REBEKAH FULTON/SOJOURNERS
May 27, 2018 – Trinity Sunday: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
Last Thursday, I joined with over 1,000 other faith leaders in a packed church in Washington, DC, where we prayed, and heard prophetic witness to God’s love – the Holy Spirit was alive in that place! I want to share with you today, on Trinity Sunday, on this Memorial Day weekend when we remember those who gave their all for this country, some of the words of those prophets who preached that night. It is from a proclamation created by a group of clergy leaders from several denominations, including our own Presiding Bishop, in response to what is happening in our nation. On their website – reclaimingjesus.org, their message is called “a confession of faith in a time of crisis.” For brevity, I have edited it, and I urge you to read the full statement on the website.
They begin “We are living through perilous and polarizing times as a nation, with a dangerous crisis of moral and political leadership at the highest levels of our government and in our churches. We believe the soul of the nation and the integrity of faith are now at stake.
It is time to be followers of Jesus before anything else—nationality, political party, race, ethnicity, gender, geography—our identity in Christ precedes every other identity. We pray that our nation will see Jesus’ words in us. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
When politics undermines our theology, we must examine th[e] politics. […] [The] Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.”
[…] It is time to lament, confess, repent, and turn. In times of crisis, the church has historically learned to return to Jesus Christ.
Jesus is Lord. That is our foundational confession. It was central for the early church and needs to again become central to us. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar was not—nor any other political ruler since. If Jesus is Lord, no other authority is absolute. Jesus Christ, and the kingdom of God he announced, is the Christian’s first loyalty, above all others. We pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Our faith is personal but never private, meant not only for heaven but for this earth.
The question we face is this: Who is Jesus Christ for us today? What does our loyalty to Christ, as disciples, require at this moment in our history? We believe it is time to renew our theology of public discipleship and witness. […]
What we believe leads us to what we must reject. Our “Yes” is the foundation for our “No.” What we confess as our faith leads to what we confront. Therefore, we offer the following six affirmations of what we believe, and the resulting rejections of practices and policies by political leaders which dangerously corrode the soul of the nation and deeply threaten the public integrity of our faith. We pray that we, as followers of Jesus, will find the depth of faith to match the danger of our political crisis.
I. WE BELIEVE each human being is made in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:26). That image and likeness confers a divinely decreed dignity, worth, and God-given equality to all of us as children of the one God who is the Creator of all things. Racial bigotry is a brutal denial of the image of God (the imago dei) in some of the children of God. […]
THEREFORE, WE REJECT the resurgence of white nationalism and racism in our nation on many fronts, including the highest levels of political leadership. […] In the face of such bigotry, silence is complicity. […]. Racial bigotry must be antithetical for those belonging to the body of Christ, because it denies the truth of the gospel we profess.
II. WE BELIEVE we are one body. In Christ, there is to be no oppression based on race, gender, identity, or class (Galatians 3:28). The body of Christ, where those great human divisions are to be overcome, is meant to be an example for the rest of society. When we fail to overcome these oppressive obstacles, and even perpetuate them, we have failed in our vocation to the world—to proclaim and live the reconciling gospel of Christ.
THEREFORE, WE REJECT misogyny, the mistreatment, violent abuse, sexual harassment, and assault of women that has been further revealed in our culture and politics, including our churches[…]. We stand for the respect, protection, and affirmation of women in our families, communities, workplaces, politics, and churches. […] We confess sexism as a sin, requiring our repentance and resistance.
III. WE BELIEVE how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner is how we treat Christ himself. (Matthew 25: 31-46) […] God calls us to protect and seek justice for those who are poor and vulnerable, and our treatment of people who are “oppressed,” “strangers,” “outsiders,” or otherwise considered “marginal” is a test of our relationship to God, who made us all equal in divine dignity and love. […]
THEREFORE, WE REJECT the language and policies of political leaders who would debase and abandon the most vulnerable children of God. We strongly deplore the growing attacks on immigrants and refugees, who are being made into cultural and political targets, and we need to remind our churches that God makes the treatment of the “strangers” among us a test of faith (Leviticus 19:33-34). We won’t accept the neglect of the well-being of low-income families and children, and we will resist repeated attempts to deny health care to those who most need it. We confess our growing national sin of putting the rich over the poor. […] Protecting the poor is a central commitment of Christian discipleship, to which 2,000 verses in the Bible attest.
IV. WE BELIEVE that truth is morally central to our personal and public lives. Truth-telling is central to the prophetic biblical tradition[…] A commitment to speaking truth, the ninth commandment of the Decalogue, “You shall not bear false witness” (Exodus 20:16), is foundational to shared trust in society. […] The search and respect for truth is crucial to anyone who follows Christ.
