Borderlines

Jeremiah. 23:5-6 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”

You might have noticed that the two scripture readings don’t seem to go together, that in fact they seem to contradict one another. Now, in case you were momentarily distracted, let’s recap. In the first reading, taken from the First Book of Samuel, the loose confederation of Israelite tribes come to Samuel, judge and prophet, and ask for a king. They have good reasons, the Philistines have moved into the region with advanced technologies and are putting pressure on the western border. Samuel warns them that a king is not God’s plan for the people, but they insist. Even though this text was written in the centuries after a monarchy was established, it records the uneasiness the people still felt about loyalty to anyone other than God.

The second reading was written five centuries later. The United Kingdom of Saul, David and Solomon had been torn in two. The Northern Kingdom called Israel had fallen, and the Southern Kingdom, Judah, was at risk, with invaders at the gate. In this reading, God promised through his prophet Jeremiah to raise up a new king for his people. Monarchy had become the theological model from which the Judeans operated. So when the people were in trouble, it was up to a great king, an anointed one, a messiah, to rescue them. Unlike the people of the exodus, these people believed that God worked indirectly, through others, through chosen kings.

The readings suggest that God changed plans, though we have adopted from Hellenism an unfortunate notion of a God that cannot ever change. The truth is that the Israelite religion is a trajectory of change. God creates a covenant with one small tribe through one man, Abraham. Then God creates a new covenant with that tribe through all members when he frees them from bondage, a covenant mediated by Moses but executed by the people. Then God changes models again and creates a covenant with a single household through one man with the Davidic covenant. We could fall back on the oft repeated trope “God planned it all that way,” but that would leave no room for human freedom, only a puppet-master God, one that seems less than worthy of our love. So what are we to make of all of this change?

Its actually amazingly simple. The world changes. God created for us a dynamic universe. The planet earth, the Milky Way, the universe itself, flinging out into the cosmos at incredible speeds. Humans, free and growing, dynamic, miracle. And when the world changes, when we change, we adapt our beliefs, our values, our practices to the new world. This doesn’t mean that God has changed, if you insist you can stick to your Hellenistic security blanket. But it does mean that we humans encounter God and understand God in different ways at different times.

In fact, contradiction and change are part of our religious DNA, they are the dynamic threads of a living faith that flows from Abraham to Moses to David to Jesus, and yes, even to Paul. Our understanding changes if we are open to God, if we listen to God, for as our own denomination has declared, God is still speaking. In fact, we are in a position today to know more about the biblical people and their context than they were 1500 years ago as the fifth century Christians attempted to freeze our faith, to determine once and for all what would be acceptable or orthodox belief and what would be considered heretical. We have used the amazing gifts of God, reason and intellect, to learn. We have dug up ancient ruins and texts, we have deciphered ancient languages.

This is pretty uncomfortable. We are humans, we like stability. Sure there is change, just please, not in our back yard. We’re happy that our Christianity came to reject slavery. We’re fond of the Protestant Reformation. That women have a voice in our faith, well we wouldn’t have it any other way. Gay and lesbian people are no longer burned to death by Christians, at least not in the United States and Europe, and we think that’s a good thing. But please, God, can you make sure the next change happens after I’m gone? I like the way things are, they work for me…

Of course, they don’t work for everyone, but we can do just enough social justice work to ease our collective conscience and move on. But things change because God made it that way. We change because God made us this way. The universe is not going to stop because we are comfortable.

So where do we turn for guidance when things are changing? There is only one place we can consistently look for God’s voice, and that is the scriptures. We can look at the historical and theological trajectories of the Word of God and discern answers for our own time. Though, as we all know, misused the Bible can become a weapon that destroys lives. As I challenged the children, so I challenge you. Study the Bible. Read it. Pray over it.

And when you turn to the Bible to hear the voice of God, know that that voice is most consistent, is most clear, in the words of our savior, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. The core teachings of Christianity are not the teachings of Paul, though we have much to learn from him. They are the teachings of Jesus. Which brings us back to the problem of change.

