A Sermon preached on June
25, Pentecost III, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Jeremiah 20: 7 – 13; Romans 6: 1b - 11; Matthew 10: 24 – 39
Our readings this week sound difficult, even a bit depressing: Jeremiah
complains to God that all he can preach about is “Violence and destruction!” In
his letter to the Romans, Paul promises death: "Do you not know that all
of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death?" And in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples: "Do not
think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring
peace, but a sword."
It is therefore no wonder that religion, including Christianity is often
accused of being divisive and being a or even the primary source of violence
and conflcit. In his book “The God Delusion”, the “arch-atheist” Richard
Dawkins claims that if we “look carefully at any region of the world where you
find intractable enmity and violence between rival groups”[1] it’s
a very good bet that religions are the labels for the in- and out-groups. And
just last week I was watching a talk show on German television about whether religion
is divisive and if the world would not be a more peaceful place without
religion. I gave up watching after a while … talk shows can become pretty divisive
and verbally violent too!
Church history often seems to be the history of “Christians behaving
badly.” There is no doubt that religion can be used to generate violence
and that our religion too has been used to justify wars and persecution. Just
think of the Crusades, the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, or of
the persecution of so-called heretics. One institution we visited during my
visit to Rome last week was the Waldensian University. The Waldensians are
pre-Reformation Protestants, originally followers of a 12th century medieval
French religious leader, Valdes. He and his followers were excommunicated and formally
condemned at a church council in 1184. The severe persecution of the Waldensians
in the 13th century forced them to begin traveling and teaching in secret until
the few survivors ended up mostly in what is today Italy where they were
finally recognised in 1848.
So are the critics right? Is religious violence a necessary feature of
religion? And is Jesus really calling his followers to violence? Not the Jesus
I know, not the Jesus who tells his followers not only to love their neighbour,
but also their enemy, (Matthew 5:44) not the Jesus who tells us to turn the
other cheek, (5:39) not the Jesus who, when Peter asks him how many times should
I forgive my brother who sins against me, answers “not just seven times, but
seventy-seven times,” (18:21-22) and not the Jesus whose follower Paul says we
must never let the sun go down on our anger. (Eph. 4:26) One reason the Waldensians
I mentioned a moment ago have their university in Rome, is to enable and
facilitate their ecumenical dialogue and reconciliation with the Roman Catholic
Church.
And yet, we do have sayings like: "Do not think that I have come to
bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword."
This is not a call to violence. The “sword,” as a symbol for discord is not the
aim of Jesus’ teaching, but a potential consequence. It is a warning that what Jesus
wants from us, that our allegiance to him is at the very top of our priority
list, can lead to division. We are not supposed to reject our father, daughter,
mother, daughter-in-law, or mother-in-law, but to be aware and ready for the
possibility that they might reject us. Another TV film I saw last week – Faith
was a special theme last week on the ARD, the main public TV channel – was about
a boy who got baptised without informing his parents and who wanted to get
confirmed, again without their agreement. The parents were secular humanists.
It showed how they struggled with his decision and how, in the beginning, how they
ridiculed it and tried to talk him out of it.
The sword also stands for persecution – a warning that those with power,
those who live by exploiting others, that those who exclude will fight Jesus’ teachings
and those who follow them. It is a frequent theme in the Gospels. We find it in
the Beatitudes: ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ‘Blessed are you when people revile you
and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”
(Matthew 5:10-11) We find it at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, when
Jesus says, if they call me the devil, just think what they will call my
followers! Challenging established structures of power and belief almost always
meets violent resistance.
Yet we are not called to use violence to achieve our aims. In
this morning’s Gospel, Jesus says “Do not fear those who kill the body but
cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in
hell.” Who is this supposed to be, who can destroy both soul and body?
According to the theologian Tom Wright Jesus is referring to the powers
of darkness who will use even our desire for justice as a bait. “The people of
light are never more at risk than when they are lured into fighting darkness
with more darkness.”[2] The
ends never justify the means. We must never forget that the kingdom of God that
Jesus proclaims is a kingdom in which the peace that passes all understanding
reigns. Getting there requires our transformation – as Jesus puts it, it is by losing
our life, our current way of living, for his sake, that we will truly find
life. (Matthew 10:39)
And if we look again at the other readings we will see that they are not
so depressing after all. One reason Jeremiah is so angry with God in the first
half of the passage is that so far all he has been able to do is to warn people
that violence and destruction are the consequences of their self-centred
behaviour. Yet when God appointed him a prophet (Jeremiah 1:10) he was appointed
over nations and over kingdoms “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to
overthrow, AND to build and to plant.” When can I start talking about building
and planting, Lord, when can I start on my message of transformation? That is
the frustration he feels, in the second half of the passage mitigated by the
knowledge that God is with him and will deliver him.
In his Letter to the Romans, Paul is not being morbid. Death is the metaphor
for the complete change of status we enjoy by virtue of our Baptism. We are no
longer enslaved to sin. By dying with Christ, by sharing in his real death, we share
in his equally real resurrection. By dying with Christ, we will also live with
him, and I would say we live like him – that is living to God. Paul is telling
his readers all about the transformation that begins when they become followers
of Christ and that equips them to resist sin – of which violence is one
manifestation.
Our transformation began with our Baptism and is nourished each week at the
Eucharist when we encounter Christ. It is by putting Christ, the Prince of
Peace, at the centre of our lives that we continue to be transformed. Human
beings are capable of both violence and peace; our hearts can know both hate
and love. To follow Jesus is a conscious choice to serve our fellow human
beings out of love.
The way we are commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation
this year, ecumenically, and with a focus on reconciliation, shows that we can
disagree in peace and love because we focus on what we have in common, Jesus
Christ. The new life in Christ that we are called to live is not the cause of violence
and division, but its remedy.
Amen.
