Fifth Sunday in Lent Sermon
We are in the midst of a massive cultural transition in our country. Church membership is plummeting: about a 20% drop in the past 20 years. And, whereas secularists might once have dreamed of a religion-less world that was rational and clear-headed, that – clearly – is not the way things are working out!
Churches may be weakening, but ideological intensity and fragmentation are exploding. It’s as I read recently:
American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever; it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief. Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations. This is what religion without religion looks like.[1]
The author went on to explore how the American psyche has, from the beginning, had a quasi-religious component to it – that “being American” has a unique claim and lure.
The American civic religion has its own founding myth, its prophets and processions, as well as its scripture – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and The Federalist Papers. In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. wished that “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” The very idea that a nation might have a creed – a word associated primarily with religion – illustrates the uniqueness of American identity as well as its predicament.
And now, as the makeup of our country gets more diverse, and as its citizens find less identity and inspiration from institutions of faith, political fervor is filling the gap. And each side is passionately convinced they are the true inheritors and champions of the American creed – fighting to preserve or birth whatever it is America is meant to be.
And as I read this article I was struck by two things:
- I think he’s right! This zealous energy in our culture right now is absolutely tapping into an energy that has historically been channeled into religion. We, as humans, are particularly vulnerable to this very ugly and uppity behavior towards those who stand in the way of righteousness (as we define it).
- And, I am not separate from this phenomenon. Even though I remain religious, I live and participate and am informed by the culture of my country. I am just as vulnerable as anyone else to this same impassioned, quasi-religious discourse about what America is supposed to be.
So my question for us today is this: If America is decreasingly identifying itself with church and church dogma, and increasingly identifying itself with an alternative dogma of political creed and zealotry, what do we – as the church in such a context – have to offer? Because if all we’re doing is parroting political platforms with a thin gilding of God’s name, then the only thing we’re offering is a fine example of taking the Lord’s name in vain (!) and the church deserves the dwindling we’re witnessing. So I ask again, What does it mean for us to be actual followers of Jesus, as the church, in this era of cultural identity?
And this is the question that draws me back to Jesus in today’s gospel reading, where – on the eve of his crucifixion and resurrection – he audaciously claims, “Now the ruler of this world will be driven out.”
What was he talking about? Who was “the ruler of this world” that Jesus claimed to be driving out? Now, for those who were listening to him teach, the most obvious answer would have been Caesar Augustus. Israel had been subsumed into the Roman Empire and Caesar was its ruler. And driving Caesar out from Israel was an absolutely bona fide expression of faith for many Jews in first century Palestine! In fact, one of Jesus’ own disciples was Simon the Zealot. That’s what zealots did: They were trying to overthrow the Romans and return Israel to political autonomy so that they could live out their identity as the children of Abraham, bearing witness to the whole world of who God was and what it meant to live faithfully with that God.
So, yes – obviously (!) – the most straight-forward solution for realizing their religious destiny was a political one: Get rid of Caesar! So it’s not at all surprising that the enthusiasm surrounding Jesus and his ministry had just such an expectation. Not unlike, the political energy of so many Americans, both in and out of the church. It’s so obvious to us! What’s right? What’s good? How will “this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed”? Get rid of the politicians who stand in our way and replace them with politicians who will do what is right and just … Then the glory of the Lord shall shine upon us.
But Caesar wasn’t the ruler Jesus was talking about.
And so for us, as we seek to be like Jesus in our time and our place, we must do some serious and sober thinking about who this ruler of the world is that we are combatting.
It is not Donald Trump. And it is not Joseph Biden.
Nor is it any other politician or any of our fellow citizens who support or exalt them.
Our fellow creatures must never be our enemies. They may be our political opponents. We may disagree on any number of topics. We may need to stand in their way to prevent grave injustice. But at a fundamental level, we must keep insisting, to ourselves and one another, that they remain our fellow humans, image-bearers of God – just like us – who want a good life, a safe life, a happy life; who – just like us – are stumbling along this pathway of life with a motley collection of hopes and convictions, half-truths and confusions.
