Press on toward the goal

Written by Alissa Bender

Associate Pastor Alissa Bender
Calgary First Mennonite Church
March 21, 2010

Press on toward the goal
Philippians 3:4b-14, John 12:1-8

Has anyone else ever found that Jesus can be confusing?  One minute he’s telling a rich young man to achieve perfection by selling his possessions and giving the money to the poor.  And then the next minute, in John’s gospel, he’s telling Judas to just relax about a year’s wages being spent in a single act of extravagance instead of being given to the poor.  “You always have the poor with you”, Jesus says, as if to add “so you may as well spend your money on what seems good at the time”.  If this were the only thing we knew about Jesus, we might think he was telling us not to focus so much on the world’s problems, because we can only do so much to fix them anyway.

But our two readers shed some light on what it seems Jesus was really saying.  Jesus was talking and John was writing to an audience that knew the “in” language.  When Jesus said “you always have the poor with you”, he was speaking in shorthand.  It’s like when I say the expression “When in Rome…” which means nothing on its own, but you know I mean “…do as the Romans do”.  Jesus’ listeners should have known that his partial sentence was reminding them of God’s instructions for life in the book of Deuteronomy.

In Deuteronomy, Moses conveys God’s words to the people of Israel, telling them how they are to live as followers of YHWH in this new land.  In 15 verse 4, the Israelites are told “there will, however, be no one in need among you” because the blessings from God are free for the taking and the sharing.  But reality sets in a few verses later, because although Moses instructs the people not to be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward their needy neighbour, he acknowledges in verse 11 that there will never cease to be some in need on the earth.  But it doesn’t end on that note.  Moses, as God’s messenger, says “I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land’.”  The constant existence of need doesn’t give us reason to give up trying to meet it.  Because the need exists, we respond to it.

This is true in the context of any need, not only material poverty.  Our readers also reminded us of the numerous commands to the Israelites to care for the resident alien in their land.  The word “alien” may sound strange to our ears today, although it’s a potent one if you want to gain citizenship in the United States.  A closer translation of the Hebrew word might be a “sojourner”.  At a basic level, it refers to someone who does not have roots in one’s community.  Someone with whom we can’t trace a common line of lineage.  Someone who is different from us.  And over and over again in the Old Testament, God gives instructions like this one from Leviticus 19:

“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.  The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”

The Israelites ought to know how to treat the foreigners who are their neighbours, because the Israelites have been foreigners.  They know how strangers can be treated.  After Jacob’s whole family moved to Egypt, it wasn’t long before the Egyptians forgot about his son Joseph, the governor who had seen them through famine.  A generation or so later, the children of Israel were just a group of people with different customs and accent and therefore untrustworthy, and easy to be enslaved and mistreated and even exterminated as necessary.  And this is why the Israelites are reminded that they know the heart of an alien.  “You shall love the alien as yourself”, God’s command says, just as a few verses earlier it said “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”.  Both the sojourner and the relative are to receive the same treatment.

The Israelites could be a forgetful people.  And if we are honest with ourselves, we can confess that we can be forgetful people.  We have all been aliens too.  Maybe not all of us specifically but if I remember my family stories, as the Israelites did, I remember that my ancestors came from the French-German border to Canada, and from Switzerland to the United States to Canada.  They came speaking a strange language, learning English with thick accents, practicing customs that their neighbours didn’t.  If I remember that this is part of my story, Scripture tells me that it will inform how I care for the sojourner in the land where I find myself.

But maybe this isn’t the kind of thing we forget.  Maybe we remember how we’re called to treat the people around us.  Maybe, if we are part of the majority culture as far as our skin colour, religion, and language go, what we forget is that discrimination based on these things and more actually does happen around us, even when we are blissfully ignorant to it.

It is one thing to agree, which I believe those of us here can, that racism and other forms of hatred are wrong.  But it is one thing to believe that, and quite another, often, to be awake to how discrimination is very real and very potent even, or perhaps especially, when it is subtle and unseen by those of us who have status and power in our society.

The apostle Paul acknowledged that he could claim a certain status in his society.  He lists his credentials in his letter to the Philippians as you heard earlier.  Paul could claim the value of his family, race, and heritage before these eager new Christians, as a way of getting them in line.  But he counts all of these society-approved status symbols as “rubbish”.  What he holds above everything else is knowing Jesus as Christ and Lord, and this is something that all of his listeners can also claim, even with different heritage.

What societal status symbols might we add to Paul’s pile, not because we believe they make us better, but because we acknowledge that we’re given undeserved power because of them.  Today, at this moment, as we worship, I expect that there is a group of people with masked faces marching through the downtown of our city, as they did last year on this day.  These people would claim that they have supremacy because their skin is white. 
It’s terribly easy for me to proclaim that I want nothing to do with them.  But just by their existence, I am faced with the fact that just because my skin is white, some people may grant me greater status or authority over someone else.  What else could I add to that pile of unearned credentials?  I speak English fluently.  I did my professional training in North America.  My religion is fairly accepted or at least tolerated and vaguely understood in Canada.

As long as all of these things are true, it makes it harder for me to be aware of how it feels to not fit into these categories.  I think of the trained and experienced doctor whose English is impeccable but whose training is unrecognized so he drives a taxi in Calgary.  I think of the person whose ancestors came to Canada long before mine did but whose skin is darker than mine, so she is treated to subtle differences in job opportunities.  I think of the refugee who feared for her life in the country she loves, but was brave and resourceful enough to bring her children here for safety and a chance to live, and who is told in words and actions just to go home.  I think of the First Nations who were on this land before our ancestors dreamed it existed, and who have been pushed to the geographic and socio-economic margins of Canadian society.

