Following Jesus III: "A Little Change Does You Good"
The Church as an agent for progressive change.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 6, 2002
Text: Luke 9:51-58
On a rather muggy, humid, and hot day last month, I was taking the subway downtown to a gathering of clergy, and so I was appropriately dressed in my clerical shirt.
At the very next stop two men entered. One stood with his back to me and the other one stood facing me. The one with his back to me, in a very loud voice (for we were going along a particularly noisy section), exclaimed: "It's hotter than hell down here!"
The one facing me opened his eyes like saucers. He looked at me in fear and trepidation, trying to get his friend to see what he had done. So, trying to diffuse what was a very tense situation, I just said: "Maybe yes, maybe no."
Finally the man with his back toward me turned around and, I swear, he nearly collapsed from the heat.
This got me thinking about something that I had read about an occurrence during the French Revolution, when people were fleeing France. It's the story of a man named Marc Brunel.
Marc Brunel had tried to flee from the revolution, but he had lost his passport. So he actually had to go back and have one forged in order that he might leave the country. But he had to reproduce accurately all the entries and documentation in his passport from memory. So brilliant was this man that he was able to do it, and he fled to a welcoming America, to New York City. But, missing Europe and missing being close to his homeland, he decided after a while to move to London.
And so Marc Brunel settled in London, started a business, and, within a very short period, became bankrupt. He ended up in Debtors' Court with not a penny to his name, and served his time. However, when he came out he applied to a number of engineering firms, for not only did Brunel have a brilliant mind, he was a brilliant engineer.
So he plied his trade and came up with a concept for a machine that could dig tunnels underground. He was able to sell this idea, and it is to Marc Brunel in fact that the credit goes for the tunnels built under the Thames. He was the one who was responsible for what is now the subway, or the underground as we know it, in London. It was Marc Brunel's machine that did this.
It is very interesting to note that even though he was a Christian one group of people opposed what he was doing: namely, the clergy. The clergy opposed this idea of digging underground because they called it flirting with the underworld. In other words, if you go down there, it will get hotter than hell. That's what they were thinking.
Such is in fact the case so often throughout Christianity: that we have been in the rearguard of change, rather than the vanguard; that very often Christians have resisted all manner of social, medical, engineering and scientific changes. We have often been a brake, in other words, to progress and we have tried to stop good things from happening, often because of myths or misconceptions.
We have also been, I am pleased to say, at the vanguard of social change. In fact, it was Christians who were largely responsible for the end of slavery within the Commonwealth and hence, through the rest of the world. It was Christians who were at the vanguard of universal literacy, the Reformation being the means whereby the Bible was printed in the vernacular, and people could actually read in their own language and study and progress.
It is Christians who, particularly in recent years, have been at the vanguard of the movement to bring women into their proper and rightful place within society. Although there is much to be done, it is organizations such as the United Church Women and others that have actually paved the way for women to have a more responsible and equal place within society.
It is Christians who have also been at the front of dealing with many illnesses and diseases in the world, and even as we speak, Christians are celebrating communion today with people who are dying of AIDS in Zambia and Zimbabwe and elsewhere.
So Christians have been in the vanguard, they have been pushing the envelope, they have been the progenitors for change; but they have also held it back. I think about that this morning with the text that was read for us by Denyse from the Gospel of Luke; for here we have an example, in fact, of Christians holding back change. Of Christians, in fact, resisting the good example of Jesus himself.
The story is very simple. Jesus is in the last days of his life and he is on his way to Jerusalem knowing that he is to be crucified. He is going through Samaria and Galilee to get there; but knowing he is will be going through Samaria with all its pagan worship and its many ways of straying from the Jewish faith, Jesus sends some of the disciples ahead of him. As they go ahead they are not well received and the Samaritans are inhospitable.
Therefore, when they get there and Jesus finally arrives, two of his disciples say to Jesus (and these are the brothers James and John, known as the Sons of Thunder elsewhere): "Would you like us to bring down fire on these people and burn them up just like Elijah did? Would you like us to destroy them? Why don't you do that!"
