God Cares About Shalom

Matthew 5:43-48; 1 Peter 2:11-17; Jeremiah 29:4-14

Coming to a head in the 1950’s, some would say sooner, resurgent mainline churches in America, at their denominational leadership and seminary teaching levels, tried to use their influence to advocate for scriptural values of peace and justice, of help for the poor and the discriminated against. But entering the political arena, they soon supported causes more closely linked to higher education and the Democratic Party than to scriptural values, especially in throwing their weight behind the revolution in sexual ethics in the past fifty years. They not only lost their influence, but also lost many of the people sitting in their pews. The downward trend has continued steadily ever since.

In the 1970’s and following, surging evangelical churches, through megachurch pastors, leaders of parachurch organizations, and media personalities tried to use their influence to advocate in line with scriptural values for the sanctity of life, marriage, and family. But entering the political arena, they soon supported causes more closely linked to big business and of the Republican Party than to scriptural values. Their churches have stalled and have begun to decline. Their own offspring view them as too political, too self-righteous, too hypocritical, too hostile, and not sufficiently Christ-like. The downward trend is not likely to reverse itself.

I was already convinced of all this when our daughter insistently and persistently told me that I had to read a book, To Change the World, by University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter. When our daughter was small, she did what I told her to do. Now I do what she tells me to do. I suppose that is fair. She earned her influence.

Hunter analyzes the problems of both Christian Left and Christian Right as idolatry of the power of the state. He is not anti-government and is not opposed to Christians voting their convictions and involving themselves in government, but he is opposed to idolatry of politics and of any attempts by Christians to use government to dominate the culture. It sends a false message about what we think is powerful. The false God of political influence has not been good for the church of Left or Right. Indeed, it has not been good for the church to be divided into Left and Right. Political combat does not meld well with Christian mission.

Although the majority of Americans have generally identified themselves as Christian, Hunter says that America has never in any spiritually serious way been Christian. The fact is that we do not live in a Christian culture and are not likely to do so any time in the near future. We live in an ever-shifting, pluralist culture, and it is likely that we will do so for the remainder of the lifetimes of everyone present this morning. The question is not, “How can we make this culture Christian?” but, “How can we rightly represent Christ while living in this constantly changing pluralist culture?” This is not a reason to despair. Indeed, our position is rather like that of the first century church representing the gospel to the Greek culture of the Roman Empire.

Let me mention three scriptural points that Hunter makes.

Scriptural Point 1: Our Great Commission is to make disciples, not just people who believe a certain doctrine and attend church, but people who are coming under the discipline of Jesus Christ, who are being conformed to the image of Christ. He says that Christians in our culture largely believe the doctrines of Christian faith, but that we have not, Left or Right, been formed to live distinctively, creatively, with Christ-like character, in our varied social environments. That is what we can do that will make a real and positive difference.

So our primary mission must be rooted in a strategy of forming Christians who can live faithfully in their cultural circumstances, in their various fields of endeavor. What counts is that we bring distinctive Christian contributions to the overall well-being of our various social environments, to home, to work, to school, to community activities, to the arts, to benevolent activities, and so forth—yes, in limited ways even in politics—not throwing our churches behind particular legislative, electoral, or partisan causes, but quietly expressing our Christian character and values in our varied ways.

Scriptural Point 2. Hunter suggests that the Hebrew word shalom covers the valid value concerns of Christians of all stripes and that we need to let this word govern our efforts to work for the common good.

Shalom means far more than its most frequent translation as peace. Combining what Hunter says with what my Bible reference materials say, I came up with this list of synonyms for shalom:

Peace

Order

Harmony

Fruitfulness

Abundance

Wholeness

Beauty

Joy

Well-Being

Completeness

Fulfillment

Rest

Blessing

Provision

Prosperity

Welfare

Health

Goodness

and more!

One word of caution: While God’s desire to see shalom embodied in our lives includes prosperity, we must understand that greed and selfishness are forms of idolatry that lead to devastating social consequences, undermining shalom itself. So, those who desire to pursue true shalom must be spiritually formed, spiritually discerning, and spiritually mature.

