"Jesus in Canada"
Sharing the Gospel in a post-Christian world
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Text: Hebrews 13:7-17
This past week, a good friend of mine from the United Kingdom, who listens on the Web, sent me an article from the front page of The Daily Mail in London on June 3rd, a couple of Fridays ago. It outlines a debate taking place in Britain, under the headline: “Hospital ban on the Bible.” It says that in one part of the United Kingdom, government officials decided that it was no longer appropriate for the Gideons to put Bibles besides people's beds. They made some mention of a health reason, but deep down, they felt that the Bible was now “offensive to readers and might not aid in their healing process.”
In response to this, some Christian leaders became absolutely irate, maintaining that the United Kingdom had been a Christian country for hundreds of years, and why now should the Bible somehow suddenly be a source of aggravation? What was particularly pleasing, though, was that Muslim, Sikh and Hindu leaders made similar comments of concern. A leader from the Muslim Council of Britain said, “it is ridiculous and extreme to do this.” He said that Britain should have respect for other faiths, but that could not be achieved at the expense of Christianity.
The article goes on to suggest that this furor is not just a tempest in a teapot, but will actually continue for a very long time. Now, while this did not happen on our shores, but in the land of my birth, there is nevertheless a sense in which one sees the times when the Gospel and the Bible are an affront to some. As such, they simply must be removed, and then people will be at peace and everything will be fine.
That is why I think that William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University suggested that Christians are like “resident aliens” in our own lands. Many of the ideas and values that previous generations have been brought up on are being called into question, put down and diminished. You can see this happening in the way that we exercise our ministries.
In many ways, as Willimon and Hauerwas suggest, ministers are no longer just professional clerics going about maintaining order and services and providing rituals in culture. Rather, we are now missionary pastors. We are embarking on a whole new mission to our very own countries, for the Gospel that we proclaim and the message we offer sounds alien, as if we are delivering it from the outside rather than from the inside. Likewise, those who have done a really good assessment of the church would suggest that we are no longer the protector or the purveyors of our culture, as if somehow the culture itself depends totally on the church. Rather, we are proclaimers of a radical grace in a world that listens to the sound of the Christian Gospel as if it is unusual or strange or even radical.
We are not alone. To think that this is somehow a singular incident, novel to our own era would be, I think, to forget Christian history, and particularly the Bible itself. This morning's passage from the Book of Hebrews, is from a sermon preached to Christians to exhort and encourage them to maintain the faith. The writer of Hebrews, whoever he or she might have been (and we really don't know), wrote probably in the later part of the first century or the beginning of the second century, to Christians who found themselves drifting away from the faith. The first generations of Christians had just simply believed, but now, the second generation was starting to wander away, because everything had become ordinary or normal.
The preacher also suggests that maybe people are being “carried away” by different voices and different ideologies like boats on the water, drifting away from the right path. Some, he suggests, have even deliberately turned away, with a reason, because they find that the faith itself is unacceptable to them. In the midst of all this, he exhorts them, he encourages them, and he says, [paraphrase]
Don't do that! Just remember Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Keep your eyes fixed on the story that got us here, on the message that brought us to the faith. Keep hold of that, because we know that we live in a world and a city that might indeed drift away, but the one city that lasts is the City of Faith, the City of Jesus Christ, the city that is the same today, and tomorrow and forever. Do not lose sight of that.
He told his people to hold on to the power of that grace, because he didn't want them to become embittered, and to lose their focus on the message.
My friends, I think the words of Hebrews are prophetic. They are words of exhortation, words of encouragement, words to keep us firmly fixed on the source that is our strength. There is no point in us, as 21st century Christians, looking back hundreds of years to find the moment we can turn back to that will be an anchor for us. There is no point, as Christians living in Canada, to wish for another day or another time or another era. No, for the Christian faith always has a radical mission of grace. In every generation, it always has something profound to say. But when enculturation occurs, when the faith becomes ingrained in the way that people live, then Jesus and his message often get forgotten or misplaced.
Some look back to the time of the Enlightenment, between 1700 and1850, when there was a solid foundation of reason, when there was a sense of science, when there was an order to society and the nation states were created, and everything was nice and solid and reasonable. Maybe if we look back to those days, we can find a source of strength and hope and we can hold onto something. Yet, we forget that it was the Enlightenment that was the very movement that said we do not receive our truths from outside ourselves anymore; we find it from within by reason and by rationalism, and by an examination of what is going on around us.
Some want to drift back to the 19th century, to the days of good old subjectivism, when we felt good about our faith: “Oh, if only we could just have been Christians then, in those happy days when the churches were full and everything was thriving and beautiful and glorious.” We love the Impressionists and the art of the time, when artists no longer had to depict things as they were, but as they saw them - a time when the faith was flourishing with emotion and feeling and passion, just like the Impressionist artists. Wouldn't that be a lovely time?
Yet, the churches were not full! They were, in fact, going through great hardship, and there were many struggles. No, we cannot go back. Maybe we want to go back to the 1950s when the churches were full, when Christianity and culture lived side-by-side when there was a good, solid sense that to be Canadian meant to sit in a church, and a United Church of Canada in particular. Maybe those were the halcyon days, even though quantum physics and the work of Einstein were turning our concept of the truth upside down and “relativizing” them.
Nevertheless, many people want to go back to that era. Or, maybe we should go back just 20 years, to a time when post-modernism started to come about, where people could in a relativistic way make up their own God and their own faith, and feel comfortable about themselves and not have to engage the pluralism of the world around them, and just simply have a nice faith where they found themselves individually to be expressions of all that God wants. Maybe we should just go back there.
