Sermon Notes: What kind of culture is Jesus forming?

 

Romans 14.1-12; Matthew 18.21-35

 Exodus 14.19-31Psalm 114

            

 What kind of culture is Jesus forming?

Prayer of Invocation

 Father, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

 Prayer of Illumination

 Father, you have sent your Son Jesus to deliver us from our sin and to form a new way of living together. Give us ears to hear, and eyes to see the ways in which our attitudes, postures, and practices run contrary to the gospel. We ask this because we want to be a people that bears witness to Your goodness, truth, and beauty. In Jesus’ name, we pray. 

 Proclamation

 As we orient ourselves to the texts that we have read this morning, I want us to think about the word “culture”. Culture has been lurking behind and underneath all that we have been experiencing the past six months in the midst of the pandemic, the racial tensions, and the polarization of our political system. When we peel back the layers on all of this upheaval, what we find are frustrations and anxiety about the kind of culture that is either being advocated, oppressed, silenced, promoted, or denied. In the midst of all the tension and anxiety of the past six months, we have discovered that we have competing visions about what our culture ought to be, competing notions of who we are, what our place is in this world, and what we should be about. Twenty twenty has exposed (and not created, in my view) a significant cultural divide in the United States. And what we have seen is that the divide even runs through Christian communities, where we also find deep anxiety, disappointment, and frustration about what kind of Christian culture we have become, or for some what kind of Christian culture we seem to be losing.

 

Culture is a hard word to define; lexicographers have suggested that it is the hardest word in the English language to explain. Sometimes it is easier to think about communities or institutions that have a thick culture to understand what we mean by the term. Let’s take Chick-fil-A for example: anyone who has worked there comments that they have a distinctive culture of efficiency, impeccable service,  friendliness to the customer, and excellence. In the world of sports, we talk about the “Patriot Way”--a culture of winning based on accountability, putting aside your ego and being a team-oriented player, and out working the opponents. Perhaps you have seen the show Portlandia, a sitcom that makes fun of the hipster culture of the Northwest. A show like that works because there is a palatable, thick set of values that are expressed in practices that shape a way of being in the world--bicycles, flannels, free-range chicken and all! If I were to say “Californian” or “Southerner”, your mind likely runs to the culture of those two labels. Then there is ‘cancel culture’, this practice in our age (mostly on social media) in which we immediately  withdraw support in order to cancel a person because he said or did something that was objectionable, something that violated a shared value. Often we hear the phrase “toxic culture” in reference to the workplace; employees find themself in a space that is negatively impacted by lack of accountability, fear of retribution, leaders who use their positions of power to benefit themselves; where workers are given goals with no resources; a culture where workers feel uninspired, hopeless,  undirected, and unempowered. 

 

Whether it is Chick-Fil-A, the Patriots, Portland, the South, cancel culture, or the toxic workplace, what characterizes these communities is the fact that they have created and cultivated a culture based upon values (good or bad); they have generated practices and artefacts that express their vision and mission. 

 

Our Old Testament text this morning (Exodus 14.19-31) recounts the story of God demonstrating his great power by delivering his chosen people Israel from their bondage and oppression from Egypt, the greatest superpower of the day. But what did he deliver them for

 

One way to think about the exodus is to locate it within the larger narrative of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. When we do so, we are reminded that humankind turned its back on God and his good gifts. The world, Genesis 1-2 tell us,  was a gift given to us to facilitate communion with God; we rebelled against the One who made us for his fellowship; rather than receive and be directed, we wanted to take and be in charge; and as a result we created a new culture--a culture of shame, a culture of making a name for ourselves; a culture of violence and exploitation; a culture in which taking and keeping became the foundational practices, and in which idols, oppression, discrimination, and slavery became key artefacts of those practices. Rather than give up on us, rather than let our rebellion be the last word, God determined to redeem our toxic culture by focusing on one person and his posterity, Abraham, and teaching him and his people a new way of living in the world. The exodus, then, is for culture-making. It is the beginning of the formation of a people that is reoriented around receiving and giving-- not taking and keeping; it is the formation of a people who are joined to the life of God, a life that is super-abundant in grace and truth. This new life, however,  entails new practices and new artefacts. This is what the rest of the Pentateuch is all about--learning a new culture. Not imitating culture; rather, shaping a new way of life that is based upon values and practices that faithfully correspond to the God who is light and life. 

