, 11/30/1999

Sermon on Luke 6:20-31, by Samuel Zumwalt

"Then he spoke: ‘You're blessed when you've lost it all. God's kingdom is there for the finding.

‘You're blessed when you're ravenously hungry. Then you're ready for the Messianic meal. ‘You're blessed when the tears flow freely. Joy comes with the morning. ‘Count yourselves blessed every time someone cuts you down your throws you out, every time someone smears or blackens your name to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and that the person is uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens - skip like a lamb, if you like! - for even though they don't like it, I do...and all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company; my preachers and witnesses have always been treated like this. ‘But it's trouble ahead if you think you have it made. What you have is all you'll ever get. ‘And it's trouble ahead if you're satisfied with yourself. Your self will not satisfy you for long. ‘And it's trouble ahead if you think life's all fun and games. There's suffering to be met, and you're going to meet it. ‘There's trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges them. Popularity contests are not truth contests - look how many scoundrel preachers were approved by your ancestors! Your task is to be true, not popular. ‘To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shift, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.'"

THE LIVING FAITH OF THE DEAD

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Most Christians visit the Kingdom of God as if it were a lengthy spiritual vacation from the real world - or an emotional weekend retreat they'll always remember - or a brief layover in an Executive Lounge between wearying cross-country flights.

But the Lord Jesus invites us to live in the Kingdom of God - to live knowing that God is the only reality, the only security, the only homeland, the only leader.

Many years ago Christian educator James Fowler wrote a book entitled Stages of Faith. In it he described a series of developmental stages for Christians. Then Fowler noted that most Christians never get beyond the type of faith that's typical of those entering puberty. To use the filling station analogy, most Christians stop in often for a spiritual fill up but the contact with the power source is quickly disengaged.

There are those that do better than that, growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, faithful in service and extremely generous. And yet there are still competing worlds and competing loyalties that routinely displace God from the center. It is always God and family, or God and country, or God and the job, or God and the political party, or God and my treasured worldview. Yes, laudably, God is frequently the center but not Only!

A handful are so drawn into the Kingdom of God - a handful are so possessed by the love and mercy of God in Jesus Christ - a handful are so seized by the Holy Spirit that they literally give their flawed lives away in pale imitation of their Lord and Master Jesus Christ. I am thinking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, and nameless others whose faith unnerves and humbles those of us that visit the Kingdom of God as if it were an exotic land.

To live in the Kingdom of God is not impossible as some of the saints have shown us. It is more that most of us don't want to travel light. Our baggage is too treasured. It seems that most of us have to find ourselves self-consciously near the end before we are able to begin to let go. And yet the letting go is often with such regret, with so many last minute conditions, and even with more sadness over what is being left behind than joy over what lies ahead.

But a handful seem to have been so immersed in the grace and mercy of God that trust overwhelms doubt, hope triumphs over despair, and citizenship in the Kingdom of God is more palpable than any earthly passport and any earthly pledge of allegiance. These are so shaped by the Holy Spirit that they live their lives self-consciously, if not perfectly, in the Kingdom of God. And people of less faith call such faith extraordinary, while people of little faith call such faith foolish, bigoted, crazy, or even traitorous.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was safely in New York City teaching at Union Seminary. He was lauded as a brilliant young theologian who earned his doctorate at 21. He came from a background of privilege and high achievement. But because God was more than an idea and the Kingdom of God was greater than Hitler's Germany, it was inevitable that Bonhoeffer could not stay as a safely disengaged critic of Hitler's kind of demonic patriotism.

Forced to choose between being an academic whiner from afar or dangerously preaching and teaching the Kingdom of God in a Germany that was being buffeted by Satan, Bonhoeffer reentered the fray. He established an underground seminary to form future pastors for the claims of the Kingdom of God. He passed information to Hitler's enemies abroad in hopes of bringing about Hitler's overthrow. Eventually this man that believed in the Lord Jesus' call to non-violence chose, nevertheless, to be part of a plot to assassinate Hitler. For this Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and in April 1945 was hanged by the Gestapo. As Bonhoeffer celebrated Holy Communion in the last hours before his death, prison guards were moved by Bonhoeffer's conviction that today he would be with the Lord Jesus in Paradise.

The living faith of the dead (Jaroslav Pelikan's definition of tradition) is not merely about making a vigorous defense of the Church's Great Tradition in the face of each generation's favorite heresies. Anyone who has been sufficiently schooled in the mandatory core content of the Christian kerygma (Werner Elert's phrase) can cleverly or pedantically point out the shortcomings of false teaching. Anyone who knows her or his Bible, catechism, liturgy, and church history can diagnose each generation's failed attempts to pass along what it means to be a Christian to the present day Church.

