Day 846 - Easter Sunday. The Kingdom of God is at Hand

A sermon for the Urban Outreach Ministry and the Church Universal, Chattanooga, TN 
April 5, 2015

Gospel Reading: Mark 15:46-16:8a

This post is an Easter reflection about the discipleship of Christian faith. I consider my self a social liberal as much as labels mean anything (they mean very little except in political arguments, actually, and political arguments close otherwise receptive minds), but at heart I consider myself a fumbling man who is trying to practice radical Christianity. This post also takes a negative view of what many of my good friends call "Christian social justice" because it is a movement easily and often subverted or slides into political causes focussed more on state politics than faithful Christian action. It also has an oblique arrogance about it that presumes to know and be able to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Some of you may be offended by my critique, but remember I am a brother in arms who persists to defend your efforts in writing and in words because I know you and your faith. I hope you take my post as a cautionary tale. As many of you who know me should know, I do place preference for giving of oneself in a direct hand-in-hand, one-on-one ministry to the abused of the world. To me, this is the Christian compassion proclaimed in Mark's gospel.

When I began this series of posts on Mark’s gospel, I called Mark the Gospel for the abused.  Mark brings us the good news in a way that underscores the expectation of discipleship by his followers and at the same time reveals the heart of the paradox of Christian faith. In Mark, Jesus calls all Christians to Christian advocacy for the abused because it reflects the core radical, ethical essence of his teaching. We are called to a radical Christianity.

Does radical Christianity manifest in political protest by concerned Christians or in their compassionate one-on-one ministry that brings tangible assistance to a person regardless of state action, heaping burning coals on the heads of those who shirk their duty and obligation as Christians?

The irony is that a person has to do both with zeal to resolve the answer for oneself. That is, one must take up the challenge of being an advocate via protest against state action (especially in a democratic state where the people are ultimately responsible for government’s action) and by direct compassionate one-on-one ministry as the good Samaritan did.

The answer most people find in my personal experience and observation of people who have “joined the fray” and done both is that one-on-one ministry is far more effective because the one-on-one experience challenges all participants spiritually. This compassionate Christian act changes you, the person you help and those who refuse to help in the name of Jesus.

This does not mean that we should eschew political advocacy based on our Christian ethics as necessarily wrong. But it does mean that political advocacy based on Christian ethics often does not result in Christian advocacy or positive change. History has proved this over the millenniums, for example, by the history of the Herodians and temple leaders in Jerusalem of Roman times (Herodians were Jews who collaborated with the Roam leader), by the failure of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel, by modern Christian Realists (pages 50-51, for example) exemplified by Reinhold Neibhur who promoted state involvement in both actual war and the Cold War, as a defense of Christianity,  the War in Viet Nam, by the modern secular Israel State and even the wars in the Middle east today where we call on the state to kill and eradicate the killers called ISIL. In every case the state subverted and adopted the ideals of well-meaning Christians for pragmatic, and particularly non-Christian purposes.

Christian political advocacy is fated to subversion by governmental authority that will use their advocacy for authority’s purposes. Even Reinhold Niebuhr recognized the state operates at a lower ethical and moral level than people. He advocated using its power to achieve his idea of Christian ends. Reinhold Niebuhr said, “social groups are inherently more selfish than individuals, (therefore) societies must use coercion – even though it violates the ethics appropriate for individuals – to restrain the destructive egoism of race, classes and nations.” In other words, someone who is “in the know” must use the state to coerce its citizens to a certain preferred standard of behavior.

We must never forget that ultimately the state is the organization responsible for defending cultural values (not religious values) and the status quo. The state is the formal collective representation of the reality that we are immersed within, Paul’s “world of flesh.” The state ultimately serves one purpose, to continue its existence, values and power at any cost. 

The social gospel movement was based on the flawed premise that this power structure can be changed. Its modern proponents say it can be changed by effective Christian political coercion. (This is the identical argument ISIL uses.) The problem is whose "Christian dogma" shall be used as the canon of truth justifying coersion?

We seem constrained and condemned to relive this paradoxical reality in a repetitive, exquisitely painful way. We are compelled to reproduce the history of yesterday as the present of today, to try to use worldly power to effect the Kingdom of God. It really does depend on the idea that we have the power in our own two hands to change the material world into the Kingdom of God.

Yet in our confessions we often say, if we rely on our own power to change the world and save us, we deceive ourselves and are lost.

What is the basis for my assertion that one-on-one compassionate ministry is a more effective Christian advocacy than political advocacy based on Christian ethics, an assertion likely received in outrage by some of my friends?

On this Easter day, I suggest the answer to the question is Mark’s gospel. What is the climax and denouement (resolution) of this gospel?

In a conventional literary sense the climax of the Gospel of Mark is 15:39; when the centurion observes the way of Jesus’ last words and breath and exclaims, “ Truly this man was God’s Son!”

The centurion’s statement is the counterpoint to the words in the opening verses of Mark at the baptism of Jesus when a voice from the sky said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Many say rightly that these two passages “sandwich” the whole Gospel. But think about it.

If this is the climax, then the most reliable ending of the gospel that are the verses I chose today (16:1-8a), might then be considered the resolution or denouement of the gospel message. Post crucifixion, the tomb is found empty save for a living person in the tomb who tells the women (the only ones who remained behind out of love) that Jesus is not here but will meet the disciples in Galilee. Then even they flee in terror of being in God’s presence and amazement of the truth of the message, knowing Jesus lives, but tell no one.

Or are these verses the climax?

