The Tension Between Cohesion and Inclusivity

Transcribed from the sermon preached December 2, 2012 

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Mic.5 Verses 1 to 5, 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13, Luke 21:25-36

 
In advent we look forward to the coming of the Christ Child and all that means for us and the world.  The prophets frequently look forward to security and peace.  It is our hope and faith that God intends peace and will work through history to bring peace.  For Christian, Christ shows us the Way, extending grace to all, and calling all to be rooted and grounded in the love and equal justice of God.  Security without true peace is fleeting, and peace comes through living and acting as if all life is created and loved by God, and therefore deserves the same respect love and respect from God as we do.  Peace comes through grace within us, and moves us out to be peacemakers in the world.
When we speak of security and peace, we come upon the question, security for whom and from whom?  In the prophets grand vision of peace, of the lion and wolf lying down with lambs, are they only speaking of security and peace for Israel? Is it only the poor and weak of Israel who will long longer worry about being devoured? When Micah says that this new king “shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord…And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth,” is the flock only the people of Israel, or the people who claim to be the “New Israel”, or is the flock all the people to the ends of the earth? 
Another way to frame the question is to ask, is God just our God, is he just the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or is God the God of all people and all life, even though they may not know him or have a distorted vision of him?  There is plenty of evidence within the Bible to make the claim that God is only on the side of those people who are faithful followers, as prayers and proclamations call for God to destroy all enemies, to eliminate all non- Jews, gentiles and idol worshippers from the land.  There is no room in God’s kingdom, from this perspective, for people of other cultures who may sway God’s people away from God.
We Christians would sometimes like to think that this is an Old Testament problem.  But of course there are a whole host of Christians who like to quote Jesus saying from John,  “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, there is no way to the Father except by me.”  The Way that is Jesus has been interpreted narrowly to mean the name Jesus, leaving all who do not invoke the name out, even if they’ve lived the way Jesus lived.
This religious exclusivity has too often been used by those seeking economic and political power to justify their conquest and oppression of other peoples.  War is waged on behalf of the so-called “chosen people,” for their security and peace regardless of the insecurity and violent injustice suffered by others.  Thus in one of the greatest ironic twists in the history of the world, the Way of Jesus has too often been associated with the way of war.  So multiple times and places throughout Christian history, the Jews, ironically, became the impure non-believers who should be punished, driven out or eliminated. So too the Puritans, who understood their adventure to the New World to be for the establishment of the “New Jerusalem,” eventually determined the Native Americans fit the role of the Canaanites whom God determined should be eliminated from the land.  In the face of such hypocrisy, is it any wonder that many have said, to heck with them and their god?
One solution might be to have a society or nation or the whole world order based not on the adherence to one religion or one cultural worldview, but to see the relativity of cultural values and religious beliefs, and maintain the freedom within which people can affirm their beliefs.  This is the postmodern experiment.  Is there a spot however, in the process of deconstructing and denigrating of our own truth claims and affirming the other that our whole cultural project begins to unravel?  Reactionary right wing Christians are certain we have reached that point.  We may disagree with them on the answer, but their anxiety raises a legitimate question: What about our faith and culture should we stand strong for? 
Lamen Sanneh, professor of world missions at Yale gives a critique of postmodernism: “The crux of the problem for cultural relativists is that in their concern to reject the unhealthy consequences of Western cultural and religious imperialism they reverted to a form of ethnocentrism in which other cultures are given license to be a law unto themselves and thus to be ethnocentric, with the stage set for proliferating plural cultural ethnocentrisms… It is hard to see how you could have cultural relativism without ethnocentrism.  When Boas and Benedict, for instance, argue that the only scientific basis for intercultural harmony is mutual recognition of cultural equality and tolerance for difference, it is not entirely clear whether such a basis, laudable in itself, is ‘culturally determined’.  In which case its converse, of prejudice and intolerance, could conceivably also be ‘culturally determined’, with no yardstick with which to adjudicate the matter.”  (Sanneh, Encountering the West. P.62)
