SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND NATHAN A. RUGH, CURATE
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY
21 JANUARY 2007

 

 

A while back, I was listening to the radio as is my habit and I began listening to a story on the fall from grace of an evangelical pastor. The pastor's name is Carlton Pearson. He built a church, in the mega-church model, in Tulsa, Oklahoma that had an average Sunday attendance of over 5,000 people. He was a big name in Evangelical church circles who was in with the likes of Pat Robertson and Oral Roberts. Now, Carlton Pearson's fall from grace was a little different from the typical fall these days. He was not involved in some sort of sexual impropriety. No, instead he fell from favor because he stopped believing in hell and had the lack of sense to preach about it.

 

As Carlton Pearson tells it, he stopped believing in hell because of a conversation he had with God after watching TV. One day in his comfortable recliner, he was confronted by the genocide in Rwanda. In response to the coverage he has this conversation with God in which he comes to believe that hell was made up in the overactive imaginations of human beings, and then released on people here on earth.

 

Now, what interests me is not the soundness of his theology, but rather how he was received when he began to preach this message in his church. At first, he was looked at suspiciously. But soon thereafter, a campaign was mounted against him, both at a national level and at the local.

 

He was discredited in the popular evangelical media. His parishioners begin to leave in droves, his fellow pastors, the folks that he brought in, left his church and started a rival church in another part of town.

 

Now, one of the reasons that Pearson was in trouble was because these folks did not believe in his interpretation of scripture. But what really bothered them was less about the Bible and more about the mission of the church. The thinking was that, if you do not need Jesus to keep you out of hell, then what is the point? If there is no hell, then you don't need to believe in Jesus to save yourself from it.

 

With Pearson's reputation in shambles, his community dwindled from the 5,000 on Sunday to only a couple hundred. His ministry changed profoundly and his church began to welcome a whole new variety of people. I think the end of his story is a happy one.

 

But, I bring up this story, because I find it very telling about the role of the Christian faith in the minds of so many, maybe especially among those who believe. The faith of many is compartmentalized. To this way of thinking, Christianity becomes a way to ensure one's eternal fate, it is obviously therefore extremely important, but it is really about after one dies and not about today and the lives we live in the here and now.

 

The Gospel then is about spiritual things. To this way of thinking, Jesus came to talk about our spiritual fates and not about politics or social structures or about this world as we find it today. If he was concerned with ethics and questions of how we live, it was only in light of what we had to do to secure our place after we die. And so the Gospel becomes compartmentalized, because it is only about spiritual things and the bye-and-bye, which leaves open all of the things that are not "spiritually" related.

 

The reasons why the Gospel has so often been relegated to the quadrant of all things spiritual is complicated. There is more than one reason. But one reason is because the church sought to magnify its own power and prestige by talking about itself in terms of being in charge of a spiritual realm. When the church became the religion of the Roman Empire, it began to have to make concessions to the status quo. This was seen as fostering the well being of the church and the spread of the gospel. By securing the favor of the Empire, more people would come to learn about Jesus Christ and therefore more people would hear his saving message.

 

After the fall of the Roman Empire the church's missionary efforts were directed at kings and tribal leaders first. By the time of the middle ages there was a well entrenched idea that there were two realms - a spiritual realm and temporal realm. The church was in charge of the spiritual realm while the temporal realm was the territory of kings and emperors. Sure, there was a lot of wrangling over power and the church was a political player, but primarily for the gain of the institution and its hierarchy.

 

And as we move into era modernity and the modern democratic state, the church found itself relegated more and more to the realm of the spiritual in a time where the spiritual seemed more and more irrelevant.

 

What I am struck by today is how un-Spiritual Jesus sounds this morning. He has come fresh from being tempted in the desert by the devil. He has resisted the devil's ways of being in control and of being in power and he has come to his hometown of Nazareth. He unrolls the scroll and he reads from the prophet Isaiah. His message is about bringing good news to the poor; he proclaims release for the prisoner, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed.

 

He proclaims the year of the Lord's favor. This proclamation sounds to me like his message is about very real problems in the here and now and not about some other time or realm. Sure, to foster a spiritualized reading, Jesus has often been interpreted metaphorically. But let's not make that mistake. Jesus is not being metaphorical.

 

In fact, Jesus weaves together different verses from Isaiah and leaves out parts of verses in order that more spiritual interpretations will be avoided. He leaves out the quote "to heal the broken-hearted" right from the middle one of the verses he reads. His mention of release for prisoners is about economic relief, for the majority of people in prison were imprisoned because of debt. Moreover, his original listeners would have heard Jesus drawing on the image of the jubilee. The jubilee is a Biblically mandated time of renewal and the restoration of property, the freeing of slaves, and the canceling of debts.

 

This was to be done out of faith in God's sovereignty, with the conviction that our social and economic life should reflect God's reign. Jesus also leaves off parts that would limit this message to being about only the Hebrew people and so we must not hear Jesus as talking about the "poor" as a metaphorical "poor". This is not just the "poor in spirit" of Matthew or about the people Israel being in need.

 

Jesus is offering a witness that is contrary to those who would like to think that the Gospel is only about things spiritual. As such, the Gospel is political. It is social. It is economic. It is structural. It is about power and human relationships. And, and it is spiritual.

 

The Gospel always stands in relation to the place of need in which those who listen find themselves. To the sinner it is a message of forgiveness. To the oppressed, it is a message of freedom and of God standing in solidarity with those in chains. To the poor it is a message of abundance. To a people at war, it is a call to peace and reconciliation.

 

To one who suffers under the weight of disease it is a message of healing and the knowledge that God does not abandon or scorn those in need. To the dying and to those who grieve it is the message of resurrection.

 

The Gospel is not some set of universal propositions that speak of a spiritual realm and destiny. Rather the Gospel is as particular as the particular individual who hears it. The Gospel is not some spiritual insurance that one needs to invest in now in order to ensure one has a nice mansion in the afterlife. It is something that encompasses our entire existence, both in the here and now and in the afterlife. Perhaps this is particularly highlighted in what Jesus says when he sits down. He says, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing".

 

This today is not just back then. The today is today, the right now. And so it is not just about the good news of escaping some eventual hell after death, but of escaping the hell that captures everyday lives here and now.

 

The Gospel is not just about getting the quadrant of one's spiritual life in order, but about bringing one's entire life and the life of one's community into the space created by Jesus Christ and his Gospel of the kingdom of God.

 

The Gospel proclaims that in Jesus, God has fulfilled his promise of old. In Jesus, God has created a new space in which we can live and move. In this new space all of our dealings with God and our neighbor and even our own selves have been liberated. We have been liberated from everything that would keep us from loving God and our neighbor, we have even been liberated from death. And so we live into this life not fearing death because even death has been defeated.

 

That is the message of the cross and the resurrection - the ultimate enemy has been trampled down by Jesus. But death has not just been trampled down for tomorrow when we die, but also for today when we live.

 

We are a resurrection people.

 

And so if death has been defeated for both today as well as for tomorrow, then we are free to operate in the space that Jesus has opened up for us. We live in that end time space to be a people of the kingdom. We are called to shine as brilliant lights in the space that God has carved out.

 

When we choose to live in the space that Jesus has created we proclaim the kingdom that is to come but that is also here for us to live into now. Today - Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing - Today.

 

Amen