Sunday, February 13, 2011

Blameless (sermon for the sixth Sunday after the Epiphany)

Isn't it wonderful that the news media is finally covering something that matters? Isn't it wonderful that we are watching a story that inspires and ennobles us rather than terrifying and enraging us? And it seems that all the sources are pointing out many of the same things. One of these is the encouraging presentation of millions of Arabs demonstrating peacefully and thereby bringing about a new regime. This is in stark contrast to the portrayal of Arabs as a murderous, violent lot that might best be wiped off the face of the earth.

But what strikes me most about this amazing story is the power of groups of people. Great power, glorious power, wonder-working power. And of course, horrifying power, destructive power, world-destroying power.

The power of groups is great, and it's more or less the power of their combined numbers. No tyranny can survive without the submission of a great number of people to that tyranny. No great evil can be done without the collusion of large numbers of people. And no great good can be accomplished, no matter how impressive the leaders, without followers in numbers.

In fact, historians in the last century or so have been moving away from looking at history as the story of great individuals and toward history being about groups of people, who together call forth and shape great individuals. I think about Jesus this way, and honestly, I think the collection of scriptures we use are a great example of exactly this process. Thousands of people made Jesus who he was, and millions of people make him who he is today. Jesus was called forth by a great mass of people over the course of many generations, and Jesus continues to be called forth by the millions who call on his name today. Jesus is not simply a person. Jesus the individual is in reality lost to history, but Jesus the movement, a movement he himself called the reign of God, can never die.

One of the great struggles I think we all have with the scriptures we have heard this morning is how impossibly demanding they are, and I think the key to understanding them is in this principle. In Alcoholics Anonymous, there is a saying, "I get drunk, be we stay sober." Translating to the church, we might say, "I sin, but we are blameless."

Now there are two crucial levels I am talking about today. The first is that my salvation is dependent on my connection to a saved community. The second is that a community is saved or condemned not on the basis of what it does, but on what it wants.

The blamelessness, or sinlessness, or holiness of the church is not, thank God, dependent on my blamelessness or sinlessness or holiness. If it were it would be out of luck. Nor is my own blamelessness or holiness even dependent on me. As one of our elders asked yesterday, "What can one person do?" Really? Nothing.

The same, oddly enough, is true of condemnation. My condemnation, what is really wrong with me, is not really about me. It is about the we that works together against what is best for all of life on earth. What evil can one person really do? Certainly it seems that one might do a great deal of damage. But compared to the kinds of evil that really makes a difference to the whole world? Not much.

But the second important fact about both sin and holiness is that neither has as much to do with what we do together as it does with what we want together.

In other words, the world is saved or damned not by individuals, but by groups, and moreover, the world is saved or damned not by what these groups do, but by what they want.

Paul says today that the Corinthians cannot have advanced to spiritual maturity because they are too busy wrangling and arguing and being divisive. His point is that if they had advanced to spiritual maturity, they would be of the same mind, that is, the mind of Christ, which is one mind, at peace. They would want what God wants, and would therefore be working together so that God's will might be done on earth as it is in heaven. They claim to be struggling over issue of truth, but Paul sees in their actions the issue only of their desires. It's not what they are doing that's the problem. It's what they are wanting.

Paul loves the Corinthian church and believes in them, but he is making it clear that they are off the track, badly off the track. Faith is about wanting what God wants, and it's obvious from their actions that they are more concerned their preferences and opinions than they are with God's. Paul is making it clear that acting in concert has no meaning if the congregation is not also wanting in concert.

The congregation, the church, the people of God, are perfect to the extent that they are of one mind in Jesus Christ, however imperfect all the individuals may be. In this is my salvation.

The Old Testament, in a bit more subtle way admittedly, addresses the same issue in multitudinous ways. The kings of Israel, in a literary sense, represented the people of Israel, What made David a great king, and therefore made Israel a great nation, was not his brilliant military strategy or his good looks or his talent as a public speaker. What made him a great king was that he passionately wanted God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And his failure had nothing to do with being a lousy leader. It had to do with allowing his own wants to become more important to him than the will of God.

What we want must be in concert, but what we want must be what God wants. Our salvation depends on our unity not only with each other, but with God.

The salvation of the world is not in doing the right thing, it's in wanting the right thing. This is the true distinction between works and faith. To do something that outwardly looks righteous, but which is inwardly motivated by selfishness or greed or a desire to dominate or control, is to become simply a part of the great waste that is sin and death.

The Greek word translated "hell" Jesus uses in today's passage is actually Gehenna, which was not an otherworldly, cosmic place, but a huge, perpetually burning garbage dump everyone Jesus was talking to knew about. Jesus was using extremely vivid language to talk about just how crucial it is to the reign of God for God's people not merely to do what God wants, but to want what God wants. Jesus is saying that the group that does what God wants but that doesn't actually want what God wants is a tragic waste, best thrown into the burn pile.

When a group of people want to control and dominate another group of people, they hide their evil under what appear to be good intentions. "We enslave you in order to civilize you. We throw you in prison to rehabilitate you. We point weapons of mass destruction at you in the name of peace. We oppress one class so the other classes can have a better life. We murder one of you for the sake of the rest of you."

There are plenty of groups out there that I can become a part of that will help me seek my selfish desires, will reward my deceit and will honor my cowardice with violent protection. I can become a part of a "we" that dominates and controls and exploits and violates, and which hides it all behind noble words and claims to the moral high ground.

But there is also the church, and all other groups of people that band together around what is truly best for humankind, and all living things, in honesty and courage. The scriptures frequently speak of foreigners and other groups that manifest the desire of God just as faithfully or more so than do the people God called. There is a single good that we can all want; that's the heart of true monotheism, and not exclusivism. The Egyptian people are an example of this kind of unity with each other and with God, the kind of power that saves the world.

I am a sinner, full of selfishness and deceit and cowardice, but we are the sinless body of Christ. I am a mortal doomed to die and pass from history forever. But we are the eternally living body of Christ. I want what I want, we want what God wants. I am lost and condemned, we are found and redeemed. I fumble in the dark, but we walk in the light.

Amen.

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