Sitting in Cochabamba; thinking about MCUSA

I'm in the middle of a seven weeks sojourn in Bolivia and a long ways from the current action percolating around Mennonite Church USA.  Our family is scattered over three continents so we've been blessed to travel and spend time in parts of the world far different from our home in California.  Every time we travel afar this lesson is relearned with some new and imaginative twist: This world is big.  The things that matter most to me are important, they seem critically important in fact, yet they are small in comparison.  Surely we can can trust in each other enough, love each other enough, believe in the heart of each other enough, in this big world, to get along.

I wonder about the common threads stitching together a series of Mennonite gatherings.

First, in the stately Hartville Mennonite Church in rural Ohio, under a cloud of chandeliers, a part of our family gathered in early January.  From what I read the mood was somber, meditative, prayerful, and thoughtful.  A sense of holy conviction emerged.  I imagine it like this.  We don't want to be mean spirited.  We long for the Spirit's leading.  We will not doubt the faith of others.  But here, in this room, how we delight in the sense of oneness, of unity, of common spiritual persuasion that we know right now with each other.  We long for more of this and we dare to believe that this is God's best for us in this time.  And so we want to carve out a new fellowship somewhere on the fuzzy boundary line of being within yet outside of Mennonite Church USA.

Then the next weekend a diverse group of Mennonite folks from around the country traveled to Arc de Salvacion Church in Fort Myers, Florida.  This gathering represented another part of our church family.  If I read the tea leaves right, this body not only represented our church's ethnic diversity, but it also reflected our theological diversity.  And they talked about important stuff.  Power, privilege, who's in, who's out, what's Jesus got to do with it, can we all find a place to call this home?  And furthermore, judging from the smiles in the pictures, people rocked out and danced.  It must have been quite intense yet also, quite the party.

Then, later in January, it was pastors week at AMBS.  Still another part of our family.  I read that the preaching was good and the conversation rich.  Surely the worship was creative, colorful adjectives adorned the spoken word, sonorous sounds filled the sacred chapel, and hearts were blessed.  Yet there were clouds.  What will happen in Kansas City?  And JHY, who once walked these very halls, his memory lingers here too.  Still, what rewarding days those must have been full of song and word, coffee and late night conversations, wisdom and saucy wit, perhaps some tears and laughter as well.

Then these last days our executive board has been meeting.  I think of Elizabeth, Patty, and Ervin, and the joys and the burdens they carry.  Elizabeth and Patty have plenty to do already in Pennsylvania and Kansas, yet they have accepted this mantle, and go forward with what to me seems great grace, courage, and mellow hearts.  And Ervin seems tireless in his gift for listening and choosing his words with care and compassion.

Writing the above I haven't even considered our (and I say this with love) crazy Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference, not to mention my own church.  But that's a subject for another time.

I want to believe that there is something sticky, something deeply of God and the way of Jesus, that glues together people in Hartville, Fort Myers, Elkhart, and far beyond.  That wonderful and Godly je ne sais quoi that can allow the peace minded and the intellectuals, the charismatics and the pink-shirted, the undocumented and the Bible memorizers, the soft-hearted and the hard headed, the combine drivers and the coffee connoisseurs, all to say, sure it's a big tent but these are my people, this is my home.

I have a story within me.  This wasn't preached loudly or pounded into me when I was young, but here it is.  Historians can tell the story with more accuracy but what counts for me is how I thought the story went.

My roots go back to the former Soviet Union.  I imagine my family in a village called Ebenfeld.  I like to think that we were poor and modest, but actually, I don't know for sure.  We were Mennonites, for sure.  We spoke German in the midst of the Russian landscape.

Around the middle of the 19th century a revival movement broke out.  A German pietist preacher was especially influential.  Get yourself right with God, I imagine him saying.  The church had grown lax.  Some, perhaps, had become far too comfortable with material things.  Deep conviction about the things of God was lacking.  Finally, a group of men got together (we liked to think reminiscent of Grebel, Blaurach and others years before in Zurich) and soberly determined, we must form this new spiritual home.  And so they did, and the Mennonite Brethren were born.  This went down in 1860.  My family became a part of this movement.  I don't know if they were part of it from the beginning or not.

