On this last Sunday in April 2008, with our world, our nation arguably not all that much better since the last Sunday in April last year, for all of our Christian work and witness, with the war in Iraq still grinding on with its continuing toll of human life, and thousands of refugees fleeing to neighboring countries, with America’s moral capital in the world in diminishing supply, and truth comes by hard times, with a world in which religion is used for partisan purposes, i.e., messianic pretenders abroad, and messianic pretenders at home; a world in which big decisions are made by people who seem to live in a different moral universe, a world with its competing ideas about God, truth, justice, and basic human values; with more Muslims living in America than Episcopalians and Presbyterians combined; with all of this and more, we Christians have suddenly discovered that we are a minority people living in a pluralistic world (a world not unlike the early Christian church in the first century), a world like unto which I didn’t grow up in, but a world that you and I are living in now. Things are just different, certainly not the way they used to be.

One of our army’s senior medical officers visited an army hospital somewhere near Baghdad. In one of the wards he saw in a crib a 2 month old Iraq infant who had been wounded by shrapnel. Turning to those with him, and Tom Friedman tells this story: “There isn’t a two month old on the planet who knows how to hate anybody. It’s all taught.”

The late Carlyle Marney of Charlotte explained it this way: wherever you find discord, sin, corruption, hate, evil, meanness, you find human beings – just like you and me. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

We don’t respond, as we used to, to the clear moral markers that we once depended upon for knowing who we are, what we ought to be about doing – justice, civility, integrity, honesty, decency, etc. Did I mention decency?

Ted Koppel of TV news in a commencement address made some interesting comments. “Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach. What Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai are not the ten suggestions. They are commandments. Are, not were. The tension between the 10 commandments and our basic instincts provides the grist for our daily mill. What a gaping void there would be in our entertainment industry without their routine violations of the 5th through the 10th commandments.

Michael Gerson uses the phrase “moral emptiness.” Someone else talks about our “bankrupt ethics.” A TV preacher quoted the Bible to explain how we got into the mess we’re in: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But, sin comes in all kinds of sizes and shapes. Growing up in the Middle West in a Presbyterian minister’s home, there were certain things not allowed on Sunday. You couldn’t go to the movies, play baseball, go swimming, etc. lest you sin. Recalling those days with some envy, I thought my buddies had a lot of fun sinning on Sunday.

But, how come this mess we’re in? Let’s cut to the bone. For our conversation today, no one has spelled out what sin means in specific more than Mohatma Gandhi. He drew up a list of seven deadly sins, comparable to the seven deadly sins of the medieval monks:

1. Politics without principle.
2. Wealth without work.
3. Commerce without morality.
4. Pleasure without conscience
5. Education without character
6. Science without humanity.
7. Worship without sacrifice

Gandhi’s grandson added an 8th deadly sin: rights without responsibility. This list describes our sin, which has become a way of life, a life style, if you please.

Now, how does one deal with this life style? Dante’s “Inferno,” his story of the nature and population of hell, speaks to the question. He writes about the “city of woes” made up of those whose lives were filled with whatever they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it. They were spectators to this life style. They devoted their lives to the pursuit of happiness. They were all “nice people,” ones who never made a fuss. They never took a stand for much of anything, or risked anything. They never looked at their lives, never felt the need to. They were propelled by the forces around them. They sort of “went with the flow.” It was samo-samo. The medieval monks dubbed this sin – apathy, I don’t care.

Now, the church has something very specific to say about this life style! Not happy talk, or spin, or smoke and mirrors, not disconnects from reality which have become the highest of art forms. The church suggests a place where we can begin. It begins with each one of us, as WE, the church, recapture that great Gospel of ours, and go into the world and proclaim this Gospel, fix things that need fixing, do things that need doing, fuss at things that need to be fussed at

This is nothing new. It has been this way from the very beginning. If things were not going Christianly, if God’s creation was being used or abused, we, the church, would change things by interruption, by intervention, by turning things upside down. The Gospel mandate is clear: we are to go into this world. That’s what Jesus said we are to do – PERIOD1

And, what is this church that goes into the world, this church that we are? The church is a gathering of folks just like us, where people have been and can be changed, transformed. Church, this crowd, this gathering of people is where Christ turns the water into wine. This church, this gathering of people, is people saying “yes” when God calls, and “yes” to one another. Church, this meeting of folks, is where we learned that God’s mercy, his love, his grace, is broader than our sin is deep. It was church that taught us that marriage is a covenant, and not an arrangement. It is church that accepts us, even though we are unacceptable, even though we cannot accept ourselves.

