Today we begin the season of Advent. In the churches year Advent is the beginning of time. In the liturgical sense, today is a birthday. At the same time, Advent is a time of reflection on the coming of Jesus along with Jesus’ concepts of humility and equity, and sensitivity to a world needful of grace.
Over many years I have tried to pursue preaching on a specific topic for this season. The value of this—at least for me, and I hope for you—is that we get to look at one topic in some depth and to view the truth that is spread before us in a way that we look at it carefully and more fully than we might at any other time of the church year.
This year I would like to spend some time thinking about the significance of justice. This is such a timely issue: with all of the unemployment and homes being foreclosed upon, as well as the conflict that exists all across this world as we seek to come to several new understandings of the meaning of peace and justice. Bishop Ladehoff, last Sunday, began a conversation with you that pointed out a number of justice issues that should be, implicitly, part of the way in which we live out our Christian lives.
Let’s begin by pointing out a common understanding of what the purpose of Jesus’ mission was all about. Most Christian teachings encourage the idea that the sacrificial death of Jesus, divorced from his life and teachings, is the only thing that really matters—as if God was looking for a victim to be sacrificed for the sin of all humanity—an “unblemished lamb” to be sacrificed for the redemption of the world.
I don’t necessarily agree that this is really helpful and while it is a common teaching within all Christian traditions, I think it is a dangerous teaching. It ignores the life of Jesus of Nazareth—Jesus as a human being—and it ignores his teachings which were the cause of his death. We have been encouraged to think of Jesus as he begins his trip to Jerusalem to die, or we have placed before us the story of Calvary and we visualize this as his proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Out of this “God sent Jesus’ to die idea comes a false understanding: that Jesus was meant to fail, that there was some kind of predestined plan by God for that failure—in other words, we have been taught that Jesus was committed from the beginning of his life to run a course that would never succeed—in order that he should end up on a cross to be a victim of sacrifice.
We’ve all heard sermons to this effect—I suppose at one time or another, I preached sermons like this—or we have been to some kind of a retreat where this was the explicit message that was taught.
The truth, in my view, is the opposite. Jesus wasn’t sent into the world to die, but to live. He was sent to live a way that would usher in a whole new understanding of living—to bring a new quality of life that was intended to serve as a standard for all humankind. Jesus’ life as a human life was important—in fact—critical. Jesus was the message from God about how women and men should live in this world. And we’re meant to take his life, his miracles, his parables, and his message seriously. And none of the stories and parables of Jesus were the pretext of getting him to Calvary. They were and are the message of God for you and for me—a message for humankind that was a message from God about life itself—life in the here and now.
We’ve been taught to believe that God was watching over everything that Jesus did on earth, intending that every word and every action of Jesus would have an impact, first of all upon the hearers of Jesus’ generation and after that upon every generation until the end of the world. These teachings of Jesus were not confined to a book—they were not just a collection of doctrines or ethical ways of living for us to study and, then, to ignore. Jesus meant action—for those early followers and for you and me. He taught what he did because he wanted to change the way people lived—he wanted to change the world—and he called this the Reign of God. Jesus was sent to inaugurate this Reign of God. John the Baptist foretold it. Jesus was the beginning. It was meant to be accepted and it was mean to succeed—not just in some time or some other world,-- but right there in his lifetime and right there in the politics of his day.
To speak of Jesus as being political doesn’t necessarily mean that we can read a gospel justification into things that are political today. At the same time, we should be wary of a gospel message that proclaims a faith that is private and one that is mostly about the next world. For Jesus, those distinctions between private and public religion weren’t made. In both the Hebrew and Christian Testaments, religion is about the whole of life-- public and private—and, in fact, truthful religion is chiefly about this world. So when Jesus spoke about the reign of God, he didn’t mean a spiritual transformation in the hearts of his listeners in particular; he meant a real and direct effect on the society of his time. He meant a transformation of the heart --a metanoia—that Greek word that means a turning around, a conversion of the heart.
Jesus’ actions were not private. They were actions that spoke his message of social transformation and justice louder than words. He healed people who were put outside of the Law; he befriended the Samaritans with whom the scribes forbade relations; he mixed with sinners in direct contradiction to the teaching of the religious leaders of his time. He challenged the public religious practices of his day. He was unpopular from the very start with the religious leaders in Jerusalem—not only because he was working for social change, but especially because he was doing it in the name of God. For Jesus, the teaching of love was not just a message about private living—it was a disturbing call for justice in society—and it was this –this calling for justice, that cost him his life.
The cross was the inevitable end of teaching about the living of justice in the Kingdom of God. His death was not about an isolated sacrifice to redeem the world in some metaphysical way—it was instead the result—the grim proof—of the impact he made on his own generation.
I think two truths come to us from this life of Jesus.
The first is the Christian fact that out of evil can come good. The prodigal son had to abandon his family and behave stupidly before he understood what family love was. Partners and couples often have to quarrel with each other before they come to be more deeply in love with each other. Families often go through real hell before they come to an understanding of committed and faithful love as a family.
The second truth is the mysterious truth about human failure. It seems that when we try to do good in this world, it doesn’t always work out. We need colossal faith, both in the future and in God to persevere in the practice of good when there is opposition. This was Peter’s instinctive attitude to Jesus in Mark’s gospel. Jesus was talking about his impending death. In the 8th chapter of Mark, Peter takes Jesus aside and tells him “ Stop taking about your death.” And we know what Jesus said to Peter: “Satan, get away from me! You are thinking like everyone else and not like God.”
For you and for me, when we apply the teachings of justice to ourselves, we turn shy of confrontation with the many problems in our nation and world which cause oppression to the poor and the outcast of this world.
We fight shy because we don’t recognize evil in the respectable surroundings of business, education, in our religious and political life. We want to be simply disciples of Jesus. And in thinking like that we fight shy of the cross.
We have a problem on our hands. We have Jesus whom we follow—but that following often turns out to be with reservation. We have a faith to believe in, as long as it makes and keeps us comfortable. But this holy Jesus, the man who died on the cross, challenges us to a deeper mission and to a specific behavior. Belief in the kingdom of God, a belief that you and I have something to do with the difficult challenges of this world-- a belief that you and I are called to live Jesus’ mission—a mission of justice in this troubled and confused world.
Next week I want to point out some of the highlights of Jesus’ mission and God’s kingdom of justice.
Amen
