Dont' doubt but believe: Sermon for the 10th Sunday After Pentecost

• • 1 Kings 19:9-18
  • Psalm 85:8-13
• Second reading
  • Romans 10:5-15
• Gospel
  • Matthew 14:22-33

*Before you read this a note of warning: If you imagine these stories as White stories, if you picture Elijah, Peter, the Disciples, the Psalmist, Saint Paul the Apostle or Jesus Christ as white folk you will not hear the word of God in this sermon nor in the Scriptures upon which this message is drawn. I wish this note of warning was unnecessary. I wish that my Christian European forbearers hadn’t worshiped at the altar of White Supremacy, but it is clear (and has been clear for a long while) that we have yet to escape this distortion and misappropriation.

 For Elijah, and the disciples and Peter, the manifestations of the divine come to them unexpectedly and in times of distress.  They are low moments of faith. We may find ourselves in a similar moment of fear and despair, as we’ve watched white supremacists march with torches shouting, “You will not replace us” and the Nazi slogan “Blood and soil.” surrounding a black church and unleash violence against counter protestors and a car ramming into counter protestors killing one. What is happening in Charlottesville, Virginia isn’t isolated from the police killing of black folk and the electoral victory of Trump and the various policies of the Trump administration and the chaos we’ve seen. Gathered here today we may feel a bit like Elijah We may be angry like Elijah that all this is even possible and happening, and we have our own litany of complaint before God. We may be wondering with Elijah and the disciples on the boat where God is in all this and if God is out there in the storm and the overwhelming waves. Yet, our Scriptures point out that Elijah and the disciples and Peter are examples of asking the wrong question. The question isn’t where is God when evil threatens to overwhelm, because no storm, no chaos the enemy can throw at the world chases God away. Nothing a Nation state is will bring the reign of God, nor truly accomplish God’s shalom in the world, and nothing White supremacy does can negate what God did in Jesus Christ upon the cross. The people of God have seen this before and before the Shalom of God comes and is manifest we the people of God will see it again. Yet we who may be surprised and angered and fearful must confess that this form of Empire and Babylon that we call White Supremacy was embraced and nurtured both by the nation state called the United States of America and by its European Christian Citizens, calling themselves White. For centuries members of Christ have themselves chased after these other gods of patriotism, nation state and white supremacy. This is not new and the Nation State and government of the U.S.A., can’t eradicate this power because the U.S.A has worshiped at the altar of White supremacy from its founding. So yes, there is reason to feel the despair of Elijah.  Things are dire. But our scriptures aren’t only stories of despair., They begin there and end in hope. So, amid the chaos, white supremacy, and the failure of human attempts to suppress and eradicate this evil we once embraced, we seek God. Hope isn’t found out there in the world, nor in some isolated fearful retreat. Hope is found in an unexpected but obvious place.

The faith that produces righteousness, doesn’t ask the very human question, why is this happening and where is God in this Chaos, or the evil? Paul says that true faith doesn’t ask Who can go to heaven, …or who can go to hades.” Faith that leads to justice, affirms with the psalmists that the word of God is near us in our hearts and upon our lips. This doesn’t mean that we people of faith won’t find ourselves sitting with Elijah despairing in the cave or with the disciples buffeted by waves threatening to overwhelm our boat. But, No matter, God always comes near. Whether our experience is like Elijah Or we may have moments like the disciples when we have a profound sense the divinity of Jesus Christ, we should not cling to those experiences. Whatever our experience, Paul’s word tells us these experiences of God at our low points, aren’t central to the life of faith.

These are moments of grace but not moments of faith. Theophany’s and epiphanies aren’t what the life of faith is about. The life of faith is trusting something we perhaps don’t quite have the capacity to perceive. The word of God the second person of the trinity become human and dying and descending to the dead isn’t what brought God to us.  God was always there, in the world amid our chaos, on our lips and in our hearts. The problem has never been with God not showing up. What Jesus fixes is our faith, our ability to see and recognize God. The problem is in us as human beings not in God! God in Jesus Christ fills out our faith when it is weak, but what we need is always and has always been accessible. Through, Christ we are awakened to what is truly at the depth of our being.

The exercise of faith is to trust this fundamental reality, even when we are overwhelmed by our fears. The exercise of faith is to trust even when we are threatened by other people’s sins, when we wonder how will we overcome white supremacy once and for all. To continue trustin in the nearness of God even in the face of evil and chaos. In trusting in Christ, we can affirm that the Word of God is in our hearts and upon our lips. We need go nowhere, nor do something to find God. God is here, wherever you are, God is in your heart and upon your lips, you can see it if you trust and have the faith of Christ.

