In a discussion yesterday about Tertullian’s De Patientia we talked about holy patience and holy impatience. Patristics has me much more engaged than any other class. Not just now, really ever. I’m on pace to make a comment in every class, which is just unheard of. Anyway, the whole time I had the following narrative running through my mind. So I thought I’d write it down. And then I thought I’d share.

I recall writing a paper in eighth grade about tolerance. The assignment, and it wasn’t for class, it was some kind of contest, was to write about the greatest problem facing the world today. As I remember it the top three essays as well as the majority of the losing ones were about overpopulation. Putting aside the clear bias of the judges, all of my friends (who were also the only people who really took the contest seriously) agreed that overpopulation would be the greatest challenge for our generation as we grew up.

That didn’t make a lot of sense to me then and it doesn’t now. What are these people suggesting? That modern advances in medical science, nutrition, and safety research as well as the eradication of various deadly viruses, the relatively lower casualty figures of modern warfare and the growing unpopularity of capital punishment are all bad things? More of us can live longer! For shame! I think the most egregious offense has been the lowering of infant mortality rates. If we could keep those up around 25% the problem could be solved.

Certainly I’m not qualified to make their case for them, but I suppose they mean that we will eventually lose the race between the number of people we are producing and the advances that allow us the ability to feed, house, and care for more and more people. But human life no matter how it destroys non-renewable resources ultimately survives on quite renewable ones. So I guess I don’t see how overpopulating the world will bring about it’s demise; there may come a point when we can’t feed everybody but never a point where we can feed no one. Is the big problem that so many people will be born that some can neither eat nor find shelter? If it is then concern for overpopulation is a self-propagating crisis. The more we do to accommodate the repercussions of overpopulation, the worse the problem gets until we introduce some kind of eugenic holocaust. Hardly seems like what an eighth grader would want to focus on as the great world problem.

So what do you say, Grant? Why is tolerance a problem? Isn’t the problem intolerance? Isn’t that what you mean, that people hate each other and will need to learn to live in harmony?

Well, sure. Intolerance of other viewpoints can lead to many destructive behaviors that do nothing to help global society. Intolerance of this type is everywhere between the races, classes, and nationalities of the world. Is it ingrained in us? Is it learned? I think my generation is one of the first to begin life in an America where Civil Rights has settled in. We lived in integrated neighborhoods, attended schools that were diverse and received educations that were quite sensitive to the differences between us. When we learned our nation’s history we were shocked by pictures of Selma and Emmett Till and could hardly accept that was our nation only a short time ago. Yet as we graduate from college (more and more of us each year) and enter the job market it would seem to me there is still a great amount of “adult-onset” racism.

The most positive effect of liberal education is how it has allowed us to become comfortable living in the tension between our hatred of other people and our acceptance of them. To put aside hatred, even ignore it for pragmatic reasons.

And that’s tolerance. And that’s the problem. The world becomes so tolerant that it grows numb and forgets itself.

The solution for inter-personal hatred is intra-personal intolerance. Instead of directing the intolerance at those around you, you aim it at yourself. You become cognizant of your internal brokenness and confront it with great impatience, throwing off your tolerance and taking on an attitude of penitence. It is a very active process, greatly opposed to passive tolerance.

But of course to do that would be to insert Christ back into the Christian morality we’ve borrowed from him and evicted him from.

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This is my approximate sermon for this morning. There may be some troubles with it, I'm really still jet lagged.

Worship at the Cost of Freedom

Prayer: Father, may your Spirit bless the words now delivered unto waiting ears. May you dwell in the hearts of all who hear this message, this message which is your Gospel, given freely to your people this day.

This morning I would like to tell you about my recent adventures in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It was thanks in large part to the generosity of this church both in allowing me leave from my responsibilities for 2 weeks and in donating a significant portion of the cost of the trip. I now offer you only a small return on your gracious investment.

I’d also like to say that the trip would not have been possible without the team of students who traveled with me. These nine Christians are, to me, heroes of the faith whose lives are living testimonies to the fullness of the Spirit who dwells within them. Don Dawson, the director of the New Wilmington Mission Conference and the World Mission Initiative was our able leader and there was Dan the musician, Tim the theologian, Eleanor the mother of the team, Helen the camerawoman and feline-lookout, Keith the lion-hearted Methodist, Brenda the servant-leader, Cynthia who would never let an hour pass without a prayer, and Lexi the entertainment.

