Lent 4, 2015 - The Confession of the Church

God brings life to death. God forgives. I need to start by proclaiming these things, as obvious as they might be, because if we don’t cling to these truths, we are not going to make it through the next ten minutes of this sermon. God brings life to death, and God forgives. Remember this.

So, we’re moving towards Easter, and towards the proclamation of new life in the face of death and to the celebration of Christ’s resurrection that demonstrates the power of God’s forgiveness and light in the face of darkness. But this proclamation and celebration is meaningless if we do not first acknowledge the death and darkness that cause us to yearn for this life and light in the first place. And so in Lent, we spend time reflecting on these things, although of course we’d rather not. Lent is a time when we are particularly called to be honest and to be brave and to face the reality of this world, so that we might recognize the glory of Easter and the coming of God’s kingdom.

Today we are called to face the reality of the death and darkness in the world that is caused by us. By Christians. By followers of God. And I’ll be honest that I would rather not talk about this. I know that sometimes you come to church to get away from all of the darkness in the world, and to receive comfort, and the last thing you want to hear is a depressing sermon. And I’ve been looking for a way all week to avoid talking about this. But last week’s Gospel lesson, and this week’s reading from John and the readings that are coming for Holy Week, combined with President Obama’s statement a couple of weeks ago at the National Prayer Breakfast about the atrocities committed in the name of the Christian religion–all these things have come together and have been weighing on me–given me a guilty conscience, actually, and so here we are.

So here’s what we as Christians have to face. On the one hand, we have the Christian proclamation, “For God so loved the world.” We have this thorough conviction that God loves the world, and that Jesus loves the world, and that we are called to follow Christ by loving the world. Jesus tells us in Matthew to love our enemy, and to pray for those who persecute us. Jesus tells us that if our enemy is hungry, we should feed them. The letters in the New Testament tell us that we should not repay evil with evil, but with blessing. Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile, to lay down our lives as he did, not just for our friends but for our enemies. We can all agree that Jesus responded to violence with peace, that he responded to hate with love, and that he would rather give his life than take another. And he calls his followers - Christians - to do the same.

So there’s that. And then there’s our history. There’s the passage from last week, where Jesus goes into the Temple with a whip and violence, overturning tables, shouting at people, and being very un-peaceful. Now, to be fair, even the very earliest Christian fathers - those who founded the Christian church - thought that this story couldn’t be true, because Jesus couldn’t possibly have acted that way. But even if we set aside this story, we have today’s reading from John. It starts out okay - “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son .... in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already.” Whoa - what just happened here? All of a sudden, the reading gets very harsh. Hostile, even. The Gospel of John divides the world into those who believe in Jesus, who are saved, who are children of the light, and good, and those who do not believe in Jesus, who are condemned, who are children of the darkness, and evil. The world becomes stripped down into black-and-white, good guys and bad guys, and if you’re not with us, you’re against us. As the writer of the Gospel interprets Christian history, and remember that this Gospel was not an eyewitness account, but written well after Jesus’ actual crucifixion and resurrection - in John’s history, the Jews killed Jesus by calling for his crucifixion (nevermind that all of Jesus’ disciples were actually Jewish), and that the “bad ones” in the story are always “the Jews.” The writer of the Gospel of John only uses “Jews” to talk about bad guys. Those who follow Jesus are never described that way, even though they were - they were described as truth-follower. Children of the light. The Gospel of John is extremely hostile to those who don’t follow Jesus, and to the Jews in particular, and we will hear it over and over again as we listen to the texts approaching Easter.