Shalom is rooted in the goodness of creation and in the endtimes hope of new creation. But the Old Testament prophets saw shalom as relevant to present day social patterns, of how we arrange our daily lives and business. Hunter correctly asserts that Jesus’ central proclamation that the kingdom of God is at hand points to the present realization of shalom in daily experience. Jesus demonstrated that God’s reigning power is available to enable his faithful disciples to experience and embody shalom in all dimensions of life even to the point of enabling us to love our enemies.

Scriptural Point 3. We must accept that we Christians operate in this culture as aliens, sojourners, and exiles, but that we must constantly be seeking the resources of our faith that can be exercised for the common good. He suggests that, if we learn to practice faithful presence in all areas of our culture, we will gain influence that does not depend on our dominating government or on our using government to dominate culture. Others will begin to look to spiritually formed Christians as people who know how to make life better.

Our path for doing that here at First Christian Church is, “The 9 Ways of Spiritual Growth”: In order to maintain a process of ongoing transformation into greater and greater degrees of likeness to Jesus Christ, we seek to: 1. Pray Daily; 2. Study the Bible Daily; 3. Worship Weekly; 4. Fellowship Regularly; 5. Serve Regularly; 6. Give Honorably; 7. Share Your Faith Intentionally; 8. Show Compassion Regularly; 9. Be Spiritually Honest

Hunter goes to two scripture passages for examples of living as exiles. The NIV rendering of Jeremiah 29:11 seems to be one of the most widely quoted verses in the Bible: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Certainly, this verse is the true and reliable promise of God, but we need to read it in context.

The extension of the Babylonian Empire’s power into the area of the Holy Land can be dated from 609 through 539 B.C., roughly 70 years. There were three exiles of citizens of Judah to Babylon during this period, a small one in 605 that included Daniel and his friends, a medium sized one in 597, and a massive one in 586, at which time Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and its temple. Jeremiah is writing from Jerusalem after the middle exile in 597 B. C. He is writing to the 597 B.C. exiles in Babylon where they were receiving encouragement from false prophets that they would soon be returned to Jerusalem. Jeremiah knew that the destruction of Jerusalem with its much worse exile was yet coming, and that no exiles would return until the seventy year period was over in 539 B.C.

Jeremiah is assuring the exiles that God does indeed have good plans for them, but that the good plans will be in Babylon, not in Jerusalem. Indeed, if the return will not happen until after 539 B.C., then Jeremiah and the vast majority of the people to whom he is writing will no longer be living at the time of the return. Jeremiah urges the refugees to devote themselves to the well-being of the Babylonian empire where they will be raising their children, grandchildren, and perhaps great grandchildren. Even though the return will not come soon, even though they will be living in an alien culture not friendly to the ways of faith, God has plans to prosper them in that situation.

The key phrase in Jeremiah 29:11 is plans to prosper you Other translations have, plans for welfare, plans for wholeness, plans for peace, plans for good, plans to take care of you. In the Hebrew original, the key word in the phrase is none other than shalom. Jeremiah was saying to the exiles that, as they live for shalom in this alien empire, they will themselves receive shalom.

Jeremiah is not counseling them to compromise their faith or their moral values, far from it! As Daniel and his friends who had been exiled in 605 had shown, there is a time to stand uncompromisingly for the requirements of one’s faith. But one may not impose those requirements on others. Jeremiah is simply urging these exiles to become known as people who work for the common good while observing the personal disciplines of their faith. As they show shalom to others, they will receive it from God.

Hunter invites us to hear this passage as guidance for how the church might live faithfully and winningly in our pluralist culture: 4 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare(shalom) of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare (shalom) you will find your welfare (shalom). 8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9 for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord. 10 “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare (shalom) and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

This is not just an Old Testament perspective. Hunter rightly sees its carry-over in 1 Peter. Peter’s audience are probably Christian Jews exiled by the Emperor Claudius from Rome to the remote and very pagan provinces of what is now Northern Turkey where the exiles receive a hostile response. Peter is urging them to live distinctively holy Christian lives, but to do so in ways that are not hostile. Rather, they are to devote themselves insofar as possible consistent with their faith to the good (the shalom) of all, thereby winning respect for their faith.

