Advent Lutheran Church

"Living God's Dream"

            Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus.  Amen.

            In the early years of this nation, when Africans were brought here to work as slaves, they were almost forced by the brutal conditions of their slavery to imagine a future that was very different from their present circumstances, to dream of things not as they were but as they could be.  So, many of their sacred songs – the old Negro spirituals – sang of an order of life that was higher and wider and deeper, more majestic and glorious than the one they knew.  They looked ahead to a new creation, one in which all human arrangements and commitments were rearranged, renegotiated on the basis of grace and mercy, a kingdom not produced or controlled by the powers of this world.

            One of those spirituals puts it this way: “There’s plenty good room, plenty good room, plenty good room in my Father’s Kingdom.  There’s plenty good room, so pick out a chair and sit down.”  It’s important to note that the slaves were the only ones singing of that new reality; the old one suited the slaveholders just fine, thank you.  They weren’t interested in change; they simply wanted more of the same.

            Those two distinctly different views of life – longing for what was to come and a deep satisfaction with the way things were – were not unique to the days of slavery in the United States; Jesus gave voice to the same reality 2,000 years ago as he looked ahead to his final days in the city of Jerusalem.  In our story this morning, as he looks ahead, he cries out a lament, and the lament is not for himself but for the people: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often I have desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

            When Jesus talked about his desire to gather people together like a hen gathering her chicks, he was describing just a bit of God’s dream, a dream that he had preached and promoted throughout his life.  For Jesus, God’s dream draws his children closer, gathers them together, shelters them and protects them in God’s embrace that leaves no one out.  That dream was at the heart of Jesus’ mission; we hear about it from the very beginning of his life when the angel appears to the shepherds with an earthshaking announcement: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

“Great joy for all people” – Jews and Gentiles, believers and nonbelievers, rich and poor, male and female, gay and straight, red state and blue state, liberals and conservatives; God’s dream is to create a new human community, a community that is constructed not by tradition or social custom or political power but by the Holy Spirit.  It is a new community indeed, a community in which those who are pushed out are brought in, those who are beaten down are raised up, those who are forgotten are remembered.

It was people’s reaction to that dream that prompted Jesus’ lament.  Their reaction was one not of welcome but of rejection, rebellion, an unwillingness to be gathered, sheltered, protected.

In a way, it’s hard to be hard on these people, because looking at them is a bit like looking in a mirror.  We’ve all resisted God at one time or another.  I’m speaking for myself here, but I suspect I’m not alone in this.  Maybe you’re resisting God even now, this morning.

 We certainly resist God’s judgment.  That’s just about the oldest story in the Book.  As the Book of Genesis tells it, after Adam and Eve disobey God and eat of the forbidden fruit, God comes to seek them out, and for the first time, they hide from God.  When it comes to tallying up our brokenness – they ways that we let God down, fail each other, fail ourselves – all in all, we’d really rather not hear about it.  We resist judgment.

But Jesus is lamenting their resistance to something more central to God’s nature than judgment.  Yes, to be sure, God is our judge; but Scripture makes it clear that judgment is not God’s most dominant quality, that in fact God’s judgment is secondary to God’s grace.  What they were resisting was the protection, the sheltering, the guidance that comes with surrender to God’s grace and their membership in God’s new community.

Once again, it’s like looking in a mirror.  We resist God’s grace, and we do it for a couple of reasons.  First, when it comes to our own individual lives, we’d rather do it our way, fight our own battles, chart our own course.  When I was a little boy, my father, who was an excellent swimmer throughout his life, took me down to the YMCA on Saturday afternoons and taught me to swim.  After the lessons we’d simply hang out and play in the pool.  I don’t remember the individual lessons or how quickly I learned, but early on in my training I apparently thought I was more self-sufficient than I really was.  I distinctly remember the afternoon when, after the first lesson, it was time to play, and my father stood in the deep end of the pool, the water up to his chest, as I stood on the side, just a couple of feet from him.  “OK,” he said, “Just jump into my arms.” 

That was kid stuff; I was too big for that, I had had a lesson, I could swim.  “No,” I said, “go back farther, I can jump far.”  So he backed up a couple of feet.  “Farther,” I said.  He took a couple of more steps back.  I was supposed to launch myself into his arms, but instead I simply hopped in off the side.  I had intended to swim underwater over to him, to impress him with how well I had mastered the art of swimming, but instead of swimming I sank.  Like a rock.  I was beginning to realize that this was about the worst idea I had ever had when I felt the strong arms of my father take hold of me, lift me up out of the depths and into fresh air.

There have been a number of times in my life when because of pride or stubbornness I’ve insisted on doing it my way.  Sometimes it’s worked out; sometimes it wasn’t until I was back down there in the depths that I felt the strong arms of my Heavenly Father pull me up to safety.  And it’s then that I’ve realized how completely I’ve needed his protection, his guidance, his grace all along.