Our exercise of this faith, awakens this same faith and awareness in others. Faith and salvation aren’t individual affairs. The individual American protestant evangelical interpretation of this passage focusing on the individual fails to recognize the communal and interdependent nature of Paul’s message. Faith turned in upon itself either obsessed with experiences of God’s presence or with some sense of assurance that because one has confessed with one’s mouth and believed in one’s heart one can be sure of one’s own individual salvation, is a dead end, and completely misunderstand the Apostle Paul. Rather f the faith that trusts that God’s word is near, in our hearts and upon our lips, confesses this faith so that others may be awakened to that same faith that leads to justice.

Even so sometimes we think we are responding to the chaos in faith, but really, we are seeking proof of God’s presence. Peter in an attempt to show Jesus his great faith, falters in that faith. Thankfully Jesus Christ, doesn’t let Peter be overcome, but gently points out, Peter’s lack of faith. But really the lack of faith began with Peter’s compulsion to prove his faith and step out from the boat. Jesus never asks this of Peter. Jesus doesn’t say Peter show me you aren’t afraid and how great your faith is by coming and walking on water with me. No, Peter asks for proof that it’s Jesus and tells Jesus to tell him to come out on the water. Jesus being kind and loving acquiesces (knowing he has Peter no matter what) and invites him out on the water.

God, in both the story of Elijah in the cave and Peter walking on water, comes in gentleness, grace and in the full otherness and awe inspiring frightening presence. Jesus attempts to calm the disciples and lovingly does as Peter asks, telling Peter to come on the water.  Jesus gently encourages Peter to not doubt but believe. God meets a frightened and discouraged Elijah and asks Elijah a simple question. A question that is to call Elijah back to himself.  God announces God’s presence with the familiar manifestations of Mount Sinai, but doesn’t attach the presence with any of those. Elijah only encounters God in Holy Silence. When in Silence God’s presence is known, Elijah can truly hear the word of God in his heart and upon his lips. God meets us where we are at and will even do what we ask, but doesn’t allow us to stay in the place of little faith. God is patient with us, but also pushes us along, to that place of faith.

What is this place of justifying faith? What is this faith that is accounted to us as righteousness? The place is our being illumined by Christ, God with us, where we remember who we are. To have faith is to no longer see ourselves as distanced from God, but trust that we are close to God and that God is close to us, no matter that our human institutions and attempts to bring about goodness and righteousness and justice continually fail. No matter that we have misplaced our hope and trust in the very things that bring about the chaos. No matter our collective or individual failures, God is always near in our heart and upon our lips, if we can step back and not doubt but believe.

Paul says that they very Word of God is on our lips and in our hearts, when in Christ we trust and believe in the nearness of God in our hearts and trust that our words can confess this truth. We then become those blessed as bearer of good news, and we can awaken this faith and justice in those who hear our confession. It is by this faith, not through the Powers and Nations that the world is transformed and righteousness and justice flourish.

I hope we can find that place of the Holy Silence where we can like Elijah hear God’s voice and call. But maybe your still with Peter on the boat buffeted by the waves of the chaos of our moment, and you want God to call to you.  God will acquiesce to your request, and will tell you come. But your desire to do something, if motivated from a need to prove that God is in the chaos, isn’t God asking you to step into the chaos. Even so, God will invite you into it if you ask God to do so. But if you falter, know God has you and God didn’t ask you to come, you asked God to invite you. However, Jesus’ word to Peter to come is very different form Elijah’s word from God after the Silence. I encourage us to wait before we act. I encourage us to look for the deep silence out of which God can speak. It is form that silence that we can hear God’s word for us not what we think we want to hear from God, as proof of God’s presence but a solid word for us is that God is near and unassailable.

We like Elijah, we of little faith, shaky on our feet, depressed and uncertain in our ways, wondering how this all can be real, we, if we trust and believe in our hearts and confess with our lips the nearness of God, Jesus Christ the Word, we are restored to that relationship with God that humanity had in the Garden of Eden. Through faith, we bring others back into this restored state in Jesus Christ, the Word. It is in this moment of both knowing for ourselves and that we are for others that we can hear God’s word to us that is for others, and then know how we will be sent into the world.