They need to accept that, “I will bring you back,” may well refer not to themselves individually, but to their great grandchildren; nevertheless, even in their own time, they will be blessed.

Hunter believes that we can win respect for Christian faith by living in our various places of influence, even as in exile, with the value of shalom, seeking the common good. He believes that Christ is our master teacher as we seek to do this. This is a call to discipleship, to the discipline of Jesus. Who will take a new step on the journey of following Jesus?

Experiencing the Social Justice Tradition and the Compassionate Life: Building a Community of Hope in Carroll County

Romans 5:1-5; 8:16-25; Colossians 1:24-29

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossian Christians:1:24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, 25 of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, 26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. 27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

The Apostle Paul says that, in his house arrest in Rome, he is “filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of…the church.” Now, Paul does not mean that there was any insufficiency in Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross. Not at all. All he means is that the church needs to embody Christ’s self-giving love in new ways in every time and place, so that people can see the reality of it afresh. The world needs to see Christ embodied in believers, embodied in acts of compassion, for Christ embodied in us is our hope of glory, our hope that God can and will restore us as his children. Paul lives and works for this goal, enduring suffering with hopefulness, so that he may present those under his spiritual influence as mature in Christ. In all times and places, the church needs to live with integrity, with self-giving love, and with contagious, solidly grounded, hopefulness.

Here at First Christian Church of Berryville, we say that our mission is to build a community of hope through Jesus Christ. What is hope? Hope is more than wishful thinking.

When I was eight years old, I had five long-term desires for my life: (1) that I was going to be a famous major league baseball pitcher, (2) that I was going to be for the milkweed plant the kind of chemurgist that George Washington Carver was for the peanut, (3) that I was going to be an ornithologist/artist of the stature of Roger Tory Peterson, (4) that I was going to be the kind of President of the United States who ends up on Mt. Rushmore, and (5) that I was going to be a preacher with influence as broad as Billy Graham’s. I was not going to have to choose among these options. I was going to do them all, either simultaneously or by turns. I need not tell you that those desires were not solid hope, but were merely groundless, wishful thinking. When I had begun to mature as a Christian, not one of those daydreams remained as my deepest desire…although I occasionally still indulge them—Walter Mitty fashion--as fantasies that pop up from the depths of my mind. My most entertaining fantasy is becoming the first rookie pitching star who is simultaneously drawing social security. Of course, I would have to learn to play baseball first, a small obstacle to overcome. The point is that wishful fantasies are not what I mean by hope.

Hope is the well-founded, confident expectation that something really good that is not yet apparent will emerge to fulfill our best and deepest desires. When I say that this hope is not yet apparent, I mean that we hold this hope even as we go through human vulnerability and suffering, even as we groan in agony over the fact that we still fall short of the glory of God, even as we are all too aware that we are not yet what were created to be, even as the purpose for which God created us is not yet fully actualized. Still we confidently expect that better things are coming, preferably already in this life, but if not in this life, then at least in the next.

For Christians, the confident expectation is not groundless, the confident expectation is not grandiose like my childhood fantasies, and the confident expectation is not in ourselves. Rather, our hope is rooted and grounded in what has been revealed through Jesus Christ regarding God’s reigning wisdom, holiness, love, and power…and our hope is rooted in our actual experience of well-balanced, daily Christian living. Our confident expectation emerges from spiritual growth through Bible study, prayer, worship, fellowship, and the rest of The 9 Ways.

Our Christian hope flowers when we live our lives as immersed in Christ and when he is being formed in us more and more each day. Our Christian hope is in the experienced fact that Christ is gradually equipping us to do his work of building hope in others. The hope of Christ moving through us touches the lives of many other people in many ways.

I want to say that hope is a matter of social justice. There is nothing more oppressive than a lack of hope, nothing more liberating than adding solid hope to someone’s life.

I want to talk about the many ways that hope is flowering through the ministries of First Christian Church.

