GOD S FACEBOOK Sermon by Paul R. Powell St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans Sunday August 18, 2013 You may have noticed that I ve dropped a few pounds, or at least that my suits are fitting a bit better. Perhaps you would also like to know that I have a new iphone4 and a new car, both of which are smarter than I am. Of course, losing weight, getting a new phone and a new car can only mean one thing I m having a mid-life crisis and an affair. To all of these rumors, I say Thank You! My reputation has been greatly enhanced. This means that if I am having a mid-life crisis at age 71, then I should live to be around 140. As to having an affair: that would only decrease my life expectancy. All silliness aside, my sermons are posted on the church s website and therefore are accessible to anyone who might be interested. They are out there and can be interpreted and misinterpreted, including the nonsense I just mentioned. That s just one small example of how modern media has pretty much eliminated any sense of localness or privacy. We live in a global environment and we might just as well get used to it. I don t do Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or any of the newer forms of social media not because of any sort of fear concerning privacy, but just because I don t see the need to use them. Technology allows those who wish to use them a way to stay connected with others, but I for one just don t want all of that connectedness. My friends and family get phone calls and visits, my acquaintances get emails, and I m pretty much content with that. Just because I can do something doesn t mean I need to do so or even want to do so. I heard someone remark recently that by the time a college student majoring in information technology graduates, almost everything learned in the first two years will be completely outdated. For those of us of a certain age, that is mind-boggling and as you get older the learning curve for new things becomes increasingly challenging. You ve probably already guessed where this is going or could go. But you wonder what God would say and do if SHE had a Facebook or Twitter account. How would God s connection with us be different? And what if 1
God were being called as Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Alligator Heights but had said something inappropriate in a Tweet? Well, let me tell you folks, God does have a Facebook it s called the Bible! And what would our lives, our church be like if we spent as much face time with God and God s Word as we do frittering away our lives with trying desperately to stay connected with everyone else? Well now, I m just getting downright nosy. The Bible, this book to which we turn for spiritual guidance, is full of wonderful stories of how God has connected with humans from the beginning of time. It is also full of stories of God s people who don t always act like God s people, who often fail in their attempts to live holy lives, who take God s love and pound people into all sorts of un-loving ideas and actions. The Bible is useless if folks only look at the Thou shalt nots without ever coming around to the You shalls. Christians so often use the Bible to extract submission from the unwilling rather than using it to open the possibilities of what the love of God and God s people can mean to those who are unloved and marginalized. Miguel De La Torre is a New York born Cuban American who converted from Catholicism to Baptist and now teaches religion at Hope College in Michigan. He has written a wonderful little book Reading the Bible from the Margins (Orbis Books, c2002) in which he attempts to show how standard readings of the Bible are not always acceptable to people or groups on the margins. The poor and those who are targets of discrimination because of their ethnic group or gender may have quite different insights and understandings of biblical texts that can be of value to all readers of the Bible. De La Torre says that there are four related themes about God which inform all of us about the way marginalized groups read biblical texts. Exodus: God the Liberator The marginalized or oppressed might read the Exodus story as revealing God the Liberator who actively entered history to side with the oppressed Hebrew slaves of Egypt and lead them personally toward the promised land of their liberation. God s movement to liberate these Hebrew slaves 2
was a political action with political consequences, namely the socioeconomic situation of Egypt. It was the beginning of the construction of a just and fraternal society, the suppression of disorder and the creation of a new order. Salvation was no longer limited to the soul in the afterlife but rather salvation encompassed liberation from the misery caused by the oppressive political structures that privileged the Egyptians. But there s more to the story than political struggles. God chose these lowly Hebrews so as to tie God s will with the liberation of a politically and socially oppressed people. The Hebrews were offered liberation for the purpose of revealing God s love and liberation to all peoples. Amos: God the Seeker of Justice Almost all of the Old Testament prophets had a singular emphasis in the connections they made between the judgment of God and the Hebrews treatment of those who were most marginalized the widows, the orphans, and the aliens, that is, those who were not Hebrews. Isaiah demanded that the sinful nation seek justice, reprove the oppressor, advocate for the orphan, contend for