POLITICS AND PIETY BETHANY PRESBYTERIAN GHURCH
LUKE 4:16-30 LAFAYETTE, INDIANA
JANUARY 27, 1974 JOHN M. BUCHANAN

I would ike to set the stage for this sermon by sharing with you some-
thing that happened on Thursday night. I had been working on the New Testa-

ment lesson for this morning ali week: an important text to which the preacher
is directed by the lectionary of the Church once a year. Some things were
beginning to fall into place, but it really wasn't happening with much
enthusiasm. And then I received a telephone call from my brother who is the
Village Manager in Liberty, New York. You may have read the notice in
Thursday's paper that there was an apartment house fire in Liberty and that
eleven people died. Those eleven people were Puerto Ricans: the apartment
house had no fire escape from the third floor: it was an ambiguous case -
not overtly in violation in the code but certainly a questionable arrange-
ment. The owner is wealthy: the city administration had only one option -
evicting the tennants because of the safety hazhard. But that would have
meant great suffering for people who don't need any more suffering at the
hands of our culture. And so the decision - and I take it that it was
largely my brother's - was to allow them to stay and hope to persuade the
owner to buiid a fire escape.

Eleven people are dead ~- most of them children: my brother called
because he needed to talk to someone. In grief, rage and bitterness he noted
that the Presbyterian Church, across the street from the apartment, - in which
he ig an Elder - recently refused to allow the neighbors in for coffee.

We didn't discuss that. In fact, al} I did was listen and identify
with my brother who was hurting. But what it provoked in me was an urgent
reiteration of an old question - the question: What is the function of
religion in life? Where is the locus of faith?

Two directions present themselves as alternatives: let's call the first
"Gut of this World" (7.) It is a reflection of a universal human desire to
escape reality. It sees the function of religion in terms of providing

a way out of the tensions, frustrations, fear and boredom that accompany

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JANUARY 27, 1974

life. God is discussed in the past and future tenses, but net in the present,
Salvation is something that will happen to the individual in the future.

Since the focus is “out-of-this-world"” the ethical implications of this kind
of religion are “withdrawal.” The believer is to protect himself from the
dirtiness and sin of everything that is worldly. This position is held in
common by adherents of ait religions - some more than others. It has been
characteristic of Christianity on and off, through our 2,000 year history.

Tt is experiencing a rennaisance in the 1970's.

The second direction is “down to earth". It sees the lacus of religion
in the wortd, It defines Salvation in the present tense: it's God is one who
is involved in the common life of the wortd. The issues about which it's
concerned are, therefore, terribly worldly. It's ethical implications are in
the direction of radical involvement in the life of the world. It too, from t
time to time, has been characteristic of Christianity. It is in trouble

today.

A recent debate on the floor of Wabash Valley Presbytery ilfustr-tss
how those two opposite directions are in conflict. The question was whether
Or mt the Presbytery should purchase several apartment complexes in East
Chicago that need a not-for-profit corporation in order to provide low and
middie income housing. On the one side were those who were appalled by the
suggestion that it is the business of the Presbytertan. Church to provide for
housing. Their preference would be to spend the money to build a church or
to provide a minister to tell the people the Gospel, On the other side were
those who believed the proposed to be a faithful reflection of the Gospel:
and that in this way the Good Hews was, in fact, being told. The: question
is not yet resolved - but it presents itself to the Church at evry level
every day.

it would be less than candid of me toa pretend neutrality on the issue.

You know better than that. The Jesus I see in the New Testament was terribly

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JANUARY 27, 1974

“down to eartn." And yet I continue to see his church cashing in on this
universal need for escapism by providing a religion that is “out of this

world": that has little if anything to do with the issues that matter most to
ali men - a religion, the very appeal of which is its total irrelevance.

Now, let's look at Luke. Last Sunday we thought about how the fourth
Gospel - John - introduces the life and public ministry of Jesus by way of a
wedding feast at Cana and the mtracle of the water become wine. Luke's
introduction takes place in Nazareth, his home town; and it's a littie like a
politician returning home to announce his candidacy.

