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November 18, 2007 Rev. Steve Gehlert The theme for our Fall Retreat was Shalom. We translate that as peace, but the original Hebrew means much more than that. It means wholeness, health, well-being, peace, life in right relation-ship with self, others, creation, and God. It's how God began creation, what God still intends for all creation, and what God promises someday to restore. But, you know, in spite of Shalom being how God began creation, and still being what God wants, and what God has promised, it's hard not to get discouraged about it, because we are so far from it. Let's think about the things that make up the word's meaning, things God wants and has promised. Wholeness? As in "wholesome?" Hardly! Whether its genetically modified, chemically laced, irradiated foods, the sleaze fashions pushed on kids at ever younger ages, or what you can't escape on TV, nothing is "whole," but modified, artificial, broken, unwholesome. Health? Hardly! In much of the world people die of simple illnesses. My friend John volunteered at a clinic in a remote part of Africa for a month, while he was there, 20 children died of diarrhea; there simply was no medicine. Here, we develop all kinds of elective cosmetic procedures but can't assure that everyone will have access to even the most basic health care. Well-being? What's that? If it's accumulating more and more things; I guess we're doing OK. Except the problem is that we're finding that way of living not only empty but also destructive of our own lives and of the world around us. Yet, it seems we don't know what to give our lives to instead. Peace? Guess we've just about given up on that. The gap between the haves and have-nots widens, injustice and exploitation grow, and so too, do the seeds for ever more violence. Plus, most of the world's governments seems to think of war as Bismarck did, as "diplomacy by another means." Life in right relationship with self? Not if our continuing obsession with appearance, and marketing ourselves is any sign. In fact, we seem increasingly worried about how others see us, and how we'll sell, to our peers, to potential friends, spouses, or employers, rather than about becoming who we are. With others? Look at families, or neighborhoods, what do you see? Ever more isolation, people doing their own thing, with little time or interest in relationship or community. Ever fewer families eat meals together; fewer people care to really know their children, much less their neighbors. With creation? Nope! We're abusing it. It's falling apart, and those who care are still a minority. And the corporations that profit most by it pour billions of dollars into trying to hide it from us. With God? Not in terms of what we give our time to. Population is up, worship and church school attendance, way down. Eighty percent of 20 something's have never been to church. Lest you think my listing too negative, or one sided, let me tell you I could have talked all morning about discouraging trends in any one of those areas. We're a long, long way from God's Shalom. What we need is something new. We need newness in the worst sort of way. We're in a fix. Everything we've tried, all the strategies and programs, can't seem to overcome the basic trajectory we're on, toward brokenness, destruction, doom. We need something fresh, not yet thought of, new. But is there any hope of that? How could it ever come about? Yet, we're conditioned to think that if there is to be any solution, any real change, it will have to come from us, or it won't come at all. Have you seen the size of the "self-help" section at your local bookstore? Addicted? Overweight? Unhappy? Stupid with computers? Limited vocabulary? Well, buy this book, and you can fix that. Help yourself! As Dr. Phil is fond of saying, "Only you can cure what is wrong with you." But that's all a lie. We're creatures of habit, caught in our ruts. We do what we do, not because it brings us joy, but because it's what we're used to doing. It's us. Doing something else is too hard. But in spite of all this, all the brokenness, in which we're so deeply trapped, today we hear the prophet Isaiah announce to suffering Israel that God is about to do something really new. Really new! God, the same creator who created a new world out of nothing but chaos, has not left it alone to run on it's own. This same God is about to do something big - and a new earth will be the result. That's the only way newness is going to come. The biblical witness clearly affirms that newness, genuine relief, and true innovation comes, but it comes only as a gift of God. Today's Gospel lesson says even more. Jesus' disciples, walking by the awesome temple, comment about its beauty and permanence. Such huge stones! A building like that, will surely last forever! Jesus responds by saying that the stones will fall, become a pile of rubble. And, sure enough, just a short time later, the Romans, fed up with the rebellious Jews, utterly destroyed this focus of their national life. The temple lay in ruins, not one stone left upon another. But Jesus was talking about more than the building. He was saying that the Temple, the central feature of Jewish faith, no longer gave life. He was looking toward a time when there would be a new kind of worship, and a new kind of social order, what he called the Kingdom of God. That's what began to happen. Israel went through a catastrophe. Through Roman violence, a faith once centered in the temple, was spread over the globe. The Jews truly became a people of the book, gathered round the world to study God's word. A great change began, that's still far from complete. This implies that there is newness coming to us, through the work of God, but it won't be painless. For something to be born, something must die. To enter a "new world," we've got to