What he is saying is that if all values are relative, then even the value that claims all values are relative is relative.   If all cultures are entitled to their autonomy and the freedom to live and believe as they see fit, then what do we do with those people, groups, cultures and nations who don’t believe in inclusivity and equality?  We might exclude exclusive Christian points of view since we view this as a struggle within our own culture, but allow a Muslim man to get away with physically punishing his wife because we want to show our inclusivity toward Islam and Sharia law.  Because of the historical precedent in the west of prejudice against Jews, we want to affirm their right to security and peace, self- determination and cultural preservation in Israel.  Yet do not the Palestinian people and all people deserve the same respect?  If all values are culturally determined, and all cultural values are relative, on what basis do we judge? 
A good deal of the tension between cohesion and inclusivity is played out between empire and the smaller minority nation.  It is in the interest of the empire for groups to be inclusive enough to get along and do business together.  So empire will naturally push toward assimilation and pluralism.  At first the push for assimilation may decrease diversity.  Yet, as different peoples assimilate they also change and expand the dominant culture…the number of gods available for worship increases. 
Fearing destruction of vital cultural and religious beliefs by the empire, a righteous remnant will call for resistance of the dominant culture.  We see this in the Luke passage this morning.  Stay strong, stay true, don’t compromise, despite all the travail and war in the outer culture.  The truth of God will outlast the oppressor culture.  If we are brave and righteous, their culture will disintegrate, and we with the word of God will remain.
The same holds true for much of the prophetic literature in the Hebrew scripture: it is from a minority oppressed people, trying to remain true to their principles and maintain security and peace while being bombarded by the oppressive outside influence of economic, political and military superpowers.
But when we escape from slavery and oppression and are able to establish our own nation, and that nation then gains economic, political and military power itself, then the call to exclusivity too often becomes justification for arrogance and the once oppressed too often become the new oppressors.  We all fall short of the glory of God.
 Those individuals with economic power, regardless of the size of the group or nation over which they wield control, and regardless of the degree of universality in their ideology, will tend to be biased in favor of maintaining and gaining more power over and against the lower classes and other nations.  The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.  But ideology does make a difference even if it is not as much as those who call us to rally and war would like us to think, or even as much as we would like to think. But what we believe does make a difference.
There will always be some level of self-deception and injustice in historical society.  As religious people who look at the world through the eyes of God it is tempting to disown the world: to think nothing we do will make a difference.  We may despair of this world and just ride life, having fun and getting what we can while we can, or we may just live our own individual life as truly and righteously as we can.  Or we may join an ascetic or fanatical group, which separates itself from the world to save themselves.  Reinhold Niebuhr noted, “Religion is at one and the same time, humility before the absolute and self-assertion in terms of the absolute.” 
This humility and self-assertion before God has both dangers and strengths.  On the one hand the dangerous:  humility before the Creator has often led to awful self depreciation, to things like self- flogging and the willingness to put up with a bad husband or a racist society.  Meanwhile, the self-assertion before God has too often served an egotistical notion that we are the arbiters for God, and are justified in maintaining a fanatical, exclusive society or to orchestrate imperial conquest against the world on God’s behalf.  Combined with the powerful sentiments of state patriotism, religious self-assertion is very dangerous indeed.
On the other hand, the there is good strength of humility and self assertion under God: Our faith may give us the humility to recognize that we too fall short of the glory of God, that we are all children of God, and that we should love our neighbor as ourselves.  Then, even under repressive circumstances, we may nevertheless see ourselves as children of God for whom God intends abundant life.  This gives us perseverance and hope.  So for instance, Christ convinced Christians that they should stop owning slaves and keep working to abolish slavery, and at the same time gave slaves the faith and hope that even though they were oppressed, in the eyes of God this was not right, God heard their cries, and God had plans to let his people go.  Liberation is coming.

If we are to live under God within history, we must surely be saved by grace.  If we are saved by grace, then we can admit that we are not always right and almost never all right.  Yet in grace we do not despair that no accomplishment in this world has significance before God.  We need not toss out our ideals because they are too high to attain.  We can admit that our nation is not perfect, and yet move forward into the future with hope, one gracious step at a time, toward the day when not just the rich and powerful, not just our country, not just Israelis or Americans, Christians or Jews know security and peace, but all nations and all God’s children.  We can look forward to that day when 
[25] The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
We are all children of God; Children of God whose justice convicts, whose grace forgives, whose love empowers and unites, whose hope never ends.  Come Lord Jesus.