Are You For Us or For Our Enemies?
The Script of Our Life: Part Two
Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’ -Joshua 5:13
I don’t envy pastors of diverse congregations. It’s much simpler to lead a lop-sided faith community that represents one side of the latest cultural quarrel. All you have to do is keep your flock happy with sermons reinforcing their prejudice on the left or on the right, close ranks with them when they gripe about the nasty people on the “other side,” and express heartfelt agreement when they tell morality tales illustrating the mean-spiritedness and judgmentalism of people who would never feel welcome in your congregation anyway. It is much more challenging when your congregation represents the country as a whole. Each side of the political aisle pushes the church to divest itself of the good news of Christianity and embody a self-adulatory, self-righteous, and self-satisfied harmony instead. Few pastors can resist such pressure and keep their jobs.
Nevertheless, the Christian church doesn’t exist to underwrite the latest conservative or liberal script foisted upon our shoulders by our society. Christianity has a very different script of its own.
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant.” -Jesus
Christianity subverts the agenda on the right and the left, not because it offers a third option, but because it is rooted in a very different way of life. It feels more natural to lead people through a “virtuous” power play. Nevertheless, our faith calls us to guide people in a radical new script. Unfortunately, it often takes a crisis to remind us of how different we are meant to be.
In 1933, the Nazis seized power in Germany. German Protestants were pressured to “Aryanize” by expelling Jewish Christians from ordained ministry and by reorganizing their churches with the “Führer Principle.” A pro-Nazi “German Christian” movement became a force within the church, pushing for the absolute authority and unquestioning obedience to Adolf Hitler as a “German Prophet.” Many churches gave up the gospel and conformed to the majority ideology of their culture. But in the industrial city of Barmen, the “Confessing Church Movement” rejected this nationalistic ideology and re-stated their commitment to the good news of Christianity. For example, the Barmen Declaration declares:
The church’s commission, upon which its freedom is founded, consists in delivering the message of the free grace of God to all people in Christ’s stead, and therefore in the ministry of his own Word and work through sermon and Sacrament.
We reject the false doctrine, as though the church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans.1
We are living in a time between dominant disintegrating ideologies. We struggle with a kind of cultural whiplash, trying to adapt to rapidly changing apocalyptic scenarios used by those who want to rule over us. The Barment Declaration reminds us of something essential to Biblical faith. The man with a sword responded to Joshua’s question as to whether the man was for the Israelites of for their enemies saying,
‘Neither,’…’but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.’ 2
As the story continues, we get to the question appropriate for the follower of Jesus:
Then Joshua fell face down to the ground in reverence, and asked him, ‘What message does my Lord have for his servant?’3
Barmen Declaration: 8:26-27.
Joshua 5:14a.
Joshua 5:14b