Years later I went to college, a Mennonite Brethren college. I learned that studious MBs in Russia later came to look on the whole Mennonite Brethren movement with a bit of a wry smile.  Actually, they said, the lines weren't all that clear.  Yes, if we can dare to read into the hearts of others, there was some dead wood.   But truthfully, they said, there was plenty of life, vitality, and spirituality in the good Mennonite folks who did not embrace the MB movement.  Later in my life, when MCC carried me out of my MB world and into the broader Anabaptist family, I found out how true this was.

Back to the present.  I believe it was a Goshen area Mennonite pastor who put his finger on what I think is a critical dynamic in our church today.  His church decided to leave the Indiana Michigan conference in hopes of finding a new home somewhere else within Mennonite Church USA.  In explaining his church's decision he said something like this.  Our church is primarily interested in thinking about, exploring, and proclaiming the transforming power of Jesus to change people's lives.  But in other parts of our Mennonite church family, there is far more interest in thinking about and exploring the outer edges of Christian faith.

As one who finds himself more in the latter camp, I think this fellow pastor has opined correctly.  I think it's true, and I know I like to hang out with people, and read the things they write, who are, finally,  sort of like me.

Having said that, it doesn't mean I don't want to learn from and be encouraged by dear sisters and brothers (here in the United States and around the world) who have experienced more vividly than I the transforming power of Jesus.  And I believe, I deeply believe, that this Spirit guided Jesus transforming stuff is happening among those who are out there roaming the outer edges.  The lines are blurry.  The waters are being stirred.  The water is getting pretty muddy.

Maybe we all need to wade in the water and plunge our heads beneath the surface, down in the murky liquid mess.  When we emerge, what might we see?  I'm the eternal optimist, for sure, but I want to believe that when gritty, dirty water is dripping down all our faces, some things will seem, in God's grand design, actually quite small.

A Better Path

President Barack Obama is perceived as a deliberate decision maker, one who thoughtfully weighs all options before moving ahead.   He came into office committed to slowly withdrawing American military forces out of the military mess in Afghanistan and Iraq that he inherited.  With that end finally in sight he has made an about-face, choosing to reengage in Iraq and Syria in a fight against the Islamic State. 

Seeing a series of Westerners alone and kneeling in a forlorn desert, waiting to be beheaded, played a part in pushing the reluctant president over the edge.

There is no overstating how abhorrent these executions are but, nevertheless, the president and congressional supporters of all stripes are making a grave mistake in trying to bomb Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.  Killing a slew of Islamic State militants may seem cathartic and satisfy the urge to “do something” but the long-term impact of American military action will be the creation of a new generation of embittered warriors willing to go to even more wretched extremes of human brutality.  After all, they’ve seen friends exterminated by a missile descending from above.  Their moral calculus determines that it is we, the Americans, who are insensitive to the value of human life.

We could ask the question, what if?  What if Iraqis and Syrians, as well as people anywhere else in the world, recognized that their primary interaction with Americans was with our nurses and our engineers, our linguists and our teachers, instead of our soldiers?  What if we dropped blankets, soccer balls, and bottles of aspirin instead of missiles?   The sober truth is that war inevitably plants the acrid seeds of revenge.  What if we tried a different path?

One of the problems of our Middle East misadventures is that the cost of this war is born, grossly disproportionately, by a very few, our military men and women.  They volunteer to go where they witness unspeakable horror, and then return home to see the rest of us far more interested in the our favorite football team, our new I Phone, or “Dancing with the Stars.”  What if the daunting task of building peace in the Middle East was something many more Americans had a stake in?

