|
SECTIONS:
Snake wisdom
Separation
Three results
Action |
SHOULD WE criticise other
religions? Should we find fault with other expressions of Christianity?
The answer is a resounding, “Maybe!” But you have to
understand what that maybe means.
When I was a young Christian,
I sometimes felt uncomfortable with the way our pastors criticised
other Christians. They Catholics didn't understand grace. The
Methodists were liberal. The Pentecostals were demonised. The
Anglicans were OK in Sydney except that they were stuck in traditions,
but everywhere else they were just Catholics without Latin.
We had it all down pat. And the three most evil men in the world
were the Pope, Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth.
The Pope wanted to turn all Protestants into Catholics so that
Christ wouldn’t recognise his Protestant people when he
returned, so we'd all be left behind with the rest of the Papists.
Bultmann was trying to demythologise Christianity — no one
knew what that meant, but it had to be bad, and would make Papists
of us all if he won.
And Barth was trying to replace Orthodoxy with Neo-orthodoxy,
and no one knew what that meant, either; but it had to be bad,
and would make Papists of us all, too.
If I were one to lay bets, I'd bet that the Catholics were hearing
very much the same in a lot of their churches. Just replace the
Pope with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Bultmann with the
Catholic theologian, Hans Küng, and Barth with Billy Graham.
I was embarrassed when I heard that kind of thing being said.
One day when we had a lunch here, we had someone visiting who
was from a sort-of Catholic background; but we also had two visitors
who would probably have called themselves Baptists. They spent
half of the time we had together bagging Catholics. Great stuff
for winning over someone who needed the gospel, and didn't need
stupid, arrogant sectarianism!
I tried to shut these two up, and one of them didn't come back
after that. The other one only ever came on special occasions.
I guess the fact that this always comes back to me when I think
of bigotry shows that I am still rather angry at what happened
that day.
The sort-of Catholic didn't hang around us much after that, either.
SNAKE WISDOM
Didn’t Jesus tell us,
Be as wise as
snakes, but as gentle as doves?
He didn’t tell us to
be as wise as doves and as gentle as snakes! Bigotry is the gentleness of snakes,
because it comes from the old serpent himself.
There's an American minister
who follows the World Council of Churches around as it holds
meetings and conventions around the world. He goes so that he
can protest.
When the WCC held its meetings in Australia about 10 years ago,
this man was outside the meeting carrying a big placard saying,
“Dialogue is sin!”
There are lots of fundamentalists who would agree.
Anyway, a Pakistani student came up to him and said, “Excuse
me, sir... I am a foreign student and I am a Muslim, and I don’t
understand your sign. Will you explain it to me, please?”
The minister began explaining. He was committed to the gospel.
He did not believe that Christians should discuss or negotiate
over their faith. Christians should stand up for their faith
and that was that. He went on further about what other religions
lack that only Christianity has.
The student thought for a while, and asked a few questions, which
the minister answered.
Then the student said, “As a Muslim, I also have some ideas
about this question. Would you like to hear my views?”
“Yes, you may as well tell me,” the minister answered.
So that’s what the student did.
The minister was interested and asked some questions, which the
student answered.
The student thanked the minister for explaining everything so
well, and for listening to him when he explained his own views.
“But just one thing still puzzles me,” said the student.
“Will God punish you for talking to me? Because you say
that dialogue is sin, and what we have just done is dialogue.”
There is always room for people to talk, to listen. to establish
a setting where people are free to think about the issues without
the threat of being called names.
SEPARATION
But there’s another side.
In our passage we find a radical step in the attitude of the
early Christians to their faith. We can read about Stephen’s
death and feel sad that a good man was convicted on trumped–up
charges, and executed without mercy.
Or we can read about the point in history where the church clearly
separated from Judaism.
Peter and John might have been great preachers and bold witnesses
to God’s work through Jesus Christ. But they were not thinkers
like Stephen was. They were true to their calling, but they didn’t
understand the radical nature of their faith. They were very
ordinary believers in some respects.
But Stephen saw the big picture. Christianity could not afford
to be a Jewish sect. It had to stand on its own feet.
“You stiff-necked
people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like
your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever
a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those
who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have
betrayed and murdered him — you who have received the law
that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it.”
He says that the Jews knew exactly
what God required, but they constantly, throughout history, refused
to do it; and now the guardianship of truth has passed from their
hands.
If we had time, we could go through the whole of this speech,
and find over and over where Stephen tells the Sanhedrin, “God
blessed you, and you rejected him; God gave you good, and you
returned evil to him; God spoke, and you listened to idols.”
He makes the point repeatedly: “God finally sent his Son,
and you murdered him, too.”
Didn’t Jesus make this point, too? He told the Pharisees
about the man who owned a garden, and rented it out to people
who agreed to farm the land and pay rent in the form of a percentage
of the produce. Repeatedly, the man sent his servants to get
the payments, but they refused. They beat one, they cursed another,
they refused to answer the knock of another. Finally, the landlord
sent his son. “Surely they will listen to him,” he
said.
But what did the tenants do? They beat and killed the son and
tried to claim the farm for themselves.
Jesus said, “Is it any wonder that the owner comes back
with an army and kills the tenants and hands the property over
to new tenants who will pay their rent?”
