Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church 29 July 2018
Hebrews 6.4-6; 13.11-14
Leviticus 16.3, 5-10; 26-28
Listen to this sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/the-vulnerable-jesus
Listen to this sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/the-vulnerable-jesus
If you were here last week,
you
will have heard Luke telling us
about
the personality typing system known as the Enneagram.
Luke reflected on how his particular personality
as an
Enneagram Type 1, or a Perfectionist as they’re sometimes known,
means
that he struggles to take proper rest
-
because the knowledge that nothing is ever quite good enough
drives
him to always want to do that little bit more,
to
make things that little bit better.
And so
he challenged himself, and all of us,
to
try to make time for periods of rest in our lives,
as
we seek to live faithfully before God.
I don’t know if you’ve ever come across the Enneagram before
- my
guess is that some will know it, and some won’t.
It’s sort-of similar to the Myers Briggs personality type
indicator,
but
also a bit different.
Whereas Myers Briggs draws on Jungian theory
and
presents itself as a psychological tool,
the Enneagram is a bit more mystical
and a
bit less scientific in its method.
There are all sorts of theories
about
how its idea of nine core personality types originated,
with everyone from the Desert Fathers to Sufi Islam
getting
a credit along the way.
But the interesting thing for me, with both Myers Briggs and
the Enneagram,
is not
whether their scientific methods or origin stories stand up to scrutiny,
but whether they help us tell a helpful story about
ourselves
that
aids our self-understanding,
and
makes our relationships with others better.
After all, a lot of the stories in the Bible, and
particularly the Old Testament,
don’t
stand up to either scientific or historical scrutiny,
but that that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tell them
or draw
helpful lessons from them.
So, in Enneagram terms, if Luke is a Type 1 Perfectionist,
I am a
Type 3 Performer.
I initially took a little online questionnaire
which
helped me to get an insight into what Enneagram Type I reported as,
but the proof of the pudding is always in the eating,
and the best advice is not to just rely on
answering some questions,
but
rather to read the more detailed description and see if it fits.
And what I have discovered is that the point where you
really know your type
is when
you read about the negative side of your personality
and it
feels as if someone is staring deep into your soul,
exposing
all your hidden vulnerabilities
which
you thought were entirely hidden.
Or, to put it another way,
in
terms that begin to take us
into
our sermon theme today of The Vulnerable Jesus,
it is when we are most vulnerable that we are most fully
known.
The nice stuff in the Enneagram description of the Type 3 is
lovely to hear,
as it
is with all of the different types.
Apparently, I’m ‘success-orient[at]ed, image-conscious, and
wired for productivity’,
and I’m
‘motivated by a need to be (or appear to be) successful, and to avoid failure.’
Well that’s OK, I think.
So here’s what they say in a bit more detail
about people
like me who report as Type 3 performers:
Healthy Threes have transcended the goal of merely trying to
look good, and are moving toward being known and loved for who they are, not
for what they accomplish. They love to set goals, rise to challenges and solve
problems, but their self-worth is not tied to these things.
Yep. I can own that.
That’s
very much how I’d like you all to see me, please.
But what happens if we take the positivity down a notch?
Average Threes push achieving to overachieving, spending too
much time at work or the gym. … They see love as something to be earned... They
are confident in their abilities but also … constantly worrying that a poor
performance will cause them to lose standing in other people’s eyes.
Ouch. But also, to an extent, yes.
Let’s take it down another notch:
Unhealthy Threes find failure unacceptable, which renders
them unable to admit mistakes and causes them to behave as though they are
superior to others. [They] may [tell] others fabricated stories about
themselves and their accomplishments in order to maintain their image. At their
worst, unhealthy Threes can be petty, mean and vengeful.
And now I feel vulnerable. Exposed.
Which
is not what a Three Performer wants to feel at all, trust me.
This all seemed like a good idea in my study when I was
planning it,
particularly
given that some of the feedback we’ve had about Sunday mornings
has
indicated that it is helpful when the preacher shows their vulnerable side.
