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Sunday, May 16, 2010

The Pesky Truth about Faith

 Acts 16:16-34; Luke 24:44-53

Reverend Richard E. Allen, Jr.

So, I was minding my own business, thinking about this week’s sermon, when my phone rang.  It was a friend who needed a favor.  I put him off for a bit; I made excuses; I hoped he’d give up on me – this time – and look for another friend.  But then I remembered that I’d asked him for a favor recently, and he had come through for me.  I told him I’d help him out.

If you have any friends at all, something like that’s probably happened to you.  Such moments remind us of a simple but profound truth:  commitments carry a cost.  True friendship is not cheap.  Friendship may be worth it; but friendship never comes without a cost.

I say all that to say that what’s true about friendship is also true about faith.  The pesky truth about faith, Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminded us from his prison cell in Nazi Germany, is faith carries implies cost.  There is, Bonhoeffer noted famously, a “Cost of Discipleship.” (This is the title of one of his notable books.) Bonhoeffer, remember, lived his message, and ultimately died for his faith in Christ and his hope for an end to tyranny in his country.  Yes, it’s sometimes risky, and it’s always costly, to follow Christ.  The pesky truth of our faith is this that believing means living in a new way, and that’s never easy.  In fact, it’s costly. 

The Christian faith is about God’s loving us as we are, but also about God’s loving us enough to call us to be better than we are: to be transformed into the image of Christ as disciples of Christ.  This transformation isn’t simple or easy.  It’s worthwhile.  The commitment to Christ is costly, because it involves change.

Change is never cheap.  And it’s one thing to say we want something:  it’s altogether different to pay the price of what we think we want.  The truth of this came to me recently listening to NY Times columnist and social commentator David Brooks talk about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Yes, said Brooks, it’s bad.  And yes, it will be costly, economically, politically, and ecologically.  And yes, such costs point to the risks inherent in finding sufficient resources to sustain our energy-hungry culture.  (The News Hour, PBS, April 30, 2010, available as a podcast through PBS, iTunes; Op-Ed piece available at nytimes.com)

There are trade-offs, costs, risks, to having and living the life we want.  This is not a simple message to give or to hear.  We Christians don’t especially like it when God asks anything of us.  And we humans especially resist any change in our world, our town, our church or ourselves.  But the gospel is about change.  It’s always been about change for us and for our world.  The change we Christians need, and that we pray for every week or every day right there in the Lord’s Prayer is this:  “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name:  Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth….”  Right there is the redemption, the change, the costly transformation we long for.  But this change isn’t cheap.

This week we mark the end of the Easter season, our celebration of Christ’s transforming resurrection.  We mark the end of this season, every year, by hearing the story of Christ’s Ascension.  It’s a bit of an unusual vision, to our 21^st century minds and sensibilities.  Christ rises to heaven and away from the mystified disciples from the top of a hill overlooking Jerusalem.  Classical Christian artists rendered this challenging scene by depicting Jesus’ feet as the disciples’ last image of him disappearing into a heavenly cloud.  They were resurrected feet, of course, but feet still bearing the wounds of the cross.

There is a deep truth here, whether you see the story a literal or mythical.  The truth is this:  Jesus the teacher is become Christ the Lord.  God is more than mere friend or teacher, because God, in the risen, ascended and exalted Christ reminds us that our job is to be followers of Christ who invite our world to the risky, costly transformation of faith.  To believe is to follow this risen Christ with joy; to follow with joy is to take a message of change to the world, a change defined by God’s purposes for the world, not our own.  The message we’ve been given is both wonderful and challenging:  “Your kingdom come…” (Luke 11:2)

Luke is telling this story of Christ’s ascension, of course.  And Luke’s agenda is a risky social agenda:  the freedom of the God’s numerous poor from the debts and the domination of the world’s powerful few.  At the beginning of the gospel, remember, Mary sang of God’s great reversal of the human hierarchies: 

            “[The Lord] has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

            and lifted up the lowly; 

[The Lord] has filled the hungry with good things,

            and sent the rich away empty.”  (Luke 1:52-53)

And the child she carries, himself humbly born and raised in humility at least, and probably in poverty, brings message of blessing to the least, the last, and the lost.  He begins his teaching, says Luke, by quoting Isaiah’s word of liberation to the slaves and prisoners.  He says to his hearers, “Blessed are you poor… blessed are you how who are hungry… [But] Woe to you who are rich… Woe to you who are full… who are laughing…. ” (Luke 6:20-25, passim) And Luke remembers his consistent care for children, for women, and for outcasts.  Jesus lived his prayer, “Thy kingdom come…”  (Luke 11:2) 

Luke might say, and I certainly believe, that Jesus’ faith is costly – as costly to him as following him proved costly to Bonhoeffer and so many other martyrs through the ages.  They died for their commitment to God’s agenda for the world – for this vision of a world transformed for equality and for justice.  And so the Ascension of this poor, itinerant, and finally crucified teacher is God’s final affirmation that nothing less than the transformation of the world will do.  For us, and for our world, faith is about redemption:  costly change.

That’s the pesky truth about our faith, friends, is that we’re called to a costly faith.  This glorious vision of Christ ascending to heaven is Luke’s way of calling us to become living witnesses of the message Jesus gave to his disciples.  It’s a message of a world transformed – it’s a costly message, yes, but it’s a hopeful message, too.

God is changing our world, beginning with Jesus.  That change continued in the disciples.  And that change continues in us.  It continues when we pray, because that changes our heart.  God’s new order for the world, begun in Jesus, continues when we live in community and learn to love and forgive each other, because that changes our hearts toward one another – we see each other as brothers and sisters loved by a common God, not as rivals competing for scarce resources.  God’s transformation of life continues in us when we give to God’s work and when we invest time in being living witnesses of God’s love, with all our neighbors:  family, friends, and even our enemies.

Jesus is raised by God at Easter, and seen by his followers.  And, in the Ascension, Christ is raised for the whole world.  So we, his followers, joyfully celebrate God’s work in our hearts and in our world.  And we his followers continue to give our hearts and our hands to live our hope for the world:  “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, as in heaven.” (Luke 11:2; some versions have these two phrases, possibly remembered from the gospel of Matthew.) Even though it isn’t always simple, even though it isn’t easy or cheap to live that prayer, we’re called to nothing less.

We are baptized as Christ’s followers.  We serve a risen savior.  And sometimes we are called and asked to serve in ways we never expected.  Friends do it all the time.  Why did we think Christ our Lord would never call?  We serve a risen savior, in the world today.  This risen savior calls us into the world, even at our own peril.  That’s just the way it is.  That’s the pesky truth of our faith.

Amen.

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