Pentecost XXI - Sunday October 15th, 2006
(by Rev. Glenn Brown)
Probably nothing more profoundly taught the prophets, especially Isaiah, who God really was/is, than the fact of Israel’s having been conquered by the Babylonians and dispersed throughout the empire. Isaiah’s world was one in which gods were identified with political powers. If your country conquers my country, that means that your god is stronger than mine. Since your country has conquered mine, that means that your god has conquered my god, and perhaps even destroyed him. History is replete with conquered nations’ gods being subsumed into the conqueror’s pantheon, with the resulting gaggle of gods and goddesses, each with his and her own function (think, Poseidon, god of the sea, etc.) but subordinate to some ultimate god.
What proved God’s faithfulness and relevance to Isaiah and Israel was that this God could still be worshipped in exile, and never suffer integration into a pantheon; and that this God was still around to bring the people out of exile. Not only that, but this change in the people’s lives was brought about, not through the state or royalty of Israel, but through the intentions of the king of the country that had originally conquered them. God did not/does not need to be identified with a currently successful world power to carry out the divine will. God can use any old body.
Put another way, it seems that God proved the divine bona fides not by being successful all the time, but by continuing to be present right through the horrible times. The fact of the good times does not prove or vindicate or justify God. The fact of bad times does not disprove, banish, or negate God. God is there through it all.
What, you may ask then, is the benefit or rationale for worshipping a God who is sometimes the loser? What about when we are gravely ill? What about when disasters strike and people lose their homes and livelihood? What about when random violence takes lives?
The understanding that God is so permanent and present that absence of success does not mean the divine absence, is an important one. It means, for one thing, that we never have to fear that God is gone, or inattentive, or uncaring. Rather, that in the midst of truly terrible or frightening things, God may also be at work in ways we cannot see. Perhaps that has a real value. In the Bible study on Sunday mornings, there are some days when one person will say something truly profound, and the rest of us will just sort of sit there and remain silent, needing to think. Or, some days, several people will do that and you know you need to sit there the rest of the morning (strong is the temptation to skip the service) and absorb it all. You need the absence of more presence; you need the time away; you need the input to cease for a while. So it is with God. Were God to be always with us in ways that we could perceive, we would never be able to fully appreciate the divine presence because of lack of distance, the absence of absence.
Children in schools now have “lockdown drills;” people are upset about North Korea conducting the nuclear tests (I have already seen e-mails from people who are wondering if it is time to build bomb shelters at their homes); the U.S. now publicly and as a matter of policy engages in secret places of torture and asserts the right to kidnap citizens of other countries, whether on U.S. soil or elsewhere, keep them hidden, and try them before military tribunals that can impose the death penalty on the basis of information not shown to the accused (I am now thoroughly ashamed of and afraid for my country of origin); we now know that within fewer than 20 years, two thirds of the world will have shortages of water, while Canada, home of so much water, is using large amounts to pump out bitumen to manufacture power for further consumption that will promote the greenhouse effect. Western nations other than the U.S., and many nations elsewhere, are looking at the issue of dealing with declining economies due to populations with greater proportions of aged residents, and ever fewer young people.
So in the clear perception of all this, we can’t help but wonder where God is, and where God will be. Clearly God is not busily making things as nice for us as anyone could imagine. So where is God and what is God doing? We have to look.
Now I want to enter what may seem a digression this morning. How much do your clothes say about you? How much do people depend on how you dress to interpret you? You remember the gentleman who died recently in front of a police station. His widow admits that he was dressed down for the purpose of gardening, and charges that the police paid insufficient attention because he appeared to be a homeless person. The taped conversation between the officers and the dispatcher whom they called to get an ambulance confirmed that this was how they perceived him, although not necessarily that they were negligent. We look at how teenagers wear their hair and so forth. Some people are concerned about how Muslims and Sikhs dress. Those things which are “foreign” to our own haberdashery seem alarmingly alien. How we dress can be read by people either accurately or not. How we dress can be attempted messages from us to others, and can be a true or false witness about who we are.
