Pre-Destined for Peace

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist


Jeremiah 18:1-12

Matthew 7:1-5


In the religious life of the planet this has been one long week of judgment. Judgment in the form of an online movie trailer. Judgment in the form of response to the trailer. Judgment in response to the response to the trailer. And so on. To the point of violent bloodshed. To the point that could decide we might as well give up on religion altogether, judging religion itself responsible for inciting the very violence that every religious tradition I know of—including Islam—does, at its core, deplore.

We at Madison Square don’t like to talk about judgment. It is a religious sentiment most of us have fled in favor of grace and a wide welcome to the universal and unconditional love of God. Which is why we are here instead of at any number of other Christian churches that have no problem saying “our way or the highway” or “woe to you who don’t believe like we do,” in condemnation of others to eternal damnation. With the same sentiment that gives rise to offending videos in the first place.

We come to Madison Square to get away from all of that, don’t we? I know I do.

But we do not get to wash our hands of it. Because the clear distinctions we might make here in the United States between “our” Christianity and “that other” Christianity get glossed over worldwide. The same way we gloss over the clear distinctions among vastly different practices of Islam in the Middle East. We do not get to wash our hands of “that other Christianity” as if it has nothing to do with us. Because it does.

The thing is we really are our brother’s keeper in the biblical tradition. United in faith even if we wish it was not so. And I think we can learn something about how to handle that responsibility from the peace-loving Muslims of Libya who emphatically followed today’s teaching from Matthew’s Gospel, albeit from within their own tradition. The one about the log and the speck and the withholding of judgment toward others in order to avoid that judgment in return.

Here’s how they did it:

In response to the worst their religion could arouse the people of Benghazi took to the streets to invoke the best. “This is not the Behavior of our Islam and Prophet,” they said with their signs and the sounds of their voices. “Murder is not Islam.” “No to terrorism.” “Thugs and killers do not represent Benghazi nor Islam.”

It was actually a form of “judgment.” But it was an internal one. From within the community. Critiquing the same community you come from. Which is very much like what the Prophet Jeremiah was doing in our Old Testament lesson. The one that made most of us cringe with its own harsh language of judgment. The one that called upon the people of ancient Judah to reform their own religious behavior before they explained away all that was wrong in their society in judgment of the evil from those “outside invaders.”

When the people of Judah blamed the Babylonians for all that was wrong within their midst, Jeremiah told them to take a look at themselves instead. Are we following the covenant of our own community, he demanded, or have we succumbed to greed and idolatry instead? Are we caring for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, he asked, or are we just going through the motions of external religious practice? Are we willing to be re-formed into a new vessel of unspoiled clay, he wanted to know, or are we resting on our laurels as God’s “frozen chosen”?

Over and over again, the people of Judah pointed the finger, in the time of Jeremiah. At anyone and everyone other than themselves. But Jeremiah told them to turn inward. To amend their own ways and their own doings first. Which is what the peace-loving Muslims of Libya did. And which is what we American Christians must do, as well, if we are going to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In fact, I would argue that all of the world’s great religions in this global, plural, inter-continental culture we have become in the 21st century must reclaim the peacemaking, self-reflecting, community-critiquing foundations of our traditions before it is too late. Removing the remaining planks of violence and intolerance and injustice from our own eyes—which for us means standing adamantly and emphatically against the youtube video version of Christianity and Jesus that does not represent us—before we bomb the speck out of the eyes of everyone else.

If every one of us did this, if every religion in the world removed the planks from our own eyes and cultivated the core covenants that are so central to all our traditions—the justice and the fidelity and the spiritual renewal that Jeremiah cried out for—we just might finally and forever decide deep down in our bones as the people of this planet that we really are all one clay in the potter’s hand. Formed ofone earth. Dare I even suggest flowing from one font of identity that fills every single one of our bodies three quarters of the way full with the water of grace. Whether we claim Christianity as our tradition or not.

I still hold on to that hope. I still want to believe that we can find a way across our vastly different traditions to swim together through the multiple streams of God’s grace toward that great river of peace that is our final destination.

I believe this because of my faith in Christ. Not in spite of it.

But we have to do the work. It won’t “just happen” just because we want it. So let’s do the work together of removing the plank from our own eyes of Presbyterianism. Starting with the doctrine of pre-destination, which is what I would have spent the entire sermon preaching on if we hadn’t had the week we just had. But it fits because if we are going to do the work of claiming the central core of our traditions in pursuit of that river of peace we Presbyterians have to come to terms with this very “Presbyterian” doctrine.

