Obedience

What is obedience? We say we follow Jesus Christ, the one whom the Gospel of John says is from above, and of whom no one accepts testimony. Incidentally, following Jesus does not mean being accepted, does not mean finding worldly power. The kinds of power that the world offers require that we would obey humans rather than God. It would be institutions, structures of dominance and control, even seemingly altruistic religious systems, that we would have to submit to, rather than the God who would rather mysteriously break us out of jails at night so that we might preach in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Obedience is such a difficult thing for us to grasp. Embedded into us by the opaque notions of "homeland security," "surveillance," and "patriotism," is a discipline of self-policing, following the laws of the land so as not to be caught and punished. A psalm says that the Lord confronts evildoers to destroy remembrance of them forever; to the contrary, the society we find ourselves in is founded upon insidious institutions cloaked in secrecy. We might say, "There's no need to worry about remembering the deeds of evil done--most folks didn't know they happened in the first place." And so obedience is difficult to grasp because often we are unaware of our options. So often the church throughout its history has seen nothing wrong with blending in--oh, there's salvation in it, but it's alongside everything else. The Gospel and the witness of the Apostles greatly shake up the notion of a comfortable conviviality between the body of Christ and the world. To obey God is to choose Christ, to seek to be led by the Spirit, not to be dictated by the powers of the world.

We must be acutely aware of what we are doing when we choose to worship God in the name of Jesus Christ. Our purpose is not to maintain some institution. The heart of the tradition we come from brings into question all alliances that would crucify Christ again given the chance. (If we were to observe history, they do crucify Christ again and again in the oppression of the poor.) But God has exalted Jesus so that we might be granted repentance, the ability to turn around, and forgiveness, freedom from the bondage of false power. As we worship, as we share the Eucharist, we boldly identify ourselves with Christ's suffering and death, his rejection by the earthly powers, and humbly seek to join in his resurrection glory. In our faithfulness, may we be guided by the Holy Spirit to the table and back into the world obeying God and not humans.

Acts 5:27-33, Psalm 34:2 and 9, 17-18, 19-20, John 3:31-36