the widow and Jeremiah states that the reason God s punishment was falling upon the House of Jacob was because they had become powerful and rich but ignored evil deeds, did not plead for the cause of the orphan nor the poor. Ezekiel said that the people of the land have used oppression and practiced robbery; they have troubled the poor and have oppressed the alien denying them justice. Perhaps Amos puts it most bluntly when he speaks for God: I hate, I reject your feast days, and I will not delight in your festive assemblies. Even if you offer up to me burnt offerings or food offerings, I will not be pleased. I will not look upon your peace offerings of fattened animals. Take away from me the sound of your songs, and the melody of your harps, I will not hear them. Instead let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing torrent (5:21-24). God not only calls for justice but stands against the oppressors, even if they are Jews and members of the chosen people. For those who refuse to 3
establish justice, God swears not to side with them. But let us not forget that judgment on God s people is always accompanied by hope. The Gospels: God the Doer The Gospels give us a picture of God as the Doer, one who acts. The Greek word logos usually translated as Word in John takes on an entirely different meaning when translated into Spanish as Verb: In the beginning was the Verb, and the Verb was with God, and the Verb was God. De La Torre points out that rather than portraying a static noun an action word Verb is used to remind the reader of the importance of faith as action. John goes on to point out that All things through him (the Verb) came into being, and without him, not even one thing came into being. Stated just a little differently, when we read the Bible, we do not read a book; rather we are confronted with the action of either obedience or disobedience to Jesus Christ as presented to us through the Gospels. The Bible calls us to actions that seek the abundant life for all of God s creation. Acts and Paul s Letters: God the Subverter Acts and the letters of Paul provide an excellent example of God as the subverter of any religiosity that fails to consider seriously racism, classism, and sexism. You may remember Paul s Macedonian call. In a vision, Paul hears a man beseeching him to come over to Macedonia and help them. This delayed Paul s call to evangelize the world, but it also sidetracked his vision of an all-male ministry. Paul sought out a group of men to begin his ministry, but instead found a bunch of women. As De La Torre points out, the Torah, God s Word, was not for women according to tradition. Yet it was Paul who would eventually say that in Christ there is neither male nor female. Paul was forced to give up his traditions and concepts of the divine in order to begin his ministry. So, he speaks to the women and one of the converts, Lydia, was the founder of the church at Phillipi. Another Baptist minister, a woman pastoring in the Bronx, puts it very clearly and forcefully when she says that the church is being converted even as it seeks to win converts. So it is that those of us at the centers of power and privilege ask those on the margins to change, to conform, to assimilate to the way we do religion. 4
However, the God of Acts and the Epistles of Paul subverts this selfimposed religious superiority. Some passages in the epistles relegate women to a secondary place in the church, but Paul learns from God that all of God s children are precious and valued co-laborers in defending the work of the Christ, in starting churches, and in leadership positions. And Paul was most certainly familiar with the sign of the new church as proclaimed by Peter in Acts 2:17: In the last days, says God, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters will prophesy, or literally translated preach by proclaiming God s word to God s people so that the body of believers know what is required of them. Paul knew of women who served as church starters, as teachers, as preachers, as church elders, as deacons, as pastors and as bishops. It was not until the third and fourth centuries that opponents of women clergy succeeded in imposing the prevalent sexism of the secular culture on the church s structures. And it is the same old song and dance routine right up until the present age. In the past few days I have tried my best to wrap my brain and heart around certain things that have been said about the leadership, finances and vision of our church as we continue to search for a new pastor. It disturbs me as I hope it does you that we are in this position again. It concerns me that our finances are not as good as they should be, it bewilders me as to why we are not unified in our desire to revitalize our church, but most of all it saddens me that after all this time and all these challenges and all the good efforts of so many among us that we continue to act more out of fear than out of faith. What will it take to convert us into a church more concerned with mission than with maintenance, more concerned with justice than with just hanging on, more committed to serving the needy than massaging our fragile egos, more pained by the abuses of a society filled with mean-spirited idealogues than in supporting the struggles of those whose only desire is to live, and work and raise their families among people who are committed to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? COME, LORD JESUS, AND SAVE US FROM OURSELVES: OUR TRUST IS IN YOU. AMEN. 5