Sermons

January 30/05

If It Quacks Like a Duck and Walks Like a Duck
Is it A Christian?

Reverend Dr Cheri DiNovo

Just because we call ourselves Christian, are we? This is the second part of a series that I’ve had fun doing on the path of the Christian , which is the path of non-violence and non-cooperation with evil. This series began with Darryl Anderson who has just appeared on the cover of the Sun, speaking about why he left the Military and cam to Canada to seek refuge.

Last week, we spoke about non-violence so this is a little coda or PS to last week: I found a website run by the Vietnam Veteran’s Association. In that website they listed all of the various places, quite an astounding list, that have been bombed by coalitions of the willing since the Second World War; China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Congo, Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iraq, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan. And they asked the question, "How many of these became democratic governments, respectful of human rights because of American intervention?" Which was the stated reason for intervening. And the answer is: none!

Now I can attest to that first hand. About seven years ago I went to Vietnam with my son. It was a spiritual journey because his dad was a draft dodger and we went to see what he didn’t fight for. We went to the museum of war atrocities. We traveled around the country and I can tell you this for a fact. Every single life that was lost during the Vietnam War was a life lost in vain on both sides. On the Communist side, who were fighting against the appropriation of their country by Western and Capitalist interests, their fighting was in vain because American companies and Korean companies and Japanese companies and Canadian companies are there in full force as true colonizing powers doing great business. On our side, we tried to save that country from Communism. Did we succeed? Absolutely not, it is one of the few repressive Communist regimes left on the planet. The question for all of us must be, we Christians who are trying to walk this path of non-violence and non-cooperation with evil, is "Why do we keep doing the same things we keep doing and expecting different results?"

Millions of cards today are being given out in Churches, in Roman Churches and Protestant Churches, and these cards are asking Christians to sign them and send them off to their MP’s and to vote against civil rights. Yes, that’s what’s happening. Just because we call ourselves Christians, are we? Just because we call ourselves Christians, are we?
Here’s a quote: "Whether Protestant or Catholic Priest, each did this utmost helping our powers of resistance to hold out not only in the trenches but also and even more so during those years and especially during that first outburst of enthusiasm. In both religious camps there was one undivided and sacred German empire for whose preservation and future existence they both prayed to Heaven." Adolph Hitler from Mein Kampf. Just because we call ourselves Christian, are we?

Now those of us who are parents and even those of us who are not parents have witnessed this phenomena with other parents and their children. It usually occurs when the child is around 2 or 3 and just walking when the parent is trying to get from point A to point B, trying to get ‘somewhere’. The child of course, never walks from A to B. They always deter all over the place, up alleys, up front steps, picking up something they saw on the lawn,. I remember very, very well when my daughter was very little, (she’s now 27 – what happened?) and I was bringing her home from daycare and we were getting off the streetcar and facing about a three block walk and it was snowsuit weather so she’s kind of a little marshmallow and I’m exhausted because I’ve been working all day and inevitable somewhere along that stretch she’d say, "Mommy I can’t walk anymore my legs are too little!" And I would have to pick her up and carry her the rest of the way home.

I can think of no better analogy for the Christian walk, than the walk of that two year old. If you see God as a kind of parent, a loving parent and here we Christians try to follow God and we’re like that two year old. We kind of want to follow but we also get distracted. You know we get distracted over here and over there. We fall down. We pick ourselves up. Sometimes we get lost. Sometimes we see something bright and shiny that catches our attention. Sometimes somebody else calls to us and we follow them instead.

But we know who we’re supposed to follow. The Christian path of course is a path that follows Christ. So just because we say we’re Christians, that is following Christ, are we? Another great quote; G.K.Chesterton, "The Christian life has not been tried and proved wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried." Just because we call ourselves Christian, are we?
The Dalai Lama, when Christian kids and Jewish kids go to him and ask about becoming Buddhist, always responds by saying, "Go back and learn how to be Jewish or Christian first." I knew this was true of Christians and then I had a Rabbi on my show and he said it was true of Jews as well. God called you here, you know that, you didn’t walk in here of your own accord. God called you into Christianity as a child and as an adult. This is where you find yourself. This is the language that we speak just like we speak English as a mother tongue. We speak ‘Christian’ here. So it is incumbent upon us to learn the grammar of that language and to learn to speak it well. Then we can write our own stories.

The famous question for Christians has always been, "What would Jesus do?" but the other day I saw a bumper sticker that I think I almost like as much that said, "What would Zena do?" Another quote, "The world is equally shocked at hearing Christianity criticized as at seeing it practiced." Thomas Trueblood said that. And C.S. Lewis said this, which makes me think of the Beatitudes, "I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port could do that. If you want a religion to make you feel happy, I wouldn’t personally recommend Christianity."
So, who is Christ that we follow? What is this Christ that we follow? What is it to be a Christian? Well, first of all, we recognize the difference and the distance. We’re two year olds after all, we’re not the parent yet. We follow at a distance. The two year old probably doesn’t know what their mother or father has in mind for them, probably doesn’t have a clue, know only that they’re loved. That if you follow this person you eventually get somewhere safe where there’s warmth and there’s love and there’s acceptance. And if you lose sight of that person, then those things might not happen. If you follow someone else, those things might not happen.

There was a big sign up on a Baptist Church on the way here that said, "Those who fail to worship God will always find a substitute". Thos who fail to worship God will always find a substitute. So, whether we’re Peter or whether we’re Judas sitting around that table with Jesus Christ, we are someone who betrays Him. There’s no question. The two year old will let their parent down. And a two year old will fight with their brother and sister. That’s what two year olds do in my experience. They fight. But they follow…they follow…

We’re far from holy, we two year olds in the faith, we’re far from holy. In fact I don’t trust anybody who is holy. Holy people give me the creeps! There’s something very strange and kind of scary about people who set themselves up as holy. What’s that about? Oscar Wilde said, "Every saint has a past and every sinner a future." So we have pasts and we have futures, we two year olds.

