2021.12.11 | Go & Tell
“Go & Tell”
The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, CA
Third Sunday in Advent
December 11, 2022
“Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.” So said St. Francis of Assisi, the 12th century Italian Catholic mystic, patron saint of animals, and founder of the Roman Catholic Franciscan Friars and the Order of St. Clare.
Implicit in this dictum is the understanding that the most powerful sermons are unspoken.
Even though I am not an Italian, a Catholic, nor Medieval religious, and even though my doctor of ministry degree is in homiletics — the preparation for and practice of preaching — my soul resonates with St. Francis’ teaching: “Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.”
II
I think that this teaching resonates with me because I was raised in a monoculture.
The term “monoculture,” originated from the field of agriculture. According to Merriam-Webster, “Monoculture [has to do with] the cultivation or growth of a single crop or organism especially on agricultural or forest land.”
But today monoculture is a term also used by social scientists, and it is used to describe a culture marked by homogeneity.
My hometown, Albert City, Iowa, back in the 1960s, was exhibit A for homogeneity.
Ninety-nine percent of the kids in my public school were the offspring of Swedish immigrants. There were three different churches in town (the EV Frees, the Swedish Covenant, and our ELCA congregation), so we had some “diversity,” but these three congregations were all founded by Swedish immigrants. Everyone in town was Christian. There were no Catholic churches. And, I knew which Protestant church every kid in my class, and my teacher, and my bus driver attended.
When one grows up in and/or lives in a monoculture, a lot of knowledge and practices are assumed. Where I come from, if an adult has to explain their behavior, they know that they are talking to a child, a person with cognitive impairment, or a foreigner (which doesn’t mean someone from another country). Some memorable examples follow:
My dad’s way of scolding my sister and me was to say, “I can’t believe that I have to tell you this again! “This” might be the expectation to sit still. Shut off the lights. Wear your boots. Close the gate. Clean your tools after every use, etc.
My grandparents’ generation was less direct. If they had to tell you something twice, one would say to the other, “Somebody needs to wash out their ears.”
An adult who found it necessary to explain things to another adult would say, “You’re not from here, are you?”
If these examples don’t resonate with you, there’s a good chance that you did not grow up in my monoculture, which was a Swedish Protestant farming community in Northwest Iowa.
I’ve learned over the years that there are blessings and curses associated with having been raised in a monoculture. One of the blessings is that I developed a strong sense of cultural identity. Unlike many white Americans, I actually know the names of my pioneer ancestors and I know their migration history.
The downside of coming from a monoculture is that I sometimes struggle to find the words to explain my culture, because doing so was unnecessary for me as a child. Stephanie sometimes teases me by saying, “I don’t speak ‘Iowan,’ so you’re going to have to use your words with me.”
III
This monocultural characteristic of not realizing that things need to be explained may have spilled over into my theology in general and my understanding of evangelism in particular.
When I was a child, I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t Christian, who didn’t go to Church, or who wasn’t familiar with the basic tenets and stories of the Judeo-Christian faith. So there was no one to tell anything to about Jesus or Christianity that they didn’t already know about, unless they were toddlers.
After my father died, my immediate family moved from one farming community to another, and we moved off the farm and into town. Our new town was closer to a city with a state university, so it had a more religious diversity.
For example, there was a Catholic parish, and a small Baptist church. Some people even went out of town to attend worship. As I got to know students from these other Christian traditions, I was shocked to discover that my peers assumed that their beliefs and traditions were superior to mine.
I struggled to debate them, but couldn’t always find the words I was searching for, much less fully form my opposing arguments. At first, I ran to my pastor for coaching. He wasn’t particularly helpful, because he wouldn’t tell me what to say. Instead of telling me what he believed, he challenged me to figure out things for myself, and to find my own voice as a teenage theologian.
I wasn’t immediately good at articulating my faith, or debating with my peers, but the exercise forced me to make the Christian faith my own--rather than mimic the faith of my forebears, or parrot what my pastor believed or what was written in a catechism.
By the time I graduated from high school, I learned that even though St. Francis’ dictum resonated with me, it was not always helpful in situations where Christians differed with regard to beliefs and practices.
IV
In college, I learned that First Century Jews and early followers of Christ encountered a similar challenge as Judaism diversified and Judaism encountered other cultures. Consider the context of Matthew’s gospel reading for today.
John the Baptist was in jail for challenging the dominant Jewish authorities and beliefs about the messiah. John had heard that there was a new prophet in town and that this new prophet might be the Messiah himself. But those reports had to be checked out and verified.
There were a number of prophets around the Ancient Near East, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah; and in first century Palestine, such as John the Baptist, and Jesus of Nazareth.
There was also more than one person calling himself and being called by others “Messiah.” Furthermore, the character and characteristics expected of the anticipated Messiah varied, even among the Jews.
Some expected the Messiah to be an external leader who would mount a political revolution and overthrow Caesar. Others were looking for a new king to rise up within Israel, take the throne, and toss out their occupiers. Still others envisioned a peasant king who would lead a spiritual revolution that brought Israel back into the right relationship with Yahweh.
It’s no wonder that John had to send a search party to look for Jesus and clarify whether he was the true messiah.
Of course, this wasn’t an easy task for John’s posse. They weren’t really sure who they were looking for, so they asked Jesus straight on, “Are you the guy? Are you the real Messiah?”
Rather than preaching a sermon with words, Jesus described the evidence that they should be looking for in the real Messiah. Specifically, Jesus said, in Matt. 11:5, “...the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”
But that is not all, Jesus said. He challenged John’s companions to go and TELL John what they had seen and heard: that Jesus was the Christ, the anointed one, the one for whom Israel--and all the world--had been waiting.
The Apostle Paul writing thirty years later, in Romans 10:14-15, built on Jesus’ instructions to “go and tell John what you see and hear,’ and by reaching back and quoting Isaiah by saying:
…And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10:14b-15)
V
As it turned out, in order for the Messiah to be recognized — even when Jesus walked the earth — his followers had to use their words and their deeds to proclaim that he was the real deal.
In our 21st Century multicultural — primarily secular world — the equivalent of the ultimate challenge for Mainline Protestant Christians is going and telling what we’ve seen and heard. It’s the getting outside of our monocultures. It’s using our words, not just our deeds, to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love.
We can’t assume that everyone shares our experiences, or knows what they are looking at. We must use our words — not just our deeds.
This may be the hardest thing we ever do. We may stumble. We may feel awkward. We may be imperfect in our speech.
But if we do not go and tell what we have seen, heard, and done, the work of the Messiah will not matter to anyone but us, because the uninitiated won’t know that we are following Christ, and they won’t join us in pursuing his mission. It’s just that simple, and it’s just that hard. But we can do it. Mindful as Paul said in Romans, the spirit helps us in our weakness (Romans 8:26). Amen.