Clarendon Presbyterian Church

Isaiah 6:1-8, Luke 5:1-11

Sept. 12, 2004

I was walking through the Eckerd Drugs the other day and the in-store sound system was playing John Lennon’s Starting Over. It’s one of those tunes that takes me straight back to college, and I had a momentary day dream ­ there as I was waiting for a prescription for some middle-age malady ­ of starting over. I didn’t think much of it, but then, a night or so later I had a dream that I was starting a new job.

As I reflected on that dream, I began counting the new beginnings and beginnings again all around me these days: Hannah beginning kindergarten, school beginning again for all of our children, fall sports kicking off, and, of course, a new program year beginning for us here at Clarendon.

The dream of beginning anew reminded me also of all the new jobs I have begun over the years, and of the sometimes barely traceable paths that led to those jobs.

I was asked in a job interview once what scripture passages I preached from. I answered, safely, that I tend to follow the lectionary cycle. But the person pressed the question, asking, “well, if you could set the lectionary aside, what would you preach from?”

I answered that, if asked to preach on my favorite passages, I’d pick three: Matthew 25, where Jesus says, “whatever you did to the least of these my sisters and brothers, you did to me”; Micah 6:8, “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God”; and, from the fifth chapter of Amos, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your brunt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

I lift these up this morning for two reasons: one, to let you know that we are going to depart from the lectionary cycle for the next few weeks to explore together what seem to me to be the most crucially important questions of our time for the church, and especially for a congregation that proudly proclaims itself to be progressive, inclusive and diverse; and, two, to point us toward some scriptural touchstones that will help us frame faithful responses to the questions of our time.

As we begin again, here at Clarendon, let’s return to first things, to foundational questions. Let’s get back to basics.

So what are these crucially important questions for our time? Well, let’s begin at the beginning, with those most basic human questions for any time: who are we and why are we here?

Our Reformed confessional heritage begins to answer, in the form of the first question of the Westminster Catechism, which asks, in its gender-biased language: what is the chief and highest end of man? In other words, what is the purpose of human existence? The Westminster divines, speaking to a mid-17^th century England whose church and society were torn apart by bitter social and political divisions, answered simply this: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy God forever.” [1]

The Presbyterian Church of our day, in its most recent catechism, asks the same question in more personal terms: who are you?

You have all heard this often enough: who are you? I am a child of God.

And, the second question asks, what does that mean? That God loves me.

We are, then, children of a loving God who are to praise God and enjoy God forever; who are, in essence, to love God.

That is the fundamental identity of all human beings: beloved children of God. It stands for all of us: conservative or liberal, man or woman, straight or gay, American or not, rich or poor, whatever race or creed or conviction. It stands for George W. Bush and for John Kerry. It stands for James Forbes and for Jerry Falwell. It stands for Pat Robertson and for William Sloan Coffin. It stands for churches at home in the Christian Coalition and for those more comfortable with Sojourners. It stands for American soldiers and for al Queda terrorists.

When we confess that Jesus is Lord of our lives, we place our trust in the One whose life incarnated ­ made flesh ­ the radical equality of the household of God and the unfathomable, boundless love of the Creator. This confession changes everything for, as Bonhoffer put it, “If God has loved the world, the whole of fallen creation, then [God] gave us no preference over the others. [God] has loved my worst enemy no less than myself.” [2]

This does not let us off the hook. It does not collapse the world into a gross kind of moral relativism that reduces all choices, decisions and actions to the same. Such reductionism amounts to saying, “well, since we cannot achieve absolutely sterile conditions, we might as well perform surgery in a pig sty.”

I don’t know about you, but if I have to have a surgical procedure I’m looking for the cleanest possible context. If I am looking for a faith community to draw me closer to the heart of a loving God, I’m looking for one whose theology, worship, common life and mission reflect and reveal that heart as clearly as possible.

To say that God loves conservatives just as God loves liberals does not mean there is no ethical or theological distinction between the words of the conservative former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and those of the quite progressive pastor of New York City’s Riverside Church. It means one thing when the Rev. Jerry Vines says, “All religions are not the same. All religions are not equally true. There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved except the name of Jesus.” [3] It means something else entirely when the Rev. James Forbes says, in the aftermath of September 11, “It does not matter which of the traditions you come from, in those traditions there is a spiritual reserve made for times like these. In times like these we need to respect one another, we need to join one another, we need to pray with one another in order that we may discern a path that leads us to a more hopeful future.” [4]

To say that God loves conservatives does not give us permission to remain silent when they twist the words of scripture to make of them a weapon in a war of division and exclusion rather than an invitation to deep communion. In such times as this, silence is a betrayal of the gospel.

To say that God loves Jerry Falwell just as God loves James Forbes does not mean that Jerry Falwell was right when he suggested, on September 13, 2001, as smoke was still rising from the Pentagon and the rubble of the Trade Center towers, that the terrorists were agents of divine judgment, saying, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians, the ACLU, People for the American Way ­ all of them who tried to secularize America: I point the finger in their face and say, ‘you helped this happen.’” [5]

To say that God loves Jerry Falwell does not give us permission to remain silent when Falwell, pretending to speak for God, fills the air with hatred that is so very, very far from the heart of God. In such times as this, silence is a betrayal of the gospel.

To say that God loves Pat Robertson just as God loves William Sloan Coffin does not mean there is no difference between the two. It means something when Robertson says, “There has been no society who has turned itself to widespread homosexuality that has survived. … Sooner or later God destroys them just like He [sic] did Sodom and Gomorrah.” [6]

It means something else altogether when Coffin says, “It is not scripture that creates hostility to homosexuality, but rather hostility to homosexual that prompts some Christians to recite a few sentences from Paul and retain passages from an otherwise discarded Old Testament law code. The problem is not how to reconcile homosexuality with scriptural passages that condemn it, but rather how to reconcile the rejection and punishment of homosexuals with the love of Christ.” [7]

To say that God loves Pat Robertson does not give us permission to remain silent when history and scripture are twisted to the demands of a narrow partisan political agenda. In such times as this, silence is a betrayal of the gospel.

