Almighty God, may you guide us to seek your Truth –
come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.
You’ll
recall that last Sunday, I laid out a sermon series for the five Sundays in
Lent. The premise is that there are two poles to religious belief. On one end
of the spectrum is religious extremism, where beliefs are held that are too
extreme for the religion to handle. Violence and murder done in the name of God
are examples of religious extremism. When you apply certain beliefs too
extremely, being closed off to compassion, diversity, or reason, what you end
up with is a distortion of religion that is problematic. On the other side of
religious belief is a problem that has infected much of Western Christianity:
routinism. In routinism, religion doesn’t affect the way you see the world, the
way you see yourself, or the way you interact with others. Religious routinism
is devoid of any meaning, substance, or vigor. And routinism is just as much a
fatal flaw to religion as extremism is.
Last
Sunday, I introduced the first commitment that we can make to avoiding
religious routinism: waking up. Our task is to wake up from simplistic
understandings of the world, to wake up to the suffering of others, to wake up
to God’s call to us. The second of our Lenten commitments to help us break out
of routinism is interconnectedness. And this isn’t just the idea that we’re
connected to each other – that’s an easy enough point to make, and doesn’t
really amount to much. Rather, this is a commitment, and therefore requires
much more of us than simply believing in something as simple as “the circle of
life.”
One
of the heresies that is alive and well in modern Christianity is the idea that
religion is something that is between you and Jesus. Certainly, there is always
a personal aspect to Christianity, and God certainly does love you as an
individual. But it’s much more than that. Throughout Scripture, God’s concern
is for groups of people, whether it be a tribe, a nation, or the entire world.
In Scripture, in almost every case, salvation is a communal event, not a
personal one. In fact, the word “religion” is derived from the root word “to
bind.” Religion binds us to one another and to God.
If
our faith is going to transform our world, be compelling to those outside the
Church, or nourish our souls, it must be a faith that is held in community.
Christianity is not a private affair. One of the central metaphors for our
faith is that we are the Body of Christ – a clear indication that we are
connected to others. Our commitment must be to interconnectedness. Christianity
has a systematic effect on our lives – so it’s not that we’re a Christian
because we go to Church on Sundays, say prayers when we think about, and smile
at people on the sidewalk. No, Christianity has implications for the entirety of
our lives. Our faith wants to have a seat at the table when we discuss our
family budget, when we decide what schools our children will attend, when we
decide who to vote for, when we weigh our medical treatment options.
Faith is comprehensive,
not to be compartmentalized. There is no point in our lives where we should be
able to say “Well, my belief in God’s love, in Jesus’s Resurrection, or the
Spirit’s blessing really doesn’t have anything to do with this decision.” What
I am describing is what some might call an authentic faith, and isn’t that what
we all hope for? Wouldn’t it be nice to drop all the charades and be more comfortable
in our own skin? Wouldn’t it be nice to be ruled by the grace of God and not
the narratives of self-doubt, criticism, and judgment? And isn’t this
authenticity what people hope to find when they look for a church home? The
peace and salvation of God are found when our beliefs are in harmony with the
way we see and interact with the world. Not only is it the faith that we seek,
but that is the best form of evangelism.
One theologian once
wondered what affect it would have on the way society sees the Church if people
who clearly have just been to church acted differently when they went out to
lunch after worship? What if everyone in their Sunday best tipped the wait
staff 30%? What if they didn’t complain if the food took a few minutes longer
than normal to come out? People might start to wonder “What’s going on in that
Church that these people are so transformed?” What if when people heard that
someone was Christian that they might feel a sense of calm instead of rolling
their eyes as they wonder what prejudices we will have? What if Christians were
understood to be people of great humility and uncommon compassion? That would
be a faith in Jesus that is interconnected with our life.
The other way that a
commitment to interconnectedness is helpful in disrupting routinism is that it
puts us in community with others. The more connected we are to others in a
community of faith, the more dynamic and less routine that faith will be. And by
being connected to others, I don’t simply mean sitting in the same pew or belonging
to the same clubs. Interconnectedness is about knowing each other’s stories,
it’s about sharing one another’s burdens, it’s about living as if we really and
truly believed that we’re all in this together.
In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther
King wrote “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught
in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” That comes from his
deep sense of interconnectedness. King was, of course, a champion for civil
rights, but he was assassinated while in Memphis to be a part of sanitation
workers’ strike. He could have easily said “The plight of sanitation workers in
Memphis isn’t my battle.” But he didn’t, he was there because he believed in
the principle of interconnectedness. He knew that, indeed, injustice anywhere
is a threat to justice everywhere.
