Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

preached on August 17, 2008 by Rev. Winton Boyd
2 Corinthians 5:17-20

Before our oldest son left to study in Norway, we had a family conversation about the ability to understand and communicate even if you don’t know another person’s language. I told my kids about my first day at a school in Honefoss, Norway in 1978. All 100 students and most of their parents gathered for an opening session with the teachers and headmaster. In the midst of this rather formal gathering, there was one young man, Morten, who repeatedly interrupted the speaker with jokes, laughter and attention getting comments. It did not require an understanding of Norwegian, I told my kids, to know what he was doing. It also did not require an understanding of Norwegian to know that his humor would get old in about a week. What I knew, regardless of language, was we often use humor to cover our anxiety or uncertainty. It appeared to me on that first day, and was later confirmed as I got to know Morten, that he masked his insecurity and uncertainty socially by using humor.

Morten was and is no different than most of us. We often use humor in the places we are anxious, have unanswered questions, or face real mysteries. It is the basis of editorial cartoons and jokes on an
y number of subjects, including death and heaven.

We use humor in the same way in church. For example, if you hang around the United Church of Christ long enough, you hear a lot of jokes about our name –
the most common being that U.C.C. means “Unitarians Considering Christ.”  Or the United Caucus of Coalitions, the United Church of National Public Radio, The First Church of Trader Joes, The United Church of the Democratic Party, or The United Church of “Fill in the blank.”

While the humor points to our diversity, our passion for positions and our theological ambivalence, what is intriguing is that when we joke about ourselves, we rarely replace the words “United” and seldom the word “church.” Most often, we replace the word “Christ” – a person/concept/idea/mystery that baffles many of us in the UCC.

This summer we have been looking at some of the influences on the shaping of our identity and theology and practice as a progressive, Christian church. One of the phrases that speaks to a core commitment in our church is “we belong to Christ.” This emanates from our the New Testament, our constitution and our long theological history of being grounded in Christ. A recent effort in the national church titled “what matters to you matters to us,” suggests that “Jesus Christ is central to who we are. We know God especially in Jesus, who lived, loved, died, rose from the dead, and is present today…No single statement fully expresses who God is, but where there is justice, peace, and compassion, we see the living God at work in history. To such a God, we belong.”

What this statement underscores are two things

1. Jesus’ life and ministry are ultimately about introducing us to God and the values and compassion of God. Jesus’ intent was not to point to himself, but to the One he served.
2. Pondering the question of Christ in the United Church of Christ, exploring what it means to “belong to Christ” does not minimize or exclude the beauty and power of other religions. However, as the central figure in the Christian tradition, it is important to ask what Jesus’ life and ministry mean to our faith today.

How does Jesus point us to God’s compassion? As much as I like National Public Radio, why do we need Jesus to understand God?

As our New Testament describes Jesus, it describes him gathering a community around him and shows him to be, among other things, a prophet (Luke 4:14-30), teacher (Matthew 5), healer (Mark 5:21-43), savior (John 3:16), welcoming host (Mark 8:1-11), justice-doer (Luke 19:1-27), a pray-er (Luke 22:39-8), a dying servant (John 19:28-30), and a living companion along the way (Luke 24:13-35). Throughout these stories, I think there are at least five ways Jesus points to God in revealing and helpful ways.

1. Jesus reveals the saving love of God
Maybe it is the story of the lost sheep where Jesus implores us to find the one lost even if 99 are found? Maybe it is Jesus’ embrace of bonafide, public figure sinners?
Throughout his teaching and ministry – he reminds us that God is about salvation, about redemption, about welcome. In a world then, and now, where religion is often defined by self-righteousness and judgment, Jesus shows us the way of saving, welcoming, and extravagent love.

2. Jesus leads us into areas we would rather not go: Grace and liberty to all people-especifically the outcast in our world
In our time and among the cultures of today’s world, these include women, people of color, differently abled, and of course, and the poor. The pressures of our lives, the dominance of the media in shaping our choices, and the tendency of human sinfulness to result in selfishness are all very real forces that cloud our focus and more importantly cloud the focus of God’s vision for the world. It is a human tendency to forget the outcast, and Jesus calls us back to God’s vision for ALL people.

3. Jesus models a faith that stands against the powers of domination.
The heart of Jesus’ ethics is the call to resist unjust powers.   According to John Dominac Crossan, Jesus preached a different kind of peace than the Pax Romana, “peace” won through military action. He taught and lived a peace that passes all understanding because it comes from God. Jesus promoted a “kingdom” or realm that was based on justice not violence and force. It almost goes without saying that without this model, it would be easy for us to succumb to the violent ways of our communities, cultures and nations.

5. Jesus calls us to intentional discipleship
Jesus first and last call was “follow me” as I follow God. He called together a community of followers because he knew how hard it would this would be. He knew there was much that would pull them, and us, away from a life of compassion – including self absorption in our own lives, materialism and consumerism, or an unreflective and even vengeful life lived in response to pain.

The ministry and life of Jesus gives our corporate devotional life focus and purpose.

6. Jesus calls us away from “bad religion.” Many of you may have seen a bumper sticker that says something like, “It’s not God I have a problem with, it is his Fan Club” or “Dear Lord, protect me from your followers.” These stickers express a sentiment that we often live with – that religion, Christians, people of all faiths have done more to damage their cause themselves than anything else. Many of us struggle with the many ways people have mis used or mis appropriated Jesus or the Christian faith.

To this point, Bill Moyers, noted journalist, once asked famous theologian Karen Armstrong, “If you were God, would you do away with religion?”

She responded, “There are some forms of religion that must make God weep. There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there’s bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too. Religion that has concentrated on egotism, that’s concentrated on belligerence rather than compassion… But then you have to remember that this is what human beings do. Secularism has shown that it can be just as murderous, just as lethal, uh, as religion. I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings.”

Jesus was not immune to the effects of bad religion – and called followers not to self righteous moralism, but a relationship with our creating and redeeming God.

As we put this all together, see that at the heart of Jesus’ life and ministry, at the heart of his teaching and his relationship with God (one he wants us to have too) is Compassion. Clearly, other faiths teach compassion too. Christianity does not have a market on that. So the core faith question for us is not “can we be faithful to Christ and respectful of other religions” – we know that is possible. The real question for us is where do we learn and understand compassion? How are we going to orient our faith in such a way that we can live and be and know and breathe compassion?

The real question, if we are honest with ourselves, is not “who are we excluding by calling ourselves Christian” but what really is at the core of our lives? How important is faith to our daily existence? How do we ignore all that would claim allegiance in our lives so that we can live the compassionate life we say we want? Our tradition and our experience as a church suggest that Jesus is such a way.

The language and image that “we belong to Christ” is a reminder that our faith is located not just in good deeds, good politics, good ideas. It is a reminder that our faith is centered on someone and something outside ourselves, someone who modeled compassionate living in the face of violence and faithful trust in the face self righteous religion. Reminding ourselves that “we belong to Christ” is a reminder that faithful living takes practice, devotion, intention and an open heart. It is trusting that giving our hearts to the compassion of God revealed in Jesus will make us better, more fully human, more loving and more courageous people.