It’s important to note that in the process of maturing physically and emotionally, we go through periods of rebellion, of resistance, and that it’s natural and probably essential that we do; that those periods are part of a process of growth.  Just so in our faith journey we go through times of doubting and rebelling against God, and, again, those times are probably essential to our spiritual growth.  The problem comes when we get stuck in one of those times of rebellion, when we insist on our independence so strongly that we even free ourselves of all the good that God has for us.  Our insistence on individualism is one reason we resist God’s grace.

A second reason we resist God’s grace, God’s dream, our inclusion in God’s new community is that we know that Jesus is headed down a path of suffering and rejection, a path on which he will be broken and mocked, and ridiculed as weak; that if we follow him, we’re headed down the same path.  When it comes to suffering, the old saying is true: Jesus went ahead of us; he did not go instead of us.

Jesus himself almost previews what’s to come.  He’s told by the Pharisees, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”  The Pharisees are typically not portrayed as Jesus’ friends, and they probably aren’t supposed to be seen that way here either; instead, they’ve probably had enough of this preacher stirring up the people and simply want him out of their district, so they try to scare him off.  It doesn’t work.  “Go and tell that fox for me,” he says, that I’ll be on my way when I’m good and ready.

The fox.  In the Old Testament the fox is associated with destruction; it’s regarded as clever, sly, unprincipled.  Jesus assigns that role to Herod, the king, the representative of this world’s power.  Jesus then takes upon himself the image of the hen, whose only concern is for her brood.  Conflict is brewing, and we see what’s coming: in a stand-up fight between hen and fox, the hen has no chance.

Let’s be honest: following a savior who dies without a struggle does not have much appeal.  We would much rather live triumphant lives, lives of courage and strength.

Which probably explains a fascinating phenomenon that’s happening in one corner of the Christian movement.  Some theologically conservative churches, concerned about the low numbers of boys and men in their pews, have turned to mixed martial arts in an attempt to appeal to and convert young men.  (For those who don’t know, mixed martial arts is a combination of boxing, wrestling and other fighting styles which, thanks to some very clever marketing, has become hugely popular.) 

Of the approximately 115,000 non-denominational evangelical churches in the United States, about 700 have taken up mixed martial arts as an outreach tool.  They are churches like Xtreme Ministries, a small church outside Nashville.  It’s a church that doubles as a mixed martial arts academy, whose motto is “Where Feet, Fists and Faith Collide.”  Evangelism efforts at some of these churches include fight-night TV parties and lectures; others host live events themselves, where in addition to watching a fight or participating in one you can also buy T-shirts belonging to a brand called “Jesus Didn’t Tap” (give up).

The pastors of those churches say that it’s all an effort to inject some macho into their ministries and onto the image of Jesus to make Christianity more appealing.

It might be good public relations in order bulk up the image, but it doesn’t square with what Jesus says about himself, that he is the One who will be betrayed, insulted, spat upon and killed (talk about weakness and failure), and all the while having massive, ultimate power at his command.  But Jesus also makes clear that that act – the death of one Man – will bring about the salvation of all; that the suffering of the Innocent One is the atoning act for the sins of all of humanity.

That understanding that Jesus gave us of his life and death would be what Martin Luther would come to call the Theology of the Cross.  It’s a theology that says that in serving we experience greatness, that in giving up our own agenda we begin to discover God’s agenda, that in dying to our own self-interest we begin to live into God’s dream.

As Lutheran Christians, that’s the theology that we embrace and live out.  In a couple of weeks we’ll send out two mission teams from this congregation, one going to a poor community in Mexico to construct low-cost housing for those who up to now have lived for years in makeshift shelters, the other team going to New Orleans to continue clean-up efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.  Their job will not be to save humanity – Jesus has already done that – but their job will be to announce through their actions of compassion and service that this world rightfully belongs to God.  They will illustrate to those they meet through those actions that this is what God’s dream looks like.

Most of you will not be going to Mexico or New Orleans; most of you will be staying right here.  But you can still go on your own mission trip. You won’t save humanity either, but you will make a difference, one person at a time, when you forgive the offense of another student, because forgiveness is part of God’s dream; when you repair a relationship with someone at work, because reconciliation is part of God’s dream; when you refuse to win an argument with your spouse, because grace is part of God’s dream.

It’s how God works now.  It’s God’s own peace, God’s own mercy, God’s own forgiveness, God’s own love that he wants to share through you.  And we discover that the more we do it, the more we set aside our own self-interest and make ourselves available, the more we ourselves get caught up in the love and grace and beauty of God.

May this Lent be for you your own mission trip, and may you experience God’s protection, his sheltering and his guidance as you, more and more, get “caught up” in God.

Amen.