The Whole Truth

Christianity happens one person at a time.  Kierkegaard said that.  He believed this was the scandal of our faith.  God was in one person; our faith, our religion, our moral code happens when God enters one person.  Christianity is not the belief that God came to earth; Christianity is a belief that God has entered your heart.

            The individual nature of Christianity is both a weakness and a strength.  The weakness is that I cannot share your consciousness, your heart. I can only guard it, respect it, trust your heart.  This can be very limiting.  This makes rules and orders and traditions precarious.  The heart is wild and precocious; fiery and equally as cold. 

            The strength of Christianity happening one person at a time is authenticity, and how this limits power.  Martin Luther spoke of the priesthood of all believers because he was convinced that you and I, each of us, have the power to forgive one another.  In our heart is the possibility of moving mountains, tearing down oppressive systems, rising above all tyranny and hate in the humility of being one person.

            This strength and weakness are not always clear.  I was part of a committee interviewing candidates for a director position of a not-for-profit.  The Urban Mission is like our Food Pantry dialed up about ten times.  There were some strong candidates, one of whom came late and disheveled having mixed up the date of the interview.  Mary was bombastic, painfully honest, and humble.  She was overweight, a smoker, and Catholic to the core. She could weep with you and give you a shellacking in the same afternoon. Mary was number two at the department of social services.  Working for us would be a cut in pay, certainly an end to her career working for the state.  But it was clear: this was a match made in heaven.

            Mary was passed over as the new head of social services.  She was passed over for all the reasons that made her a perfect fit for the Urban Mission.  In the department of social services, the rules were the key, the defining characteristic.  Rightly so.  The department of social services is not a church, or an extension of the Christian faith.  The department of social services doesn't happen one person at a time; it serves tens of thousands at a time. 

            During her tenure as the director of the Urban Mission which she led until she died of cancer, she would go out of her way to introduce me to someone, recount an event or challenge.  Each story was different, but each had the same meaning: we helped this one person.  There were no papers, no rules, no criteria: there was need and we helped.  The Urban Mission had policies and procedures, rules and in some instances needed to comply with regulations, laws.  But that was not the power, the purpose, the faith of the Mission.  The faith was Christianity happens one person at a time and God was just in our midst in the heart of a broken person, a hungry person, a heart in chaos seeking peace. 

            I know this will sound a bit odd, but Mary was a great example of how the church and state need to work together, to complement one another, but never be the other.  A Christian church is a place where the life of one person is redeemed.  We worship together, we pray together, we sing together, we serve together, but in the end, it is your confession, your faith, your hope where God is at work.  I can interpret the Bible for you, but only you can live it.  A state, a town, a local government does the opposite.  No matter what you believe or hope or want, there are rules we all follow.  Government is of the people, for the people, by the people.  People, plural.  Not the individual.

            What it means to be a church is counter intuitive to what it means to be a state.  Hence the beauty of our church and state separation.  One cannot and should not try to be the other.  Yet, here is the tricky part.  They have to work together, balance each other, offer what the other cannot. 

            I got a call from a city manager many years ago.  There was a house about to be condemned.  The owner was a hoarder, and her home was now a public safety risk.  The call was to say, can you do what I cannot. The city manager cannot clean your house or fix your kitchen or provide a dumpster to empty the thousands of pounds of waste that cover your floors.  But I can; the church can.  The city manager must ensure the safety of all the homes in a neighborhood and cannot look the other way when one house becomes a hazard.  That's her job.  But it's not mine.  The city manager knew her job, but she also knew the church could help where she could not.  And we did.

            The house was saved; the owner given a new chance at life; the neighbors were all relieved, came and filled the fridge with food.  It took five days and more than a hundred volunteers.  It wasn't the effort of one person.  But it happened within hours of one phone call.  There is a need; the church acted; the need was met.  For the city or the state to have done something even remotely like this would have taken months of forms and reviews and applications accepted or rejected.  That's not how a church works.  The church and state are counter intuitive, but, when things are best, we work together.  The city wasn't a church, and the church wasn't a city. We were a community.

