To Blues and Reds

Preached at Hanover Street Presbyterian Church

On December 5, 2004

By the Rev. Thomas C. Davis, III, Ph.D.

Texts:

Isaiah 11: 1-10

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.  His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.  He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.  Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.  The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.  They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.  On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Romans 15: 4-13

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.  May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.  For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.  As it is written, "Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name"; and again he says, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people"; and again, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him"; and again Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope."  May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 22: 15-22

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.  So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.  Tell us, then, what you think.  Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?"  But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?  Show me the coin used for the tax."  And they brought him a denarius.  Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?"  They answered, "The emperor's."  Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."  When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Sermon Text

Last Sunday was the Advent Sunday of hope, but the sermon then was dedicated to another topic, so this morning I want to take time to preach about hope, because there is such a need for hope as we approach the end of one year and the beginning of another.  Let's focus on this opening verse in our reading from Paul's letter to the Christians in Rome:

"Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.  May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome that whatever was written in former days was written for their instruction.  Could the same be said for us?  When I was teaching at the seminary in Florida I asked my students which scriptures in the Bible were written for our instruction.  I got all kinds of answers.  Many said that all of the scriptures were written for us.  One student said the prophets obviously were, especially Isaiah, Amos, and Jeremiah.  Another said that she found the psalms most applicable for our time.  And another said that the gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John were written for future Christians, so they must be the scriptures most clearly intended for us.  Then I said that as I saw it, none of the scriptures were written for us, for the Jewish scriptures were written for Jews, not Christians; and the Christians who wrote letters and gospels did not expect the world to last much longer than their own lifetime.  None of the Biblical writers, either Jews or Christians, foresaw a world with atomic energy, or electricity, or airplanes, or ultrasound, or the Internet.  Clearly, none of their writings were intended for us.  Nevertheless we do use them for instruction.  On what grounds?  Because Holy Scriptures are living literature.  They continue to speak to situations unforeseen by their authors, because the spirit of God gives modern readers holy imagination to use them for their own needs.  Were it not so, ancient writings would be dead.  We could derive no instruction from them, and no hope.  But God's indwelling spirit gives us imagination to appropriate words that were not intended for our seeing, so that we in our own time can have hope, and light for our path. 

Let us therefore not forget our creative role in using Holy Scriptures.  Ancient texts cannot speak to our needs unless we make them do so.  This act of appropriating ancient texts for our circumstances is a creative act, as creative as any artist's rendering of clay or paint into an object that comes alive.

So, this morning I would use my imagination to appropriate Paul's words about hope, in order to address a growing division between Christians in America, the division between Blues and Reds.  But before we get to that division, let's have a look at the one that Paul had to deal with in his day.  Paul was almost solely responsible for carrying the good news about Jesus to non-Jewish people, that is, Gentiles.  "Pagans" is a better translation, I think, because it carries a disparaging tone; and many Jews in Paul's time did disparage non-Jewish people.  In this morning's passage from his letter to Christians in Rome, Paul argues that the prophet Isaiah foresaw God reaching out to pagans.  He quotes the portion of Isaiah, which we read this morning, where we hear about a shoot growing out of the stump of Jesse (King David's father).  This offspring of King David would rule even the pagans (that is, all the nations, not just Israel).  All nations would find hope in this divine leader.  That was Isaiah's sacred message from God; and it served as Paul's foil against the Judaizers, a party of conservatives in the church who insisted that if you wanted to become a follower of Messiah Jesus, you had to first become a Jew.  For men that meant getting circumcised--a painful and hygienically risky procedure.  Paul said no, absolutely not.  You don't have to convert to Judaism to become a disciple of Messiah Jesus.  You don't have to get circumcised, and you don't have to stick to a kosher diet either.  Culturally you can remain a pagan and still be a disciple of Jesus.  All that is required is that you accept him as Lord of your life instead of Caesar, or the High Priest, or the rich man who owns you lock, stock, and barrel.  Accepting Jesus as Lord of your life means striving to become like him, doing your very best to love all people, even your enemies.  It means renouncing spiritual snobbery and renouncing the use of force to get what you want.  It means forgiving those who spitefully use you, and returning good for evil.

Writing to the uptight Judaizers, and also to a burgeoning number of pagans eager to follow rabbi Jesus, Paul wrote:  "May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus."  These words reveal that Paul was hopeful that the cultural divide between the Judaizers and the pagans could be bridged if both sides would just make Jesus their guide.  They would learn to tolerate each other and eventually even to respect each other if only they would just open themselves to the loving spirit of Jesus.  That was Paul's earnest hope, a hope he wanted to impart to his fledgling churches.

