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<\/a><\/p>\nPastors have a frequent question when they begin to discover\u00a0mimetic theory<\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s great. But how does it preach?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Reverend Tom Truby shows that mimetic theory is a powerful tool that enables pastors to preach the Gospel in a way that is meaningful and refreshing to the modern world. Each Wednesday, Teaching Nonviolent Atonement will highlight his sermon as an example of preaching the Gospel through mimetic theory.<\/em><\/p>\n In this sermon, Tom alludes to mimetic theory\u2019s concept of models. As mimetic creatures, we all have models \u2013 people who form us into being. The early Christians knew this and took Jesus as their model when they claimed, \u201cJesus is Lord.\u201d As Tom claims, \u201cWe Jesus-followers do not say either the Democrats or the Republicans are Lord.\u201d Our hope is in the claim, Jesus is Lord! Year C, All Saints Day \u00a0<\/strong>All God\u2019s people, Every Human on the Face of This Earth!<\/strong><\/p>\n Our inheritance as Jesus-followers is a hope that is bigger than we are.\u00a0 God knows our weakness and that we need someone bigger or we will puff ourselves up and destroy ourselves in our desire to be king of the mountain. So God made a plan, and it was a plan that will work, no matter how long it takes. It\u2019s a plan that brings honor to God\u2019s glory, not our own, and it centers on hope in Christ.<\/p>\n This plan delivers us from ourselves and our worst failings.\u00a0 The plan is contained in the word of truth in Christ, which is the good news of your salvation.<\/p>\n When we believe in Jesus Christ\u2014that is, that he shows us an all-loving, non-retaliatory and totally peaceful God; something changes inside us.\u00a0 We feel safe and protected because retribution, punishment, the accusing finger of \u201cyou are bad, deeply bad, for all time,\u201d is sealed out.\u00a0 It can\u2019t get to us.\u00a0 Badness is excluded by the caulking compound of forgiveness.\u00a0 We are shrunk-wrapped in the Holy Spirit\u2014that spirit of the way God is.\u00a0 \u201cGod is light and in him there is no darkness at all.\u201d<\/p>\n This sense that all is well at the most profound level is God\u2019s down payment to us on our inheritance\u2014we know now and feel in advance what we will one day know in full.\u00a0 We get to be in the process of being redeemed by this hope in advance.\u00a0 We are the exemplars of what God is doing for the whole human race. We are here to bring honor to God so that other people will see God\u2019s glory, God\u2019s wonderfully beneficent reputation.\u00a0 We aren\u2019t the glorious ones; in fact we are the ones most aware of not being glorious. We Jesus-followers, of all people, know where glory comes from and it\u2019s not from us.\u00a0 It is from our Lord Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n The writer of Ephesians, who was not Paul, but wrote in Paul\u2019s name, writes, \u201cSince I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God\u2019s people, this is the reason that I don\u2019t stop giving thanks to God for you when I remember you in my prayers.\u201d Now I must make a confession to you.\u00a0 I have always thought that this meant that when the Jesus-followers in the city of Ephesus love all God\u2019s people, the writer was talking about all the other Jesus-followers; all the people who were part of their tribe, their group, their fellowship, their church.\u00a0 I thought the writer was praising them for getting along well with each other.\u00a0 And I think that\u2019s part of it, but I think there is more. I think Ephesians should be taken literally here.\u00a0 Word had gotten back about how these Jesus-followers loved all God\u2019s people and he meant all God\u2019s people on the earth.\u00a0 Not their particular tribe but the entire human species.<\/p>\n My hunch is that this is an expanding awareness, a positive virus that keeps spreading, that constantly includes new categories of people, people we hadn\u2019t thought of before or noticed in their particularity. It may even expand beyond our own species and include other creatures and creation itself.<\/p>\n For example, my new awareness includes a deepened understanding of institutional racism as I read, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness<\/em> by Michelle Alexander and Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption<\/em>, by Bryan Stevenson.