Ecclesiastical Fraud and Tribalistic Idolatry
Preparing for the Third Sunday in Lent: Three Days before Sunday (Year B)
Scripture
Psalter: Psalm 19
Old Testament: Exodus 19:1-9a
Epistle: 1 Peter 2:4-10
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Prayer
God of the covenant, in the glory of the cross your Son embraced the power of death and broke its hold over your people. In this time of repentance, draw all people to yourself, that we who confess Jesus as Lord may put aside the deeds of death and accept the life of your kingdom. Amen. (Revised Common Lectionary)
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Reflection
Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones let yourselves be built[a] into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture:
“See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
This honor, then, is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the very head of the corner,”
and
“A stone that makes them stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were not a people,
but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:4-10).
The one thing that excites me the most about interacting with Christians from all over the world is that it reminds me that the church is truly a global community that transcends all national identities. In worship and conversation with sisters and brothers in Christ in various places, I experience a glimpse of Revelation 7:9-12:
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying,
'Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!'
And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing,
'Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.'
From its very beginning, the church has been a transnational community. The church cannot be tribalized and therefore minimized as a community whose primary loyalty is to a particular nation state or ethnicity. No earthly nation can be a Christian nation because only the church can hold that honor. To give America or Canada or Germany the status of Christian nation is to commit ecclesiastical fraud. The Apostle Peter says to the church.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 1:9).
It is quite the tragedy that through much of its history, the church has not embraced the truth of its existence by reverting back to making tribal loyalties central in a way that Jesus died to destroy. In reference to the tribal loyalties of Jew and Gentile, St. Paul writes in Ephesians,
But now in Christ Jesus you [Gentiles] who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it (2:13-16).
Any form of Christian nationalism is an aberration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and a denial of the true identity and purpose of the church. That does not mean that as Christians we do not love the nation of our birth or the nation we have adopted. I am an American. I love America and the good she has done. But I am also critical of the country of my birth because I want her to be better and I want her also to own up to the tragedy and evil perpetrated in her history as well—slavery, Jim Crow, the displacement of the First Americans, the Trail of Tears et. al. History will be of no help to us moving into the future, if we selectively remember only the good things and forget or at least minimize the atrocities of the past. Any American who loves America will face history in complete honesty.
But, the one thing that Christians cannot do and still be faithful to the gospel and to the church is to have their ecclesiastical identity compromised by nationalistic interests. It must be more important to the followers of Jesus how American action in the world affects their fellow Christians in Iraq and Syria and Zimbabwe than in how it affects America. That is not always easy to distinguish, to be sure. There is often much ambiguity. But one thing is for certain and I now dare to say it—most Christians in America did not ponder how the invasion of Iraq would decimate the church there, nor have many of them considered what happened to Kurdish Christians given the withdrawal of American support from northern Syria.
Yes, it is true and must be true that as a transnational community, the church must be concerned about all persons (Christian or not) since everyone is created in the image of God and is a soul for whom Jesus died. But when we fail, at the very least to consider the implications of how nation state actions will affect our sisters and brothers in Christ around the world, we functionally default to a nationalism that can only be described as idolatrous. Such tribalism is a betrayal of what the Holy Spirit began on the Day of Pentecost.
I close with a portion of the Letter to Diognetus, who was a tutor of the emperor, Marcus Aurelius (reigned 161-180 A.D.) The unknown author of this epistle truly captures the vision of the church as a transnational community.
Christians are not distinguished from other men by country, language, nor by the customs which they observe. They do not inhabit cities of their own, use a particular way of speaking, nor lead a life marked out by any curiosity. The course of conduct they follow has not been devised by the speculation and deliberation of inquisitive men. The do not, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of merely human doctrines.
Instead, they inhabit both Greek and barbarian cities, however things have fallen to each of them. And it is while following the customs of the natives in clothing, food, and the rest of ordinary life that they display to us their wonderful and admittedly striking way of life.
They live in their own countries, but they do so as those who are just passing through. As citizens they participate in everything with others, yet they endure everything as if they were foreigners. Every foreign land is like their homeland to them, and every land of their birth is like a land of strangers.
Revelation 7:9-12 is not a vision to be fulfilled exclusively in the future; it is a reality the church of Jesus Christ must embrace in the here and now.
PRAYER: O Lord, strong and mighty, Lord of hosts and King of glory: Cleanse our hearts from sin, keep our hands pure, and turn our minds from what is passing away; so that at the last we may stand in your holy place and receive your blessing; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (The Lectionary Page)
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