Sunday
January 24
The Gospel Ground
By Marsh Chapel
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In April of 1521, Reformer Martin Luther stood trial for his beliefs and convictions. With full knowledge that heretics of this magnitude were generally put to the death, at the conclusion of his defense he famously uttered, “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.” Luther’s theology and convictions led him to stand firm when it would have been far easier to stand down. He is generally viewed favorably for standing strong for what he believed to be true, especially as it challenged existing paradigms and structures. In the United States, we face a situation where many have strong convictions rooted in their beliefs. We know all too well though, that convictions cannot be equated with truth and that convictions can have serious repercussions.
As a nation, we are coming through the postmodern breakdown of all truth to a place of competing truths. There is my truth and your truth but very little of our truth. There is little work across the aisle, across the pews, and sometimes even across the dinner table. In many ways, truth has been reduced to individual experience. There are benefits to recognizing the perspectival, contextual, and experiential qualities of truth; however, truth also exists, or perhaps “insists” to borrow language from Caputo, intersubjectivily. It is never the sole property of one person, one view, or one party. So we come to a point of crisis or at least confusion, there are different “Here I stand” situations across the nation and world, which raises the question, how do we interpret these convictions amid competing truths.
Like many of you, I am still processing the January 6th insurrectionist attack that took place. My soul is weary and my mind is full as I try to keep a grip on reality. It is not always easy to separate fact from fiction in the best of times but given the breakdown of civility and a lack of candor, it is unfortunately not too difficult to understand how conspiracy theories are being legitimatized and how radicalization is being actualized. We live in uncertain times. We are in difficult times but we do not mourn as those without hope. We are those with faith because of the promises of God poured out through grace. We are those who can imagine a world of equality and freedom because we have seen and tasted a Gospel that lays claim on our being in the world. This works to ground truth, not as some absolute that can be offered in pietistic pithy phrases, but grounded in a Creator who continues to create, a liberator who continues to liberate, and a healer who continues to heal.
We heard last week the words of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. through his 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail. There is a great sense of urgency in the words of King, especially read back through his death and through current events. We find also a sense of urgency in our lectionary passages for the day.
From Jonah, we hear the most effective 8-word sermon that still left the preacher disappointed, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” From Paul in 1 Corinthians we hear the hope of the imminent return of Christ and the passing of the present age, “I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short” and a little later, “For the present form of this world is passing away.” From Mark, we hear recognition that the nearness of the Kingdom is at hand and the imperative to believe in the Gospel. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” These texts placed together by the lectionary on this third Sunday after the Epiphany communicate a sense of urgency. They communicate a sense that something has happened, is happening, and that something is about to happen. These passages teem with expectations of the eventfulness of God’s presence and work in the world. These passages dream with expectations.
The writers of each of these passages wrote of a God of power and strength capable of acting in and upon the world. A God whose words and actions can rupture into time to re-orient particular places and even time itself. They drew direction and purpose from the meanings derived from these understandings and symbols of God. They also understood the importance of responding to the call. While God spoke through messengers and while God is envisioned as the one bringing about aspects of newness and change, the urgency in the passages is not just what the divine is doing or will do, but how humans will respond. The promise of Divine activity is at the same time a call for human responsibility. The call and response provide ground and grounding as God works in, with, and through people for justice, liberation, and love.
This can be a painful process because of misplaced affection and direction. Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. He did not want his enemies to repent and he actively ran from the call. Jonah knew God to be a God of forgiveness when repentance was genuine. When Jesus called, the disciples put down their nets and they followed. As fishermen, their nets were their livelihood. It was one of their most important tools but a new call requires new tools. Following Jesus did not take away who they were but it did change how they understood the world and their vocation in the world. They could not bring everything from their old life into their new life. Growth rarely comes without growing pains. Often, the Gospel is bad news before it is good news but it is bad news that brings about good news. The Gospel is bad news to parts of the old that should no longer be. It is bad news to powers and principalities. It is bad news to idolizing understandings of God and lies that deceive. The call of the Gospel leads to restoration and transformation. While the Gospel is for me, it is also for you, and for us. Whenever the Gospel stops being for everyone, it is no longer the grounding Gospel.
It is in the hopes of proclaiming a Gospel for everyone that I share the following about myself with you. I grew up in white America. A town that still is 98.9 percent white that played the country music which described it so well. I lived on a dirt road listening to the crickets and cows in my back yard. I was raised to love God, my family, and the United States of America. I was taught that we were always the good guys. A city on a hill blessed by God and built upon religious freedom. I learned early in life that the United States was formed as a nation set apart for the peace of the world. I pledged allegiance to the flag every day, in fact, I led the pledge of allegiance in my high school over the intercom for years. My mother, who taught me AP government in high school, instilled the hope that if injustice was occurring, that we the people could always form a more perfect union through democratic practices.
