Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
Nov. 18, 2012 Proper 28
Hebrews 10:24-25People my age are sometimes heard to insist, "I may be old but at least I got to hear all of the really good bands." I'm old enough to have seen the Beatles and gone to Woodstock but I just wasn't that cool. But I do feel fortunate to have met some of the most amazing authors and thinkers of our time before they died.... I got to hear Truman Capote and William Buckley speak.... Though admittedly, they were both drunk at the time. I met and talked with Scott Peck, I was frequently in Peter Gome's classroom and living room, but the most impressive now deceased person I have ever gotten to talk to in person was the American historian Howard Zinn.
And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
I honestly believe that it was a mistake when MSU first invited Zinn to speak here in 2003. A grad student arranged the visit and I don't think the administration knew what kind of a radical they were allowing on campus. People at Drury heard him at MSU and arranged quickly to have him there. Finally, in 2004, I got to hear him a third time at Harvard.
When we started this church, one of the first things we did was ask Dr. David Adams, our resident American history professor, to lead us in a year-long study of Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States. An old proverb says that history is that it is written by the winners. Zinn's particular gift was to write history from the perspective of the oppressed, the victims of genocide, the displaced and the poor.
His work, in my eyes, is especially important because he shows us how often the most horrible things that have ever happened have been allowed to happen because people of conscience were not organized in their opposition and ultimately, many otherwise good people were tricked by false patriotism or evil religion to murder and do other horrendous things. It is important to note that most of history's genocides and most horrible events were legal... they were done under the direction of or the approval of the government.
Zinn said, "Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience." We have been obedient to sick religion, obedient to the manipulations of governments, obedient to fear based prejudices, racist practices, discriminatory hiring practices and the institutions that both create and perpetuate poverty.
Every time I heard Zinn speak, I could feel a kind of collective resolve in the room, a kind of emotional electricity as people realized that they had been lied to by official histories, they had been manipulated into cooperation with oppression.... They had been raised by schools, churches and families to be obedient to rules and leaders with whom they do not morally agree.
But that kind of fire doesn't last long, not once we've all put our coats back on and walked out into the cold darkness of the real world. It is so easy to become cynical, to be both angry and isolated......like the bad guy in the Matrix movie, Cypher, who decides that reality is too painful and he chooses to be plugged back into the Matrix, to be lost in the unreality of an imaginary world rather than face the painful realities of a world that demanded both sacrifice and courage from those who are aware of the facts.
And that, my friends, is why we go to church. That is why we need one another. Without a faith community, none of us can maintain our courage.... There are no long lasting solo prophets in the world..... we need prophetic communities, not individual martyrs.
Our scripture text today is, I believe, the only passage from Hebrews I have read aloud in church for 20 years. Hebrews is one of the kind of sketchy books of the New Testament. In ancient manuscripts it was stuck onto the end of the collection of Paul's letters. Some argued that the Apostle Paul had written it and so it had to be preserved but apparently everyone, even in the ancient church, was sufficiently skeptical about it to put it at the end of the collection.
We are absolutely certain now that it wasn't written by Paul and if the church of the 4th century had been similarly confident, it would not have been preserved. It's theology is mechanical and too frequently heavy handed in its moralizing.
It is a letter written in a time when the church had come under severe persecution. Paul often talks about the church being persecuted but there had not been any wide spread persecution of the church until right at the end of Paul's life. In fact, we presume that Paul was among those Christians executed by Nero when he blamed them for the great fire that burned up so much of Rome.
After that time, it became very dangerous to be a Christian in Rome. Many people were dying and many more were abandoning the young church to avoid persecution. We have a late first century letter from the Roman governor, Pliney the younger, who wrote to Emperor Trajan to ask for some guidance in the persecution of Christians.
He asks about those who are no longer Christians for, upon examination, many testified that they had not been Christian for years. The church was falling apart in hard times. That's when the Letter to the Hebrews was written, which accounts for most of its severity and demands for loyalty to orthodoxy.
This one passage we have before us today from chapter 10 intrigues me. In fact, in many ways, it is one word in the passage that draws my attention. The author writes, "Let us consider how to 'provoke' one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some...."
Let us consider how to "provoke." Now, I'm no linguist and I'll usually leave all of the translation gymnastics to Dr. Trobisch who is, in fact, one of the world's leading scholars in the field of translation. But "provoke" is an odd word to find in a sentence about love and good deeds. The Greek word, "par-oxus-mon" cannot be translated into what you would expect Paul, or a decent pastor for that matter to say. It doesn't say, "let's encourage one another." It can't be something more church like.... It doesn't say "teach" or "lead" or "inspire."
It is, in fact, a harsh word. Sometimes it means "to cut," "to sharpen" even "to pester" or "to punch." We find it translated as "incite," but "provoke" is the better term here. It is a hard word for a hard time.... But really, when it comes to working for justice and mercy in the world, when is it not a hard time?
One of the very real dangers in offering our messages on YouTube and iTunes is that we immediately found members of our own congregation no longer attending very often in favor of just waiting for the upload on Sunday afternoons.
I'm glad that people are interested in hearing what I have to say.... I've always believed that the whole world has a right to my opinion. But consider this.... What if that fateful August day in 1963 when Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his famous, "I Have A Dream" speech that instead of 200,000 people crowding in to hear him, it had been a few dozen and everyone else just waited to see it on TV?
Black Americans sitting in their homes knew what racism was. They knew about the Apartheid of segregated schools, the insult of "coloreds only" water fountains and toilets. They knew.... They didn't generally need to be educated about the facts.... It wasn't that they needed to have their opinions changed or their beliefs confirmed..... they needed each other. The real gift of Martin Luther King was not only in his brilliant writing and preaching but that thousands came out of their homes and marched with him, visibly, courageously and they provoked one another to take action.
I am grateful for the thousands of listeners we have around the globe but I implore you, I encourage you, in fact, I would like to incite you, provoke you, into finding your own tribe in your own towns. Listen in when you can but don't let this be a replacement for getting off of your butt and going to be in community with other people who are willing to be provoked into love and good deeds if only enough people cared enough to get together and provoke one another.
Many of you here today are actively involved in service to the poor of this city.... How involved were you before you found yourselves regularly surrounded by people who provoked you into love and good deeds? Many of you have gone to New Orleans with me to do hurricane relief, to Joplin to do tornado relief.
Some have gone to Nicaragua and others are going with me in February.... Would many of you have gone to Joplin or New Orleans on your own? Would you go to Nicaragua and try to help the poor in the rural jungles? Would any of us be who we are without the other people here to have taught us, been an example for us, encouraged us and yes, sometimes irritated, incited, provoked us to open our minds and then to open our hearts and our hands?
The whole world seems to expect churches to just be passive gatherings of nice people who would never swat a fly. And I know that even some of you would like it better if I were just a bit less outspoken and a tad more concerned with being perceived locally as being a nicer, more patient and kind sort of pastor.
But there is this passage in the tenth chapter of Hebrews..... Let us consider how that we can.... Pester.... Incite....provoke..... and you know me, I'm quite the Biblicist. Without these two verses from Hebrews I would just be an obnoxiously opinionated old preacher but as long as we stay in community with one another then, I'm just doing my job.
But let's not just be difficult.... Let's try to provoke one another to love and good deeds.