Now I’m just going to take a wild guess that you have not—at least in recent memory—experienced a sermon at Madison Square that touched on pre-destination. Which is the idea that God has chosen from the beginning of time who will be saved for eternity. And, yes, who will be damned for eternity. It is a harsh doctrine on its face. And it can easily get twisted into condemnation of all those “other” people who didn’t get chosen by God because they aren’t Christian. Which is exactly the opposite of what it is supposed to mean!

Most modern—and post-modern—progressive Presbyterians mostly avoid talking about predestination because we don’t want to talk about judgment. We want to believe that God loves everybody and grace abounds and hell has no place in our theology of love. But I am going to argue today that reclaiming and reforming the doctrine of predestination—rather than rejecting it outright—might give us the critical tools we need to persuade our global Christian family toward greater religious tolerance in this era of interfaith collaboration. And that this greater religious tolerance can be an act of Christian faith and not just a good idea from the world of secular liberalism.

Because the doctrine of predestination teaches that God alone is the sovereign ruler of the universe, and not any religious tradition. That God alone has determined our eternal fate, and not any religious tradition. That God alone is the one who knows what that fate will be, and not any religious tradition. And that nothing we do—or do not do—has anything to do with God’s choice in the matter. Which means that not one of us has any business declaring God’s eternal damnation—or even God’s eternal salvation—on any other person, or on any other group of people, or even on our own selves. Regardless of our religious tradition.

If we really are true to the core of our Presbyterian heritage, we don’t get to judge anything for God. The only thing we get to do is gratefully welcome the grace of God, which is the true core of the doctrine of predestination. It’s about our desperate reliance on God’s grace alone for any hope of salvation, in this life or the next. It’s about confessing in every part of our being that we have no hope for humankind at all—for ourselves or for anyone else—without. God's. grace.

Which I think has been made abundantly clear this week.

In light of where we are in the world today, I would like to add a hopeful addendum to predestination, based on the work of Karl Barth and other theologians who have followed him. It is possible, in keeping with the Scriptures that proclaim God's peaceable kingdom on the other side of God’s final judgment, that we are, in the end, “pre-destined for peace.” All of us. Because the thing about pre-destination—about eternal rejection and eternal salvation—is that Jesus, himself, has already experienced both. In the agony of the cross and through the harrowing of hell and right back out again to a resurrection of joy, Jesus has experienced both damnation and salvation. Once and for all. For all time.

And if we who are Christian have really been baptized into Christ, literally and not just metaphorically, then that means we have experienced both eternal damnation and eternal salvation, too. Once and for all. From the beginning of time to the end. In the fullness of time. All of us pre-destined for both. But not for ourselves alone.

If we are baptized into the rejected AND elected Body of Christ, we have no choice but to find ourselves in solidarity with anyone else in all of creation who knows what it is to be rejected right here and right now! Including those who are rejected by “Christians.”

Because that is where Christ’s rejected Body will always be!

But we also have no choice but to believe beyond belief that the saving love that is God’s final word in Christ is in that exact same place! Where Christ's rejected body is, there, too, is God's eternal salvation. Period. Not because we choose it. But because we need it. No matter who we are or what we have done or what we have left undone. Or where we worship.

It is, I would argue, the final Word throughout the Scriptures. From the mark of Cain in protection of a wandering murderer, to the joyful return of the very lump of clay that careened off the potter’s wheel and was given up for lost in Jeremiah, to the New Testament Gentiles who are seemingly rejected but have in fact been chosen by God from the foundation of the world for inclusion in the God’s family. To you. And to me. And to all of creation.

Rejected. And chosen. At the exact same time.

Having said all of that, I will confess once again not to really know what happens to the spoiled lump of clay that falls off the potter’s wheel. Or to the lump that maybe never got on in the first place. Or to any one of us in the Christian church or out of it. The clay may very well get thrown away for eternity. Or just set aside for a season.

What I do know is this: somewhere, somehow, clay always comes back to the earth. And gets mixed back together with the rest of it. And a potter picks it back up again somewhere along the line and shapes it once again. Always working together with creation to pronounce it "very good."

And so I choose to believe that someway somehow that so-called “rejected” lump of clay will always and forever be the very one chosen by our God. Not because of anything we have done. Or not done. Not because we have been easy to work with or delightfully challenging. But because of the grace of a God who desperately wants this lump of clay we call the human race to finally figure out how to live together as one body. Pre-destined for peace. With the Spirit of God breathing through every one of us.

I pray it may be so. Amen.