The Fellowship of Forgiven Sinners

Transcription

1 George A. Mason 2 nd Sunday of Easter Wilshire Baptist Church 8 April 2018 First in a series, The Beloved Community Dallas, Texas The Fellowship of Forgiven Sinners 1 John 1:1-2:2 Fifty years ago this week, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered by a rifle shot to the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. We ve heard a lot this week about Dr. King, and rightfully so. He was a prophet to America about the pernicious and persistent problems of racism, materialism and militarism. Prophets speak dangerous truths, and they are better regarded after they re gone than when they were with us. As much as his message of nonviolent love should have struck home with all people of goodwill, King was maligned and discredited by many in his day incredibly, blacks as well as whites, powerless as well as powerful, the church as well as the world. This past week, The Dallas Morning News published snippets from some of us in the community. We were asked to cite something King said or wrote that inspired us. For me it was the moment in 1956, the year of my birth, when he almost gave up. He had been receiving death threats from racists and told to leave Montgomery. He was sitting in his kitchen late one night drinking a cup of tea, pouring his heart out to God in a moment that must have felt to him like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed to let the cup of suffering pass from him, but not my will but thine be done. Somehow, King said, he felt he heard a voice saying to him: Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever. 1 God is on the side of justice and truth, and God sides with those who side with justice and truth. There can be no peace as long as injustice and lies continue to tear apart the fabric of a society. King wasn t just a critic though, he was a visionary. He saw what was right, he described it, he longed for it. And what he envisioned is what he called over and over again in speeches and sermons and books: the beloved 1

2 community. To some who disagreed with his nonviolent approach, King said: Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the fight with fire method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. And then again to supporters: There is another element that must be present in our struggle that then makes our resistance and nonviolence truly meaningful. That element is reconciliation. Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community. 2 That idea, the beloved community where did King get that? The Epistle of First John would be a good place to look for it. It s buried in this passage in the first chapter four times, because the word for beloved community is translated fellowship. First John talks about how the apostles had seen and heard and touched with their own hands the one who was 2 g/bcquotes.html himself the word of life Jesus Christ. They declared what they experienced, so that others might have fellowship with them, a fellowship that is also a fellowship with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. The word John uses in the Greek language is koinonia. My predecessor, Bruce McIver, loved the word. It s a good Baptist word. It can be translated partnership, fellowship or community. The idea is captured in the little ditty about how to understand the word fellowship: just think all the fellows in the ship. In other words, when we are talking about fellowship, we re all in the same boat. We will sail together or sink together, but we will be together. G. K. Chesterton said it this way: We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty. 3 King put it similarly: In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever 3 -we-men-and-women-are-all-in-the-sameboat 2

3 affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be... 4 King s notion of the beloved community extended to the whole world. And that s appropriate, because we should never want something for ourselves that we don t want also for our neighbor. We shouldn t have double vision, the way some do today some who are even pastors and religious leaders in our country. They claim one thing is for the church and another thing for the rest of the world. The church, they say, is called to be a community that practices love and reconciliation, but we shouldn t want that for our country as a whole. We should want the country to function on a different basis, employing violence to advance our goals, punishing outsiders and wrongdoers without mercy, and protecting the rights of those who use tactics of hate and intimidation to protect privilege. That is unseemly and unsaintly. It divides Christ up into who he s for and who he s against, when, as First John says, Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. Christians can never be content to build a beloved community for themselves that they won t extend to the whole world. On the other hand, if we don t build a beloved community as the church, the world will have nothing to emulate. The church is the test case, the model, the pilot project to which the world should be able to look to see an alternative way of living in the world. If the world is ever to become a beloved community, the church will have to teach it how by being that itself right in the midst of the world. So, what is entailed in the church becoming that kind of beloved community, or as First John puts it, a fellowship? First, we must live together and worship together and confess our faith together as human beings called together by God s inclusive love through the fully human man who is our savior, Jesus Christ in-a-real-sense-all-life-is-inter-related-allmen 3

4 Look, every book of the Bible is written to address someone in particular and you can only understand a passage if you understand who it was written for and why. First John was written to reinforce the fact that God actually did come in the flesh as the human one, Jesus of Nazareth. The ancient theologian Gregory of Nazianzus, said it right: What is not assumed is not healed. That is, if Christ did not take on the mess of our flesh, we would still be in the mess of our sins. Not everyone believes in such a messy religion, though. First John is addressing people who thought true religion is such a spiritual matter that it can t touch matter. Jesus appeared to be human, but he was only divine. He brought a message of how to escape the flesh by learning secret truths about light and life. Theirs was an elitist faith that separated people into the knowing and the unknowing. First John is saying that any faith that separates people from others isn t Christian faith. This tendency is still among us. We have people today who call themselves Christians but think they are too cool for (Sunday) school. That is, they are too spiritual for fellowship with a church of sinners. They usually wouldn t say it that way. It s more like not wanting to be among people they don t agree with. They define holiness as purity, and separateness is a strategy to maintain purity. The church in America is getting smaller and smaller, because more and more Christians avoid church attendance or involvement in it because they have some complaint with its imperfections. If you meet them for lunch, though, they will pray before a meal. They will tout Bible verses on social media. But you won t find them in the pews on most Sundays, because they seem to know better or think they are better than run of the mill sinners in the pew. First John makes it hard to claim you can have fellowship with God if you separate yourself from the fellowship of sinners. The beloved community is a fellowship of sinners. It can t be anything else, since Jesus came in the flesh to atone for our sins. If you aren t in relationship to the church as a fellowship of sinners, you are actually denying that Christ needed to die for sinners. And, in fact, that s what happens 4

5 when you don t think you need forgiveness for anything. Asking forgiveness is to some a sign of weakness. They would rather carry the weight of the world on their shoulders than to confess their need for help. In New York City you can find an enormous statue outside of Rockefeller Center of Atlas holding up the world on his bent back. It s a favorite spot for Instagram shots, don t you know?! The Greek god Atlas was punished by Zeus for his participation in the losing revolt of the Titans against the Olympians. He was forced to hold up the sky for all eternity; but over time he came to be represented as holding up the universe by sheer force of physical strength. There are many who still tout their own self-reliance, their own goodness and achievement and consider the church to be a place for losers. And in a way, they re right, because sooner or later the world will be too heavy for us to carry, our sins will weigh us down and carry us to ruin. Right across the street from the statue of Atlas, grimacing in pain as he tries to hold up the world, is St. Patrick s Cathedral. Inside that grand church, you will find a small chapel with the statue of the boy Jesus with his right hand holding up his fingers in the traditional greeting of peace and a small globe in his left hand. The boy Jesus is holding the whole world in his hand with ease. This is the thing to remember as we consider the church as the beloved community. We are only a fellowship of Christ if we are a fellowship of sinners, but we can only be that if we know ourselves as sinners forgiven by Christ. When we do, we lose all selfrighteousness. We lose the attitude. And we can then more easily forgive others. Three days after Dr. King s kitchen table epiphany, the front porch of his house was bombed. His wife and children were okay, but he returned from a meeting to find a mob of angry black men ready to take up arms. Here s what he told them: Don t get panicky. Don t do anything panicky. Don t get your weapons. If you have weapons, take them home. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember that is what Jesus said. We are not advocating 5

6 violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love. 5 If you think racial tension in this country is still thick, try to imagine the last fifty years without the example of King. When the church knows itself to be a fellowship of forgiven sinners, it has the moral power to forgive others. And when it does, the beloved community comes into better view. Amen. 5 g/entry/january martin-luther-king- jrs-home-bombed-in-montgomery-alabama- today-in-crime-history 6