Sermon 42 - The Christian Vaccine
Amos 1:9, 10
This is what the Lord says: For three sins of Tyre, even for four, I will not relent. Because she sold whole communities of captives to Edom, disregarding a treaty of brotherhood, I will send fire on the walls of Tyre that will consume her fortresses.
Matthew 18:6-7
If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!
Once again, this sermon was prepared during somebody else's boring sermon. The person described a friend's transition from atheist to Christian, and noted, at one point, that the person was apparently closer to becoming a Christian, but was possibly further from God than ever before. And I was immediately reminded of the Christian vaccine.
Now some of you will be upset by me simply mentioning the word vaccine. Don't worry, we are not talking about an actual vaccine. Nor do I expect you to get it, since it doesn't exist. But I suppose that I have to mention something about vaccines, and also about viruses.
There are various kinds of bugs that we can get, that will make us sick. And possibly even kill us. There are parasitic insects, there are parasitic worms. There are bacteria. And there are viruses.
Bacteria are living organisms. There's pretty much no doubt about that. Bacteria have a single cell, as opposed to us, made up of many cells, and a wide variety of cells. Bacteria, of a given species, all tend to be pretty much the same. They are large: usually larger than most of the cells in our body. And they contain the same structures as the cells in our body. There is a nucleus, containing the DNA. There are mitochondria, turning whatever the bacteria eats into energy. There is a membrane outlining the outside of the bacteria. These are all structures that we have in pretty much every cell in our body.
We don't use vaccines against bacteria, for the most part. Bacteria are pretty ordinary, as far as living organisms go, and there tend to be other ways that we can kill them.
Viruses are a bit different. Actually, quite a bit different. There is, in fact, within the biological community, a lot of debate as to whether viruses are actually any kind of life. Viruses are much smaller, and much simpler in structure, than bacteria. They have fewer structures, and what structures they do have tend not to resemble the structures that we have in our own cells. As I say, a lot of people consider viruses not to be any form of life, but rather extremely large and complex chemicals, which, somehow, using our bodies and cells, are able to make copies of themselves.
We use vaccines to fight viruses.
Don't worry, I am not going to go into a great deal of detail. Suffice it to say that the idea of vaccination is that you take the virus, or something like the virus, and put it into our bodies, in such a way that it wakes up the immunological defenses within our body, and prepares those defenses to fight a specific type of virus.
Sometimes the virus that we use for a vaccination is not the actual virus we want to deal with, but rather something similar. This was the case with the first deliberate and recorded vaccination. Someone found out that when people got cow pox, a disease that didn't make people terribly sick, thereafter they didn't get smallpox, a disease which would often kill people. Sometimes the virus that we use for a vaccination is the actual virus, but weakened in some way. I haven't got a really good illustration of that one. Sometimes what we use for a vaccination is a part of a virus. Therefore we are not risking people actually getting sick from the virus, but, if that part is important to the virus, we wake up the body's defenses and get it to tear apart the virus at an important point. There are a number of different ways to make a vaccine, and we are finding more all the time.
But, as I say, I am not going to fight political battles over vaccines here, I just want you to have the idea. You give somebody a version of something, so that they are better prepared to fight off the real thing.
And that's where the Christian vaccine comes in.
There are many ways to look like a Christian, and even *act* like a Christian, and still not have an actual relationship with God. We say that Christianity is a religion. But many of us know that Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship. The word religion comes from Latin, and is based on the Romans idea of religion. Their idea was very legalistic. In fact, it's really hilarious, sometimes, to read Roman religious inscriptions, and then compare them with Roman laws, and to see how much one looks like the other. Sometimes they even cross over, and go to the other side.
For example, there is an inscription in a certain Roman city, which was created on the occasion of a sacrifice to the gods. The inscription goes into great detail, and says that, if the gods promise, and *fulfill* their promise, that by this time next year, this town will have the same level of prosperity, or to have increased its level of prosperity, then the city promises to sacrifice to the gods so many bulls, and so many goats, and so many sheep, and so many pigeons, and that the city faithfully promises that they will do all of this sacrificing, if the gods have, by this time next year, fulfilled their part of bargain.
Then there is an edict on maximum pricing, which one of the emperors proclaimed, as a law, and the preamble is much longer than the actual law, and reads like nothing so much as a sermon. The emperor is sorry, but his subjects have behaved very poorly, and some of his subjects have raised their prices so much that the Roman army is having a difficult time taking care of its soldiers, and so it is necessary, even though the emperor is sad and dejected to have to do this, but, since the Roman citizens have misbehaved, and raised prices so much, to the detriment of the general population, that, etc etc etc.
