Third Sunday of Easter Sermon

And then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”[1]

How foolish, indeed, are we all, in all the ways we persist in expecting God to behave as we behave, for God to value what we value, for the church to uphold the same opinions we walked in the door holding. And so, we look to what the Bible says – about God, about Christ, about righteousness, about truth – to vindicate our beliefs and values, shallow and self-centered and unexamined, though they often be.

“How foolish we are and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared.”

Jesus showed us the way of God and the way to God. It was a way of peace, of sacrifice, of obedience, of death… and then of resurrection.

There was no short-cut for Jesus. There was no glory that did not first involve dying. There was no triumph for himself, that did not include a thorough giving of himself for the world.

This world – you and I and everyone else – will always be motivated by self-preservation. It is nearly impossible for us to choose otherwise. And yet, Jesus did. And yet, so have many others. The most heroic, the most beautiful, the most worthy stories of human goodness are always those in which – like Jesus and against all odds – someone chooses the other’s well-being over their own.

“Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”

There is no gospel – there is no good news, there is no Christ – in which love and mercy and compassion and self-sacrifice are not the message, in both word and deed.

And woe to the one who dares to use the name of Christ to proclaim any other gospel.

There is a term for such a one in the New Testament. That term is “antichrist.” It only appears a few times in scripture, and it has less to do with some particular, future figure than it has to do with anyone or any force that uses the name of Christ to function in a way that is contrary to, or undermines, the true person and mission of Christ.

To some degree (one can argue), every Christian and every Christian denomination throughout history has functioned as antichrists. Whenever we are hypocritical – proclaiming love while behaving selfishly or uncaringly – we become our own “anti-evangelists,” perverting and corroding our witness. And when that perversion is grossly exaggerated, such as the clergy sexual abuse of minors, concealed and perpetrated by the church, then the power of our “anti-evangelism” is swift. Just look at Ireland – the last major holdout of Christianity in western Europe. Since the clergy abuse scandal erupted there in the past few decades, faith has plummeted and the country has rushed towards secularism. There are other economic and political issues at play, but the hypocrisy of the institutional church has been a leading cause of its demise.

So, yes, whenever we undermine our witness – as individuals and as a church – by a selfish or uncaring spirit, we are functioning more in the spirit of antichrist than in the spirit of Christ himself. And often (I get it!), that behavior is simply reactive, fueled by fear and immaturity. I’m not excusing it; it’s just an honest awareness of our human condition and how we human Christians function, time and again.

But an outright spirit of antichrist is something far more serious and diabolical. It is calculating and intended to deceive. It is purposeful in using the name of Christ to perpetrate evil – to perpetrate cruelty and dominance and greed. It is predatory, preying often on church people, who should know otherwise, but whose faith has been formed in a culture that prioritizes the trappings of Jesus more than the character and behavior of Jesus.

And so this spirit of antichrist uses Christian symbolism, Christian language, and Christian theology as its garb. But to what end? It’s not Christ (I assure you), or anything at all like Christ. It is power and dominion and control. It stokes fear and demands fealty.

No matter how defensible one’s theology may be on the surface, if its outcome endorses anything less than “Love God and love your neighbor,” something of that theology has been perverted. And, with antichrist, it didn’t just miss the mark by accident; it intended to deceive all along.

I have no interest in a Christianity, robust with crosses and angels and Bible readings and lengthy prayers, if it’s all being deployed as an arsenal for cruelty.

Today begins an eight-day “America Reads the Bible” [2] event – when Christian leaders, elected officials, and entertainers will read the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. You can attend in person at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC or you can watch it being streamed online.[3] Inspired by the book of Nehemiah, when the prophet Ezra read scripture aloud to the people of Israel, this event hopes to inspire revival and discipleship.

President Trump, from the Oval Office, is scheduled to read a portion of 2 Chronicles that was written as God’s mandate to King Solomon, son of King David. It includes this famous passage:

“If my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves, pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”[4]

And then he’ll go on, reading from that same passage:

“As for you, if you walk before me as your father David walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my ordinances, then I will establish your royal throne, as I made covenant with your father David saying, ‘You shall never lack a successor to rule over Israel.’”[5]

Now, please God, I earnestly desire that this event would accomplish great things. I would love to see genuine revival in our country, where the Holy Spirit does indeed inspire repentance and renewal: within all churches (progressive and conservative alike) and throughout the nation and the world. I would love to see revival everywhere, in which our faith is renewed and empowered that we might resemble Jesus in our character and our actions. I would love to see this – in me, in St. John’s, and in our president – that he would do just what the passage he reads says to do: to humble himself and pray, seeking God’s face and turning from wicked ways, that he would keep God’s statutes and ordinances.

But, whereas I have hope in God’s eternal sovereignty and intent to redeem, I cannot say I have hope for this particular event, linked as it is, with Christian nationalism, a political ideology that grossly distorts the gospel.

So far as I can tell, all this explicit Christianity being promoted in the political sphere, comes across as manipulative propaganda. And how can you tell? How can you trust if this is Christ or antichrist? Look to the fruit. What does it produce?

For God’s sake: If you’re going to grasp hold of the name of Christ and trumpet it as God’s mandate for the nation, it’s going to take a lot more than the name of Christ. It will require the spirit of Christ. It will require the love of Christ, the humility of Christ, the self-offering of Christ, the servanthood of Christ.

Promoting peace, is Christlike.

Promoting mercy, is Christlike.

Policy making, that values the humanity of all people is Christlike.

Policy making, that protects the vulnerable from exploitation is Christlike.

We can never drape chaos and cruelty and bullying in the name of Christ and call it Christian. Call it whatever you want, but don’t drag Jesus into it, unless we’re calling him in to forgive us for our sins and to empower us to rescue those we’ve violated.

“If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile….

“Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew.”[6]

We are born anew.

We are risen with Christ.

So, in obedience to this new reality in which we’ve been born, let us “save ourselves from this corrupt generation,”[7] choosing again and again the costly way of Jesus.

Repentance is not a single conversion event. It is a pattern of living, day by day: confessing our enmity and choosing neighborliness; confessing our selfishness and choosing generosity; confessing our certainties and choosing humility; confessing our complacency and choosing engagement – to go where Jesus goes and to love as Jesus loves.

Our nation is at war – with Iran, certainly – but more urgently, we are at war within ourselves, embattled over the question of what it means to be America.

But as people of faith, our way of faith is not policy to be enforced. It is a way of living with God and with one another. It does not insist on its own way, but gives itself away.

Like Jesus at table with his disciples, we, too, take the bread, bless it and break it and give it away.

We take literal bread and give it away to those who hunger.

We take the bread of our own bodies, our own lives, and we give it away.

We take the bread of the church, its sacraments of grace, and we give it away.

I do not know what the future holds for this war being waged for the soul of America. But I do know this: The way of faith is never control. It is sacrifice. Faith gives itself away, that others may live.

And from that sacrifice, from the tomb of death and decay, comes life and life and life again.

[1] Luke 24:25-26

[2] americareadsthebible.com

[3] Livestream on Great American Pure Flix

[4] 2 Chronicles 7:14

[5] 2 Chronicles 7:17-18

[6] 1 Peter 1:17, 22-23a

[7] Acts 2:40