However, the grace of God accepts us where we are, even if we have more doubt than faith, even if we want God to tell us to step out into this chaos. But the way of surer footing is to wait, to be still, to wait to hear from God in your deepest being out of the holy silence. Out of that silence God’s word is near to us. From this silence, we will know how we each are called to be for others. The word of God is near in our hearts and it will be upon our lips. First, we must be silent, then in faith we will be able to proclaim and bring God’s justice and truth. From this faith that God is near in our hearts and upon our lips, the world is renewed. . Amen.

Hope is a Crucified God; Sermon for Reign of Christ Sunday

 
• Jeremiah 23:1-6 and Psalm 46  • 
 
• Colossians 1:11-20  • 
• Luke 23:33-43

As Christians, this is our hope, Christ crucified. Our hope is that Christ has been exalted over all things through his death on the Cross.

There are dangers in this statement of faith and hope. There are interpretations that ask us to accept injustice for the sake of a deferred hope. In seeking to find hope in the crucifixion many focus on the final sentence of the Gospel passage just read. “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” The interpretation that focus on this says that our hope is only one found in what happens after our death.

But such an interpretation misses the identification with oppressed, poor, suffering, sinful humanity.  A “faith” that focus only on “Today you will be with me in Paradise” is more like the lack of faith of the first insurgent criminal than the second. It fails to connect the afterlife with this life. This complete focus on the afterlife fails refuses to be overcome and encompassed by the full ministry of the incarnation, it is a rejection of God joined with matter and our humanity in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. God’s union with humanity and the outcast is the essence of Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, the Holy one of God, and this union effect the now or it doesn’t affect the afterlife.

The Cross, Christ Crucified, is the politics of the Church, the body of Christ. This crucified one is God come to be the shepherd of God’s people, who is consistent when other shepherds lead the sheep astray or abandon the flock altogether

This is our hope, the Cross.

In this moment though it is not enough to just say hope in Christ crucified. For this statement of hope and faith has been used by the powerful to say that the oppressed must accept the oppression the lot given to them.

St Paul in the letter to the Colossians gives us the antidote to the missuses of the Cross:

1:11 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully1:12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.

If we don’t anticipate the end of this passage, if we don’t remember that for Paul, Jesus Crucifixion is the power and glory of God we can misunderstand what Paul is encouraging us to embrace.  The Cross is our strength, God’s solidarity with the oppressed with our divided ruthless humanity and God’s willingness to suffer its consequences. This is the glorious power of God.  If you don’t believe me wait till we get to the end you will see that this is Paul’s point of this opening encouragement to us, the church.
1:13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son,1:14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
So we are strengthened by the glorious power of God (the Cross) by which we have been moved from one realm into another,  We have redemption and forgiveness. Do we act like we live in the Kingdom of Christ, or under the power of Darkness?
1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;1:16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers--all things have been created through him and for him. 1:17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 1:18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
So the Crucified one, the suffering servant is the image of God, is united with all creation, as the firstborn.  Are you seeing in whom we hope, who was crucified, who is in solidarity with oppressed humanity?
1:19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,1:20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Not only image as we human beings are intended to be, but in this crucified one, in Jesus of Nazareth the fullness of God dwelled. This identification with us was not to subdue us, not to punish us, but to reconcile us, bring an end to our violence, but suffering our violence and our tendency to oppress seeking power over others. God in his glorious power in Jesus of Nazareth, and in the crucifixion, acts contrary to these impulses and suffers as one who could have inflicted suffering.  God fully in a human being faces destruction when God could have come and destroyed. Through solidarity with the marginalized the oppressed, with the condemned (justly or unjustly), with the tortured and the rejected, god in this act by the shedding of God’s blood, by undergoing death, reconciles and makes peace and shows us the way to overcome death and oppression as a path of reconciliation and peace.  But it is only in solidarity, in being with, in willingness to walk the way of Christ, which is the way of the cross that there is hope.

Questions for discussion:

In facing our fears for ourselves for our friends for our families, for the marginalized and the vulnerable, what hope can you see in these passages in the Cross and in the Crucified One, in God in solidarity with us in our suffering and with the oppressed?

What does Reconciliation mean in our context and how is this ministry of reconciliation hopeful?

In the coming months and years, we can act out of fear or out of hope.  What does it look like and mean for you in your context and in your circles to act upon the hope of the Cross and God’s ministry of reconciliation?

