Jeremiah 11:1-14 & Romans 13:1-10
In just over five weeks’ time, my 15 year old son and I will be boarding an Easyjet airliner from Bristol International Airport – yes we would appreciate your prayers! – for a destination in Poland – Krakow to be precise. No, we didn’t get the dates of the Euro 2012 international football competition wrong nor are we going there to enjoy the gourmet delights of Polish cooking. We are going to visit the historic sites of this Polish city – the cathedral with its trumpeter in the tower, the Cloth Hall, the wonderful market square, the beautiful buildings and other wide squares and avenues – all of which have graced our TV screens recently – at least the TVs of those who follow football. The city of Krakow has a deep and rich history - but it also has a very dark one too for, indeed, during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s, it was the capital of Hitler’s General Government of Poland under Hans Frank with its own large Jewish Ghetto.
About 30
miles west of Krakow, the rivers Vistula (which runs through Krakow) and the
Sola meet in a town with exactly the same size of population as Salisbury –
48,000. So like Salisbury it is a place
where rivers meet; it also has a large church with a tallish spire. There the resemblance stops – for this town
has a large industrial zone on its outskirts. It also has something else! The
town’s name is Oswiecim – better known in the west by its German name -
Auschwitz - and this is the principal
reason for our trip. My son has been doing
some project work about the Holocaust and instead of going on an organised
school trip, elected to go with me because I’ve been there before. Let me tell you briefly about that previous
visit. For three consecutive nights after that first visit, I had the most
horrible nightmares as I saw myself in the queue for selection – death or life.
An intense feeling of utter evil seemed to pervade the whole place. The horror recorded in that monument to inhumanity
is indescribable and shook my then quite weak faith. How could a God allow such suffering? What was the purpose of it all? Could there really be a God?
That first visit was in 1989 when I was much
younger than I am now – although not as young as my son – and I was in my
“wilderness years” as far as my faith was concerned. It wasn’t the most important thing in my life
and could easily get de-railed – fortunately it didn’t, but it did wobble from
side to side.
I sat down
to read tonight’s two readings a few weeks ago and have to confess that I
struggled with them both. I thought, “whatever
can I say in this sermon as these readings are so difficult. In the extract we
heard from Jeremiah, the prophet is telling his listeners that having broken
the words of the covenant with Moses, by not obeying what they were told to,
the Jewish Nation will have disaster brought upon it and any prayers offered up
will not even be heard, let alone answered!
Pretty heavy stuff! This appears,
on the face of it to be God deliberately turning his back on his own
chosen. How does that relate to the God of
love we encounter in the New Testament?
The answer
to that question is to be found in the question itself. It needed a new covenant – or testament – to
bring not only the Jewish people back on track but also provide salvation to
the profane or Gentiles.
Turning back
to Jeremiah for a moment, you see, the Jews firmly believed that the Babylonian
captivity, the Exile, had been brought about by their disobedience of the
commandments or the law of the Torah.
They thought that only a strict adherence to the law was the way to
salvation as a nation as a whole. When
they understood that a Messiah was coming they assumed that he would establish
a kingdom like that of David’s and Solomon’s not a Kingdom of Heaven based on
Grace. This is why Jesus became so frustrated
with the Pharisees who believed in religiosity – strict adherence to or
religiously following ritual and rubric – thinking that was all that was
needed. Some of us today can fall into that trap too. Where church attendance and styles of worship become
the end rather than the means and we lose sight of the bounty of God’s love and
grace through the way we live our lives and love and serve our neighbours. God
needed to come down himself in the form of Man to put the record straight.
Let’s fast
forward, whizzing through the Gospels and Acts until we get to this great piece
of writing from Paul to the Church in Rome.
More than any other letter of Paul’s, Romans sets out the post
Pentecostal theology as taught by him.
