The Social Gospel Again – Dec 16, 07

The Social Gospel Again – Dec 16, 07

 

The first OT RDG for today is Isa 63.1-10.  In it, Isa is preaching a Gospel of Hope.  The 2nd RDG is Ps 146.  In it the Psalmist is preaching a Gospel of Hope.  And of course, Jesus is preaching a Gospel of Hope.

Listen for the word of God.

Ps.146 – I think everybody knows that ‘Praise the Lord’ is ‘Halleluyah’ in Hebrew, so I am not going to translate ‘halleluyah’ in this reading

[1] Halleluyah!
Praise the LORD, O my soul!
[2] I will praise the LORD as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have being.
[3] Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no help.
[4] When his breath departs he returns to his earth;
on that very day his plans perish.
[5] Happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD his God,
[6] who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith for ever;
[7] who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets the prisoners free;
[8] the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
the LORD loves the righteous.
[9] The LORD watches over the sojourners,
he upholds the widow and the fatherless;
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
[10] The LORD will reign for ever,
thy God, O Zion, to all generations.
Halleluyah!

Here ends the reading from the Holy Scripture.

The Social Gospel, Again

As we consider the Message of Hope for today, let us recall a story from the past:  A little timid guy, obviously depressed, was sitting in a bar, hovering over his drink, when a big tough guy walked in, grabbed the little guy’s drink and gulped it down.  The little guy began to cry.  The big guy said, “Don’t take it so hard.  It was only a drink.”  The little guy sobbed, “I have lost all hope.  I lost my job.  The bank is foreclosing on my house.  My wife left me.  My daughter is pregnant.  My son is on drugs.  I have lost all hope.  I was sitting here trying to get up enough courage to kill my self, when you walk in and drink my poison.”

 

The Social Gospel Again

 

We are now in Advent, a major Church season – a season in which we promote Hope as a major Christian virtue.  Since this is an anniversary that we celebrate every year, we tend to lose sight of its message.  God has promised you a Messiah – a Savior.  And why should we need a Savior?  

Because, we individually, and collectively, are at great risk.  We always have been.  I suppose that during every past Advent season, preachers have been telling you that we are at great risk of losing everything.

I tell you today that we are at greater risk now than we have ever been.  The forces of evil are in charge – they run the show.  

The Christians, by that I mean the Mainline Denominations, have been preaching Hope forever, it seems.  But the ‘Powers and Principalities’ that Paul spoke of (Rom 8.28), have been working hard at Killing Hope.  Killing Hope is a new book by William Blum

In it, he reveals the nefarious schemes of the Gov’t that have been disclosed, through the Freedom of Information Act.  In it we learn that our Gov’t has never leveled with us about its machinations to control the world.  Not only has our Gov’t betrayed us, its citizens, it has been treacherous in its dealings with other ‘Powers and Principalities’.

And Blum is certainly right; what we learn about our leaders is enough to Kill Hope.

A second report that I would call your attention to is an article by Geo Monbiot, in the Guardian, a liberal UK Mag.  This article is called, “Civilization Ends with the Shutdown of Human Concern”.  His point is that society is not concerned about the plight of the poor – people are concerned only about themselves and their well-being.  Their attitude is, “I am getting by.  That’s all that counts.”  Monbiot’s message too, is that there is no Hope.  One source dismisses Gov’t as a reason for Hope.  The other dismisses Society as a reason for Hope.  And of course, the two are related.  With Society on their side, it is not likely that BIGMONEY, the billionaires, are going to make any concessions toward a just society.

Frederick Douglass, that great African/American Abolitionist observed, “Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.”  Demand?, I would have said , “Without being forced to.”

These people haven’t heard the Christian message, and they don’t want to hear it.  They want to maintain the status quo.  They think that it is just fine that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  Don’t they know that they are destroying Hope?  Today, half of America has no Hope for a better future.  Wars are consuming all of our resources.  The factories have sent all of the jobs over-seas.  The mortgage companies are foreclosing on people’s homes – inflation is consuming their small income – health care is beyond their means.  It looks like the whole economy is about to collapse.  How could anyone have Hope?  There are just no prospects that things will improve.

Now let’s take ourselves back to ancient Babylon, and consider the situation of the Jews in Exile there.  They had no prospects either.  Forces beyond their control were shaping their lives – were determining their future.  Their children could not speak Hebrew – their young people were marrying Babylonian natives – their culture was being lost in the larger culture of the area – the world that eventually became the Muslim world.  The Jews were losing their identity as a people.  They too, were losing Hope.  The other 11 Hebrew tribes had already been assimilated and absorbed into the new world they lived in – they had no separate culture to speak of.  The Jews didn’t want that to happen to them.  But what could they do about it?

