It has been a hell of a week, a phrase I am getting very tired of using. I’d offer a fine whine this morning, but I’m betting you have some whining to do as well. I struggled with the sermon, with texts I chose weeks ago so the rest of the team could plan, and with that decision every pastor faces in a time of church decline and social chaos, whether to offer spiritual chemotherapy or spiritual palliative care, to try to re-energize our life together, or write it off as a loss.
So despite waffling about this sermon, which I re-wrote again this morning, I’ve made my choice. I’m not a quitter. And I’m not going down without a fight.
And speaking of fighting…
When the last administration legitimized the Taliban and announced a unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan, it set in motion the calamitous events we have seen unfold in the last several weeks, the collapse of the undermined Afghan government, and the restoration of Afghanistan as a terrorist state.
But if we are honest, the former president is not alone. There is plenty of blame to go around.
There was never a realistic plan, not a year ago, not twenty years ago. Rural Afghans share the Taliban’s core values, and we can’t manage our own urban-rural divide, so how were we supposed to manage theirs?
Besides, our allies are state-sponsors of terrorism, countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the latter the creators and supporters of the Taliban. I found myself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with John Bolton this week as he called out Pakistan’s evil.
And don’t get me started on the invasion of Iraq, where we de-stabilized an entire region based on known knowns, the lies we were told, and in so doing created the power vacuum that was filled by the Islamic State, the organization that metastasized around the globe and slaughtered Americans and Afghans alike this week.
But, hey, we got to the moon before the Soviets, so it is all okay.
But let’s focus on the scripture for a moment.
Both of our texts are about what you do.
The passage from the Gospel According to Mark reflects a recurring conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees. They, along with their allies the Scribes, are very focused on rules. But, as Jesus makes clear, the things they do are meaningless. They obsess over ritual cleanliness, when uncleanliness is about your heart, not your hands, what you say, not what you eat. And while they are busy doing meaningless things, they fail to do what they should do, using a technicality to avoid caring for their parents. They are good at doing stuff that is about themselves.
The second reading comes from an epistle or letter traditionally attributed to James. This is not the James of the gospels, the brother of John. This James is the brother of Jesus, the leader of the Christian community in Jerusalem after the state-murder of Jesus.
This text could be the Nike commercial of the Christian Testament, complete with “Just Do It” and a swoosh at the end.
It is far more important than you realize, for it is part of an argument that has haunted Christianity since the beginning.
Paul, responding to the legalism of the Scribes and Pharisees, the sort of mindless routine Jesus calls out in our New Testament reading, emphasizes belief. The 613 rules of the Torah were a tremendous obstacle to sharing the good news with the Gentiles. And Paul believes the good news of Jesus is worth sharing, that the world Jesus proclaims, of radical love, is worth the risks.
Paul’s letters are written in a particular context. Unfortunately, absent that context, it becomes this false binary of faith versus works. Paul himself comes to regret this framing, for some early Christians concluded that as long as they believed, they could do anything they wanted. Of course, that wasn’t true. Following Jesus was demanding, is demanding, for the love it requires is selfless, the antidote to the fear that is our original sin.
Martin Luther would fall into the exact same trap as Paul. Just as Paul was responding to the legalism and excesses of the Pharisees, Luther was responding to the legalism and excesses of the Medieval Roman church. The Reform tradition under Calvin would take this even further, to the point that some “born-again” Christians believe a single prayer, one that does not even exist in scripture, is a light switch that insures salvation.
The authors of James are actually in the same place as Paul, despite the ways this text is positioned as the binary opposite of Paul, and subsequently Luther, the ways this letter influences Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
Both Paul and James actually insist that belief is important, but so too is action. In Christ, there is no faith versus works. There is only faith and works. It is a reinforcing loop.
You can tell me all day long what you believe. I want to see what you do. And if you aren’t doing the word, then, to borrow from Shakespeare, you are “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
And I don’t want to know what you did twenty years ago. Or two hundred years ago. Because no one is saying that the debacle of America’s war in Afghanistan is somehow okay because we won World War II, or landed a person on the moon.
I love history. My library, at home and here in the Pastor’s Study, is filled with history. It explains and informs, inspires and sometimes warns.
I love that one of the earliest actions of the newly formed United Church of Christ was the lawsuit that integrated the public airwaves, though it is something that probably could never happen today, smothered in parliamentary procedure and concern that some big donor might walk away.
But I didn’t bring that lawsuit. I wasn’t even born yet.
The challenge before me it to contribute to the story. As Walt Whitman famously wrote in “O Me! O Life!,” the powerful play goes on, and I can contribute a verse.
One of the Marines killed this week was an infant on 9/11.
Most folks in Gen Z don’t really care that we are Open and Affirming. They don’t understand why LGBTQ+ rights is even an issue.
So we were founded by Abolitionists. Great. But how are we doing the word now? What are we risking to dismantle the systems of oppression? Folks are going to want us to be able to tell them what we are doing. Not individually, because many of you are doing good things individually, but as a church.
If The Park Church closed tomorrow, like the churches across the street, like so many churches in our community, like so many churches across our nation, who would really care, except us?
Don’t be hearers. Be doers. Just do it. Be relevant. Swoosh.