05/16/2021
This week, as I was ruminating on the teachings of Jesus in our Gospel lesson, I stumbled onto the following Facebook story which, for me, struck right at the heart of my thoughts.
A “church goer” wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper and complained that it had become senseless to go to church every Sunday! He wrote, “I’ve gone to church for 30 years now, and in that time, I have heard something like 3,000 sermons, but for the life of me, I can’t remember a single one of them. So, I think I’m wasting my time. The pastors and preachers are wasting theirs by giving sermons at all!”
This started a real controversy in the “Letters to the Editor” column, much to the delight of the editor. It went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher: “I’ve been married for 30 years now; in that time my wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. But, for the life of me, I cannot recall the entire menu for a single one of those meals. I do know this, however: They all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife had not given me these meals, I would be physically dead today! Likewise, if I had not gone to church for nourishment, I would be spiritually dead today1”
The telling of the story then summarized: When you are down to nothing, God is up to something! Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives the impossible. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen.” (Heb. 11:1)
Thank God for our physical and our spiritual nourishment.
The Gospel reading from John that we heard this morning is a portion of what is called “the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus.” The setting is in “the night in which he was betrayed.” Jesus prays for his disciples – and for us. He prays for our unity, for our joy, and for our safety and protection. Jesus states that, as his followers, we are not of the world, but that we should nonetheless remain in the world – for our calling to be in ministry is to be in the world and for the world.
Now, when Jesus says “world” here, He’s not talking about the created order – the rocks, trees, bunnies, bees, and things like that; instead, he’s referring to human society which is organized as it sees best to promote its own purposes. Jesus is talking about business as usual; he is talking about the society, the culture, the various human institutions, the status quo – the world in that sense doing what is usually does.
And Jesus makes this point to his disciples: that the world has hated them because they are not of the world. This hatred is to be the fate – indeed, it is to be the one real, distinguishing mark of all who follow Jesus. Disciples are to stand out because they don’t really fit in.
When was the last time the world hated you because you belong to Jesus, and not to the world? When was the last time your faith so set you apart from business as usual that you were met with anger, ridicule, or hatred? How about a little bit of contempt? Mild dislike? How about a tiny bit of irritation?
I’m sure you’ve heard the illustration of what happens when an oyster gets a bit of sand, a piece of grit, an irritating tidbit inside its shell, then one of two things will happen. Either the oyster will create a pearl, or it will die. The pearl, a thing of beauty and value – is the oyster’s way of staying alive after something very irritating has gotten past its shell and into its heart.
The bit of grit for us “oysters” is this: we need to ask whether we have become so totally caught up in our culture, become so totally of the world, that we have to work hard to discover if we are different, and how we are different, and what it might look like for us to be different, and whether it’s worth the effort and the cost to be different!
One way we try to get out of this pinch is by saying that it’s the Church’s job to fix the world so there will be no conflicts between faith and culture for us to worry about. And so, from time to time, we humans have reared back and tried to change everything within reach so we could be both righteous and of the world at the same time. Now, on one level, this is really, really good. We must engage the world and we should try very hard to make things better – things like institutions, systems, people, and ourselves. We are called to do this; our faith demands it. But we need to avoid getting confused about what that means. And we do get confused easily.
We get confused when we forget that God doesn’t call us to be powerful or effective as the world sees power and effectiveness. God calls us to be faithful – to live in the way of Christ’s example, to follow His steps. After all, of the twelve apostles, Judas was the most effective one at using both money and the powers – that – be to get what he wanted.
So, how do we do this? How do we live faithfully and honestly, rationally, prayerfully, prudently, and with integrity, in the midst of a world that is really quite far from God’s realm? How do we do this without being trivial, without being silly, and without minimizing either the depth of the tension between the Gospel and the world or the importance of our response? You may have some ideas already. Taking this challenge seriously amounts to some of the most important pearl-making work the church has on its agenda. It’s really the question of how we are to live.
We need to look honestly at “the world”, the culture and institutions around us, and at who we are – and then pay careful attention to, and take prayerful, concrete steps toward becoming, the person and the Church that God would have us be. We may even discover that Jesus was right, and that, in one way or another, the world will hate, or at least misunderstand us. But Christ continues to pray for us, we are promised all of the help we need, and that nourishment and strength comes from abiding in God’s love and word.