Brave Enough to Do Right

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

Sabbath, May 11, 2013

Texts:

Blessed are the persecuted. Matthew 5:10

Students are to be like their teacher, and slaves are to be like their master. And since I, the master of the household, have been called the prince of demons, the members of my household will be called by even worse names! Matthew 10:25

As teenager I was inspired by the stories of the Protestant Reformers as recounted in Ellen White's book, The Great Controversy. I especially thrilled at the scene of the grand showdown between Martin Luther and the representatives of the Pope at the council convened by Emperor Charles V.

Religious controversy had been swirling through the German territories. Luther was the most prominent of a growing chorus of voices protesting abuses of power and spiritual corruption in the Roman Church. The pope had already condemned Luther for his outspoken challenges. Everyone figured it was only a matter of time before he was seized and burned at the stake. But in a surprise move, the Emperor summoned him to appear before the grand council in the city of Worms. Luther's friends urged him not to go. They figured he would never get back out of town alive. But the emperor had given Luther a safe-conduct pass along with the summons to appear. Besides, Luther refused to be intimidated.

On the appointed day, he was conducted to the assembly hall. There he stood directly in front of the emperor. Luther knew he had sympathizers in that vast assembly. But they were mostly minor princes, younger nobility, people with dreams but little power. When push came to shove, Luther was going to be on his own. The prosecutor pointed to a stack of books placed front and center and asked Luther two questions: Was he the author of these books? Would he retract what he had said in them?

Luther readily answered the first question. Yes, he was their author. Regarding the second question about retracting or recanting, he asked for a day to consider.

The next day, he was back before the vast assembly of bishops, priests, nobles, theologians, lawyers, dignitaries and, of course, the emperor. It was a dazzling company of watchers. The brightest minds in the region. The most powerful personages. Many of the powerful people there had already been emphatic in their calls for Luther's arrest and elimination. He was dangerous.

The prosecutor demanded that Luther give a final statement as to whether or not he would recant what he had written. He gave a carefully worded answer. The papal prosecutor was not satisfied. He wanted a simple, direct, up or down answer. So Luther gave it to him:

"Since your most serene majesty and your high mightinesses require from me a clear, simple, and precise answer, I will give you one, and it is this: I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the councils, because it is clear as the day that they have frequently erred and contradicted each other. Unless therefore I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by the clearest reasoning, unless I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted, and unless they thus render my conscience bound by the word of God, I cannot and I will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other; may God help me. Amen." GC 160.

As a teenager reading this, I cheered. I dreamed of standing boldly for truth and righteousness like Luther did. I dreamed of possessing the courage and intellectual ability Luther exhibited.

Now, I dream of this kind of holy boldness for a younger generation.

I think Jesus was encouraging that kind of thinking when he declared,

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who are so committed to righteousness, that even persecution cannot seduce them into capitulating.

We don't talk much of persecution these days because deadly persecution is not part of our every day world. Here in the United States you do not put your life at risk for voicing the wrong ideas. You might get fired. You won't get killed.

Of course, if we lived elsewhere, it might be a different story. In February of this year, the mutaween, the Saudi Arabian religious police, raided a private worship service and arrested 53 Ethiopians. Three of the leaders were charged with trying to convert Muslims, a charge that can carry the death penalty.

Being a Christian is dangerous in Saudi Arabia. In 1997 the kingdom executed two Filipinos who had become Christians while in prison. They had gone to jail for some ordinary crime. There, they were converted and would not keep quiet about it. So the kingdom executed them. Persecution is real in Saudi Arabia. It's against the law to have a Bible, to pray together in your home. The kingdom is so sick, they have a special police force dedicated to forcefully eradicating every hint of creative religious thinking, every expression of spirituality that is not already approved in the policy books of Wahhabism. Still guest workers from other countries secretly practice their faith.

Jesus sees this secret worship and blesses it. God disagrees with the mutaween. The religious police persecute. God blesses. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia imagines it can preserve truth through force of police and prisons and executions. The kingdom is wrong. Eventually, it will crumble.

