Looking for Jesus – 2/15/09

St. Valentine, Charles Darwin, and Abraham Lincoln; as far as sermon illustrations go there was a lot to choose from this week. At the same time, no one is really sure who or how many St. Valentine’s there are and it’s really more of a Hallmark holiday these days. Charles Darwin and the church, well, they haven’t been getting along too well lately. So, that leaves Lincoln. This whole last week there were news clips, articles, and documentaries that were looking for Lincoln. They wanted to get passed the myth and try to find the real man who served as President. To do that they highlighted is own words, the words of those who were closest to him, and took a new look at history itself. There were a couple of things that jumped out at me as I listened.

The historians presented a much more complicated view of Lincoln on the civil war. There was no doubt that he wanted to preserve the union. That was his mission. But, I always took that to mean that he had a great care for all of the states. Looking over his writings, he rarely if ever referred to the southern states as states or even as the confederacy. They were, however, referred to as insurgents or insurrectionists. It sounds like such an odd thing to refer to other citizens of the same country as insurgents. He didn’t want to sit at the table with them, he didn’t want to negotiate with them, he wanted to defeat them. To this day there are descendants of confederate soldiers who think of Abraham Lincoln as a war criminal. You definitely don’t hear that in 8th grade social studies. Neither did you hear that Lincoln didn’t expect freed slaves to become citizens, at least not in America.

Again, looking over his own writings it is clear that Lincoln opposed slavery. Still, he wasn’t an abolitionist and there is even some debate as to whether or not he thought of black people as equal. In the end, many of the historians decided he was a politician; meaning he said what he had to in order to be elected. So, when he was running for election he would call for the freedom of slaves but also suggest that white people were superior to blacks for the sake of the vote. Much of what Lincoln wrote about freed slaves was regarding colonization in other places like Liberia or Panama. In other words, Lincoln felt that freed slaves would never be welcomed in a racist society so the best plan was send them all back to Africa. Of course, not everyone was happy with that plan. Apparently, Lincoln was willing to listen.

It was people like Frederick Douglass who were credited with turning Lincoln toward emancipation. It was said that Lincoln had never met an African-American who could match his wit and his intellect. In meeting Douglass, Lincoln had met his match and began to open his mind. As I listened to all the historians that were looking for Lincoln, I began to wonder if it was necessary to look for Jesus. Just as people has pick and choose which stories they like to tell about Lincoln, Christians have always selected passages and phrases that suit them and their interests. However, it didn’t take long to realize that, while Jesus may be complex. Though the church often tries, Jesus is not that complicated.

C.S. Lewis, one of the great church thinkers and authors, wrote in Mere Christianity, “It is so easy to get muddled about that. It is easy to think that the church has a lot of different objects – education, building, missions, holding services…[but[ the church exists for nothing else but to draw people into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose.” What C.S. Lewis is saying is that the only reason God came in Christ was to make us like him. Paul says it this way, “So, he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For in him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.”

When Paul writes “both of us” he is not referring to two, individual people, but two groups of people; to Jew and to Gentile. When Christ came and preached peace to those who were near, he was preaching to the Jews; to those who knew God, who were circumcised, who knew the commandments and were aware of the covenants of promise. The Jews knew the covenants like those promised through Hosea which we heard this morning, “I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will take you as my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness, in justice, in steadfast love, in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.” In other words, God was making a promise of peace to his people.

The Jews knew these promises and they knew God so at least they had hope in the world. But Paul writes that those who were far off, those Gentiles were strangers to all of that. They were without God in the world so they had no hope. But now, Paul writes, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. As God has done so many times throughout the Old Testament, God showed pity to those who were not worthy of pity. As God did so many times for the people of Israel, in Christ, God was now calling as his people those who were not acting as his people. God was not taking them as slaves or even as subjects, but as a spouse; as one honored and cherished. God was taking them in righteousness, in justice, in steadfast love, mercy, and faithfulness. In other words, God was taking them in peace through Christ.