            I am excited to see this happening in our food pantry right now.  The church is being a church.  We have some rules, some criteria, even some regulations.  But that is not our focus.  We are there to help one person, one family, one house at a time.  We give what we have as we have it and as much as we can.  This is not our job or our department; this is what it means to live our faith.  And now good things are starting to happen.  Social workers, case workers, agencies that are bound by the rules, by the regulations are partnering.  The state does not become a church and the church should not become the state, but we work together, we complement one another.  We meet needs in ways the state cannot, and the state does things that go far beyond our reach.  We can help with rent for a month; the state is there to provide help for years, decades even.

            This is how it is supposed to work.  Power used in good ways.  Our reading today is the opposite, how power is abused.  Power is used in destructive ways.  The Pharisees want to kill Jesus, not expose him, or punish him; they want to kill him. But they know they do not have this power.  If they did, there would have been no need of Pilate.  Their authority did not extend to execution.  For this they needed the governor. 

            Pilate didn't want to kill Jesus, have him executed on a bogus charge, a religious question.  Religious questions for him didn't rise to the level of civil authority and regulation.  He says this to the Pharisees.  What is more, he doesn't find anything criminal about saying, I could tear the temple down and rebuild it in three days.  Pilate tells them, saying things like that is not a matter of the state. 

            But Pilate needs the Pharisees.  He knows the power they possess and the role they play.  He needs them to be leaders, a moral authority. Pilate needs the Pharisees to do what he cannot, appeal to the heart of the people. 

            The Pharisees were lost in fear and consumed by a need to control power.  Greed and pride had replaced responsibility.  The Pharisees are a long lesson in how power corrupts.  Indeed, the Pharisees corrupt Pilate, they force him into an abuse of his power.  I am not supposed to kill innocent people is his plea to the Pharisees.  And then he capitulates and washes his hands.

            It is easy to look at our passage and be cynical.  People in power do bad things.  They do.  Power corrupts; therefore, power is bad. Don't mix religion and politics.  Mix, no.  But neither should we exclude or isolate or pit one against the other.  Jesus tells his disciples, the poor in spirit have the kingdom of God; and he also says, the meek shall inherit the earth.  He instructs us to pray: thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  It's not one or the other, or one at the expense of the other.  The kingdom of God and the earth are both blessed.  The challenge is to know how and in what way and where does the truth of the blessings come to us.

            During the peak of the opioid crisis the local attorney general asked if the church could gather community leaders to learn about the crisis and talk about ways we might stem the disaster.  I invited a number of folks and we ate breakfast together each week for two months.  It wasn't hard to find people to speak to this as it was overwhelming communities and tearing lives apart every day.

            Those gatherings were a powerful reminder to me of how fragile life is and how stigma shapes our response to suffering.  Yet, the great insight was not for me, but for the chief medical officer of the local hospital.  Mario sat there week after week and absorbed what he heard.  I counted Mario as a friend and someone I admired before this, but afterward, I held him in the highest of esteem for what he did with all that he heard.

            He changed the protocol of the hospital.  When people overdosed and came to the hospital the protocol was to stabilize and discharge.  This is consistent with all other maladies.  No one would criticize the hospital for following this protocol.  Someone is bleeding; stop the bleeding; discharge the patient.  But what he realized was that in this instance the protocol for overdose wasn't working; it was hurting people.  So he changed it.

            From now on he explained to the staff of the emergency room our protocol is to stabilize and refer, direct, guide people unto treatment, unto detox in an inpatient facility.  Treatment is now the goal, not discharge. 

            Mario could have come to this realization at a conference.  This could have been the mandate of the state.  But it was a church fellowship hall week after week where he heard the heart of the people struggling to save folks.  It wasn't a paper he read; it was the community he heard.  The church did not demand change.  I didn't leverage or manipulate him.  We ate breakfast together, he listened with his heart, he changed the protocol.  He saved lives.

            Jesus before Pilate is dark moment, a sad moment.  Someone who should be serving the people failed, the leaders meant to love the people were corrupted by fear and greed and pride.  This can happen and it is sad.  But it's not our fate.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Our faith, that heaven can happen here, our faith happens one person at a time.  We must live that faith with all the people, true. Our faith happens one person at a time, but it doesn't live that way.

            It's not the church or the state, religion or politics.  It is the delicate and honest challenge of finding a life together in complement, in community.  We need a government of the people; and we must have a faith of God in each heart. The kingdom of God here and now.  Amen.