Now, what is this church that is to go into the world? It is church that gives us eyes to see with, the words that flavor our language, the mind that helps us rightly to divide the word of truth. It is church, this gathering of folks like us, that gives us what we need to understand what happens to us, and what is happening in the world around us. Church gives us a place where we can love, where we can weep, where we can continue to think critically and live faithfully. It was in church that we learned that Jesus was an orthodox Jew, and it was this crowd of Christians, this gathering of folks here, who taught me that Jesus was not born in Fairfax, or on Capitol Hill, or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Church is this gathering of people that we all are, where, as the spiritual sings it, lay down our burdens, dump our unresolved guilt, and all the other stuff that we drag around with us all day long, and where we, as the priests that each one of us is, has been given the gift to forgive others, in the very same way that God has first forgiven us. Martin Luther coined the phrase: “priesthood of all believers.”

All of this – and more – gives us, this crowd of people here, the resources, the power when it is sent into the world, as Christ mandates: YOU go into the world and proclaim this great Gospel of ours.

Now, what about this world that you and I are to go into and proclaim this Gospel? The world is that place that can get very ugly – because of people. It’s a world, as Lord Acton said, where power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And you can see this power in action – in politics, in education, and, yes, even in church.

It’s that world where Iran, Iraq, and North Korea are called the “axis of evil,” even though, as Bill Coffin said, humanity suffers infinitely more from pandemic poverty, environmental degradation, and a world awash in weapons.

What is this world into which we preach this great Gospel of ours? It’s that world where the poor go to public clinics, because they have no coverage to go anywhere else.
It’s a world in which public discourse has become adversarial and dysfunctional. It’s that place where the trust level with which we view our elected officials is at an all time low.

It’s a world, as for trying to understand it, we are too busy being amused and following the adventures of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and other celebrities.

It’s a world with a church where, as the numbers show, those who are charged with preaching Jesus’ explosive message have made it banal, boring, as compelling as a CEO’s annual report to his stockholders. And as a result of all this, as Karen Armstrong maintains, an increasing number of people are finding traditional doctrines and practices irrelevant, and turn to art, music, dance, literature, sports to give them the transcendent experiences human beings seem to require. It’s a world where according to a recent United Nations report, about 300,000 children under the age of 18, including some of elementary age, are currently serving as soldiers in countries, many of which are in the 3rd world, and many of them receive military assistance from the USA. Amnesty International, World Vision, and Human Rights Watch give their support to commanders who do not want US troops to confront the spectacle of an armed child in a combat situation.

And yet, the world is that place that God loved so much that he gave his only Son. And, it’s in this very world that God wants us to be, where he wants us to live, and into which he wants us to preach this special Gospel of ours. As Craig Carter writes, “There is enough bad news in the world already. Let’s get on with the task of sharing the Good News – a way that involves serving others, rather than dominating them, controlling them, exploiting them, manipulating them.” According to God’s mandate, it’s a world into which each one of us has a vocation into which we have been called by God, a special work to do, a critical labor in the world that God loves so much.

At this point, you may be constrained to say, “right on, preacher. I hear what you say, and I’m with you most of the way.” ”But, tell me, to get involved in the kind of work you have spelled here is a real load. I don’t have the skills, the special gifts, the wherewithal to be effective. I’m just a poor lil’ old me. Who am I to do any of this? I come to church on Sunday, sit in my pew, sing the hymns, hear the word of God read and preached, and go home after benediction.

Who am I, you ask? I’ll tell you who you are. You are a child of God, his very special singular creation, who has been put on this earth for a purpose, for a reason, a purpose or reason not yet discovered means there’s a lot of catching up to do. As someone put it, “God don’t make no junk!’ Jesus said you are the salt of the earth. Let me illustrate what I’m trying to say.

In the early chapters of Exodus is the story of two Hebrew midwives, living in Egypt, with its patriarchal culture, where women were not more than mere chattel. These two women refused to carry out Pharaoh’s death sentence on all newly born Hebrew male babies, aiding by their defiance the birth of the Hebrew nation, as they hid the infant Moses along the banks of the Nile River. In parsing this story down to the last sentence, you can make a case for the fact that these two Hebrew midwives, chattel though they were, are responsible for each one of us being here today. There’s little excuse for anybody – not any more!

A generation later, this is Moses interrupting Pharaoh’s palace calm by saying. “Let my people go!” How’s that for religion getting into politics?

This is the prophet Elijah putting his finger on Ahab’s corrupt palace regime. In particular, this is Obadiah, a bureaucrat in Ahab’s court, who gave shelter to the prophets of Israel from a murderous rampage instigated by Ahab. This is John the Baptist blowing the whistle on Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee: “It is illegal for you to be married to your brother’s wife.” This is Jesus laying down the gauntlet in the Temple; Martin Luther defying Vatican authority; Sir Thomas More calling Henry 8th into account; Pope John 23rd upsetting Vatican tradition.

As you look at the record, it in times and occasions such as these that the church has been at its best – and has been Church!