See also the post with the video. Based on John 12:20-33.
Every year when I go elk hunting, I disconnect from all email and voicemail for about a week. Last fall when I checked my messages, I discovered that I had missed a message from Mark, an engineer at Ameren’s Technology Applications Center in Champaign who was working with me on my electric vehicle charging project. His message said that he was leaving Ameren that Friday, with some vague reference to church; of course, I didn’t get the message until the weekend, which was too late to get in touch with him for more details.
Later, I had the opportunity to talk with his former supervisor, Rod, and asked what Mark was up to. Mark had decided to commit himself to a project in Africa. He is visiting a tribe with a language that does not exist in written form. What he is doing is recording people telling Bible stories in their language, which he can then distribute to other groups who speak the same language. In this way, even though written Bibles are not available, the African tribespeople can still hear the Gospel.
Rod and I talked about Mark’s commitment. We are both committed to our respective churches; I shared a bit about the Commissioned Ruling Elder program that I’m working through. But we both agreed that it would hard for us to do what Mark is doing. Kids in college, family to care for, and good jobs that are hard to walk away from. We both admire Mark, but are not yet ready to take that leap.
In today’s passage, we hear about a group of believers who, like the Africans that Mark is evangelizing, needed to hear the Gospel in their own language. At that time, there were Greeks who were referred to as “God-fearers.” I suppose a reasonable analogy in modern Christianity would be unbaptized worshippers. God-fearing Greeks could go to the Temple in the Court of the Gentiles and offer sacrifices, but they could not participate as fully as circumcised Jews. While Greeks were the dominant group in much of the Roman Empire, they were outsiders in Judea. They had come to worship God during the Passover festival. Apparently when they arrived, they heard about Jesus. This passage comes just after his triumphal entry on what we celebrate as Palm Sunday. Maybe they had also heard about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Jesus was the big news in town, so they sought to encounter Jesus.
So they did what most people do: they found someone who spoke their language and knew their customs who could make the introduction. Philip had a Greek name and was one of Jesus’s closest disciples, so he was the perfect choice. When he and his hometown friend Andrew approached Jesus, Jesus realized that the time had come. He was not only drawing Jews to himself, but Greeks as well, and would soon draw all things to himself and reconcile the world.
Yet Jesus knew that life would not be easy, not for himself and not for his followers. He knew his own death was approaching and faced it with courage. But he also needed to warn his followers that if they chose his path, they would need to cast aside all of their other attachments. They—and we—would need to even hate their lives, that is, all the comforts of ordinary life.
Throughout history, and even today in some parts of the world, suffering for the Gospel includes paying the ultimate price of martyrdom. Early Christians were martyred; many schisms in church history have included martyrs. I read a story recently about Assyrian Christians, an ethnic minority in northern Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran. These are the same Assyrians we know from the Bible. They converted to Christianity in the first few centuries A.D. In the centuries since, they have been persecuted, even subjected to a genocide around World War I. Most recently, their population was decimated by ISIS. They remain a dwindling minority in the Middle East, with a small number living elsewhere around the world.
Meanwhile, in Myanmar, we hear mostly about the ruling Buddhists persecuting Rohingya Muslims, but the army has also imprisoned over 100,000 Christians in concentration camps. I met a pastor from Myanmar who was studying at Eden Seminary. He said that there were times when the army surrounded his church to prevent him from preaching something subversive, and he had to pivot to a sermon that supported the military dictatorship. He has since completed his studies and returned home, where he continues to lead his church despite the threats.
But we are not Assyrians, nor do we live in Myanmar. We live in a democracy where religious freedom is guaranteed. The so-called threats against our faith include such terrible things as not being allowed to lead communal prayer in public schools, or being forced to sell wedding cakes to gay couples.
Yet it is still true that Christians suffer in more subtle ways, or else compromise their faith. Many of us are fearful about sharing our faith in any public way, for fear of reprisal from our superiors at work or loss of friends. I know I need to be particularly careful on campus because of my position of authority. There can never be an implication that students are expected to profess what I believe in order to succeed in my class. I work with people of all different faiths—every sort of Christian, plus Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, and more—and our different beliefs can’t prevent us from working together.
For generations, we have been taught that it is impolite to discuss religion or politics. I understand that, to a certain point. The problem is that we have failed to learn how to politely discuss these sensitive issues. These are the things that really matter, that really touch who we are, and we never talk about them. Even among my friends at church, these last few years have been pretty hard on political conversations.
