Bring it on
Luke 21:5-19
The Rev. Sara Fischer
Sometimes, it seems that the only good news in today’s Gospel is that this too shall pass.
For the very poor with whom Jesus surrounded himself, the poor for whom Jesus came, the message that everything was going to pass away was a message of hope. To the religious authorities and to the Romans, not so much.
Christianity was always a resistance movement. The Roman government under which first-century Jews lived was racist, misogynist, xenophobic, corrupt, and economically oppressive. No one in the early church ever expected the government to line up with the love and justice that Jesus preached. In Jesus’ predictions of destruction and devastation he is both zooming in—to the hierarchical, exclusion practices of the religion of his time—and zooming out onto what we used to call man’s inhumanity to man...our tendency always to work against all the goodness that God plants in us.
In the decades following the earthly ministry of Jesus, being a follower of Jesus became a life-threatening proposition. Christians were given a choice between worshiping the gods—and emperor—of Rome or dying a miserable death.
Today we rarely have to take a stand for the gospel in a way that puts us at risk. This has not always been true, and it may not always be true.
Anglican theologian Kenneth Leech, who was a friend and mentor whom I quote often reminds us that “…to struggle for freedom and equality is to be a resistance movement. This will not increase the popularity of the church…and so we will need to support and nourish each other more and more.”
The “each other” who need our support and nourishment are childbearing women, our trans siblings, people dependent on the Affordable Care Act, people dependent on SNAP benefits, people depending on federal grants for affordable housing, our immigrant siblings, and our homeless neighbors who are so poor and invisible to the people in power that they are treated only like garbage.
To be part of the resistance movement that is Christianity is to protect victims of hatred with love. This protection has nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with how we vote or what news outlets we choose to follow, but everything to do with what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Protection may come in the form of advocacy, inclusion, friendship, financial support, prayer—and much more.
How do 21st century American Christians align with the resistance movement to which our Christian identity calls us? I’d like to suggest three practices, three things many of you already do. I invite you to enter deeply into these practices, reflecting on them as expressions of Christian resistance.
The first practice is to immerse ourselves, quite simply, in love, and to love intentionally and extravagantly. I came across something this week that asked the question: “Would we go to church if it was just a bunch of ragamuffin Jesus-followers gathering around a table, trying to love God and love neighbors?” (No sermon, no Sunday school, no fabulous music program?) And my answer is “I hope so!” I hope that is what we are doing when we show up each week, when we pray, and when we go forth into the rest of our lives.
We join the Christian resistance movement when we stretch in love, when we consider all the many ways to love our neighbor. When we strive to become the hands and heart of Jesus in the world.
The second practice of Christian resistance is to participate in the Holy Eucharist as we do here at this table every Sunday. Again, my friend Ken Leech says that “the eucharistic offering must be at the heart of Christian politics, because it is the realization of a new force at work within the world.” The Eucharist is a new force at work in the world. In the Eucharist we take things of the world—bread and wine—and transform them into holy food and drink that binds us to Christ while keeping us grounded in the world God loves, to do the work that has been set before us. The Eucharist feeds the Body of Christ with Christ’s body, with the reminder that from humility and brokenness comes a larger whole. Our humility and brokenness is the greatest source of our power to love.
(On a personal note, it has taken me decades to learn this, but the superpower that I bring to ministry with the poorest among us is my own experience of inadequacy and failure. No one cares about expertise or cleverness; what the world needs is more humanity and humility.)
The third practice of Christian resistance is—wait for it—to give generously to the Christian community where we worship. This time of year, I usually preach a sermon that is all about giving but you all do a good job of putting your money where your prayers are, with or without a priest. You all know what to do. What I will say, in brief, is that while of course giving to the church is important to our budgeting process, it is also important for how each of us moves through the world as individuals. Today’s gospel is a call to focus on what matters—the urgency of aligning our hearts with God’s.
When we stretch ourselves to give in a way that reflects the incredible abundance with which God blesses us, we are saying no to the powers and principalities of the world that tell us to be anxious about our money. When we stretch ourselves in our giving, we are saying yes to humanity, yes to loving God and our neighbor, to defending the vulnerable, and to making sure there is always Eucharist in this place, always a way to turn our own humility and brokenness into the superpower of love.
Love, Eucharist, generosity.
I have often described the Church as a training ground for discipleship. The current moment, whenever that is, is always what are in training for. This moment is when we make good on our baptismal promises. All of those times we showed up at church when we didn’t feel like it, or practiced love with someone we didn’t know or care for, all those times we prayed for courage and strength to be more like Jesus in some small way or some grand way, we have been training for this moment in our life as citizens of the Kingdom of God. As people of the Way, people of hope and promise, I say: Bring it on. Let’s be hated because of Jesus’ name. Let’s be hated because we are lovers, bread-breakers, and givers in the name of Christ. Let’s astound the world with our generosity and our love.
