March 9, 2008 Des Moines
5th in a Lenten
Series on Take Time to Be Holy
2 John 1:5-11
Prayers of the People:
Leading God, you go before us. Once upon a time it was in a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day; in guiding dreams and imaginations of heaven along with the path to reach there; in the life of Jesus and the voices of prophets who are still making your way known. You go before us, and we would follow. But we don't always pay attention. Those prophetic voices don't always suit our fancy, and the dreams can seem more wishful than real, and somehow less compelling at times than the alternatives breaking open more loudly around us. And we hate to say this, but Jesus seems distant in time and place and even relevance, sometimes; archaic and out of touch. And we are prone to ignore him. We'd give a lot for pillar of fire, but your way seldom seems that clear. We wish you would take our hands in ways that inspire more confidence, and give us more clarity. Life, after all, can be confusing.
We relish the joys that sparkle the journey...
...and we have no trouble finding you in such blessings. But when we ache – when we push against anxieties and fears and sadnesses and frustrations; when concerns leaden our steps, we aren't always sure where to find you.
And we look for healing and comfort and encouragement and strength, but though we know what we would like, we aren't really sure what the best outcome might be. And so we pray more fervently: guide us, O God. In whatever way choose to manifest your will and your way, go before us, we pray, and we will follow as your patient, obedient, discerning people. Amen.
Taking
the time……for Obedience
What are you giving up for Lent?
We are more than half way through this season of spiritual calisthenics
and self-discipline, so how are you doing?
The idea of “giving something up” has its roots in the ancient practice
of fasting – exerting the cleansing, reorienting discipline of removing those
consumptions that can become outsized in their importance in order to refocus
on that which truly gives life.
For some, that fasting
literally takes the form of giving up food – lunches, for example, or perhaps
just certain indulgences like chocolate.
Others are taking the idea of fasting in new directions – turning off
the cell phone, for example, or undertaking a “green” colored fast designed to
reduce one's carbon footprint.
You might be interested
to know that I am giving up “orange.”
Also, coconut and sour cream.
Yes, it's true that thusly depriving myself isn't much of a
stretch. I dislike all three. Mightily.
But success is everything – isn't it?
I wanted to follow the rule, and I can truthfully report at this
juncture that “so far, so good.” I have
been very disciplined, thank you. My
salvation is secure.
But I'm worried about
Norma Lyon. You know her. Since 1960 Norma “Duffy” Lyon, farmer and
artist from Toledo, Iowa, has been shamelessly, unabashedly fashioning a golden
calf out of butter that subsequently draws thousands of State Fair worshipers
to view and admire. If it isn't quite
bowing in reverent obeisance before a graven image, it seems perilously close,
and I am deeply concerned.
I'm also full of
baloney. The “Butter Cow Lady's” annual
art form no more violates the law than my giving up orange for Lent keeps
it. All of which is to call attention to
the fact that this “religion as rule” business can be tricky.
Don't take that as an
attack on rules. Cultures that thrive –
civilizations that have the character to sustain themselves – submit themselves
to the rule of laws designed for the mutual protection of all. I do, however, mean to highlight the
distinction between the face of a law and its intent – its letter, versus its
spirit.
Take, for example, the
laws contained in the holiness code of Leviticus 19 that we've come across from
time to time in recent weeks. According
to vss. 9 & 10, farmers are required to leave some grain around the edges
of the field for the benefit of the poor and the alien, and are forbidden from
picking up fallen fruit for the same purpose.
Now, if you don't happen to own a farm, a vineyard or an orchard are you
thereby absolved of any responsibility for keeping this law – or could it be
that there is some principle embedded here that applies to you, as well?
The law prohibits me
from reviling the deaf or putting a stumbling block before the blind. Now, am I good so long as I hold my tongue
around the aurally disabled and withstand the temptation to rearrange the
furniture around the visually impaired, or might there actually be a more
substantial point these narrow specifics are attempting to embody?
My son hates pork – a
heretical thing to admit in the state of Iowa, I know, but certainly not in the
biblical sense where the “other white meat” is clearly prohibited. So does it make him righteous according to
the law that he refuses to eat it?
The answer, at least as
I would offer it, is “no”: these and
countless other examples confirm to me that it is quite possible to violate the
law by keeping it; potentially even possible to honor the law by breaking it.
What, then, does it
mean to “keep the law”? Jesus, you might
recall, got into trouble on this very question.
Time and time again Jesus defended himself against charges that he was
breaking the law by insisting that in so doing he was actually accomplishing
the law's intent. That spiritual/legal
discrimination was to become even harder in the years and generations after
Jesus' ascension. What, the question was
continually asked, finally matters? What
does it mean to be obedient?
And we are still trying
to figure it out. “The Bible says...”
asserts one, only to be answered by another recalling Jesus' own rejoinder,
“You have heard it said...but I say to you...”
What does it mean to submit? What
is the shape of obedience? When Paul
wrote to the Galatians that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no
longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are
one in Christ Jesus,” was he talking strictly about Jews and Greeks, males and
females and slaves and free, or was he speaking more broadly about all those
dividing walls of bigotry and discrimination that people seem to have such a
knack for building between each other, that make it possible to be dismissive
of someone categorically?
