“What Makes Us Different?”

Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – August 18, 2019

Centenary United Methodist Church

Isaiah 5:1-7; Luke 12:49-56

 

    The two Scripture lessons this morning are gut-wrenching if the reader's predisposition is one of judgmental violence coming from Jesus.  He was talking about bringing division among people in many of their relationships.  He said,

Do you really think that I came to bring peace on the earth?  I have not!  I have come to bring division. (Luke 12:51) All of you are hyprocrites.  You can look at the earth and the sky and reasonably predict the weather patterns, but you cannot recognize the meaning of what is taking place during our present time. (Luke 12:56)

    These words seem very clear, but if that clarity suggests that Jesus is bringing harsh judgment, perhaps the conclusion we have reached is coming through our personal filters that we have cultivated through the years.  Words are often misunderstood because of these filters.   

    There are believers that know that end of the world is near and that the Son of Man will come in the clouds and bring judgment to everyone.  Are the words in our lesson really about separating the sheep from the goats?  Do they reflect the Last Judgment that is clearly outlined in Matthew 25:31-46? 

    Everyone, who believes that all such passages are true, is bringing an interpretation that has clouded their understanding of the nature of God.  As men and women of faith, we have to decide if God has given us freedom to live our lives as we choose or, as many of the faithful believe, God is a micro-manager who insists on certain attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to be saved from eternal destruction.

    What Jesus was referencing in our lesson today has been present in the civilized world since the beginning of recorded history.  Nothing has changed.  Nations rise and fall.  People striving to be the power-brokers for the rest of humanity, have been a relevant theme in every generation.  This is a cycle that will remain unbroken well into the future.  Always there will be governments and rulers who believe that they know what is the best for everyone else.

    The Bible is sacred to many believers yet the record is very clear that many writers believed that God acted on behalf of his chosen people.  Last week, we talked about God inspiring Abram to leave the city of Ur in Babylonia and move his clan southward.  Once they were settled, a moment came when God made a Covenant with Abram and said,

I promise to give your descendants all this land from the border of Egypt to the Euphrates River including the lands currently occupied by ten tribes that are now calling this their home.  (Genesis 15:18-21)

    When we fast-forward to the time of Joshua, God commanded him to march across the Jordan River and enter Canaan, the land that God had promised to give to Abram's descendants.  This was during the historic period when the Hebrews were relentless in their ruthless seizing of the property of others in the belief that God had empowered them to destroy, plunder, and murder the agricultural populations that were currently living in the promised land, many of whom had no standing armies.  (Joshua 1:1f)

    When we were Sunday School students we were treated to the story of the fall of Jericho.  We even sang, Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho that celebrated the city's defeat when "the walls came tumbling down."

    Did our teachers ever ask, "Did God really encourage his chosen people to engage in the massive killing of others?  Would God promise to give land to the Hebrews when it was already occupied by peace-loving, agriculture cultures?  Nothing of the kind was ever taught to us. Joshua was our hero.  Not only do we have these stories but we also find God totally involved much earlier when Moses and God defeated the Egyptians.  (Exodus 14:27f)

    So many times, aggressive story-tellers repeated these stories until a new generation of writers encountered the teachings of Jesus who taught a theology regarding God's nature that changed many of the conclusions that the Hebrews had reached in their religious heritage.  This brings us back to the meaning of our lesson today.  What kind of division was Jesus teaching?

    Not all divisions are violent.  Not all divisions have harsh judgments connected with them. The Royal Gazette had an article in yesterday's paper about finding a renewed purpose for living. Some people walk away from accounting to become a healer because of a new choice they make.   Such choices divide us when a discovery was made that our prior choice was not a good fit. 

    It was impossible for Jesus to bring peace. No one can bring peace.  Today, we hear politicians making claims of wanting to unite people.  Collective unity will never happen in our experience.  Such a moment would have to involve a collective will of all people, a power that belongs to each individual and not to some ruler.

    Why is this true? The answer is that no one can legislate peace for everyone else.  No one can mandate that everyone must love their enemies. No matter how powerful Jesus and his message was, he could not deliver anything but division. 

    Again, we need to ask ourselves what kind of division did Jesus bring?  Think about this.  All wars, differences of opinion, liberal and conservative political views, right and wrong actions, religious differences, and proper and improper methods for bringing improvements to our lives are responses to living in the material world. 

    There are over seven billion people living on our planet.  Each has their own opinion. There are systems of belief that are irreconcilable like Communism, Socialism and Capitalism. Such differences only change when millions of people die and along with them their beliefs.  New generations will bring changes that were unacceptable to their ancestors.

    Today, people are protesting against their leaders in Hong Kong, Russia, Venezuela, the United States, and several other countries.  Protestors act as if the right political leaders can bring happiness to the masses.  This has always been an impossibility making such protests a useless hope. 

