Nice

The First United Presbyterian Church

“Nice”

Rev. Amy Morgan

June 21, 2020

Matthew 10:24-39

24 "A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; 25 it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

 26 "So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. 27 What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 28 Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

 32 "Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; 33 but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

 34 "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36 and one's foes will be members of one's own household.

 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

 39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

A few months after I began seminary, I sat with a new friend, comparing notes on the people we’d met so far. My next-door neighbors were nice. The people we met in the dining hall were nice. The professors were nice.

Finally, my friend had had enough.  “Everybody’s nice!” she shouted in disgust. She was exhausted by all the niceness and sickened that there was nothing else we could say about these people.

This conflation of niceness with Christianity was illustrated in a character on the sit-com Community. Shirley, an evangelical Christian, responded to just about everything with, “That’s nice,” or “that’s not nice.” Niceness was the measure of whether or not something resonated with her Christian belief and practice.

Niceness has become a stereotype for Christians. And even though we may think niceness is a good thing, generally, like most stereotypes, this may not be helpful or accurate for Christians.

About a decade ago, a study of teen spirituality in America revealed that most teens who professed to be Christians actually believe something not very much like Christianity. Those teens, who are now young adults, believed that:

•        A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth

•        God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other

•        The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself

•        God is not involved in our lives except when we need God to solve a problem

The researchers named this set of beliefs “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” Notice the word Christian does not appear anywhere in this confounding phrase. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is a belief that we should be nice and happy and ask God to help us find good parking spaces.

And as good and easy as that sounds, it doesn’t seem to be doing much good for Christianity. More recent studies have shown that those teens who believed in Moralistic Therapeutic Deism have grown into adults who have exactly no interest in going to church or getting involved in any religious institution. They do what they think is right and good without referent to any system of belief. And they are the most stressed out and loneliest generation ever.

But Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is what the church has taught for the last generation. Be nice. God is there when you need God. Believe in God and don’t worry about Jesus too much. 

But this isn’t the picture of Christianity we get from the Bible. You don’t have to read very far to see that Jesus wasn’t nice. He didn’t make life easier for his followers. He didn’t boost their self-esteem.

Jesus doesn’t have much nice to say in the passage from Matthew’s Gospel that we read today, which is a continuation of last week’s missionary pep-talk to his disciples. Yes, you’re worth more to God than a bunch of sparrows…which means you’re at least worth more than the most worthless bird on earth. And God knows how many hairs are on your head, but that doesn’t stop them from falling out or turning grey.

In this “inspirational” speech, Jesus talks about how people will not be nice to him. And they will not be nice to his followers. He says his followers will need to say things that are so not nice people will want to kill them. Jesus doesn’t nicely say that even if you deny him he’ll still be your friend. He says “you deny me and I’ll deny you.” That’s not nice. That’s also not what he does, thankfully, as Peter will find out later.

And we find out here that not only was Jesus not nice, he was downright divisive.

We love to read in Advent about the coming of the Prince of Peace, and on Maundy Thursday about Jesus telling his disciples, “my peace I give to you,” and the Sermon on the Mount when he declares “blessed are the peacemakers.” But these peaceful images of Jesus are shattered by these words in Matthew’s gospel: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Suddenly, Jesus is not such a nice guy. He’s turning family members on each other and demanding total devotion from his followers. This would seem to contradict all those teachings about peace and love.

But being a peacemaker is not the same thing as being nice.  Loving others has nothing to do with being nice to others. 

Peace on earth and good will to all is only accomplished by confronting the injustices, prejudices, conflicts, and practices that keep God’s reign from being fully realized.  Jesus is the prince of peace. But peace often comes at a price. 

Jesus paid that price on the cross. And as he was preparing to do that, he warned those around him that bringing the reign of God to earth would create a crisis for them. That crisis would not be contained to the external spheres of politics or even church but would find its way into our homes and our families. Anyone who follows Jesus, who desires peace, who wants to love as God loves, will not be treated nicely and will experience division. The reign of God creates a crisis in our world, in our communities, and in our relationships.

