Practicing Peoplehood

Proper 9C; Isa. 66:10-14; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20; St. Paul’s – July 3, 2016

Jim Melnyk: “Practicing Peoplehood”

Israel is in exile.  Jerusalem’s walls have been torn down.  The Temple – the symbolic home of God among the people – lay in ruins.  The Psalmist tells us that Israel’s Babylonian captors ask for songs about Zion.  “How can we sing songs of Zion in a foreign land?” they reply. “We would rather our hands wither and curl up and our tongues cleave to the roof of our mouths than sing for you like birds in a gilded cage.”

           

Yet in the midst of sorrow the prophet Isaiah sings out a song of hope for those bound in Babylon:

Thus says the Lord:

As a mother comforts her child,
so I will comfort you;
you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice;
your bodies shall flourish like the grass.”

God looks to a people – to a community – trying its best to hold together their identity as God’s people, even while in exile.  And God hears their cry.  God remembers God’s promise of old, “You will be my people and I will be your God.”

As we look to today’s Gospel lesson and to the witness of Holy Scripture as a whole, we begin to see that the God of Israel, who is also the God of Jesus, is a God who first and foremost calls us to a practice of peoplehood.  Peoplehood is another way of saying “community;” it’s also a way of responding to the grace and love of God in our lives.  God’s promise to Israel is to a people, not to a bunch of individuals.  Jesus doesn’t send the seventy out to create bunches of one-on-one God/human connections – Jesus sends the seventy out to reinvigorate the covenantal understanding in the hearts of the people of Israel.  Centuries earlier it took the harsh reality of exile to capture people’s attention.  In Jesus God seems to be saying, “Let me try yet another way – perhaps they will listen to my son.”  The sending out of the seventy is about reconnecting with the God who brought Israel out of Egypt.  It’s about reconnecting with the God who willingly went into exile with Israel hundreds of years before – it’s about the God who brought Israel home on a highway through the desert. 

Now, it’s true Jesus recognizes that not everyone will receive his disciples.  He even tells them to wipe the dust of the town off their feet whenever that occurs – but not without reminding them that the kingdom of God has come near.   These challenging words from Jesus must be read in light of the gospel lesson from last Sunday.  You may recall how the disciples wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume those who wouldn’t receive Jesus – and how Jesus rebuked the disciples for their intolerance.

In an article entitled The Practice of Peoplehood, author James W. Jones makes what he calls a “brief excursion into biblical history” in order to show how our faith stories reveal “the call of God as a call to a people;” and that “when individuals are called, it is to play a role in the formation of the people of God.”  “Peoplehood, community, is not an option,” writes Jones, “but is at the heart of the way God does business.” 

Jones’ understanding of Peoplehood seems to be a fitting thing to consider as we find ourselves in the middle of the Fourth of July weekend we’re enjoying.  One of the twenty-first century fallacies of our faith is any nation’s sense of some kind of favored-nation concept – an idea held by many American Christians today.  Jones writes, “The call [from God] is, however, not [only] for the sake of the people chosen but rather for the nations of the world as they are called to serve” (Sojourners: Preaching the Word). 

The greatness of any people – the greatness of any nation – is how that nation – how that people – loves and serves one another.  The greatness of any nation is not found in the power or wealth it possesses, but rather their greatness is found in how that nation treats those who are least among them.  Israel went into exile in part because they left those who were most in need in the dust.  Peoplehood does not leave anyone in the dust.  As the Apostle Paul reminds us in today’s lesson from Galatians, we are to “bear one another’s burdens, and in this way fulfill the law of Christ” (6:2).

God calls all of creation into relationship.  We are called to live in solidarity with all the nations of the world – not having a favored status before God or a more holy calling.  God’s grace is not dependent upon our form – or any form – of government, our national following of any one specific way of believing, or our economic model and financial acumen.  Nor is our wealth as a nation or our position as a superpower due to a special blessing from God because we’re better or holier than others. 

God’s grace is dependent solely upon the ability and the decision of God to love what God has called into being, and our call is a call to proclaim that love and grace for all people.  Our call is to serve one another with grace and love – and to work toward a world that will someday treat all people with the same grace and love that has been revealed to us through the Law and the Prophets, by the Spirit of God speaking through God’s people throughout the ages, and for us as Christians – through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Jones writes, “Our relationship to God is to be as close as the most intimate human friendship, and our relationship to others is to be as close as the Spirit of God dwelling in our hearts.  To be authentic,” Jones adds, “our religious experience must produce an ever deeper walk with God and an ever deeper community of brothers and sisters.”  To me that means finding a way to be connected with one another even when we believe differently from one another – and finding a way to stay connected with God even when that relationship is a struggle as well.

And so we come to today – the day before the day on which Americans celebrate the birth of a nation – each of us challenged by the Gospel to go into the world proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ Jesus – and in many places around our nation, struggling to keep both the celebration and the call in a way that allows each its own integrity. 

As we live within the celebrations of two calls – as a nation and as a faith community of God – I am reminded of the words of the Rev. William Sloane Coffin in his book Credo: “There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good.  The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics.”  That goes for us as Christians and members of the institutional Church as well.  Those whom Coffin calls good patriots, and I would say also, good people of faith, carry on a lover’s quarrel with both their country and their institutions of faith which,when done properly, enlivens the spirit of transformation to which God always calls us.

Our Collect for the Day reminds us that we keep the commandments of God by loving God and our neighbor – and our neighbor certainly lives beyond the boundaries of this land as well as within, and loves with a faith outside that of the church as well as within.   And we struggle with that call in light of the harsh realities of Orlando, Istanbul, and now Bangladesh.  We live in a nation that embraces the dream of freedom, and we follow a Savior who embraces servanthood – and if that’s not a paradox of faith I don’t know what is – embracing both freedom and servanthood. 

And if we’re honest with ourselves we wrestle with both, especially when we see our way of life at risk or when we become fearful for our lives.  Yet both realities – nation and faith – freedom and servanthood – find their roots in peoplehood – find their roots in community – find their anchor in how we care about and love one another. “We the people” introduces our Constitution, and “We believe” begins our creedal statement of faith.  Peoplehood. “Our relationship to God is to be as close as the most intimate human friendship, and our relationship to others is to be as close as the Spirit of God dwelling in our hearts.”

As we pause in our hectic lives tomorrow to remember and to celebrate the birth of our nation, perhaps we can take the time to ask ourselves one very important question: “How does God long to be the transforming power in our nation, and in our lives?”