Inconsistency at Home

INCONSISTENT
October 15, 2008
Ezekiel 16:49-60

I have shared with you over the past several months the strange place in which I find myself as a chaplain in a maximum security prison. The way I have described it is that I could have gone my whole life without becoming exposed to such a desperate, irresolvable, negative environment. I think what washed over me was the thought that prison has disturbed my comfort zone. I should rather coast out in ignorance than come up against this seemingly impossible situation where my interpersonal skills simply don’t work very well, and I am forced to really trust God.

The way I have described it is to say, “I didn’t need to know about this.”

The Prophet Ezekiel is telling us in Ezekiel 16 how we use our blessings from God to insulate ourselves from the kind of reality we can’t change or don’t like. The fact is that we have a lot of things to think about in this Christian walk. There is the world out there that some Christians are trying to change with money, influence and politics. There is the church in here that some of the rest of us are trying to change. There are all those people in the middle who have become so numbed by God’s blessing on America that they are not interested in changing anything. Maybe they just want to be left alone.

As Christians, we can attack our culture and the sins of our culture and become oblivious to the rot that is destroying the Bride of Christ – the Church. In a sense, that is where Israel went wrong, and that is where the Christian Right is going wrong today. If we don’t face our own sins, we fail to stand for righteous and victorious living. Yet, if we focus too much on the sins within the church, we run the risk of destroying its life and vitality and turning it into a legalistic cult. No wonder the great mass of humanity prefers to zone out religious zeal from their lives. Religious zeal complicates comfortable living.

Let’s take a minute or so to examine Sodom and Gomorrah and Ezekiel’s condemnation of Israel as being worse than either. It is in the context of Israel’s somehow having done worse things than Sodom and Gomorrah and Samaria. Sodom and Gomorrah were burned for their sin, and Samaria, where the 10 tribes of Israel had relocated after Solomon’s reign, had been carried off to Assyria around 150 years before Jerusalem fell to Babylon.

Ezekiel is prophesying to his people in Babylon and telling them that they are going to be restored but that the daughters of Sodom, Gomorrah and Samaria are also going to be restored. In that way, he destroys the popular idea of a culture clash between those three cultures and states that Israel’s sin was twice as bad as was Samaria’s.

Faithful Jews would not understand such a statement, nor would the Church of Jesus Christ in America understand such a statement if that were to be said about us today.

Nobody knows much about Samaria, but everybody knows about Sodom. It has a sexual act named after it. Both the church and the world refer to Sodom as having been destroyed by fire for its homosexuality. When we think of Sodom, we think of promiscuity and judgment.

But when the Lord speaks of Sodom here, He describes their sin very differently. He doesn’t speak of homosexuality or licentiousness. He speaks, instead, of arrogance (or pride), gluttony and indifference. Those, apparently, were the sins of Sodom. Ezekiel speaks of Israelites and Sodomites as being sisters. That’s a touch of irony in a male-dominated homosexual environ!: “You would not even mention your sister Sodom in the day of your pride, before your (italics added) wickedness was uncovered” (v.56).

You will remember that when Lot and Abraham split up, Lot chose Sodom because it was fertile: “Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere” (Gen 13:10). Ezekiel refers to all those good things about Sodom as the source of their sin and destruction. They were arrogant, or proud. They became like gods. They put themselves on top of the ladder and would take instruction from no one. They had the attitude that they knew best what sort of behavior was acceptable and good.

Does that not sound like America – arrogant and proud? America acts as though it is superior to other cultures in the world and therefore has a right to set the standards for behavior. As with Sodom, sexual promiscuity has become a symptom of the disease of pride and arrogance. Divorce, homosexuality and all those uncomfortable sins out there are symptomatic of a society that makes its own laws and thinks it is free when it lives without restraint. And here comes the church of Jesus Christ, including most of us, condemning those sins, as did Israel, and at the same time falling victim to them, as did Israel. It reminds me of that old saying, “When you point your finger at someone else, you have three pointing at yourself.”

I met with my siblings last Saturday at a family wedding. My sister, Sue, who has played and sung here a number of times, was talking about her counseling practice to Christian women. It has been her experience that more than half the teenage girls in high school today are sexually active in a way that would shock you, as it did me. Being a Christian apparently is of little consequence. And yet, we point fingers at a promiscuous public of non-believers.

The same pride that has infected America has infected the church of Jesus Christ. Which came first is a matter of debate.