What is the righteousness Jesus blesses?

The book of Matthew comes back to this theme over and over again. Righteousness means doing right. Telling the truth. Practicing faithfulness at home. Avoiding scorn, ridicule and hostility. Loving even our enemies. All this is epitomized in Matthew 25 in the story of the sheep and goats. The final destiny of people hinges on how they have responded to the down-to-earth needs of the people around them. Taking care of people is the essence, the very heart of righteousness.

The Book of Micah puts it this way:

He has shown you, O Man, what is good. What does the Lord require of you? Just this: to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

Jesus blesses people who are so radically committed to this practice of righteousness, they will persist even in the face of persecution.

Part of walking humbly with God means learning, moving forward in our knowledge of truth.

By definition, church doctrine is conservative. It is a record of what the great majority of church leaders believed at a particular point in the past. Doctrine becomes the foundation of persecution when someone in the church learns something new. By definition you cannot have a “new understanding” without departing from what is already believed.

The history of the Christian church includes many episodes of persecution because of this conflict between learning and doctrine.

Not every new idea is a good one. Doctrine plays a useful role as a sea anchor to keep the church from being yanked this way and that every time someone new writes a book. But doctrine is also the fundamental tool used by those who persecute. So we need to be careful.

One of the primary reasons Jesus was persecuted was because he defended people the religious authorities condemned. The religious leaders scornfully condemned “tax collectors and sinners.” Jesus went to dinner with them. Jesus even partied with them.

The religious leaders delighted in condemning people caught in sexual sin. Jesus refused to condemn and instead pointed to a better life. (John 8)

At the time of World War I, people who opposed the war were arrested and jailed. You weren't allowed to speak out against the war.

During the Vietnam War, in the Adventist Church there was the same generational divide that characterized the rest of the country. Older members thought that Christians ought to support the government. Young people thought they ought to oppose the war. Young people who spoke out against the war were scolded and even punished by church leaders and teachers. But the young people were right.

In the run up to the Iraq war, those of us who publicly opposed the war were scolded as unpatriotic, as appeasers. Time has proven us right. It was right to speak out against an unjust, unjustifiable war.

I appeal to you young people to brace yourselves to speak out for compassion and mercy, to speak against violence, greed, tyranny. Keep speaking even when you are told to be quiet. Keep speaking even if it costs you.

The heart of righteousness is not sinlessness. It is compassion and truth, justice and mercy. Avoiding sin is a way-too-meager objective. Those who talk and dream of sinlessness will unavoidably be distracted from the real work of righteousness. Jesus did not bless those who avoid sin. In that case, his blessing would have applied primarily to dead people. They are perfectly sinless. But, of course, they are utterly incapable of righteousness, i.e. doing right. Jesus blessed those who do right. Only we the living can even attempt that.

A special word about the persecuted. Not all people who are prosecuted (yes, I'm deliberately changing the word) are guilty. Some of them are blessed of God, because they have not done wrong.

I have friends who are physicians who have been sued for malpractice. The truth is, they are guilty of only two things: 1. They aren't God. 2. They have given excellent care.

I would tell them, “Don't worry about it. You know you didn't do anything wrong. You know you gave good service.” But the lawsuit is there. It eats at them. It is an assault on their sense of dignity and competence.

If you are a medical person: Hear the words of Jesus: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessings on you for continuing to serve humanity in a role where the threat of suit is never far away.

I know of scientists who have been persecuted for doing right, for speaking the truth as they see it. In secular universities, sometimes scientists are mistreated because of their devout Christian beliefs. In Adventist universities, scientists are sometimes mistreated because of their commitment to science. Especially in the area of earth science, if you speak the truth as most Adventist scientists see it, your job will be in jeopardy.

If you are a scientist, I want to join Jesus in blessing you in your commitment to righteousness, your commitment to the pursuit of truth.