Let’s start with the Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry. When a family is at the end of its rope, f-o-o-d spells hope. This congregation has labored long and given generously to support Loaves and Fishes. The number of families who have been sustained in their hope is beyond calculation, but it is highly significant. Even if you are one of the volunteers or donors, let’s all join in applauding those around us this morning who have joined energy and resources to make possible this outpouring of hope. Recently, our volunteer energies have been stretched pretty thin. There is no shame in letting other congregations help fill our gaps. But keep this in mind: the other congregations that have historically supported Loaves and Fishes are also experiencing the stretching of their volunteer energies, some more severely than we are. We need some folks praying and thinking about creative ways to expand the human resources and food resources of Loaves and Fishes. If we want to go farther in building hope for the families being helped by Loaves and Fishes, we need to be thinking about how we can help them with a hand up as well as a hand out. Can we help them with job skills? Can we help them find home-based ways to supplement their income? Can we help them with gardening, cooking, and food preservation skills? Can we help them with financial planning? Can we help them with family relational skills? Can we help them establish a stronger spiritual foundation for their lives? Can we stimulate conversations within and beyond this congregation on what comes next for Loaves and Fishes? Can we deepen our prayer on such matters? I am not trying to pile more burdens on the already over-burdened volunteers. I am trying to stimulate visions that will bring more people, more energy, and more resources into the battle for hope. We need to be talking to our friends within and especially beyond this congregation about all the possibilities. There are lots of people out there, some of them Christians who are not affiliated with a church, who want to make a tangible difference for the better. If they see and hear that First Christian Church is about making a tangible difference, about building a community of hope through Jesus Christ, they may join their energy and resources with ours. They may even supply new creative vision and new leadership. We have to show by our conversations and by our actions that we care. This is a matter of social justice.

Let’s think about families, youth, and children. It is not just here in Berryville, but all across our culture, that families, youth, and children are in crisis. Like many earlier times in history—for instance, the 1790’s or the 1920’s—we are proving that life without a spiritual and moral foundation does not work. Our education systems reflect the lostness of our whole culture. I am not attacking our schools—they have a tough, perhaps impossible task in trying to compensate for the broken homes from which their students come. And since, in our pluralistic culture, they are unable to speak with moral and spiritual authority, they are trying to fight with their hands tied behind their backs. But it is apparent that there are many children and youth for whom our education systems are not working. How do we pour some hope for something better into the lives around us? I do not have statistics, but I believe it probable that First Christian Church is attracting far more unchurched youth to our mid-week youth program than any other long-established congregation in this community. It comes as a bit of a shock to some of us. Some of us—maybe most of us--prefer not to see the signs of brokenness so openly displayed among us. But take a look at Jesus. The perfect Son of God did not pull back from the messiness of life. He did not insist that those who came to him know how to do things with social propriety before they offered their hearts and their service to him. He was willing to take a lot of heat for that. Christ is still at work. I believe that he is at work in our youth ministry. And he is still taking heat. Let’s just be sure that the heat he is taking is not coming from us. Can we use more help? You bet. Do we need more critics? Probably not. We will not help by standing back and remembering through a golden glow how we did things in the 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, or 1980’s, and then wondering why we are not still doing things that way. Even 1990 was a generation ago. What we did then had to be designed to work then, and, to be honest, our best efforts did not always work then. Youth ministry is messy and unpredictable in any generation. We are entering the second decade of the twenty-first century. What we do now has to be designed to work now. Let’s get about the task of building a community of hope that includes youth and children. This is a matter of social justice.

