Jeremiah 1:4-10; Romans 12:1-2
Presented April 27, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
Quaker author Philip Gulley has a new book entitled For Everything a Season, a series of meditations based on the familiar text from Ecclesiastes 3, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted . . .” The first meditation is based upon A Time to be Born, and he shares the story of his father, year after year on Philip’s birthday, telling Philip the story of unfolding events on the night of Philip’s birth. A ritual developed between Philip and his father, with the father asking, “Have I ever told you what happened the night you were born?” and Philip responding, “I don’t believe so.” And then would come the story of a 20-mile drive on a cold winter’s night through a snowstorm so intense that the outline of neighbor’s houses could scarcely be seen, with the defroster in the car not working, and Philip’s father nearly getting frostbite on his face from driving with his head out the window. And finally, after running a red light and being stopped by an officer, the family received a police escort the remainder of the way to the hospital.
Finishing the story, Philip’s father would conclude, “That makes you special.” It was a story, shares Philip Gulley, that frequently helped him through the hard times of growing up. “In my teenage years,” writes Gulley,
When my father and I were at odds, I would remember how he suffered frostbite to bring me safely into this world . . . and my heart would soften. I was a skinny child, the target of bullies. When beaten up and ridiculed, I would take comfort in the fact that I was ushered into this world with a police escort and they were not. It was a wonderful gift my father gave me, that story. He could not give me wealth or fame to ease my way, so he gave me that story and it provided a deep consolation.
Stories can indeed carry significant power in our lives, can they not? Even when Philip Gulley discovered, many years later, how embellished the story was, its power did not fade, for the primary message was not in the details, but in the affirmation that Philip was special, that Philip was loved.
The gospel story carries even greater power for us, with its remarkable conviction that God loves us with a love that will not let us go—a conviction that not only assures us that you and I are God’s beloved sons and daughters, but as God’s children, we are called to share in Christ’s ministry; we are called to give witness to the good news of a love so deep, so grace-filled, so transforming, that we can never again be satisfied with business as usual.
Sadly, the Christian community all too often finds itself embattled over details about the gospel story, in the process losing sight of the heart of that story. Brian McLaren, frequent writer about the spiritual life, reminds us that Jesus came “confront[ing] the framing story that drove the society of his day and offered [in its place] a radical alternative.” It is the alternative story of life in the kingdom of God—an invitation to live, here and now, as if God’s kingdom were fully present among us. It is a call to embrace Christ’s new story for our living, a story that speaks of new possibilities in God’s kingdom—a realm of living based not on oppressive control and domination over others but on bottom-up service; a realm of living marked not by a clenched fist but by open, wounded hands extended in a welcoming embrace of kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, and grace; a realm of living that embraces not the way of fear and violence and suspicion but one that challenges us instead to love our enemies and pursue the things that make for peace; a realm of living ever seeking to expand the circles of God’s renewing love—a gospel not of exclusion but of radical inclusion.
William Sloane Coffin, former pastor of the noted Riverside Church in New York City, laments that much of the church’s evangelism—much of its proclamation of the good news about Jesus—little speaks to the critical issues and needs of the day. For most portrayals of the gospel overlook the basic truth that “Jesus subverted the conventional religious wisdom of his time.” Coffin then offers this challenge:
We have to do the same. The answer to bad evangelism is not no evangelism but good evangelism. Good evangelism is not proselytizing but witnessing, bearing witness to “the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it;” bearing witness to the prophet’s cry, “Let justice roll down like mighty waters;” and [bearing witness] to the prophetic insight that we all belong one to another, every one from the pope to the loneliest wino on the planet.
