Today's Scripture is Ephesians 5:1-21
Let us offer our souls to the Living God – Jesus Christ:
O Lord Jesus,
Drown our sin in your living water and let us emerge from the womb of the Living God as a New Creation so that we might see the promise that you have for us. We pray this in the name of the One True God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen
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The British sitcom Outnumbered is a television series about life with small children that gets at the nuances in our messy personal lives and reveals them to the world. 8 year-old Karen (played by Ramona Marquez), in our video clip today has a picture of Jesus on the edge of a cliff with Satan trying to persuade him to jump off. The theological conversation that ensues is absolutely brilliant and, according to the producers of the show, most of what the children in the series say is unscripted. This is the very thing that amazes me about the program, because we get the real meat and potatoes of real life questioning that curious children inspire.
I also love the fact that Karen’s teachings about Jesus, and specifically Satan, are traced back to a Miss Braebrook who has claimed to see Satan and, further, that Satan is everywhere. When Karen’s mother says, “I think we’ll find Satan’s not real” her response is “but then if he wasn’t alive, how would people know how to draw him?” And mother says, “Nobody’s ever seen Satan...” and the kid replies, “Miss Braebrook has” and goes on to tell her mother how Mrs. Braebrook saw Satan looking down on her from her wardrobe. And mother does what mother does best, looks out for the safety of her child saying, “Do you think you could point out Miss Braebrook to me on the playground tomorrow?”
The picture is somewhat of a reminder of the temptation of Jesus when he is led by the Spirit out to the desert to be tempted by the devil. In Matthew’s Gospel the second temptation is when Satan takes Jesus to the highest part of the temple and says, “If you are the Son of God throw yourself down. For it is written:
“He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” (Matt. 4:6)
Jesus replied, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
I’m also reminded of the story from Luke’s Gospel where Jesus goes to synagogue on the Sabbath in his hometown of Nazareth and takes the scroll of Isaiah and reads from it and says “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” They loved the first part of his sermon, and then the people asked, “Isn’t this guy the son of Joseph?” The connotations obviously being about Jesus’ bastardly birth – you know, he was born to unwed parents and, further he was the son of a lowly carpenter.
Jesus then tells the people:
“No prophet is accepted in his home town. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed – only Naaman the Syrian.”
Do you get where this is going? Jesus is directly challenging those in the crowd who mock him for his upbringing. The second half of his first sermon angers the crowd and the Bible says,
They got up, drove him out of town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
Twice Jesus comes face to face with the cliff that Satan wants him thrown off of and twice Jesus narrowly escapes with his life. Of course these are both sensationalized accounts of Jesus. We know, at least from the second account that there is no sheer-faced cliff in or near what remains of Nazareth. But what do we do with these stories as people living on the edge of faith? What do we do with these stories as people sitting on a fence, almost ready to make a declaration in favour of Jesus Christ?
There are a couple of problems we face. First, the problem of Satan; how do we, as rational people respond to the Satan personification in the Bible? What do we make of Satan? Is Satan real? How do we find the clues that would lead to understanding who Satan is?
When we read the Bible it is important for us to consider where words come from. Though many of you do not have advanced degrees I think Jesus loves you enough for me to tell you that our New Testament word Satan actually originates in the Hebrew ha-satan which we translate into English as The Adversary or The Obstacle or, most notably, The Prosecutor or the Accuser. With the role of accuser or prosecutor in mind we read in the Book of Job the story of a man who is viewed by YHWH as blameless; “a man who fears God and shuns evil.” (Job 1:8)
Well, that day the angels had gathered before YHWH and Satan was among the group and he is the one that says, “Wait a minute. Job is the way you say he is because you, YHWH, have protected him. You have given him nothing but flourishing.” And Satan, attempting to reveal that Job isn’t blameless says to YHWH, “Stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” So YHWH allows Satan to wreak havoc on Job’s life by having all his herds and flocks killed by jealous neighbours, and having Job’s beautiful mansion collapse in on his children killing all of them – daughters and sons. But Job doesn’t respond the way Satan expects him to. Job falls to his knees in worship and says:
Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.
