This sermon was preached from the lectionary texts for Sunday 15th January: Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians1:1-9; John 1:29-42. You can find those here.
It’s not often I find it hard to pick one of the readings to focus on, but this week, I found myself wanting to say something about all three of them. I found that together they brought into focus a theme that I hope you’ll agree, we need to explore and act on with a greater sense of urgency this year. The main theme I noticed is Calling. Each of these texts says something about calling and also says something about Identity and Mission as a result of God’s call.
In the Isaiah reading, there is the calling of the servant, the nation of Israel, who are then given a twofold mission– to show forth God’s glory and to be a light to the nations. Now, remember the context of this call.
Isaiah is telling a defeated, devastated, traumatised, exhausted group of people that their honour will be restored, they will be liberated, AND that they are to be a light to all nations. Last week we heard Isaiah telling the people that God is doing a new thing.
The restoration which God promises the people is not just for them – that’s too small. God’s calling is always bigger and more expansive than we think or assume. Even though the community is in crisis, still they are called to be a blessing, a light to others, not just to look after themselves, not just to minister to their own.
This speaks into our context too, don’t you think? This calls us to consider if we are looking just to our own survival. This suggests that the call of God on the church is not to revive or renew the church – this is too small a thing. I believe that this cannot be the focus of our purpose, our mission, not just because it’s too small, but also because I believe that God’s idea of the church is not the same as ours. I think we, the church, have misunderstood our identity.
Paul also has something to say about this. He begins his letter by affirming the calling of the folks in Corinth to be saints, and their calling into the fellowship of Jesus Christ our Lord. This calling he is talking about isn’t about joining an organisation or about conversion into a new belief system. It’s a call that draws us into constructing a new identity. An identity that is shared with others (fellowship) who are also orienting their life around the significance of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. The call to be a saint in Corinth is about a community living a different way, grounded in love, hope and peace.
Paul’s opening in this letter also indicates that while he’s very pleased with the Corinthians, he wants to shift how they understand certain things about grace. And what he wants to shift in them is their speech and knowledge. Grace is the capacity to speak in a certain way, and it is the capacity to understand things in a certain way…Paul doesn’t think the Corinthians quite get it yet. He tells them that they aren’t lacking in any spiritual gift AS THEY WAIT for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. They are perhaps a bit overconfident, or a bit impatient. They think they’ve heard it all already, that they know all they need to know and there is nothing left to learn. But Paul says faith is a journey and you have a long way to go yet.
You, collectively have many gifts, he tells them, and there are still more to come. And some of what is still to come will come from outside of your current community, because this is how we are a light to the nations. Your journey together doesn’t have a clear, set path for you to follow. You will make the way as you go, guided by prayer and the Holy Spirit and connecting with others along the way.
Now, in the past, the church has understood mission as going out with the intention to convert (get others to believe), and then to bring those others in to the church (so they can belong), once they are regularly among us, we can instruct them on how to behave so that they can be like us. This model has been in operation for decades, and for generations. But over generations it has found fewer responsive hearts and minds, and in the past forty years, there’s been a growing recognition that this ‘Believe, Belong, Behave’ model of church and of mission has many flaws.
Some of those flaws may be very obvious to you, some less so. Until we examine this model of church and mission and recognise what its flaws are, we can’t be part of the new thing that God is doing. Until we can look honestly at our assumptions and notice our blind spots, we won’t even be able to perceive the new things that God is doing. We’ll sabotage our own efforts if we rely on what we think we know and what church has always been and done.
We have to reckon with the fact that in our organising of church and engaging in mission we haven’t truly understood and accepted that God forgives all of us by including all of us in forgiveness – instead we’ve made it conditional on a belief system.
We say God created all of us, but we can’t imagine that God therefore delights in diversity – instead we’ve identified what’s acceptable and what’s not.
We talk of God’s healing us and setting us free, liberating us from everything that keeps us small, stuck, shackled and afraid – but we’ve created systems of worthiness and control through guilt and shame that keep us small, stuck shackled and afraid.
And although throughout the scriptures God shows especial concern for the poor and oppressed– we’ve kept structures of status and power.
I don’t exempt myself from this failure to understand God’s call to us to be church and to partner in the mission of living as a community of light, hope and healing love. I am as mixed up in the missional thinking of the church as any one of you, and my theological education has helped me identify the issues, but not given me any clear way to shift that thinking into a different model. We are on a journey together in this and like the Corinthians, we’ll make the path as we go, guided by prayer and the Holy Spirit and connecting with others along the way.
But one thing I can do that will help us start that journey is to identify four good reasons why we as a church collectively through history, have not stopped to challenge the missional assumptions of our faith:
Because of four Ps.
