In the world not of the world

 

Reflection Sunday 30^th August 2020 – Romans 12: 9 – 21

 

The Church, the body of Christ, has been referred to as being “called out” of the world as a community “set apart” for a distinct mission to the world. We are in the world but not of the world. But this raises some questions? Why are we different? What is distinctive about the Church? How can we be in the world but not part of the world? And if we are apart from the world, what is our stance in relation to the world?

These have been questions for the Church since its very beginning. And certainly, it was a real issue for the Church in Rome Paul is writing to.

How the Church relates to the surrounding world determines how the Church’s identity and character is formed. The early Church saw itself as very much set apart from many of the values of the Roman Empire. The early Church wrestled with how to stand in contrast to the privilege, power, influence, and affluence of Rome.  The early Church was very aware of how to live differently as defined by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. A Jesus who had been killed by the authority of Rome and yet who showed himself more powerful than Rome through his resurrection.

The challenge for the Church has always been not to be sucked into conformity with the ways of the world. When the church has been faced with the overwhelming power of a mighty Empire or government, it has been very difficult not to conform. For example, in Nazi Germany, significant number of Protestants joined the National Church – a Nazi initiative. (A significant minority including Dietrich Bonhoeffer – formed the Confessing Church, in opposition to Nazi ideology.)

But we shouldn’t assume that it is just in times of oppression that the Church can conform to the world. Conformity to the ways of the world is just as much a temptation when the surrounding world seems benign and presents itself as a patron of the values that Christian communities emulate.

And this I fear is where the Church in most of the affluent Western world finds itself today. The Church has influenced much of the society around itself. But society has taken the nice easy bits and chosen to ignore the harder aspects of faith. With genuine respect to our Anglican friends, they in practice find themselves in the cosy position through 600 years of history, of being the State Church. And for much of that time they undoubtedly had some truly Christian influence. But now the world has moved on and the world sees them (and all Christians in this country) as an irrelevance.

But it is not just an Anglican issue. The Methodist Church at one time punched above its weight in advocating the Christian message on the wider stage. But like many others, we’ve become so comfortable with the world that we’ve lost our identity as an alternative community.  Driven by the desire for relevance, and seduced by what Eleazar S. Fernandez in “Feasting on the Word” calls the 3 Bs (Buildings, Budget and Bodies [members]) we’ve ended up being comfortable with the world around us rather than standing in opposition to it where necessary.

In the part of his letter to the Romans we are thinking about today, Paul is reminding the fledgling Church in Rome of the values they need to adopt to make the Church there distinct from the world around. It is a long list – though all the things Paul espouses are founded on love

⁹ Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. ¹⁰ Be devoted to one another in love. Romans 12: 9 – 10

What Paul goes on to say is a radical agenda for a Church faced with real hardship and oppression.

¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.

¹⁷ Do not repay anyone evil for evil… ¹⁸ … live at peace with everyone. ¹⁹ Do not take revenge…. ²⁰ On the contrary:

‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
    if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

²¹ Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.

We who live in the power of Christ embody virtues and practices that promote life giving relations. We are called “to engage a way of being and acting that seeks to embody genuine love, mutual regard, humility, solidarity, peace and harmony. It is a way of being and acting that cares not only for members of the faith community but also wider society, particularly strangers in our midst.” Eleazer S. Fernandez

Over recent weeks, the news has carried reports of refugees trying to reach this country in small boats from France. Some of the newspapers, stoked by some of our politicians (or vice versa?) have condemned these people.

I am not telling you what to think about the issue. But I ask you to reflect on what Paul is saying in this passage. To me Paul’s words remind us what we as the community of faith should be thinking, doing, and saying in contrast to the world. We should we part of welcoming the stranger. But we should also be part of the solution. Seeking peace. Seeking solutions to the causes that make people leave their homelands.

The world around us won’t want to hear this message. Such a message doesn’t get the votes, doesn’t sell the newspapers. But it is the message Christ wants us to bring to our troubled world.

 

Refugees should be welcome here.

In the weeks leading up to our holiday whenever I told people where we were going – France – inevitably the comment that followed was “I hope you’re not going via Calais”. We didn’t go via Calais as it happened. We went from Poole to Cherbourg. But that comment “I hope you’re not going via Calais” of course said something about people’s thoughts about the refugees there seeking to get in to Britain.

And I have to be honest, I was relieved that we weren’t going via Calais. Though I’ve been asking myself the question was I relieved because I didn’t want to see what was happening there? Or was it simply because I didn’t want my holiday to be disrupted? And do you know, being honest I think it was down to my holiday plans as much as anything. How selfish is that?

Last Monday morning – as I always do – I looked at the Bible readings for this Sunday. One from James Chapter 2 caught my attention.

It starts off with a short illustration:

2 My friends, if you have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, you won’t treat some people better than others. 2 Suppose a rich person wearing fancy clothes and a gold ring comes to one of your meetings. And suppose a poor person dressed in worn-out clothes also comes. 3 You must not give the best seat to the one in fancy clothes and tell the one who is poor to stand at the side or sit on the floor. 4 That is the same as saying that some people are better than others, and you would be acting like a crooked judge. James 2: 1 – 4 Contemporary English Version

What an image this portrays.

