“The Truth Shall Make You Odd”

Beth Newman, Professor of Theology and Ethics

Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond

Hampton Baptist Church

July 8, 2007

It’s certainly a delight for me to be here today and to be able to bring you greetings from BTSR.  Pastor Smith and I recently met at the Chester Brown Preaching and Worship Conference at the seminary, and we are so grateful for the generosity of this church in helping to make that conference possible. 

I grew up in Fayetteville, NC, but I claim roots here in VA as well.  My grandfather was a Baptist pastor in Louisa County, VA, for about forty years.  He served mostly small, rural churches there.  Like me, he also went to Southern Seminary but graduated a bit earlier – 1927.  When he died back in 1983, he left me a number of his seminary books.  One of these is titled A Short History of the Baptists (1907).  And, believe it or not, in this otherwise rather dusty, drab volume, the book opens with a colorful picture of a young woman.  Her name is Perpetua, and she was a saint in the early church who was brutally mauled by wild beasts for converting to Christianity. 

As the story goes, Perpetua refused to make the required public sacrifice to the gods requested by the Roman Emperor (Severus).  Even Perpetua’s own father, while holding her young nursing son in his arms, desperately pleads with her to renounce her new faith: ‘Have pity, my daughter, on my grey hairs. Have pity on your father, if I am worthy to be called a father by you.,.” But Perpetua refuses his request. 

The oddness of including Perpetua in a short history of Baptists is almost as strange as the rationale for her death.  Emperor Severus asked only that his subjects make a public sacrifice to the gods for his health and safety.  In private, folks were free to worship whoever they wanted.  Why wouldn’t Perpetua simply give the emperor his due?  (That way she could at least remain alive, as mother to her child…)  But Perpetua, like the early disciples, knew that Christianity isn’t a private faith.  It involves allegiance to Christ in all areas of our lives: public and private, political and economic.  To citizens in the Roman empire, this Christian sect (as they regarded it) was surely odd – dying a death that could easily be avoided.  Are these folks out of their minds?  Are they enemies of the Roman Empire?

But our faith is no less odd today.  The title of my sermon comes from a Southern fiction writer, Flannery O’Connor.  O’Connor herself was a kind of misfit: a Catholic growing up in a mostly Protestant South; a gifted writer who, because she suffered from lupus, lived with her mother for most of her life.  O’Connor’s challenge, she once stated, was how to write in a time when “people think faith is a big electric blanket?”  Her stories communicate the conviction that when God’s grace gets ahold of you, it makes you look odd.  In gospel terms, you might be willing to leave behind your job or embrace hardened criminals or even die for your allegiance to God above all else.

As we no doubt know, being odd can be an isolating experience.  Any child who has been teased for some reason knows the loneliness and fear of not fitting in.  I’m just recently read, The Best of Enemies, about Ann Atwater, an African American civil rights leader in NC and CP Ellis, a former member of KuKluxKlan, who eventually, by the grace of God he would surely claim, developed an odd friendship with Ms. Atwater.  They ended up working together for racial reconciliation.  But Ellis, who grew up in deep poverty, tells about eating lunch as a 12 year old boy crouched at the bottom of the school stairwell.  He was trying to hide from other boys who mercilessly teased him about his lunch: a browned biscuit smeared with lard.  “Watcha got for lunch, CP?…Sure smells good.”  The humiliation remained a vivid memory.

It’s not fun being odd.  And yet there is one exception to this rule.  If we become odd through living faithfully, then oddness can be joyful.  Perpetua was no doubt afraid, but she also knew the peace of Christ.  In fact, while in prison she has a vision: in it, she sees a golden ladder, guarded by a fierce dragon.  But she climbs the ladder, stepping on the dragon's head to do so. At the top, she finds herself in a green meadow, with many white-robed figures.  In their midst is a shepherd, who welcomes her and gives her a morsel of cheese from the sheep-milk. In the face of death, Perpetua receives a vision of the beauty and abundance of a God who cares for her and feeds her.          