But honestly, I’m having my doubts right now;
and
yet… it is when we are most vulnerable that we are most fully known.
And anyway, I don’t believe I’m the only person to have a
fear of failure.
Just as
we all needed last week to hear Luke’s challenge to take some rest,
I
wonder if this week we can all hear a challenge
to
reflect on our shared fear of failure, and how it makes us react.
So, I wonder, what failure are you afraid of?
A
failed marriage? Failing as a parent?
Failing
to be a good friend?
Failing
to do all the things you’ve said you’ll do?
Failing
your exams? Failing to achieve your goals?
Failing
to hold down a job? Failing to be liked?
Failing
to avoid sin? Failing to stand up for what you believe in?
I could go on and on…
And what about us as a church, as a community who gather in
this place?
What
failures are we afraid of?
Do we look around us at our large building,
with an
empty gallery and whole pews with no-one sat in them,
and
feel that we are failing?
Do we fear failing to be able to afford to care for our
beautiful building?
Do we
fear failing to care for one another?
Do we fear failing to be the people, the community, that we
think we should be?
Do we
fear letting Jesus down?
Finding our points of fear of failure can feel very
vulnerable,
particularly
for those of us whose personalities
are
focussed more around success and achievement.
But it is when we are most vulnerable that we are most fully
known.
And so we come to The Vulnerable Jesus,
in our
series on how the book of Hebrews can offer us
a range
of different ways of encountering Jesus.
This week, we are invited to encounter Jesus in
vulnerability.
Our readings from Hebrews today take us to the place of
crucifixion,
to the
place of abandonment, to the place of Jesus’ greatest weakness;
and they invite us to identify with Jesus in his moment of
vulnerability,
knowing
that he identifies with us in our own weakness.
And I could just stop the sermon there, I suppose.
We’ve reflected on our own fears and vulnerabilities,
and
we’ve heard from scripture
that
our weaknesses are met in the weakness of the cross,
as
Jesus draws near to us in our failure and sin
to
forgive us and restore us, allowing us to draw near to him.
We could just go on from here to pray for ourselves and for
others,
and
particularly for those who find themselves to be weak and vulnerable.
And that would be an OK thing to do.
But if we did stop now,
we would
only be understanding part
of what
Hebrews is wanting us to hear about the vulnerable Jesus.
Because you see, there is another side, a very dark side,
to the
human experience of failure, and weakness, and vulnerability.
It was there in the final sentence
of the
description of an unhealthy Enneagram Type Three that I read earlier.
Did you notice it?
I said,
‘At their worst, unhealthy Threes can be petty, mean and vengeful.’
Or, to put it another way,
we love
to find someone to blame for our failure.
If we are afraid of failing, then when we do fail, as we all
do,
we can
be be highly motivated to shift the responsibility for that failure
onto
someone else.
We will look for someone to blame.
And the
person who is most likely to get the blame for our failure
is
someone who is even more vulnerable than we are.
I’m talking here, of course, about the universal desire to
scapegoat others.
To take
our sins, our failures, our lack of success,
and
to put the guilt for that onto another,
so that
they can be driven away from us into the wilderness,
taking
with them the culpability that should rightly still lie with us.
Our passages from this morning about the vulnerable Jesus
being
crucified outside the city walls
are a clear reference to the reading we had from the book of
Leviticus
where
the question of how to address the problem of sin is discussed.
In the Levitical law code, there is provision
for
communal and individual guilt to be dealt with in two ways,
both
involving animals.
Firstly, for individual sin, you might sacrifice an animal
such as a bull,
pouring
its blood onto the altar before God,
and
then burning its body outside the city wall.
This destruction of something precious and living
symbolised
the seriousness of the consequences of sin,
and the
costly commitment of the person seeking forgiveness.
