The Gift: The Enemy Of The Church

I went to the latest installment of the Star Wars saga with very low expectations. My appetite for space ship shoot ‘em ups has waned since 1977. As the movie opened, I was preparing for a little nap. But then I was totally surprised by the depth of the story. We watched how Anakin Skywalker, the most talented young Jedi Knight was turned to the dark side. The evil Sith lord played upon his love for his wife and his fears for the safety of their unborn child. Anakin was told that by opening himself to the dark Force, he could gain the power to protect his family from death. Having been through the agony of seeing his mother taken from him, Anakin seeks unbridled power for the sake of the one he loves. Too late does he see the cruelty of this deception. Having killed a mentor, there is no turning back. A horrifying scene followed when we realize that Anakin had killed a dozen Jedi children. Wrongly trying to control what cannot be controlled, his deceived quest for life turned him into the dealer of death.

As the carnage grew around him the more Anakin accumulated power, I couldn’t help but think of another movie, The Passion of the Christ. It also was full of violence, but the brutality was turned towards one man, one with all authority who refused to protect himself. In stark contrast to Anakin, he gave away his power; he took the blows; he died in humility and abasement. Refusing the temptation to wrongful power, Jesus became the Savior of the world, the giver of life.

Getting it right about the nature of reality has enormous consequences. Living according to the truth or living under deception may involve only subtle choices of which road to take, but the final destinations of such paths are worlds apart. Now we might think that making the right choice would be as obvious as it is in a movie. But in the real world, there are enormous forces arrayed against us. There are spiritual powers bent on leading us into illusion, and so to enslavement. Danger is afoot for the people of God.

Jesus knew this as he prayed his magnificent high priestly prayer recorded in John 17. As we pick up with verse 11, Jesus prayed concerning his disciples, “And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.” Judas had gone out to tell the authorities where Jesus might be found. Jesus had resisted the temptation to avoid the suffering of the cross. He had, in a sense, already completed his mission spiritually. But before the final drama, he paused to pray for those he would leave behind. He had begun the journey of leaving this world and returning to his Father. But his disciples would have to remain in the very world which would kill Jesus. “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me…. While I was with them, I kept them in your name…. I have guarded them…. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.”

Immediately we see why Jesus is concerned. His disciples are the gift from his Father. He has cherished the gift and offered them back to his Father. They have, as we saw last week, been caught up in the great love story between the Father and the Son in the Spirit that then got played out in the field of earth, the world where we live. But now Jesus was leaving them, and they would be without his physical, guarding presence. Jesus named two enemies of his disciples: the world which hates the disciples as much as it hates Jesus, and the evil one, the malevolent power behind the world that resists its God.

Yes, we are the gift. We are the love-gift between Father and Son, those elected to be taken up into a relationship with him. We are those sent to tell that story and invite others. But the world rejected the eternal Son sent to save it. The people loved darkness rather than light. They preferred the lie to the truth. So Jesus had to be stopped. It would be no different for his disciples. To know the truth, to walk in the light, to joyfully join the love that beats at the heart of the universe is to rouse the ire of the world and the evil one. The church has deadly enemies.

How can this be? God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. The world is the object of God’s seeking, searching love. But the world also is defined as the whole system of resistance to the rule of the Triune God. The world is the field of self-assertion and independence from anything higher than ourselves. It is our attempt to organize life in such a way that we control it. The world represents all the ways we desire to be our own gods, to place humanity at the center of existence and the top of the heap. The world is the system of trying to be sufficient on our own. Spirituality, according to this world, is what I choose for myself, the way I manage the mystery beyond me. The thought that there is a God with a definite will and a known nature who makes an actual claim on me is considered a horrible infringement on my rights. The world that desires to remain the world simply cannot hear the words of Jesus as he claims to be the truth, the light, the life. For Jesus would displace our egos on the throne of life, and that is not acceptable to the world.

This is the world that is in conflict with the church. And the church must accept this conflict. In fact, we may not flee it or evade it if we are to be faithful. Being engaged with the world is our mission. We are locked in a struggle with the world, for the sake of the world. If we drop what offends the world, we become of no use to the people of the world whom God loves. If we flee the world, we become of no use to the people of the world whom God loves. The great missionary and theologian, Lesslie Newbigin, has written:

The world does not know God. This contrast between knowing and not knowing God has to be stated with absolute clarity. Not to state it, to be silent about it, would be collusion with the power of the lie which rules the world. In a world which is organized around the self and seeks its own glory the statement “I know God” will be seen as an outrageous piece of self-glorification. Agnosticism will be seen as a proper modesty. But this modesty does not provide any way of escape from the world which is centered in the self. Its genial tolerance ends abruptly in the face of a claim that God has actually revealed himself in the flesh and blood of the man Jesus. This claim will appear as a shocking assault upon the sovereignty of the autonomous reason and conscience. The inevitable conflict is focused and resolved in the crucifixion of Jesus.1

We are witnesses that the light has come into the world of darkness. The love of God has been revealed in the sending of his Son Jesus to save us. This is the way God is. It is the most wonderful news ever reported. But it is offensive, because the truth of it knocks away every other attempt to explain the reason why we are here and the purpose of human life. The world prefers to remain agnostic, so that the self remains in control. But being stuck with ourselves gives us no possibility of escape from the prison of self and our futility. We need a Word from above to free us. We need an action from beyond to get us out of ourselves. We are desperate for the truth, but we self-enthroned humans do not go quietly before the Lordship of our Savior.