THEREFORE, WE REJECT the practice and pattern of lying that is invading our political and civil life. Politicians, like the rest of us, are human, fallible, sinful, and mortal. But when public lying becomes so persistent that it deliberately tries to change facts for ideological, political, or personal gain, the public accountability to truth is undermined. […] The normalization of lying presents a profound moral danger to the fabric of society. In the face of lies that bring darkness, Jesus is our truth and our light.
V. WE BELIEVE that Christ’s way of leadership is servanthood, not domination. […] (Matthew 20:25-26). We believe our elected officials are called to public service, not public tyranny, so we must protect the limits, checks, and balances of democracy and encourage humility and civility on the part of elected officials. We support democracy, not because we believe in human perfection, but because we do not. […]
THEREFORE, WE REJECT any moves toward autocratic political leadership and authoritarian rule. We believe authoritarian political leadership is a theological danger that threatens democracy and the common good—and we will resist it. […]
VI. WE BELIEVE Jesus when he tells us to go into all nations making disciples (Matthew 28:18). Our churches and our nations are part of an international community whose interests always surpass national boundaries. The most well-known verse in the New Testament starts with “For God so loved the world” (John 3:16). We, in turn, should love and serve the world and all its inhabitants, rather than seek first narrow, nationalistic prerogatives.
THEREFORE, WE REJECT “America first” as a theological heresy for followers of Christ. While we share a patriotic love for our country, we reject xenophobic or ethnic nationalism that places one nation over others as a political goal. We reject domination rather than stewardship of the earth’s resources, toward genuine global development that brings human flourishing for all of God’s children. Serving our own communities is essential, but the global connections between us are undeniable. Global poverty, environmental damage, violent conflict, weapons of mass destruction, and deadly diseases in some places ultimately affect all places […].
WE ARE DEEPLY CONCERNED for the soul of our nation, but also for our churches and the integrity of our faith. The present crisis calls us to go deeper—deeper into our relationship to God; deeper into our relationships with each other, especially across racial, ethnic, and national lines; deeper into our relationships with the most vulnerable, who are at greatest risk.”[1]
Yes, we must go deeper – deeper into relationship.
We are made in God’s image. We are the body of Christ. We are baptized in the Holy Spirit. We are Trinitarian beings ourselves. That is who we are – a relational people – because we are the children of God – the God whose very essence is relational – Creator, Christ, Holy Spirit in the dance of infinite love and light. And right now, the country and the world is battling darkness and a breakdown of all that holds us together.
These leaders of the Reclaiming Jesus confession are right – we are living in a moral crisis in the spheres of power – economic, political, and social – and it is creating a systemic breakdown in the web of humanity. Our relationship with one another, with God’s creation, is frayed, even broken. The world is growing cold and dark in the wake of what is happening. We must go deeper into relationship!
This prophetic witness by our faith leaders to reclaim Jesus is really a clarion call to right relationship – to a return to who we are – a people of God created in God’s image – born for our own Trinitarian relationship – with God, with our neighbor, with our selves. Relationship is not a passive thing – it requires investment of our time, our emotion, our bodies, our spirit. And if there was ever a time in the life of our nation, our world, our faith, when we needed to not only reclaim Jesus, but allow Him to reclaim us – it is now!
That is why we, those who were there this week, didn’t just speak and hear words inside the walls of that church. Had we done that, it would have been as empty as an “I love you” would be if given as the only sign of love ever shown to another. The truth is – we were so filled with the Spirit of God’s love, that a call to action would have been impossible to ignore. So as planned, we took that message out into the streets, and to the very seat of power in our country – the White House. We brought our light – the light of Christ burning inside of us and symbolized with candles – out into the streets to proclaim that God’s love is more powerful than hate, the light of Christ is more powerful than darkness, and there is nothing that can ever extinguish the life giving breath of the Holy Spirit.
Let us not let these words, or this march, be the last our world hears from us. On this Trinity Sunday, on this Memorial Day, let us commit ourselves to relationship with God, with one another, with ourselves. Let us restore right relationship in our hearts, in our neighborhoods, in our nation, and in all of God’s earth. Let us reclaim Jesus in word and deed – by the power of the Holy Spirit, and by the grace of God.
Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast, or click here:
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
May 27, 2018
The First Sunday After Pentecost – Trinity Sunday
1st Reading – Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
2nd Reading –Romans 8:22-27
Gospel – John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