Our trip began in Ho Chi Minh City, the second largest city in the nation. Most of you know it by another name: it was Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, before it was sacked and renamed by the communist North in 1975. If this were a history lecture there would be much to discuss about Ho Chi Minh himself, how he prized patriotism and national unity over all else and made deals with Russia and China to fund his struggle against France and America because he felt the communist ideology was less imperialistic than western democracy. That is to say he seemed to believe that communism is freer than capitalism.

But because this isn’t a history lecture, and I’m not qualified to give one anyway, I’ll stick to telling you about my time in Vietnam.

Our first task in Saigon to was to load a bus and head to Dalat, a mountain city 6 hours north and east. Dalat would be the place I got sick for 3 days so I don’t remember much about it other than that we spent a good deal of time as wandering tourists and I slept whenever and wherever possible.

From Dalat we chartered a smaller bus that would take our group down the mountain and east to the coast and a city called Phang Rang. Here we stayed at a beautiful hotel with ocean-side villas and a full moon over our dinner table as we dined beside the South China Sea on a perfect 76 degree night. I can only imagine how long the lines would be to sign up for long-term foreign mission work if they put this scene on the cover of the newsletter. But even then, pictures don’t do it justice.

We spent those days in Phang Rang visiting the people of the eastern Cham. My school, Pittsburgh Seminary, via the World Mission Initiative and the work that Don Dawson is doing has set a goal to reach out to the eastern Cham people. This work is accomplished in large part during these two-week trips made by groups of students.

The Cham are one of the most ancient remaining people groups in Southeast Asia. They have their own language and their own lands, which have been delineated for them by the national government. They are primarily laborers who farm rice and some animals but they are also famous for weaving beautiful silk and making it into table clothes, scarves, ties, and even shirts like this one. Though their rights are limited compared to Vietnamese citizens there are a growing number of Cham people who are enjoining themselves to the culture around them by attending universities and developing trades that are competitive with the bustling local economy. For the most part though they seem to live in slums. None of Vietnam is wonderfully sanitary to the extent an American would expect in her own country but the areas left for the Cham are particularly degenerate having the appearance of only two modern comforts: electricity and the television.

The Cham are historically a maternalistic culture. The elder women of a family are considered to be the head. This is a very foreign idea for westerners. A second history lecture could focus on the rise of paternalism in the world and perhaps its ill effects, but as a sermon that is quite a different subject. For the purposes of mission maternalism means that the religion of the mother (or the aunt or the grandmother) is the religion of the family. You may have heard that for orthodox Jews a person who is born to a mixed-faith home it is only Jewish if his or her mother is. In Christianity, well, say what you will about a person’s necessity to make their own decision for Christ, it would be nearly impossible for them to do that if it was contrary to the will of their senior female family members.

So wherever we went women greeted us most energetically and we often saw men hanging back, not interested in approaching or being approached. This made it difficult to distinguish the men who were detached and disinterested from the men who were spying on us with the hope of gaining some useful knowledge to pass on to the police. They were watching to see if we distributed any gifts or religious documents. At one point during a house visit while some of our team members were comparing a Cham-language copy of the gospel of John to the NIV version the guide suddenly said “put those away quickly!” then Don, the old pro of mission trips switched his line of questioning in mid-sentence from “How did you come to be a Christian?” to “Where did you get these lovely dishes?” Moments later we were moving casually back to the bus trying our best to look like dumb tourists with no agenda but to take a few pictures of local folks.

You see, there is no such thing as a protected right for the citizens of Vietnam. In a moment a person can be arrested, interrogated, charged, and jailed for the simple act of carrying religious tracts. It’s very likely that the homes we visited and the people we spoke to have since been visited by rather unfriendly agents of the state who are curious what terrible acts of sedition the Americans were returning to plan.
• Who were they?
• Where were they from?
• What did they give you?
• When are they coming back?
• Are you a Christian?
• Were they Christians?
• Did they speak Vietnamese?
• Who was their translator?

I can only imagine what it might be like to be interrogated by police based on the testimony of a neighbor who saw strange people entering my home.

This is a fact of faith for Vietnamese Christians. Just as you and I reorganize our schedules to be present in church for 90 minutes on Sunday morning and plan to attend charitable events and donate our money, so does a Vietnamese Christian leave his house every morning prepared for the moment when he will be swept away, held without trial for days, and asked to sign a statement renouncing his faith on the basis of patriotism and first-loyalty to his country.