The second way of dealing with guilt that Leviticus offered
was to
do with communal guilt,
and it involved a ritual of putting the sin of the community
onto a goat,
and
then driving that animal out of the camp into the wilderness.
It’s what we call the Scapegoat.
Did you know that the word ‘scapegoat’ was invented by William
Tyndale
as he
translated the Bible into English in the 1520s.
Tyndale was struggling with one of the verses we had from
our reading this morning,
specifically
Leviticus 16.8-10
Aaron shall cast lots on the two goats, one lot for the LORD
and the other lot for Azazel. 9 Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot
fell for the LORD, and offer it as a sin offering; 10 but the goat on which the
lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the LORD to make atonement
over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.
Tyndale was confused by the Hebrew ‘for Azazel’,
and
wasn’t certain if the term referred
to
the wilderness where the goat was sent,
or to a
supernatural power that resided in the wilderness,
such
as a desert-demon or the Devil.
In the end, Tyndale decided to interpret Azazel
as a
corruption of the Hebrew ez ozel,
which
means ‘the goat that departs’ or the ‘goat that escapes’.
This ‘escape goat’ became the vehicle by which the sins of
the Israelites
were
sent out of the camp.
Here’s how Tyndale translated this passage:
And Aaron cast lots over the two goats: one lot for the
LORD, and another for a scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which
the LORD’s lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But the goat on which
the lot fell to scape, he shall set alive before the LORD to reconcile with and
to let him go free into the wilderness.
These days, of course, scapegoating has developed a meaning
well
beyond a fifteenth century translation of the book of Leviticus,
and has come to mean the act of holding a person, or a group
of people,
responsible
for specific problems in the community at large.
So, for example, the Nazis scapegoated the Jews
for the
economic situation faced by the German nation
in the
aftermath of the first world war.
Or to bring it up to date, in our modern world
there
is a strong tendency to blame migrants for rising crime rates,
a lack
of jobs, and pressure on the welfare state.
Controlling immigration was the number one popular factor in
the Brexit vote,
and
Trump’s long-promised wall with Mexico
was a
key part of his election campaign.
We scapegoat the other for problems that we all share
- and
we seek to put them out of the camp, beyond the wall, or outside the city,
to rid ourselves of our guilt
at our
own failure to be the people or nation that we wanted to be.
If we can blame the other,
we can
absolve ourselves, at least for now.
So who do we blame for our failures?
Who do
we use to offload ourselves of our responsibilities?
When you look at the empty pews, who do you hold
accountable?
And here I’m going to use a word
which
I’d promised myself I’d never use from the pulpit,
but
which I think the passages for this morning demand.
That word is ‘backslider’.
When I was growing up,
anyone
who used to come to church, but had stopped,
was
referred to as a ‘backslider’.
They had, I was told, ‘fallen away’ from the faith.
They
had let the side down, they had let Jesus down,
and
worst of all they had let down those of us who still attended.
It was kind of the worst thing you could do.
Other
sins could be confessed and forgiven,
but
backsliding was the unforgiveable sin.
And our passage from Hebrews 6 was used to justify this.
After
all, it says that:
it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who
have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared
in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the
powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away.
But then Hebrews goes even further.
These
Backslider are, apparently,
on
their own ‘crucifying again the Son of God
and
… holding him up to contempt’.
Wow.
It sounds like the preacher to the Hebrews was pretty upset
that
some of his congregation had walked out on him,
and it also sounds like he knew exactly where to lay the
blame for their absence.
Blame
those who have gone,
blame
those who are not there.
Scapegoat
them, so you don’t feel guilty about those who have backslidden.
Make
it their fault.
Or at least, that’s how I was always taught to read this
passage.
But
what if there is another way of coming at this?
You see, we talk a lot about the importance of church as a
‘safe space’.
It’s important to a church like Bloomsbury,
which
values its commitment to the marginalised and the excluded,
that we embody a safe place for people to belong,
particularly
those who have been made unwelcome elsewhere.