YHWH gave and YHWH has taken away; may the name of YHWH be praised. (Job 1:21)
The angelic being ha-satan’s role in the court of YHWH is to test YHWH’s subjects for their loyalty to the king. We should know a little bit about this living in a country whose governance style is a parliamentary democracy with constitutional monarchy. Whom do Canadians pledge allegiance to? When Canadians are charged for crimes who is it that charges them? Who is it that signs legislation into Canadian Law? The Crown of Canada. Everything is about allegiance, and the Old Testament role of Satan is to test the allegiance of YHWH’s subjects. I think, to a certain extent, this is the role of Satan in the New Testament as well. Jesus’ loyalty is tested. When we get to the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness it is all about testing Jesus’ human needs – his need for bread, his need for power, his need for greed. Will Jesus remain faithful to the high calling of God?
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that many of us may believe Satan to be the personification of evil, but that this is not foundational to Jewish belief nor does it seem to be the point of the texts we have just read. The point of the character in the text from Job and the other from Luke reveals some sort of being who continually attempts to goad us into turning away from God. The question here for us is what do we name those things that attempt to turn us away from God?
[Silence]
But, today, we are dealing with one of the least inspiring texts of the Bible – one that outlines everything that a Christian ought not to do. I, particularly find this stuff interesting because the Church has traditionally said that Paul is the writer of Ephesians, when the evidence seems pretty clear to me that this was a circular letter that could have been written by Paul, but the theology within the book does not sound anything like the theology of the different epistles that we know Paul wrote like Romans and 1 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians and Galatians. When we read Ephesians we get into content that doesn’t sound like the Paul who is living and believing that the return of Jesus Christ is imminent. He doesn’t care who gets to preach – whether it’s a man or a woman, a slave or a free person – as long as somebody preaches in the places he has established churches. He is attempting to form and reform a Church within an empire that looks like the post-apocalyptic heaven that the return of Jesus Christ is to reveal. But today’s Scripture is a like a Rick Warren sermon on “How to...” do Christianity a certain way. I just find that kind of Christianity rather boring and unchallenging. When God is a technique rather than one who just loves to resurrect the dead and bond with a bunch of smelly fishermen to build the kingdom of God I just sit back and think, Hell, joining the local chamber of commerce ought to be more fulfilling; and I don’t know a thing about business.
Paul says in the 2nd letter to the Church at Corinth this:
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinth. 5:17)
Our problem in today’s Church is that we don’t deal with the struggle that inherently goes along with Paul’s words. Rather, we do Church the nonchalant way by sprinkling water on people’s heads rather than believing that joining Jesus Christ changes our whole view of reality. Our old foundations for what is true are rent apart and a new foundation with a new Truth is firmly planted over the old ruins of shattered visage. If following Jesus was so important, and if we actually believed that generosity comes to us on its way to someone else we would see the same rapid change that Bishop Will Willimon longs for he says:
When one joins Rotary, or the League of Women Voters, they give you a membership card and lapel pin. When one joins the Body of Christ, we throw you under, half drown you, strip you naked and wash you all over, pull you forth sticky and fresh like a newborn. One might think people would get the message. (Willimon, Christ Means Change)
The point that Paul makes is that when Jesus comes to you and says, “Follow me” and somehow you can’t wrest yourself from Jesus you realize that with Jesus Christ it’s a whole new world; a whole new ball game. For us all of the decisions of life get re-arranged by Jesus to be a city on a hill and a dancing flame flickering upon the wick of a candle whereby we do politics differently than the world does, we do morality differently, and we do economics differently.
This past week the United Church of Canada met in Kelowna, B.C. for its 40th General Council where around 400 clergy and lay members of the church met to figure out where we’re being led by God and the one highlight that dominated the meeting was a bunch of proposals arising out of Toronto Conference and Montreal and Ottawa Conference regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict that has gone on for decades. The proposals, for the most part, seemed to be pro-Palestine and anti-Israel and one of the four proposals compared the Israeli oppression of Palestinians to Apartheid in South Africa, and the proposal that got my attention the most was one that proposed boycotting cultural institutions that support the Government of Israel. The proposed boycott named a bunch of well-known corporations as complicit in the ills that have arisen in the polemical culture of the Middle East and some of those corporations are Time Warner Inc., whose subsidiaries include the issuer of Time Magazine, the operator of television station TBS, and film company Warner Brother Entertainment – whose library of well-known films include financial giants such as 1939’s Gone With the Wind, 2008’s The Dark Knight, the Harry Potter series of films, and 1973’s mega-hit horror film The Exorcist. The list also includes clothing maker The Gap and its subsidiary Banana Republic, cable news giant CNN, soft-drink manufacturer Coca-Cola and its subsidiary Fruitopia, General Electric – whose assets include American cable giant NBC, and The Home Depot. Other highly recognizable brands and corporations included on the list are the makers of Huggies diapers, book publisher HarperCollins, underwear maker Hanes, ICQ, IBM, computer chip manufacturer Intel, J. Crew, JC Penney, Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Kleenex, Starbucks, and the list goes on and on and on.
