April 18, 2004 - Second Sunday of Easter
Psalm 139:1-10, 17, 18, 23-24
    NRSV KJV CEV
Philippians 3:7-17
    NRSV KJV CEV

Rev. Peter Kennett
"Following Jesus"
11:00 am Service

Let me begin with a parable.

I have traveled by train on four continents but never anything so sad, so dismal, as the suburban train from Auckland to West Auckland, in New Zealand. The New Zealand rail system was privatized. It used to be run by Winconsin Central until they sold to N2 Interstate. The carriage was dirty, the tracks poorly maintained, the view – yuk – poor backyards, deserted factories, weeds, graffiti, covered station platforms so thick you couldn’t read the station names. And onto this dismal train came a class of kindergarten kids, about four years of age.

Along came the guard – he looked about 18 – and he went up to the nearest child, and handed over a card and his clicker! The child looked puzzled, so the guard took the children and showed them how they worked. Card into clicker – click, click – hand the card back. He showed it to all the children. Their eyes and faces gleamed. That wasn’t in the guard’s description, not part of his duties. He used the power he had to empower those with the least power, little children.

So it is with us. God in Christ empowered us spiritually, to us who possess no saving power, he brings into our lives power and joy.

Now, a brief look at the Corinthians passage. vs. 14. – Therefore, Paul loves to use his “therefore”. Here, it is stronger than usual. We really need to look at the passage that precedes this, verses 1 to 13 to do justice to what follows. I leave that to you.  Still in vs. 14 he addresses them as “my beloved” so much stronger and more emotional than “my friends.” He goes on “avoid, shun, flee, quit, and don’t dabble with idols.” They’re such a diversion.

Paul refers to the Lord’s Supper. It is Communion – in the depth of Christ. It means sharing the body – the body of Christ, which is the church. He’s writing about relationships with one another resulting from our relationship with Christ, for us by God.

He goes on: An idol is not God, it has no spiritual power. To mix it with idols is to choose an alternative to God.  Vs. 23 – You can do what you want, stand by your rights, but God calls you to do something better. Whatever you do, says Paul – everything you do – do all to the glory of God. There’s the grace note!

The father of Jesus Christ – our deliverer, redeemer, empowerer, is worthy of giving glory to  - in all we do. We march to a different tune – from that of self, uninhibited. Do not, urges Paul, do your own thing. Do not seek your own advantage but act to benefit others. From the Contemporary English version of the Bible: “Think about others, not yourself. Do not cause your brother to stumble. “ This has been the strongest Christian argument for restraint in the use of tobacco, alcohol, gambling, etc. But you don’t say that in the Brew City!

Two case studies in what is, or is not, idolatry today.  The first: In Jasper, Canada, as we came through eleven days ago, the local paper carried the story that Jasper’s heritage and information centre building, was to be made into a casino. A spokeswoman for the park authority said this was quite in keeping with the purpose of the park. In the early days there was quite a lot of gambling going on in the frontier saloons. The only thing wrong with that story is that it was published on the first day of April. It was an April Fool’s joke…the Canadians aren’t that stupid. Yet the worship of Lady Luck and general greed is a virulent disease spreading across the globe.

Case study two is more serious and more challenging. It’s no joke. I learned in Vancouver, 15 days ago, of a New Zealand Baptist scholar, who was coming to Lombard, IL for a conference. On the way, he worshiped at a Baptist church in Los Angeles and was amazed at the connection between God and country. Later he asked Paul Kraybill, a college professor, what he thought of religious nationalism. Kraybill replied with one word: idolatry. Take that as you wish. It was one American’s identification of idolatry today.

I want now, to delve deeper into the seat of idolatry, to adopt the method of E.E. Van Illich, an educator, who never talked to a group about themselves. To social workers he talked about traffic wardens. To traffic wardens he talked about radiographers. So I’m going to talk about Anabaptists. The name is an insult to those who carry it and who have had “a bad press,” until recent years. Today they cover Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites and Brethrens. They were Congregationalists before Congregationalism.  I’ll pick up on some themes in early Anabaptism, in continental Europe.