What is the shape and
character of obedience? The question is
especially relevant in light of the scripture reading this morning, and the
verse of our Lenten hymn that sprung from it.
Take time to be holy, let
Him be thy Guide;
And run not before Him, whatever betide.
In joy or in sorrow, still follow the Lord,
And, looking to Jesus, still trust in His Word.
Apparently
in John's community, some were getting carried away – improvising just a little
too creatively on the spiritual life.
And so while John could give thanks for the faithfulness of many in the
congregation, he also felt the need to observe that “Anyone who runs ahead
and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God”.
What does
it mean to “run ahead” of Jesus, and thereby lose track of God? It isn't a picayunish question. The direction we choose – the landmarks we
revere – shape us in fundamental ways.
Robert Frost recognized the significance of the “ways” we travel,
recalling how once, years before, two opportune paths had once diverged in a
river wood, and how the particular way he ultimately chose has made all the
difference.
We resonate with that poem because we are well acquainted
with roads diverging ahead of us, and with having to make a decision about
which way to go. And let's face it,
while Jesus is, by his own description, “the way, the truth and the life,” he
is not the only way available.
Like dogs off a leash, we follow along for awhile but are routinely
intrigued by a rabbit over here or a curious smell over there and lope off to
investigate.
If, however, Jesus is “the way,” and a disciple is one
who follows, how do we keep from running off ahead of him – beyond where he has
already gone -- to our own distraction, and perhaps even to our own
destruction? On the one hand it seems
like we are forced to run on ahead.
Jesus, after all, left behind no guidance on many of the critical
dilemma's of our time. Pick up the best
and most detailed concordance of scripture you can find, and you will still
search in vain for any reference to cloning or stem cell research; neither
global warming, recycling, appropriate responses to genocide or universal
health insurance. Search all you want to,
but we have no record of Jesus or Paul having anything to say about gay
marriage or abortion or border fences.
Does this mean that the Bible has nothing to contribute to those
conversations?
What, let me ask again, is the character of
obedience? Our own denominational
tradition – the spiritual offspring of such passionate and biblically-grounded
frontier preachers as Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone -- suffered a
massive division at the beginning of the 20th century over what I
would describe as a difference of opinion over silence. One of our early slogans of self-description
was “where the scriptures speak, we speak; where the scriptures are silent, we
are silent.” But what is the implication
of silence? Permission? Prohibition?
Or no clear direction?
One major branch of our denominational family tree, quite
cautious about getting ahead of Jesus, was of the conviction that if scripture
– in general, and the New Testament in particular -- didn't expressly
permit a course of action, it implicitly forbade it. Finding, for example, no New Testament
warrant for instrumental music in worship, to then employ one – a piano, an
organ, even a guitar – would thereby be corrupting. Finding no New Testament examples of
cooperative efforts among partnering congregations, they condemned such
innovations as missionary societies and joint ministries.
Our branch of the family tree took a somewhat different
approach. Scriptural silence, as far as
we have been concerned, has simply meant that we would need to look for subtler
clues and insight and instruction.
Missionaries, to borrow that earlier example, needed to be supported and
sent out, and if a cooperative organization accomplished that more effectively,
so be it. And we obviously never found a
problem with instrumental music in worship.
So, what does it mean to follow after Jesus, and not run
ahead of him? Are we to be “letter of
the law” people, or “spirit”? According
to Eugene Peterson, “To follow Jesus implies that we enter into a way of
life that is given character and shape and direction by the one who calls
us. To follow Jesus means picking up
rhythms and ways of doing things that are often unsaid but always derivative
from Jesus, formed by the influence of Jesus.
To follow Jesus means that we
can't separate what Jesus is saying from what Jesus is doing and the way that
he is doing it.”[1]
We
will, in other words, immerse ourselves in the teachings of Jesus –
saturating ourselves with the values and motivations and imaginations by which
he lived. We will seek -- as prayerfully
and studiously and reflectively as we can – to know the mind of Christ:
l
hearing what he said, but
also comprehending what he meant;
l
watching what he did, but
also synthesizing what he intended;
l
observing the large and
small ways he interacted with his circumstances as a kind of framework for how
we might interact with ours.
Nail the letter of the law to the wall and it will stay
exactly where you put it; but nail the spirit of the law to the wall and it
will drip and seep and stain the entire surface. It takes more time, this path to holiness,
but isn't that what the law is supposed to accomplish: the transformation of the whole, rather than
one small piece?
If we are to live in the present tense, we will
necessarily encounter questions and choices and particular pressures that Jesus
neither faced nor addressed. In a sense,
we have no choice but to engage the winds of our time. But we are not running ahead or floating free
– wild and loose and merely riding the gusts.
Like a kite with a steadying tale and a mooring line, we stay connected
– dipping, but also soaring; far beyond where Jesus' own experience carries
him, and yet firmly tied directly back into his hands where he guides and
turns, steadies and, I like to think...
...admiringly, encouragingly smiles.