I Am Not a Christian

Luke 4: 21-30

February 3, 2013

I’ve decided I’m not a Christian.

At presbytery recently our executive presbyter read us some stats about why people stay away from church.  One of the most common reasons was that people in church are judgmental.  I think a more refined look at this might reveal that what really bothers folks is that we call ourselves Christian and are judgmental.

Our response to this is usually to try and show people the ways we are not hypocritical.  We say, “the Christians you are talking about don’t represent all Christians.  We are loving, welcoming, help the world…not like those other folks who are judgmental and so unchristian.”

Problem is, anyone who stays at any church long enough will find a mismatch between our lives and the life of Jesus:  the Christ – from whence comes the name Christian. In short, our only response to the criticism of Christians being hypocrites really should be “yep.  You caught us.”

If a Christian is one who follows Christ – not just believes in a set a words, but lives as Christ lives – well, until I go for my fitting for a wooden cross, it seems a little presumptuous.  I am not a Christian – at least certainly not all the time.

One thought – I know it’s impractical; I admit I haven’t thought it through; I know there are disadvantages to this – but one thought is that instead of attempting the impossible – to not be hypocrites – maybe we can change what we call ourselves.  Be a little more accurate. 

So I’ve decided I’m not a Christian:

I’m a muddle – er.  I muddle my way through life trying as best I can to be faithful to what I think God would have us be up to in this world.  I’m a muddle-er.  I hit the mark sometimes, I miss a lot, and given how complex this world is, sometimes I’m doing both simultaneously.  But I muddle.  And more and more in my life, I’m making peace with that name: muddler – not least because it’s more accurate than Christian. And frankly, I think this is more than good enough – heck, it means like I am like everyone else!

And I think the folks in Jesus’ hometown, the ones he’s talking to in this passage, were fellow muddle-ers.  In fact, our scriptures are full of fellow muddle-ers.  To give away the ending, I actually think that puts us in pretty good company.  But let me back up.

Let’s remind ourselves who these folks in Nazareth were.  They were Jews – the Jews Jesus grew up with.  Jews that went to the synagogue regularly to read the scriptures and sought to live as faithfully as they could to those scriptures.  And they have pretty darn good scriptures.  You’re not going to go too far wrong with them.  They went about their daily lives and were, I have no doubt, on balance, incredibly good people who were shaped by a faith tradition that stresses caring for the poor, welcoming the stranger, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with their God. 

But, like us, they muddled through, day after day, doing the best they could – hitting the mark sometimes, missing others, or both. 

Now one of their own, Jesus, is out there – and there is buzz about him.  He was doing great things for people.  There was even some whispering that he might be the messiah – the chosen one come to save the chosen people.  He would be the one who would make all that muddling worth it.  So they were thrilled when he came home – when he came to them.   

Then it happened:  Jesus reminded them of the prophets of old:  Elijah and Elisha.  They came not to cleanse one Israelite, but the foreigner. He basically said, the Messiah is not for you – here, at home – the chosen ones.  The Messiah is for the poor, out there, in the wilderness of life.  The ones chosen for nothing. 

The thing about the folks in Nazareth is that they didn’t want to leave home.  So they don’t like that one bit.  And you know how they respond.

Compare that to another group.  Just a chapter later in Luke we find out that there is a group of folks who lived and worked and grew up in a community very much like Jesus’.  Muddlers I’m sure.  But when Jesus comes to them, they don’t try to keep him there – they don’t think he’s coming to them – to save them – they get up, leave everything and follow.  The disciples. 

They left home.  They did amazing things.  They got scared.  They failed miserably. But they realized, at least from time to time, that it was all for others – not just for them.

I think, we, us muddlers here, vacillate between being the ones at home, and being the disciples in the world.

I think if we visited the synagogue at Nazareth and met these folks, we would really like them.  We would find much in common.  They got together, read the bible, sang, prayed, had 3^rd Sunday – well Saturday – potlucks.  They went to work the next day to try and integrate it all into their lives.  They cared for each other and they had an impact on each other and the community around them. 

And…. I think when Jesus shows up, and calls us to leave home, most of the time we want to keep him here – we think he’s “ours”.  And when he says, “no – I came to call you to leave everything and go heal the broken world,” we try to shove him to the back of our minds…throw him off a cliff, if you will.

So I think we’re like the folks in Nazareth.

MOST OF THE TIME….

Sometimes we are the disciples.

Sometimes we do leave home, at least metaphorically – leave our comfort…give up those things we rely on when the going gets rough.  Sometimes we follow Jesus into the world and see that others need Jesus desperately – need us.  Just like the Jews in the synagogue in Nazareth, we do a pretty good job caring for our own – when people are broken, lost, poor within our community, almost all the time, we step up.  But, we all know there are people who are hurting, and no one steps up.  Those are the ones Jesus goes to – to step up for them.  And those are the ones we, from time to time, go to as well.  We still muddle – we do amazing things, we mess up, we get scared; but we go, and there we work with Jesus.

I don’t pretend that this is an easy way of looking at this passage.  Jesus doesn’t stay with us – the ones muddling along pretty well.  Jesus goes away, and we choose whether to follow.  We might want to ignore this Jesus.  We ignore the parts of scripture that say, “deny yourselves and follow me.  Give up all you have and follow me.”  We might even want to kill him…we want to stop listening to the hard passages in the bible.  We reduce him to what makes sense for us here at home. 

BUT, remember – and this is key folks…you are not allowed to underestimate this…remember: they didn’t kill him.  They may have wanted to, but in the end, he passed right through them and they let him go.  They raised him…he grew up there, and they were the incubator for this ministry that would bring light to those in the darkness.  They provided a home he needed until he was ready.  And they let him go.  It was an incredible act of sacrificial faithfulness.  And dollars to donuts, I bet from time to time, they probably left home – either literally or metaphorically – to follow the one they set free.

My point is that we are muddlers, co-muddlers with the folks in Nazareth, at our best muddlers with disciple-y moments.  (hey, if I get to make up words, I might as well go for it).  Staying here…staying home…trying as best we can to take this incredible book and let it impact our lives…taking our best guess at what it means for what I do each and every day.  And dollars to donuts, every once and a while, we follow Jesus into the world – if only for a while –  by being his disciples far beyond our homes.  And that ain’t nothin’.  It isn’t.  Look around you.  Look at the people sitting next to you.  Look at what this church does. (I SO wish you all could have been here last week!! J).  Think about how this book has shaped us into people who care, who yearn, who, as we will sing in a moment, genuinely desire, yearn, want to be a Christian in our souls.  A desire that drives us to do some pretty amazing things.  It ain’t nothin’.

I did spend some time thinking about whether I could ever call myself Christian.  And I think Paul solved that one for me.  He believed we were called to be the body of Christ:  Christians.  That was what being Christian meant to Paul.  Being the body of Christ.  That means being out living as Christ lived.  When we leave home and follow, we take our place in the body.  But notice there’s a catch.  We’re never the whole body.  There’s no way to be the body of Christ – to be Christian – alone…by yourself.  It’s only the body of Christ if all the members are present. We have to do it together.  We can be Christians if all of us muddlers come together, work together, leave our homes together, and live as Jesus did.  So, I’m not a Christian…not yet.

In the meantime…I’m perfectly happy with being a muddler.  Amen.