Sometimes discrimination is obvious, like graffiti sprayed on the Holocaust memorial and Jewish community centre in south Calgary last fall.  But sometimes it is hard to put your finger on.  There are many people in this congregation who moved to Canada as adults or young adults.  I wonder if you can sometimes more easily remember the feeling of being different, and that being different mattered, rather than recalling a specific event that was overt discrimination.  It’s those experiences, those feelings, that are hardest to see, and yet are bricks in walls that divide us.  Attitudes shape the structures of our society.  And if we remain blissfully ignorant to the realities of discrimination in our communities, we are building those dividing walls.

On one hand, Paul’s words may seem to come from a different context than our own, but on this day we confess that violence and oppression still emerge in our communities because of the valuing of one race or culture or religion over another.  With Paul, let us count as rubbish the gains that society grants us in this respect, straining forward to what lies ahead, pressing on toward the goal of the diversity of God’s children living as one.

In the past there have been violent clashes between the masked marchers I mentioned earlier and those who, like us, believe racism to be wrong.  But if we choose not add our fists and hateful words to that kind of demonstration, what will we do to counter hatred and discrimination in our city?  How will we work toward reconciliation?  How will we strive for unity?  We always have the victims of hatred with us, so our call is to open our hands and our spirits to the neighbours and sojourners in our land.

Lazarus and Martha served Jesus in their comfortable, every-day ways.  Mary served Jesus with a ridiculous and rather embarrassing act of extravagant love.  Can we be inspired by both of these acts of discipleship?  Let us press on toward the goal of living in God’s love and creativity in the ordinary, every-day actions that display our beliefs.  And let us be bold enough to do ridiculous and even embarrassing acts of extravagant love, as we seek to take hold of Christ, who has taken hold of us.

Acts of Confession and Commitment

 As God’s people, we are called to continually examine our own lives of discipleship, and to discern how God is calling us to live in contrast to the broader culture. We are also called to critically examine the culture in which we live, and to discern how we can, in fact, be agents of transformation within it, and to proclaim that the values of the Reign of God have something vital to say to our broken world.  At the heart of honest examination and discernment, we find confession.  Confession is not an action that seeks to leave us wallowing in our past.  Confession is an action that seeks to lead us into God’s future.  In that spirit, let us prepare to join in a prayer of confession as we honestly bring before God the realities of actions of hatred and discrimination in our world.

I invite you to hold your ribbon in your hand as we pray our confessions, and afterward we will have a chance to let go of these ribbons as we commit to being agents of transformation in our city.

Prayer of Confession

Creator and creating God,
You have made us in your image, and we thank you.
Today we celebrate with wonder that you have made all people in your image, even though each person we meet looks different, sounds different, and acts differently from the next.  Your creativity amazes us, and your love for all of your children surrounds us.

These are gifts we want to hold onto, God, the ones we don’t have to give up in order to share them.  We hold onto your promise of love, through our pain, and through our mistakes.  We hold onto your love so that we might be loving, too, toward all those we encounter.  We hold onto your creativity, revelling in the beauty of the world around us, and being inspired by the great diversity of your creation.  We hold onto your creativity, desiring to be creative too.  We see your creative gifts expressed in art and song and words and ideas, and also in conflict transformation, in the ability to find new hope, and in re-imagining your Church.

But today we confess, God, that we have not always been creative, and we have not always been loving.  We confess too, that we are sometimes complicit with a society that is not always creative in the face of new opportunities, and that is not always loving to all of its members.

On a day when our international community is raising its voice to end racial discrimination, we raise our voices to you, asking that we might be your instruments to uproot hatred based on race, religion, or culture.  In the silence of our hearts, we name the acts of hatred we have witnessed, ignored, or even taken ourselves – words spoken out of ignorance, assumption, or prejudice, actions meant to hurt and exclude, walls that are built with no-one brave enough to tear them down.

We confess our part in this pain, gracious God, both in our action and our inaction.  We confess our part in the building of dividing walls between cultures, colours, or creeds, and also lament the walls that we have witnessed, or to which we been oblivious.

Help us to let go of the things we carry that allow these walls to be built.  Help us to leave behind our blinders, or our prejudices.  Give us wisdom to pick up and hold onto the tools that build your peace and justice.  Transform us, God, that we might be lights of transformation in our communities.  Give us strength to press on toward the goal.
In the strong name of Jesus we pray,
Amen.

Act of Commitment
And now, as we press on toward the goals of transformation, reconciliation, and unity, we will let go of whatever holds us back.  As we sing a celebration song about Christ who has made us one, I invite all who are able to come forward with your ribbons, and to let go of them.  Tie them onto a branch as a way of leaving our confessions before the cross of Jesus.  Then take a card with a new ribbon for you to wear on your lapel or your purse to say “I will press on toward the goal of rejecting all forms of hate, standing with those who are victims, and seeing God in every person I meet.”

So let’s stand, and sing from the screen, and with this simple action with our hands, let us commit to actions with our whole lives. Come, let’s press on toward the goal.

Words of Assurance
Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.  God is about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  God will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert for us, the people God formed for God’s self so that we might declare God’s praise! (from Isaiah 43:18, 19, 21)