"Hope in Troubled Times"
Luke 18:9-14
In late October, a lot of people
are celebrating Halloween. But in the
church, many Christians are more focused on Reformation Day.
Five hundred and two years ago, on
October 31, 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and theology professor in
the university town of Wittenberg, published his Ninety-Five Theses by nailing them to the door of the Castle
Church. In those days, the church door
served as kind of a community bulletin board.
The 95 Theses were in the form of an invitation to debate about
traditional church doctrine and practice, that, in Luther’s mind, needed to be
re-examined and reformed. Luther was
advocating for reform within the Roman Catholic church, but before it was over
Luther would be excommunicated from the church and branded an outlaw by the
Holy Roman Emperor.
As John Buchanan describes it,
“violence ensued, wars were fought, martyrs on both sides were tortured and
executed. Luther’s followers and their
churches were called ‘Lutherans’ in derision, but during the next century large
portions of northern Germany, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, all the way to
the Italian Alps and the Scottish Highlands, separated from Rome and organized
themselves into Reformed churches.”[1]
Five hundred plus years later, as we commemorate Luther
and the Ninety-Five Theses, it’s a good time to remember that the Protestant
Reformation was a development that took place slowly, over time, and that it was
and is
an ongoing process.
As a former representative of the World Alliance of
Reformed Churches has written, “Luther and Calvin did not just fall from
Heaven. Other people had worked the same field, and people at that time were
aware of earlier reformers.” By earlier reformers, he was referring to Waldensians,
Hussites, the Czech Brethren, and others.”
So, with this in mind, I think it’s a good thing to
observe “Reformation Sunday” in late October, but to focus on what Jean Calvin
called “the many resurrections of the church,” which include the earlier
reformers, and Luther and Calvin and Knox, and other examples of the Spirit’s
reforming, rejuvenating work in the church throughout history and to our
present time.
The gospel lesson we heard today is a brief and
straightforward parable Jesus told his disciples. Earlier in the 18th
chapter of Luke, Jesus had told them a parable about their need to pray always
and not to lose heart. In this parable, a widow kept going to an un-just judge
“who neither feared God nor had respect for people.” Eventually, because the
widow persisted and kept coming back
to the unjust judge, he said, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for
anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice,
so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”[2]
Jesus said to his disciples, “Listen to what the unjust
judge says. And will not God grant justice to God’s chosen ones
who cry out day and night? Will God delay long in helping them? I tell you, God will quickly grant justice to
them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
That’s the context
for the parable we heard today, which Jesus told to “some who trusted in
themselves that they were righteous and who regarded others with contempt.”
“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee
and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying
thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other
people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this collector. I fast twice
a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even
look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to
me, a sinner!”
Jesus said, “I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for
all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be
exalted.”
"Nobody is more dangerous
than he who imagines himself pure in heart,” wrote James Baldwin, “for his purity,
by definition, is unassailable.”
Such people clothe
themselves in religion while creating hell for others. They see everything
but their truest selves. They hide their vulnerabilities and practice spiritual
dishonesty about their own shortcomings.
Jesus is addressing a crowd
of people who “trust in themselves,” but who really can’t see themselves. They
can point to the flaws in others and avoid seeing their own shortcomings and
sins.
This parable gives us a
window into this particular Pharisee’s mentality, through the words of his
prayer. He embraces the insider-outsider politics of institutional religion.
His public prayer creates a firewall between him and those who are
“other.”
When Luke says Jesus’
listeners “regarded others with contempt,” the Greek word for contempt suggests
treating other people as nothing. This kind of spirituality lets people pursue
their idea of holiness and morality, while they treat those they see as “other”
as sinful or unworthy or without value.
As the Rev. Willie Francois
III writes, this culture of false perfection betrays the truth of the gospel: “that
God loves us with our scars of disobedience, markers of mistakes, and wounds of
worry. Such a culture creates myriad communities of throwaways, of people
perceived as disposable.
Even churches consecrate
categories by which they effectively label people disposable. When we fail to
see ourselves as we are, we tragically fix our eyes on others—and we live with
spiritual blinders on. This derails our journey to wholeness and
transformation.”[3]
The
Pharisee in the parable isn’t guilty of any of the specific things he names—but
there are many other sins he wasn’t willing to name. The tax collector avoids
narrating a long list of his own virtues or sins to God, but he names his condition: he confesses that he’s a sinner, and he pleads for mercy.
We live in a tumultuous
time—a time of great change and polarization and anxiety— in the world and in
the church. But it isn’t the first time.
The Scottish reformer
John Knox felt compelled to leave the British Isles after the Roman Catholic
Mary Tudor rose to the English throne in 1553. Eventually he joined a
fellowship of religious refugees from
across Europe who had thronged to Geneva, Switzerland.
Geneva’s most famous resident, the French lawyer and humanist John Calvin, was
himself a Geneva immigrant. Calvin helped create an atmosphere in Geneva
that was welcoming to outsiders. They established a hospital for refugees, as
well as an academy for their education. Knox ministered to a congregation of
English-speaking refugees.
John Knox marveled at his time in Geneva, calling it ‘the most perfect school
of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the apostles.’”
Calvin’s emphasis on placing full trust in God, as opposed to any earthly
ruler, aimed to infuse life in Geneva with gratitude and faith and to ease the anxieties of a people living
in an age of plague, war, and dislocation. For Calvin and for Knox, growing in trust of
God and love for God enlarged a community’s ability to respond to God’s call to
love and service-- no matter where its residents came from.
Five hundred years after the Protestant
Reformation, we’re living in a difficult and challenging time to be the
church.
We need to re-learn how
to love and recognize the image of God in one another. We need to learn how to live more and more
fully as beloved children of God… and become more and more fully the Beloved
Community.