Perhaps these 8 verses are the climax of the gospel; that the Son of God is arisen and the disciples will find him in Galilee. If so, Mark leaves the resolution of the truth of this assertion unwritten and the task of completion to us - those who have the faith that the entire gospel teaches.

The parables of Chapter 4 reveal what life in the Kingdom of God is. The parable of the sower has a preeminent role (4:1-9,13-20). The kingdom of God is not always apparent to us.

The teaching on what constitutes discipleship in Chapters 9-10 should weigh on us all. We hear Jesus say it contains faith. Jesus responded to the request for healing if he is able by the father of the epileptic son.  Jesus replies, “If you are able! All things can be done for the one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

We hear Jesus tell the disciples that humility is the critical value of discipleship. If they want to lead, they must learn to serve and have the trust and innocence of a child and we hear Jesus call those who cause people (God's children) to stray stumbling blocks with millstones around their necks.

We hear Jesus declare to the rich young man, “No one is good except God” (If that does not give pause to the advocate who promotes social action because it is good, nothing will.) To prove his point, Jesus tells him he should go and sell all his possessions and give them to the poor, then come and follow him. He tells his objecting disciples that the engulfing world makes it very hard to enter the Kingdom of God.

This interchange with the rich young man quite nicely reflects the example of one-on-one discipleship as should the feeding of the great crowd who followed him for three days. There Jesus says he has compassion (a special Greek word) on the crowd for they have spent this time with him without food and if he sends them away they will “faint “(die?) on the way home.

He explicitly says that we know how the state lords its power over us, and the Son of Man came not to serve but to serve and give his life to ransom many.

It is inescapable that in all these cases we have Jesus, or a disciple or another person directly (as an act of one's own hand) giving sustenance to someone in need as an act of Christ-like compassion. It is unavoidable that the greatest two commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor as God loves you. To prove the faith in this message Jesus walked to the cross, was killed and defeated death and sent one message to those left behind – meet me in Galilee.

Those faithful who hear that message to take an abused person in hand and use one’s own resources to help that person come to understand it is a Christian obligation to be practiced until it is a reflexive habit. In that habit one learns as much about oneself as about who is abused. We learn that the abused, the one's in need of the Kingdom of God are both those who are physically or emotionally suffering and those who have spiritual and economic resources to help them but do not.  We do not need a government to help the poor; we can do it by our own hands.

And so, the resolution of the gospel is left to the penitent listener who will write it every day by one’s own actions taken in confidence or faith in its message until the final day. Those actions are not trying to use the government to create the Kingdom of God on earth (it is already near) but in our own personal compassionate action towards our brothers and sisters that demonstrates we are citizens of the Kingdom of God.

Mark (and Paul) clearly show the government will make its own version of the Kingdom of God using what ever tools are handy. It will rule in power as Caesar did. It will use its power and the unwitting support of citizens to achieve its own peculiar worldly ends that may help some of the poor but leave many more destitute.

The state, or Christian advocates, may try to justify that action by the premise that it is better to raise the status of many even though some will suffer. I heard that statement from a senior leader of PDA several years ago to justify pulling out of the Gulf Coast and redirecting designated resources even though there were many still in need.

Certainly we can raise the status of many, for example by trying to create a universal health care system such as the ACA. But the ACA is clearly flawed from a Christian perspective. In the best implementation you have to have money to get service and use tax money to pay for it, and in the worst implementation the government intentionally excludes large numbers who must fall not on the on the mercy of their brothers and sisters (their neighbors), but on the government who will take its cut of your tax money for other purposes and use the remainder to help some. Their brothers and sisters (their neighbors) could be helping them anyway, regardless of the status of ACA.

A Christian advocate makes the greatest contribution by giving directly with one’s financial and spiritual resources to lend a hand to help the abused; that is, to aid directly those poor souls left by the government of Tennessee to languish in the ditch on these side of the road - unless you would rather walk to the other side of the road with your protest signs. The message of the good Samaritan (thank you Luke) cannot be transformed into changing the government by social activism. did  The Civil Rights Act eradicate racism from our society?) 

In my perspective, the kingdom of God is at hand and discoverable. Jesus said this in Mark 1:14,15: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’”

Perhaps this ultimate “hero sandwich” urges us to write the resolution of Mark's gospel. The words of Jesus in the beginning proclaim his purpose, the Kingdom on God is at hand, and the good news of the young man in the empty tomb close it, “you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here... But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 
       Why would he meet them in Galilee? Galilee was the country of rubes - all outsiders, the poor and field laborers who resentfully worked to increase the benefit of the rich in Jerusalem and Rome.

       If this was where Jesus said the Kingdom of God is at hand, we should search out and meet Jesus in our own Galilee and exercise our discipleship to the abused flock in need. Help the abused, not by political protest which at best can marginally improve some of the people’s plight but more likely will harden the heart of government and make the plight of all worse. 
       Rather be a tentmaker. Do the very thing Jesus taught and encouraged his disciples to do, provide your assistance to the poor and field laborers until it hurts your pocketbook lest they faint or die on the way home. When you do so, you will reveal the faith of Mark’s unresolved gospel story, a story that contains no visible presence of the risen Jesus but only the women running in fear and amazement. 
       Your faith will be revealed to the world AND to yourself by compassionate one-on-one action. Your compassion to give all of your self will lead you to Jesus in your own Galilee. There you will discover your own spiritual poverty and the blessing offered by the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God is at hand. Its citizens are on the city streets in every city and country, in every locale. Its glory is found in your compassionate hand, not in the state’s hand.

Amen