The Gulf oil spill which dominated the news for a time is receding from the lead story on the evening news and the front page of the local paper. It was and is and will remain a great tragedy, but it should call to our attention that the practices and policies of industrial agriculture have been killing the Gulf for decades now, sending topsoil and fertilizer down the Mississippi. Not only that, but those same policies and practices have been killing the soil of our farmlands, killing family farms themselves, killing the rural towns that once served those farm families, killing all of us as we eat the subsidized high fructose corn syrup and similar products that emerge from our agriculture industry, and depending heavily on petroleum at all stages of the process, petroleum that is itself costing us heavily at all levels of our lives. Diversified, sustainable agriculture and local food economies are the answer to many of the problems that face us. Our church community garden may not seem like much of an answer to such huge problems, but our garden is like a signpost calling our attention to the shape of the solution. I am convinced that our garden fits very closely with our biblical and Christian values. I am also convinced that it fits with our mission of building a community of hope. Perhaps we can welcome into our church people who are looking for such a sign of hope and who in turn can help us enlarge the impact we make in supporting increased opportunities for employment in our local economy. It is a matter of social justice.

Last week, I asserted that the modern Christian social justice movement emerged from the evangelical tradition and the holiness tradition. These three traditions compose the subtopics of our mission statement. The evangelical tradition is represented in “drawing people to Jesus.” The holiness tradition is represented in “becoming more like Jesus” and the social justice tradition is represented in “doing the work of Jesus.” Last week I bemoaned how the church has suffered for well over a century by the splitting apart of the social justice tradition from the evangelical and holiness traditions. Both sides of the split have suffered from that. I see hope that this is turning around, that the chasm is being bridged by the latest generation of young evangelicals who are less judgmental, less dogmatic, less narrowly focused on private morality, and more aware of the social justice concerns that are rooted in the Bible. I pray that this may be so. Whether it is so or not, there is nothing that keeps us right here and right now from taking a holistic approach to Christian spirituality. We will be spiritually healthier when we are living out a well-rounded Christian life represented by the six streams of living water, and the social justice tradition will both draw strength from and contribute strength to that healthy combination.

Let me conclude with an example of how the streams work together: My father was not an active church person through my growing up years on the farm. His excuse was that the church was filled with hypocrites, and that there were people outside the church as good as those in the church. He finally dropped his excuses and became actively involved when he saw two things: (1) he saw rural churches overcoming traditional antagonisms and cooperating to offer more effective ministry and to help slow the decline of rural communities, (2) he saw Heifer Project International taking practical self-help steps to make life better in impoverished countries. As a result of reconnecting with the church, my father began rapid spiritual growth that showed up in study, service, personal formation, and general life satisfaction. His seeing the social justice tradition in action gave him hope and spurred the rest of his spiritual growth.

It can happen again. It can happen right here and right now. Our efforts to carry tangible hope to people in despair can make a difference. Let us embrace our calling.

Discovering the Social Justice Tradition and the Compassionate Life: Making a Difference

Isaiah 1:15-17; Luke 4:16-21; Acts 4:32-37

Not long ago, a well-known media personality urged Christians to leave their churches if they found the term social justice on their church website. His reasoning: Communists and Nazis both used the term social justice. The flaw in his reasoning: We would have to give up all our good ideas if we ran from each idea that has been misused by some unwise group or some ungodly group. A valid kernel in his reasoning: Some churches, not only liberal, but also conservative, advocate for partisan social causes that they would better leave outside the church. A strong counter to his reasoning: Anyone who carefully reads the Bible should conclude that concern for social justice is essential to the faithful people of God.

The opening books of the Bible make clear that God created human beings to work together in community to care for creation, to sustain the good and varied richness that God has created for our sustenance and enjoyment, and to remember that we are indeed responsible for the well-being of our spouses, our children, our brothers and sisters, our parents, our neighbors, and even the strangers and aliens residing among us. Our basic assignment as God’s children is to represent God’s nature and heart and purposes, and that assignment has not changed in its essence through all the millennia of human history. Working for social justice is part of our reason-for-being as children of God.