Friends, I reached a breaking point in Vietnam and I prayed. I took Jesus aside just like Peter and said, “What are you doing? This isn’t the way a messiah should treat his people! Christians here need someone strong to come with the sword and fight off these disgusting overlords who have forced them to bow before idols and live lives ashamed of their faith. Millions of people here are deceived! Where are you in all this, Jesus?”

Jesus’ response is harsh and biting. He doesn’t say “Peter, I love you, but…” or “think about what you’re saying and try again…” he barks at him “Get behind me, Satan!” The NRSV uses weakened language “for you have set you mind…” it’s more like “Peter! You’re playing for the wrong team! Don’t you know who calls the shots! It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, or what you think you know because you’re stuck within the limits of human wisdom and until you learn some real faith, you’re never getting out!”

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego knew just how radical true faith in God really is. They stood before the most powerful man on the planet, King Nebuchadnezzar, and refused to worship his gods. They knew torture and death awaited them yet the terror of the furnace paled in comparison to the mightiness of the God they served. But if not… the three men affirm that nothing in the power of their oppressor is nearly forceful enough to affect the kingdom of God. Yes, the phrase appeals to my sense of duty as I hope it does to everyone here. Whether you see the will of God done before your eyes or whether you see a the world becoming more and more lost, certainly you should always remember to maintain your faith and know that God is larger than the mountains put before us.
• Lord grant me a new job and a nicer house. But if not I will serve you just the same.
• Father cure me of this disease and let me walk again. But if not I will praise you from this bed.
• God let this woman love me. But if she never does I still will love You all the days of my life.

Christian duty often asks us to make the most extraordinary statements, our constant commitments to serve a God who doesn’t always give us the things we want most. But do not miss the most critical lesson of verse 18… don’t forget that the NT bleeds from every word in the old. Christ has conquered death! Even if I die today my faith in God is not dead! Though I lose my very life, I save it, and though you may live or die you have been delivered from the hands of your enemies. God is Good!


You would expect some culture shock when an American lands in a communist nation for the first time. The hammer and sickle, the gold stars, the bright red banners blazing in the sun, and the ubiquitous white head of Ho Chi Minh seen everywhere all make you feel as though you’ve stepped into a Tom Clancy novel and must now fight your way back out. But in time the red banner with the gold star that flies from every building just settles into the background like the living streams of motorbikes, the clusters of disorganized power lines, and the grotesque fish oil that seasons everything you eat. And not just the culture but the faith absorbs you an you feel as though you, too, are a covert Christian with a faith that stands before a giant saying “do your worst”

But the fact of culture shock is that it works both ways. Just as I’m surprised by how soft my bed is, how clean the water in my shower is, and how it can somehow be 70 degrees on Tuesday and snowing on Thursday, I’m just as shocked by my freedoms, and by my church that is bogged down in pluralistic confusion about everything from the saving grace of Christ to the very name by which we call our Lord and our Father.

It is my prayer for each of you that you come to know a faith stronger than your greatest enemies, that each day you thank a merciful God for your freedom and your protection, and that every day you can earnestly confess your abuses of that freedom and your hope to discern a more faithful way to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

I saw in Vietnam a world where God is active in the lives of a small number of people, yet by the power of his Spirit has led them to do great things. It is a world where prayer is unquestioned as the best and ONLY means of gaining advantage in the spiritual war over the future of the nation.

Benediction:
On behalf of 2,000,000 Christians in the nation of Vietnam and the thousands of American Christians who pray for them: go forth from this place to love and serve the Lord. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Though I can't promise to avoid a few ad libs here and there, what follows is my first ever sermon (in verbatim script) from the pulpit on a Sunday morning. Comments welcome.

Disestablishment

Antidisestablishmentarianism has two prefixes and 3 suffixes. At 28 letters it’s arguably the longest word in our language. I did start a rumor in the church that it was the longest word in our language so I’ll take this opportunity to set the record straight: There is one word longer. I won’t be trying to say it out loud, but I’ll spell for you:
Floccinaucinihilipilification
F L O C C I N A U C I N I H I L I P I L I F I C A T I O N
For those of you keeping score that’s nine ‘I’s and 20 other letters. Though the term has roots in the 18th century and was once used in a debate on the floor of the US Senate, it hardly counts as a word. It’s just a compounding of four Latin words that each describe a different kind of “nonsense.”

Ultimately though we can leave the record keeping to the statisticians, I’m more interested in talking about the purpose of the term with two prefixes and three suffixes. The core of the term is the word ‘establish’ which we understand in about five different ways. It can mean ‘to originate’ ‘to install’ ‘to found’ ‘to enact’ or ‘to authenticate.’ There are some heavy theological implications arising from each of these variations.

