Strangers

Like many of you, I’ve kept tabs on the budget discussions taking place in Washington, and I experienced a mixture of frustration and disbelief as the process dragged on. How is it that NFL football players and team owners who have only their own best interests at heart can get a unanimous agreement on contracts, but our representatives, who in theory have the best interests of all citizens at heart, can’t agree on the time of day?

Part of the difficulty for me is I have very little knowledge of economics, especially at the national and global levels. So when seemingly pivotal statements are made about potential consequences of raising the debt limit or cutting the national deficit, I don’t know who to believe. “Raising the debt limit is crucial.” Yes,  it is. If we don’t, the world economy will collapse. No, it isn’t. We need to quit borrowing money. “The national budget is just like your household budget.” You’re right. We can’t spend more than we make. You’re wrong. National and family economics differ greatly. They can’t be treated the same. “We have to cut the size of government. We’re spending money we don’t have.” True. All these entitlement and education programs are unnecessary, and we can’t afford them. False. Government services are essential, and we need to prioritize, not lay waste to all of them. The money is there if everyone pays a fair share.  Like the kid says in the commercial when he’s asked, “Where do babies come from?” he replies, “It’s complicated.”

Recently we studied 1 Peter in the Fellowship Class at church. The lesson had to do with how believers are to conduct themselves in the middle of a culture that is non-Christian. From Peter’s perspective the followers of Jesus are “strangers in the world” who are “scattered” (1 Peter 1:1). They are different from the people around them because God, by grace, has given them “a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1:3). How are we supposed to conduct ourselves in the world? Peter says we are to model ourselves after the Risen Lord, living “good lives among the pagans” (2:12).

In light of Peter’s teaching, two things come to mind with regard to the current political crisis (and others that will undoubtedly follow). Because we’re still “in the world,” we participate to a greater or lesser degree in governmental processes and the discussions around them.  And those discussions today, for the most part, lack civility. Listening  to political diatribe and news/talk show rhetoric, one can hear people on each side twisting the facts and then referring to those on the opposite side as radicals, crazy, communists, Nazis, idiots, and every other term that paints them as “other” instead of as “one of us.” Liberal and Conservative have become curse words. The language is meant to exclude, not embrace. The underlying premise seems to be that if all these people who disagree with me would just go away, the country would be a better place. The idea that we are “one nation under God” has gotten swept aside. Peter’s advice? Believers, in their words and actions, must model something different, something better. “Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called, so that you may inherit a blessing” (3:8-9).

The second issue is concerned with priorities. We recognize that priorities are difficult to sort out, even in the church family. Should we use our resources to put a new roof on the building, support another missionary, hire a staff person, begin an outreach program – some, or all, or none of the above? So when it comes to national priorities, it isn’t surprising that things become even more complicated. The boy in the commercial who wonders where babies come from doesn’t know what complicated is. But as Peter continues in chapter 3,

“Whoever would love life and see good days

must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech.

He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer,

but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil” (3:10-12)

When it comes to setting priorities, shouldn’t we be asking ourselves as Christians what it means to turn from evil and do good?  As a nation we aren’t without resources; it is a matter of how we use them and who contributes to the common good. Where do we wage war, and why? Do we cut off public education to those who can’t afford private schools? Do we continue to use our “defense” budget to support 3^rd world dictators who have no allegiance to us? Should our military power be employed to insure the flow of oil from the Middle East? Do we refuse food and medical care to the poor? I’m not suggesting that the answers to these questions are all easy , but it is contingent on us, as “aliens and strangers,” to struggle with what it means to “turn from evil and do good,” to “seek peace and pursue it” in the midst of an unsympathetic culture; indeed, to let ourselves be defined not by our enemies, but by scripture— as persons who are born anew into a living hope, focused not on fear, as so many politicians want us to be, but focused on the new and eternal life God has promised us through our Resurrected Savior.

In His name,

Pastor Mike

Who We Become

    In The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis’ final book in The Chronicles of Narnia, the Narnians loyal to Aslan the Lion meet the Calormene enemy on Stable Hill. Outwardly the stable is a dingy, smelly, ramshackle building that is believed to house the evil god Tash. And even though they worship him, the Calmorenes are terrified of Tash. They’re determined to throw the Narnians into the stable without entering themselves. But when the Narnian king Tirian finds himself at sword-point outside the stable door he grabs his opponent, the Calmorene king, by the belt and hauls him into the stable. Tash appears and drags Tirian’s enemy away, but Tirian is unharmed, protected by Aslan himself.
“For a moment or two Tirian did not know where he was or even who he was. Then he steadied himself, blinked, and looked around. It was not dark inside the stable, as he had expected. He was in strong light…” He found himself surrounded by seven kings and seven queens, dressed in royal clothing.  He expected to be in a twelve-by-six foot thatched stable. “In reality they stood on grass, the deep blue sky was overhead, and the air which blew gently on their faces was that of a day in early summer.”1
    The stable, appearing to be a tomb, is in fact the entryway to the eternal Narnia. And the tomb of Jesus, appearing to be a sanctuary of death, is in fact the empty place that helps prepare us for eternal life. In the tomb Jesus overcomes the grip of death, and everything changes.
When Mary sees Jesus, she mistakes him for the gardener. He is the same, but different. His appearance has changed, and he walks through locked doors. His friends don’t recognize him right away. And as Sarah Dylan Breuer points out, when we receive resurrection life, for the first time or on a deeper level, things change.
    Our relationships, our understanding of power, our vision, our heart, and our sense of what is possible change.
    Jesus, raised from death, now calls his followers sisters and brothers. We are bonded to unlikely strangers in Christian fellowship, receiving even our enemies, and use the same terms—brother and sister—to describe them.  Our understanding of power is transformed when the risen Lord continues to serve his disciples and us. He doesn’t address us with judgment, but with love and forgiveness. With our new vision we begin to see Christ in the most unlikely places – in a child’s eyes, an enemy’s heart, a suffering friend, and in opportunities to be peacemakers in a broken, unjust world.
With Christ’s resurrection comes a change of heart. Forgiveness becomes possible in the most trying settings. Compassion and sensitivity are lived out unexpectedly. We experience grace. And what is possible changes. In God’s economy Egypt’s slaves became a new nation, and Christ’s disciples became a church. “What seemed to be certain death became a call to new life, as the scattered Hebrew slaves became a people, God's people. In Judea, some looked at Jesus' cross and saw death; some looked at the empty tomb and anticipated death for themselves, as Roman law decreed death to grave robbers. But what looks like death is an opening for new life.”2
Easter proclaims not just the resurrection of Jesus, but of all who believe. We are transformed  to new life, and as Breuer says, we “find ourselves sent forth to be known and make Jesus known in the breaking of the bread, the healing of the sick, the loving of the unlovable, the reconciliation of each of us to one another and to God in Christ.”3
    Our Easter prayer is that we be changed. Or in the words of Walter Brueggemann,

God of Exodus and Easter, God of homecoming and forgiveness,
       God of fierceness and peaceableness,
         we are finally driven to your miracles.
This day hear our urgency and do among us what none of us can do.
Do your Friday-Sunday act yet again and make us new.
We pray out of the shattering death and the shimmering new life of Jesus,
whose name we bear. Amen.

Pastor Mike

 

1  Lewis, C.S. The Last Battle. MacMillan, 1956, pp. 137ff.
2    Breuer, Sarah Dylan. Dylan’s Lectionary Blog.  http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2005/03/easter_day_prin.html
3    Ibid
4    Brueggemann, Walter. “While the World says, Not Possible. Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth. Fortress Press, 2003, p. 121-122