As a result, we end up discussing surface-level topics. We talk about the weather; we talk about sports. These days, we talk about COVID. I have a lot of conversations about my beard and about hunting. Such small talk smooths out our interpersonal interactions, but we never reach true understanding of each other. Just as the interstate highway system is a way to cross the country without seeing any of it, small talk is a way to talk at length with someone without knowing who they really are.
For the last few years, I have been active with the Campus Ministries Association. CMA includes Common Call, which is this church’s ministry, plus CCF, the Newman Center, Baptist Student Union, the First Methodist ministry called Ignite, and a few others. CMA’s flagship event is an Interfaith Dialogue every spring. Last year, of course it got canceled, and this year we have to pivot the format a bit, but here’s how it goes in a normal year. We try to get people to attend from a wide range of faith traditions: Christians of many types, from within our ministries and also from across campus, plus Muslims, Hindus, and whoever else we can think of. We mix them up at tables of six with a facilitator at each table. Then each group goes through questions like, “Have you ever been asked to do or say something that went against your faith or belief system? How did you respond?” Or, “How do you understand evil in persons and in our world? What do you think is the best way to deal with evil?” There are about twenty different questions, and none of them have a right answer. Most of them don’t even have an “approved” doctrinal answer. They are more about the practical realities of our spirituality. How does our religion or our spirituality impact our daily life? We are all trying to figure things out and live our faith as best we can.
The two keys to a successful interfaith dialogue are a willingness to share and a willingness to listen. The goal is to understand each other, not to win a debate. I have found that I have more in common with a Muslim than I ever imagined. We may all leave believing the same things as when we arrive, but we also leave with a memory of an experience of the Kingdom of God.
Because really, what is the kingdom of God? It is people living together in deep relationships. It is abundant life, not a life of abundance. It is seeing Jesus in each other. It is being guided by the Holy Spirit. It is setting aside our fears and anxieties and showing our true selves.
That is what Jesus is calling us to do. He asks us to set our lives aside—our false selves—and pursue Him and His Kingdom. That is not an easy road, but it leads us to a place of joy and peace.
Some people are called to literally set their lives aside, as Mark did to travel to Africa. Others find ways to live for Christ where they already are. Rev. Dr. Maria Evans is a pathologist in Kirksville who felt called to the priesthood a few years ago, and so is serving as the interim priest at Christ Episcopal here in Rolla. She continues in her practice as a pathologist while at the same time serving God through pastoral ministry. Rev. Steve Lawler, on the other hand, is a semi-retired Episcopal priest with an MBA who is the director of the Walker Leadership Institute at Eden Seminary. His goal is to help people who have had successful careers, who are perhaps at or near retirement, find ways to use their career skills to serve God through missional leadership, meaning leadership of organizations that are serving some specific mission towards establishing God’s kingdom. James Brown is a sportscaster, best known for being the host of the NFL Today on CBS, who is also ordained in a nondenominational church. He doesn’t preach much on TV, but he does radiate God’s love, and he’s not afraid to bring his faith into the discussion when it’s appropriate.
Maybe you’re not ready to become a preacher, ordained or otherwise. We are all differently gifted. Some are led to preach or teach, others to healing and compassion, others to a wide range of service to God’s Kingdom. But we all share one calling: to be witnesses of God’s grace at work in the world. We are all called to encounter God, to see God in all things, and to share with others how great is God’s love—for each one of us, and for everyone else, too. God’s love is greater than anything else any of us ever have or ever will experience. As followers of Christ, we should treasure that love above all else. It is a great gift, one that gets bigger the more we give it away.
Sharing God’s love means sharing our deepest joy, but sometimes means touching another person’s deepest pain. That pain can lead the person to lash out at us, as a proxy for the angry or spiteful or judgmental God they think they know. But if we’re willing to suffer through that pain, we have the promise of glory on the other side: the glory of entering God’s kingdom here and now, as God’s beloved children become our siblings in Christ.
Truly, that is the promise of the Gospel. Following Jesus isn’t easy. It is frequently a path to poverty, or to persecution, or to ostracism. But it is also a path to deeper, truer relationships. We go beyond the surface to those issues that touch our hearts. We connect to people we would otherwise never know. Let us each seek to set God’s priorities above our own, to open our true selves to our neighbors, and in so doing to experience the joy of God’s beloved community. Amen.
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