My friends, you can go back any length of time you want, but if you don't go to the centre, to the core, to Christ, you find nothing solid. There is no going back! There is no hope in returning, just as the writer of Hebrews knew when he exhorted his people to remember the faith of those who had gone before, but in remembering that faith, to remember that it is Christ alone who is the same yesterday, today and forevermore.
I think it is fair enough to say that the Christian story is pushed very much to the side within our society, certainly in the popular sense, and people don't know the story anymore. Even the story of the relationship between Christianity and our history and our culture, often becomes clouded.
I think this is one of the reasons that when people read The Da Vinci Code, which is a brilliant book and a wonderful story, they have absolutely no sense of where this actually fits into real history. They have lost the story, they have lost the plot, and they are not quite sure where the two fit.
So, what do we do? What should Christians in Canada in this new century, do and say? Well, Doug Hall, a great United Church theologian, has said, “We need to disentangle ourselves from the culture.” Not that we should stop engaging the poor or helping the needy or loving the outcasts or being present for those in need, but we must disentangle ourselves from all those things to which we have become attached that make us think that we are going to be accepted and Christ's message is going to be received, just because we are the ones who say it. We must disentangle ourselves from that. Doug Hall implies that no one, no organization, no government can take us to the Promised Land; the Promised Land is not a land that can be found physically, but is the Kingdom of God, the reign of Christ, the rule of the Spirit.
This reminds me of a little story about Noah, who in 2005 was approached by the Almighty. The Almighty said to Noah, “I know you are living in Canada now, but I have a job for you. I am going to destroy Canada and all the nations, and so I would like you to build an ark.”
Noah said, “Sure, I'll do that - no problem at all!” So, Noah started building his ark.
Six months later, the Lord comes back, and he says, “Noah, where on earth is the ark that I told you to build? I am sending the waters tomorrow to destroy the world.”
Noah said, “You don't understand! It has not been as easy as you thought! You see, I started to erect the ark on my front lawn, but my neighbour complained that the by-laws for height restrictions had been contravened, and the city shut me down until I obtained a building permit. Then, I decided that it was time to move the ark, but the Department of Transportation said that I had to reduce the size of my ark to make sure that it went under all the overhead wires. Then, when I tried to get the animals on board, I was stopped by the animal rights people, who complained that I wasn't treating them properly or giving them proper nurture and care on this ark. Then, I was set back by human rights legislation that said I hadn't paid people properly for building the ark in the first place, and all my builders went on strike. And finally, when I had it all built, and I put it on the dock, ready to launch I was told that the CRA was auditing me, because I haven't given a thorough breakdown of the financing of my project.”
God said, “Oh, dear! Well, this isn't very good.”
So all of a sudden, the clouds dissipated, and the sun came out, and Noah looked at God and said, “So you are not going to destroy Canada after all?”
God said to Noah, “I don't need to - the government has done so already!”
You can't place your trust or your hope in any one institution, nation, or government! The writer of Hebrews knew that: The one in whom you place your trust is Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
So, what do we do? As Christians, what do we say to this great and glorious nation of ours?
Well, the answer, it seems to me, is very, very straightforward: We re-tell the story. The very purpose of the church, the very nature of its ministry, is to proclaim the story of the Gospel. It is to learn it ourselves and inwardly digest it. It is to share it publicly from this pulpit. It is to manifest it in our music and in our liturgy. It is to declare it in what we say and what we do. The purpose of the church is to tell the story to our culture, and to tell it in such a way that it is gracious, and humble. The days of the old imperialism, where the church could simply speak “on behalf of God” and have everyone bow down and listen to it is long gone. Even then, I question whether it was desirable. Imperialistic, culturally based Christianity might have seemed impressive on the outside, but unless it changes hearts on the inside, what was it really worth?
A very good friend of mine, my successor at Parkdale United Church, Dr. Anthony Bailey, says that the churches of today have to think, to use his phrase, “glocally.” We have to listen globally, and we have to act locally. We can no longer have imperialism in our society that says: “Here we are! We are the culture of truth, and everybody else in the world should be listening to us.” Rather, it is the voices from outside that proclaim the Gospel to us, and we need to be humble enough to hear them.
Humility has not been our strongest suit, nor has it always been at the core of our faith. That is why the writer of Hebrews had a very strong warning at the end. He said, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and yes, forever,” and it is that message that you must hold on to. He also said, “Do not neglect doing good works; do not neglect sharing; for with such sacrifices you please God. Obey your leaders; pray for them; urge people to be restored: These are the things that give peace.” This is the humility of a Christian. This is the humility of saying that I and even my country might not necessarily embody the cultural truth, but Christ is the truth.
We are speaking now to a generation that will hear that story in many different ways. Some will hear it and be hurt by it, because of former wrongs that were done in Christ's name. Some traditionalists will hear it and say, “Yes, that is what I believe to be true. Those were the good old days!” Some will say, “That meets with my sense of truth.” Others will say, “That is an affront to my sense of truth!”
You don't stop telling the story just because people hear it differently. Rather than focus on the tangential things, those things that are on the periphery, those things that are penultimate rather than ultimate, we need to focus on Christ. By focusing on those other things, we detract from the One who really does speak to any culture. Christ: the same yesterday, today, and forever. Rudyard Kipling put it beautifully, and his words speak to those who want to take the Gideon Bibles out of those hospitals:
God of our Fathers, known of old
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath his awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine-
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headline sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law -
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!For heathen heart that puts her trust
in reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word -
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Our hope is Christ: the same yesterday, today, and forever! Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.