Longing and Anticipating a Just World

Isaiah 64:1-9-
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19 -
1 Corinthians 1:3-9- 
• • Mark 13:24-37
  So much emotion, in these texts.  So much is at stake.  Where’s the focus, it is all bewildering.  I’m not only speaking of our scriptures this evening, but also the events in Ferguson Missouri, or rather what the killing of the unarmed Mike Brown by a police officer Darren Wilson and the decision of a grand Jury not to indict the police officer, has awakened.  If you've followed the events since the death of Mike Brown at the hands of the police, you know a movement has grown up around this because Mike Brown’s death is larger than his own death and larger than whether or not Mike Brown’s civil rights were violated in away the Federal Government could act upon, or even whether or not on these same criteria City and it’s police are consistently engaged in violation of the civil rights of its African American citizenry, as important as that reality is.  Rather, the movement has emerged because the killing of Mike Brown by a police officer, Darren Wilson isn't an isolated incident, as a number of similar incidents where police have shot African American men (and most recently a boy of 12) occurred at the same time and have continued to occur, since.  What we are awakened to is that   the U.S. Justice system and policing is unjust and racist.
  Many are awakening to these injustices. Most likely those of us here this evening weren't completely unaware, but if you are like me you have been further roused and more attuned, to the enduring racism that floats mostly unseen, hidden behind laws, and state sponsored violence. In the midst of all this Jesus tells us to stay awake, to be watchful.
  The anger, frustration and grief expressed on our streets in protest and rioting, isn’t far from Isaiah’s wrenching call, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence”, such deep longing and pain behind such a statement.  A longing and desire for justice and for God to act.  For God to act like God did in the past, when God delivered the Israelites at the Red Sea by the complete and total destruction of the structures of the Egyptian law and order that oppressed the Israelites
  If we pay careful attention to Isaiah, we hear a more complex story:  the people of God have moved from victims to being complicit in sinful systems.  There are two movements in this lament and prophesy, a deep longing for God to act and a confession that responsibility for the situation from which there is the need of deliverance is the people of God themselves.  For white Christians in this country that is certainly also true when it comes to systemic racism first as slavery followed by policies of segregation and oppression and Jim Crow, continued now in mass incarceration and policing.
  Isaiah cries out in longing and deep pain for God to act and for justice , echoing the cries from our streets since August  and Isaiah expresses the complicity with these systems of injustice, reflecting for us the place of White Christians in relations to racism in the United States.
  Isaiah though almost seems to throw up his hands, God isn't acting, and this lack of action seems to make matters worse.  In the end we are clay in the potter’s hand, and even what Isaiah sees on the horizon and even being experienced by God’s people is on some level God’s doing.  Our Isaiah text leaves us with deep longing and anguish and helpless in our own sin and failure.
  But our psalm points us toward the hope of being clay in God’s hands: the hope of restoration, or of a remolding.  The Psalmist holds out for us the the hope of God transforming us , renewing us and the whole world.
  And Paul expresses this hope as grounded in the person and work of Jesus Christ
  Where might all this lead? 
  What conclusions if we take Ferguson also as our text, as revelatory of God at work in our midst?
  I want to draw attention to the language of shaking, and of tearing, the disruption of the fabric of what seems unalterable and just the way things are.  But also that this shaking is the shaking of governments, nations, powers.  In these images and if we reflect on the deliverance of the people of Israel from their oppression in Egypt, their liberation and justice doesn't come from the systems and the state, Egypt isn't the source of their liberation, nor even that which cooperates with that liberation.  And if we hear Isaiah well, not even the people, can be the source of justice, transformation, and liberation.  The people of God also fail at justice and righteousness.  The state and the powers can and will be forced to deal justly, but they aren't the source nor the guarantor of justice nor are we the people the source or guarantor of justice.
  Justice comes from beyond, our hope is in that we don’t create justice rather we submit to it.  But what we submit to is a caring and loving reality.  Justice isn’t abstract and cold and unmoving.  Rather the source of justice is a shepherd, an artist, and a lover.
  Lastly Jesus says that when you see systems and the powerful sun and moon and stars shaken and upended, darkened blood red showing their violence, these are simply signs of something else.  That is if we are waiting for the United States to become a place devoid of all injustice and racism we are looking for the wrong thing. We have misinterpreting the signs.  Human government and systems of justice are just that human, mortal, limited and passing away, and fallible.  Our human systems will fail us.
  Our hope is in a more lasting and radical transformation of the world in which the world once again shows forth completely the love and justice of God who is the very source the very life blood of our existence.
  And Tonight I proclaim to you that God did tear open the heavens and come down, and is now forever bound to the physical created universe.  The systems of the world were shaken to their knees, and then went on their merry way because it was just a Jewish Galilean peasant wonder-worker easily dispatched through human justice and state sponsored violence.  But in that the governments and powers exposed themselves for what they were and are systems of violence set against the very source of life.  The good news is we can turn to this one and find God at work transforming us into citizens of a more just and loving world.  Since God became incarnate in the Virgin Mary, God has been at work in matter and the physical world, in our very bodies transforming the world into what it should be. Are you ready for that world? Are you awake to that world?  Wake up stay awake. Be a citizen of the world that is coming in which racism and all forms of oppression and injustice are shaken from the earth.
  Stay awake and watch for that world is coming, the signs of its coming are in the protests even the riots in Ferguson, but also right here in our midst. Right here as we take in each week the justice of God in human flesh, who awakens you to this transformed and transfigured world, slowly making you, in your very body, into a person of love and justice, a citizen of the present and coming reign of God.