First theme: The fallen church. Reading their Bibles in their own language came like a revelation, a bolt of lightening. They compared the scriptures with the church of their day, and it did not compute. The established church had lost the plot. It had so many ‘clip-ons’ to the faith that you couldn’t see the wood for the trees. And the protestant reformers did not completely reform. For example: Zwingeli, the reformer, at Zurich still conducted mass at the altar, withholding the cup from the congregation  (who got only a wafer.) Baptism was done with blowing on the child, driving out the devil, crossing moistening with saliva and anointing with oil. The earliest Anabaptists, held a simple Lord’s Supper, according to the Scriptures, in a farm room with ordinary bread and wine, demonstrating fellowship with Christ and one another.

Second theme: Their view of the church is very much like the constitution of First Congregational Church. The church consists of believers, voluntarily gathered, covenanting together.

Third theme: They repudiated the marriage between church and state that had taken place in the 4^th century by the Roman Emperor. No one should be forced to become a Christian and the church and state should not meddle in each other’s patch as happened in Calvin’s city-state, Geneva, and Zwingli’s Zurich. I think the American Constitution owes more to the early Anabaptists of continental Europe, than to the Congregationalists of New England on that score. How’s that for heresy?

Fourth theme: Our Congregational forbearers did not aim to found a new religion. Neither did the Anabaptists who preceded them. They wanted to restore (x2) the integrity of the earliest, the gospel church as in here. We too, despite our foot in the reformed camp, take our authority not from religion gurus, not from bright ideas, or traditions or from a demographic vote of the people, but from the gospel of the new covenant.

Which brings us to the Bible. Here the gap widens. The Anabaptists, unlike the reformers emphasized the new of New Covenant.  The new surpassed the old. A very different new Israel replaced the old, a result of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. A new, landless, spiritual community replaced the old. The Anabaptists took their marching order, the Sermon on the Mount, very seriously. And out of that community of fellowship and ghetto, Protestants and Roman Catholics persecuted the Anabaptists viscously without compassion alike. And by the government of both, just as our martyrs were executed by the order of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London. The Anabaptists withdrew from civic life into their own communities, or communes. But not all.

We worshiped last Sunday with the Clinton Frame Mennonite Church of Goshen, Indiana. I call it the Monica Lewinski church. But seriously, it was very similar to worship in the Congregational churches in New Zealand, perhaps a little more restrained. And do you know what? Their hymnbook has 22 hymns by Isaac Watts. The Pilgrim Hymnal has 18. Mennonites – 22, Congregationalists – 18. Does that make the Mennonites more Congregational than the Congregationalists? Certainly not. But it makes you wonder about stereotypes.

May I digress about Isaac Watts, the father of English Hymnody? He was delivered from arid Unitarianism to Trinitarian faith. He was rescued from almost the worship of nature, to be grasped by the grace of God in the cross of Jesus Christ. He Christianized the psalms – the Church of Scotland has never forgiven him. Most of all, he wrote about 6,000 hymns, most of them rubbish, doggerel rubbish. It took Christian editors to sift the wheat from the charf. I don’t think there will ever be a better hymn than When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.

Let me close with another parable from life today.  The Northerner, an overnight train that goes from Ellington, the capital of New Zealand and passes through the city of Hamilton about 5:00 a.m. I knew there was usually only one taxi to meet the train, and I wanted to catch it to get home. Across the aisle from me sat a woman, 50ish, poorly dressed. She talked too much and tried to engage the young man sitting next to her in conversation, but he was too engrossed in his Bible to interact with people. In the middle of the night, when most were trying to sleep, she spoke to me. By this time I had taken my hearing aids off and they were tucked up in their little box. I could not hear what she was saying, and I didn’t want to start a fruitless conversation. But she could well have taken me for rude and inconsiderate.

The train arrived at Hamilton and I jumped off and ran as fast as I could for the taxi in the rain and cold. As I approached the taxi, I became aware of someone behind me. I ran harder. A hand touched my arm. It was the woman from the train. She held out her hand. “You left this on the train,” she said, and placed in my hand a ten-cent piece, a dime.

Who would want to hanker after alternatives, after idolatries, when they have experienced and thrilled and been empowered by the grace of God in Jesus Christ?