The Lord describes Sodom is being “overfed,’ or gluttonous. Gluttony describes our nation today, does it not? We have supermarkets full of food; we have homes abundant with luxuries; we have toys for our amusement in all kinds of weather and conditions; we trade our cars when the ashtrays get full, so to speak. God has given an abundance of material wealth to Americans. Yet, the Church of Jesus Christ, while condemning our culture for its gluttony, practices the sin of pride, a sin that is the prelude to sexual deviancy.

The Lord mentions the indifference of Sodom to its neighbors. In the King James Version, this is stated as “abundance of idleness.” That hits us where we live, does it not? We might refer to it as “prosperous ease.” There was nothing that gave the people of Sodom any anxiety. They had peace and prosperity, enjoyed an abundance of food with a good mix of work and leisure. Is that not like America, as well? The Church of Jesus Christ condemns such self-absorption but practices it itself without conviction.

The last thing that the Lord says about Sodom cuts to the core. She did not help the poor and the needy. The poor and the needy are uncomfortable realities for us comfortable suburbanites, are they not? God is not just talking about the down-and-outers of society. He is referring mostly to people who suffer from some kind of disability or distress, including those socially in need of protection from the arrogant and proud.

My passion, especially, is for those inmates who come out of prison with $50 and a bus ticket as far as Portland who can’t find housing or a job. We don’t want to know about those people, do we? It is better to talk about what they have done than what they could be doing now with our help. The two angels who came to Sodom that infamous night in Redemptive History found hospitality only in Lot’s home. When it became dark, the people of Sodom surrounded Lot’s house and demanded to have the two men for sex. Instead of supporting and assisting the two men and Lot’s family, their instinct was to abuse the vulnerable – the stranger.

That was a refusal to grant hospitality. That was the principal sin for which Sodom was condemned – refusal to extend hospitality to those in need of protection. If there had been 10 righteous people in Sodom, God would have spared the city. In the end, though, it was four – Lot, his wife and their two daughters, and Lot’s wife looked back because she could not bear to leave the pride, abundance and ease behind.

Why, we might ask, did the Lord not come right out and mention Sodom’s sin as we all understand it to be – the sin of sexual deviancy? Why mention first her pride, her gluttony and her indifference? The answer is that Sodom’s sin of sexual promiscuity was the ripe fruit of her pride, just as America’s sin of sexual deviancy is the ripe fruit of our pride.

Those things that Sodom had enjoyed – abundance of food, power and money – were blessings from God. Instead, they were abused to make themselves feel superior. The blessings were used for self instead of for God. While they relaxed the rules of their own living, they became desensitized to the actions of others. There is no record of anyone jumping in to help the two angels when they were under attack by that pack of human jackals. So God had to jump in and strike the men with blindness.

We have become gods unto ourselves in America. We have set our own rules of behavior. And many Christians, instead of rescuing those who suffer from their sin, are out there wagging their fingers at unwed mothers, sex offenders, murderers and sexual deviates. Self-love and self-congratulations will never lead to self-denial vital to showing compassion for those who are social rejects. If your world is only as big as yourself, and you use the prosperity that God has showered on you to satisfy only your own desires, why would you suddenly deny yourself for the sake of others?

Jerusalem’s sins were, somehow, even worse. In fact, they were guilty of the same sins because they tolerated the same attitudes. On the outside, Jerusalem was much like the church today. Its behaviors were nowhere near as repulsive as were those of the Sodomites. Despite the fact that their outward behavior was better than that of Sodom, they were worse because they had received the riches of the gospel and still succumbed to pride.

Do we as Christians – the New Jerusalem – view God’s abundant grace to us to be used for the benefit of others? Do we have an attitude of self-denial, seeking how we can best use our prosperity and peace and privileges for the benefit of others? Have we made it our business to help the poor and needy at home and abroad? Or do we consider the poor and needy a threat to our comforts?

The difference between the church and the world cannot be summed up in our sexuality or our positions on social issues. The difference between the church and the world lies in that first sin that God condemned through Ezekiel – pride.

That brings me to my concluding thoughts this morning – thoughts that were triggered by a sermon written and delivered by Charles Spurgeon in the mid 19th Century.

Those thoughts have to do, not with what the church sees when it looks at the world, but with what the world sees when it looks into the church.