Beyond boycotting such corporations, the document also mentions that Israeli cultural boycott would include:
Israeli film festivals, Israel public venues, and Israeli institutions supported by the government, to end all cooperation with these cultural and artistic institutions that to date have refused to take a stand against the Occupation.
And a sporting boycott would include:
Aims to end sporting collaboration with Apartheid Israel until it complies with international humanitarian law. This was a particularly important tool against South African Apartheid. The boycott movement will aim to take action whenever Israeli teams play outside Israel and pressure sporting bodies to end those links.
Furthermore, one proposal attempts to indict Canadian MPs who have taken trips to Israel on the Government of Israel’s tab and compared it to accepting “bribes”.
Obviously the content of these proposals initiated backlash from both the Canadian news media and the Canadian Jewish Congress, which is one of the major lobby groups for Jewish thought in Canada. In fact, Past President of the CJC Rabbi Reuven Bulka said:
Today, should motions pass to boycott Israel "in any way, shape or form," relations between the CJC and the United Church will likely dissolve.
The proposed motions were, in common language, rejected which caused a sigh of relief inside the United Church of Canada and beyond, but it made me wonder about what it means to be “a new creation” if I am in Christ or if our church is “in Christ”. Why do we, as a Church do politics the way that sovereign states do politics? As far as I am concerned when the Church plays politics the way the world does we end up living inside the vitriolic mess that always ends up playing like a scratched CD – repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating the same wars and exploitation. Jesus, I think, has a better way of doing politics than the sovereign states of the world. Rather than boycott Time Warner and Fruitopia, Jesus has dinner with the employees of such disdainful companies and when the United Church of Canada comes along and says, “Why are you eating with such sinners?” he replies saying,
It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go learn what this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
And then they finish eating dinner, and then later on, because the religious establishment doesn’t like the fact that Jesus doesn’t join the boycott and, rather, proclaims that both Palestinians and Israelis are human beings, they call him a blasphemer, beat the hell out of him as they drag him in chains to declare his teachings heresy, and then they put him in front of the closest Supreme Court that will be able to torture and execute him, and they put him on the electric chair to watch him fry for 6 hours. All because he chose to go to the roast beef supper supported by the God who created both Palestinian and Israeli – that was also able to raise over $10,000 that night.
Let me finish with a parable that might disturb you and cause you many nightmares. Here’s what the kingdom of God is like.
George W. Bush was ushered into his armoured limousine by his personal Secret Service agents. He rested on the rear seat of the car surrounded by his security personnel, advisors, and attendants and the presidential motorcade began its journey from the White House to New York City.
As the president’s motorcade began its journey on interstate 95 suddenly, ahead of the president’s limo, there was a blast; the lead vehicle, an armoured Chevy Yukon, had been hammered by a rocket. The president’s limo pulled out and passed the wrecked vehicle. The president peered out the window to see his personnel bloody and mangled by the savage act. More rockets came as vehicle after vehicle in the president’s procession was pounded – finally Bush’s own vehicle was hit and the car spun out of control, flipped and lay on the shoulder of the interstate. George W. Bush was laying in his armoured limousine half-dead.
Now, by chance, a Christian pastor was driving along that interstate and saw the devastation, but went on through. Likewise, a Democrat of the U.S. Senate was driving along that interstate and, he too, saw the terrorist act, but drove on through.
But a man from the Middle East – a man named Osama bin Laden – was driving along that interstate and pulled up to George W. Bush’s limo, and when he saw him he was overcome with pity. Bin Laden gathered the president and bandaged up his wounds and took him to the nearest hospital. The next day bin Laden returned to the hospital and handed over some cash and said, “Please take care of this man and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend.”
Tell me, who was the neighbour to George W. Bush in this story?
Once you figure out who the neighbour of George W. Bush is, “Go and do likewise!”
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinth. 5:17)
Amen!
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Let’s pray together.
O Holy Spirit:
Call out to us; call out to our broken hearts; call out to our broken relationships with our neighbours and within our families. Call out to us these prophetic words:
Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you!
Let Christ shine on us; let Christ illumine our worldviews; let Christ inform our reality and truth. Amen.
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