And here’s the thing. Here’s the part that I really would rather not preach about, and the part that I’m sure you would really rather not hear about, and the reason I made sure my kids weren’t in church today. These texts of hostility - this division between us-and-them (didn’t we talk about this last week?) - these texts - which are not just in John but throughout the Bible, both Old and New Testament - they have had a profound influence on the actions of Christians in the world. This idea that Christians are children of the light sent out to conquer children of the darkness, the idea that we are good and others are evil, the idea that it is our job as Christians to confront and overcome those who do not follow Christ - this violence is one of the legacies of the Christian church on earth. These texts from John were used on Good Friday, to preach that Christians should go out and kill Jews. In Toulouse, France, during the middle ages it was the custom to find a Jew on Easter, drag him to the front steps of the cathedral, and strike a blow to his head. Sometimes this blow was so severe as to kill him. “But he killed Jesus! He’s a child of the darkness. He’s evil!” During the First Crusades, a Christian war to rid the world of evil infidels, Christians in German cities by the Rhine killed 12,000 Jews in a three-month span in the year 1096. In those same Crusades, Christian soldiers beseiged Jerusalem, and despite offers by the Fatamid Muslims to share the Holy City, the Crusaders slaughtered 50,000 Jews and Muslims. A document from that time by a Crusader says the soldiers were in blood up to their ankles. “But they are not followers of Christ! They reject Christ! They’re evil!” From the 14th to the 18th century, Christians killed between 40,000 and 75,000 women on accusations of being witches. John Calvin had an opponent burned at the stake for heresy. In the early 16th century, in Germany, the Christian aristocracy killed between 100,000 and 300,000 peasants, inspired by words of  Martin Luther. In the late 17th century, an American Puritan pastor, a pastor rejoiced when he found out that 600 Native Americans had been burned alive. Our Christian history is an appalling almost two thousand year long legacy of Christians killing their enemies. Not praying for them. Not turning the other cheek. Not loving them. Killing them.

“But that wasn’t us,” you might be thinking. “That wasn’t me.” “I can’t be held accountable for what they did in the past!” “I wouldn’t do that!” Or “We didn’t start it - we were persecuted first!” You know, these are the excuses my children make when they get caught doing something wrong. Let’s be adults here. This is Lent, and this is a time of repentance. Lent is a time not just for individual repentance, but for corporate repentance. There’s a reason we say confession together at the beginning of the service. There are some sins that are so huge they involve everybody, and some sins so staggering that we must repent of them for generations. And we should be ashamed of trying to wriggle out of these accusations. As Christians who follow Jesus, who told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us - not punish them, pray for them - as Christians who are about to celebrate that Jesus gave his life and asked for forgiveness for those who had clearly wronged him - as Christians who claim that the faith we confess is 2,000 years old, and who claim God’s blessing has extended to us through the generations, we need to also confess that we, as a Church, as a community of Christ-followers, have done terrible, violent, murderous things. We, who are supposed to love, have killed. We, who are children of the light, have brought darkness. We, who are supposed to be good, have committed evil. And, lest we think that this is all in the past, I only need to say: the former Yugoslavia - 1990 - 100,000 people, mostly Bosnian Muslims and Croatians, were killed, and women raped, by Serbian soldiers who operated under the explicit blessing of the Serbian Orthodox Church; Rwanda - 1994 - almost 1 million Rwandans were killed - in April of that year, a priest offered shelter in his church to over 4,000 Rwandans, and then this “priest” removed the communion elements and ordered a bulldozer to take down the building with the people inside and then invited militia in to finish the job. This wasn’t the only time this happened in Rwanda and we knew about this. The western media knew about this. But what did we, as Christians, do? Did we publicly condemn these atrocities committed by people of our faith? Did we as Christians denounce those other Christians who were killing their enemies? Did we remind them that Jesus told us to love our enemies? And in case this still isn’t current enough - the Central African Republic - 2014 - Christian militia beheaded a Muslim man despite the presence of peacekeepers in the region. Who are the children of the light and who are the children of the dark? Who are the ones who love good and who are the ones who love evil? “For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.” Who exactly is Jesus talking about here?

Do you remember what I said at the beginning of this sermon? God brings life to death, and God forgives. All of this history I have just recounted is too much, it is too overwhelming, and it should crush us under our own guilt if we do not remember that God brings life to death. The guilt of Christian violence, if we acknowledge and confess it, should and does kill us. But we are on a path towards Easter. And in Easter, death has met its match. Death has been overcome. Not by confrontation or hatred or violence. Death has been overcome by love, and by forgiveness, and by the grace of God in Christ. The Easter message that we so desperately need to hear at this moment is that God brings new life wherever there is death. God brings new life wherever we bring death. 