    No bride or groom can bring happiness to their mate.  Happiness is what each individual must generate from within themselves and it has little bearing on the circumstances.

    What Jesus brought was a choice that individuals could make freely from their desire to do so. That choice had the potential to separate sons and daughters from their parents and all the other divisions mentioned in our lesson.  Everyone who makes this choice can separate themselves from the influences that exist in the world.

    That choice is to live in the Kingdom of God while being alive in their physical bodies. What Jesus brought was the choice to live in Heaven now, a future environment where nothing in the physical world exists.  All right and wrong systems of beliefs that we experience here will instantly vanish the moment we graduate from this life.

    We have talked repeatedly about being an angel-in-the-flesh without our actually becoming one in our own minds.  Why has this been so difficult?  The answer is that we find it nearly impossible to let go and disengage ourselves from the values of the material world.  Throughout history very few people have succeeded in doing so. (Matthew 7:14)

    One of my favorite historic episodes deals with a group of monks that had gathered many of the sacred texts in order to preserve them during The Dark Ages (roughly 500-1000 AD). The group lived high in the mountains where they could practice their craft of copying these manuscripts in safety.

    Below their caves was the plain of Sharon, a Mediterranean coastal plain where two armies were poised for battle.  The Abbott asked those who wanted to watch the battle, "Which army is good and which one is evil?"  They all knew which army was favored to win by the will of God.  The standards and flags that were displayed identified the Christian army from their opponents. 

    The battle commenced and during the fierce battle, the Abbott repeated his question.  One of the newcomers answered, "It is hard to tell which is the army of God.  All that we see now are men killing each other."  The Abbott said, "Exactly.  This is why we have withdrawn from all of it in order to preserve the Scriptures for those who survive their hatred for each other."

    It took a long time for millions of people to die before a new narrative for living could arrive.  That came centuries later in the period known as The Renaissance (1300-1600 AD). This occurred because of a common recognition by masses of people that killing each other was not the way civilized people should behave.  The world came to life again and a new spirit came with it. 

    What makes the followers of Jesus different from all other human beings is the choice to make our expression of loving energy our daily task.  Diehard people for one cause or another can easily say to such people of faith:

So, you must not care at all what happens to society.  Evil will only triumph when good people sit on the side-lines and do nothing.

    Jesus did not sit on the side-lines nor did he get involved in taking political sides, each with their own talking-points. Yet, no one can say that he did nothing.  He died because of what he had found in life.  He continued to express love your enemies until he drew his last breath.  He could not put anyone in possession of what he had found, but he sure knew how to express the quality of life that everyone will experience once we leave this world.  Are we understanding his message?

    In the next reality that all of us will experience, there are no opposites.  What Jesus was teaching is that it is possible to live such an awareness in full-bloom right now.  People have to ask themselves:

What am I demonstrating to others through my attitudes, thinking, and spirit?  Have I been overly influenced by the constantly changing values of the external world?  What happens when the nature of my God who supports my definition of justice, equality, and decency for all people, confronts Jesus' God whose nature is infinite mercy?

    Jesus made a choice that expressing loving energy is the only quality that matters when we graduate from this life.  Why?  Loving energy is God's nature.  THIS is the division that Jesus brought.  On which half of that divide do we find ourselves?

     

CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER

Loving and nurturing God, we search for the spiritual nourishment that will cause our neediness to be silenced.  We know that gratification is not the same as fulfillment.  We know that the power that comes from skills of spirit is not the same as the power that comes from our earthly figures of authority. Teach us that our faithfulness to living what Jesus taught is our greatest gift to our world.  May we seize every opportunity to give form to the knowledge that we can live in Heaven while we are still alive here on earth.  Amen.       

 

THE PASTORAL PRAYER

Loving and ever-present God, long ago a Psalmist wrote, "And what of humankind that Thou, O God, should be mindful of them?" And the same writer answered, "You made them a little lower than the angels; you crowned them with glory and honor and made them rulers over all things." (Psalm 8:4-6)

How is it, O God, that often we come to you with many requests for the very issues you have given us the power to solve? Help us to rediscover that the adventure here in our physical forms offers us countless opportunities to expand who we are. Our desire is to once again affirm our faith that you have never left our side, nor would you allow us to experience what we do not have the potential to manage beautifully. We need to remember that uncertainty, discomfort, and a lack of peace are teaching us to change how we think.

While we cannot know the outcome of anything that we experience, enable us to grow in trust and confidence that our drama is unfolding for a purpose that we may not yet understand. As we live with that awareness, may each of us become a disciple who represents your presence in all occasions, all circumstances, and to all people. We pray these thoughts through the spirit of Jesus Christ, who taught us to say when we pray . . .