 

The Scriptures tell us that this cultural renewal project culminates in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham. He becomes the pattern of what it looks like to be a faithful, flourishing human in relation to others. He becomes the pattern of what it looks like to live in the midst of competing cultures that work to distort our humanity and destroy community. And from him (re)new(ed) values, attitudes, dispositions, and practices emerge--new ways of being in the world. 

 

In our Gospel reading from Matthew 18.21-35 we find ourselves in the midst of a significant block of teachings from Jesus (18.1-20.34) in which he is seeking to inculcate a new culture based upon God’s being and mission in the world. Likewise, in our epistle reading for this morning from Romans 14.1-12, Paul is addressing a cultural problem. But he diagnoses the problem through the lens of the gospel, which he has argued throughout his letter is not just a message about how to get saved from God’s wrath, but also about how the gospel entails a new way of life (especially Romans 5-8, 12-16). For Paul, the gospel generates a new culture, a new way of living in community. It is good for us to remember that Paul  usually writes letters because he finds that a Christian community is failing to live in keeping with the cultural demands of the gospel. 

 

Let’s turn first to Jesus. What kind of culture is he seeking to form? In Matthew 18 we learn that a Jesus culture, that is a culture that is formed around the life and teachings of Jesus, takes sin seriously: “Woe to the world for temptations to sin (Matt 18.7)!” If your hand or your foot or your eye causes you to sin, it is better to cut it off or pull it out (hyperbole) than to be separated from the life of God (Matt 18.7-9). Sin, Jesus reminds us,  is deceptive, patient, slow-working; it causes us to slowly drift from God. As such, it is not to be played with. We must know what sin is, and we must confront it. And cut it off immediately. If your brother or sister sins against you, for their sake and the sake of the community, do the uncomfortable, counter-cultural thing--go to him or her and tell them what they have done wrong. Do not let them drift; do not let sin have a foothold. In this way, we seek the lost sheep as Jesus instructs us in Matt 18.10-14.

 

But Jesus’ emphasis on a culture that takes sin seriously has raised a question in Peter’s mind: “how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him (Matt 18.21)? Seven times?” The rabbis set the bar high at three; Peter wants to outdo them by suggesting that we should forgive seven times, a number of perfection or completion in the Scriptures. Jesus uses this question to further add shape to this new culture he is forming: “not seven, but seventy seven (or perhaps seventy times seven) (Matt 18.22).” The poetic point that Jesus is making is that forgiveness has no limits. Surely no one can or will  keep track of the seventy seven times, or the seventy times seven times that one sins against another! An excel spreadsheet can’t even help us here!

 

Having made that point, Jesus launches into a parable, a story about the nature of forgiveness in a Jesus culture, in a culture that embodies God’s rule and reign. He tells a story about a slave who had an insurmountable debt he owed to his master: ten thousand talents. A talent was the highest denomination of money in the ancient world (in US currency it is $10,000). One talent represented 20 years of labor. This slave owed roughly 547 years worthy of labor. The point is that  he could never repay the debt. The master graciously released him and forgave his debt. But that same servant, Jesus says, found another slave who owed him 100 denarii (or about a half a year of labor). Rather than treat the slave as he had been treated with grace and mercy, the slave seized him, choked him, refused to forgive the debt, and instead put him in prison. When the master learned about this, he imprisoned the servant whom he had forgiven and demanded that he pay back his insurmountable debt. 

 

The punchline of the parable is that the Father will do the same to everyone who does not forgive his brother or sister from the heart (Matt 18.35).

 

I want to highlight two key observations from this punchline: First, Jesus calls us to forgive our “brother”. One of the strange and deeply theological moves that happens in the early church, in this newly emerging Jesus-shaped culture, is that people who are unrelated to one another biologically begin to refer to themselves as siblings, brothers and sisters. Because of Jesus’ mercy and grace, we are now family. We have the same Father; salvation brings us new family relations, new family obligations. Second, we are called to forgive from the heart, seventy times seven. That is to say that forgiveness is as much an attitude or posture we have towards another sibling as it is an action. (We all can think of examples in our own lives when someone forgives in word but not from the heart.) 