For he is our peace, writes Paul, in his flesh he made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two thus making peace. It’s not that the law was bad. The commandments and the ordinances of God were meant for the well-being of the people of God. But God’s people had used them to build a wall between themselves and all the other people of the world. Those commandments and those ordinances had created a distaste for one another and a distrust in one another that lead to a great hostility between the two groups. So, those commandments and those ordinances had to go. The commandments and the ordinances were the bricks that were used to build the dividing wall so the whole thing had to come down and the bricks thrown out. In their place came Christ who would serve as the cornerstone of a new building project. It starts with those who are looking for Jesus.

All God wants from us is to be like Jesus Christ so that we can have everything that God wants for us; all of the safety and justice and mercy and love. Of course, that’s easier said than done. It’s easy to know and hard to live. Jesus is easy to see if we’re willing to look in the right places. But all of those different objects that C.S. Lewis wrote about seem to keep getting in the way; all the education and building and missions, worship services and cathedrals and clergy and sermons, even the Bible itself can become bricks in new dividing walls that divide black and white, rich and poor, male and female, Reformed and Christian Reformed. They start creating a distaste for one another and a distrust in one another and we’ve got hostility all over again that pours out into a segregated society and a war torn world. It’s not that we tried to do it, we may not have even wanted it, but somehow we got caught up in it and now don’t know how to get out of it. Christ got us out of it through the cross. Paul writes that God put to death the hostility between the two groups through cross so that the two groups might be reconciled into one body or, perhaps, into one building.

With the dividing wall out of the way, God would build on the foundation of the apostles and prophets and with all the members of the household of God build a holy temple for the Lord; holy because there was no wall to divide Jew from Gentile, slave from free, or male from female. All of them would be built together into a dwelling place for God. All of us have been brought near for that very reason. Through our faith in Christ we have access in one Spirit to our Father in heaven and we are being built into a dwelling place for him. The bricks are no longer made of stone, they are not commandments and ordinances that divide. The bricks come in all colors and genders and shapes and sizes. What they all have in common is Jesus Christ. These bricks are people who walk in love. They look like you and me.

There is one story about Lincoln worth telling this morning. It’s about his personal servant, William Johnson, described as a freed “colored man” who came to Washington from Illinois. In the afternoon, we worked for the Treasury Department. In the mornings, he was Lincoln’s right hand man. He traveled with Lincoln to Gettysburg and would die from the small pox that Lincoln contracted there. William Johnson was buried by Lincoln in what would become Arlington Cemetery. There was one word on his gravestone: citizen. Of course, William wasn’t and couldn’t have been at that point. That wouldn’t happen until many years later. But clearly, Abraham Lincoln had come to the view that all men deserved to be equal status in America. He wrote it in stone for all to see and he would die because of that belief. But he may never have gotten there had he not listened to the likes of Frederick Douglass.

If there is one cue that the church can take from Abraham Lincoln it is to listen; to listen, not just to those who think like us and look like us, but to everyone whom God has called as a member of his household. If there is a second cue, it’s that we should make our beliefs in equality and justice known and be willing to lay down our lives for them. If you are looking for Jesus, he just may be found on the other side of the walls that continue to divide us. It starts with the people who are right around us. If we are to have the peace that Jesus came to bring, it begins by acknowledging that we are all citizens, not only in this country, but with the saints. In Christ, God has taken all of us up to be honored and cherished in faithfulness. Only together can we represent the covenant of peace that God spoke of through Hosea so long ago and established in Jesus Christ. Through us, God is working for peace. And through this dwelling place of people God will work again to abolish the roadside bomb, the predator drone, and war from the land and to establish righteousness and justice, steadfast love and mercy.

As Paul wrote about bringing different races and nations into one church, he must have known how difficult that task would be. I imagine that’s why, in the middle of his letter, he burst into prayer and praise. As our church continues to seek ways to bring different races together and represent the covenant of peace established in Jesus Christ, I leave you with that prayer, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.