The mind that shapes tomorrow

 

Deuteronomy 18: 15-20
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
January 31, 2021

A couple of weeks ago on Twitter I got into it with an Anglican priest from Sherman, TX. His initial tweet that got my attention read, “Christianity isn't just a flavor of ice cream for personal spirituality, existential meaning, or moral living. It's a specific claim about a real historic event when God showed up on earth (Jesus) and gave a specific revelation about God, and a command that all people follow him.” The part that hooked me was the command that all people follow Jesus.



All people. That would mean people of every faith and no faith. It would mean that there is only a singular theological teaching that is true. It continues to astonish me that in this post-Christendom world, there are people who still think it is the Church’s mission to colonize the entire world. When I responded that I have a problem with this, he replied, “In the end it will happen anyway. Every tongue and every knee will confess Jesus as Lord regardless. The differen[ce] is just how long it takes us to get there and how. Unless Christianity is wrong. In which case Jesus may well be just some guy and people can listen if they like.”



All or nothing. Zero-sum thinking. Christian supremacy. Because of the exclusive claim that Jesus is God, Christianity is either completely right for everyone or Jesus is just some guy. As if someone else’s interpretation or belief diminishes or delegitimizes another. I told him that my way or the highway does not sound like the grace that will lead me home.

Or as satirist George Hahn puts it, “It is so great that America has finally devolved into a place where we give voice to individuals who believe in lizard people, Satan-worshiping child molesters and eaters, and people who talk about things like Jewish space lasers and threatening the lives of elected officials; because for me, we shouldn’t just give those people a voice; we should elect them to public office and give them power. And when they keep saying things like that, we shouldn’t censure them. We should just treat them as normal.” 

How do we know the truth when we hear it, experience it, witness it? How do we discern what prophets—teachers, truthtellers—to pay attention to? In the reading from Deuteronomy, it is God who ordains, who chooses who will be a prophet from amongst God’s people; it is God who provides the words the prophet will speak. And Moses reminds them that this is what they asked for. God’s people sound like a disenchanted lover or a dramatic child: if they hear the voice of the Lord anymore or ever again see the great fire, they will die. It’s like they can’t stand the sound of God’s voice. They’d rather have God speak through one of their own, someone who understands what it’s like to be human and vulnerable, to be oppressed and marginalized.

"Truth" by David Hayward/nakedpastor

Even so, discernment is not as simple as God’s prophets are the ones who speak for the oppressed and the marginalized. Even as God directed Moses and then Joshua to lead God’s people to the promised land, it was land that someone else was already living on, but hey, that was okay because they relied not on prophets but on soothsayers and divination—practices which Yahweh forbade. Who are the oppressed and the marginalized now? One danger of overcoming the oppressors is that the oppressed can become the oppressor. Nowadays, just about anyone can see themselves as being oppressed and marginalized, including evangelical Christians and conspiracy theorists.

In these days of conspiracy theories, alternative facts, confirmation bias, and fake news, the burden of proof no longer sticks to the one making claims. Telling the truth is no longer enough. The right of free speech is corrupted and abused, neglecting the responsibility for the impact of one’s speech on human lives. And yet human rights, human decency are not a difference of opinion but of morality. While actual maligned truthtellers like Colin Kaepernick, Black Lives Matter, trans and queer folx, and climate scientists must live with death threats and prove themselves, antivaxxers can shut down a vaccination site at Dodger Stadium in the midst of a deadly pandemic.

Discerning what is truth and what is a lie has become even more complicated by the ability to communicate to thousands, even millions of people, fueled by power, money, and greed, and stirred with emotions like anger, shame, and fear. God’s prophets speak of the divine priorities: the big, bold themes that lead to wholeness, to holiness, but also challenge us and our own confirmation bias.



What are the divine priorities that lead to wholeness, to holiness? (The following came from the congregation present at worship.)

• Empathy
• Compassion
• Acceptance
• Awareness
• Ability to forgive
• Love
• Grace
• Love your neighbor as yourself
• Truth
• Justice
• Peace
• Caring for each other & the earth
• Sincerity
• Shalom
• Humility
• Sharing
• Self-awareness
• Generosity
• Equality
• Kindness
• Sacrifice
• Stewardship
• Accepting change
• Listening to others
• Learning, growing in wisdom
• Do unto others as you would have them do to yourself

Wholeness and holiness are in direct opposition to empire and everything that supports it, including whiteness, capitalism, and Christian supremacy. The divine priorities are those entities which dismantle things like homophobia and ableism, racism and sexism, caste and classism.



How do we as Church challenge empire? How do we support empire, wittingly and unwittingly? What are some ways that we engage in Christian supremacy and how do we also challenge that authority? How do we participate in the liberation of the oppressed? What are the voices that we need to listen to that would free us?

It all comes back to community. None of us does this prophetic work of discernment and imagination alone nor do we do this alone as church. We are blessed to have other churches, interfaith partners, and nonprofits like Friendship House with whom we challenge ourselves regarding systemic poverty, homelessness, and the universal need for safe living space. We follow and listen to a homeless man, a homeless people in our scriptures but find reality quite a different experience the other six days a week. We love the poetry of the prophet’s words that say we are to act justly, love mercy, and live humbly and yet living them is no small or easy task, which is why we need each other.



Ultimately it is love that is the key to our discernment and our imagination of what is prophetic and who are the prophets. And not just any love but the love that came to bind up the brokenhearted, to preach good news to the poor and to proclaim liberty to the captive, recovery of vision to those who have lost it, to let the oppressed go free. It is the love we know not only through Jesus but embodied in any and all who love this way, whenever we love this way. Love is the word that God has placed in the mouth of God’s prophets. Love is the mind that shapes our tomorrow.

Benediction – Glynn Cardy


May you be blessed with enough wisdom
to know what you don’t know,
to trust what you do,
and to act on it.

May you be blessed with enough stupidity
to risk doing what can’t be done,
to try anyway, and fail;
and not lose hope.

May you be blessed with enough love
flowing to and from you,
to strengthen and sustain
your fragile heart.

May you be lost and found and lost again
and again on this jumbled joyous journey,
guided by the light of paradox,
into G/god.

And may you find friends on the path,
and be a friend to others,
and yourself.