And nations, like
individuals and the church, struggle to look in the moral mirror. At the Democratic National Convention,
Michelle Obama said, “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by
slaves.” That’s a historical fact about the White House and our national
capitol building—one that’s often relegated to a footnote or simply omitted.
Yet many found the statement to be controversial. The institution of slavery
funded the greatness of America—and more than 150 years after the signing of
the Emancipation Proclamation, the American check still bounces.
Long
ago, biblical prophets like Jeremiah expressed the national need for
repentance. The nation needs mercy. For over 400 years, black people have been
dehumanized in America—from the trafficking of African persons from their
native lands through years of slavery, Jim Crow, Black Codes and predatory
sharecropping, unchecked lynching, red-lining and residential segregation, mass
incarceration, under-education, mass criminalization, and police violence.
The
church also needs mercy for the ways it supported the institution of slavery
and structural racism and poverty or failed to resist them…for the Doctrine of
Discovery which the ways it gave permission, even encouraged colonialization
and the genocide of indigenous peoples.
Reverend
Francois challenges all Americans when he says, “To change—to be redeemed—America
has to actually look at itself. We
have to stand squarely in front of the moral mirror, beat our chests, name our
sins, and be justified.
On
Reformation Sunday, we are reminded that we are justified by God’s grace,
through faith.
The
question of the day is: how shall we live, in response to God’s gracious
gift? That’s where sanctification comes
in. “Sanctification” is a theological word for how we grow in the Christian
life, as we are taught and led further into the truth and empowered by the Holy
Spirit.
Sanctification is a life-long process, as we are
gradually freed from our fears and doubts and brokenness-- to love and serve
God and our neighbors as Christ does. As we grow in Christian faith, we open
ourselves to be surprised and transformed by God’s word.
One sign of growing in the Christian life is maturing in
love for and solidarity with all of
God’s children-- especially with those who are poor and marginalized and those
who are different…those we see as “other.”
The early Protestants
believed that they were not only creating a new church-- but they were creating
a new world, one that would resemble
more fully God’s desire for humanity.
The original Protestant impulse was to resist powers of worldly
dominion and domination, in favor of the power of God’s spirit to transform
human hearts and society. They felt a deep discomfort and discontent with
the status quo. They knew things were not right, and they set out to change
the world.
Today, we live in troubling
times—a time of great change and anxiety, in the church and in the world. In 2019,
the world groans under flame of wildfires and floods caused by global warming,
as families are left shattered by sprays of bullets and the devastation of war,
in this time of broken human relationships and extreme political partisanship
and structural racism and poverty and corruption in governments. Things are not
right. But I believe God is working to
do new things in our time.
I believe we are living in a prophetic
time—a time of new reformation. I believe that God is working to create a new
church, in and through us. I believe
that God wants to use us as instruments of justice and reconciliation in our
communities… in our nation… and in the world.
I give thanks that “we’ve come this far by faith”—that we’ve
been hearing a new word from God over the past few decades about human
sexuality and some of the other things that have consumed so much of our energy
and focus in the church. I give thanks
that this seems to be freeing the church to focus on structural
racism and poverty and other forms of injustice. I give thanks that we have been gifted with
strong and faithful and diverse leaders in our national Presbyterian church and
the ecumenical and interfaith communities who are leading us to act more faithfully
and more boldly.
I give
thanks for the prophetic witness of Bishop William Barber and the Rev. Dr. Liz
Theoharis and other leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign around the country as
they work to bring about justice for all.
I give thanks for Rabbi Alana Alpert and the Detroit Jews for Justice
and their work for water justice in Detroit and their work with the Poor
People’s Campaign. I think that part of
this new time of re-formation is how we’re learning to work together as
ecumenical and interfaith community.
Two
weeks ago, we gathered in this sanctuary to celebrate 100 years of mission and
ministry at St. John’s. The Rev. Dr. J.
Herbert Nelson reminded us of the way things are changing in the Brief church and in
our society and said we are living in a prophetic time. The mission field is here around us, and we
have work to do.
This
week, especially, we have mourned the passing and given thanks for a prophet of
our times, the very Honorable Congressman Elijah Cummings, and we have been
inspired by the witness of this man of faith and humility…integrity and courage
and compassion.
I was moved to hear that
Congressman Cummings quoted a poem by Benjamin Mays during his very first
speech on the U.S. House of Representatives floor on April 25, 1996 while
noting that he recited that poem up to 20 times a day:
“I have only just a
minute. Only 60 seconds in it.Forced upon me, can’t refuse it. Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it.
But it’s up to me to use it. I must suffer if I lose it.
Give account if I abuse it.
Just a tiny minute, but eternity is in it.”
Elijah Cummings was living
with a serious, life-threatening illness. But he was passionate about working
for justice. He lived with a sense of urgency,
conscious about being effective with every minute
he was given. His life can inspire and
challenge us.
We are living in a time of
new reformation. God is working to create a new church and a new world, and
wants to use us as instruments of justice and reconciliation in the world.
So—on this Reformation
Sunday and in the coming days, as we look around at the world and see things
that are not right, let us be praying that we may respond to the challenges of
our time with courage and hope.
In the
words of our Presbyterian “Brief Statement of Faith:” “In a
broken and fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries
in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work
with others for justice, freedom, and peace.”[4]
Thanks be to God!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Guest
Preacher
St. John Presbyterian Church
Detroit, Michigan
October 27, 2019
[1]
John M. Buchanan, “Values Worth Fighting For,” at his blog Hold to the Good. https://jmbpastor.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/values-worth-fighting-for/
[2]
Luke 18:1-5
[3] Willie Dwayne Francois III, at https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2016-09/october-23-30th-sunday-ordinary-time
[4] “A
Brief Statement of Faith,” 1990. Book of
Confessions of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
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