November 2009

SERMON: Remembering the “Middle Ages,” or Forgetting the Unholy Stuff Between Paul and Luther.

TEXTS:
New Testament Reading: Acts 28:17-22
Old Testament Reading: Numbers 25:5-9

Before there was a sacred text called the New Testament, there were storytellers. Before Paul’s letters, before the Gospels, there were storytellers. It was the first preaching of a new utopian vision where Jesus’ expected return would bring a new world of peace and justice. Imaginations of a world with no war, a world of Peace have some to us since the days of Plato and his imagining a Philosopher-King who could rule in perfect peace and justice.

From the early Greeks through the modern period there is a traceable history of utopian hopes and visions expressed through stories, doctrines, laws, and yes, even wars. It seems we will do anything to move forward with our goal to create the perfect and just society – ironically, even kill.

Christianity passionately continued the utopian hopes, but important details were different. Utopia would not hang on the Greek idea of a perfect Philosopher-King, rather, these utopian hopes now hung on Jesus, the one sent by God, the Messiah. The history of Christendom is filled with the utopian dreams that began with Jesus’ preaching of the coming Kingdom of God –

“The Kingdom of God is coming! Repent!” preached by every generation until this day.

The church has largely seen itself and portrayed itself as the vehicle through which God has been building a more just and peaceful society, met with much cynicism even from Christians. From late antiquity to the early modern period the Church built monasteries and missions, to showcase if you will, mini-utopias, examples of religious community devotion that could yield utopian-like societies. The Amish and Quakers serve demonstrative Protestant examples. We can look to Judaism as well in the message is of the modern Jewish Kibbutz communities.
These traditions influenced early American founders and religious sentiments until today. We have heard many times America described as a “shining city on a hill” to the rest of he world – words uttered even in the most recent presidential inauguration speech of President Obama. The Church in the West has undoubtedly seen itself as a kind of savior for the world - bringing justice and equality to all.

But Colonialist Europe and early American history used language that divided the world into the “civilized” and the “savage” and explained the benefits of colonialism to themselves, but neglected to see its own contribution to injustice and in equality around the world.

Today, we have a broader view of the world and a different understanding of what Democracy means. In fact our idea of democracy has laid the theological foundation for the church. We cannot conceive of a good Christianity that does not also promote democracy and equality. We have moved beyond the Christianity that seeks foremost to alienate those outside the church with accusations of heresy or paganism – No, instead we have learned the importance and value of religious tolerance to the evolution of a more just and peaceful society. Whatever ideals we may still have of a utopian future, will include more open and tolerant views of religions and cultures different than ourselves.

But in this evolution of the church in the past several hundred years in particular can be for some a lesson we are apt to forget if not want to forget. The Christianity of the early modern period is one we sometimes feel we can easily forget. For we have a better understanding now of democracy, human rights, and equality.

But the hope of a better future is tied to our refusal to forget our failures. As it is in our own personal life so goes it with church – growth and moral development must always include remembering what we aren’t proud of so that we might make something we can be proud of.

We are today, the beneficiaries of Baptists, Quakers, early American seekers, like Roger Williams and that’s why we recognize the important contributions of Judaism as well with writers like Baruch Spinoza who advanced principles of Religious tolerance ahead of his time. This is an age of a more mature Democracy, still maturing. We can no longer limit our view of ethical religion to Christianity alone, no more than we would limit Christianity to one particular church – that fact tells us that we are in an important new place in history. And though we have been here for some decades now, we should not fail to acknowledge that we share a world with people of different faiths, and people with no faith. The early Church through the Reformation preserved ideas, traditions, and rituals that still define us today. But some of history we critique for growth, some of it we preserve for practice.

But we should also keep in mind, for the purposes of living out our faith gently, humbly, and with “ears to hear,” that the thousand years between Augustine and Christopher Columbus, makes up roughly half of the history of the Church – and while one kind of popular view of history tells some contemporary Protestants, including Baptists, that the most significant persons in Church history are truly Paul and Luther. Such a view of our history is far too limited, not to mention the oversights of these figures themselves – whether it be Paul’s low view of women, not shared by everyone in the ancient period, or Luther’s condemnation of Jews and Judaism to the extent of favoring serious measures of persecution against Jews in the name of God. Luther failed to add the unjustifiable persecution of Jews to his 95 objections against the Church – an unimaginable oversight from where we sit post-Hitler.

The lesson is that we learn immensely important things when we refuse to ignore the inexcusable periods of our history. I don’t know a dominating empire, nation, or religion that does not of moments in their histories that they would like to be forgotten. But we can learn much from that period that we most want to ignore, and I believe it is the exact exercise of faith that Jesus places such a premium upon… forgiveness, humility, and reconciliation.

To forget our past is to fail to practice our Christian faith as Jesus taught it. The individualized concerns of contemporary Christians are important, but the gospel lesson, in keeping with its ancient cultural values had many more communal or corporate concerns - mission there is a lesson in considering ALL of our past, even the past we don’t like, especially the past we don’t like. It is an opportunity to reflect on a past that is still part of who we are, a past that only benefits us to remember, and a past we seek to make better in the present. Shame and guilt should not prevent us – the consequences of reconciliation, under the watch of a gracious God and the wisdom that follows humility should draw us toward it.

We can celebrate Baptist soul freedom, expressed in the courage of Roger Williams, and the insistence of the early Baptist on religious freedom in political contexts. The examples of early Baptist and Quakers, should serve to inspire us to go further with the message they paid a price to preserve –

That seems to me to be one of the resounding lessons that comes to us as Baptists, and Christians – that we are still learning – we are still undoing dogmatic faith – we are still making lifting up the marginalized– we are still listening – we are still seeking.

In all this, our past inspires us not only through the lives of heroes who set examples of courage and innovation, but we are also moved by a past that could have been better, could have been more just - Both the heroically just and the shockingly inhumane are important histories to preserve. In them we are compelled to live out a faith that reaches back to its origins in Jesus and is contiguous with the present so that we see it with our eyes wide open and our hearts anticipating change. In this the Good News of the Gospel is celebrated.

Recommended Reading: “On the Jews and their Lies” by Martin Luther
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Luther_on_Jews.html