Micah 6:6-8 Luke 10:25-37
Today is part 5 of a six week series on the “Great Ends of the Church.” Now, I’m guessing that some of you are thinking, “What are those and why should I care?” I’m pretty sure that was my reaction in seminary, and even now it seems kind of institutional and icky to say, “These are the great ends of the church. Memorize them so that you can sound really ‘churchy’ and good because that makes Jesus happy.”
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The “Great Ends” are a celebration of who we are as God’s people, and they are a reminder of what God has called us to be a part of. None of these “ends,” or purposes, are complete by themselves, but none of them are optional, either. If we follow God as witnessed in scripture, this is who we are and what we do. It’s just that simple.
So far we’ve talked about proclaiming the good news of salvation. If we are forgiven, sinners, then our lives proclaim salvation. We talked about providing shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship to God’s children, everywhere, all the time, in the safe space of love we create between us. We’ve talked about maintaining worship that is God-centered and not self-centered by leading worship filled lives. We’ve talked about preserving the truth of God’s amazing love that says you are loved, and so are they.
Today we are going to talk about promoting social righteousness, and I imagine that some of you – if you have not already stopped watching – have a finger on the remote. Others of you probably already have your signs and markers out and your tennis shoes on.
Regardless of how you feel about church and politics, let’s take a moment to unpack the term “social righteousness” and see how our scriptures may guide us to understand what God is doing in and through us today.
As I said before, social righteousness is a fairly old term. It actually came out of a time of social reform in the late 19th Century when the Social Gospel Movement sprang up out of the Protestant Church in the United States. Church leaders spoke out against poverty, unfair labor practices that included children, and the need for public education – all in response to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Life was hard. People were suffering. The church spoke out. Things changed. That’s what the promotion of social righteousness means. It means that we recognize that our lives are held together through a social fabric that is made of people who are precious to God. When that fabric begins to tear, God’s people are the ones who cry out to God, and God’s people are the ones called by God to do something about it.
Now, what does that have to do with you and me, and where does it connect with scripture? Well, for one, we simply can’t escape the fact that we live in community. We are responsible selves with inherent freedoms and abilities, but we can’t function without each other. We also can’t express our free will in ways that take away the ability of others to express their free will. We live and move and have our being in social contracts, whether we talk about them or not. We are inherently social creatures.
The question is not whether or not that is good or right. The question is whether or not we are doing that in a way that is good and right. Over and over, again and again, the Bible reminds us that being right is not simply about being correct. Being right is about aligning our hearts and minds with the heart and mind of God. Micah, like so many other prophets, reminds us that what we do in worship doesn’t matter. God is actually quite salty in this passage when he mockingly imitates those that approach God through religious rituals, “Should I give rivers of oil...Oh, wait, my firstborn child?!”
Micah knew that human sacrifice was the one thing that truly separated the God of the Hebrews from any other. He knew no one could fill a river with oil. He also knew that God was saying, “Stop trying to make me happy, when my people are sad.”
Essentially, God was saying that the fact that there is poverty is an affront to God’s love. The fact that there is inequality is an affront to God’s love. The fact that there is injustice, hardness of heart, and lack of mutual concern for each other is an affront to God’s love.
The same is true in the parable of the good Samaritan – which by its very name is an affront to the gospel. Jesus never calls him a “good” Samaritan. We did that. Our tradition did that. The translators and publishers put it in as a sub-title. Calling him a “good” Samaritan simply underlines the belief that by his ethnicity he should be bad, yet Jesus just said there was a Samaritan who took pity on the man and showed him mercy.
Of course, this was supposed to be shocking to the original listeners of the parable. The
Samaritan was the last person they expected to do the right thing – not the correct thing, but the right thing. Maybe it’s not so wrong to call him “good” in order to remind us of our own preconceived notions about others.
What matters, in the long run, is that we remember that the person who inspired Jesus to tell the story was looking to justify himself because he knew the right answer. What Jesus told him instead is how to be right with God, and that requires doing the right thing for the person in need. It requires showing mercy. It requires taking someone else’s burdens as our own.
Left to our own devices, we will surely fail in our pursuit of righteousness, and that is why our confessions – statements like the Great Ends – remind us again and again of the gift of faith. Not only are we forgiven when we fail, but we are given the example of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit that encourages us to succeed. Our wrongness is replaced with the righteousness of Jesus. It’s never ours. It can’t be earned. It can only be responded to out of love and joy and gratitude for what God has done and is doing.
More than that, or maybe along with that, we are given one another so that even when we are apart we know that we are not alone. Big spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the last Star Wars movie, but that’s a big theme in the film. The way the enemy wins is they make you think that you are all alone. I don’t want to give anything else away, but they basically defeat evil with a group hug, in space, with lightsabers.
So, where does that leave us? The church is meeting online. Interestingly, in that way, the
church is more united in its experience of worship than it has been in ages. Even Andy Stanley, Pastor of one of the largest congregations in the US has publicly stated that the church doesn’t need to meet physically in order to be the church, yet staying apart seems to be one of the hardest things we’ve ever done.