What it sees when it looks into the church is either the person of Jesus Christ or justification for continuing in its own rebellion against God. If it sees the person of Jesus Christ, it does so despite the church’s flawed and imperfect life. If it sees only the justification for continuing in its sin, it does so because it sees there what it wants to see.

There is a classic example at the scene of the crucifixion of Christ. The thief on one side of Him saw what would justify his own rebellion against God: “If you be the Christ, save yourself and us!” The other said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” At the foot of the cross, people sneered and said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.” Then there was the Roman centurion at the moment of Jesus’ death, who praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous men.”

What we have is something very human here. When the church looks out into the world, some see corruption and are burdened by the world’s sin; others see the same corruption and are pleased with their own righteousness: “Lord, I thank you that I am not like other men – like that sinner over there!” When the world looks into the church, some see hope and redemption; others see human failing and are pleased with their own righteousness. Spurgeon says that a man who is willing to find an excuse for being God’s enemy will never be at a loss when he looks into the church.

The issue before us as believers, however, is what God sees when He looks into the church. Does He see arrogance? Does He see gluttony? Does He see indifference? Or does He see concern for the poor and the needy – the socially abused and vulnerable? Does He see comfort, or does He see passion, not only for souls, but for the desperate plight of sinners wallowing in the pit of self? Does He see a church that condemns the behavior of others, or does He see a church that weeps over Zion?

These are convicting thoughts this morning, aren’t they? When we look at our mission in that light, we have to wonder what we could possibly offer a world dying in sin and loving it so. When pride becomes the sin, sex and self become the symptoms. We all get measured by the same standard – both within the church and outside the church.

The people of God give comfort to others by their murmurings and complaints. We talk about faith, but our faith does not often blossom into service. We grumble about the economy, the prices, low wages, political incompetency, as though God were treating us very badly. We show indifference and even cold-heartedness to others around us. Our churches are lukewarm and lifeless. We spend more time on worship than in prayer for others.

The Gospel is watered down to appeal to the enemies of God in order to look successful. We like everything to go smoothly and not be too unorthodox or too revved up. That also is the kind of church that the world likes – a church that operates beneath the radar and makes no waves. We focus on missions in far away places, while those around us are dying without Christ. In short, we help to keep sinners comfortable in their sin because we fail to exhibit our righteous standing before God and others, and we fail to stir the waters so that others may be healed.

The great sin of the church is that while we may be successful, rich, popular and entertaining, we are not witnesses of God in such a way that will stir men’s hearts to want what we have. We have not lived the righteous and sacrificial life that rebukes. It is a masterpiece of genius by the devil that he can use Christ’s own soldiers against Christ.

There is, however, a ray of hope. While the world looks at the church and finds it hypocritical and inconsistent, there are also those who are holy as examples to those who seek holiness. There are also those who are good as examples to those who seek goodness. There are also those who are true as examples to those who seek truth. While we all have been guilty, the question that writes itself in the midst of this sanctuary is, “Are we prepared to respond when others find holiness, goodness and truth within us, and how shall we respond?”

I began this sermon with the thought that I have discovered accountability for my life as a Christian that demands to be answered. It is the same accountability that I have preached Sunday after Sunday for all these years. I will readily admit that I have not been anywhere near faithful to my calling. Yet, it is true that “Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.”

My heart breaks when an inmate comes into my office, is about to be released, and I have nothing to offer him but trifles and platitudes. He comes seeking bread, but I can offer him nothing but a stone.

I am hoping over the next few months to put together a support group for released felons - a Second Chance ministry, if you will. How that will happen, I have no idea. I am almost too weary to take it on at this point in my life. It is, however, a crying shame that the bulk of our churches are not willing or able to open their arms to these discards of society. I ask myself, and I ask you, “Who better is there to whom to minister than those whom the world has rejected?”

I ask you to pray for wisdom as we begin plotting and planning for a ministry here that will reach people where they live instead of in their comfort zones. The church protects its comfort zones by preaching against abortion but overlooking unwed mothers. It preaches against homosexuality but overlooks pride. It endorses the free enterprise system but ignores greed both within and without the church.

I hope that when God looks at us, He sees a church here in North Manchester that seeks first His Kingdom, that deals honestly and vigorously with carrying its cross daily, that weeps over those kinds of injustices that are resistant to any kind of a human intervention and that lives the message that outside the grace of God through Jesus Christ, we are nothing and can do nothing.