One way to start would be to end completely our dependency on Middle East oil.  What if we said, we will all pay a couple dollars more per gallon at the gas tank in order to dramatically reduce our reliance on carbon fuels?  What if we agreed to follow the lead of the European Union and agree to cut emissions by 40% by 2030?  What if we made it a national goal to dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to dramatically increase clean energy sources?  Such a commitment would touch all levels of American life. It would further unleash our best minds to accomplish these challenging goals.  It would bring our men and women in uniform back home.  It would help to preserve this one planet that we are blessed to live upon.

A striking reality of the Islamic State is that they have placed their hands on American made military equipment.  It has been good for sectors of the American economy to build the tools that have been part of the war effort in Iraq.  The hard truth is that America’s fine minds and skilled workers create the weapons that cause carnage and death.  These lethal instruments of death are sold to our friends but switch sides once a city falls, a battle is lost, or soldiers run.  One step towards slowing down the cycle of violence in the Middle East is for our country to stop producing and selling weaponry.  We should redirect our industrial skills into products that build life, not destroy it.

Believing that the only language the Islamic State and their ilk understand is violence, we choose to descend to the moral lowlands, becoming like our enemies.  We could take the simple but divinely wise counsel to flesh out what it means to “love our enemies.”  We could stubbornly refuse to fight and kill, aligning ourselves with nonviolent movements of the past.  We could insist on being all about schools and dispensaries, agriculture and tree-planting, well-digging and engineers, conflict resolution and soccer fields, free-thinking and clean water, family planning and cross-cultural sensitivity, windmills and religious freedom.    

The grisly deaths of Westerners perishing in the Iraqi desert are appalling.  The understandable human response is to fight back, to avenge, and to extract an eye for an eye.   But there is a better way.  Those who died were humanitarians, curious about the world, desiring to report on and respond to human suffering.  In their lives we see hints of how the nations of the world ought best to respond to the Islamic State.  Truth telling, providing aid to the refugee, steadfastly standing with the voiceless, and exposing the emptiness of fundamentalist thinking are the better tools.  When we respond with our own violence we only stoop to the level of the Islamic State, demonstrating a shared belief that the way to show that ghastly killing is wrong is to engage in killing ourselves.  It’s a difficult path, and it’s a costly path but its far better to bake bread and drop blankets, not bombs.

Zechariah and Elizabeth's Boy

Zechariah and Elizabeth’s Boy

(Matthew 3:1-12)

I.

Just like Sarah, Elizabeth had to laugh

when Zechariah came home with the news.

He had gone to the holy place, incense in hand, to perform his priestly duty.

For generations the sanctuary disciplines of offering and incense,

mingled with elements of fire and air, wind and breath.  They were tended

by men like Zechariah who made sure everything was done properly and in good order.

Alone with the potent aroma in the inner sanctum, Zechariah could hear the

murmuring outside, the persistent prayers of the faithful. 

Sometimes he wondered if it was all a charade, each performing their assigned roles,

they outside on the street, he inside where no one could see,

but everyone privately wondering if the clasped hands, the eyes raised heavenward,

the routine, ritualistic words meant anything at all, or could they really move mountains?

All these questions evaporated in a flash when the angel appeared.

The vividness of the revelation now intersected with the uncomfortable truth of his and 

Elizabeth’s marriage. 

If the angel’s prediction was true there would still be murmuring.

II.

Years later people were still talking as they trekked outside of town to witness

the latest hot prophet.

Those with long memories still chortled remembering Elizabeth’s growing girth

and Zechariah’s wry smile.

Old family friends, the lower classes, the simply curious, and the overtly religious

all found their way to the water’s edge to see Zechariah and Elizabeth’s son.

Maybe it was his shrill tone, or his vegan habits, or perhaps the burning conviction behind his 

colorful choice of words that made him a popular destination point, at least for that short season.

Snakes and the ax, tree fruit and threshing floors, water and fire all found their way

into his shtick.

After the final punch line, and once the invitation was given, quite a few,

more than you might think, felt compelled to jump into the water with him.

He seemed to baptize with a vengeance, tugging on the hair gripped in his wiry hands, making sure each one got good and wet.