The Old Testament is clear that social justice is to be embodied in the community life of the people of God. Their religious calendar included a Sabbath day every seventh day providing rest from human endeavors and labor (applying even to indentured servants and working beasts), a Sabbath year every seventh year providing rest for the land from cultivation and relief for debtors and indentured servants from their condition, and a Jubilee year every fiftieth year for returning citizens to ownership of their share of family property. The basic social justice point is that no one was to be left indebted or indentured forever, that no one was to be left without inheritance or without hope for a new beginning, that no one was to be prevented from drawing near God in faith and repentance, seeking healing, blessing, and empowerment. Although it seems likely that these laws were seldom if ever fully enforced, the Old Testament prophets repeatedly railed against those who schemed to defeat the purposes of such laws, who sold the righteous for silver, the needy for a pair of sandals, who trampled the head of the poor into the dust and turned aside from the afflicted. The words of Amos echo through the ages, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” Nothing in the New Testament eliminates that high valuing of social justice. The realities of human corruption, of urbanization and division of labor, and of invading foreign empires made the Jubilee laws impracticable, but did not invalidate their purpose.

Jesus announced a new way of implementing the purpose of the Jubilee laws, through caring communities of faith, in which each believer is given spiritual gifts to use for the well-being of the whole community and in which the community sees to it that its opportunities and resources are appropriately distributed. The church is Spirit-anointed to follow Jesus in proclaiming good news to the poor and liberty to the captives and the oppressed.

There were places in the first century A.D. in which Christians were, because of their faith, cut out of the economic life of the larger community, places in which their very survival depended on their developing a secondary local economy in which they supported the enterprises of one another so that they could continue to live and bear witness in the larger community to the goodness of their Lord Jesus. These Christians demonstrated extraordinary resourcefulness and generosity in keeping their fellow believers and their Christian mission afloat. Luke says that the early Christians in Jerusalem did not consider anything their own, but as belonging as needed to the fellowship and mission of their crucified Savior and risen Lord.

Acts 4:32-37: “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.”

Imagine how that attitude of viewing nothing as our own would revolutionize our churches today!

Pursuing social justice is not a matter of being politically liberal or conservative. We can hold any number of views on what the government ought to do about social problems, and still agree that the people of God must devote their energies and resources toward correcting real injustices that are contrary to the heart of our loving Creator and Redeemer. We may favor or oppose any variety of government remedies, and this still does not relieve us of the personal obligation to make a positive difference in the name of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.

When I say that churches ought not be involved in politics, I am not saying that individual Christians ought not be involved in politics. My concern is that churches not divide themselves along political lines and that churches not hinder their outreach to unbelievers by making a politically biased presentation of the gospel. Wise government policies can be of some help, but high Christian ideals are never totally achieved through political means. Never has happened, never will. There is always work left for the church. Our job together as the church is to do the work of Jesus.

Although I like to see churches steer clear of political advocacy, churches must be involved in concerns of social justice. Christian hearts must indeed be sensitized to the plight of victims of injustice, or we are not representing the heart of our Creator and Redeemer, which is the purpose for which God created and redeemed us.

Today in Protestant circles, concern for social justice is sometimes associated with theological liberals, people who do not really believe in the Bible or in the biblical God. But, prior to the time that skeptical, liberal Bible scholarship came to the forefront in the mid-nineteenth century, most Americans who were strong Christians, whether Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, or members of our Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, swam in both the evangelical and the holiness streams of living water, and were encouraged to swim in the social justice stream as well. This made sense because the founding figures of the three streams—evangelical, holiness, and social justice--were the same people, people like Nicolas von Zinzendorf, John and Charles Wesley, John Newton, and a generation later, our own Barton Stone.

I will give two historical examples of the combined evangelical/holiness/social justice streams.