Some of you have experienced difficulty because of your commitment to Sabbath-keeping. My father tells the story of being admitted to medical school at the University of Tennessee, decades ago. A week after classes began, the dean called him in. “McLarty, I see you're an Adventist. Yes, my dad said. Well, I'm sure you won't have any problems. We've had other Adventist students here. But I want to let you know that we have one class that has labs on Saturdays. It's the only class that you'll be required to attend on Sabbath here. The other Adventists have accommodated to our schedule and I'm sure you will, too. But I thought I should let you know.”

Dad argued. He checked with other people. There were no options. The dean's word was final. Either Dad participated in these Sabbath labs or he would not graduate. Dad had to drop out of medical school. It was a crushing disappointment. For the next few years he worked at jobs that paid ten cents an hour.

He was finally accepted into med school at Loma Linda. But for several years he paid a high cost for doing what he believed was right.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Righteousness, doing right, practicing mercy and justice, telling the truth can sometimes carry a high cost. Do it any way. And carry in your heart the assurance voiced by Jesus: You are blessed. You have a special place in God's kingdom.

Dawn

Sermon for Green Lake Church, a Seventh-day Adventist congregation

December 1, 2012

Text: Matthew 4:12-17

Note: This will be my first sermon as the senior pastor of Green Lake Church. I will miss my North Hill Adventist Fellowship congregation immensely. On the other hand I'm excited about the prospect of ministry in the Wallingford, Freemont and University neighborhoods of Seattle.

Years ago in Akron, Ohio, a woman approached me after church. Could I baptize her daughter, Annie?

I should have been a little less enthusiastic. The question fleetingly crossed my mind: why was Mother asking me about baptism for a daughter I had never met? But I was so excited by the prospect of giving Bible studies and preparing someone for baptism, I took the bait, hook, line and sinker.

Could I baptize her daughter? “Sure. Of course. I'd be honored. Let's set up a time for Bible studies and we'll prepare Annie for baptism.”

“You don’t understand.” Mother responded, using the language of that time and place. “My daughter is retarded.”

“No problem.” I answered. “I'll make it real simple.”

“No, you don’t understand. She’s severely retarded. She can’t talk.”

This was a problem.

Mother gave me more information: Annie was twenty. She was about two speaking developmentally. She was still in diapers. The reason I had never seen her was that her mother did not bring her to church. Annie was given to spontaneous, loud vocalizing and erratic movement. Rarely she had seizures. Ruth didn't feel comfortable bringing her to church. But could I baptize her? Could Annie join the church?

Mother knew her request was against the rules. Adventists practice “believer's baptism.” We do not baptize children at the mere request of their parents. Instead baptism is our recognition that persons—whether they are little people who have grown up in the church or big people coming to church as adults—have the capacity to choose to accept grace, to choose to cooperate with God, to participate in goodness. Believer's Baptism expresses our profound commitment to freedom.

We do not baptize two-year-olds. Our doctrine precludes baptizing babies in diapers. Still, Ruth was asking me to baptize her twenty-year-old baby, Annie.

Mother tried to minimize the violation of the rules. “I tell Annie all the time that Jesus loves her. And I think she understands. Sometimes I think she says Jesus. It's not very clear, but I'm pretty sure that's what she is saying.”

What to do?

Church doctrine is unambiguous. Church policy is clear. Equally clear was the desperate longing of this Mother's heart. For her, baptism was the doorway to the kingdom of God. The idea that Annie would be excluded from the kingdom of heaven was a darkness too heavy to bear.

So, in a private ceremony, we broke all the written rules. Overriding tradition and doctrine and policy, we baptized Annie and received her officially as a member of the church.

That Sabbath afternoon was a fulfillment of our scripture reading.

"Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, hear this: the people sitting in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the territory of the shadow of death a light has dawned. Matthew 4:15-16

We see Jesus lighting a mother's life in a fantastic story in Matthew 15. Jesus was on a private retreat with his disciples. He had actually left Galilee and gone across the border north into a non-Jewish town to escape the press of the crowds. Somehow a pagan woman finds out Jesus is there. She accosts Jesus and company, begging him to exorcise her daughter. First Jesus ignored the woman. When that didn't work to get rid of her, he told her that her request was inappropriate. In fact, Jesus said, she was asking him to go outside the limits of his divine commission. To state it as bluntly as possible, Jesus told the woman, “If I do what you are asking, I would be acting contrary to God's calling.”

Then what did Jesus do? He granted her request! He brought into her life great light. Jesus regard for actual human need was so intense, that it prompted him to step outside the ordinary limits of his divinely-given mission. (See Matthew 15:22-28.)

Certainly for that mother, Jesus arrival in her neighborhood was the dawning of a great light.

I'm intrigued by the cryptic words at the beginning of this verse—Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. Zebulun and Naphtali were two of the twelve tribes of Israel. They are not particularly famous or infamous for anything. They were the nobodies of Israel, or maybe I should say, they were the everybodies, the ninety-nine percent (or more accurately the sixty-five percent). They had no connection with the monarchy. They were not priests. They weren't famous as warriors. They were just plain folk.

Metaphorically, Annie's mother was one of those Zebulunites. She was a nobody. The only person in her family active in the church. No connections to the important people in the congregation. No college classmates at the General Conference. A true believer living in faithful obscurity.

The darkness referred to in the prophecy was not “special darkness.” It was not extraordinary, newsworthy horror. It was the prosaic darkness characteristic of the human condition. It is the darkness that arises from our fear of alienation. Our suspicion that we are not included. The darkness that haunts a mother's heart when she wonders if there is place in God's church, in God's kingdom, for her special-needs daughter.

Let's go back to our scripture. Matthew described the beginning of Jesus' ministry using the language of Isaiah: Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, Galilee of the Gentiles, hear this: The people sitting in darkness have seen a great light. Those are the words of Isaiah and Matthew.

Jesus used entirely different language: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent.”

The “great light” of Isaiah and Matthew is the news that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It's close. Real close. It's right here.

It is so close, so available that repentance makes sense. It's doable. It's possible.

“Repent” is fancy religious language. It would be better translated, “Turn.” or “Alter your life.” Make a good change.” Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, so turn, enter. The door is right here.

Jesus does not tell people to adjust their lives in an effort to attain the kingdom of heaven. Rather he tells them, the kingdom of heaven has moved into your world. It's here. It's available. So turn. Turn now. Turn here. Turning is not a desperate, Hail Mary, long shot, aiming at some unlikely goal. It is the confident turning toward the welcoming presence of God.

The story of Annie's mother awakens our sympathies. We are all happy together that Annie was welcomed, that the rules were adjusted so Annie's mother's heart was filled with light.

Sometimes darkness haunts people whose vulnerability is much less obvious than Annie's. People like Nicodemus and Thomas. People like Bob.

When Bob and I met he was taking his first tentative steps back toward some kind of connection with church, unsure whether there was really a place for him.

We shared significant interests outside of church. We became friends. I heard his story. When he first encountered the Adventist Church it was perfect medicine for the chaos and dysfunction in his life. It made sense. It helped. He embraced it completely, zealously. A couple of decades later he was a leader in his church. A paragon of Adventist virtue. Then he found some cracks in the edifice.

Twenty years of obeying all the rules had not transformed all of his unruly impulses. It seemed to him, he was essentially the same person he had been when it all began. He was obviously had not become good enough to pass the heavenly inspection.

He was going to be lost.

The final proof of his hopelessness was his inability to believe the world was 6000 years old. When he had joined the church, he happily set aside everything he had learned in his geology classes and embraced the doctrine of the church. Twenty years later, he could no longer do it.

The church taught 6000 years. He did not believe it. Could not believe it. So, he had resigned himself to being lost. There was nothing to be done about it. He lived in darkness.

As you would expect, I argued. Certainly, the official doctrine of the church was clear. Still, just because he did not believe that particular item in the church's creed, that did not mean he was excluded from church or from the kingdom of heaven.