At the same time, people are crying out due to a pandemic. People are arguing over their rights as an individual versus the scientific evidence that mutual mask-wearing limits contagion. Protests are being held all across our nation to acknowledge racial disparity in lending practices, housing, disproportionate sentencing, and distribution of wealth. Immigrants fleeing violence around the world find themselves at the mercy of disease and greater cruelty.
I don’t say any of this to make you feel bad. My assumption is that you’ve heard it all before. I don’t say any of this to point a finger, either. I passed by a fair amount of poverty on the way to record this sermon today, to be sure. I say it to lament with the church over what we might do in the face of what feels like a cracking dam holding back a wall of water.
We can’t fix it. That’s not our job, is it? No, but we can promote social righteousness. We can ask the right question at the right time. We can be ready to help, not as a do-gooder who does things to feel good, but as a Samaritan who is willing to take on the burden of another as our own.
The thing is, we do this all the time. We do it when we deliver Meals on Wheels in partnership with St Barnabas. We promote social righteousness through clean water in Cuba. We do it when members collaborate to make and take masks to childcare centers and other places of need. We do it when we gather in small groups to study and pray.
Is there more that we can do? Certainly, and the Lord will continue to guide us, along with all who follow Christ, as we respond to God’s grace and mercy with all that we have and all that we are. Promoting social righteousness is slow, steady work, and sometimes things happen that create opportunities for greater progress. What matters is that we are willing to move, and that we are moved by compassion, and that we are less concerned with being correct and more concerned with being right with God and neighbor – for the neighbor is the one who shows mercy.
I pray it may be so with me, and that it may be so with you, and all to God’s glory. Amen.
The same is true in the parable of the good Samaritan – which by its very name is an affront to the gospel. Jesus never calls him a “good” Samaritan. We did that. Our tradition did that. The translators and publishers put it in as a sub-title. Calling him a “good” Samaritan simply underlines the belief that by his ethnicity he should be bad, yet Jesus just said there was a Samaritan who took pity on the man and showed him mercy.
Of course, this was supposed to be shocking to the original listeners of the parable. The
Samaritan was the last person they expected to do the right thing – not the correct thing, but the right thing. Maybe it’s not so wrong to call him “good” in order to remind us of our own preconceived notions about others.
What matters, in the long run, is that we remember that the person who inspired Jesus to tell the story was looking to justify himself because he knew the right answer. What Jesus told him instead is how to be right with God, and that requires doing the right thing for the person in need. It requires showing mercy. It requires taking someone else’s burdens as our own.
Left to our own devices, we will surely fail in our pursuit of righteousness, and that is why our confessions – statements like the Great Ends – remind us again and again of the gift of faith. Not only are we forgiven when we fail, but we are given the example of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit that encourages us to succeed. Our wrongness is replaced with the righteousness of Jesus. It’s never ours. It can’t be earned. It can only be responded to out of love and joy and gratitude for what God has done and is doing.
More than that, or maybe along with that, we are given one another so that even when we are apart we know that we are not alone. Big spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the last Star Wars movie, but that’s a big theme in the film. The way the enemy wins is they make you think that you are all alone. I don’t want to give anything else away, but they basically defeat evil with a group hug, in space, with lightsabers.
So, where does that leave us? The church is meeting online. Interestingly, in that way, the
church is more united in its experience of worship than it has been in ages. Even Andy Stanley, Pastor of one of the largest congregations in the US has publicly stated that the church doesn’t need to meet physically in order to be the church, yet staying apart seems to be one of the hardest things we’ve ever done.
At the same time, people are crying out due to a pandemic. People are arguing over their rights as an individual versus the scientific evidence that mutual mask-wearing limits contagion. Protests are being held all across our nation to acknowledge racial disparity in lending practices, housing, disproportionate sentencing, and distribution of wealth. Immigrants fleeing violence around the world find themselves at the mercy of disease and greater cruelty.
I don’t say any of this to make you feel bad. My assumption is that you’ve heard it all before. I don’t say any of this to point a finger, either. I passed by a fair amount of poverty on the way to record this sermon today, to be sure. I say it to lament with the church over what we might do in the face of what feels like a cracking dam holding back a wall of water.
We can’t fix it. That’s not our job, is it? No, but we can promote social righteousness. We can ask the right question at the right time. We can be ready to help, not as a do-gooder who does things to feel good, but as a Samaritan who is willing to take on the burden of another as our own.
The thing is, we do this all the time. We do it when we deliver Meals on Wheels in partnership with St Barnabas. We promote social righteousness through clean water in Cuba. We do it when members collaborate to make and take masks to childcare centers and other places of need. We do it when we gather in small groups to study and pray.
Is there more that we can do? Certainly, and the Lord will continue to guide us, along with all who follow Christ, as we respond to God’s grace and mercy with all that we have and all that we are. Promoting social righteousness is slow, steady work, and sometimes things happen that create opportunities for greater progress. What matters is that we are willing to move, and that we are moved by compassion, and that we are less concerned with being correct and more concerned with being right with God and neighbor – for the neighbor is the one who shows mercy.
I pray it may be so with me, and that it may be so with you, and all to God’s glory. Amen.
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