The important part of this comparison is that Roman religion was very legalistic. That probably didn't feel too strange to the Jews living within the Roman empire. After all, both the prophets, and Jesus, pointed out that the Jews were pretty legalistic. They were concerned about being scrupulous about how you would wash out cups, and tithing ten percent from your herb garden, but didn't pay attention to the more important aspects of taking care of widows and orphans, and being kind to your fellow man, and loving God. And then along comes this guy, who boils down the commandments into two: love God, and love your fellow man. Somebody else, a bit later shortened it either even further: love God, and do as you please. That's not very legalistic. That's a relationship.
But we keep on slipping back into legalism. We keep on saying that it's important to do this action, or to say precisely these words, and that if you don't, it doesn't matter how much you love God, and how much you are helping out your fellow man, God isn't going to let you into the club if you don't say the right words, or go to a certain building on a certain day, and wear certain clothes when you do.
And, of course, every time we make a list of the things that it's important to do, it's a list of things that *we* find not too arduous, but that other people might have trouble with.
And the thing is, that those things that we think are so important, are generally things that God, somewhere or other, has told us He's really not worried about. Are you doing good in Jesus name, but you weren't part of the official group? Oh, no that's not right! You should stop! Are you doing sacrifices of the right animals, and in the right way? Well, if you're not, then regardless of what you're doing, and how much it is helping other people, and how much those people are coming to appreciate God through your help, then, no! You can't do that!
But God has already said that taking special care over washing a cup is not a big deal, as long as you are helping others in his name. God has already said that he doesn't care how many animals you sacrificed to him. If you figure that that's all you need to do, and that, because you sacrifice animals, you don't need to do anything else he is prompting you to do, well, you really haven't got the idea.
And when we decide that certain words, or certain phrases, or certain formulas, or certain actions, or certain ways to dress, or certain days on which to worship, are more important than actually paying attention to what God wants us to do, well, that's the Christian vaccine.
You see, the Christian vaccine is something that is *similar* to Christianity, and the necessity of having a relationship with God, but it lacks the central, and important, part.
Thus, the Christian vaccine inoculates us against having a real relationship with God. Number one, we are too busy doing the right actions, and saying the right words, and wearing the right clothes, to listen to God, and pay attention to what God is telling us. Number two, the Christian vaccine makes us feel that we are protected. Since we are doing the right things, the fairly easy and visible things, we are in. We don't need to learn, or to listen to, or to do, anything else.
We are inoculated. We are vaccinated. Against God.
We start to think that minor, and empty, rituals are the important thing. We're doing our bit for God. Except that that isn't what God actually wants. But what *we* are doing becomes more important than finding out what God wants. These empty rituals can actually vaccinate us against having a genuine relationship with God.
Saying the right thing, but not doing the right thing is covered in Isaiah 29:13, "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." But the same idea goes right through to 1 Corinthians 13:3, "If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to be sacrificed so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."
We start to recite hymns, or prayers, or creeds without truly meaning the words, or even thinking about what they say. We attend church services out of habit or obligation rather than a desire to worship or give thanks. And we can definitely use Christian jargon or clichés without truly grasping their meaning. Even the things that we do become part of the vaccine. Making hampers for the homeless becomes a coffee klatch. The men's breakfast becomes a competition about who cooks eggs or sausages best. Even Bible study becomes all about who can find the weirdest trivia about this chapter or passage, rather than what it says to us right here and right now.
Our worship, and even our works, can become another form of sin. Because sin is *anything* that separates us from God. If we get too comfortable within our little niches, being vaccinated against God can make us really good at pushing back against any of the nudges he sends us to warn us that things aren't quite right. Within us.
Now that I have escribed this, you can, of course, think of people, and even churches, that fill the bill. I'm sure that you even have specific churches in mind, that are obviously infected with the Christian vaccine. And stressing to them that they need to do what *we* are doing, rather than what *they* are doing.
And you might also wonder why I started with that passage from Amos. Well, it's in the middle of a couple of interesting chapters. If you look on a map, you will see that all the nations that God is saying he will punish form a kind of a spiral. And the threats get bigger as the spiral comes closer to home. That's pretty understandable. We tend to reserve our harshest criticism for those who are closest to us. They are close, but not quite right. The thing is, the big bombshell comes to the people the prophet, Amos, is speaking to. His neighbours. Who probably were congratulating themselves, like the pharisee in the Temple, and thanking God that they were "not like other men." But we are. Remember about vaccines being similar to the deadly virus. The closer they are, the better the vaccine works.
Are *you* innoculated against God?
No comments:
Post a Comment