 

What kind of culture is Jesus forming? A culture in which we who have pledged our allegiance to Jesus see one another as family members, siblings, brothers and sisters who share obligations to one another. A culture in which one anothering one another in keeping with the pattern of the gospel is our main task. A culture that on the one hand takes sin very seriously, but on the other is willing to forgive the sins of others. Jesus teaches us to work this culture of forgiveness  into our lives in the Lord’s prayer--our Christian pledge of allegiance: “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”. At the core of Christian culture is  a fierce vigilance for sin, but also mercy and grace for those who sin. That is a challenging tightrope to walk. 

 

Turning to Paul, we find a similar punchline. God is concerned about our attitude or posture towards one another; our heart or disposition towards our brother and sister is as important as what we do! In Romans 14.12, when Paul warns that each of us will give an account of himself to God, the context teaches us that what we will give an account for is our attitude or disposition towards our brother or sister

 

In the passage we learn that there is a faction in the church family in Rome, a division that has ethnic or me might say today racial roots. There are two groups that are dispising one another and passing judgment on each other (a posture or attitude)  on matters that are adiaphora, that is matters that are important but nonetheless unnecessary for being members in God’s family. The issue comes down to competing cultures. Some, mostly likely Jewish followers of Jesus (and perhaps some Gentiles that have been persuaded by them) feel that to be faithful to God they must abstain from eating meat sacrificed to idols. Others (most likely Gentiles, and perhaps some Jews) regard all foods as clean, and thus eat meat without any problem. Some feel they need to keep the Sabbath holy (for thus it is written in Scriptures), while others treat all days alike. At the root, are two distinct cultures, shaped by their ethnic identities,  with practices that are meant to express faithfulness and honor to God. 

 

It is interesting to note that Paul does not take a side. He does not tell his Jewish followers that they must stop keeping Torah. And he does not tell the gentile followers that they must keep Torah. Instead, he digs deeper to a more foundational cultural implication of the gospel: both groups--Jew and Gentile--have been welcomed by God. Through the gospel of Jesus Christ, both groups who were under the power of Sin (Rom 3.9), have been forgiven of their sins, have received the Spirit, have been baptized into Jesus Christ, and as such have become siblings, brothers and sisters (Rom 4-8)! For this reason Paul asks, “why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or why do you despise your brother (Romans 14.10?”  Instead of passing judgment and despising,  Paul says, we are to welcome one another (an action and a posture or attitude), for God has welcomed them (Rom 14.3). This is the same theological rationale that we find in Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 18. What God does to us and for us, we are to extend to others: forgiveness and welcome; grace and hospitality. These are the foundations of the culture that Jesus is forming. 

 

The question that confronts us as we read these texts is this: will this be the culture that we display in practice? Or will we be shaped by some other competing culture, some other way of being in the world? And will we do the hard work of reshaping what we mean by “we”? For example, will we (a predominantly church) see Black, Hispanic, and Asian Christians as siblings? Will we mourn what they mourn, grieve what they grieve? Will we rejoice in what they rejoice in? Will we suffer with them? Will we seek to understand their experience of life in this particular place and at this particular time? Or will we let our broader culture and its practices of identity formation determine what “we” means, who “we” are? 

Eucharist

There is perhaps no more powerful a practice in the church than the Eucharist for shaping a Jesus culture. For as we come to the table, we are reminded that we have been forgiven a debt that we cannot ever pay; here at the table we learn that we all come to God in the same condition, as sinners; at the table we are reminded that in Christ we are siblings, family members. We are forgiven forgivers. This table reminds us that “we” is a transnational, multicultural, counter-cultural  “we”. It is the place where we are reminded that we have been welcomed by God; and it is the place where we are exhorted to welcome others in the same way. It doesn’t make our work in this confusing time any easier; but it does help clarify our calling; it orients us. 

 

Reflection and Discussion Questions

 

  1. What is God saying to you through these texts and our reflections this morning? 

 

  1. What other kinds of attitudes towards others will we be accountable to God for?

 

  1. Do these texts challenge you to rethink who “we” is? Explain. 

 

Benediction

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

 

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