To say that God loves folks who gravitate toward the Christian Coalition just as God loves the folks at Sojourners does not mean there is no difference between the two. It means something when some churches exclude and attack gays and lesbians. It means something else when a church articulates in its mission an understanding that God’s love is radically inclusive.

To say that God loves the people in both churches does not give us permission to remain silent when hostility masquerades as holiness, when prejudice poses as piety, and when bigotry hides behind the Bible. In such times as this, silence is a betrayal of the gospel.

To say that God loves American soldiers just as God loves al Queda terrorists does not mean there is no difference between the two. At the same time, it does it mean that we should remain silent in the face of war, or that we should not hold accountable and bring to justice all those who use the tactics of terror.

Permission to remain silent, to sit by passively, is not at all what it means when we say that God loves our worst enemies no less than God loves us, or to acknowledge that God loves those with whom we disagree just as much as God love us. No, In such times as this, silence is a betrayal of the gospel.

Bonhoeffer’s observation is nothing less than a revolutionary challenge: if God has loved the others, the enemies, the outsiders, those with whom we disagree, just as much as God has loved us, then when we confess Jesus as Lord of our lives, we are called to love the others, the enemies, the outsiders, and those with whom we disagree, just as we love ourselves.

That calling certainly requires that we be bold in pressing for peace, and that we take seriously the words of the Confession of 1967, which reminds us that the “church, in its own life, is called to practice the forgiveness of enemies and to commend to the nations as practical politics the search for cooperation and peace. This search requires that the nations pursue fresh and responsible relations across every line of conflict, even at risk to national security, to reduce areas of strife and to broaden international understanding.” [8]

Still, I must confess that loving enemies in the abstract is often far easier than loving those very present sisters and brothers within the Christian community with whom we profoundly disagree.

Part of loving those with whom we disagree lies in lovingly holding them accountable ­ holding them accountable for the effects of their words and holding them accountable to the best of progressive theology. And part of loving them, lies in holding ourselves accountable to the best and most faithful challenges from our conservative sisters and brothers.

This means holding ourselves accountable to the gospel challenge to go forth into all the world. It means holding ourselves accountable to a vision of personal piety often at odds with the values of the culture. It means practicing our faith with renewed and deepened conviction, even as we hold conservatives accountable to a gospel-based vision of justice rolling down like a mighty water, of an inclusive household of God, of building the beloved community here and now.

So, who are we, then, we who call ourselves a “progressive, inclusive, diverse Christian community?” As the Westminster divines answered for their time of crisis, we will answer for ours. We will love God.

The marks of our love are these:

v                 We will live accountable to Jesus’ challenge to care for the least of these, for those marginalized and cast out by the broader culture, the poor, the immigrant stranger, those disabled and differently abled, sexual minorities, racial minorities, religious minorities, those labeled “suspect” in an age of widespread suspicion.

v                 We will live accountable to the prophetic calling to make our worship a place where justice rolls down and righteousness streams forever.

v                 We will live accountable to the prophetic challenge of doing justice, loving with merciful kindness, walking humbly with God.

In our time ­ in the time after September 11, in the time of permanent and seemingly endless war, in the time when highway signs tell us to watch for and report suspicious activities, in a time of ongoing “culture wars,” in a time of great division within the church and the culture ­ in such a time as this there is no more difficult, and yet no more decisively crucial calling than this: that we proclaim and live into a creative love for those with whom we disagree, for those with whom we seem to share so little, indeed, for those with whom our nation wars.

Will it matter? Will it make a difference? Some times I grow weary and disheartened. The news that pours forth day after day is not good. We, as a nation, seem bent on legalizing assault weapons and criminalizing same-sex marriage. The death toll of Americans in Iraq passes 1,000. The toll of dead Iraqis rises past more than 10 times that figure. The number of Americans living in poverty climbs and the taxes on the wealthiest fall. The rolls of mainline churches shrink as does the courage of most mainline Christians.

But amidst such gloomy news last week I found reason for hope, buried in the Washington Post obituaries. It does say something about our times that there’s more hope to be found among the dead than the living. Be that as it may, the obits carried the story of the Rev. C.F. Beyers Naude, a South African cleric who died last week at the age of 89. As a young man, Naude was a respected member of the Dutch Reformed Church who, the paper said, “spent decades spouting biblical justifications for the South African apartheid regime.” [9] But in the middle of his life, confronted by black suffering, by black Christians, and by gospel truth, Naude had a conversion experience and became an outspoken critic of the apartheid regime. He was thrown out of his church, his home was firebombed and he was “banned” by the government. But in the final 20 years of his life he succeeded Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu as head of the South African Council of Churches. In a picture accompanying the obituary, Nelson Mandela is seen pushing the Rev. Naude’s wheelchair, just a few months ago.

Change is possible. Redemption does occur. The arc of the moral universe is long, but when the voices of the faithful sing out, it does bend toward justice.

So, as we begin again here at Clarendon, what shall we say to the challenges of our time?

When the carpenter’s son comes looking for fishers of humanity, what shall we say? When the God of love comes looking for someone to proclaim that love anew and afresh, what shall we say?

When the waters of righteous are blocked by the detritus of injustice, and God comes calling for someone to let justice roll down like a mighty water, what shall we say?

As for me and my household, I pray for the wisdom, the courage and the strength to say, “here I am, Lord. Send me.” Amen.

 

Rev. Dr. David E. Ensign