With this baptism you’ve got to change your ways!

He spat out the words allowing no room for compromise, no space for “ifs” or “buts” or “in case 

of circumstances” beyond anyone’s control. 

This is the way it’s got to be, he insisted, and for the most part, people listened.

Near the edge of the crowd the Pharisees and the Sadducees stood, arms folded.

They had their differences on matters of resurrection but they stood united by the water’s edge 

listening to the tart words and the splashing water.

A scorpion’s sting could hardly have injured the faithfully religious more.

You are nothing but a bunch of fools!

Those finely crafted prayers, honed over time, nothing!

Those days of fasting, not worth a thing!

He dared to laugh when he mocked pedigree.

The scorn was visceral when he called relying on tried and true practices pure folly.

Water is one thing but fire and Spirit are another.

Once the ax hits the base of the tree a dozen times, it’s all over.

There’s nothing to do but make a bonfire.

Yet, even old stones can be useful.

Like Ezekiel’s old bones, knit together, dancing for the first time.

Like ordinary wheat flour, separated from the chaff,

mixed with yeast, butter, milk, and salt, and baked at 425.

In the end a warm loaf of bread, something to share with a neighbor.

In the end a warm loaf of bread, and when paired with a cup of wine,

a suitable reminder of all that was to come.

III.

A flower, pink and radiant, sprouts and blooms midst the scattered stones.

For no particularly obvious reason Miss Mdingane, on the first day of school,

looked at the young boy and said, I’ll call you Nelson.

It’s a fine name, the seven year old thought, but what does it mean?

Rolihlahla, meaning “troublemaker,” that works, but Nelson?

During the long twenty-seven years he pounded rocks for someone else’s benefit.

Limestone and granite, sandstone and schist, pounded into submission,

one hammer blow at a time.

Having deliberately challenged the unfair rules

the small advantages of upbringing were gone.

Winnie had to stand outside the walls.

The prison cell was small.

The rocks at his feet, each subtly different from the next,

the slow work of wind and fire producing shades of brown and grey,

the colors of the world lay still and lifeless on the prison yard.

The old patterns give way with an ache, awaiting the holy breath of Spirit and fire

to merge black and white

to unite wolf and lamb

to nurture wisdom and peace.

A flower, pink and radiant, sprouts and blooms midst the scattered stones.

IV.

The transcendent word finds voice in sundry odd places. 

Out in the desert the ancient cries still echo.

A solitary life is silenced but still lingers.

A prophet dressed in rags points to truth beyond what he can see.

A man dressed in prison garb dares to dream of what can become beyond his walls.

There, beyond, in the shadows, near, but not within, the fine print, in the soft glow of

Advent candle, rests the whisper, the wind, the fire, and O, the mystery of God’s dwelling.

--This was for the second Sunday in Advent, December 8, 2013

There are Bones

Outside the little parish in Sasabe I met a couple of new friends and peed on the hill

behind the church.  A horse walked by and we ate simple tamales in the courtyard.

Inside three young women sitting in front of me sang repetitive refrains and the local padre

decided now was the time to express his personal solidarity with the poor migrants.

Everything was done with translation, and it was already afternoon and though of course

the padre was sincere all I could wonder was when will we ever leave this town?

Religious people like me were then asked to say a few words of greetings. 

It took time but finally we could stand up, get in line, and receive a dribble of water on our heads, 

water for a slow walk through the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge.

All the while, at the front of the parish, near the bowl of water and the cheerful padre,

three caskets waited to remind that out there in the desert, beyond the wall, there are bones.

After the last blessing for the long road I grabbed the small handle of a casket with my left hand.

Jack, a veteran of these walks, was on the other side.

We staggered down the steps and onto the rocky, dirt road of this border town, the hot sun

bathing our bodies.  Soon enough I had to change the position of my fingers to manage

the casket, the small handle and my knuckles making an awkward match.

We walked, hardly saying a word, my fingers resigned to a mile-long ache.