The Chasm Between Us: Sermon 18th Sunday After Pentecost

Readings: Amos 6:1-7; Psalm 146; 1 Timothy 6:6-19 ; Luke 16:19-31


Sermon:

Health Care Reform

I have also posted my current thoughts on health care reform on my Priestly Goth Blog. Those are my personal opinions and they inform what I would say pastorally but they are not intended as that on my blog.

As a pastor and minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ I remind all that for the Church and as disciples of Christ we must begin our thinking with Jesus' and God's concern for the "least of these", and the poor. Given this it seems that the staggering numbers of those who are without insurance and that among those are people working two perhaps more jobs to support their families and who cannot afford basic health care nor the insurance that would enable them to afford basic health care, is unacceptable given this need to care for the least of these. We as Christians should be concerned about this situation. A public option is one way to address this issue. The Gospel and any moral mandate does not though demand a public option, what is demanded is that we make choices not out of our own self preservation but out of a sense of justice and righteousness and a care for the outcast stranger, poor and other. Those who are Christian and oppose a public option then need to offer ways in which such an opposition is more than simply passing by on the other side of the road convinced that there is nothing we can do to help, and being self-satisfied in our private and personal charity. In part this is so because still a majority of people claim to be Christian in this country, which means that there is a good chance that Christians are among those who profit off a system that in the least is as concerned with making a profit as it is for peoples health. This also means that Christians are also among those who cannot afford health care and are without insurance. If we simply oppose health care reform based on some sense that the church and personal charity should fill in the gaps of our for profit system, it is clear that this is not happening, that we are not providing care for those who do not have access to it. Show how the churches and their institutions and members are stepping in and providing the care for those our system does not care for and I will listen.

Yet for those who support health care reform, I urge caution. We should ask from a Christian POV how much power should we give the government. Even well meaning politicians and rulers can make selfish and power appropriating decisions in the name of the Good. In the Revised Common Lectionary in year B we have been following the story of the Kings of Israel starting with Saul and now reading about Solomon, all duly appointed and anointed of God, all in varying degrees failed to act in true justice and righteousness, and found the temptations of power to be too great to resist. I do not think we as Christians can ignore the dangers of increasing the ways in which a government can have a say in our day to day lives. Justice and the Gospel do not call us to accept whatever a legislature may give us as possible reform. Our scriptures give us a healthy dose skepticism even of good government.

So as we as followers of Christ seek to wade through this current morass two things we need to keep in mind: that we are called away from self preservation and moved to seek to help and care for the least of these and the poor, and government and the power to do something does not make it necessarily just, even if it is well intentioned and done by a legitimate power structure.

For us at Reconciler I suggest that perhaps we use this current legislation as a case study for our fall study on Biblical and Christian perspectives on government and justice, and take the time to examine the ins and outs and the justice of the proposed legislation.

Eat Well Food Tour

This Sunday, June 28th, Many Peoples Church in Rogers Park is hosting the Chicago stop of the Eat Well Food Tour: What do food and faith have to do with one another? Is it enough to pray before our meals? Giving thanks to God is certainly important, but there are also many other ways Christian values can influence our food-related habits. This is a free workshop on how to put faithfulness into practice around the table and beyond. The Eat Well Food Tour is co-sponsored by the Christian Reformed Office of Social Justice and *culture is not optional.

Time: Sunday June 28th
6:00 pm, potluck, 7 pm workshop
Place: Many Peoples Church
1507 W. Morse Ave. Chicago, IL 60626

For more information about the tour, visit them on the web.