James is writing to the early church in Jerusalem. In fact many Biblical scholars believe that James – who is thought to be one of Jesus’ brothers- was writing to the earliest church. And he is writing 10 or 20 years after Jesus’ death.

Clearly he is writing to address a problem within the church – the preference that is shown to rich people at the expense of the poor. In other words James is addressing those who claim to profess the faith of Jesus but do not live up to it. And he is reminding those in the church in Jerusalem – and reminds us today- that preference for the rich rather than the poor is a betrayal of God’s law, the law of love.

It is not clear whether James’ story of a poor person and a rich person entering the church is real or something he uses to illustrate his point. And it is not clear whether they are meant to be actual members of the church.

But the behaviour described in James’ story isn’t just confined to a first century church. It is typical of human behaviour on so many occasions. All so often the rich and prosperous – especially if they are well dressed and have the outward trappings of wealth – are welcomed in and the poor are excluded.

As I was writing this I remembered a film called “Pretty Woman”. If you’ve not seen it, it is a story of how a very wealthy man falls in love with a prostitute – Vivian Ward. He saves her from the gutter as it were and then they live happily ever after. In one scene, after they have just met, he decides that if Vivian is to be his companion she needs to dress more smartly. So he gives her his credit card and sends her off to some exclusive shops.

However, when Vivian walks in to one shop in her scruffy jeans and t shirt, the swanky shop assistant refuses to serve her kind. Vivian is served in another shop and she returns – beautifully dressed – to the first shop to point out the costly mistake of the shop assistant.

But that is how people often are. Societies all too often treat the rich with worldly honour; meanwhile the poor are addressed with scorn and degradation. We welcome the rich in and exclude the poor.

And James, 2000 years ago was able to identify this going on even then. Even in the early church.

But James pulls no punches in telling those in the early church who favour the rich over the poor that they have done wrong.

5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? James 2:5

These words echo Jesus’ teachings in the beatitudes;

Matthew 5:3New International Version - UK (NIVUK)

3 ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Or as Luke 6:20New International Version - UK (NIVUK)

20 Looking at his disciples, Jesus said:
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.

James is reminding the early church and he reminds us that God has chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in respect of faith. God has promised that the poor are the heirs of his kingdom. The view of society – that the rich should be honoured – is completely at odds with the preaching and teaching of Jesus. Jesus says that the poor have a place of honour since the poor have been honoured by God.

And James reminds the people of the church in Jerusalem that there is a royal law. And that royal law is “Love your neighbour as yourself”

8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself,’[a] you are doing right.

Christianity has always had a special message for the poor. After all, in Jesus’ first sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth he said “He has sent me to preach Good News to the poor.” The Christian message has consistently been that those who matter to no one else matter immensely to God.

As the great New Testament scholar William Barclay once said

“It is not that Christ and the Church do not want the great and the rich and the wise and the mighty. But it is the simple fact that the Gospel offers so much to the poor and demands so much from the rich (and that where the church has grown it is because) the poor have been swept into church”

So often we in church are concerned about dwindling numbers. There are many reasons for the decline. But I cannot help feeling at times that one reason is that what the church says goes so far against the values of the world.

When we have a society that idolises the rich and encourages wealth – seemingly at any cost – then our message:

‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
And

‘Love your neighbour as yourself,’

Falls on deaf ears. But our message is truth. And we must keep proclaiming it. And in our own society when we are all rich when compared to most of the world then people think they don’t need the Gospel.

However we as Christians need to challenge the world. We need to keep proclaiming that:

‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
And

‘Love your neighbour as yourself,’


And that means we as Christians must be the voices for those who have no voice. We have to speak out against the injustice of the refugees at Calais and elsewhere in Europe. We have a duty to mourn for the Syrian toddler Aylan al Khurdi found drowned on a Turkish beach. We have a duty to mourn for all refugees.

I use the word refugee. Sometimes the press talk about “Migrants”. Sometimes about “Asylum seekers”. And those terms have taken on a negative image in the press. But do you know what first and foremost these are people. They are human beings.

The 70 refugees found dead in the lorry in Austria were people. Poor, desperate people. That poor little boy Aylan al Khurdi found drowned on a Turkish beach.

Maybe if we started to think of those in Calais or those clinging to flimsy boats as people our attitudes would change? Maybe if we knew their names, their faces, their ambitions and their fears, their loves, what they fled then we’d begin to think of them as our neighbours? Maybe we’d challenge our politicians. Maybe we’d try to help them in some way? And maybe we’d be prepared to offer them sanctuary and help instead of rejection?

2 My friends, if you have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, you won’t treat some people better than others. 2 Suppose a rich person wearing fancy clothes and a gold ring comes to one of your meetings. And suppose a poor person dressed in worn-out clothes also comes. 3 You must not give the best seat to the one in fancy clothes and tell the one who is poor to stand at the side or sit on the floor. 4 That is the same as saying that some people are better than others, and you would be acting like a crooked judge.