Sunday November 16th 2008

J. Paul Mullen

Scarboro United Church

Calgary, AB

September 28, 2008

“New Minds For Old”

    It seems Jesus and the Chief Priest were having a leaders’ debate. Debates like this were common in Jesus’ day. They were about honour and credibility. Society valued honour and the more honour you had, the more credible you were and the more authority you were granted by people. Honour came either from the circumstances of your birth or it could be earned by a variety of means, one of which was to excel in debates with honourable persons. The debates took the form of challenge and riposte. The challenge was often in the form of an innocent-seeming question. The riposte was the reply to the challenge. If the riposte was more clever than the challenge you won honour, if it wasn’t then you lost.

    Can you imagine if the participants in the leaders’ debates, Canadian or American, were caught without an answer or a response to a challenge? How embarrassing! Can you imagine the impact it would have on voters?

    The Letter to the Philippians calls us to be of the same mind as Jesus. In ancient psychology the mind and heart were essentially the same. This passage speaks of Jesus letting go of his oneness with God and how he came as one without earthly authority, without honour. He had questionable birth circumstances, no position to speak of and described himself as homeless. “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head.”

    Authority is not an issue for Jesus, for he “speaks as one with authority,” and he won’t say where it comes from. Instead he demonstrates his authority by declaring the thieves and hookers will be in a right relationship with God before the priests. The authority of Jesus is not an appeal to an outside source although he supports it by quoting scripture. He knows and uses scripture yet demonstrates an authority beyond scripture which enables him to interpret scripture.

    Dominic Crossan tells us that there were four kinds of authority behind the Roman Empire: military, economic, political and ideological. Ideological power undergirds and empowers the other three. Jesus challenged both Roman and Jewish ideological authority. He says he will not say where his authority comes from, then, with a story, challenges the religious establishment’s relationship to God.

    He knows that merely believing, having status, or religiously-correct behaviour is not enough to have a right relationship with God. Compassion and justice are essential. There is an authority which comes from living in God’s way. A lot of freedom comes from a narrow path.

    Paul says to “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling.” It is not a matter of earning salvation but more of determining the implications for living. Does our faith make a difference in our behaviour?

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    Diana Butler Bass, in her book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, writes of an emerging church in which authority is not an issue, where appeals to outside authority are regarded with suspicion, where people are turned off by the hypocrisy of saying “I believe”, but showing no evidence in their behaviour. Instead people in this emerging church are more impressed by people who say they have no faith or religion but act with morality and compassion. She writes of how people are looking for churches with wisdom, practice, tradition, where each one feeds and critiques the other, in a growing and authentic way.

    Writing in her blog on the Sojourner’s website she quotes her priest (Episcopal) who:

“… reminded us that we are God’s polis, a holy city—one not governed by the stock market, presidential campaigns, or housing prices, but by grace, generosity and goodness.  This alternate city, the community of grace, is ultimately strengthened by worldly hardship because it reminds us that our spiritual investment is in a realm not seen.  Our community is one marked by holy insecurity—the sure knowledge that our wisdom is not an economic strategy; our power is not financial; and our trust is not in princes.”

    We have our own insecurities; national, provincial, urban and rural. As a church we worry about smaller numbers, increasingly elderly congregations, living in the shadow of Mega churches and televangelists, aging buildings, etc. We have a tendency to grasp for whatever apparent certainty we can find, and yet we have this holy insecurity.  Like a slave-people in the wilderness standing before a rock wondering how to get water out of it. Like Moses knowing what to do, yet wondering how it can possibly work. Like Jesus standing before the powers that be and knowing that all he can do is be both the rock and the water.

    In our holy insecurity we gather around the Rock. We help each other remember the living water that flows from it. We help each other drink deeply, knowing there is a way through the wilderness to the land of promise.

    I was recently reminded of a fable of the Arab mystic Sadi and found this version on the Internet:

        “A man walking through the forest saw a fox that had lost its legs and wondered how it lived.  Then he saw a tiger come by with game in its mouth.

    The tiger had its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox. The next day and the day after, and the day after, God fed the fox by means of the same tiger.

    The man began to wonder at God's greatness and said to himself, "I too shall just rest in a corner with full trust that God will provide me with all I need."

    He did this for many days but nothing happened.  He was almost at death's door when he heard a voice say, "What do you think you are doing?  Stop imitating the fox and follow the example of the tiger."

    The authority of Christ that is ours to share comes to us, not from grasping at and clinging to God’s favour and blessing, but with wisdom and faith, taking the risk of walking in the way of compassion and seeking justice for all, following the example of Christ:

    who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. (Philippians 2: 6-8)

Amen