So often we are told by
our social groups or the media what we’re supposed to care about. We are led to
believe that our world is a struggle of us versus them. We are led to believe
that there is a limited amount of resources, so we always are in competition
with others. We are led to believe that tribalism cannot be avoided. But that
is not the Gospel. The Gospel is about abundance and interconnectedness. It
might be easy to think that the unemployment rates of young black men just
isn’t a problem for me, after all, I’m white and really have never worried
about finding gainful employment for even a day in my life. But as St. Paul
said, if one part of the body suffers, all suffer with it.
The Kingdom of God comes
to its fullest fruition when we are interconnected with each other, when we
care for each other, when we know each other. Each person is a unit of God’s grace,
and so the more we get to know them, the more we will get to see the grace of
God in our world. Everything that I’ve said thus far is drawn directly from our
readings from Genesis and Matthew this morning.
In Genesis, God says to
Abram “I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a
blessing… in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” This is a
truly radical claim, that Abram is blessed so that he will become a blessing to
all the families of the earth. So often though we tend to think of our
blessings as things for us to delight in. And certainly, there should be a
sense of joy that accompanies God’s blessings upon us. But God’s economy
doesn’t stop there. Blessings are things to be passed on, for the benefit of
others. God could have chosen to bless the world in a variety of ways, through
direct divine action, for example. But God prefers to work through Abram,
through you and me.
A commitment to
interconnectedness is so vital because that is how God’s blessings work. The
world needs the blessings that have been entrusted to you. What blessings have
you received that you might bless the world with? What gifts and talents do you
have that might help others? Spend some time considering that – how might God’s
blessings to you be God’s blessing to the world through you? And the other side
of that equation is that the blessing which you need might very well lie with
someone else. The more we are connected to others, the more likely it is that
we will find God’s healing and grace being offered to us.
In John, we again
encounter the importance of interconnectedness. One of the most well-known
verses in Scripture is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have
eternal life.” And certainly, it is a beautiful verse that conveys God’s love.
But so often we pay attention to the second half of the verse more than the
first. When it says “For God so loved the world,” the word “world” is the Greek
word kosmos. It’s not that God so
loved only Israel, not that God so loved humans, not that God so loved planet
Earth, but that God so loved the cosmos. And included in the cosmos are people
that we disagree with, people that we don’t like, plants and animals, asteroids
and stars. We are connected by God’s love. The more we are in-tune with nature,
the more we can gaze at the stars, the more we get to know others, the more
deeply we will sense the love of God.
Jesus notes that “The
wind blows where it chooses,” and “wind” is the same word as “Spirit.” Notice
that the Spirit doesn’t blow where we tell it to blow. The Spirit doesn’t only
fall upon the people that we think are deserving of God’s Spirit. The Spirit
comes and goes in ways that we do not understand, reminding us that our task is
not to define, capture, or direct the wind, but rather to simply open our sails
and be taken where God wills.
The famous, or perhaps
infamous, metaphor used in this passage is that “you must be born again.” In
the worldview of Jesus’ culture, time is divided into two eras. One is the
present age, with all of its problems and divisions. The other is reign of God,
full of God’s mercy, justice, peace, and healing. Jesus’ ministry was about
connecting us to this second age of God’s reign while we still live in the
present age. Jesus wants us to know that God’s grace is not stuck in the
future, but is readily accessible now. The trick is, you have to be born again
to see it.
Being born again simply
means being awakened to the present reality of God’s reign. It means seeing
connections that used to be obscured, between various aspects of your life and
between all of Creation.
And being born again also
means that you are a child, and a child is always dependent on their parents.
God is our loving mother who cares for and nurture us. God is our compassionate
father who is always with us and calls us into being a blessing to this world.
Being born again means that we depend on God, and therefore strive for a deeper
connection with God. The more connected we are to God, the more connected we
are to the vitality of our souls. The more we connect all the aspects of our
life to our faith, we more we will find an authentic and life giving faith. The
more connected we are to others, the more we will find God’s blessings that are
intended for us. The more connected we are to all of Creation, the more we will
see the fullness of God.
How might you connect
your faith more fully to your life? How might you connect more to others? How
might you connect more to the whole cosmos? In what ways do you need to be born
anew, seeing God’s grace in places where you haven’t yet found it? In what ways
do you need to be born afresh, blessing the world through your blessings? In
what ways do you need to born again into the interconnected reality of God’s
reign of peace, grace, and mercy? For God so loved the cosmos that she gave his
only Son, so that everyone who is connected to God may not perish but have
eternal life. Thanks be to God.