The scene is the Synagog on the Sabbath. The ritual prescribed that a
certain portion of the law was to be read and a selection chosen from the
prophets. Any member of the congregation could be asked to do this reading
and then to sit down and comment, or preach, on the text. Sometimes this
honor was assigned to a visiting dignitary. So it was that they invited
desus, a local boy whom everybody knew with a growing reputation as a Rabbi,
or teacher, whose career bore watching. He chose a text from Isaiah 61:

"Phe Spirtt of the Lord ts upon me,
because he has annotnted me to
preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
release to the eapttves
and recovertng of stght to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

ft

to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,

The good people of Nazareth “oooed and aawed" at that. It was a fevorite
passage, written by a prophet after the exile, but in the first century one
with which the Jews easily identified. They were the poor - the captives -
the oppressed. When the Messiah came he would change all that, He would ’

rally the people and drive the Romans into the sea. The Kingdom of David

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January 27, 1974

would rise again. desus had read what they wanted to hear,

But then he handed the scroll back to the attendant who placed it
reverently in the ark: and he said something SO incredible that for an
instant they could't believe their ears: "Today this scripture which you
nave heard has been fulfilled." I ean imagaine a Jong, protracted, deadly
Silence: and then, “Did I hear right? Does he mean what [I think he means?
Joseph's son? Jesus, the capenter? Its the most ridiculous thing I ever
heard!" | | |

Jesus sensed what was going on, and so he pulled out two stories From
the scriptures, both of which illustrated how God works in ways people dont
understand - in thease two instances with people who were not Jews. And that
incensed them: "They were filled with wrath": they ejected him and mob
mentality would have thrown him over the hill. a

Now, that is a very important passage of scripture - coming where it
does - immediately after his baptism by John and his period of temptation
in the wilderness: at the very beginning, that is to say, of his public life.
And there are two directions that lead out of it - and that are important
for our purpose this morning.

First, it establishes the base for everything that follows. From the
beginning Jesus tried to focus people's attention on something that was
happening in their midst. "The Kingdom of Got" is now here. He rejected
every suggestion that he was the main attraction: he saw his mintstry in
terms of announcing that the reign of God had begun: and he invited people
to enter that Kingdom by obeying God's will.

But people didn’t hear it that way. The evidence Seams to be that the
Jews - or at least a sizeable group of them - were interested in Jesus
because they thought that he would precipitate a military revolt against
Roam. They follawed him until it became quite clear that he wasn't going
to do it: that the Kingdom he was taiking about was not at all the Kingdom

o

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January 27, 1974

David, but rather a state of mind that cuts across all political allegiences,
but that had to da directly with the quality of the common life of pegie.

Rome, likewise, heard him politically. The Romans knew that a man who
loved poor people and associated with outcasts and had compassion for
the oppressed would ultimately threaten their power. That is correct. What
they didn't understand was that he was singularly uninterested in staging a
military revolt. In any case, they dealt with him in the way goaernments
have always dealt with threats to power ~ they got rid of him.

That's the first rather complext understanding that comes out of this
text. The threat of Jesus! message was that the Kingdom of God is now
present within the common life of the world. And while that did not mean a
military revolt - which the Jews wanted and the Romans feared - it most
certainly meant that a different set of pricrities were now on the agenda
for anyone who wanted to be a part of God's Kingdom. Life was now about te
be changed radically: the poor - the oppressed - the blind - the captives -
are now about to hear some good news.

The second understanding that grows out of Luke's text is that Jesus
Christ made the abstract specific. He took the "out of this world" religion
of men and brought it "down to earth", Something that men don't ordinarily
want to happen: something that means alwas to precipitate conflict and
controversy.

Think about that for a minute: think about these abstractions:

Independence ~ Emancipation - Non Volence ~ God ~ Faith. Just words:
ideas: concepts that float freely in the mind. But then place - names ~
dates - events beside them.

Independence - an abstraction until made specific by Thomas Jefferson

writing a Declaration

Emancipation - "lovely", until Abraham Lincohn made if concrete

Non-Violence - "very nice" until we saw Martin Luther King demonstrate

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January 27, 1974

the real power of the idea

God - three letters which can mean whatever you want them to mean until
they are brought down ta earth in the life of Jesus Christ

Faith - “something everybody ought t have", until we see it in the form
of a cross.

Well, Isaiah 61, was one of these grand abstractions that inspire people
until someone has the audacity to make it specific. That is what Jesus did
in slazareth. He filled in the blanks: and suddenly the poor, blind, captives,
oppressed were no Jonger vague ideas - but those wretched, dirty people out
there in the street. And so they became furious, and it seems to me people
have been responding in much the same way ever since.