But what do you say to yourself in how you dress? Do you define yourself by how you dress? Well, there are times we dress for work and so forth that have more to do with convention than with self-expression. But we “dress” in ways other than involving clothing – body language, physical deportment, attitude. And all that may be false. I was talking with someone recently who went to great pains to ensure that I understood that the self-assurance and competence seemingly exuded by this person, were altogether false. I suspect that others are just as hidden behind what they wear. I am sure that the clothing companies have solid market research behind them when they put their names and labels on clothing, and when they advertise their “look.” Clothing have a great deal to do with how many people think of themselves and how they communicate their images, true or false, to others.
Now Paul encourages people to “put on Christ” as if an article of clothing. And we because of our cultural inferences, wonder immediately if one can “put on Christ” and be just as false as when putting on any other clothing. But Paul’s cultural background was different, as was his audience’s: religions commonly used this as an expression of change of personhood. Because the Christian “wears” Christ, so to speak, it is expected that the practice and the experience change you. You become the kind of person that Jesus was. Here, were this simply a matter of rhetoric, I would list the qualities of Jesus. But I won’t do that, because then Jesus is reduced to categories and qualities. Read about him yourself, and then you’ll understand who you are to become.
And the idea is that because we are all “putting on Christ,” being informed and inspired by him, we will act with goodwill toward each other and others. This is important in a church. If we find that we are not acting in this way, then there is something wrong, something missing, some aspect of living out the Christian life that is not receiving due attention.
Paul’s injunction has to do with an ideal. You read that there is no longer the kind of cultural and prejudiced separation between people such as Jew and Greek, or, for Paul’s larger audience, between Greeks and barbarians, as they would have said, and you know that such harmonization did not always take place. You read that there is no longer male and female, and you read some of Paul’s other material, and you know that living out this perception of how things ought to be, was difficult for him. So there is nothing automatic about it.
At the Session meeting last week when we were discussing the strategic plan, it was suggested that an important quality of life in the church which we seek is personal satisfaction with our experience of God and each other. Putting on Christ is a key ingredient in this, and we need to pay attention to it: that is, there are some ways in which we should act as Christians, and some in which we should not. Carelessly hurting one another, or doing it carefully, is not.
You know those actions that are encouraged in the “commissioning” at the end of the service (from First Thessalonians)? Let me emphasize a few.
One is “make for what is good, and hold onto it.” The simile comes from being on a boat, making for a wharf during a storm. With all the terrible stuff happening, we need the port in a storm often, I think.
A second is “seek the good in and for others.” That is terribly important. It is so easy to categorize people, especially because people can sail under false colours, false to you, false to themselves. Sometimes it is as the outsider that you alone can identify to someone the good in him or her. And someone may desperately need to hear that; perhaps without knowing their own desperation.
And seeking the good for them is the basic Christian task. I know that everyone realizes this. But it seems that not everyone perceives others to be acting accordingly.
A third is “speak words of comfort to those without courage.” In the Greek, the “words of comfort” are to be in the form of a story. Now it takes time and dedication to compose a story about your life or someone else’s. It takes more time to tell the story. Engagement with the other person is the task; it is next to impossible in a sound-byte society where people move so quickly that responses to words are formulated before the speaker is done putting forth all the intended words. We used to call this “snap judgment.” It is not possible to care about someone quickly.
These are all part of “putting on Christ.”
Paul assumes, of course, that people who put on Christ do so as the result of a powerful experience that changes them. Not everyone in a church has had a powerful experience. Some come to faith more by slow accumulation of experiences and information. Being a Christian “seems” right to them; a good way to be, different from how else they might be. The experience is not a necessarily prelude to putting on Christ. Just as God is God and is among us even when we are not winning, so putting on Christ is effective and life-changing even if we haven’t had a magic experience. It’s not that you must have had your life changed before putting on Christ; it is that putting on Christ can change your life.
And certainly, in a church, we must put on Christ.