The other thing that a Christian does that follows Jesus, is that we’re forgiving. You know if you had a video of yourself as a two year old, or a Super 8, videos weren’t around when I was a two year old, and you watched yourself walking behind your mother or father and stumbling and wandering off, you wouldn’t say about that two year old you, "What an idiot!" That wouldn’t be the first thing that would come to mind. You wouldn’t even say, "What a sinner!" You would say, "Aren’t they sweet?" "Look at them trying, look at them falling and then getting up again." In the same way if we look at the story of our won lives and we see all sorts of detours, all sorts of failures and all sorts of falls, "Look they were really trying but kind of missed it there. Look how they caught up. Look how they kept going. Look at how they learned"

Third thing: Christ is always thankful, always giving thanks to God. Christians who are Christians, are always thankful Another quote, "No Christian can be a pessimist. Christianity is a system of radical optimism." William Inge said that. We’re radically optimistic. We truly believe that things will work out as they should. We absolutely believe that every prayer is answered, maybe not yet, and maybe not in the way we hoped but every prayer is answered. You know this is a cause of great burn out for those peace activists and social justice activists, who really work hard and do all that they can and don’t see much in the way of changes. My heart always goes out to them because they are our brothers and sisters in faith even though they might not recognize it as such. You know what they don’t have? Faith. They don’t have the radical assurance for all the hard work that they do, all the peacekeeping that they do, all the forgiving that they do, that it’s all worthwhile. That this is what God intended and we will get home! That there is someone to follow and that if we follow them we will get home! And home is a warm, beautiful, safe, loving place! This is something some two year olds know that perhaps some two year olds don’t. We should share that knowledge. And we should give thanks.

Four: Jesus was never alone for long. Yes, he did retreat but it’s hard to be a Christian alone. Christianity is about community. And boy, community stinks sometimes don’t you think? Like our neighbour, what’s wrong with them? I don’t know about you, but my neighbours bug me, not just the enemies but the friends. They really get on our nerves. We can’t be Christians if we don’t work it out with them. You can’t be a Christian if you don’t keep on trying to work it out with them. That is what Jesus did. He went out healing and teaching and trying to build community. And he succeeded, very briefly and then it all fell apart toward the end. But he kept on trying to live and to build community.

Five: Jesus was courageous and brave. You know as I said the other week, that ‘turning the other cheek thing’ that’s not ‘wimp’. It’s not a cowed dog. It’s the most courageous of all possible stances. It’s being hit and standing in the face of evil again, falling down, getting up and standing in the face of evil again. It’s being hit and falling and standing again in the face of evil and saying what you have to say prophetically. You will not hit back but you will stand in the face of evil. That is the most courageous and brave stand of all. It’s easy to hit back.

Christians are courageous and we are courageous because of course we have that sure and certain faith that the one that we’re following, albeit poorly, the one that we’re following will lead us in the right direction. So we don’t put our faith in anything worldly, not in anything human, not our families, not our governments, not the military. They’ll all let you down. We put our faith in God.
Six: We worship. We actually pray. We get together and we rejoice.

Seven: We recognize that the only template of whether we’re Christian or not is the Bible. Now boy, do we get this wrong. People always accuse me and us of not being biblical, of not being faithful to the Bible. So let me tell you I think we are the most Biblically faithful Church and we are the most Biblically faithful denomination. And I try my best on a good day! The trick is, what do you do with that book! How do you read it?

Jesus gave us the key and the key is this one. He said everything in this book can be summed up, very simply, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and your neighbour as yourself." Because that’s all you need to know. That’s it. Anything you read in this book, you read through that lens. If it doesn’t fit with that then you’re not reading it right. You can live and die in Leviticus brothers and sisters and there are many denominations doing just that. Those Churches thata re giving out cards this weekend and asking them to send them to their MP’s are living and dying by the letter and not the spirit of the law. Because if you really lived out every prescription in the bible, we would be sacrificing animals every morning, you would not be eating shellfish. We would be banishing women to sheds, at least once a month. We would be flogging people and stoning people. We would condone slavery. Come on brothers and sisters, is this what we mean by being biblically faithful!? And by the way we would all be polygamous, because that is the way family was in the bible. Is that what we mean by being biblically faithful? If it is, shame on us. Just because we call ourselves Christian, are we Christians?

So no matter what you do, whether in politics, ethics, in your own life, you have to do it through this lens. Are you loving the Lord your God and you neighbour? Are you extending the same rights and benefits and privileges to your neighbour as you would have them extend to you, or not? If you’re about to kill somebody, one could safely say, you’re not loving your neighbour as yourself. That pretty well rules out violence of any sort, doesn’t it? And anything you could think of doing or think of thinking, "Is this treating my neighbour as I would be treated?" Which does not mean to become the cowering dog. It means to stand in the face of evil, non-cooperation with evil over and over and over again and to fall down and pick yourself up, over and over and over again. After all, that is what Jesus did.

Here’s a good quote, "I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me as much." Mother Theresa, who you don’t think of as having a sense of humor, said that.
In closing, we’re all those two year olds, there are those times when you find yourself lost, you’ve wandered up a lane way and you don’t see your mother or your father anywhere. Are they somewhere? Of course they are. They’re looking for you. Because you know that is the joy that we are part of a religion where humans do not seek God but that celebrates the fact that God seeks us. So God will find you. God has found you. You’re here. No what are you going to do with the rest of your life? Just because we call ourselves Christian, are we?

Amen.