To teach, confess, and practice the Great Tradition of Christianity is to hold fast to the Truth while claiming no merit or righteousness of one's own. To love one's fellow sinners while fearlessly naming disobedience - that is the living faith of the dead. To live confidently in the communal love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - to lose your life to the claims of the Kingdom of God just like Bonhoeffer - that is the Spirit's work and the truest meaning of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. The faith of the dead comes alive when we live as if the Kingdom of God is our homeland and our destination. And the more we go that way the more that those whose hearts still belong to this world will seek to silence us.

Mother Theresa could well have lived in the safety of the Christian West. There were convents in every major city of the nominally Christian world and poor folk living in the stately shadows of each magnificent house of easy worship. The little nun from Eastern Europe could well have lived in the Kingdom of God in the humble obscurity that has been the dress of so many sisters and brothers. But she was drawn to that subcontinent where Hindu and Buddhist and Muslim and Sikh have shed so much of each other's blood in the name of their gods. (Who are we in the West to cast stones at them?)

There among the wretched poor of Calcutta, Mother Theresa and other young women were drawn by the Holy Spirit to declare that each life was valuable. It is one thing for comfortable suburban middle class Catholics and Protestants to vote and march for the pro-life cause. It is a breathing icon, an open window, indeed a manifestation of the Kingdom of God when you sacrifice yourself day in and day out like Mother Theresa believing that even the most seemingly useless life is precious to God.

The living faith of the dead is more than memorizing the Lord Jesus' words of blessings and curses in today's Gospel and infinitely more than memorializing God's commandments in bronze and stone. The Lord Jesus is the embodiment of the Kingdom of God - he is the Servant King who pours out his life on the cross in obedience to the Father even dying for his enemies. When you can say and do with Mother Theresa, "God has not called me to success but to faithfulness" - that is the living faith of the dead. When you can do and say with Mother Theresa that you pour out your life for the forgotten because you see in them the wounded dying Jesus - that is the living faith of the dead.

Sainthood is not otherworldly perfection. It is progressively abandoning this world for the Kingdom of God while progressively embracing this world for the Kingdom of God. Sainthood is what God declares and enacts in Holy Baptism and what the Holy Spirit is daily declaring and attempting to enact in each heart and mind that gladly hears the Word of God and learns it.

Jim Crow's heirs have worked overtime to declare Martin Luther King's personal flaws as if his failures somehow undid the Holy Spirit's work in his life. Yet, by their fruits you will always know the adversaries of the Triune God - whether conservative or liberal. History is littered with the victims of their false teaching, false practice, and false worship. They are as phony as $35 Rolex watches, as phony as the so-called sexual ethics of liberal Christians, and as phony as renewed liturgies that make orthodoxy optional while celebrating ourselves to death ("It is right to give our thanks and praise!")

Martin Luther King eloquently preached the Kingdom of God when these United States of America were declaring that the only god we really trusted was an idol made from paper and green ink. He was beaten, mocked, and finally executed by his Lord's enemies in the vain hope that silencing the preacher would make the Kingdom of God go away. It was easier to sing "red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight" than to live it. And to this day, 11 a.m. on Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour of the week for Christians. To this day most liberal and conservative Christians fail miserably to lose our safe and comfortable lives for the sake of the Gospel.

Because we cannot by our own effort or understanding believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or be claimed by His Kingdom, the Holy Spirit continues to call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. Today the Spirit of God is calling you and me like He called Dietrich Bonhoeffer, like He called Mother Theresa, like He called Martin Luther King. It is not impossible to be seized by the Kingdom of God - if that were so there would be no embodiments of the living faith of the dead. There would be only fables, fairy tales, and heroic epics of this world's Gates, Buffetts, Bushes, and Obamas.

It is not enough to worship weekly, pray daily, give generously, and serve faithfully. It is not enough to learn the Ten Commandments, the Creeds, and the Lord's Prayer and defend them to the next generation. It is not enough to know the orthodox liturgy and pass by worship fads like driving past a greasy spoon. It is not enough to do serious Bible study and know the form of a Hittite suzerainty treaty. It is not enough to go on a Via de Cristo or Teens Encounter Christ (spiritual retreat) weekend. It is not enough to become a Stephen Minister or a hospital visitor or to commune shut-ins. It is not enough to vote your liberal or conservative social conscience. It is not enough to work with the young or to practice hospitality to the homeless stranger. It is not enough to give a few dollars a year to the hungry and write governmental leaders on their behalf.

The living faith of the dead - the practice of sainthood - is to die and live with Christ out of obedience to His Father for the sake of the world that God owns and loves!

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Samuel Zumwalt
Wilmington, North Carolina USA
E-Mail:

Bemerkung:
Luke 6:20-31 [The Message, Eugene Peterson, Translator]

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