So the world mocks Christians. Its favorite words in this decade include rigid, strident, arrogant, narrow, exclusive. These harsh words stop us right in our tracks. Who wants to be like that? The world’s invective can silence our voice and dim our light. But if we understand what is gong on, we can resist taking these charges too seriously. When we see that the world is desperate to preserve its autonomy, we can understand why the story of Jesus raises such ire. When we realize that only those touched by the Spirit can receive such news, we understand why we will seem like aliens. This is normal. It helps, though, to see what is causing such words to pour forth upon us. The reality, I think, is that for every charge of being rigid, the case is that we are firm because we adhere to a reality we did not invent. Strident is actually clarion; we blow horns of grace that cut through the fog of this culture. Arrogant is the misnomer for those who are actually consecrated to a truth that is beyond us, so consecrated to that reality that we have no choice but to proclaim its truth. Narrow is just the slur on being focused on the truth, and exclusive is the smear for anyone who has clarity about what God has revealed.

If we are doing our job of loving the world and bringing the message of God’s love for us in Christ, we may expect that we will be smeared by a world in rebellion against its Lord. Resistance is normal. Resistance is overcome by loving actions, by patient speaking of the truth in kindness and gentleness.

Jesus did not pray that the Father would keep us out of this conflict. No, he sent us into this engagement of the world. What he prayed is that we would be kept in the name of God, kept in the name of his Holy Father, kept from the evil one. In today’s context, we hear Jesus’ prayer as the prayer that the church would not collapse its story in order to avoid conflict. We need a mighty work of God to keep us from collapsing our borders and boundaries in a culture where the very presence of borders and boundaries is the absolute taboo. For if we stop being the church of Christ in order to get along with the world in the short term, we ultimately end up being cruel. For we fail to offer anything that can save the world from its self-centered will to power and bent for destruction.

Let’s listen to Newbigin again:

When the Church is kept in the holy name of God it has a final commitment which is outside the comprehension of the world. Without this radical otherworldliness the Church has no serious business with the world. Archimedes said: “Give me a point outside the world for a fulcrum and I will move the world with a lever.” If the Church does not rest on a point outside the world, it has no leverage with the world. All its tugging and straining is but a minor disturbance within the life of the world, and therefore it is still under the power of the evil one. The Church is marked off from the world by the fact that it has received and must witness to the word of God which is the truth and which thereby calls in question all the so-called axioms, absolutes, and self-evident propositions which are the stock-in-trade of the world’s life. It has to bear witness to the weakness and folly of a crucified messiah as the power and wisdom by which the world exists, is sustained, and will be judged. To accept this means to accept the overturning of the accepted wisdom of the world. It is therefore not a human possibility; it is a gift of God, a miracle, a new birth from above. Between the Church and the world, therefore, lies the boundary line which is called “conversion,” and if the Church ignores this, it falls into the power of the evil one.2

The danger facing the church in America today is not persecution, though that is increasingly likely to be our lot. The danger is that the church will simply wimp out. We will become part of the world, not engage the world from a place outside of its values and ambitions. If we ignore the boundary line that “conversion” is required to enter the relationship with the Triune God of grace, then we simply leave people where they are, lost and hopeless. Our softness is not kind. It is cruel. If we have no Word from beyond, then all our pleading and tugging does not move the world at all. Our message is from above. Our Lord has come to reclaim his lost and wayward people. We are whom he has sent into the world, that well may hate us, with the news of a God who loves us so much that he came to live and die for us. Such salvation, though, means leaving the cesspool in which we are drowning. Jesus loves us as we are, but he loves us so much he does not leave us as we are. He summons us to more. The church must maintain that edge, or we are worthless.

Now, keeping our edge does not mean being obnoxious. Maintaining the claims of Christ does not mean bludgeoning people. Clearly defining what historic Christianity is and always has been doesn’t mean strutting around like bantam roosters. But most of us are nowhere near in danger of any of those errors.

Rather, we need to get back into shape about our story. We need to stop letting a hostile world define us. We are called, as Peter says, to be able to give an adequate defense for the reason for the hope within us. For instance, will we let the media swamp us with the lie that those who resist destroying embryos are self-centered bigots who don’t want people to be healed of diseases? Have we done the work to be able to explain the science, how adult stem cells have been used successfully but to date embryonic stem cells have not? Do we know how to articulate the theology that destroying life to save life is the choice of Anakin Skywalker, not Jesus, and historically has proved a very dicey way to go? In the area of sexuality, have we done the work to read the science to know that family and environment are the dominant factors in homosexuality and that no gay gene has been found? Do we know the theology of compassion and transformation that can lead us in a path that is neither blanket acceptance or cruel bashing of those who are sexually conflicted? In the discussion of the plurality of religions, do we know what the other world views have to say? Do we know enough about our world view to be able to articulate our story in discussion with other faiths in such a way that we don’t have to get all hyper and sweaty?

Yes, the world is hostile to the church. But the real work of the evil one, the enemy of the church, is to work within, urging us to collapse our boundaries in order to avoid conflict. That is the way the evil one hopes to render the church powerless. The real enemy works to close our mouths about the way, the truth and the life that is in Jesus. That, of course, avoids strife in the short term, but ultimately it leaves the world mired in sin and despair, destruction and hopelessness.

We are called to more. Jesus prayed that we would be kept in the name of the Holy Father. This means remaining in the truth, the truth of his Word, and engaging the world in love with that truth.

This sermon first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 13, No. 3 (May/Jun 2007).