The Christian Faith, as it appeared in America, was a part of the culture.  Beginning early in the 19th Century, Activists began to agitate to abolish Slavery, and to give women the right to vote.  The labor movement began to agitate for better treatment for the workers – especially to eliminate Sweat Shops and Child Labor.  All of this work was a Message of Hope to the poor, and down-trodden.

All of these people were wanting to build, or re-build, a community; and that should be our goal today.  And how do we do that?  What is that Gospel again?

And what is the Christian message again?

If you love your neighbor, you will share with him!  A sizeable proportion of our people don’t want to share with anybody.  So!  We have a lot of work to do.  Step 1; we must convince those selfish people that Love is everything.  And how do we do that?  We must convince those selfish people that our very survival as a species requires that we encourage the Feeling Brain and its development.

A person who has no feelings cannot possibly relate to those people in our world who have nothing – expect nothing – and who have lost all hope.

Perhaps the first essential is to replace the Me-First society that we live in.  It’s hard to preach the Gospel of caring, to people who have been indoctrinated from day one to look out for themselves, and let the other guy founder in the muck of hopelessness.

 

People who blissfully play the Lottery day after day are convinced that ‘Some day it will be my turn’.  They never consider for a moment that the odds are even greater that ‘Some day adversity will strike’.  It never enters their minds that Adversity strikes anyone and everyone – The rain falls on both the just and the unjust.  Remember the rich man who built bigger and bigger barns to hold his ever bigger harvests.  The Lord said to him, ‘Fool, this day adversity will strike you.  Of what value are your barns now?’

In a viable community, everybody looks out for the other person.  In a viable community, personal adversity is never a major calamity.  Even a community adversity is not insurmountable.  We recall the Mennonite Community that survived the murderous assault on their School.  Together they forgave the criminal – together they began to rebuild.  Together – and that is the key word – together we can tackle almost any adversity.  This the Social Gospel that Jesus preached – this is the Social Gospel that Isaiah Preached – this is the Social Gospel that the Psalmist preached.  This is the Social Gospel that will save us, if only we will listen.  El Rito deserves a lot of credit for working hard always toward providing for the community, and for building togetherness.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was preaching to his ‘community’.  He is telling them how to live at peace among themselves.  In Mt 5.11, he discusses the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’.  He said, ‘Don’t even let yourselves get angry’.  He then talks about how future Christians should build community.  He was especially concerned about the children.  “Whoever gives to one of these little ones, so much as a cup of cold water, is my disciple.”

In Mk 8.2, Jesus says to his disciples, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days, and have had nothing to eat.”  And we all know that he did something about it.  This concern had nothing to do with their Spiritual Lives; this was strictly concern for their Physical Bodies.  This is the Social Gospel!  In Mk 9.36, Jesus takes a little child in his arms, and says, “Whoever receives one such child in my name, receives me.”  Does Jesus see the 180 million souls in America without health care?  Certainly he does!  And he reminds us that, “Whatever you do for the least of these my brothers, you do also for me.”

The PTS Panorama of Winter 2007, has as its theme: JOY!  The Lead Sermon is “The Other Mark of a Christian’.  In it the preacher extols JOY as a distinguishing ‘Mark of a Christian’.

As I read through this issue, I wondered why I don’t feel more Joy, and preach more Joy.  Then it came to me:  The first mark of a Christian is his Compassion for his fellow man.  That is, I said to myself, if a person has genuine compassion for his fellow-human, then it is not likely that he is going to feel Joy at the same time.  Then slowly, the light began to dawn:  Christians are able to assess say, the world situation, and realize that it is gloomy.  They do what they can about it, and then move back into the Spiritual Channel.  It has been a part of my on-going emotional-health problem, that I was not able to do this.  Instead, I would dwell on these world problems, until I made myself sick over them.  

And of course, millions of other people have had, and still have, the same problem.  That is why the Serenity Prayer is central to all of the 12-Step Programs: “God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot control, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.”  Everybody prays this prayer at every 12-Step meeting.  We do that because we have to have its substance drummed into our consciousness.  We have to believe its message in our hearts.

That way, we can be aware that there are millions of starving children in the USA and in the world.  This is not a hopeless situation.  There are International Programs that are working tirelessly to solve the problem.  We do what we can to support these Programs, and we can continue to remind other people that hunger is a world problem, and urge them to support these worth-while programs.  Now here is the kicker!  After we have done all that we can do to eliminate world hunger, it is time to back off and regain our Christian Joy.

God has given us the solution to most of these problems.  The solution is in the Lord Jesus.  He has taught us all that we need to know.  He has given us the Courage to Change the things we can.  He has given us the wisdom to know that after we have done all that we can do, Jesus knows it.  And, yes, he does rejoice with us.  All he asks of us is that we do our best.