Sermon Proper 27 in Ordinary Time

Amos 5:18-24
Psalm 70
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13
This is the outline of the sermon I preached on Sunday.
Expecting, the Unexpected Hope.
I) Introduction-
a) Americans feel more hopeful after the election of Obama as President.
1) The Election of Obama is significant for this country.
2) Obama’s campaign ran on hope and change, to what degree his presidency will be able to live up the rhetoric, we will see.
b) The scriptures direct our attention away from fleeting politics and all that is passing away to the day of the Lord, the coming of the Kingdom of God and the return of Christ.
1) In this way Scripture tells us, we the people of God, to warn exhort and encourage one another with these words.
2) We are to do so by reminding ourselves that God is beyond us and our politics and our works of justice and righteousness.
c) We are to remember that God and the Kingdom will surprise, terrify, shock and comfort us.
II) Amos’ warning
a) The mistake - expecting God to be on our side or thinking that we are on God’s side without nuance or complication.
1) Why is the Day of the Lord darkness and not light, Why might god’s coming be terrifying? The problem isn’t with God but with humanity with God’s people Israel who think God is just on their side.
2) They were certain of the justice of their cause the justice and righteousness of their actions.
b) Vs. 5:24 in context seems to say that one can only claim to be fully on God’s side if there is absolutely nothing damming up the flow of God’s justice and righteousness.
1) The day of the lord breaks all those things that dam up justice and righteousness, floods the parched land of oppression.
2) Here we have image of floods after the dry season or for us possibly the breaking of a dam, a wall of water of justice descending upon us.
3) Amos tells us that the coming of God in the fullness of righteousness will be overwhelming to us because there are going to be blockages in us and our societies of that righteousness and justice.
c) So Amos warns us be careful what you wish for it will also overtake you, none will escape the flood of righteousness when it comes. So we should warn one another with these words lest we become too comfortable thinking we can know completely and fully implement the justice of God.
III) Jesus parable exhorts us to be ready for it is possible to miss out on the coming of Christ and the Kingdom.
a) What is the fault of the Foolish virgins in what way are they unprepared for the coming of the Bridegroom?
1) They don’t bring extra oil.
2) They were only prepared for what they knew to expect, their fault was not accounting for the unexpected, the unpredictable.
b) Like in Amos the issue is expectation and being open and ready for the excess of God’s coming.
1) The coming of God will be other than what we can encompass and predict.
2) In our seeking for justice in our waiting the coming of the righteousness of God we are to be ready to be taken beyond any expectation.
c) So exhort one another with these words keep awake to the otherness of God, and that God is beyond any human concept of righteousness and justice. God’s justice God’s ways exceed and overflow our abilities. Be prepared to go beyond what is humanly defined as good true and just.
IV) At first Paul’s words of encouragement about those who have died in the faith seem to distract us from caring for justice in this world.
a) To understand this text fully we must ask ourselves what is the power of Death.
1) Death is the power that founds and is at work in all injustice and oppression.
2) Thus an appropriate response to injustice is mourning. When politicians fail (Obama will disappoint in some way).
3) In our living into the Kingdom of God in this age and working for justice and righteousness there will continue to be reasons to mourn.
b) So when we face the continuing power of death manifest in injustice, whether in our own country (Obama: as we have had to confront it in every Presidency) or in the Economic powers in the world or other nations states or in the death of loved one, how will we encourage one another?
1) We miss the meaning of the encouragement to get caught up in debates about the Rapture.
2) Paul is saying that Christ has overcome death and so even in death there is life and Resurrection.
c) Christ had gone to Hades and returned.
1) We or any who go on and face death whether through physical death or violent encounters with oppression and injustice can know that Christ is already there
2) The realities of Death, injustice , oppression can not separate us from what is alive just and righteous, for Christ has gone ahead in death and through the resurrection has planted the tree of life (the Cross) in the midst of death.
V) Conclusion:
a) So we need to continual remind ourselves of these things.
1) Our justice and righteousness will always fall short of God’s; none will escape the rushing water of righteousness when God breaks the dams of injustice and unrighteousness.
2) So be prepared for what we cannot prepare. Be open to the surprise that is the coming of Christ in the fullness of the Kingdom.
3) Lastly encourage each other with the knowledge that Christ has already overcome death, and we are or any who seem to be taking in the grips of death, Christ is already there gathering them to himself .
b) We will overcome death and injustice only because Christ has already overcome. So in life or death we are in Christ by faith and Baptism.
c) May we not forget these things as we gather and as we go out in the world, as we work and act for justice in the world, as we advocate for those with no voice. For our only true hope is in God being beyond our concepts and abilities to realize justice, and in God having in Christ overcoming death.