While much of what I learned had good and truth in it, there were also many falsities and untruths. In elementary school, I was taught that indigenous people were uncivilized aggressors and that the “holy” pilgrims just wanted to worship God in peace. In high school, I learned that the Civil War was fought to preserve the union and that it was fundamentally a conflict of state rights. My teacher would not accept slavery as a cause of the Civil War. There are myriads of other white myths that formed and informed me. There was a lack of truth about the histories of non-white people and a great fear of “the other.” The other, who takes away jobs and who is a threat to democracy and family values. There came a time when I had to separate fact from fiction and truth from lies. There came a time where the call was a choice. Do I love “the other” or do I run to Joppa? Do I follow a Gospel unbounded by nations and nationalism or do I hold onto my nets which tangle truth with lies?
Some might say I became disillusioned. When what I held to be true but learned was only partly true and mostly false fell apart, I felt wounded. I struggled. I wonder if some of you are there today. In despair and disillusioned. Wondering how to move forward in faith or move forward at all. Maybe you are there for the first time, maybe you are there for the 10th time. While it is a hard place to be, there are times when we need to be disillusioned to myths in order to see the truth.
Like you, I watched in horror on January 6th, 2021. I watched a crowd of overwhelmingly white Americans attempt a coup upon not only the particular people in power of this country but the entire American democratic process. I watched people declare that they would rather kill those who they disagreed with then live in tension. I watched people break windows, scale walls, and propel chemical agents. I saw pictures of blood, zip ties, gallows outside the Capitol building, and guns were drawn. I saw democratically elected officials wearing gas masks, laying on the floor, with fear for their lives in their eyes. I saw flags of racism, hate, and sedition in the hallowed halls of government. As an ordained Christian minister, I confess the most offensive images were those with crosses. To authorize a political insurrection with the cross is not only to misunderstand the cross, it makes an idol out of the sacred symbol. Those were really nets. Good for trapping and killing. The cross is not for trapping and killing but freeing and living.
I wept as I held my 8-month-old son who bears the same name as the officer murdered by an insurrectionist mob. I wept that the day Georgia elected its first black senator, Confederate flags representing a system where not all were free and equal were proudly displayed in his future place of work. I wept and I am still angry.
I am angry at calls for unity that come with no accountability. There can only be unity when there is accountability. There can only be unity when there is trust. When trust is broken, it takes time to be restored. I am angry at the excuses and lies that created this moment in history and that attempt to say what happened didn’t really happen.
Beloved while it is necessary, disillusionment can be dangerous. It can just as easily lead to apathy as it can lead to change. We’ve seen a part of this danger in a concrete form on January 6th but it is also the case that many people have experienced disillusionment their whole lives. Disillusionment itself can become a net or ground for those who repeatedly choose it or are forced into it. Through time, I have come to see that “my America,” the America that provided me with opportunities and liberties, was not everyone’s America. Through time, I learned that “my America” was not only not everyone’s America but also that “my America” depended on America not being America to others. My upward mobility, my success, my financial independence, my gadgets and gizmos galore depended, yes on my hard work but also on the backs of others. My load was lighter just like my skin … because of my light skin.
Like you, I am still wondering where we go from here to heal from the traumas of history and recent events. Like you, I still wonder how to partner with others and God in redemptive work in the world. This week I heard echoes of the call at the inauguration of President Biden, especially in Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb.” Listen now to a part of this powerful poem. “When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never ending shade? … If only we dare, it’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a force that would shatter or nation, rather than share it. Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. And this effort very nearly succeeded, but while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated in this truth. In this faith, we trust for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. This is the era of just redemption. We feared it in its inception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter. To offer hope and laughter to ourselves. So while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us? We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be a country that is bruised. But whole benevolence, but bold, fierce, and free … When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid, the new dawn balloons, as we free it. For there was always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
Beloved, bravery is necessary to keep searching for light. Bravery is necessary to hear the call of the Gospel and respond with love and liberation for all. The Gospel and democracy are not the same, neither are faith politics. They should not be confused but they can mutually inform and critically engage when done responsibly.
President Biden reminded us this week that democracy is fragile; perhaps, it is time that Christians recognize that the Gospel is fragile as well. Perhaps it is time to see that the Gospel is not a weapon but an invitation, it is not a trump card but a call to live for the sake of God and “the other.” It is not some transcendent universal past panacea but hope of what is to come that alters the present. Caputo put it this way, “The name of God is possessed, not of ontological foundations, institutional support, a large bank account, Swiss guards, a television network or ecclesiastical authority.” He goes on the say that God is found and experienced in the call and response of the everyday lives of people. He calls this urgent eventful aspect of God the “poetics of the impossible.” The “poetics of the impossible” led Jonah to Nineveh when he wanted to go to Joppa, Paul to Corinth where he was rejected, and led the disciples to drop their nets.
The “here I stand ground,” the grounding of the call and response of a liberating God, is the call of the Gospel. The “here I stand ground” is not the moral high ground, the military high ground, or the political high ground. The Gospel ground is sustained by faith and driven by truthful conviction. The “here I stand ground” is the ground of love and service. The call can still be heard today but listening must precede speaking, learning must precede teaching, and accountability must precede unity. There are times when the Gospel has to dislocate us before it can locate us. Stand in the work of the Gospel.
-The Rev. Scott Donahue-Martens
Ph.D. Student in Practical Theology: Homiletics
Boston University School of Theology