A few dogs barked.  The local police offered an escort.  Some children stood and watched

the strange procession.  And then, over the next hill, stretching as far as I could see, the wall,

and beyond the wall, somewhere, there are bones.

The still desert becomes our teacher.
The chollas' thorns naked beauty, the blossom within the silent saguaro,
the dry wadi where water cascades after a desert storm, the patches of desert grass,
the sun-baked earth, the ancient rock formations, the sacred  Baboquivari.
This desert land holds the dreams of all who walk its dusty path.
The Tohono O’odham preserve timeless memories and wish to live the hopes of the ancestors.
The weary migrant thinks of a house with a yard, a swing set for the children,
enough room to grow corn, chilies, and tomatoes.
Others walk to say that some dreams end because the desert holds the knowledge,

the truth, that there are bones.

These are the bones of the tio who crossed to find family in California.
He promised to stand in line at 4:30 in the morning to catch a van to work in the fields

to weed, pick, and prune.  No matter.  He would drive old tractors, working hard no matter

that it was dirty and the hours long.  Just so the children can someday learn ingles and play

the other futbol and sing in the school choir and hold test tubes in a chemistry lab

and carry their own books. 

It’s true, he thought. 

Maybe they will come to forget the feel of the sea breeze in Guerrero.  

Maybe they will come to forget the pride of the Coloso or the music in Guadalajara. 

Maybe they will forget the smacking sound of tortillas in a woman’s hands

or the quiet of a village in the mountains near Guatemala. 

Maybe in time the language of their birth will grow unnatural.

But these things will always be known, he said before he left, deep down in their bones.

This is what he said.
Today the family on both sides of this great wall still waits.
The desert holds its breath.
And somewhere there are bones.

The Migrant Trail Walk

Two months ago I participated in the 10th annual Migrant Trail Walk, a six day 75 mile walk from Sasabe, Mexico to Tucson, Arizona.  The walk made real and personal the weighty decision to cross the border without papers.  It brought home the reality of death and the sorrow too many families know.  For me it underscored the complexities of immigration reform.  Over fifty people participated in the walk.  A contingent of Anabaptists made the trek, including from left to right, Dan, Jennifer, myself, Saulo, Linda, Jack, and Jodi.

The Atonement and Us

Here's a sermon I wrote nearly two years ago on the atonement and how a person comes to faith.

 

Paul’s letter and Philip’s encounter

This morning I’m not going to pour over the two New Testament passages we heard earlier.  The first reading was from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians where he makes the point that God was in the world, in Christ, seeking to reconcile humanity to God’s self, and in turn entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation.  And in the Acts passage we have the story of Philip interacting with an Ethiopian court official, hopping on his chariot with him, presumably continuing their discussion of Isaiah, and then the next thing you know, they halt the chariot and jump into a little body of water, so that the Ethiopian eunuch can be baptized.

I want these two passages to stand in the background of my remarks.  They both, I think, have much to do with getting right with God, coming to faith, and accepting Jesus as Savior and Lord.  They have to do with conversion, salvation, following Jesus—or any other of a host of expressions we employ to communicate the convergence of heart, mind, and will turning to Jesus in allegiance, faith, and trust. 

The cross

We’ve just come through the Lenten season, the forty days leading up to the Easter celebration.  Lent climaxes with the events of Holy Week…the triumphal entry, the Last Supper, the betrayal, the trial, the crucifixion, and then, the resurrection.  The cross is a centerpiece of this week, and the great Christian symbol.  There’s a cross here in front of me on the communion table. There’s one in one of our stained glass windows.  Some of us are probably wearing jewelry right now with a cross in it.  When you see someone wearing a cross you think, that person claims Christ. 

And the cross is understood as essential and necessary for our very salvation.  We sing:

Was it for sins that I have done he groaned upon the tree?

Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree.

“Man of sorrows,” what a name for the Son of God who came,

Ruined sinners to reclaim! Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, save in the death of Christ, my God!

All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them through his blood.

