God’s Dream in the Real World (2nd Sunday in Lent; John 13:1-17; February 25, 2018)

God’s Dream in the Real World

2nd Sunday in Lent
John 13:1-17
February 25, 2018

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

We are always changing. We sincerely hope that our changes are changes of growth, of deepening, and of wisdom. But whether our changes are in the direction of being perfected in love, to use John Wesley's phrase, or merely the solidification of our prejudices, we are always changing.

I have been ruminating on my changes over the last several years. I know that my thinking has changed a good deal in the time that we have journeyed together. A number of experiences have urged me on, making it impossible to remain in one place. I am indebted to so many people.

As I have read the Bible with new eyes, I have come to understand Jesus as a social justice reformer whose thought and work were grounded theologically in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets. Let me repeat that. Jesus was a social justice reformer whose thought and work were grounded theologically in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets.

He lived out of a reality that the gospels called ho basileia tou theou or (in Matthew) ho basileia tou ouranou. These are usually translated as "the kingdom of God" and "the kingdom of heaven." The latter is unfortunate because "heaven" seems to mean a place we go after we die. This gives "the kingdom of heaven" an other-worldly sense. In reality, though, substituting "heaven" for "God" is simply an example of the Jewish reluctance to speak of God too directly. This same sensibility is the reason that "Lord" is substituted for God's proper name, deemed too holy to pronounce lest it accidentally be taken in vain.

In recent decades, it has been the "kingdom" part of the phrase that has been the focus of attention. Feminist theologians have correctly pointed out the privileging of male-ness in the notion of a kingdom. Kin-dom has been proposed as a possibility, lifting up equal relations in place of the power structures of a kingdom. Another alternative is the "reign"--that's r-e-i-g-n--of God. It works in print, but aloud it sounds like a weather report.

I'm not sure that "kingdom" makes any sense to us at all, we whose only exposure to kings and queens has been British royal weddings or seeing a greatly-limited constitutional monarch in the Nordic Fest parade. (Harald seems like a nice fellow, but there is little even remotely kingly about him, at least by ancient standards.)

For all of these reasons, I've settled on the phrase "God's dream" as possibly the best way to name in English the very Hebrew notion at the center of Jesus' life. God's dream. And what does that dream involve?

Unpacking the phrase is the work of a lifetime and, if I am right, requires much if not all of the Bible to answer adequately. But, at the center are a couple of simple ideas: 1) A world at peace in which the needs of every living creature are met without the exploitation of any; and, 2) A human community that enjoys just relations of mutuality.

It is hard (but not impossible) to translate these into policy. They are easy to express in images of which maybe the most persistent is this table to which both the rich and the poor come. There the poor receive what they need. There the rich are relieved of the burden of excess wealth which is what they need.

Jesus saw God's dream made real and visible in things like healing from the diseases of poverty and oppression, deliverance from oppressive spirits, resisting evil non-violently, and freedom from debt.

One of the most startling realizations that has come to me is the place that the forgiveness of sins has in Jesus' life and ministry: very little. It's not that it wasn't important. It's that the forgiveness of sins takes is place under the broader umbrella of debt forgiveness. A major "plank" of Jesus platform was the elimination of the debt system. In God's dream, our relations with each other are not based on debt. Neither is our relation with God.

Somewhere in our history the forgiveness of sins displaced social justice as what we thought Jesus was up to. I suspect that when Christianity became a mostly Gentile movement it lost the deep moorings it had had in Jewish notions of justice. So gradually Christianity became a way for individuals to have their sins forgiven rather than a way for us to cooperate with God's dream.

God's dream is one that embraces us and our world from the smallest level to the largest. It requires revolutionary change in the structures of our social and economic life and the transformation of individuals. But society and individuals are in a closed loop: society forms us; we form society. Where is there an entry point where God's dream can break in to begin the work of transforming us and our world?

In our reading this morning we begin to see that the community of Jesus' followers is part of the Jesus' answer to that question. We usually call that community the church. The church is the beta release of God's dream. A beta release is when a computer program has been designed, built, and tested in a lab, but needs to be tested in the real world before it's put into production. In the real world a computer program is put through its paces, subjected to abuse by users who don't know what you can't do to a computer program. Problems will happen. The program will fail. But the failures will be repaired and the problems ironed out and eventually the program will be ready to release. The church is the beta release of God's dream.

The church isn't perfect, but if the church is being the church, we can see in it the outlines of the world as God dreams it. We in the church are not perfect, but we in the church begin to see and move toward the deep changes toward which God's dream calls us. In the church the transformation of the world and our transformation find their meeting ground.

In this reading we see into the heart of what makes the Jesus community work. It can't be based on power. I can't be based on debt. It has to be based, says Jesus, on love. Nothing else will work. Nothing else will form a community that shows us what life on our planet could be. Nothing else can make possible the humane life God dreams for us.

By love, Jesus means something well beyond the warm feelings we link usually label as love. Jesus took a bowl of water and a towel and, kneeling in front of them, washed the dirty feet of his friends. It was servant's work, not the work of a rabbi. But it's what he did. Why? Because it's what we're supposed to do. Not the foot-washing thing, at least not necessarily, although we can do that too. No, it's the concrete expression of love doing the work of service.

The disciples thought that was beneath them and that it was certainly beneath Jesus. And yet Jesus regards this act, this servant's work, as a place where God's dream is coming into the real world. Imagine that! Imagine that the smallest act of mutual service is the place where God's dream takes shape and occupies space in our world. Our world needs some more of that.

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