(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Bearing Witness in MPK”, originally shared on February 3, 2023. It was the 250th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
What do road construction, home lighting,
and entering the Reign of God tell us about how to live as Christians in a time
of violence and decline in a pluralistic religious environment? Today, we’re
going to find out.
Sally and I were at the grocery store,
loading our car, the other day when I saw an elderly white-haired women pass
behind me to load her car. We both finished loading at about the same time so I
thought, “I’ll do something nice for the senior citizen,” and I turned to offer
to take her cart back to the stall?” when she said, “May I take your cart back
to the stall?”
Today, we will hear from Jesus how little
things can have a big effect and that when we think we are in control, it is
often we who need the most help.
We are now almost two weeks from the mass
shooting in Monterey Park, on January 21st. I visited the location
at the Star Dance Studio this week. There have been dozens of other mass
shootings since then. We have seen a variety of religious and political groups
holding public vigils.
What is the current environment for sharing
what our faith has made us to be?
Well, on the one hand, it’s kind of chilly.
We are living in times when there are many
religions all around us as well as an increasing number of people with none at
all.
We are living in increasingly secular times.
We are living in times where many people believe that all religion is basically
the same, that religion is something that human beings make up in order to
answer the questions they can’t answer for themselves. And when those questions
are answered, then who needs God?
We live in times when growing numbers of
people have never gone to church, never had any proper Christian education,
don’t know a Christian, and who have gotten all their impressions of the
Christian Church from popular media. And what does all of this add up to for
them? Who needs God?
We live in times when people believe that
they are self-sufficient because they have enough money or power or education
or status in the world to feel secure. They think that those things will last,
so who needs God?
We live in times when people are very
tolerant of others as long as others conform to their beliefs and values,
particularly on social media and in politics. And if those two statements seem
contradictory, they are. What are our common values as a civilization? They are
pretty hard to find. And, when we don’t think we need common values, who needs
God?
So, on the one hand, our current environment
is kind of chilly. But, on the other hand, people are asking the hard questions
like “How could God allow this to happen?" and “Where is God in my suffering?”
that require salt and light and the good news of Jesus Christ to answer.
The early Christians in New Testament times
and a bit beyond lived under the Roman Empire. As in our society, there were
many religions represented within the Empire.
The Romans themselves believed in many gods.
Almost all the people they conquered and occupied believed in many gods.
And the Romans couldn’t care less about what
people believed, as long as they believed that everybody else’s beliefs were
just as true as their own. They needed that in order to maintain order within
the empire. No one was allowed to say that what they believed was true. Only
that it was their truth.
People could believe in as many gods as they
wanted as long as they said that everybody else’s gods were just as real. The
Empire didn’t want to have to use their troops to maintain order within the
empire. Troops were needed for border defense and for expansion.
And, as the glue to keep everything
together, the empire declared that the Roman emperor was a god to provide a
point of common worship among all the conquered people of the empire.
Christians and Jews said, “No. There is only
one God.” And both groups were persecuted for their intolerance. Christians
were persecuted a little more because the Romans valued the veneration of
ancestors and, while Christians saw Jesus has having fulfilled the promises
given to their ancestors, the Romans saw them as having rejected the religion
of their Jewish ancestors.
Christians and Jews weren’t persecuted for
their faith. They were persecuted for their intolerance.
How to we live as Christians in a time of
violence and decline in a pluralistic religious environment?
Last week we spoke about what the Christian
faith has to say to the evil we saw in the mass shootings at Monterey Park,
where I am serving regularly but very part time.
This week, we are going to speak about what
Christians have to say about maintaining our integrity in a way that bears
witness to our faith, and about preventing the violence from repeating itself.
The Bible reading that we’re looking at
today begins with an answer from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew
5:13-20, it begins,
13“You are the salt of
the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?
It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
Salt was mined from the earth in the time of
Jesus’ public ministry. Salt, or “sodium chloride”, cannot lose its saltiness,
but it can be corrupted in the mining process. The Romans used that corrupted
salt as road construction material. It was thrown out and trampled underfoot.
In the same way, we have the treasure of the
Gospel given to us in Jesus Christ. We give our testimony to it every time we
say one of the historic creeds together in worship. No one else is sharing this
good news but us. All the good we do in the world comes as a product of who we
are in Jesus Christ. It is a natural response. But if we are founded and
focused on something else, if we allow ourselves to be corrupted by the culture
around us, we slowly become a human tradition-protecting society, or a
friendship club, or a social service agency or as a social justice organization
using religious language.
If we allow our culture to accept us in
exchange for our acceptance of this world, what good are we? Nothing.