Whether we talking ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, or
social status,
one of
our core values as a church
is
that we want to be a safe and welcoming place
for
those deemed unwelcome elsewhere.
We are
a place where the vulnerable can find a home.
There are people here today who have left other communities
of faith
because
they were unable to belong there.
And I don’t think the blame
for an
inability to belong in one particular faith community
lies
entirely with the individual who leaves;
I think it lies with the community as a whole.
Blaming the person who has left,
labelling
them a backslider,
taking
their personal failings and magnifying them
to
the point where they absorb the failings of everyone,
is just
scapegoating.
It’s the avoidance of communal responsibility.
And we must be careful that we don’t fall into the same trap
here at Bloomsbury
that we
can more easily identify elsewhere.
There are those who have left Bloomsbury,
and
there will be those who leave in the future,
and some of them will go well, and some will go badly,
but we
mustn’t fall into the trap of making ourselves feel better
by
offloading our own responsibility,
our
own failure as a community, onto them.
The thing is, I do feel guilty when my beloved church
is not
the kind of church that someone else feels they can belong to.
I hate being told that we’re not inclusive enough,
not
welcoming enough, not accessible enough,
despite
all our best efforts.
And the temptation to get cross,
and to
offload our anger and guilt onto the other who has left,
is
always before us.
But, and here’s the crucial thing that we all need to hear.
We are
not called to stay within our safe spaces.
We are not called to make our community a safe place
with
high walls that keep out the scary people who are not like us,
whoever
we may be.
Rather, we need to realise that Jesus is not here with us,
inside
our camp.
He is outside the wall, beyond the border,
being
crucified again and again and again,
for
those who have not yet found a home with him.
As Hebrews says,
Jesus … suffered outside the city gate
in order to sanctify the people by his own blood.
Whatever boundary we erect around ourselves to keep
ourselves safe,
Jesus
is beyond it.
And we are called to go there too.
Hebrews
continues:
Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he
endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that
is to come.
The irony of the scapegoat,
the one
who is made to carry the sins of the many,
is that when they get into the wilderness,
they
meet there the one who became the ultimate scapegoat for all people.
Jesus is not in the camp, he is not in the city,
he is
not in the Christian community of safety.
He is in the wilderness, as vulnerable as he can be,
arms
wide on the cross,
welcoming
those who have been sent there
in
all their weakness and failure and vulnerability.
So if, as a church, we want to meet the vulnerable Jesus,
and if
as individuals we want to encounter him in our vulnerability,
then we are called to be those who go to him
beyond
our established places of safety.
We are called to let go of our established norms,
our
dearly held beliefs, and our sacred practices.
We are called to set aside our safety, to risk our
reputations,
to
question our presuppositions.
If we genuinely desire to be a Christ-focussed community,
then
our focus has to shift, because Christ is not in our midst.
Rather, he is beyond whatever boundary of faith or praxis or
belonging
that we
have erected around ourselves for our safety,
and he is in the wilderness of uncertainty, vulnerability
and weakness.
So, and I appreciate that this may be a controversial
statement
to
utter at a church like Bloomsbury,
but maybe it isn’t our job as Christians
to
create a safe and welcoming community,
to which the gratefully vulnerable scapegoats from other
communities
can
come to find refuge.
Because by that model of church,
the
power will always remain with those of us
who
have the privilege of being the gatekeepers.
What if, instead, we are called to look for Jesus beyond
ourselves,
beyond
our boundaries,
to see who he is drawing to himself out there in the
wilderness.
And what if the solution to the empty pews, and to our sense
of failure,
is not
to blame those who have left;
but rather is to learn to see Jesus out there,
beyond
the glass wall that divides us from them,
drawing
the world to himself in love;
and what if the call us for us to make the journey
from
our own place of communal safety
into
the wilderness of vulnerability,
as we learn to love those for whom Christ is crucified
again, and again, and again.
And hear this:
It is
when we are most vulnerable, that we will be most fully known.