Easter means that those whom we have killed, God has gathered up into God’s embrace and given new life. Easter means that God’s kingdom is packed full of our enemies, those whom we did not love and those for whom we did not pray. Easter means what the Gospel of John actually manages to get right - that the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. God does not allow ours sins to win. God overcomes our evil and our darkness with God’s own good and God’s own light. God overcomes our hatred with the love of Jesus. God overcomes our killing with the new life we see in the resurrected Christ.

And, although we do not deserve it, God shares Easter with us, too. We heard it earlier, from Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. Chapter 2, verse 4. “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” The result of Christian works has too often been violence and death. But God gives the gift of new life and forgiveness, and grace through Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Lent 3, 2015 - Ich-Du

I have two magnets on my fridge that I particularly like. One says, "Because I'm the mother ... that's why." and the other is from Alcatraz Island, the site of the infamous maximum security prison, and it says, "Regulation #5. You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else you get is a privilege." I like these magnets because when I look at them, they make me feel tough and in-charge, and like I'm the boss of the house. They make me think that I'm right to want the kids to have chores, and that I'm right when I want to be stricter with them and impose consequences for every misdemeanour, and that I'm perfectly justified in demanding that they listen to me without question, and do what I say, and obey me at every turn. When I look at these magnets, I feel strong and powerful, and authoritative. These magnets are, in a sense, commandments. They are the rules of our house. You shall obey your mother. You shall be grateful for what you get. You shall work for the things that are extras.

But you know, I struggle sometimes with being this kind of rules person. You see, one of the things that’s come up in the last few months of visiting and talking with people in their 80s and 90s is that there is a distinct difference in quality in the interactions between families where the children grew up in a rules-based house and families where the children grew up in a relationship-based house. Now, I'll explain what I mean by relationship-based house in a minute, but in a rules-based house, children were taught that following the rules was the most important thing. Whether they were house rules or Bible commandments, the rules - well, they ruled. Don't question your parents, don't cause trouble, finish your food, sit up straight at the table, go to church every Sunday, sit up straight in church. We would call these families very strict, and there's no doubt that, in many cases, this way of living was a mode of survival. I know that when families are trying to get through a crisis, and just struggling to survive, that they often have to turn to the reliability and dependability of rules. When things are in chaos, we need stability and predictability. And rules offer that.

But when rules are the only things that a family, or a community, knows, that's when things can get tricky. Because when we rely only on rules, we end up treating those who are supposed to follow the rules, not as people, but as objects. As things. As things which are supposed to follow the rules, but probably aren't. A famous German Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, called this way of relating to someone as being in an I-It interaction with them. In his original German, he called it Ich-Es. This kind of interaction with people is built solely on rule-following. We don't see the other person as an individual, or as a person like us. We see them as a rule-follower, as an "It." We don't recognize their God-given uniquenesses, we don't have compassion for their frailties, we don't think of the love that they have to share with us, we don’t overlook or forgive their infractions. We think of us, and we think of them. Buber called it an I-It interaction, but we might call it an Us-Them interaction. When we live with only rule-following as the foundation of our live, we divide the world into those who follow the rules - presumably "us" - and those who don't - "them." When my husband and I set down some rule in the house, and the kids break it, my husband and I become "us" and the kids become "them." A divide grows between us adults and them children. We're the parents, they're the kids. And we see this divide in families where the children have long been grown up and living on their own. The gap between the parents and the children that was created by a strict emphasis on rules is evident throughout the life of those families, even though they are now all adults. The parents and the children have strained relationships - everyone is still trying to live by the rules, and still treating each other as "Its" - still living with Us-Them interactions. 

