Changing Our Ways
Changing Our Ways
Matthew 28:18-20
Last week, I tried to speak honestly about the decline of Christianity in America. I don’t think this is the result of nefarious forces trying to destroy the church. I think the church has damaged itself. Leaders who were entrusted with the well-being of the church fell prey to forces as old as human beings: greed, the lust for power, and plain old lust, just to name a few. The church also, at turns, has become so political and so determined to enforce its understanding of morality that it has sold out its spiritual mission in the service of achieving a political outcome. Finally, in a world of rapid social change, the church has been very slow to take those changes seriously. The church has a tendency to keep doing what it has always done. Like an “ugly American” abroad who thinks everyone will understand English if we just speak louder and more slowly, the church keeps repeating a theology which doesn’t speak meaningfully to people’s lives.
There’s not much that I can do about most of these. I remember the pastor who was sleeping with his church members. When this became public, the resolution that leadership arrived at was to put that pastor in charge of leadership development for the whole region. I’m not kidding. I have resisted attempts for us to become more politically active as a church because I don’t want our church to split like our nation. The church will never get fully up to speed with our changing world but we have tried. We’re a thinking church and those thoughts do lead to action…eventually. For example, it took us too long but we are beginning make use of social media in a way that fits people’s lives and enhances their experience of our church. It took a global pandemic to make this happen. Why didn’t we realize that members who are ill or who are older might really need to be able to worship at home?
In my own Protestant tradition, the need for the church to change is at the heart of our history. The battle cry of the Reformation was, “Once reformed and always reforming.” In every age, the church would need to reinvent itself and answer the question, “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” (Interestingly, if you read some of the key thinkers in America’s early days, there was the same expectation—that there would need to be revolution after revolution for the nation to remain vital and alive.) Of course, reformations and revolutions are messy, risky experiences in real life. The temptation when change arises is to double down on the need to change nothing at all. (Do you remember your 8th grade yearbook inscriptions? “Don’t ever change!” Everyone knew that their whole world was about to be turned upside down.)
So, as the church has resisted change, we’ve tended to respond as loudly and slowly as we can. We don’t care if you don’t get this whole “sin” thing: “YOU ARE AN AWFUL SINNER ANYWAY!” We don’t care if you don’t like this hymn: “THIS IS WHAT SACRED MUSIC SOUNDS LIKE. STOP ASKING US TO PLAY YOUR TUNES.” We don’t care if the way we worship isn’t meaningful to you: “THIS IS THE WAY WE WORSHIP. NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE BUT YOU.” We speak slowly and loudly and keep repeating what we are saying until one day it dawns on us that we are, in fact, only talking to ourselves.
Don’t get me wrong here. I totally and completely believe in God but our notion of God needs to catch up to the world in which we live. I believe the church has a critical role to play—especially in such a lonely world—but as the one who responds to the needs of human beings not as the one who judges them. I believe that the church can be renewed, not through legislation that enforces “Christian values,” but as the place where people practice what it means to love one another.
Why do I think this? I think this because this is the mission that Christ set before us in the first place, the one that we’ve forgotten as we’ve built cathedrals and carefully developed our theories of who is in and who is out. This truth is right before us in our text today…
So, let’s review. Jesus lives a pretty normal life for about 30 years. There’s a lot of fanfare when he’s born but then things grow quiet. We know that when he was 12, he wowed the authorities at the temple. We know that he was a carpenter’s kid so that means he was probably a carpenter. If he died at 33, less than 10 percent of his life was lived in his active ministry—three years from the time he was baptized until the day he was crucified.
If you’re a regular around here, you’ve heard me emphasize these 30 years because the tendency is to skip right over them to get to the “good stuff.” I believe that those 30 years are critical, even though they are mostly a mystery. Why? I believe this because this was Jesus living his daily life just like us. He had friends. He had work. He had sisters and brothers and a mother and father and a community. All of these people and things mattered. In those thirty years, Jesus fell in love with this life and realized that this world might just be worth dying for.
Traditionally, the church might say that Jesus saw how sinful and awful and in need of saving the world was and that’s what made dying worth it. I want to challenge that notion. I don’t think Jesus was determined to make sure that we didn’t go to hell. I think Jesus was determined to show us that there was a better way to live. Think about this…he went out of his way to love people, especially the people who weren’t often loved. Beneath the stories he told were notes of wonder and awe: consider the birds of the air; think about the mustard seed; see those children—we need to be like them. If he pronounced judgement, it was usually upon the religious authorities who promoted an understanding of faith that divided people from one another.