Bob dismissed my words. “That's just you. We're friends, so, of course, you're going to say that. You're a liberal. No offense, but the people who really count don't think like you do.”

No, I argued. On this point, it's not just me. And I told him the following story.

In the early 2000s the General Conference organized a series of conferences on Faith and Science. I attended as an observer. In the third and final conference held in Denver, a number of conservative theologians called for the church to be more activist in rooting out every faculty member who evinced the slightest doubt about 6000 years. Two of the most pugnacious leaders in this camp were Michael Hasel and Fernando Canale. On Friday afternoon both were on a panel.

A pastor stood and addressed Fernando Canale, “I held evangelistic meetings some years ago. A scientist attended the meetings and asked to be baptized. He worked at a leading research facility in the area. I found out he was already attending church. He was keeping Sabbath at some considerable cost to himself. And he was paying tithe. However, he told me he had one problem. He just could not believe in a short chronology. My question to you: Would you baptize him?”

Canale responded: “That is not the question before us. We are here to debate the official doctrine of the Church. And on that we must be crystal clear. We are talking about what is to be taught and preached in our Church. The actual decision about baptizing someone is a pastoral decision to be made in light of a full knowledge of the circumstances and spiritual life of that person.”

The pastor would not let it go. “Of course, I understand we are debating theology here. But I want to know when I go back to my Church what kind of ministry you are requiring of me. Would you baptize someone who was keeping Sabbath, paying tithe and attending church but did not believe in six days/6000 years?”

Canale clearly did not want to answer the question, but to his credit he finally did. “Based on what you have told us, yes, I would baptize him.” Michael Hasel agreed with Canale.

“So,” I said to my friend Bob. “It's not just me.”

And so, I say to you, behold the astonishing power of the light that shines from the ministry of Jesus.

Canale and Hasel have spent much of their professional lives in the church fighting to exclude slightest hint of wavering in the church's doctrine regarding the age of the world. They believe any weakness in this doctrinal point would undermine the entire system of Adventist theology. Adventist identity and mission would crumble into nothingness if we gave an inch regarding geochronology. The very survival of the church as an institution requires absolutely unbending rigidity on this point. They have written this. In the Faith and Science Conferences they delivered passionate lectures along these lines. Then when confronted not with an idea but with a person—a particular human being, a scientist who held a repugnant idea, but still a person, a human being—in the face of this single person their entire bombastic crusade crumbled. Why?

It was the light that shines from Jesus. For all their doctrinal purity and theological certainty, they could not imagine making the argument that Jesus would exclude a man because of his opinions about fossils. They knew, as every person who is acquainted with the gospels must know, that every time Jesus confronted a conflict between preserving institutional prerogatives and caring for a real, live human being, Jesus cared for the person. Jesus welcomed the person. Jesus touched the person. Jesus defended the person. Jesus shone a great welcoming light.

If Jesus could welcome the tax collector Zacchaeus as a full-fledged son of Abraham, if Jesus could pronounce a Roman centurion's faith superior to any exhibited by the proper people of God, if Jesus could turn on its head an incontrovertible accusation of adultery, it is not possible to imagine he would shut the door of heaven to someone because of their opinions about rocks.

The light of Jesus welcomes my friend Bob, and Dan and Robert and Jean and all those others who have been driven by their own studies to question some element of the Adventist creed. By the rule book Annie's lack of cognitive development excluded her from formal inclusion in the family of God. By the rule book, Bob's hyper cognitive development excluded him from formal inclusion in the family of God. The light that shines from Jesus illumines a welcome into the kingdom that exceeds the power of any rule to exclude.

Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, Galilee of the Gentiles: The people sitting in darkness have seen a great light. On those sitting in the territory of death, a light has dawned.

This Advent season, allow the light of Jesus to suffuse your mind. Then, as you are warmed and brightened, look for Annie's mother or a friend named Bob and share the light.