In the
passage read tonight, (which incidentally we studied in our house group only
this week, on Thursday), Paul is imploring his readers to subject themselves to
governmental authorities (in this case the Roman Imperial Government – Emperor
and Senate) for he says, quite categorically, all authority comes from
God. The theme is once more “obedience”
with a belief that if you do good and act in accordance with the state’s laws,
then the state cannot harm you. These
words are sometimes referred to as Paul’s “Theology of the State” and I think can
be contradictory at times. It is my
belief, and that of some far more eminent theologians, that these words must be
read specifically in the context of the time.
The Church in Rome was in a very vulnerable position – being located in
the capital of a large and powerful pagan empire – and Paul was anxious to
impress upon the church there that it should not act in a manner that might
bring about its own destruction by disobedience.
Paul, and we
Christians, can, however, take a direct lesson from Jesus’s own teachings. You will
recall, in an attempt to trick him into displaying a treasonable attitude, he
was asked by the elders in Matthew 22:17-21
whether taxes should be paid to Rome. He
answered by asking to see the coin used to make payment and whose head appeared
on the coin – the Emperor Tiberius.
Does this mean
that we must be obedient to all authority at all times? Those who ran Auschwitz – the major players –
at the Nuremberg trials often tried to hide their guilt behind the “mantra” – “I
was only obeying orders”. Does that
exonerate them then? Surely the
authority to kill 1.1 million people in the gas chambers of Auschwitz wasn’t
authority from God?
Back in 1989
I thought to myself, if I had been a guard in Auschwitz I would have refused to
have obeyed orders or if I had been a potential victim I would have risen up with
others against the guards. But would
I? It’s a frightening thought that I am
not sure I know the answer to that question.
What is Paul really saying to us today?
A clue might
be revealed in the life story of a modern day living Christian. A few weeks ago, a few of us from the
Clarendon Team, including Jane and myself, were invited to Godolphin School to
listen to a Chinese Christian by the name of Liu Zhenying (Liu Cheng-ying)
better known as Brother Yun or “The Heavenly Man”. His autobiography is contained in this book
called “The Heavenly Man” which I
subsequently bought from Amazon and
have read from cover to cover in a couple of weeks. It is quite an easy read and it contains some
remarkable stories about his conversion to Christianity, his spiritual growth,
persecution, torture and imprisonment and also some amazing miracles including his
remarkable escape from Zhengzhou (Chengchow) Maximum Security Prison. It is a great testimony to the remarkable
power of God and the Holy Spirit.
However,
this evening, I want to just read you one small passage towards the end of the
book which I think shows a true Pauline attitude to faith from a situation in
the 21st Century. Brother Yun
writes as follows (pages 286 – 287):-
“Once I spoke in the West and a
Christian told me, “I’ve been praying for years that the Communist government
in China will collapse, so Christians can live in freedom”. This is not what we pray! We never pray against our government or call
down curses on them. Instead we have
learned that God is in control of both our own lives and the government we live
under.
God has used China’s government for
his own purposes, moulding and shaping his children as he sees fit. Instead of focusing our prayers against any
political system, we pray that regardless of what happens to us, we will be
pleasing to God”. We shouldn’t pray for
a lighter load to carry but a stronger back to endure. Then the world will see that God is with us,
empowering us to live in a way that reflects his love and power. This is true freedom”.
Since 1989,
I have moved out of the wilderness (although I do sometimes pop back for the
odd fleeting visit) and I think I am a little further along my own spiritual
road. I have never experienced or
witnessed anything like some of the scenes described in Yun’s book but like to
think that my faith has been strengthened by some of the things which have
happened to me over the intervening years.
I have certainly seen other’s faith strengthened by suffering.
I am
encouraged by stories like Yun’s but wonder whether I will view things any
differently, after 23 years, when I arrive in that small town in southern
Poland in August. The horror will be no
less I am sure, but will I have a better understanding of God’s plan and the
reason for the Holocaust. Will I understand Paul’s words any better? Despite all the suffering and evil of that
place, will I also find, in some small corner, God’s grace there too. I dearly hope so.
I’ll tell
you when I return.
Amen
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