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Sermon for Church of the Holy Spirit, February 6, 2005
by Betsey Mulloy
Text: Luke 7:18-23
Most of my childhood friends are "politically correct". Do you have the "PC" in
Your life? Even though they know we are Christians, they regularly forward to
me on email what they think are hilarious exposés of the President's IQ or lack
thereof, or they send screeds against his policies, both foreign and domestic.
Months after his re-election, some are still foaming at the mouth!
In spite of all our efforts to describe, explain, "share" the past 30 years of our
lives with Jesus Christ as Lord, they evidently think that we might still be
"politically correct" too.
They know that, as in the old days, we still care very much about the plight of
women in our world, that we contribute to the right relief efforts and that from time
to time we even travel to unglamorous places like Uruguay, Honduras and
Uganda to do some kind of good thing for the poor, and that we still like U2.
These things they admire. And so I guess they surmise that perhaps we are at
least a "purple" state all our own.
But, of course, we are not politically correct at all
How incorrect we are came home to me the other day. I received an email from
an old friend in Texas. We had grown up together in the same little town, a place
which was, then at least, full of bigotry and provincialism and we had jumped
through the same social hoops (the horrors of dancing class, the agonies of
being misfits during the junior high and high school dating days, the expectations
of our settling down to a life of PTA, bridge and golf.
At college time, our whole misfit gang had fled, each as far as we could get, and
my friend Susan , during the social and sexual upheaval of the 60's and 70's
entered into the homosexual life, which she remains in to this day.
Susan grew up as a conservative Jew, was even bat-mitzvahed, and has a
spiritual life that is till there to be awakened. She is a person of great intelligence
and humor and tenderness of heart toward others.
I have told her about Jesus, I have shared my testimony and I feel His yearning
for her in my heart and prayers.
Anyway, she had heard from a mutual friend that I was headed once again for
Africa and wanted to know what I'd be doing there. I began to describe what I
hoped I'd get to do...Then I had a brilliant idea!
The Lebers, Jennifer and Phil, the missionaries with whom we stay, have a
wonderful website (ugandamission.org) which chronicles, complete with great
photographs, their years of work all over Uganda. I knew that our last trip was
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described vividly there, as well as stories of the "night commuters" the children
on the northern border who must walk up to 5miles each night to a central camp
in order to escape the village raids by the diabolical Lord's Resistance Army.
Before I referred my friend to the site, I logged on just to check the chapter
numbers: yes, there was our trip in Chapter 31. Then the night commuters and a
piece on Rwanda (by the way: see Hotel Rwanda) in Chapters 34 and 35. Great!
But uh-oh! Chapters 32 and 33: General Convention and "A Place to Stand": in
which the Lebers explain the response of Bible-believing Anglicans in the world-
wide communion to the ordination of a gay bishop in America and the
subsequent mangling of Scripture to condone it.
My heart sank...what if my friend reads all that and then asks me to explain "their
side" versus "our" side and why our position on orthodoxy doesn't make us
narrow minded homophobic reactionaries (as we are so often represented in the
press).
What a bunch of quicksand, I thought. Well, I know that God would give me the
theological answers IF THAT WERE THE POINT OF THE BATTLE...
But I know that the battle is not even over the written Word of God: it is over the
Living Word of God and His reality. It has to do with whether or not one knows
Jesus Christ personally and experientially to the extent that one has walked out
on commandments and promises that seem counterintuitive and has found that
they pertain to a reality that is superior to the material world...in other words...the
point is: is Christianity a theological system, is it even a political lifestyle...liberal
versus conservative, or is it something else entirely (IN the world, but not OF it).
Is Christianity just our favorite way of arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic or
is it the lifeboat off?
Later that day, as I was pondering how to convey this idea, the Lord showed me
what He had done when challenged with the theological and political
expectations of His people:
I was preparing a lesson on Luke 7 and I happened to read a passage from a
respected commentator, G. Campbell Morgan, who pointed out something I'd
never really noticed before.
READ THE SCRIPTURE:
Background: John the Baptist has been imprisoned by Herod and his illegitimate
wife Herodias because he has exposed their sin. He has been languishing in
prison while his disciples waited to see what Jesus of Nazareth intended to do
about it....
So John sent a deputation to Jesus: Are you the one or is there another? What
he is asking is kind of in code:
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...In Isaiah, there were two key messianic themes: one which had to do with a
servant (actually a suffering servant) and the other seemed to refer to a king who
would overthrow the kingdoms of the world. Naturally, the oppressed Jews
under Roman rule were anxious to know if Jesus was just the servant, the healer,
the prophet....Or if He were the Political figure, the champion of Israel, the
revolutionary out to overthrow Rome and at last to restore the Kingdom to
Israel....there had probably been many discussions even among His own
disciples about what His ultimate aim was...
This is the remarkable thing: when they come and ask. Jesus doesn't even
answer them. He keeps on doing what He had been doing: raising the dead,
healing the sick, exorcising the demonically oppressed and announcing with
every healing that the Kingdom of God was even now among them.
Only after they have watched for a while does Jesus say to them: go and tell
John what you yourselves have seen and heard.
The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the
deaf hear...
And blessed is he who is not confused, put off, offended, puzzled by me and my
methods....
He is quoting Isaiah, 61: His inaugural sermon: Today this scripture is fulfilled....
In other words: It's exactly by what I am doing that the Kingdom of God will
overthrow the kingdoms of this world with their wisdom and their brute force and
their politics and their theologies...the ways of God that confound the quote wise
unquote and make sense to the babes....those who have come to Him as Savior.
Morgan explains it this way....
THIS is the answer to everything: He heals, He sets free, He opens the way to
eternal life by indwelling us, by enabling us to see, and to walk cleansed from
whatever kind of sin binds and defiles us; He enables us to live the righteous life
that is impossible without Him doing it.
Of COURSE, those who don't know His reality, His power HAVE to mangle
Scripture:
They HAVE to say that the 5,000 were fed because they shared their lunches
They HAVE to say that miracles and speaking in other languages was
metaphorical
They HAVE to say that the resurrection was only spiritual
They HAVE to say that sin is not sin...
If there is no Living Healer and Savior, they HAVE to pull the plug on real Godly
mercy, mercy which convicts in order to heal
They have to substitute a theology of tolerance that condones all human sin,
calling evil good and good, evil...
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Proverbs reminds us that the "MERCY" of those without God is ultimately cruel
because It makes people comfortable in their prison cells...
It keeps people from ever meeting the Living Answer to every sin, the One Who
took all our sins upon Himself and disposed of them on the Cross, who bought all
the freedom any one of us is ever going to need in order to be able to lay aside
our besetting sins (whatever they may be) and move into the Abundant godly life
He won for us....
...You remember how in John 10, the Pharisees and theologians grilled the blind
man: saying who was it? Was he a prophet?
All I know is.... Once I was blind. Now I see.
This is the church's answer: or should be the church's answer: go and tell: the
lame are healed, the blind see and the lost and confused are having the good
news of God's reality not only proclaimed but manifested in their lives.
This is OUR final answer to our friends with questions: I once was blind and now
I see and you can, too.
Tell the world, tell your friends your stories of Jesus the Living Word. Don't Be
distracted by, trying to convince with words...but keep at work, letting Jesus heal
and bring freedom TO your life and THROUGH your life.
As Matthew Henry put it: even the most subtle argument will not convince a man
who has tasted honey that it is not sweet.
Go tell somebody what you've seen and heard. If you haven't moved from
the theory into the reality: come and see. Ask the Lord Jesus today, the Living
Word to come into your life in power... Pray...amen.
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