A sermon
preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 22 January 2017,
the third Sunday after Epiphany, by the Rev. Dr. Judy Chan. The scripture readings that day
were Ezekiel 36:25–27; 2 Corinthians 5:14–21; Luke 15:11–24
A few weeks
ago, I saw an article in the New York
Times that caught my eye. It was about the son of a prominent American
evangelical preacher. This son, as it turns out, decided not to follow in his
father’s footsteps. In fact, he went the opposite direction. Now there are
likely many preachers whose children choose not to follow their parents’ faith.
But what intrigued me was that this 48-year-old son, named Bart Campolo, had
for many years been a model of Christian discipleship. He had worked tirelessly
in inner city missions. He was a dynamic speaker, and often a guest preacher in
churches. Then one day, he had a terrible bicycle accident, and nearly died.
The recovery in the hospital took over a month, during which he thought a lot
about life or more particularly, the afterlife. And what he concluded was that
he didn’t believe there was an afterlife…what we have here on earth is it, and
we need to make the best of the time we have right now.
In short,
Campolo lost his faith in God, and that was OK by him. He said, “I don’t want
to live a lie anymore.” But at the same time, he needed a job. He’d always
liked talking to people and helping them. So he reinvented himself and his
ministry, using the techniques he had learned as a Christian. Only now he wanted
to help nonbelievers. Bart Campolo is currently chaplain for the Secular
Student Fellowship at the University of Southern California.
To be fair,
the article was not an attack on Christians. Nor was it a glorification of
atheism, which denies the existence of God. Actually the nonreligious people
that Campolo reaches out to might identify themselves as humanists, rather than
atheists. That means they’re focused more on joy and living up to our human
potential rather than tearing down what others believe. As the article puts it,
“Their project is to talk about leading a good life without God.” Or as Bart
Campolo himself says, “A church for people who don’t believe in God.”
For someone
like me, this of course is unimaginable. I don’t know how to talk about a good
life without God in the middle of it,
and I don’t know why you’d call it a church unless you do believe in God. But
the article did make me think about my faith and our faith as the body of
Christ. And the question that came to mind was, “What difference does Jesus
make?”
It might
surprise you that that’s the same question Christians have had to ask
themselves over and over again since the beginning of the faith. You’d think
those who walked and talked with Jesus would have the inside story. But remember
how many times Jesus had to scold his followers for their lack of
understanding? Even when the risen Christ met the two disciples on the road to
Emmaus, what did he say to them? “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of
heart to believe all the prophets have declared!”
In the New
Testament Church, it was no better. You’d think that those churches started by
the apostles would be the strongest ones of all. Yet, over and over again we
read of conflicts and controversies that threatened to tear the church apart.
And that’s exactly what was happening in Corinth in our epistle reading for
today. Paul is writing to a church that he had founded and knew very well. But
now some of the members had broken off their relationship with him, and they
were following false teachers who had infiltrated the congregation. The
Corinthians were convinced that Paul was the false teacher, a loser who was
always getting into trouble, in and out of prison, even close to death a few
times. What kind of leader was this? How dare he call himself an apostle!
Paul, of
course, is deeply hurt by their abandonment. But even more, he’s alarmed that
they had missed the very heart of the Gospel. So he writes not only to set them
straight about himself but even more to set them straight about their faith.
What difference does Jesus make? Paul’s answer: EVERYTHING!
The way
Paul sees it, the Corinthians have not just rejected him. They’ve rejected
their Lord and Savior. And how does he know this? Because they have judged him
according to human standards, not God’s standards. They’ve measured his
ministry by worldly success, not the Cross of Christ. Paul says, “Can’t you see
that your hostility towards me is actually hostility towards God? Can’t you see
that our broken relationship has broken God’s heart? We beg you, on behalf of
Christ, be reconciled to God and open wide your hearts to us!”
I think
this letter must have been as difficult for Paul to write as it was for the
Corinthians to read. Conflict and controversy are hard enough, but
reconciliation is even harder. Sometimes we are just tempted to walk away and
cut our losses. Or we say, well, it’s their fault, so they’re going to have to
make the first move. Or even worse, we say, I really don’t care anymore. They
can go to “Hades” as far as I’m concerned.
Can you
imagine if God had felt that way towards us? If God had said these humans I’ve
created are hopeless. They won’t listen to me. They’re determined to ruin
everything I gave them and destroy themselves in the process. I wash my hands
of them.
Yet, the
Bible tells us that God did exactly the opposite. Instead of waiting for us to
make the first move, God took the initiative. Instead of giving up on the
relationship, God gave us His only Son. Instead of letting us go to “Hades”,
God welcomed us to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Let us never forget
how much love and sacrifice it took for God to bring us back home.