You see, the world was changing when Jesus walked the streets of Galilee and Judea. And as the world changed, people adapted. But like us, they weren’t happy about it, so they created structures and systems of belief and defended them with their whole lives. The Pharisees sought an answer to the changes of life under an occupation army by clinging to the Law, by self-righteousness and legalism. The Zealots sought an answer by arms, they hoped that a military rebellion would reveal the messiah-warrior-king. The Sadducees and Herodians decided to compromise, to make the Judean and Greco-Roman worlds co-exist. The Essenes moved to the desert, rejecting the world all together. Then there were the Gentiles, but who cares about them? Each group was busy drawing borderlines. On this side you are on God’s side, you are good, holy, you are right. This is the border between us and them.

Then Jesus came along. Jesus who healed and exorcised Judean and Gentile alike. Jesus who brought Matthew the tax collector, the agent of the brutal Empire, and Simon the Zealot, enemy of that Empire, together. Jesus who rejected Sadducee and Pharisee alike. As busy as everyone was drawing borderlines, Jesus was busy smashing them. Even the boundary between in-group and out-group was smashed. The radically open table fellowship at the heart of Jesus’ ministry smashed social boundaries, but it also smashed boundaries of righteousness. You didn’t even have to repent, to be bathed in the Jordan, to come to the table. You only had to believe.

We still draw boundaries. I still draw boundaries. We are, when we get right down to it, inclined to Social Darwinism. It is at the heart of our socio-economic system. Those people over there are not like us. It’s no wonder they are impoverished, suffering under a dictator, hungry. Feed, cloth and visit Jesus says, ignore the boundaries. Jesus calls us always to move beyond, to be more, to do more, to love more. Hitch a ride on this amazing ongoing creation, smash through the borderlines, and do it now. What are you waiting for?

The message of Jesus could not come at a better time. Petroleum is running out. All life in the oceans will be gone in our lifetime. These are not the lunatic ravings of some crackpot scientist. These are facts. We are destroying the planet just as we have always destroyed one another. Economic and political systems are broken beyond repair, including our own. The plans we are busy making for those little miracles in our Sunday School are not going to be realized if they are based on a world that looks like this.

This is not the first time in the history of humankind that there have been sweeping changes, great trauma. The world has always changed. Great plagues, colonialism, the scientific revolution, the dawn of modern democracies. But in the last half century man has developed the ability to wipe out life itself. This is new, this is unheard of in the entirety of human history.

Of course, we can stick our heads in the sand and pretend none of this is happening. We can call such realities apocalyptic, or offer it all up to God. We can keep doing the same old things. But the world is going to change. And someone is going to recognize that change, is going to bring to that change a value system, and they are going to act. We can sit back and let them do it. But Jesus wasn’t a very sit back kind of guy. Jesus didn’t preach a gospel of sit around and pretend. Jesus preached a gospel of get up off of your rump and go do something. Go change the world. If the world is going to change, then maybe we should be the ones envisioning that change. Would you rather have progressive Christians taking the lead, Bible in hand, or would you rather leave it to extremists, busy with their borderlines? Or maybe our future should be decided in corporate board rooms?

Am I the only one who dreams of a new economic system that is grounded in the message of Christ? Surely there is some Christian economist out there who can think outside of the current box! Because our current system is, in the words of Brian McLaren, a suicide machine. It is destroying us.

Lead or follow. It’s up to you. Take the Bible in hand, study it, pray with it, work together as communities of love and faith and change the world. Or let the world be reshaped by intolerance and greed, by the keepers of the borderlines.

I am asking us to do three things. One, admit to ourselves that the world is changing, stop pretending like everything is okay. It’s not. It never will be. Jesus knew that. Even John Calvin knew that! White middle class life in a North American democracy is not the model of God’s kingdom found in the scripture. Two, get serious about the Bible. As individuals and as a congregation. In classes and study groups. With commentaries and with scholarship. With one another. Because the life that keeps you too busy to read and study the Bible is crashing down around your ears. And finally, three, armed with the Word of God, I am asking you to take action. Don’t sit back and let others decide the shape of our world. Change your life. Then change the life of one other person. Then change our life as a church. Get up, Jesus says. Get up and walk. Get up and go out. Get up and feed and clothe and visit. Get up and do.

Let me end with this one dream. Imagine a world in which we put as much time into the Word of God as we put into our love of professional sports, of the Patriots and Celtics and yes, even Red Sox. If we were that serious about our faith! We could save the world through the power of Christ’s saving Word.

May we make it so!