Firstly, because of prejudice. We thought we were better – more civilised, better organised, more successful, more sophisticated than other peoples. We thought poverty meant lacking in everything, we couldn’t see and didn’t value the abundance that was present in different cultures and peoples, and we didn’t recognise the potential that was repressed.
Secondly, because of privilege. We assumed everyone was starting from the same place, and failed to notice when others were starting with fewer options, fewer resources and fewer opportunities.
We preferred those who are like us, and we were quick to judge difference as failure, often full of arrogance and lacking compassion. We couldn’t see our own advantages.
Thirdly, because of patriarchy. We allowed systems of power and authority to form and inform our communities, minimising the gifts of women and children, dehumanising and elevating men. We let patriarchy determine which bodies were valued and which were shameful or useless because they are weaker or differently abled.
And lastly because of penal substitution atonement theory.
That’s a technical term, so let me explain it for you. Penal means punishment or penalty. Substitution means one person stands in for another. Atonement is the work of reconciliation between God and all creation. And a theory is an idea. Together, this provides an explanation of how the cross works in Christian faith. This theory has been the backbone of much evangelical Christianity – it’s certainly how the gospel and the cross were explained to me at age 16.
This way of understanding the atonement says that God is holy and that humans are sinful. God cannot simply ignore human sin and be true to God’s holiness. So there must be a just punishment. Jesus the Christ, the God-Human, willingly stood in the human sinner’s place, absorbing God’s just punishment on sin and sinners. Christ’s righteousness is placed over us, just as our sin was placed upon him on the cross.
There are several passages of scripture which support various parts of this understanding of how the cross works, and Paul certainly uses this substitutional sacrifice language at times.
But.
Scripture offers us a multifaceted witness to God’s revelation of divine love. There are many ways that the whole testifies to the way that God works, to God’s nature and intention, and the theory of penal substitution is just one among many.
Theologically, there are at least two major issues with this as the main way to understand the atonement.
The starting point of holiness that demands punishment and love which promotes grace leads us to a dangerously bipolar image and experience of God. I have heard people speak of the cross as the Son stepping into the gap to avert the punishing wrath of the Father, or of the Son placating the Father’s wrath. if you accept that this God exists and is your creator, then you find yourself in a relationship with a God whose attitude to you has swung dramatically between death dealing anger and self-sacrificing love – and in return you are expected to feel only love and asked to surrender yourself to this God.
In the same vein, I have heard the gospel described as bad news followed by good news, which requires people to believe first that they deserve an eternal punishment simply for being human, and then that a divinely sinless human has taken that punishment for them, which they can only benefit from if they will repent and try diligently to behave better.
Although I found this a comfortingly clear explanation of the cross for some time, if it’s the only way you have to speak about God’s saving love and action, it seems to motivate an underlying response of fear rather than trust. And when the focus is on wrath, on God as holy, on the cross alone, omitting the life and teaching of Jesus, the resurrection, and Holy Spirit, that means the larger redemptive grace of God is often out of focus. It may be that you hold this theory as the basis of your faith, and that you now feel anxious or angry about it being questioned. That is how I felt when I was first challenged in that understanding.
It’s not my intention to destroy faith or to provoke anger, but I accept that the chances are each of these four Ps touch a raw nerve for most of you and so it’s fair enough if you react with some energy to that.
So, please see this as a conversation starter, and not as a declaration of war.
I do believe that how we speak about and how we understand grace has to shift, and I’m not alone in this – there are churches and church leaders all over the world recognising this is true.
In the words of missional leader Alan Roxborough,
“the most important question we must address is this:
In a world confronted with cascading catastrophes, what does it mean for God’s people to form communities of hope that offer to our world an alternative way of living? This is the leadership question we must address as God’s people or become irrelevant.”
We have a big shift to make. But I believe we have all the resources of grace available to us, AND I also believe that shift can happen when we make conversation and contemplation the foundation for our fellowship. That’s an alternative way of living. When we humbly listen to each other and appreciate each other’s learning journey, and when we humbly listen to God in scripture and in silence, that’s an alternative way of living – and we open a way for grace to move among us.
When John points out Jesus to two of his disciples and says, ‘here is the one you are looking for’, they leave John and follow Jesus. It’s not so much that Jesus calls them, but that they are already primed to follow. Jesus invites the two disciples to come and see where he lives, where he abides. And when they get there, the two abide with him, and then they bring others they already know, and whose hopes and longings they already know, to meet Jesus.
This is what God calls us to. To come and see and to abide. To be a community who live a different way, who are grounded in love, hope and peace, so that we reach beyond ourselves and touch the hopes and longings of those we meet.
So let’s talk, and let’s keep on talking and listening and praying together as we face into this year with courage and compassion.