let go of an old one. The change to God's newness means pain. That's one reason why we experience so little of it. Yes, we avoid pain. Pain avoidance is a big part of our problem. When Jesus spoke about what was to come, along with the destruction of the temple, before God's new order could be established, he mentioned things like his disciples being hated and persecuted for his sake. That's only possible when disciples are truly disciples, followers of Jesus, rather than of the ways of the world; their way of living is so irritating to the world, that they're persecuted. Maybe the reason that, bad as things are, no one is persecuting us, is that we're so accommodated to, comfortable with, and conformed to, the world - the same world, that's structured against, living in opposition to, the Shalom that God intends and wants to restore in every part of creation. We don't do anything to irritate that world. We hold on to what is, even though it's broken and destructive, because we're comfortable with it. So we can't welcome the good news of a "new thing." Because to proclaim God's new order is also to announce the end of our world - our economic systems, political theories, our lies, our compromises with evil, our "when-it's-convenient religion." For us, the crisis underlying Jesus' strange words about the coming of God's new order is that it's a judgment on our social order, a social order we're so enmeshed it, that it's also a judgment on us.. How do we hear Jesus words, "Not one stone will be left on another"? We're mighty proud of what we've accomplished, our great cities, our military power, our wealth, our techno-savvy. And yet we pray, Thy kingdom come! As if that's what we really want! Well, if God's kingdom comes, what about the world we live in, are accommodated to, and comfortable with? Our ways are death-dealing! There's little in them that makes for true shalom! When we hear that God's new order is coming, by implication we're also hearing that our way of life will become past tense! Is it any wonder, then, that the true gospel isn't very popular? If we've built our prosperity upon "things as they are," can we welcome a new kind of world? No! How could we? Still, God continues to promise to bring life out of death, new order out of chaos. And God wants us to see that just as there's no painless birth, there's also no painless future. Yet, whether we see that, whether we accept the pain or not, God will have a new future. It's just up to us to decide whether we'll be for or against it as it comes. God calls us to welcome and work for it, to bear the pain of standing apart from the way things are, because our hope is fixed on what God's promised. That's a challenge for we who are so accommodated and comfortable that it mostly doesn't occur to us to do anything to irritate the world. And, if one of us does try to raise our voice about something in the world that's opposed to what God intends, others of us are apt to say, "Be quiet, don't irritate anyone, if you do, there'll be a price to pay." That's right, there will be, and once upon a time, most Christians were willing to pay it. Are you ready to do that? To pay the price? To stand apart from the way things or so you can be a sign of God's newness? Clearly the first challenge is to end our accommodation, our fitting in, with a world that's destructive of what God wants, a world which God will one day overturn. Separating ourselves will mean persecution. If we're living God's new future, being a sign of what God intends for all creation, a sign of the kingdom, that's what we can expect from a world that will resent us. But, Jesus says, "Don't worry. I'll be with you. If you're put on trial, I'll give you the words to say." They're not to prepare their defense in advance but to trust that words will be given when they're needed. That's what our faith journey is about - trusting promises that go beyond what we can see, keeping going even when it looks as if the end has come. It's not about big churches full of comfortable people who provide a spiritual option in world that's going to hell. It's about families of faith where people are seeking to be and make disciples, followers of Jesus who seek to live his way in the world, regardless of the cost, and give each other strength and endurance, as the wait for and trust in his ultimate victory. Our concern should be making sure that we're on the side of God's newness, not on what'll happen to us once we take our stand there. Jesus promises that once we make the move to God's side, God will be with us, by our side, offering a security beyond any we could gain from the world. The world's problems are great. We're deeply enmeshed in their causes. The world cries out for a newness beyond what we can achieve with our personal ways of accommodation, manipulation, charm or cunning. Beyond what we can achieve through our social systems of management, marketing, or consumption. Our scriptures tell of an ending to all that, but also the promise of a new beginning. Our challenge is to be free enough to go through those endings and welcome the newness that God will bring. A literal translation of the 1st line of Genesis is "In the beginning, God began creating . . ." Creation isn't something God does once and for all, but something God continues to do. God keeps making all things new. Day in and day out, God is actively involved with creation, sustaining, renewing, and doing battle with the chaos that threatens to undo creation. Creation continues as God keeps making something out of nothing. God gives newness. The God who tears down also builds anew. The God who casts down our self-serving systems, and puffed-up expectation for ourselves, also builds up a new heaven and a new earth. That is our hope. May God give us courage to live it. Amen. |
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