As I read
Paul’s magnificent words on reconciliation in 2 Corinthians, I realize though
all this love and sacrifice was not just for our personal benefit. As he says
in v. 19, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself … and entrusting
the message of reconciliation to us. In other words, in Christ, being
reconciled and being a reconciler always go together.
So what
does a ministry of reconciliation look like? I can tell you what it doesn’t
look like. There’s a story that took place on one New Year’s Eve at a club in
London. A playwright named Frederick
Lonsdale was asked by his friend to reconcile with a fellow member. The two had
quarreled in the past and had never restored their friendship. “You must do
this,” he told the Lonsdale. “It’s very unkind to be unfriendly at such at
time. Go over now and wish him a Happy New Year.” So Frederick Lonsdale crossed
the room and spoke to his enemy. “I wish you a happy New Year,” he said, “but
only one.”
We laugh,
but reconciliation can be a scary word. As one Christian said, “It’s simple,
yet complicated meaning can be difficult to talk about, especially when we are
talking about the church. Simply put, reconciliation is the intersection
between forgiveness and justice. It is the act of unconditional love colliding
with the desire to make life better for the world. It requires us to listen
intentionally for God’s voice in the stories of our neighbors.”
Last year
when I was in the US, I had some firsthand experience listening intentionally
for God’s voice. On November 8th, the day of the Presidential
election, I was in NYC with friends preparing to celebrate the first woman
President of the United States. So when Mr. Donald Trump won, I was more than
surprised, more than disappointed. I was probably in shock. The next day I was
near the famous Riverside Church on the upper West Side of Manhattan so I went in
to pray. Riverside Church is a Protestant church but it’s modeled after a 13th
century gothic cathedral in France. The sanctuary is huge and awe-inspiring but
somehow I just couldn’t pray. So as I was leaving the sanctuary, I noticed
there was tiny room to the side called the Gethsemane Chapel. I walked in, sat
on the bench, and gazed up at a large painting of Jesus praying in the Garden
of Gethsemane. Within seconds, I burst into tears. And I was crying not only
for a deeply polarized nation that I had seen close up for four months. I was
weeping also for a deeply divided church in America and the broken
relationships that had made Christians strangers and enemies to one another.
Like Paul, I knew I must be a minister of reconciliation, but I couldn’t find
the way forward on my own.
So it was
very helpful to hear what church leaders around the United States had to say in
the days following the election. One of the most meaningful to me was written
by the Bishop of the Episcopal or Anglican Church of New York. Let me read you
Bishop’s Andrew’s pastoral letter of November 11th posted on a
website called ‘Living Reconciliation’.
“My Brothers and Sisters,
For many Americans, of both political parties, the
results of the presidential election… were a surprise. It was not what was
expected, or at least not what we were led to expect. We discover now the depth
and the breadth of the rift that divides and separates [us] one from another in
ways that have not been revealed by other elections. These differences,
this divide, cannot and must not be simply smoothed over in false hope of an
easy reconciliation. Rather, the much harder task now lies before [us], to
really listen to one another, to hear one another’s pain and fear, to
understand one another, and by God’s grace to find together the deeper hopes
and dreams which all human beings share …. This task may be our most urgent
work now as a church.
Despair or gloating are unfaithful responses to
this election for Christians. So is the hatred of those who differ from
us. But … it must not be forgotten that a substantial amount of Mr.
Trump’s rhetoric during the campaign was racist and misogynist, brutal and
violent, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and sexually offensive….
That rhetoric has occasioned extraordinary alarm. We
pray that the heated language of the campaign will not follow him into his
presidency or inform his governance, but we also insist: it may not.
Last Saturday at our diocesan convention, I
suggested some basic principles of the Christian faith….They are not partisan;
they favor no particular candidate or political party. They are of the
very fabric of the Christian faith, and I repeat them here:
1.
The equality and dignity of all
persons of every race and gender and sexual orientation…
2.
The welcome of the stranger…
3.
Compassion and relief for the
poor, and economic justice…
4.
A commitment to non-violence,
and to peace…and
5.
The gracious stewardship of
creation…”
Bishop Andrew
then closes with these powerful words: “Our
call as Christians is always to hold ourselves to the standard of these
principles, and as Christian citizens to hold our elected officials to the same
standard… we pray that God grace [Mr. Trump] with the wisdom and courage
to rise to the high calling of his office, as we will also pray that he be imbued
with compassion for and understanding of every single person in [our nation]
…Our president, our elected officials, one another, and we ourselves will be
held accountable for this. On this too much depends.”
This
message to the church in America could also be a message for many others
outside the country. That includes us in Hong Kong. We too know what it means
to live in a deeply polarized society. We too don’t hold false hope for an easy
reconciliation. But we also know, as the Bible says, for our sake, he made him
to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of
God.
What
difference does Jesus make? Everything. A divided church and an unbelieving
world stand waiting for you and me to show them how. Amen.
# posted by Kowloon Union Church : Sunday, January 22, 2017