Our spiritual forerunners, the early Brethren, recognized that Christ calls us to embrace a radically alternative story, and along the way, those Brethren began to understand themselves as a “peculiar people.” Peculiar because of an uncompromising conviction that we are to look to Jesus rather than to the world around us for our values and priorities in life; peculiar because of a commitment to nonconformity. It is a matter of seeking the kingdom of God above all else, of choosing to walk in the ways of Jesus—loving God wholeheartedly and serving neighbor compassionately, going the extra mile in relationships, praying and working for justice to roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream, pursuing the things that make for peace, placing our trust in the God of hope. Sadly, during the course of our history, there have been times when the Brethren have been inclined to reduce what it means to be a peculiar people to a matter of outward appearance, to plain dress and proper hairstyles, to a list of do’s and don’ts. But when we’ve been at our best, we have heard the apostle Paul’s call not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds and spirits. It is a call to walk in a spirit of peace while living in a world that assumes violence and rancor to be fundamental responses to human conflict; it is a call to live as servants in a world that extols those who claw to get ahead in life; and it is a call to invite all manner of people to join us in the journey of faith, when the world instead cautions suspicion and urges us to erect barriers of to separate us one from another.
Our present age—is it not?—is a crucial time for Brethren to embrace anew the practice of nonconformity, to heed the apostle’s admonition to “not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” In The Message Eugene Person offers this paraphrase of Romans 12:1-2:
Here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for God. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what God wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann asserts that there is a growing tension, a developing collision course, between two competing perspectives. On the one hand, consumer militarism stands at the heart of contemporary American life, feeding on our greed and our fears, and on the other hand stands the Christian faith, this matter of trusting in our God to bring forth the best out of us. Navigating this deep divide, says Brueggemann, is the great spiritual challenge of our day. But it’s really nothing new, the conflict between faith and fear, between trust in God and trust in possessions and yearning for security through weaponry and force. Centuries before Jesus, in the days leading up to the period of exile, ancient Israel experienced a similar collision course. The prophet Jeremiah lamented about his fellow Israelites,
For from the least to the greatest of them,
everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
and from prophet to priest,
everyone deals falsely.They have treated the wounds of my people carelessly,
saying “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.They acted shamefully, they committed abomination;
yet they were not ashamed,
they did not know how to blush (Jeremiah 6:13-15).
They did not know how to blush. For the people had made easy peace with injustice and selfishness, with a growing disparity between the rich and the poor, with reliance upon political intrigue and military alliances. In such a climate Jeremiah hears a call to embrace the life of a prophet. Jeremiah protests that he is too young; in effect, Jeremiah is saying that he would far prefer living his own life. But it is a call that cannot be ignored, this task of setting an alternative way of living before the people. Brueggemann defines vocation as a matter of “finding a purpose for being in the world which is related to the purposes of God;” it is a two-fold call: not simply standing against injustice and greed, against whatever keeps us from living in the light of God’s warm embrace, but even more, it is witnessing to a new vision for human life—to the vision of a life of beloved community, to borrow favorite language of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Brian McLaren suggests that the very essence of the gospel Jesus proclaimed—and certainly of the prophets who preceded him—lies in this wondrous invitation to adopt a new way of living, a new life-perspective, a new shaping story for our lives. Writes McLaren,
Jesus was saying, in essence, “There are a lot of bad stories in our world. But I have a good story that frames the bad ones, that puts them in a new light, that says they aren’t the last word. I have a good story that inspires healing and transformative action in our world.”
Sisters and brothers, our calling is to live in the light of that healing and transformative gospel story, to so embrace the story that we may yet be labeled a peculiar people, to display the courage of questioning the values of the troubled and broken culture around us while giving witness to the good news that violence and warfare, suspicion and fear, envy and greed do not have the final word in life. McLaren questions, What would change if we applied the message of Jesus—the good news of God’s kingdom—to the world’s greatest problems?
Truth be told, would not all of life take on new perspective, new direction, new vision? Vision from the God who is able to change our hearts and our spirits from the inside out, perspective from the God who has created us to be beloved daughters and sons, guidance from the God who holds us in arms of care even when it feels as if life is crashing in upon us, strength and wisdom from the God who loves us with a love that will not let us go. It is this God who has the final word in life and in all creation. It is this God who ushers us over the great divide between the broken values of our culture and the challenging values of the gospel. Thanks be to God for the unspeakable gift of Christ Jesus our Lord! Amen.