Jesus knew how to walk this line. He argued with people; he took issue with people (especially with very religious people). But he never swerved from his love of people, even his adversaries. Which means he never treated them with ridicule or violence or force. He would sooner be killed by them, whatever the source of their confused and errant loyalties, than to take up his hand against them.
Caesar was not the ruler Jesus was contending with.
The ruler of this world that Christ was driving out was Satan and the principalities and powers of darkness. It is evil itself that is the enemy of Christ.
Now, I know, this isn’t the kind of language we normally use. We are post-enlightenment people. We don’t speak of demonic forces. We speak of political forces, of sociological or psychological forces, or the forces of how chemicals affect our brains. But in the time of Jesus, the demonic realm was an unquestioned reality. Naturally, as 21st century people of faith and readers of scripture, we have a lot of legitimate questions on this front – questions I don’t feel particularly qualified to answer.
But what I can say, with confidence, is this:
- Evil is real
- Jesus was confronting evil itself (and not the human victims of evil)
- And Jesus’ principal weapon against evil was forgiveness. “Forgive them, Lord, they do not know what they are doing.”
I am not dismissing the existence of a literal Satan and demons. Nor am I willing to obsess over them. What I’m clear on is this: The reason Jesus did what he did – in his life, in his death, in his rising again – was to set us free from evil and all its consequences; it was to set us free from the evil done to us and the evil in which we are complicit. And the way he did that was through forgiveness.
I cannot overemphasize how essential this is. The gospel with which we are aligning ourselves is one which believes and participates in the Christ-based reality that forgiveness is the ultimate power in this universe.
I was talking recently with a friend who said, “Love of enemy is Christianity’s ‘ace’ – the most powerful card in our deck. But we so rarely play it.” It’s true. I’ve felt its power especially in the prayers we’ve been praying at Lent – that one prayer in particular:
We pray for our enemies and those we hold with contempt, that we would learn to love them, ’til they are enemies no longer.
It’s so compelling! “Love of enemy” is not a burden to be endured for Christ, but a joining with Christ toward the actual point of it all: that forgiveness triumphs, that evil is vanquished, that the enmity between us is over! And we are now friends.
If anything can be forgiven, then nothing is stronger than it. Nothing! It is forgiveness – and with it, divine peace – that will triumph in the end.
This is the heart of the New Covenant Jeremiah prophesized so long ago – this vision of a day when all people, all people, from the least to the greatest, will know God – not just ideas about God told from one person to another (like I’m doing now!), but a knowing that is experienced in each heart directly from God. And the banner of that knowing will be the assurance that God has forgiven our iniquities and remembers our sin no more.
It is finished!
Sin itself is vanquished, because all has been forgiven.
This is the gospel to which we belong! And if we are going to live into this gospel – in our families, in our relationships, in Gig Harbor, in the religion-less religion of 21st century American life – this is what we, the church, have to offer to our angry and divided world: a vast and total and liberating forgiveness.
And to be clear, I’m not interested with an old model of evangelism that turns forgiveness into a doctrinal commodity to dangle before frightened and guilty people. The forgiveness we have to share with the world is God’s forgiveness alive through us. We don’t just tell people about the generality of God’s forgiveness. We forgive them ourselves, for their actual offenses against us. And we do so with a growing spirit of love and delight. Let our forgiveness become their living sacrament of God’s forgiveness.
There is a kind of dying that happens when we forgive, when we allow our old self – our indignant, wounded, outraged and fractured self – to die and be buried with Christ. But it becomes as a solitary grain of wheat that, once buried, will spring to life anew – no longer alone – but verdant and alive and bearing much fruit.
For when we forgive we are now joined together with the one we have forgiven and with the one who first forgave us – God in Christ – this day and forever.
Amen.
[1] Shadi Hamid, “America Without God,” The Atlantic, April 2021