Final words at Bellingen Uniting Church.

Final reflection at Bellingen Uniting July 2013

On biblical diversity, women and men as God's image, Gay marriage and what really matters instead, not judging, and proper Christian fundamentalism.

A slightly polished up version of my spoken notes.  Not perfect by any means but good enough.

Readings Colossians 2:6-19 and The Lord’s prayer (either version)

Colossians 2:6 encourages us to continue to walk in Christ (often translated “live in”).  This travelling metaphor isn’t something the Uniting Church made up.  Jesus- follow me.  Paul talks of faith as a marathon, Colossians - walk in Christ.

Paul was always leaving messages for congregations.

What message would I want to leave with you?

What final dot points?

One is that it’s exciting, empowering, and necessary to read the scriptures, the biblical witnesses, seriously, not just devotionally and certainly not just literalistically.

To have a hard look at Colossians, for example, and notice that a lot of it doesn’t sound like Paul.  For example this next bit about the fullness of God dwelling in Christ.

In the letters which everyone does agree are written by Paul, there’s none of this divine Jesus stuff.

Which is why most scholars think Colossians was written later on, by someone else in Paul’s name, as Christian thinking continued to develop and diversify.  Faith is always on the move.

So we end up with the Synoptic gospels- Mark, then Matt and Luke (and Paul) in which Jesus is Messiah and Lord,  and John’s gospel and Colossians which attributes greater divinity to him.

The diversity of opinion about who Jesus is (his nature), is accompanied by diversity in opinion about what his life means.  How it all works.  As the lawyer put it to Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

So we have Paul: Jesus is the sacrifice for our sins.  This is magnified in Hebrews: Jesus the high priest and ultimate, perfect once for all sacrifice.  We have John: the need to believe in his name.  And the synoptics, Jesus puts it quite differently.

The lawyer asked, “what must we do to be saved?”  Jesus’ answer:   Love God, self and neighbour.  Do this and you shall live. 

In the Lord’s prayer he says forgive others.  “Forgive us our sins,” we should pray, “ as we forgive those who are indebted to us.”

Mark, Matt and Luke all contain explicit expansions of that claim by Jesus- being forgiven is caught up in forgiving.

So, salvation: was it all done for us as a sacrifice (as Paul argues) or as a legal satisfaction in heavenly court (as Colossians says), or do we have to participate (and Jesus argues in Mark, Matt and Luke).  Is it about beliefs (John) or actions (synoptics)?

My point isn’t to settle the argument, but to remind you that the arguments are there, in scripture.  Being a disciple means joining in the argument, praying and discerning, not simply memorising answers and trying to believe them.

Of course we do have to decide, and what we decide will shape what we think the gospel is and what we are inviting people to, but we decide knowing that there is a diversity of contrary opinions, or at least other emphases.

I don’t want to settle the argument, but I will say that for the most part I’ve tried to focus on Jesus’ understanding of his nature and mission, and our responsibilities, as far as we can work that out, rather than Paul or Colossians or John.

It is strange that some churches listen far more to Paul than Jesus when they try to work out who Jesus was and the point of his life.

“Your kingdom come” Jesus invited us to pray.

Not the kingdom of the world, of power and privilege and violence.  But the kingdom of leaders being servants, the first being last, of love of neighbour including and perhaps especially the neighbour we’d happily see burned out of house and home.

As Colossians puts it, Jesus divested himself of the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them.

Usually translated here as Jesus “disarmed” the rulers.  But the word more often in scripture is translated as divested.  Separated himself from, disassociated with.

UCA in NSW recently decided to divest itself from the fossil fuel industry.  To separate itself. 

“If it’s wrong to wreck the earth, it’s wrong to profit from wrecking the earth.”

We live in a world where we’re pretty enmeshed in dozens of systems we don’t like and would change if we could, but maybe there are things God is calling us, you, to divest ourselves from.

When our grandchildren or great grandchildren look back on this time in history and ask us what we did about it, what will be the things they most want to interrogate us about?  What will be most want to be able to say we divested from?  Resisted as people of faith?

Instead of just leaving that with you, I made myself think about it.

The first, from above, is obviously that I resisted various arrogant, narrow, alienating and blatantly false attempts by some Christians to say that their simplistic, selectively collected summary of the faith was the Faith.  That the bits of the bible they likes was The Bible.

It should hardly be an issue anymore, but clearly we continue to affirm, in so many ways, that women are less important and competent than men.  In the OT reading for today Hosea is told by God to marry a whore and get her pregnant as a symbol of Israel’s wanton ways. 

That God would be willing to use a woman as an object in such a way, and the constant comparing of Israel to a slut wouldn’t have batted an eyelid back then, hopefully it would now.  The idea that women are stupider than men, found in the New Testament, because it was Eve who was fooled and not Adam, hopefully wouldn’t pass our lips serious in worship today.

But we do constantly give the idea that God is more like a bloke than a woman in our singing, which is a big chunk of our worship, and our prayers and so on. 

It is impossible that this doesn’t have a negative effect on girls self image.  It gives a false teaching about the God the Spirit, who is of course no more male than female.

God as father made sense in a world where fathers commanded allegiance and loyalty.  As did Lord.  They are metaphors, no more. 

The amount of angst caused by positing out the obvious, even as I heard it resulting in some of you being interrogated around town as to whether the minister has _really_ said God was a woman (which of course I didn’t) would be funny if not so disturbing.

Did the minister _really_ say women are as much the image of God as men.  Well, yes he did.

Even worse than equating women and men appeared to be trying to persuade the church that of all the issues facing us in the world today, whether two men or two women marry is way down the list.  Personally I’d go much further than that, and affirm that whether a couple is treating each other in the way Jesus taught is more important than their gender. 

But for those who disagree on that, surely a church which wants to defend families should be much more loudly heard on issues like providing sanctuary to families fleeing war, challenging a world where 1% of families control most of the world’s wealth, making other families starve.  In a town where unemployment and poverty is so high, government policy on welfare and tax breaks for the rich will have far more impact on people’s well being than their sexuality.  I’m reliably informed that one man in town owns 70 houses!  That is far more important for the dynamics of this town than his sexual preference.  

Our other reading for this week was the destruction of Soddom.  In popular culture because of the men’s homosexuality.  In the story because of their same sex rape of Abraham’s guests (putting aside the disregard Abraham showed for his own daughters).  But in Ezekiel we read God’s judgment of Soddom:

“She (or course it’s she) had pride, more food then she needed, and prosperity, but did not aid the poor and needy.  They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them, when I saw it.”

It follows that if God was going to judge Australia along the lines of Soddom, if a decision to allow gay marriage even registered, it would be way down the list behind being a proud nation; with plentiful food; and yet not aiding the poor and needy.” 

The church should be preoccupied with managing the earth’s resources in such a way that families of the future can supply their needs, and I’d add the families of the many other species we share this planet with.  Gay marriage will have far less impact on families and individuals than the latest measurement which shows we have exceeded 400ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.  

Our great grandchildren will be far angrier, will suffer far more, if we fail to support groups like 350.org and beyond zero emissions, than if we fail to stop gay marriage.

The author to Colossians finishes by reminding the congregation that people will always tend to focus on the small stuff, and be quick to condemn those who don’t agree with them.

Instead, stick to the fundamentals:

Walk in Christ, the head: the source of our movement.  Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  Love yourself.  And likewise, love your neighbour. 

Most especially the one you despise, at least in part because like the loving Samaritan, they may be the one to show you the path to eternal life.