Sermon ending changes... again

Funny what happens with more study... time.. and prayer!  For my sermon notes on "Jesus and Justice" I have found the need - once more - to change the conclusion.  So, here goes... The set up is that theologian, Douglas John Hall, has just seen a sign - in a Protestant church, no less - that says:  "Don't just do something, sit there!" and he writes:

This, I believe, is the first requirement for any Christian person or congregation or denomination today that wants to find a way into the future. Thought—original, deep, critical, theological thinking—is the conditio sine qua non—the condition without which the Christian movement will not find its way into the uncertain future. Another word for the kind of thought of which I am speaking is the much-misunderstood word “theology.” Ours is a time when theological reflection may be the most important thing Christians can do if they are earnest about their future (and concerned about justice.)

That is what was so intriguing, effective and important about the Occupy Wall Street movement:  from the start they were committed to gathering people together to reason and reflect in community about our current crisis.  They were not interested in demonizing others or polarizing society around real or imagined enemies. Rather they understood that first, more than anything else, to do justice requires that we think and pray and talk carefully about our common life together.  To use the words of America’s greatest moral and ethical theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, to make the gospel of Jesus Christ effective in our public realm, the church must bring together both spiritual vigor and social intelligence before it acts – but act it must.

The tragedy of most churches, Niebuhr insisted, is that we cultivate a spirituality by divorcing ourselves from the realities of the common good.  “Yesterday,” he once wrote, “church leaders discovered that the church may be an ark in which to survive during a flood. Today, however, we have become so enamored of this special function that we have decided to turn our ark into a home on Mount Ararat and live in it perpetually.”  Rather than offer both a diagnosis as well as a plan for healing the wounds that hurt us all, Niebuhr taught, we get sidetracked and afraid. Conservative congregations then convict men and women of only their secondary sins, “while the liberal church is unable to convict anyone of any sin at all because of our romantic view of human nature.”  

And I have to tell you that I think old Reinie was right:  American Christians are just not very good about bringing spiritual vigor and social intelligence together when it comes to doing justice.  Sometimes we act like we self-righteous windbags trying to bully one another into silence or action; and at other times we revert to a pious sentimentalism that wonders out loud, like Rodney King did after the LA riots:  Why can’t we just all get along? 

·         One polarity arrogantly and naively acts as if they have a monopoly upon wisdom – whether liberal or conservative – and that turns most people off; while the other romantically insists that if we just practiced the Golden Rule individually the kingdom of God would be right around the corner.

·         The result is that most churches come to an impasse about doing justice because we act like “substituting benevolence for justice is the best we can achieve.”  And the fundamental reason for this impasse is because we define Christian love only in terms of personal not social relations.

And THAT is why Douglas John Hall urged us to sit there before hurrying up to do something:  we need to totally rethink what the justice of Jesus is all about.  I believe that the old way of doing politics is exhausting and over – stick a fork in it – it’s done!  What we need to do now is bring a Christian anthropology into our politics – reclaim the deep importance of both sin and grace – in shaping public policy for the common good.  We need to renew our prophetic critique against greed and corruption and arrogance in light of the Lord’s humbling and transforming Cross. 

And we need to relearn the essential ethical foundation of the Christian life that always lives in that odd land between sentimentality and cynicism.  Like life in another so-called Dark Ages, much of this has been lost, only kept alive in the private libraries of the clergy or remote monastic orders.  But we need a renaissance of thinking about the common good.  

·         So let me propose that we do some serious theological reflection – and I mean starting with brother Niebuhr’s wisdom – and let that become part of our adult education ministry and mission of First Church.

·         After my current series on Monday night’s is over after Lent, let’s take the next few months to review and digest the works of one of our own, Reinhold Niebuhr, so that we reclaim both a common language for doing justice as well as a deeper wisdom about how Christianity offers authentic healing options to a shallow and sick American culture.

If we do that, if we bring spiritual vigor and social intelligence back into the conversation, then we might be ready to do something - something that resembles the justice of Jesus.  And that, beloved, is where I find the good news for today.