Acts 17:22-31
Psalm 66:7-18
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21
God doesn't give up on the world
"'God made every nation from one ancestor.' In our time of fundamentalism, perhaps this is the most important message to preach." ~ Barbara Rossing
from a sermon on living in a time of empire
"A few weeks back, I started preparing for this Sunday, reading these scriptures from John and Luke and I Peter. I had the beginnings of a sermon that I thought would be a zinger. But I’ve changed my mind, or rather, my heart. I threw out that sermon that I started. Let me tell you why.
That original sermon started when I read a commentary that showed how Luke, writing in the second half of his gospel, in the Acts of the Apostles, makes a play on the word for world. I learned that there are two different ways to say world in Greek: cosmos and oikoumene. The first word, cosmos, refers to the created order, created by God, that which was called good in the Genesis account of creation. But the second, oikoumene , is a far cry from the goodness of creation, is not something to which the great God said It is Good; the second is the creation of humans, the second is empire.
I read all that and thought, Aha! Here is the key to preaching about the age we live in, this age of American empire, when the cross is wrapped in the flag, when a single party threatens an independent judiciary, when civil rights are in jeopardy, when war is used as a first response instead of a last resort, when the created order itself is threatened by policies that disregard the environment, when the poor are disenfranchised more and more each day.
I was ready to hold forth –with a little vinegar-- on the contrast, named by Luke, between world as created by God and world as created by empire, and then draw the obvious parallel between the ancient imperialism of Rome and the current imperialism of Washington. It was a zinger, alright, another zinger not unlike a few others I’ve preached in the last many months about living in a time of empire.
But I don’t want to preach that sermon anymore. Not that it wouldn’t be true, not that it wouldn’t be an accurate and even appropriate assessment of the age we live in. Not that I think preachers should shy away from political commentary—I don’t think that at all, because good theology always considers the political and social context of the day. Jesus preached that way, to be sure, as did Paul and Peter and Amos and Jeremiah and Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu and so many more.
But I want to turn the focus around. I want to focus on what it is to be a person of faith in a time of empire. It’s important to name the empire, but I don’t want to take the easy route of pointing fingers, or the expected route of wringing our hands about the Christians who wrap the cross in the flag or the politicians who co-opt the cross with the flag. I think that’s obvious, with one glance at the front page of the newspaper.
To use the old cliché, I don’t want to curse the darkness. I want to shine the light. I know what bothers me about the radical right, the religious right. I know I don’t like it when they say that their way is the only way. I know there is more to Christianity than what might make it in the popular press. I know that the empire’s embrace of power and wealth and might is not the way of Jesus.
So I want us to claim our way, to tell our story, to live it with passion and articulate it with clarity. I want to define who I am as what I am, rather than what I am not. I want us to define ourselves as what we are, rather than what we are not. I want us to be able to say this is what we are all about, this is our faith, this is what we stand for, this is what we care about, this is who we are as Episcopalians, and even more importantly as Christians, as followers of Jesus..."
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