A Call to End the Underground Practices

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
February 6th 2008
Ash Wednesday Meditation
Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“A Call to End the Underground Practices”
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Ash Wednesday is a day which is hard to market in our culture, at least if we are really honest about the day. Now, don’t hear me wrong, I am not seeking to add my voice to the many which bemoans the loss of our faith from the places of power. Instead I am simply pointing out that the messages of Ash Wednesday and our culture are somewhat at odds. After all, the highest good is that which meets our personal needs. I say this not to be judgmental but to offer an observation about reality.
Like it or not, the message of Ash Wednesday could not be more counter cultural. Whether we follow the church of the Middle Ages on Ash Wednesday focusing on our sinfulness or whether we focus on the earliest institutional churches practice of focus on baptism, the message is ultimately about repentance, the journey from death to new life. It means, like it or not, that this day is about dying to ourselves and living in the way of Jesus. So in a nut shell the simple reality is that we are part of a faith that is not primarily designed to meet our needs, at least not our consumer driven needs. So, at the end of the day, Ash Wednesday is a call to turn from anything which does not bring life.
Before, I said something about not being judgmental. Well, now I am going to be, or maybe what I mean is that I am going to get preachy. (Maybe that is not a bad thing since I am actually a preacher…) My main point is that it is time for Christians to ignore the words of Jesus from Matthew. Yes, I actually said ignore the words of Jesus. What I mean by this is that it is time for us to stop using those words as an excuse to never share our faith or beliefs. Jesus did not mean for people to hide their faith. Instead, Jesus was saying “NO” to any form or expression of faith disconnected from the ways of justice.
I recently read a book about the movement Students for a Democratic Society and how it became the Weatherman or Weather Underground. While I do not pretend to have any expertise on the subject, I did notice a couple of things which might be instructive. As members of the group went underground the support of people who were not underground was vital. The underground came to an end when they no longer had a clear purpose and become fractionalized trying to take on too many issues at once. After a while, those in the underground began to turn on one another taking focus away from the primary goals. Finally, when the underground went on too long, the aboveground movement became disconnected from those underground.
While the analogy is not perfect I believe there are some things which might be instructive for those of us who are part of the denominations which no longer hold the privileged positions we once held. I liken this move from the places of privilege to a move underground. While there are many problems with this analogy, the biggest is that the movement underground of this wing of the Christian church was not welcomed and was not really a choice. However, as we experienced a loss of position two patterns emerged; one wing joined the movements to reestablish dominance in the public arena and the other joined itself with movements for justice and began to be less vocal and less able to articulate, to the world outside or to their children, their motivations for action. The rallying cry in this wing was the famous: “Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary us words.” Over time both groups became more and more estranged, divided and confident that the other side was wrong. And in the end, what the outside world knows about our faith seems to be reduced to issues like gay marriage, abortion, and Republican Party affiliation. I believe God is not pleased about this, and I believe God would not be pleased if the only thing people knew about Christianity was that we were Democrats. But friends, we know another story, and it is that story which needs to be brought out into the light.
I believe it is important in a pluralistic culture to find a way to practice our faith in public ways. I know it is a work that is not easily done and loaded with all sorts of troubles but it is time to wade out into this unfamiliar territory and let people know there is more to the story. It is time for us to stand up and give a witness to the wideness in our faith. In other words, I believe we must end the Christian underground.
I must confess that I am bit envious of the Unite Church of Christ’s God is Still Speaking Campaign. I believe it is precicly the sort of thing we ought to be doing. However, it really is only a good start. We must continue to move this work into the pews in order to really ‘Come out,’ and claim the God give calling upon all our lives.
So let us give of the ways of the underground and come out! Come out and tell the story of our faith with our lives and our words. Come out, and let people know that we have faith in Jesus is not built on exclusion or hatred but on love. Come out and show that the love of God in Jesus Christ is the ultimate “No” to war, to torture, to all the ways of violence, and the ways of exclusion, hatred, and fear. Come out! Be bold! Well actually we should be humble since that is part of Jesus calling as well. Just make sure to stand up and be counted doing everything in the love of Jesus who was so opposed to the ways of coercion, oppression, and violence that he would not reply in kind but instead showed his complete commitment to the ways of love.
So let us remember, in these forty days, of the ways in which we are being called to ‘Come Out’ from the places of our captivity and the places where we cooperate with the powers of death in the world. May God open our eyes, minds and hearts so this will be a journey of liberation and new life. Amen? Amen.