Jesus takes them to one side and says: "You do not know of what spirit you speak, for I have come to seek and to save that which is lost."
Now, there are some differences in translation of this text, and you probably noticed it this morning. In the one that was read, there is no reference to Elijah; but in many others such as the Codex Bezai, one of the original translations into Greek, in fact it is mentioned. The point is, whatever the exact words of the disciples were, the sense is the same: They wanted to bring down the fires of Heaven on these people and Jesus was saying: No, the purpose of my ministry is to come and to seek and to save.
What we have here, my friends, is the clash of two basic principles: one, that has characterized religion all to often and has certainly been in the minds of many people when they think of the Christian faith; and the other one, the principle that we find embodied in the grace of Jesus Christ.
The first principle is what I would call the "James and John principle." The James and John principle is based on two basic foundations, the first of which is an argument from precedents.
This last week I was honoured to attend the ceremony for the Call to the Bar here at the Law Society of Upper Canada. I was there to celebrate my wife Marial's Call. It was a fascinating time watching all these lawyers of different forms and colours and sizes going forward to be admitted to the Bar.
What was most fascinating, however, was that the treasurer of the Law Society, in giving his speech, was talking to those young lawyers about the past. He was talking about the importance of precedents, about the fact that the Law Society was created in the late 1700s and that they are part of a long line of succession of a very important profession. He impressed upon them the need to act accordingly, for in law precedents, as we all know, are important. They are important in cases. They are important in judgement. They in fact create the foundation for so much of what is decided and done. Precedents are important.
And it is important to have precedent; to have a foundation and to be able to go to the past and to look to the future in making one's decisions. The problem is, however, when precedent becomes everything, or when precedent is used to enable that which is contrary to the law or the spirit of the law. That's what Jesus is encountering here with the disciples. The disciples are referring to a time in the Book of II Kings where Elijah, taking on a crooked King Ahab, wants to bring down fire from Heaven to destroy Ahab's minions because they are not following God.
Now Jesus is not rebuking the disciples or rebuking Elijah. Let's be very clear here. He is just saying that that is not the precedent that is to be used because they are using it to justify the destruction of people for their own gain, for their own purposes.
My friends, the church of Jesus Christ throughout history has very often been blind to the needs of the world and has often been very reactionary in the way in which it has dealt with things using precedents.
The best case, I think, and one with which we are all familiar, is the story of Galileo Galilei. Galileo, who had been educated in Pisa but because of financial trouble couldn't continue his education, nevertheless became a great thinker with great ideas. He was the one who thought about the pendulum. He thought about gravity. Even Pope Paul V wanted to speak to Galileo about the many developments that he had and was thinking about.
The problem, however, was when Galileo's ideas clashed with the preconceptions and the precedents of the church. He said that the earth moves around the sun. The church said everything else moves around the earth.
In 1632, he was called to appear before the Great Inquisition and although he was an old man for his time, nearly seventy and not well, he had to travel from Florence to Rome to defend himself. When he got there, the inquisition in 1633, a year later, made him recant his beliefs and sentenced him to house arrest for the rest of his life.
On his deathbed in 1642, the legend goes, Galileo is said to have uttered these words: "But it still moves anyway." Galileo was forced to recant but he understood the truth to be the truth and the truth was important.
Now, I have always believed that the church of Jesus Christ has nothing to fear from truth; that in fact if we believe the Gospel to be truth, which I do with my whole heart, then why would we in any way be threatened by truth?
The problem is that the church is often threatened when it stands on ground that is shifting; when it makes absolute that which is questionable. When we do that we suffer the vitriol of society, and with just cause.
These disciples, James and John, were using a precedent for their own purposes and Jesus rebuked them.
But they were also basing their argument on their own experience. They were angry. On the surface it seemed that they were perfectly legitimate and right to condemn the Samaritans. After all, the Lord and Saviour himself was not being given hospitality because of them. But their motivation was anger. Their experience was one of hatred and of wrath. They might have been right philosophically. They might have been right logically but this was not the purpose of Jesus of Nazareth, the one that they were following. They had got so caught up in their own experience and so caught up in their own emotions that they had forgotten the purpose of being a disciple and the purpose of the ministry of Jesus, which was to go and to seek and to save that which was lost.