One thing that he doesn’t want us to do is to fret about things over which we have no control.  That doesn’t do anybody any good.  

Listen to Paul’s closing remarks in his first letter to the Thessalonians: (I have paraphrased this in places.)  “5. [3] Just when people say, "There is peace and security," then destruction can come upon them suddenly.  [4] But you are not in darkness, brethren, for adversity to surprise you. [5] For you are all sons of light, and sons of the day; we are not of the night, or of darkness.
[6] So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake, and stay clean and sober. (no alcohol and no drugs) [7] For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night.
[8] But, since we belong to the day, let us stay clean and  sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. (The Whole Armor of God)
[9] For God has not destined us for violence, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
[10] who died for us so that whether we wake or whether we sleep we might live with him.
[11] Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you have been  doing.
[12] But we beseech you, brethren, to respect your ministers [13] and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work.   

Be at peace among yourselves.
[14] And we exhort you, brethren, admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.
[15] See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.
[16] Rejoice always, [17] pray constantly,
[18] give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
[19] Do not quench the Spirit,
[20] do not despise prophesying,
[21] but test everything; holding fast to all that  is sound, [22] abstain from every form of evil.
May the God of Peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[24] He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.
[25] Brethren, pray for us.

I hear Paul saying to the Thessalonians, “Build Community!”  Treasure each and every member of it!  For alone, you are neither a community, nor a church.  And you will not likely survive as an individual.

So what is our mission?  Jesus said Mk 16.15, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.“  Jesus knew that not everyone would listen.  He said, “Reach the Reachable.”  This makes sense.  The character traits of any population are distributed over a normal distribution curve.  The vast majority are reachable.  And these people are our target.

The Church, almost by definition, has a mission – that is one of the givens of the bible.  We have a mission and we are apostles – we are the ones sent out.  And what are we sent out to do?   

Exactly what is our mission?

Today, I see our mission as a call to personal commitment.  We don’t have to convince our friends and neighbors to become Christians, although that would be nice, but we do have to convince them that “the greatest of these is Love”.  And certainly not far behind is Compassion.  Theoretically, we have a primal Love instinct in our genes, to love our family, even though this instinct is certainly not dominant, else child-abuse would not be the national problem that it is.  But in a normal, healthy family Love exists.  Our mission is to get this family to move on to Love for the neighbors kids – to feel Compassion for the neighbor family if one of them gets sick, or is injured.  If a person can feel Compassion for a neighbor that he knows personally, eventually he can be encouraged to feel Compassion for a child that he doesn’t know.

We are trying to promote a national policy of Love and Compassion.  In this nation, in fact all over the world, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.  Does not our sense of justice cry out against this situation?  Isn’t this situation that the prophets have been crying out against since they began crying.  They knew that God did not like that situation – and he don’t like it today.  God has always asked his people to support the under-privileged.  Not just financially, but morally, and socially.  We still have no program in place to reach out to those traumatized individuals who want to hurt other people.  Every day there is a news story of some child shooting one or more classmates or teachers, because the school bully picked on him or her.  This past week we saw that a troubled young man shot-up a shopping mall in Iowa, another troubled teen-ager shot-up two churches in Colorado.  We absolutely must make provisions to provide emotional health care for our troubled individuals, for our own protection, if not out of Compassion.

This message sounds more suitable for the Soap Box than for the Pulpit.  But!  Did not the voice from the cloud (Mk 9.7) say, “This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him!”  Listen again to the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7).  Isn’t Jesus preaching an Action Gospel?  Isn’t he telling us to promote the Gospel?  Isn’t Paul preaching in every one of his letters, “Put your faith into action!”  God is calling you to action!  The church calls you to action!  Your own conscience calls you to action.  Friends, believe the good news of the gospel, it will save your life if you will act on it.

 

May God add his blessings to this message.

 

Goto Chap 3

The Charge

Friends I hope I have touched on several messages for you today.  First and foremost is that Advent is a Season of Hope.  Hope for a better future – Hope for a better world, and hope for the individuals in it.

Second, there is work to be done – Jesus knows that , and has sent us, as a Church, out to do his work – to make it a better world.

And third, Christianity is a Religion of Joy.  God wants us to Rejoice Always.  He knows that this world is not all that he wants it to be, but he wants us to thankful that it is as good as it is.  Give thanks for his many blessings.

 

HSR comment:  There isn’t really that much in this sermon about my Theology.  What it does stress is the Social Gospel.  Nobody is preaching the Social Gospel these days – and these days are when we absolutely need it.  It looks like the Church has abandoned the poor, the homeless, and the jobless.  So, in a sense this is a radical sermon – it calls for social action – not many sermons do that.