Sunday Sermon text - Dare We Be Christians?

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Dare We Be Christians?

James Sledge                                                  July 24, 2011

Have you ever done a load of white laundry, and something dark got mixed in?  A single, red item somehow went unnoticed, and you open the washer to discover that everything has turned pink.  It’s amazing the way one, unseen thing can give you a new wardrobe.

Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven, the coming rule of God, is a little like that.  Jesus actually speaks of yeast and mustard seeds.  But mustard plants were generally not grown as a crop in Palestine, although the tiny seeds did find their way into the other seeds that a farmer would sow.  It was easy to miss such a tiny, dust-like seed mixed in with the larger grain.  Only later would the farmer realize that a fast growing mustard plant was now transforming his field into something quite other than he had intended.

And yeast or, perhaps more properly, leaven, is not the same product we buy at the store to use in baking.  Leaven is dough that has soured, that has begun to go bad.  Used carefully, it could intentionally be added to a new mix of dough to make it rise in baking.  But it could also make you sick if it was too far gone. 

In the Bible, leaven is almost always a symbol of corruption.  Leavened bread could never be used as an offering to God.  During Passover, not only was leavened bread forbidden, but no trace of leaven was allowed in people’s homes.  And Jesus himself speaks of the teachings of the Pharisees as leaven, something that corrupts and distorts the good gift of God’s Law.

But in the parables we just heard, Jesus speaks of God’s hoped-for new day as like a mustard seed that unexpectedly sprang up in the field, like leaven that has transformed the bread into something that is no longer fit to be offered to God, like a red sock that has turned the entire load of white dress shirts pink.

Perhaps it is a bit unsettling to think of the kingdom, the dream of God’s new day, as something that subverts and corrupts the order of things, especially for us Presbyterians.  We Presbyterians love things “decently and in order,” so much so that we sometimes seem to worship order and fear anything new.  An old joke asks, “How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?”  And the punch line goes, “Change?”

But today Jesus says the kingdom that has come near is like something subversive and corrupting that insidiously and almost imperceptibly works to change things.  And Jesus continues his surprising imagery in describing the Kingdom’s great worth.  Merchants, like the one who finds the pearl, were the used car salesmen of Jesus’ day, and the fellow who finds a treasure in someone else’s field either commits fraud or theft to acquire it.  I suppose Jesus is saying that the Kingdom is so desirable that we should risk anything to be part of it.

Unfortunately the Church has often marginalized this Kingdom.  We’ve not seen it at work in our everyday lives.  Jesus says the Kingdom, God’s rule, has come near, but we’ve hidden the Kingdom inside the Church walls or, more often, exiled God’s rule to heaven, and so exempted the world, and our daily lives, from its subversive, life altering impact.

Back in the 1980s, our denomination  began a formal peacemaking program.  We affirmed peacemaking as every believer’s calling, and  the General Assembly urged congregations to integrate peacemaking into their life and mission.  There is an annual Peacemaking Offering.  Resources were developed to study and discuss peacemaking, including a pledge that church sessions could approve and sign to declare they were a Peacemaking congregation.   Many presbyteries encouraged the congregations in their area to sign this “commitment to peacemaking”  occasionally announcing the percentage of congregations who had.

Now when you recall that Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” you might think that everyone would want to sign a “commitment to peacemaking.”  But in fact, peacemaking proved to be a contentious subject.  Might such a commitment put us in the same camp with anti-war demonstrators?  Might it be seen as unpatriotic or liberal?  Many sessions steadfastly refused to sign the commitment, and some argued forcefully that churches had no business doing anything that seemed to question defense policy or even hint at being unpatriotic.  After all, Christian faith is about personal salvation and going to heaven when you die, isn’t it?  It’s not about civil or governmental affairs.

Yet when Jesus shows up, his first words are about the Kingdom coming near.  Jesus uses a political image, and he says that the arrival of God’s rule , God’s new government, requires us to change, to repent, to begin living different sorts of lives now.

We Americans have little experience with kings and kingdoms.  And though we are sometimes fascinated by British royalty, we know them as mere figureheads.  But when Jesus speaks of  the Kingdom, he does so in a world where kings make the rules.  And proclaiming God’s kingdom is an explicit claim that God governs.  God is the central character in the life of the world and is at work in surprising, even subversive ways to bend history and the world toward God’s purposes.  But the world, and many of us, do not believe it.

It turns out that it is quite easy to believe in God without believing that God rules.  We can believe in God but still act as though the real rulers of the world are money, military might, political clout, etc.  We even speak of “the invisible hand of the market” and “the almighty dollar,” and these often exert more influence on our daily lives than God’s rule.

But not so with Jesus.  Jesus is so certain that God rules, his life is so saturated by God’s rule, that he lives and acts in surprising, subversive ways, casting his lot with the poor, the oppressed, and the sinner; undermining the powers-that-be as surely as leaven changes the dough.  Jesus is so certain that God rules and that the world is being aligned to that governance, that he is willing to give his life for it.

How absurd to believe that God is really in charge of history, that we cannot secure our future via military might or economic power.  How foolish to believe that God is on the side of the weak and the vulnerable, and that God’s will – not ours nor Wall Street’s nor some political party’s nor anyone else’s – is going to be done here on earth.  How ridiculous to believe that I become fully human only as I fully acknowledge God’s rule, and my life begins to be shaped by that rule in the way that Jesus’ life was.  And what an idealistic delusion to think that we as the Church could live together in ways that demonstrate and embody God’s rule for all the world to see.

When I graduated from seminary, a professor I was close to gave me a gift, a little book by Walter Rauschenbusch entitled, Dare We Be Christians?  It was written in 1914, another time when the Church was filled with confidence.  But Rauschenbusch, who had worked in a poor and destitute part of New York City known as “Hell’s Kitchen,” thought that the Church’s focus on personal salvation had undermined Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom, and about our call to embody it.  And he asks if we dare believe the absurdity and foolishness Jesus declares to us and calls us to live out?

Dare we?  Dare we trust that the power of resurrection has be set loose in the world?  Dare we trust that God will provide and equip us to live in ways that transform others and the world?  Dare we become agents (red socks?) of the Kingdom Jesus says has come near?