We are God’s people. We don’t need a lot of
power.
How much salt do we need when we cook? A
small amount flavors a large dish. We just need to be who we are. Numbers
aren’t important in order to be the instruments of human transformation. Our
faith is in the power of God working through us is.
Our reading continues with verse 14,
14“You
are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15No
one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the
lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16In the
same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good
works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
I once heard someone say, “Don’t tell me who
you are. Show me your lamps.”
What do the lamps you’ve put in your house
say about you? I would guess that some things could be said about where you
place them.
“Let your light shine,” Jesus says.
Let your light shine but it you’re going to
put a Christian license plate frame on your car, drive respectfully.
How do we let our light shine? Martin
Luther, the 16th century Church reformer, purportedly said, “The
Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes,
but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”
Light shows us the way things are, it keeps
us from stumbling in the dark, it takes away our fear of what we can’t see, it
extends our productive time.
What is your light? What does your light do?
We make a difference in the world by
maintaining our character as Christians in a time of decline and danger.
How are you salty in a time when there are
so many influences that would dilute our messages of the good news in Jesus
Christ?
How do you let your light shine as good
works in response to what God has already given us in Jesus Christ?
David Crosby died a couple of weeks ago. He
played with 60’s rock groups like the Byrds, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, as well
as others. He and his wife used to come into Nate ‘N Al’s deli in Beverly
Hills, one of Sally and my favorite restaurants when we’re in LA. He would just
sit quietly with his head down and eat. One night, as we got up and I turned to
leave on a day that Sally had braided my beard, he raised his head, looked at
my beard braid, nodded appreciatively, smiled, and went back to his dinner. It
wasn’t a lot, but I thought we had a moment. 😊
People pass by us all the time in life. What
can we offer them.
We offer the world a place of genuine
community, a kind of community that is hard to find in our culture. We point
the world to the genuine transcendence it seeks in a living relationship with
the one true living God when the world doesn’t always have the words to ask.
We have been given the Word. It is Jesus. It
is the transformed life we have come to know in Him. And it is good news for
everybody.
Our reading concludes, beginning with verse
17,
17“Do not think that I
have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to
fulfill. 18For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass
away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until
all is accomplished. 19Therefore, whoever breaks one of the
least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called
least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be
called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you, unless
your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never
enter the kingdom of heaven.
Wait a minute. That kind of sounds like bad
news.
The Scribes were people who made copies of
what we would call the Old Testament, what might be called in Jesus’ day the law
and the prophets. They made their copies by hand and would check their work by
knowing how many words, how many letters, and how many punctuation marks were
in every book. They checked them reading forwards, and then the checked them
reading backwards. They knew the Bible!
The Pharisees were lay men who had retired
from their life’s work to dedicate themselves to learning 613 religious laws
and to keeping them every day. They were deeply respected and every man (only
men could be Pharisees ) wanted to grow up to be a Pharisee.
How could anyone be more righteous than the
Scribes and the Pharisees?
They couldn’t. That’s Jesus’ point. Nobody’s
perfect. Everyone falls short. Nobody keeps God’s laws perfectly. And breaking
any part of God’s law separates a person from God.
The Gospel, i.e. the Good News, is that,
though we deserve punishment, God has given to us a Savior, Christ the Lord.
It’s been said that there are three uses of
God’s Law. The second is to control bad
behavior. The third is to show us what pleases God. But the first is to show us
that we need a savior.
That’s the point that Jesus is making, not
that we need to be more righteous than the Scribes and the Pharisees, but that
we can’t, that we need a savior.
The price of eggs has been going up like the
price of natural gas. People can’t smuggle gas as easily as they have been
smuggling eggs into the country lately. Eggs!
We have something infinitely more valuable
than any earthly commodity. How can we make it known?
Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for
the New York Times and the author of the book Bad Religion notes that
the Christian Church has found itself in danger and decline several times
throughout its history and two things have brought it back: holy living and the
arts.
How do we bear witness in Monterey Park and
in all the places in our world where the Christian Church is struggling?
Jesus tells us not to worry too much about
our numbers, but to seek only to receive God’s righteousness through faith and
to do God’s will, trusting in God’s power to make all things new.
How can we stem and stop the violence, the
danger, and the decline? By pointing to the power of God to transform the human
heart. By being the salt and the light and the bearers of the good news of
Jesus Christ and living the natural outcome of a life of faith, a living
relationship the one true living God.
Let us live the holiness of our message and
live our lives in response to the love that God has first shown us on the cross.
That is all that matters for us to bear
witness to the good news of Jesus Christ in Monterey Park and beyond.
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