The three suffixes take the verb ‘establish’ and turn it into a noun, then an adjective, then back to a noun. First it becomes ‘establishment’ which we all understand as the basic noun form: something that has been established. Then it becomes an adjective ‘establishmentarian’ which describes a person or concept that relates to or perhaps supports some given establishment. Then it becomes and ‘ism.’ I’m sure we’re all familiar with ‘ism’s they come at us from all over. Fascism, pluralism, liberalism, pacifism, racism, terrorism, heroism, antinomianism, the list goes on. You’ll certainly hear me talk about a few ‘ism’s in my sermons, the world is making up new ones everyday, and often you’ll find a new ‘ism’ is an attempt to give credence to an unconventional mode of thinking.

Both of the prefixes (anti- and dis-) are negatives. I’m sure you’ve all heard the story of the freshman English professor who was explaining one of the peculiar traits of English that a double negative results in a positive where in most every other language a double negative is a more emphatic negative. The teacher says “even more interesting is that a double positive is universally understood as an emphatic positive” and from the back of the large lecture hall one student leans to his neighbor as says, loud enough for the room to hear “yeah, right.”

Well with this word both negatives are necessary to understand the history of the term. You see, antidisestablishmentarianism arose in England in the 19th century against disestablishmentarianism (for what it’s worth there never really was an establishmentarianism). Our word describes the ethos of those political activists who believed in maintaining the relationship between the English monarchy and the Church of England. Ever since King Henry VIII with all his divorces and beheadings the English monarch was declared to be the head of the Church. The system worked great for Henry, he could finally invalidate his own marriages and many theologians liked it also, especially those who were eagerly watching the Reformation on the continent and growing steadily more disloyal to the pope.

But moving the seat of religious power 1,100 miles to the northwest did not satisfy everyone. Some disestablishmentarians were uncomfortable with the idea of any relationship between church and state. Others wanted the freedom to establish their own tenets in their own area of the country.

So who won? The Church of England remained the Church of England, but the Church of Wales and the Church of Ireland did not recognize it. The Church of Scotland was another story. There was no question Scots were largely Presbyterian, but would they establish the Church or leave it free and independent of the state? Looking at the Church of Scotland today you see the answer to that is “yes.” The Church is both formally recognized by Parliament, and fully independent on matters of spiritual discernment. The English crown affirms the Church and is represented at meetings of their general assembly, but has no undue power to affect church polity and certainly none to impinge on spiritual matters. In England the Queen is the “supreme governor” of the Anglican Church, but in Scotland she’s just a member, just like any one of you. If the Queen of England finds herself in Scotland on a Sunday she attends a Presbyterian service! Even if it isn’t Sunday she is still a Presbyterian.

Now look at the United States. Do we establish? Disestablish? or Antidisestablish the Church of America? From our conception we’ve been a Christian nation. Well, not an established Christian nation, more like an incidental Christian nation. All of our presidents have been Christians. There has been only one high-ranking Jew in the history of the United States, Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Before Kissinger the most powerful Jew on this continent was Judah Benjamin who served as Jefferson Davis’ secretary of state in the short-lived Confederate States of America. One should note neither of those are elected positions. It would seem that while we might not promote Christianity at the highest levels in America, we certainly dis-promote other faiths.

Even before the term with 2 prefixes and 3 suffixes came to be our founding fathers believed that the government would not dally in religious establishment. You will hear different interpretations of this; many preachers across the country will be taking the pulpit in this week and the next to remind the people in the pews that America is and always has been Christian and the American voter needs to remember that as she takes to the polls. But what manner of Christians would create a gap between the spiritual life and the public society?

Thomas Jefferson, writing 8 years before the ratification of the Constitution drafted a bill for the commonwealth of Virginia called the Bill Establishing Religious Freedom. Establishing Religious Freedom. Not establishing a church, but establishing freedom. Lets return to our five meanings: originate, install, found, enact, and authenticate. Which one is Jefferson doing? Well we know he believed that freedom came from God, so he’s not originating it. Authentication is something we do to determine if something is real or fake. I suppose since we are talking about legislation it would be most appropriate to say he wants to enact religious freedom. But again, why would he want to do that if he was, in some sense or another, a Christian man?