My friends, often the church does things out of anger. We do things in a retrograde manner.
There is the wonderful story of a doctor in Scotland called James Young Simpson. James Young Simpson he wanted to help people not feel pain during surgery. For months and months and months he worked with students and he mixed crystals and he tried different potions to put people out and to create anaesthesia during operations.
One day, on the 4th November, 1847, by accident, he knocked out his whole class with chloroform. They all slept nicely through it. They all went out like a light and he realized he had finally discovered what he had been looking for.
Do you know who opposed him? Who hated what he was doing?
The church. The argument from the pulpits in Scotland was: "Pain does us good" and "Pain is God-given" and "A little bit of pain will be for our betterment." Doesn't that sound so churchy? A little pain does you good.
This man was horrified. They were quoting Scripture to him. They were getting angry with him and he was a Christian. He believed that what he was doing was humane. Finally, fed up with all this, he decided to read the Bible himself. He came across one passage that he quoted to the different clerics in Edinburgh, and I love it.
He stood before them and he said: "I would like to read to you the Word of God, from the Book of Genesis:
'But for Adam, no suitable helper was found so the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh.'
Amen. That's my argument: God practises anaesthesia."
My friends, all to often, in our anger, in our complete lack of sense of the meaning of the Gospel, in our preconceptions, we make absolute that which is questionable. When we do so, like James and John, we cause trouble.
This brings me then to the "Jesus Principle." The Jesus Principle was completely contrary to James and John, for Jesus is travelling through this area for a singular purpose: to go to the Cross; to carry out his Father's wish and to do what he was called to do from the beginning. For in travelling through Samaria, Jesus was more interested in what lay ahead, the purpose of the Gospel, than he was in bringing down a quick judgement on someone right there and then. The purpose of his ministry, said Jesus, was to seek and to save that which was lost. That was his meaning.
And he challenged James and John. He said: "You do not know of what spirit you speak."
In other words, you speak only from your own emotions, only from your own experience. You have lost sight of the whole purpose of what it means to be a disciple, to follow me in this ministry of salvation, in this ministry of restoring what is broken and saving from sin that which is sinful and reconciling humanity to God. You, by trying to bring down judgement now, are standing in the way of the ministry of grace, which is the purpose of my ministry.
My friends, the ministry of the church of Jesus Christ always must be predicated on that central Gospel tenet: to seek and to save that which is broken in the name of Jesus Christ.
One of the most famous ministers in the 19th century, in the tradition of our own congregation here at Eaton Memorial, was a man called George Whitfield. George Whitfield felt called to go from his pulpit into the world to preach in fields and farms and to bring the good news to ordinary citizens wherever they lived. It is no surprise that the opposition he received came from the church; that one of London's leading preachers, aptly named The Reverend Dr. Trapp, preached against what he was doing and condemned him for having taken the preaching out of the church. George Whitfield, when questioned about this condemnation, exclaimed: "Well, in that case, if they disagree with me, I must be right."
I like the old adage of one great speaker: "If the horse is dead, for goodness sake dismount."
Very often, my friends, we as churches have been dead. We have been dead precisely because we have lost sight of the central call that we find on the cross of Jesus Christ.
As I am thinking back over the last 40 years of the ministry of the United Church women, both here and in other churches I have been in and throughout this country, I realize that in many ways it is the UCW that has taken the Gospel out of the bounds of the church; that through its support for missions, through its desire to bring women together in fellowship, it has brought about worship and has encouraged women to come into the church, and it has taken that message with passion and with kindness.
I believe that the strength of the UCW in the years ahead is still predicated on its original foundation and on that original call of Jesus to James and John: "I have not come into the world to condemn it; I have come to seek and to save that which is lost." It is always a ministry of redemption and a ministry of hope. That kind of change, the change that Christ makes, does us all good. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.