Saturday of the Fifth Week of Easter Years 1 and 2 2024

Peter H. Davids

Easter • Sermon • Submitted 17 days ago • Presented 13 days ago

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Our passages show both Paul’s discerning to compromise with Jewish boundary markers for the sake of mission and Jesus’ indicating a fundamental hostility between his followers and the world because they really are not “of the world.” Thus we need discernment and fortitude to discern appropriate compromises and resist inappropriate ones, accepting rejection in whatever form it comes and enduring all with Christian virtue and without lashing out in anger, but rather taking out anger and fear to Jesus and leaving it there.

Notes

Transcript

Title

Relating to the World

Outline

We live in a non-Christian context to some degree

For religious, including clergy, it may be a corporate living in the world, but we still live there. Our ruler is Jesus, our pledge of allegiance is the creed, and that is not true of the world around us.

Our passages talk about how to deal with this situation.

Paul is willing to minimize conflict especially when it came to Jews

The Jerusalem council had decided that it was not necessary for Gentile believers to be keep the boundary markers of circumcision, the laws of kashrut, and the observance of Jewish festivals (the most important being the Sabbath). There were what divided Jews from Gentiles; the Council was saying it was not necessary for Gentile believers to become Jews.

Timothy, however, had a Jewish mother so by Jewish Torah he is a Jew, yet he had a Greek father, so circumcision had been forbidden. He was a believer, so there was no need to circumcise him, but he had been influenced by the faith of his mother and grandmother and he was working with Paul who tried to go to the Jews first, so for the sake of the mission and not to appear to be saying that Jews who believed in Jesus should abandon the key boundary markers, Paul has Timothy circumcised. He and Timothy thread the needle of what concessions are proper to make and do so at a personal cost.

And surely they did this at the direction of the Spirit after prayer just as they changed wise and rational travel/mission plans at the direction of the Spirit.

Jesus points out that there is a fundamental tension between Christians and the world

We really do not belong, for we have been born from above into a new family and kingdom. We are “church”, ecclesia, called out, or chosen out. There is therefore some degree of hostility for we live differently. It may be suspicion, mockery, or insult rather than violence, but all of this is rejection.

This should not surprise us, for within a Jewish context Jesus had been persecuted and “‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.” The fact is that Jesus’ “name” which is his authority and identity is upon the disciples so they are rejected. But the root cause is because “they do not know the one who sent me.”

This produces a threefold temptation: depression, including wondering if God also is against us, compromise, trying to act enough like non-Christians that they will accept us, and anger, lashing out at the non-Christians and criticizing or condemning them.

Sisters this is so relevant to today

We live in the context of a nation that especially those on the political right consider Christian, but which is really the echoes of Christendom. We live in a nation in which the Christian population is viewed as Protestant. And we live in a time in which Popes, among others, have been pushing the “new evangelism” because so many nominally a part of the Church do not seem to know Jesus as Lord or the one who sent him. In one sense the “great dechurching”, the widespread loss particularly of those 40 and under is a good thing because it makes the situation more honest and clear (1 John speaks to that).

Jesus is telling us to find our belonging needs and our affirmation in him first of all and then in fellow committed believers, for if we seek it from the world, including many who are not fully committed to Jesus.

We should not be shocked by being ignored as irrelevant, snubbed, insulted, not chosen as friends, or verbally or physically attacked.

At the same time we need the Spirit’s wisdom and conviction to know where we go the extra mile, when do the unnecessary thing to be part of the community and when we quietly refuse to compromise on the virtues or our allegiance to Jesus. We need the Spirit’s guidance in this. We also need his courage or fortitude to take any anger or fear we may feel to Jesus and to leave it with him rather than lash out at persecutors or retreating into a cave of fear.