Church was forever mixing the two. He would say that the Church should be transforming culture not the other way around. The old adage that we should keep our religion to ourselves that it is private is wrong. While it is true that each of us has our own private relationship with God, it is never true that God wants our faith to be private. God was forever calling forth leaders to use their transformed lives to transform culture. Jim Wallis, one of the great social prophets of our day, states in his book “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get it,” our relationship with God is personal but never PRIVATE.4 Each of us need to strike a balance between our private piety and the social gospel. We meet the personal God in the public arena where our faith is acted out.5 Powerful forces throughout history have tried to put God under control, or to disdain any kind of attempt to let God influence a public agenda unless it is to be the God of the status quo. God is not the protector of the status quo6 – not in Jesus’ time, not in the time of the prophets, not in Moses’ time, and not in our time. God hears God’s people cry and responds through social prophets courageous enough to do God’s work Listen to the topics that Jesus addressed in his day and compare them to the topics and troubles of our day. He spoke out against unfair taxes, debt, inequity, oppressive governments and systems where the elite benefited at the expense of the weak and poor, prisons, welfare, wages, racism, sexism, ageism, health and welfare, violence and dealing with enemies. This is the stuff of modern politics. When we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” we are saying that we will be active participants in addressing these Kingdom issues. The Christian vision involves changing the world around us to resemble the kingdom we claim will come! There is no greater collection of “alternative wisdom” than the writings of Jesus collected in Matthew 5-7 known more commonly as the Sermon on the Mount. They are words that challenge us, excite us, confront us, and frighten us because they call us to a higher moral standard than most of us care to imagine let alone live. Of all the words in the three chapters of instructions, I chose four verses that are strategically placed right after the Beatitudes. Just in case the reader is unsettled after reading the society tilting words of the Beatitudes, just in case the reader is thinking of backing away from living the new code of conduct, just in case the reader is contemplating the familiar notion that I can believe these things but not live them, Matthew puts two powerful images of social transformation. You are the salt of the earth…if you lose your flavor, if you forget what you have been called to do, which is transform the world and make it more flavorful, then you will be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world…if you hid it under a basket no one will see it, no one will be guided by your insights, no one will be changed. We are called to be transformers of our culture not to be transformed by it. You and I are called to present a new vision – Christ’s Kingdom vision of peace, justice, compassion, and mercy – to the world. That means mixing religion and politics and it probably will get messy. According to Jim Wallis as Christians we need to cast aside political labels and categories, we need to elevate the debate, recast the discussion, alter the context in which political decisions are now being made and change the wind of society rather than constantly complaining about it ever shifting direction.7 The vision for a Christian life is not complete without including healing. We are called as a church and as individuals to bring healing to our world. Healing is not limited to physical healing but includes emotional, psychological, relational, and spiritual. When we embrace our own healing and when we claim the forgiveness, compassion, mercy, and grace that has enabled us to be renewed and remade whole then we can offer it freely to others. The church and the individual Christian is at his or her best when we as wounded healers embrace, protect, comfort, and heal those who are wounded and weak around us. We are at our best when we put aside judgment and with wise compassion create a sanctuary for new life to emerge. In a world that manipulates our feelings of shame, guilt, and self worth, the Church needs to provide the sacred and non judgmental ground where we all discover our belovedness. Our vision statement as a church contains the dual responsibilities of healing and transforming. I remind you that we do not leave this work to professionals. We are all called to this sacred work. You and I are called to a high vision. Transformed in Christ we are called to be transformers of our community. Forgiven by Christ we are called to be healers and forgivers of others. Loved by Christ we are called to be the compassionate, inclusive, non-judging, and merciful presence. Inspired by the alternative word of Christ we are called to be compassionate champions for the marginalized and social prophets challenging the political context of our day. Claimed by Christ we are called to be intentional in our relationship with him and our Creator but also intentional in how we reach out to others. It is a great calling for a great Kingdom. 1 Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright, “The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions,” Harper SanFrancisco, 1999 p.207. 2 Borg and Wright, p. 243-4 3 Borg and Wright, p. 244 4 Jim Wallis, “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get it,” p31 5 Wallis, p40 6 Wallis, p31 7 Wallis, p22 --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------