So, like I said, I struggle with this rules thing. Because rules clearly have their place - they establish stability, they even - when interpreted correctly - protect society. They protect the weak and vulnerable. The Ten Commandments are great examples of that - “You shall not murder” protects those who are too weak to physically protect themselves. “You shall not commit adultery,” in Israelite times, protected women who would otherwise be cast out by their husbands and made homeless. Today we might say, You shall not abuse women. “You shall not steal” protects those who have to work to support their family. “You shall not bear false witness” protects those who would otherwise be vulnerable to lies about them. “You shall not covet” protects those who can't protect their belongings without help. We can't have no rules at all - anarchy is great for the powerful and hell for the vulnerable. We need rules. But, we can't relate to people through rules alone. We can't create community or family on I-It or Us-Them, rules-based interactions alone.

But I don't think we're supposed to. I just said that the Ten Commandments protect the weak and vulnerable, but more than that, they protect relationships. At the foundation of these commandments is the idea that the reason we don't hurt people is because they are people. They are God's creation, just like we are. We don't bear false witness and lie about others because doing so is destroying the reputation of another person, not a thing, not an It. We don't steal because it would be stealing from another person, like us. We're not stealing from Its, or from things, or from "them." We're stealing from others like us, we're disrupting the relationship. Buber had a name for this relationship, too. Standing against the I-It, Ich-Es, Us-Them interaction is the I-Thou, or I-You, or, in German, the Ich-Du relationship. The I-Thou relationship is built on seeing the other as ourselves. It comes from building on relationship, actually, instead of rules. It take the gap between us and them and turns it into a "we."

This I-Thou, or "we" is the foundation of the relationship-based families that I mentioned earlier. In these families, where the children grew up where relationships were the priority, rather than rules - not that rules were abandoned - but where the love between family members was the guiding principle, these families live as "we." There is no division between the adult children and their parents - there is only love and care. They are kind to one another, and respectful of one another, and compassionate, and merciful, and forgiving. All the things that God calls us to be, when you think about it. I've seen this with my own children, actually. Those moments when I come down with the rules, when I override their feelings and their thoughts by demanding that they submit, those are the moments when I feel that they are the farthest from me. They don't see me as a person, or even as their mother who loves them - they see only a law-giver who doesn't care about them. But those moments when I approach them on the basis of our relationship - out of love and compassion, and an understanding that we all have bad days that make it hard for us to do what we're supposed to do, and with forgiveness and grace - those are the moments when we reach one another and when we live as "we" and when they can see the relationships under the rules and, interestingly, find it easier to follow those very rules.

So how do we move from I-It, Us-Them rules-based interactions to I-Thou, We, relationship-based interactions? How do we change those intrenched behaviours that may have gone on for decades? Well, we don’t. But God does. God gives us rules and commandments in order to provide stability and protect our relationships with one another. But above all, God gives us love. "For I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments." I preached on this verse a couple of months ago, and it's important enough to repeat again. God's relationship with us, God's everlasting covenant with God's people, is based most importantly on steadfast love. God is determined to have an I-Thou relationship with us. Yes, God establishes rules, but God forgives. Through Christ, God forgives us all of our rule-demanding and our rule-breaking, God forgives us when we break the commandments and when we break relationships. And God loves us, and in loving us, transforms I-It, Us-Them interactions into I-Thou relationships, where each person is a dearly loved child of God. When we trust that God’s love outlasts God’s punishments, when we allow ourselves to fall into the I-Thou relationship with God that God already has with us, the power of the love in that relationship spills over into all of our other relationships. When we feel that God loves us as persons, as individuals and not as things or Its, we can love others in the same way. Because we are God’s “Thous” - we can see others as “Thous” and God can work to transform our I-It interactions into I-Thou relationships.

So I have these two magnets on my fridge. “Because I’m the mother ... that’s why.” And “You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else you get is a privilege.” And they’re kind of funny, and they make me feel powerful and in-charge, but they don’t make me love my children more or make my children love me. So on our fridge I also have pictures of the children, and my husband, and our friends. Pictures of people whom God has put into our lives as living reminders of the I-Thou, I-You relationships, signs of God’s gracious love. Rules and commandments are important, but they only take us so far. Underneath them lies God’s I-Thou relationship with creation, a relationship God is calling us to and that God already shares with us. Thanks be to God. Amen.