Oh,
God, open my lips and my mouth shall declare your praise.
The secret is out. Last week
we heard about Jesus healing the leper. We also heard that
instead of following Jesus' instruction to tell no one, the
leper has gone and told everyone. Now Jesus is at his home
base in Capernaum, and so is everybody else. A crowd has
gathered to hear him preach and teach. There are scribes
inside the house with him and an overflow crowd is outside in
the street. It probably looks something like a street
performer who has attracted a crowd. Only those up front can
truly see and hear, but everybody beyond them wants to get
closer. They want to see and hear and even touch the man
who has been teaching and healing with such authority.
They want to see Jesus.
One group
of people firmly believes in Jesus' power to heal and they
decided to bring their friend, a paralytic man, to see Jesus.
The crowd is overwhelming and there is no way they can get to
the front. However, they are undeterred and decide on an
alternative, radical course of action. They go up on the roof of
the house, cut a hole in it and then (after having hauled him up
there) lower their friend down into the house so that Jesus can
heal him. Their faith in Jesus' ability is so strong that they
are willing to take those risks to see their friend healed.
That's the
flashy part of this particular story. It's not where I want to
focus, but it is the catalyst for where I do want to focus our
attention today. I'm interested in the interaction between Jesus
and the Scribes who are in the house with him that day.
In order to
heal the man, Jesus utters the words, "Your sins are forgiven."
Jesus uses his authority as the Son of God/Son of Man to restore
to wholeness this individual. He does it because of the faith he
sees in the friends of this man, and likely the man himself.
Jesus
is acting with the
authority that is naturally his because of who and what he is -
God's son who has come into the world to redeem it.
The scribes see things
differently. They see Jesus as a usurper and worse, a
blasphemer. He has spoken on behalf of God, and acted as if he
were God. That is very much a taboo in their society up to this
point. The scribes have become the keepers of the law and the
only ones able to speak with authority about forgiveness of
sins. In a society where illness and disease is equated with
sin, this is extremely important.
The manner in which one achieves
forgiveness up to this point is essentially by buying it. You
have to make a sacrificial offering to God, which means you must
possess or purchase the appropriate thing to offer. It might be
a goat or a dove, or some other item of value. For a society in
which the vast majority were very poor, that means forgiveness
is the provenance of those with money and is overseen by the
scribes. While they never presume to speak on God's behalf, the
gates of access are controlled by those with money and power.
Jesus has just bypassed those
channels. He's spoken directly in God's name to forgive the sin
and thereby heal someone who hasn't made an offering. He has
done it because of the faith he sees expressed in their actions.
He does it because it is what he was sent to do - redeem God's
people and bring about reconciliation by Jesus himself becoming
the sacrificial offering.
What we are witnessing in that is
a paradigm shift of monumental proportions. It takes place in a
small house in Capernaum in front of a crowd of country hicks
and a few scribes. But it is something that is going to build
into a movement that will change the world view for centuries to
come. It won't happen over night. In fact, it will take about 4
centuries to reach a climax, but it is undeniably there. As
Isaiah said, "God is about to do a new thing."
I count myself lucky that the God
I pray to and worship is a living God. He's a God who
understands that creation continues to evolve because that's how
it is meant to be, and we humans created in God's image - have
an intellect to adapt to our surroundings. Go changes her
tactics when it is needed. She can do something new. And
yes, my gender switching is intentional because I find God in
both the masculine and feminine, so I'm not about to restrict
God's ability to be present and relevant to just one gender. I
like our Jewish's friends way of expressing God's presence in
both the male and female imagery - something we Christians seem
to take issue with.
I think we Christians have a
larger issue to contend with than what gender God might be. From
the time in the 4th century when Constantine made
Christianity the official state religion, our world has
been Christian. That world, for the most part, was the near East
and Europe. Christendom conquered wild tribes as it moved out of
the near East and across Europe. The pagan religions were
sometimes driven out and sometimes driven underground, but
Christianity became the official, public, state sanctioned
religion. For a good deal of time the Church was also the State
as evidenced by our Roman Catholic friends and the Papal State
of Vatican City. It was hard to separate one from the other.