However, Paul's attempt to bridge this cultural divide eventually failed miserably.  Synagogues took to beating and then expelling followers of Messiah Jesus, and the church became more and more non-Jewish until it finally broke away from its spiritual parent.  Later, after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the church, now entirely non-Jewish, turned on Jews.  The previously persecuted became persecutors, utterly failing to appreciate, let alone emulate, the loving and forgiving way of Jesus.  The cross of Jesus had become, like the emblems of Caesar's legions, a symbol of conquest.  What a travesty of Jesus' good news!

Well, I opened this sermon by saying that none of our holy scriptures was intended for our reading, but nevertheless, by holy imagination we can appropriate those ancient writings; we can find something in them to teach us how to follow the loving, forgiving way of Jesus in our own time and place.  And that should give us great hope.  The cultural wall dividing U.S. Christians is not that between Gentiles and Jews, but rather that between Blues and Reds.

Yes, I'm invoking political terms to talk about theological distinctions, and I have good reason for doing that.  When Jesus held up a coin with Caesar's picture on it and said, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars, and unto God the things that are God's," he was not defending the separation of church and state.  He was saying: Do you see this emblem of conquest?  Do you know that Caesar puts his picture on this coin in order to spread his intimidating propaganda, to get people to worship him like a god?  Well, give this paltry piece of pretentious pomp right back to him.  He deserves it!  As for God, give to God what God deserves:  your utter loyalty, your heart and soul, the very things Caesar wants, but mustn't have, so help you God!

Make no mistake, Church.  We can't separate our religion from our politics.  The way of Jesus has always been profoundly political because it concerns ultimate authority.  When you worship Jesus as Lord, you cannot give your heart and soul to anybody else; and the state, however apparently benign, however democratic, will press for your utter loyalty, especially when it gets anxious.  And if it can't get your loyalty by coercion or intimidation, it will cloak itself in religious robes and pretend that it deserves to be your Lord for spiritual reasons, just as Caesar did when he called himself Lord and savior of the peons of his empire.  Did you know that Caesar called himself Lord and savior before the followers of Messiah Jesus claimed those titles for him instead?  An inscription is carved into a cross beam of an arch leading into the ancient city of Ephesus.  It reads:  Caesar, Lord and Savior.  When the followers of Jesus started using those titles for him they were making a deliberate political protest:  Caesar isn't our Lord and Savior--Jesus is!  Thus, we see that from the beginning the good news about Jesus as God's anointed was starkly political, though not partisan.  Historical instances of Christianity, though, have often been partisan, because Christians have failed to retain Jesus as their ultimate authority. 

That brings me back to my earlier observation:  the cultural divide between U.S. Christians today is that between Blues and Reds.  The divide is becoming more and more pronounced.  Some folk are saying that you cannot be a true Christian unless you become a partisan for certain political causes.  You must be against abortion, or against stem cell research, or against the teaching of evolution in public schools, or for a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage, or for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to pray in public schools; or, you must be against the war in Iraq, or in favor of a woman's right to choose, or against capital punishment, or for gun control; otherwise, you cannot be truly a Christian.  You might call yourself a Christian, but you would be self-deceived.  Some Christians are making such claims.  The level of acrimony continues to climb even though our national election is over.  All manner of musts or must nots have become the modern equivalent of circumcision.  Paul said to his contemporaries:  Please, please, let's not lock each other out because we have cultural differences!  Let's keep our common devotion in mind:  our devotion to a loving, forgiving Lord. 

The way to conciliate the cultural divide between U.S. Christians is not to advocate that Christians should keep their religion and their politics separate.  As I said before, devotion to Jesus as Lord is profoundly political.  We cannot separate our religion and our politics.  We might try to do that, but we will just end up fooling ourselves, and making ourselves vulnerable to connivers who will manipulate naive citizens by way of religion.  What we can do, though, is mark the difference between fanatical partisanship, which has no compassionate regard for adversaries, and the loving, justice-seeking way of Jesus, which says that we should love even our enemies, because we recognize that they too are children of God.

I began this sermon by noting that it would be about hope.  I do indeed have hope that the present cultural divide between Blue and Red Christians will not escalate into an internecine feud.  My hope--similar to Paul's--is that we shall erode and diminish that wall, not by retreating from politics, but rather by celebrating our common faith that Jesus Christ is Lord. 

Let me conclude with his benediction to the divided Christians in Rome:

"May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God."