Again…I keep saying this but I’m never sure folks really hear it: Jesus spent almost no time in designated holy places (synagogues and temples). He had not been designated a holy person so he had no credentials to do what he was doing. He would gather people or, more frequently, the people would find him and gather around him, but he could teach anywhere and the lesson he taught could be lived anywhere: love your neighbor; feed the sick, visit the lonely. He wasn’t teaching us to go to church. He was teaching us how to live.
Jesus came to show us the way. That’s what makes our text this morning really critical. The three years of Jesus’ ministry—wandering the countryside, teaching and healing and preaching—or to think about it differently—showing people what a faithful life would look like, caring for people, one person at a time—that life is over. Jesus dies. Then, against all the odds, he lives again. Why does this matter? I don’t believe this matters because the “lamb of God” has been sacrificed and the score is even and we all get to go to heaven. I don’t care how many billboards scream that point of view. Jesus calls us to live a loving life. If we do, this will put us at odds with people. If we do, that love will cost us, maybe even cost us our life. Jesus’ death and resurrection matters because it shows us that living a loving life is not transactional. It’s not about what’s in it for me. It’s not about being protected. It is simply about doing the next loving thing. The promise is that as we rise to that calling, nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Do not live fearfully. Live lovingly. That’s the message Jesus is delivering and embodying. He has died. He has risen. He has one last chance to drive his message home. How do we take this in?
First of all, as a small aside, it ought to be a challenge to everyone who has ever tried to claim special authority because they met the risen Jesus. Yes, there are mystical experiences but, at best, those experiences are private and personal, not the basis for some claim to power and privilege. I remember the televangelist who saw Jesus and he was hundreds of feet tall. (Oral Roberts, I think…) I’m pretty sure a fair amount of people who saw Jesus shared their experiences in order to let us know that the Jesus wanted us to boost our contributions. All I’m saying here is that the notion that Jesus kept appearing isn’t Biblical. He lived. He died. He rose. Then, he was gone.
Here’s the thing…if you’ve ever had a serious loss in your life, if anyone who was core in your world has died, you’ve been close to this post resurrection experience with Jesus. I want you to consider this. In the immediate aftermath of such a loss, things are chaotic. The world is spinning. In fact, it is spinning so hard and so fast that we can’t believe that it is not spinning for everyone. We make it through those days. What comes next is an interlude where that person we are grieving still feels very present. They might appear in a dream. We might see their favorite bird and feel like, “That’s them!” After a while, though, often despite our best efforts, that sense of an immediate presence shifts. They’re still here but more in the background. They’re in our hearts and minds but not in a way that shuts everything else down. We know they’ll be with us for the rest of our lives but somehow we can live again and love some more and even call out to them every now and then.
The moment of our text is the occasion of this shift. Jesus assures the people that he will always be with them. They need to know that just as much as we need to know that the people we loved will always be with us. This is the hard work and the good news of grief: people don’t disappear, even when they’ve died. We remember. We carry them with us in our hearts and minds. In this moment, Jesus, whom we met at his birth as “Emmanuel,” “God with us,” becomes, “God will always be with us.” It’s the kind of good news that makes it possible to live: we are not alone.
The second thing Jesus says is incredibly important: “I showed you how to live. Now, it’s time to go live that life. It’s time to go invite other people—all people—to join you in that way of life.” Again, think about the people you’ve lost in your own life. Do you think that they would want you to stop living because they died? What kind of a tribute would that be? Think about how many people have tried to make Jesus’ message be, “You really should focus on the next world.” I have no idea how anyone can study this man’s life and his teachings and conclude: “Well, I guess this world and these people just don’t matter…”
Jesus came to show us how to live a loving life, a life in which we loved God—sure—but a life in which we love God by loving the real, broken, totally in need, complete piece of work, person who is standing right there in front of us. They might be a stranger, a foreigner, someone who scares us or someone who repulses us or someone whom we are 100 percent sure does not matter. They might be our next door neighbor who bothers us on a daily basis or our teenager who keeps pointing out how uncool we are, day in and day out. “Love them,” Jesus says.
This is how we make disciples—not by scaring people or guilting and shaming people or by insisting that people say the “magic words.” You don’t have to live like me or worship like me or call God by the same name that I use. You just have to love the person in front of you and then love the next one that comes your way. And on…and on…and on.