The first example comes from a little more than a forty year period in England, from about 1792 through 1833, the generation after von Zinzendorf, Wesley, and Newton. A group of activist Christians began to buy or build houses in Clapham, England, a village in a natural setting then still a few miles south of London. Most, though not all of them were Anglicans, but their theology was evangelical and their personal spirituality and morality was of the holiness type. Most, though not all of them, were wealthy. The wealthy supported the Christian labors of those who were not. Their motive in living together was to offer mutual encouragement in Christian living and in implementing certain Christian goals for social justice. Their Christian faith was so much part of their motivating energy that opponents derisively dubbed them “the Clapham sect,” or “the Clapham saints.” The best known member of this circle was William Wilberforce, but there were something like two dozen other members of the circle who made major contributions to their work on behalf of spiritual, moral, and social causes. In over four decades of labor, this little group supported the emergence of world missions, of Bible translation and Bible distribution organizations, of the Sunday school movement and the Sunday observance movement, of broader schooling and Christian social work among the poor. They campaigned against blood sports, dueling, gambling, and cruelty to animals. Politically, they sought to reform Britain’s governance of India and the related actions of the East India Tea Company, they sought to reform England’s prisons, they brought into being the African country of Sierra Leone, and most notably, they did more than any other group in history to bring down slavery not only in the British Empire, but also worldwide. Yes, their most publicized actions may have been political, but, while their political actions were taken with Christian motivations, they were not taken, so far as I know, in the name of the church. My point is that their social justice labors emerged from evangelical tradition faith and from holiness tradition spirituality. It was because of the richness of their faith and spirituality that the Clapham saints made such a difference for social justice.

Just before the time that work of the Clapham saints was winding down in England, the work in America of Charles G. Finney was beginning. Finney was the foremost revivalist and the leading evangelical and holiness spokesperson in America from the mid-1820’s for another forty to fifty years. My University of Chicago American history professor who listed Jonathan Edwards as one of the two most influential Americans in our entire history, listed Charles Finney as the other. My professor believed that Finney produced more lasting change in 19^th century American life than any other person. It has been estimated that over half a million converts to Christ were won at Finney’s revivals and that 80% remained strong Christians for the rest of their lives, and that does not begin to count those who came to Christ through the efforts of those Finney taught and influenced. Finney encouraged his converts to work for social reform in the areas such as health, temperance, sexual morality, Sunday observance, women’s rights, the abolition of slavery, and the humane treatment of prisoners, the insane, and the handicapped, a list very similar to the previous work of the Clapham saints back in England. Why was Finney’s work so successful? Beyond his obvious gifts for communication, it was his deep spiritual life that made the difference. And it was the spiritual life he conveyed to others that produced so many workers for social justice in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century.

Then, in the latter half of the nineteenth century and opening decades of the twentieth century, liberal, skeptical Bible scholarship emerged and split the church. The theological liberals proclaimed what they called the social gospel, but lost the biblical gospel that could win souls to Christ. The theological conservatives kept the emphasis on personal evangelism and personal morality, but drew back from the social dimensions of their previous work which they now saw as tainted by theological liberalism. The conservatives tended to slip into judgmental self-righteousness, to which the liberals responded with a culturally elitist self-righteousness of their own. The chasm kept widening. That sad state of affairs endured for more than a century, and how much poorer we American Christians are because the spiritual streams were separated.

We are at last seeing the emergence of a new generation of evangelicals with a social justice agenda that includes, not only opposing abortion, but also alleviating poverty, advocating creation care, peacemaking, prison reform, and refugee relief. Many young evangelicals appear to be re-uniting the evangelical, holiness, and social justice streams. May their tribe increase!

Let me tell you what I believe about our times; I believe:

1. that the American people are discovering that many of the solutions to our problems will not come from government or from the other large institutions that fund our two major political parties, but will emerge from the grassroots.

2. that, as we choose simpler and healthier lifestyles, live closer to our neighbors, and live on a more human scale, our lives will be more meaningful and more fulfilling.

3. that our hope for better lives is closely tied to the teachings of Moses and the Prophets, of Jesus and the Apostles, and especially closely tied to the purpose of Jesus for his church, that we are to be bearers of new hope to the world.

4. that the mission statement of our church, “Building a Community of Hope through Jesus Christ,” is especially well-suited to our time and place and compels us to be about Jesus’ work of social justice.

5. that, if we truly choose to follow God’s leading right here and right now, we can make a profound impact for the better on Carroll County and beyond, both now and in the future.

6. that we will be most effective if we operate with the force of all six streams of living water in harmonious cooperation. My point for today has been that the evangelical, holiness, and social justice streams of Christian spirituality definitely belong together, not in opposing camps. Let’s get past our prejudices and take a holistic, biblical viewpoint that will make a real difference for the better right here, beginning right now.