Jesus isn’t anti-family, but he recognizes that keeping our families nice and safe and happy can inhibit our ability to see and participate in the realm of God on earth. If we are unwilling to share with those we love most the things that God has whispered to us in the dark, there is no point in proclaiming them from the housetops.

The realm of God is characterized by reconciliation and peace, but life in this realm requires commitment. And that commitment can be costly and divisive.

Derek Black grew up in a family, and a community, of white nationalists. His godfather was the former Klan leader David Duke, and his father is Don Black, founder of a white-supremacist and neo-Nazi website.

Derek had been the poster child for white nationalism since his early teen years, appearing in media interviews defending his views and organizing summits to promote them. He never doubted for a moment that what he believed about separation of the races and a world-wide Jewish conspiracy was fundamentally true because everyone who was close to him reinforced those beliefs.

And then Derek left the bubble of his family, his insular community, to attend college. And soon, Derek found himself confronted with the ugliness of his ideology. He was outed on campus for being a white nationalist and started receiving backlash from his college classmates. For the first time in his life, he began to listen to the critiques of his views and was confronted with competing truth claims.

When Derek finally came to the realization that he no longer believed in the white nationalist ideology he had once shaped and promoted with his family, he wrote a letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center disavowing his beliefs.

After discovering Derek’s letter on the internet, his family grappled with how to explain this sudden reversal. Was it a joke? Was Derek trying to fit into the mainline? Was it some kind of Stockholm Syndrome where he aligned himself with a liberal institution that held him prisoner?

When Derek finally confronted his family with the truth that his views on separation of the races and many other things had changed, they disavowed him. He was uninvited to his father’s birthday party. They wouldn’t speak to him or see him when he was in town.

For Derek Black, God’s unity, God’s peace, living into God’s vision, created division. 

The division created by God’s reign, the crisis created by Jesus’ ministry, flies in the face of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. It’s not about being nice and safe. It’s about risking everything – your reputation, your relationships, maybe your very life – to live into the vision of a world made new that Jesus proclaimed. 

It’s about reaching out to and fully including those on the margins, not because it’s the nice thing to do, but because it’s what Jesus did and calls us to do. It’s about knowing God is there for us SO THAT we can be a blessing for others. And it’s about proclaiming the amazing love of Jesus Christ in a culture that is much more comfortable talking about a generalized god who makes no claims on our lives.

The claims Jesus makes on our lives are real and costly. But Christian mystics have taught for centuries that letting go of all our attachments and ego – all those things we think define our lives – is the only way to find our true life, the abundant life promised to us in Jesus Christ, the life God created us for. The crisis created by Jesus is the only way to unmask our false selves and weak commitments and uncertain faith. If we feel worthless because we haven’t proclaimed Jesus as Lord from the housetops or taken up our cross or loved Jesus more than our parents or children, that’s our crisis. And the only way through that crisis, the only way to recover our worth, to find our life, is to let go, to lose the life we think we have. We have to lose our grip on niceness and likability. To lose our need for affirmation and affection. To lose our desire for control.

Father Thomas Merton is one of those contemplative mystics who understood this truth in a real and profound way. He developed what is called the Welcoming Prayer, which some of you are familiar with through the Contemplative Prayer group and our daily morning prayer practice. The Welcoming Prayer invites us to welcome all things because all things are for our healing. When we are maligned, when people seek to destroy us, when we are fearful and conflicted and divided, we welcome all those things as the crisis Jesus creates to help us lose our lives and find our lives. The prayer calls us to let go of our lives and open to God’s presence and activity within us, to the true and eternal life God desires for us now and always. The Welcoming Prayer is difficult and costly. It won’t make us nicer people. It won’t make people nicer to us. In fact, it may do just the opposite. Welcoming all experiences, letting go of our ego and attachments, and opening ourselves to God is a costly exercise. It is more than a prayer, you see. It is a way of losing our lives.

But it is also a way to find our lives, and love God and others, and bring God’s peace to reign on earth. That’s not nice. But it is good. And it is what we do as followers of Jesus. 

Amen.