In the draft he makes two compelling statements. The first is “opinions and belief of men depend not on their will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds…” Do you believe that? We only think what we are told to think, or what we are manipulated into thinking? Jefferson certainly didn’t think what he was told to, else he wouldn’t have supported revolution. What he means is that you and I, the peasants, the destitute will only understand what we are allowed to understand. Jefferson was an elitist, all the founders were. Did you know the US Senate was originally intended to be composed of the best and brightest men from each state, not elected by the people but selected by the state government or even just the governor. IT was the House that was actually intended to represent the citizens. This system was precisely like the House of Lords and the House of Commons. We’ve long since done away with that notion, and I believe we can agree that the senators are no longer the two smartest people from each state. Yet some how they managed to retain the elitist attitude.

Jefferson’s second comment is more powerful and, though I don’t know that he intended it to be, it is profoundly theological. He states: “truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.”

A little background: Jefferson was a deist. Deism is based in human reason and natural religion. Natural religion is opposed to revealed religion. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are all revealed religions. In each the knowledge of God is somehow made by prophesy or revelation. On the contrary natural religion is purely scientific. A naturalist looks at nature and sees God in the immensity of it all from the complexities of the circular system to the beauty of the fall leaves. As a deist the ‘believer’ believes because he can find God on his own in nature and not by compliance with some foreign revelation.

So truth to Jefferson, this truth which prevails on its own, is a formulation of that concept that God prevails upon the mind of the individual. Jefferson could doubt every miraculous event of Jesus life and yet by his own reason he could come to know the full depth and power of God anyway. Certainly with such a powerful mind it would be a mere nothing to formulate a document from which the most powerful nation the world has ever known would grow.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. The Constitution has established a society in which this church was allowed to be founded and fostered in a tradition with which many Americans, even those in power, do not agree. Yet we are still here and we are proclaiming a message that is in no way coerced by the power of the state. But what we have sacrificed to gain that freedom? It’s true that Christ was given many opportunities to rule and force belief but in His wisdom He forsake them. So I concede that Christianity is not meant to be imposed, but is this “established freedom” in itself an imposition?

The sociologist Robert Bellah wrote an essay in 1967 that changed the study of American society. He determined that we have adopted a “civil religion” that is parallel to or independent of whatever religion the individual has chosen. This explains why we have endured the name of God on our money, an inaugural oath sworn on a Bible, or (until recently) the ten commandments on the walls of our courthouses. Politicians scramble to adopt this language of American generic religion and the sense that we are striving for something greater, but in the end it remains a distant embrace of the transcendent. We reach out for an anonymous God, divorced from the true revelation in Jesus Christ.

Hebrews is written as a sermon to a people who are familiar with their own surroundings and their own traditions but not with Christ. They may have heard of the man, but cannot conceive of the magnitude of his sacrificial love. The author makes the argument all the more forceful by introducing Christ as the great high priest who is over and above the priests of their ancestors. Before we were the United States, before Jefferson and the elite disestablished religion, our Puritan pastors were our governors. A citizen was only provided a voice in civil government if they were first found to be living a righteous life before God. Imagine then these priests, many in number, are your American heroes: Washington, Roosevelt, Penn, Lincoln, these are the people who are embodied in this scripture as the former priests in the tradition that shapes us as American citizens. Their offerings were the founding of a state, the winning of a battle, a proclamation, or a social welfare program; actions completed once, and limited by mortality. Our great high priest, our greatest hero, is the same Christ, the same who by His unique and singular offering of himself established a kingdom on earth and in heaven that shall not parish and shall pervade every culture and civilization on earth.

Friends, the author of Hebrews reminds us today that we do not rely upon our great priests. They serve us well, they give offerings for their sins and for ours. We give our offerings today and we pray on behalf of those assembled here and those beyond our doors, even those who lead our denomination and guide our understanding of the Word revealed. But none of these can match the task before them to the awesome accomplishment of Jesus Christ, who made one sacrifice, that of his own life. Today and everyday, regardless of what you know or what you have done, Christ asks you to respond to his gift by the offering of your own life unto Him.

The truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.

The Truth has prevailed once and for all time over sin and death calling all people unto Himself.

Amen.


Benediction
There is none who finds God in a flower, or a rainbow, who does not seek the knowledge of God revealed in Christ. We do not abandon our control for the fallen attempt to allow truth to prevail on it’s own terms. We must be compelled into action by the ministry of Christ, the Truth with a capital ‘T’ and not fall victim to the human reason that tells us we must resign our religious beliefs in deference to a plural state.

Go forth from this place knowing that you offer your life to a priest who is not subject to weakness, who does not lie stagnate in a grave, but is risen and made perfect forever.