Very Slightly Treasonous

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

Rev. Dr. David Williams; 4.03.2016

Scripture Lesson:  Acts 5:27-39

LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:

I’m a little bit suspect.

Maybe it’s in my blood, the inherent bias of my MacDougall-clan Scots heritage.  The MacDougalls, after all, were the ones who got so annoyed at their fellow Scots that they were happy to side with the English when things got ugly.  And a Scot who sides with the English is more than a little suspect.  Not, of course, that they were truly Scottish at all.  As the raven battleflag on the prows of my ancestral galleys indicated, that part of my blood was really actually Viking, the Norsemen who just decided that maybe they’d bail on Denmark and stick around in the highlands.

I’m a little bit suspect.

It goes beyond my not particularly caring about the Redskins, and my never having been to a Nationals game.  It goes beyond my complete indifference to the performance of the University of Virginia in March Madness.  I don’t even have a bracket.

I am, truth be told, kind of a little bit of a traitor.  I am, if I am honest with myself, perhaps not completely to be trusted.

I’m reminded of this even more as we go deep into the blathering obsessive relentlessness of a superheated political season, and as one politician after another declares their undying love of America.  How much do they love America?  They love it so much, more than anything.

Pronouncement of patriotism are made, and there are flags upon flags, as red, white and blue decor becomes the rule of the day.  And in the midst of all of this love of country competitiveness, I find myself doing a gut check, and finding that I probably don’t pass muster.

It’s not that I don’t find value in our constitutional republic.  Our system of government may seem flawed at time, but it is a more perfect union than I’ve encountered elsewhere.  I appreciate that I can write what I want, that I can say what I want, that I can travel where and when I am able.  I appreciate that we can gather here in worship without fear of oppression, and that Buddhists and Episcopalians and Mormons and Muslims and humanists and Raelians can all do the same.

I’ve been places in the world where that is not the case, and I am sincerely glad not to live in those places, and to live here instead.

But for all of that, I’m still not to be trusted.

And in that, the degree to which my identity is shaped by nation has some pretty clear boundaries.  

Because not only do I have no sense of allegiance to either political party, I also feel America is less important to me than Jesus, if I’m honest with myself.

This is faintly alarming.  I mean, think about it.  Here, a religious zealot with a beard who cares only about his faith.  Such people are dangerous, right?    But honestly, it’s true.  Jesus is more important.  If it came down to choosing, I’d go with Jesus.  That commitment has priority over pretty much every other one in my life.

Not institutions.  Not nations.  Not structures.  Just the life and teachings of Jesus, and the moral demands of that whole Easter story I seem to faintly recall hearing about recently.

That someone is Gamaliel, who appears at just the right moment in the story from the Book of Acts today.  Here we are, just a week out from Easter, and already the early church is in some significant trouble.   We hear that every single one of the apostles, meaning every leader of the fledgling Jesus movement, every one of them is gathered together and in the hands of the Sanhedrin.  

They are refusing, and have refused, to stop telling people about their Easter experience. Honestly, at this point in the story, it’s the Pentecost experience, too.  But that’s jumping ahead a little bit, and so let’s forget I said that.   When they’re point-blank ordered to cease and desist, their reply is simple:  “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”

This doesn’t go over well, particularly as many of the people they’re talking to are the Tzaddikim, the Saducees...meaning priests, whose entire career revolves around being the ones who have access to God.

As they’re actively defying the power of folks who have the power to kill them, things are looking pretty dire for Christianity.  It’s just one drone strike away from being completely expunged from world history.

As the gathered group of rabbis and priests gets worked up into a fury, one of them stands up and changes the course of history.  

It’s one of the rabbis, the Pharisee Gamaliel, the President of the Sanhedrin, one of the most respected rabbis of the first century, who is still remembered in the traditions of rabbinic Judaism today.

As Luke tells the story, Gamaliel finds himself holding the lives of all of the apostles in his hands. The crowd calls for their deaths. What does he do? If he lets things go as they're going, and doesn't intervene, all of the leaders of the early Jesus movement will die. Instead, he takes a stand and counsels tolerance, making a vigorous and persuasive case that they should be spared.

After citing some examples, he suggests that if God was not at work in them, then they would fail anyway, but if God is in them, then opposing them would be pointless. He sways the Sanhedrin, and instead of being killed, Peter and the apostles are just given a whuppin' and set free. So here we have a thoughtful, gracious, and tolerant rabbi saving Christianity.

Which, if he’d seen the history of the Crusades and the Inquisition and other places where people who claimed to be following Jesus didn’t exactly return the favor, he might have reconsidered.

Early Christianity found this a little confusing, particularly in light of theologies that assumed that Judaism lacked legitimacy as a faith tradition after Jesus.  There are stories, which are as reliable as the stories you might have seen on Facebook two days ago, of Gamaliel secretly converting the Christianity.  In Eastern Orthodoxy, he was made a saint.

But however you look at it, Gamaliel affirmed the perspective of those first apostles: he reminded the Sanhedrin that they must trust and prioritize God over all other interests.

That’s the mark of a faith that has the right to call itself faith.  A faith commitment must have primacy, must be the first and foremost among commitments.  That’s what makes morality moral, what allows it to establish life purpose.

That does have limits, sure.

If your faith is dark and misguided, and your God is your own power, declaring that the only thing that matters is God tends to make things look a whole bunch like Northern Iraq.

That is and has always been the danger of faith, that if misguided and misplaced, it blinds us to the reality of both the human beings and the creation around us.

But it is also the thing that gives form and shape to our other relationships.  It is what allows us to be gracious in loss.  It is what allows us to see past the anxieties and fears that can govern our careers and our relationships.  It is what turns our hearts from self-interest, from the yearning for war.

It is always, always, just a little subversive, a little unsettling of the orders of power and anger and fear.

It is, in it’s own way, the heart of our grounding, the foundation on which we can safely stand.

Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.