Mystery of Faith

You know, folks, Jesus Christ just loves to die for people under 30.  There’s just something so wild and spirited about people under thirty that impassions the Christ to die for them. In fact, in the church one way we proclaim the mystery of our faith – our loyalty to Christ – is by saying these words:

 

                                    Christ has died.

                                    Christ is risen.

                                    Christ will come again.

 

Now, we are officially in the Season of Advent – the beginning of the New Year for Christians –and there’s something stirring for us.

 

                                    Christ has died.

                                    Christ is risen.

                                    Christ will come again.

 

We recall these words because we know our God to be a little unmanageable, untamed, violent, and wild.  Parker Palmer talks about his own definition of violence.  He says:

 

My operating definition of violence is that violence always involves violating the integrity of the other. We do violence whenever we violate the integrity or the nature of the other, whether the other is the earth, or another human being, or another culture.

 

You see, folks, our God, by that definition, is a violent God – a God that is too wild to be tamed; a God that isn’t safe to worship.  Through Jesus Christ, God violates our very nature as human beings by reaching out to us, by dying for us, by scaring the hell out of us in resurrection, and in the very promise of return into our lives.  Our God is a violent God.

 

Jesus is not safe.

 

I recall the Chronicles of Narnia when the kids are trying to figure out who Aslan is.  When Lucy asks Mr. Beaver if Aslan is a man the talking beaver replies:

 

“Certainly not.  I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea...Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great Lion.”

 

Then Susan asks whether the lion is safe.  Because, as she says,

 

“I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

 

Mrs. Beaver responds,

“That you will, dearie, and no mistake...if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

 

I often hear Bishop Will Willimon say that God loves us so much that he’ll take us the way we are; but our God also loves us so much that he’d never leave us that way – he’d never leave us to be sinners; broken-hearted and compass-less travelers.  I mean, the heart of the God we worship is violence.  Our God wants to violate your very nature; my very nature because God knows we can be better than we are.  We’re satisfied with just doing the best we can – God isn’t.  That’s why we’ve come to meet the undomesticated Jesus.  The one for whom we proclaim the mystery of faith:

 

                                    Christ has died.

                                    Christ is risen.

                                    Christ will come again.

 

Folks, welcome to Advent – the term Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means coming.  The ancient church saw Advent as a time awaiting the coming of the Son of Man on a cloud of power and glory.  As time moved on, the church began to await a different kind of coming during Advent – the Incarnation – the fleshly embodiment of a violent God in a person – Jesus, that rascally rabbi from Nazareth.

The deep promise of our Scriptures is the coming of our Lord to violate our integrity – our very nature.  “Behold,” Jesus says, “I am coming soon!  My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done!”

 

I recall one story from Anne Tyler’s novel Saint Maybe.  Ian, a nineteen year-old tells his parents that he’s leaving college to become an apprentice cabinetmaker.  He made this decision in co-operation with Rev. Emmett, pastor of Church of the Second Chance – a congregation that believes in literal atonement; that you actually have to do something real to be forgiven of your sin.  Ian’s sin was that he led his brother to believe that his wife had been unfaithful to him, and his brother committed suicide.

 

When Ian tells his parents of the decision he has made they become alarmed.

 

"Ian, have you fallen into the hands of some sect?” his father asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Ian said. “I have merely discovered a church that makes sense to me, the same as Dober Street Presbyterian makes sense to you and Mom.”

“Dober Street didn’t ask us to abandon our educations,” his mother told him.

“Of course we have nothing against religion; we raised all of you children to be Christians. But our church never asked us to abandon our entire way of life.”

“Well, maybe it should have,” Ian said.

 

His parents looked at each other.

His mother said, “I don’t believe this. I do not believe it. No matter how long I’ve been a mother, it seems my children can still come up with something new and unexpected to do to me.”

 

Ian’s story is about the two gods competing for our hearts.  The first one is the god of apathy, that doesn’t care whether we live or die; doesn’t care whether we worship or don’t; but just wants our lives to be comfortable, secure, manageable.  The other is this God who just loves to die for 19 year-olds.  This violent God promises to be coming sometime in the future, and in the meanwhile demands that you do something with your life that will anger your parents and make them think you’ve joined a cult; cause your grandparents to disown you; and make your friends think you’re downright crazy.  This God we worship; this God who says he’s coming; this God who we await during the Season of Advent is calling us to be disciples.  This God is discipling us by reshaping our priorities, by violating our integrity and realigning our nature and bending us to his will.

 

Listen to a Tony Campolo story:

 

Roger was gay, we all knew it, and we all made his life miserable.  When we passed him in the hall, we called out his name effeminately, we made crude gestures, we made him the brunt of cheap jokes.  He never took showers in phys. ed, because he knew we’d whip him with our wet towels.

 

I wasn’t there, though, the day they dragged Roger into the shower room, and shoved him into the corner.  Curled up there, he cried and begged for mercy as five guys urinated on him.

 

The reports said that Roger went to bed that night as usual, and that sometime around two in the morning he got up, went down to the basement of his house, and hanged himself.

 

On that day I realized that I wasn’t a Christian.  I was a theologically sound evangelical, believed all points of the Apostles’ Creed, declared Jesus to be my Saviour.  But if the Holy Spirit had actually been in me, I would have stood up for Roger.  When the guys came to make fun of him, I would have put one arm around Roger’s shoulders, waved the guys off with the other and told them to leave him alone, to not mess with him, because he was my friend.

 

You see, folks, we are God’s enemy.  We don’t mean to be, but we are.  We were kicked out of Eden because we chose ourselves to be our own gods.  We were given a Saviour to die for us to close the chasm between us and God, but we constantly turned away from the Creator of the Universe and insisted on becoming our own creators.

 

But as we await the physical coming of our Lord, be it through Incarnation or Parousia, God, unbeknownst to us, searches us, invades us, manipulates who we are so that we’re shaped by a new citizenship – a citizenship that requires us to hold a new passport – one in the Kingdom of God.  One shaped by the mystery of faith that we proclaim:

 

                                    Christ has died.

                                    Christ is risen.

                                    Christ will come again.

 

Amen.