\u00a0 These books opened \u201cthe eyes of my heart\u201d and I shed many tears as my soul painfully stretched. This year my awareness of the plight of our Native American brothers and sisters has been deepened by the book, Massacre at Sand Creek: How Methodists Were Involved in an American Tragedy<\/em> by Gary Roberts. Our adult Sunday School class is studying On this Spirit Walk: The Voices of Native American and Indigenous Peoples<\/em> by Henrietta Mann and Anita Phillips.\u00a0 This emerging awareness for Native Americans has been enhanced by meeting Sam Robertson, a Native American who is currently at Standing Rock in North Dakota and sending back reports.\u00a0 My world is expanding, my humanity deepening and I find it exhilarating.<\/p>\n Now I understand more deeply the problem of addiction and our cultures addiction to it as revealed in Johann Hari\u2019s, Chasing the Scream; The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs<\/em>. Each of these books significantly expanded my love of all God\u2019s people.<\/p>\n This is was what the writer to the Ephesians was seeing in the followers of Jesus in Ephesus and he wanted this habit of openness and inquiry to deepen. He writes, \u201cI pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, will give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation that makes God known to you.\u201d The writer doesn\u2019t want us to open our minds to all God\u2019s people because he thinks we should.\u00a0 He wants us to do it out of a sense of calling from God.<\/p>\n On Thursday night Laura and I went to see a play at the Armory in downtown Portland entitled Hold These Truths<\/u>. The one-man play gave us eyes to see how our Japanese-American fellow citizens experienced their incarceration during World War Two.\u00a0 Our eyes filled with tears as we felt with them. After it was over we all stood in confession, honor and recognition. We needed to express our appreciation for what our Japanese-American brother had caused us to see.<\/p>\n The writer to the Ephesians goes on, \u201cI pray that the eyes of your heart will have enough light to see what is the hope of God\u2019s call.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThe eyes of your heart,\u201d what a beautiful image! This is the only place in the Bible where it is used. With the writer of Ephesians I pray that God will open the eyes of our heart to see how alike we are as humans and how we all want peace. He wants us to see that we need each other and no one should be left below the radar.<\/p>\n How do we open the eyes of our heart? How do we let more light into our inner world?\u00a0 We allow ourselves to get to know all God\u2019s people.\u00a0 If we want to follow Jesus, this is what we must do.<\/p>\n This vision for all God\u2019s people is the hope of God\u2019s call, it is the richness of God\u2019s glorious inheritance. We who have begun to experience this are just beginning to realize the overwhelming greatness of God\u2019s power that is working among us believers.\u00a0 This is what animates us and gives us hope.\u00a0 This is why we have hope no matter who is president. \u00a0We have tied ourselves to a power deeper than politics, deeper than the cycles of history and deeper than religion.\u00a0 \u201cThis power is conferred by the energy of God\u2019s powerful strength.\u201d\u00a0 We are not siphoning energy from a human and limited source; we have tapped into the power of our creator God who loves all God\u2019s people.<\/p>\n How do we know that God\u2019s power is at work in our world, particularly when things look so dark?\u00a0 Here is the writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians answer.\u00a0 \u201cGod\u2019s power was at work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and sat him at God\u2019s right side in the heavens, far above every ruler and authority and power and angelic power, any power that might be named not only now but in the future.\u201d\u00a0 We Jesus-followers do not say either the Democrats or the Republicans are Lord.\u00a0 We do not say our two-party system, a single party system nor any possible multiple-party system is Lord. We do not say capitalism is Lord, nor the United States is Lord.\u00a0 Always we say \u201cJesus is Lord\u201d and this Jesus is bigger than us all and bigger than our religion.\u00a0 Jesus is Lord because Jesus shows us God, who loves all God\u2019s people, every human on the face of this earth.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n Copyright: dolgachov \/ 123RF Stock Photo<\/a><\/p>\n
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\nNovember 6, 2016
\nBy Thomas L. Truby
\nEphesians 1:11-23<\/a><\/p>\n
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