Explicitly in the theology of these words is the idea that the cross is crucial to our salvation.  We humans are hopeless sinners.  The love of God is infinite.  And Jesus’ death on a cross—his blood shed for us—is necessary for our salvation.

But how, exactly does this work?  How does the death of one man 2,000 years ago somehow relate to my personal failings and shortcomings, your missteps, or corporate, systemic sins that conspire to keep the poor in their place and inflict lethal violence on those who get out of line?

Atonement

This leads us directly into thinking about the atonement.  How does what Jesus did on the cross make us right, clean, and justified before God?  What do we have to do?

The prevailing doctrine of the atonement in Protestant circles has for about a thousand years been some version of “satisfaction” atonement.  A medieval theologian, Anselm of Canterbury, articulated how salvation happens in a way that has influenced Christian thinking for all these centuries. 

Satisfaction atonement takes sin seriously.  Though God created the world good, sin quickly crept in.  And it has continued, infecting the heart of every single human being.  And so there is a great gulf between a perfect God and imperfect humanity.  No human sacrifice could appease God’s righteous indignation over our sinful state because God needed a perfect sacrifice.  So God sent his son, Jesus, who lived the perfect life.  He was killed, dying in our place on the cross, and so, by his wounds, we are healed and made right in God’s sight.  God’s righteous anger is satisfied.

I came to faith in Christ with this kind of understanding of what Jesus did for me.  This was an act of great love, I was always taught.  Jesus loved me so much he was willing to die for me.  That’s what I learned.  And you know, those precise words (Jesus loved me so much he was willing to die for me) I can still say.  But somehow for me, and this journey began many decades ago, this whole way of understanding what God was about in Jesus didn’t resonate deep within.  How does this happen, really?  All I have to do is confess belief and then a celestial deal is made, high in the heavens, and I’m saved?  Now the satisfaction understanding of the work of Christ on the cross has the great advantage of taking seriously our sins, both individual and corporate.  And it has the great advantage of simplicity with its wondrous reliance on God’s grace, which I believe in.  But still I wonder if there could be a better way of understanding the work of Christ on the cross.

Justice and the death of Osama bin Laden

Last Sunday evening we all learned the stunning news of the dramatic American raid, engineered by extraordinarily skilled and highly trained Navy SEALS, in Pakistan that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden.  Sunday night a sober-minded, grimly determined President Obama announced the news.  Then the television screen filled with images of young revelers shaking their fists in the air and triumphantly shouting USA, USA, USA.  Black and white, male and female, they partied, proclaiming their joy.

There were interviews with people who were in New York on 9/11, and interviews with family members of office workers and firemen who were in the twin towers on that awful day nearly ten years ago. 

And from the president to the people on the street, from the newscasters to the family members, one heard this repeated refrain: now Justice has been served.  After all these years, there is justice!

The logic is this.  Osama bin Laden was the man ultimately responsible for the mass murder of about 3,000 people on that glorious September morning of nearly ten years ago.  For the scales to be balanced, for a sense of rightness and order to be regained, the one responsible for the 9/11 atrocity has to be killed.  Now that this has happened, and his body eased into the North Indian Sea, justice has been served.

But already, just a week later, things don’t seem all that different.  The euphoric chanting in the streets has faded away.  Whatever vengeful satisfaction there was in the thought of waking a tall, ascetic guy up in the night and shooting him above the eye, that satisfaction doesn’t prove very lasting.  And though I can’t pretend to put myself in their shoes, I just don’t think that Osama bin Laden’s death really eases the pain or the sense of loss all that much of those who so unfairly lost loved ones nearly ten years ago.

For this sense of justice, a justice that demands the killing of one because of the killing of others, really doesn’t bring any kind of ultimate closure.  There’s just more blood.  There’s just more tears.  There’s just more anger.