So, Jesus taught it, and Stephen put it into a practical context:
God called Israel, Israel never listened, and now God has turned
from Israel and given his commands and his blessing to a people
who will listen, a people called out of Israel, but greater than
Israel. God has turned to the Christians.
Through its rebellious leaders, Israel persecuted Christ; when
the message of Christ's death, resurrection and return was proclaimed,
these same leaders did not repent, and led the people to follow
them into sin. Now they were persecuting Christ’s followers
as well. Clearly, they were determined not to listen to God.
Peter and John might have declared
the word of God; but they didn’t see the radical difference
between the Jews and the Christians. Stephen did, and he said
it: “We are different. We reject the rebellion which has
become endemic in our society. We no longer accept a role as
a minor Jewish cult. We will stand on our own feet and accept
the consequences.”
THREE RESULTS
Three results flow from this as we apply these scriptures to
our situation.
First is the principle of
radical separation from sin and rebellion.
We must be very clear on what we are not, and where we refuse
to stand. We have no partnership with evil, even if it speaks
pleasing words.
That means that we must be very sure that we ourselves are not
secretly in sin and rebellion.
Stephen separated the church from the rebelliousness which was
leading many Jews of his day to an obsessive concern with law
and a lack of concern about justice.
While we are not called to a generally aggressive or attacking
role, we can’t participate in those aspects of our own society
which blatantly support injustice while talking the language
of law.
Jesus said he would not quench a smouldering wick, he would not
snuff out an almost–dead candle. If there was the slightest
flicker of life, he would blow it into a flame. That must always
be our bottom line position. Where we find a flicker of the light
of Christ, we are called to blow it into a flame. But we always
come from the position that this world is not our true home,
and we are a new people, a people of power, who stand by God’s
principles, and not the principles of this world.
And, if this means confronting as Stephen confronted, then we
have to do it.
The second principle is the
principle of definite identity.
Stephen was able to deliver such a scathing critique of Jewish
history because he knew who he was and where he stood. Above
everything else, he belonged to Jesus and was part of God’s
new community of faith under Jesus’ lordship and rule. He
no longer had any loyalty to the rebellion around him.
We have no calling or purpose to be rude or aggressive towards
people of other religions, such as Jews, Muslims, Buddhists,or
secular humanists. But we must be clear that we are different
from them. We and they might sometimes find ourselves fighting
on the same side, but that doesn’t mean we are the same
people.
As a younger Christian I was often angry and disappointed that
Christians were often in the forefront of seeing a wrong that
needed righting. Straight afterwards the Communists would arrive
to do something about it. And so the Christians would back off,
because they didn’t want to seem to support Communists!
That just proves that too many Christians didn’t really
know who they were in Christ!
If this world and its systems has no more hold over us, because
we are now in Christ and belong to a whole new creation, then
we must stand as who we are, God’s new people, created in
Christ Jesus. We must cultivate that self awareness and never
let it go. God has called together a people in this place. We
must know it and live it.
People who know who they are don’t need to fear losing their
identity when they participate in the world’s pain. Jesus
knew who he was, and that enabled him to get right in with a
sinful, hurting world. We have to, too.
If we are sure of who we are, we will stand firm. When opinions
come and go we will know what to accept and what to reject, but
we will be motivated by reasoned faith, and not by fear. We will
know whom we have believed. He is able to keep the life we ahve
committed to him!
Finally, we must be wedded
to the principle of interdependent independency.
The passage doesn’t teach us this directly, but it flows
from the other two principles.
If we know how to come out of and be separate from the evils
of this world, and if we know who we are in Christ, then we need
no longer hang on other people’s coattails.
There have been many books lately about co-dependency and how
destructive it can be. We all know people who are stuck in situations
they hate, yet they are afraid to get out. They keep coming back
for more of what hurt them in the first place.
I had some dealings with a couple some years back who had a seriously
abusive relationship. Each needed to get away from the other
just to survive. But she kept coming back for the security and
he kept coming back for the sex. They were on the point of suicide
many times, but couldn't bring themselves to break old habits
which were killing them.
Churches can fall into the same kinds of relationships.
They can become dependent on some person or organisation which
offers to give them funds, so they never get to creating a self-supporting
community. Or they expect someone else to provide the music,
to lead the evangelism, to do the visiting or whatever. They
become parasitic.
Sometimes it is an older church which has never become mature
in its faith, and seeks a retired minister to work for nothing
so they have a preacher until they die; sometimes it is a new
plant which expects that someone else will supply all their needs.
Too many of our ethno-specific congregations are like that, I’m
afraid!
We have to commit ourselves to growing up and being ourselves,
and putting in the input to get ourselves onto our own feet.
We have to be committed to being independent. We can’t become
a sect of someone else’s mainstream.
At the same time, Christian fellowship demands that we be interdependent,
that we learn to share, to give and to receive, so that grace
can be shared among us.
ACTION
I’ll close with two appeals.
First, I ask all who are willing to stand and reaffirm
our commitment to being God’s people to our part of Marrickville.
Second, if you realise that you have compromised in some
way with the sin and rebellion of our society, and you are ready
to do business with the Christ who died to rule your life, come
and see me straight after we close, and we’ll talk to the
Lord about it.
AMEN |
