A Third Way

A Third Way

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

February 19, 2017

Scripture: Matthew 5:38-48

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Human life, you know, is filled with conflicting opposites. We deal with them all the time. Self and others. For many, family and work. For many, work and play. Chocolate cake and a bulging waistline. Politics and ordinary life. Duty and desire. Companionship, even intimacy, and solitude. Loving your grandkids and finding them absolutely exhausting. For far too many marital fidelity and a roving eye. The yard needing to be mowed and the Seahawks playing an afternoon game. We run into competing opposites all the time.

The scripture of the Christian faith is filled with conflicting opposites too. God and creation. God and the nation. Earth and heaven. Self and others—that one shows up in the life of faith as much as it does in other aspects of our lives. For far too many, politics and faith. Charity and personal spiritual practices. Charity and social justice—they aren’t the same thing you know. The body and the spirit—far too many Christians make these two competing opposites when they really aren’t. Personal desires and Christian morality—far too many Christians make that one something it doesn’t have to be too. In the life of faith as in all of our life we run into conflicting opposites all the time.

A great many Christians insist on seeing God and Jesus Christ only on one side of our conflicting opposites. They think God calls us always to choose between conflicting opposites. When faced with conflicting opposites they think there’s this way, and there’s that way, and God is only on one side or the other. Choose between them, they say. Take one way or the other. There’s no third choice, and only one of the choices is moral, only one of them is Christian.

Well, I want to tell you this morning that when faced with conflicting opposites Jesus rarely took one way or the other. He usually found a different way, a third way, his way, God’s way. It might not be obvious, but he’s actually doing that in the passage we just heard from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. In that passage Jesus is addressing the question of violence as a means of opposing evil and oppression. In our English translations he says “Do not resist an evil person.” He says if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek. If someone sues you to take your tunic, give him your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go a second mile with him. Sure sounds like he’s advising meek passivity in the face of oppression, doesn’t it? Well, he’s not. The late great theologian Walter Wink taught us that the word that gets translated as “resist” in the phrase “do not resist an evil person” actually means something like do not resist with armed force. Wink taught us that turn the other cheek, give the cloak also, and go the extra mile are actually examples of assertive, creative, nonviolent resistance to oppression. It sounds to us like Jesus is making a choice between meek acquiescence in oppression and violent resistance to oppression and choosing the former. He’s not. What he’s doing is finding a third way, a way that incorporates the sacred in each of the two options and rejects that which is itself evil in them. He found a third way. Not a way of compromise but God’s way between two sinful human ways.

Jesus does that in areas of concern other than the choice between passivity and violence too. Take the question of whether the life of faith is about personal piety and salvation on the one hand and transforming the world in the direction of divine justice on the other. Christians usually see an either/or choice here. Faith is about personal spirituality and salvation of the soul or it is about transforming the world. We think we have to choose between those two polarities. Both sides of the divide over that supposed choice, which today splits American Christianity in two, think they’re the ones choosing God’s side and think those who choose differently have lost touch with what God really wants.

Well, Jesus actually chose neither of those sides of the social justice or personal salvation question. He found a third way between them. He found the divine way of transforming the world through inner, personal, spiritual transformation. He rejected an exclusive focus on the world, and he rejected an exclusive focus on heaven. He proclaimed God’s radical justice for the poor and the marginalized, and he called his followers to develop a healthy inner spirituality that brings peace and salvation. He said don’t resist oppression by taking up arms against it. He said resist it by driving the oppressor out of your heart, out of your spirit. He thought that if enough people would do that, transformation of the world would come as a natural and unavoidable consequence of that inner transformation. He found a third way. He found God’s way, and he calls us to do the same.

We see this kind of either/or choice when we look at the future of the church. The future of this little church to be sure, but the future of the entire Christian church as well. We think we have a choice between being big and financially well of on the one hand and being small and probably dying on the other. I am convinced that if Jesus were here in person today he would tell us that that is a false choice. He would call us to find a third way. He would call us to find a way that rejects what is bad about both ways and keeps what is good about both ways, the good in the large church and the good in the small church rolled into one.

Big churches can be vital. They can be alive. They are filled with people, and those people can and often do perform great works of charity in their communities. But big churches can also be, and usually are, difficult places for new people to fit into. They are difficult places for new people to find true community. They often have big and quite rigid bureaucratic structures. Sometimes they hold together only because they have a charismatic preacher. When he leaves so do many of the people. Big churches also far too often preach really bad theology, theology for example that condemns women and gay people simply for being the way God created them and expects people to turn their brains off when they pass through the church door.

Little churches have their virtues and their challenges too. It is much easier for a small church to be community for people than it is for a big church to be that. It’s usually easier for new people to fit into the life of a little church than it is for new people to do that in a big one. Here are some examples: Our vice moderator Jesse is a newcomer to this church, but he has already become part of its leadership. Other new people have become active here in recent times too. Beate works with the deacons. Lisa sings with the music group, works in the kitchen, and has gotten us doing a better job of recycling than we’d been doing before. That would not happen in most big churches. It’s easier for people to make their voice heard in a small congregation than in a big one because there are far fewer voices clamoring to be heard in a small church than there are in a large one. Little churches definitely have their sacred virtues.

They have virtues, but they also have drawbacks. A little church can’t do as much in its community as a big church can. This little church is in pretty good financial condition, but many little churches aren’t. Churches with very limited financial resources can find it hard to call a pastor. People in little churches can think that their church doesn’t matter as much as a big one does. They can fear the future more than people in big churches do because their financial and human resources are quite limited.

Jesus call us, Jesus calls you, to find a third way between being a stereotypical big church and being a struggling little church with no future. Jesus says the third way of being church is to be a little church that is every bit as alive as the big churches sometimes seem to be. Keep the virtues of being small church. Love one another. Be community for one another, as indeed in many ways you are. Listen to each other. Not just to the longtime core members but to the new people too. But, Jesus says, drop the bad stuff about being a small church. Stop being panicked about your future, for God will be with you in whatever that future holds. Stop worrying that there is relatively little you can do outside these walls. Keep doing what you can. Keep doing what you have done and rejoice in it, giving thanks to God. When I’m gone seek a new pastor, yes; but don’t despair if you have trouble finding one. You’ve been church without a pastor before. You can do it again if you have to, and you’re better off with no pastor than with a bad one. There are lots of materials readily available online to help you do church by yourselves.

So: find God’s third way. Keep what is holy about you, and there is much that is. Don’t let that which is not holy in you stop you. Keep praying together. Keep coming together for worship and for work. Keep coming together for companionship and community. Keep listening for how God is calling you to be church in this time and place. There is a way. There is God’s third way. I pray that with the help of the Holy Spirit you will find it. Amen.