But still this way of understanding is dominant in our country, and I suppose all over the world.  If someone does something evil and bad, justice demands a response commensurate with the gravity of the evil committed.  We call this retributive justice.  It’s the understanding of justice undergirding all those justice has been served remarks.  In the biblical framework we think of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  This teaching served as a helpful restraint on extreme vengeance in response to an evil.  But then Jesus comes along and says you have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil…

Satisfaction, retributive justice, and the atonement

You can see how the way we think about justice fits into the satisfaction understanding of Jesus’ death on the cross.  To make things right God needed the perfect sacrifice to balance the scales, to make up for all the sins of sinful humanity.

But wait a second.  Does a loving God actually get angry enough to arrange for his own son to be killed?  The death of Jesus was an actual event in real history, so, what did it mean in its own historical moment?  And furthermore, what about the resurrection?  If all God needed was a perfect sacrifice, and then Jesus is killed, what’s the point of the resurrection?  It’s a nice exclamation point but in terms of appeasing God’s righteous anger, it does very little.

Non-violent Christus Victor

Another way of understanding the meaning of the cross fall under the label “Christus Victor,” (or Christ the Victor).  This understanding goes back to the early Church Fathers.  It fell out of favor with Anselm in the middle ages and has been making a comeback in the last fifty years or so.   Mennonite scholars like John Howard Yoder, Norman Kraus, Thomas Finger, Mark Baker, and J. Denny Weaver have all tried to understand the work of Christ in this way.  Contemporary writers from Greg Boyd to Marcus Borg to Jim Wallis to Walter Wink all seem to resonate with this understanding of the atonement. 

Christus Victor understood from an Anabaptist theological perspective tries to take sin (both personal and corporate) very seriously, insists on incorporating the entire witness of Jesus (his teachings and his deeds), understands the crucifixion in historical context, and believes in the resurrection. 

Let’s not forget the verses we heard early in the service from II Corinthians.  That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.  So how does sin-infested humanity become reconciled to God in this model?  Sin is not short-changed.  It is real and understood as our bondage to the forces and powers of evil in our world.  It’s understood personally as our violations of the holiness God would have for us.  Salvation is in the becoming free of these chains that bind, and being transformed by the renewing Spirit of God into the realm of the Kingdom of God.

Now Jesus himself, in living out his mission, the kingdom, ran into the powers of evil all around him.  He stood up to them and was executed by them.  His death was less a blood payment to ensure a celestial transaction, and more a rejection of the rule of God, of the kingdom, by the forces of evil hostile to the kingdom, the way, Jesus lived and proclaimed.  In his death he revealed the true nature of the evil of his time.  The cross vividly contrasts the way of power and violence exhibited by those who killed him, and the nonviolent way of the rule of God.

So evil did its worst but in the resurrection Jesus proved triumphant even over death.  As Weaver puts it: The power of the reign of God over the forces of evil is made manifest in the resurrection of Jesus.  (Weaver, p. 44, The Nonviolent Atonement)  He goes on to say:

Those who believe in the resurrection perceive the true nature of power in the universe.  Resurrection means that appearances can be deceiving.  Regardless of what appears to be the case from an earth-limited or earth-bound perspective, such as the seeming crescendo of evil…..resurrection demonstrates the power of God’s rule over evil.

The invitation

God’s victory over the power of evil is our invitation to join in God’s kingdom and to embrace salvation.  We do so by saying our “yes” to a new, transformed life, a life no longer held in bondage to evil because we know that, in the end, Jesus is triumphant.  Our yes is our pledge of allegiance to the totality of the way of Jesus, an allegiance to the life and teachings, the death and resurrection of Jesus.  When our united heart and mind turn to Jesus, whispering or shouting our allegiance, we know salvation. 

In the course of our lives we do this over and over again.  Just like a life-long relationship on this earth begins with a tentative “I love you,” so we may haltingly say yes to Jesus for the first time.  But over time we sing it over and over again, in song, in the quiet of our hearts, at the foot of the cross, in the silence of a contemplative heart, and in the taking of the bread and cup. 

In the face of the evil within and the powers of evil around us we place our hope in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, living and trusting in the power of love to overcome evil.  Thanks be to God.

Amen.