From that lowly, house in the
little village of Capernaum, a movement started. A cult was
formed that worked on the fringes and frequently met secretly.
Its converts kept sharing their stories and continued to act
with the authority Jesus passed on to them from
God. In about 400 years a cult
that others had tried hard to stamp out managed to become the
state religion of a powerful and vast empire. And it
continued to grow from there.
I see that as relevant today
because I firmly believe that we are in the midst of another
paradigm shift. Over the past 150 years or so, theologians have
been raising their voices in concern about the end of
Christendom - the end of the Christian era. Soren
Kierkegaard wrote and spoke about it in the latter part of the
19th Century. Others like Neibaur and Moltmann
continued the discussion in the 20th Century.
They were looking at society and its increasingly secular shift
as well as the growth and acceptance of other religious
expressions within our society. What they saw was the start of
the dis-establishment of Christianity as the dominant world view
and religion.
More recent work by Douglas John
Hall, a Canadian theologian and professor emeritus of McGill
University, continues the discussion. They all argue that
Christendom is drawing to an end. If you look at where
Christianity is most rapidly growing and making converts it is
in Africa and South America. While it is still the religion that
defines the cultural norms of Europe and North America, it keeps
losing ground to a secular society and other faith expressions.
Christianity, however, is not a
dead religion. What I see is a shift to something similar to our
early heritage. We're going to be pushed back to the margins
again and will need to re-claim our roots in that movement.
We'll again be one of many religions, Judaism, Hindu, Islam,
Buddhism and blatant secularism will be but a few of the
religions we'll have to navigate through and compete against.
We're going to have change our ways and try something new.
For us at Ascension that might not
be such a scary thought. We've already committed ourselves to
trying something new. We've had some major changes taking
place here in the past few years.
We're already open to looking at new ways of existing as the
physical representation of Jesus' mission and ministry in this
place and time. We already work within our community in ways
that are unique to us. But can we make the more radical shift
that is yet to come?
Knowing
exactly what that radical shift is going to look like is
impossible. Those who have studied paradigm shifts throughout
history say that they take about 50 years to actually happen;
for a new way of functioning to be put in place. That means most
of us aren't going to be around to fully see and know how it
works itself out. I don't expect I'll be around when this one is
over, but I hope I live long enough to get a glimpse of what the
end result will be.
The hardest
part for any of us to imagine is likely what life will look
like when Christianity doesn't provide the basis of society's
governance and structure. Can we re-imagine our entire lives
without the overlay of Christian beliefs? I guess we really
won't have to, but our children and grandchildren may well have
to. Our challenge IS
going to be to make sure that
they are firmly grounded in our Christian beliefs so that they
can help carry out the future of Christianity in our pluralistic
world to come - and which in many ways is already here.
I wonder if we are teaching our
children and grandchildren enough that they will be willing and
able to carry on our Christian traditions in the face of this
changing world and so many competing ideas. If we can teach them
the difference between traditionalism – the dead faith of the
living, and traditional – the living faith of our ancestors,
then they will be in good shape. As Lutherans we have a rich
heritage to impart and a lot to say about adapting our methods
to current circumstances without giving up any of the core
values of our faith. I’m not going to know, but I have faith.
I do know
one thing - with God all things are possible. Well, maybe I know
two things, because I know that our living God can and will try
something new. It's just going to be up to us to claim the
authority that is given to us by God through our faith in Jesus
and to
act
with that authority. We Christians are a resilient people and we
have a God who is a loving and protective father we can call
"Abba," a brother who knows what it is to live in this world and
to lay down his life for another, a caring mother who will
gather us in as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings.
Our faith will endure. Amen