The trouble is that as soon as we fill in the banks we are forced to
cross a line that makes us most uneasy. As soon as we try to take our Lord
seriously we find our piety and politics confronting each other. And that is
something nobody wants to do. In the first place things are never black or
white in the political arena, but a frustrating shade of gray. And bestdes,
the church has never been very good at playing politics: when it has accrued
political power in the past it has abused it as badly as Tamminy Hatl. And
$o traditionally we have kept them separate: our religion is safely “out of
this wortd.”

Tn our community the combined Christian witness on matters that are
important simply doesn't exist. There are individual exceptions: there are
heroic exceptions. But the only thing that we've ever done together is to
quietly ask that the Christmas parade be held a littie later in the day s0
that our worship services wouldn't be disturbed.

We need a revival: a revivat of honest-to-God, Christ-like, New Testament
Faith that sees tite world as tie place God loves so much he sent his Son into
it: a revival that calis people to follow Jesus Christ - not out of the world

but into it where peopte live and earn their wages and hurt and hope and die.

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January 27, 1974

Two old hymns come to mind "I walked today where Jesus walked": I
doubt that. For the people who love to Sting that hymn wouldn't be caught
dead walking where Jesus walked, touching Tepers, extending understanding
to a prostitute, eatirg and drinking with the poor and outcase.

“Jesus calis us; oe'r the tulmult....

Day by day his sweet voice soundeth
Saying ‘Christian, follow me?"

Well now I doubt that if the Church of Jesus Christ - or you or | -
allowed the voice of Jesus to be heard that it would sound very sweet.
Rather, IT would expect the bull-roar of @ man insisting that we fill in the
blanks: that we stop fawning over him and begin to act in the world as if we
were really citizens of Gad's Kingdom.

I can hear him asking about the poor ~- the hungry ~ the Welfare Depart
ment and the Food Stamp Program.

I can hear him asking about the blind - and wondering about our agenda
in education and medical care.

I can hear him asking about the oppressed and wondering where we were
when prison reform was being discussed in the legislature.

Congressman John Brademas warned his fellow churchmen: (2)

"If the Christian Church today fails to touch on the ‘weightier
matters of the law’ - on the treatment of (Blacks) in both North and South,
on the paradox of poverty in the richest nation in human history, on the
Slums still festering in our major citis, on the problems of devising a
tolerable peace in a nuclear world - then on what matters wilt it touch?

If the church has nothing to say on these great issues, it has little of
Significance to say about anytning, because these are the crucial issues of
our times."

Now, in none of this is there the Suggestion that it i the job of the

Church ta accrue political power, or to allign itsetf with a particular

POLITICS AND PIETY {8)
January 27, 1974

political ideology. What is here - wiat is fn the Gospel - is the insistance
that piety and politics do mix: that our task as followers of Jesus Christ
is located in the world: the world from which becomes too much for us at
times - the world that in 1974 looks so frightening and complex that we'd
like nothing better than to escape from it for a while,
Our world - into which Jess Christ invites us to follow him - has
caused many of us to become numb. Ff think Watergate has done that to us.
We are being pushed past the limtts of caring any more. With each conse-
quent revelation of dishonesty, deception, cover-up te find ourselves wanting
it to go away: to excuse it - to look for someway of escaping its implications.
And that, I believe, is a religious problem,
Eric Fromm recently said that (3) "The difference today is not between
those who believe and those who do not."
That, finally is where Luke 4 takes us. We are called by Jesus Christ
to care, specifically, for other people: to be citizens of Ged's Kingdom,
by realligning our priorities so that they correspond with his. We are
called to follow our Lord, not “out of this world" - but precisely into it:
into the city streets where piety and palitics look the same: into the worid
where abstractions becomes terribly specific. For it is there that his
Kingdom exists.
And it all began in ilazareth when he found where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has annotnted me to
~preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proelatm
- release to the eaptives.:
and recovering of sight to the blind
- to set at Liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the aceeptable year of the Lord,"
And then said: .
"Today this sertpture has been fulfilled." AMEN
Father, it would be so comfortable to remain abstract. We'd Tike our
religion to help us get away. from all the netec and tension of our life.

God, save us from that. And give us that courage to follow where you Tead
and to bo what yeu want us to ba, Through Jesus Christ our Lord. ANEW