Perhaps this vision is so odd we don’t really believe it.  Was it just her imagination or a projection of her needs? In our modern, scientific age, we tend to be suspicious of people who claim to have visions.  And yet Perpetua’s life embodies the words from the prophet Joel that Peter speaks at Pentecost before the early church:  “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17ff).  The onlookers, as we know, thought these early Christians so strange that they accused them of being drunk.  Peter has to remind them that it’s only 9 o’clock in the morning.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.  Peter’s words at Pentecost are also for us today.  Like the early church, we also are in the Messianic age; God desires to give us this same Spirit, to pour out upon us what we need to be faithful.  And faithfulness can make us look odd before a watching world.  Is it possible that others might think we’re “drunk” or not thinking straight? 

In what ways does Jesus make us odd today?  I’m sure you recall the horrific Amish school shooting in Lancaster County, PA, last fall, that resulted in the deaths of 5 young girls.  If there is one group that seems odd today, then the Amish stand out with their buggies and funny hats.  They refuse many of the modern conveniences that most of us take for granted:  like driving cars, having their pictures taken, wearing the latest styles or owning the most recent technological gadgets.

We might admire their tenacity, but we also might wonder if this kind of odd life is really necessary.  After all, does having electricity compromise your Christian witness?  While not driving a car might be good for the environment, it seems a necessity for most of us.  What about education?  Not having an education past the eighth grade seems terribly irresponsible.  Aren’t the Amish seriously limiting the future possibilities for their children?  Come to think of it, this train of thought might lead us to conclude that the Amish have got it all wrong.  What does their odd way of life witness to other than a stubborn refusal to join the modern world?

And yet, the Amish way of life produced a remarkable response to the tragic deaths of their own children.  They offered forgiveness to Marie Roberts, the wife of the murderer.  They invited the widow to their own children’s funeral.  More than thirty Amish attended the killer’s funeral.  And finally, they requested that all donations be shared with the widow and her children.  (Some of the Amish even came down simply to be present at the VaTech shooting.)

Such a strange response perplexed many observers.  How could they act so generously towards the perpetrator and his family?  Aren’t they offering forgiveness too soon, before there is any repentance or accountability?  Isn’t such forgiveness even dishonoring the dead, jumping to forgive before the children are even buried?  They are not following the “normal” stages of grief.

And yet, the Amish are long practiced in the art of not needing to be “normal.”  Their extraordinary witness [through the practices of forgiveness and peacemaking] cannot be separated from the seeming oddness of their way of life.  Their willingness to attend the funeral of the man who murdered their children is of a piece with their refusal to wear the latest styles or use the most convenient mode of transportation.  They embody the claim:  “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” 

But where does this leave us?  We are not like the Amish.  Most of us don’t want to be; at least we want cars and air conditioning [a fact brought home to me when our church in Indiana visited an Amish home, with sweat dripping down our faces, on a 100 degree summer day.]

If the Amish’s peculiar way of living is related to their extraordinary way of forgiving, then does this mean that most of us are prevented from practicing such profound communal gestures?

In the second Scripture reading this morning, Paul describes a kind of life together that – to the Corinthians  – would have sounded odd.  In the previous chapter (11) Paul has already reprimanded the congregation.  “When you come together,” he states, “it is not for the better but for the worse”.  For one thing, he continues, there are divisions among you.  Even more, Paul continues, when you eat the Lord’s Supper, you eat in such a way that some go hungry while others become drunk.  For this reason, he soberly concludes, “many are weak and ill, and some have died.”  Paul’s diagnosis: their life together is producing sickness and death, rather than healing and life.  What is the solution?

Paul’s response to the Corinthians (and also to us today) is a version of “the truth shall make you odd.”

Christ desires that you be one body.  Sounds easy, but how do you do this?  You need to remember that you are a part of the whole.

Paul writes:  “The body does not consist of one member, but of many.  If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.  And if the ear would say, ‘because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body” (12:15-16) 

Outside the body of Christ, being a foot makes no sense.  If you were to say, “I want to be a foot,” the outside world would think you crazy or drugged.  But within the context of the whole body, the foot is desperately needed.  It is, in fact, a great gift.

Even more the oneness of the body depends upon each realizing that he or she needs the other.

I recently heard that where CEO’s locate their offices in buildings has changed.  Executives used to want their offices at the very top of their buildings:  the largest rooms with the most spectacular view.  Those at the bottom of the corporate ladder had the rooms at the bottom, where they just looked out and saw the sidewalk or perhaps didn’t even have a window.  Now, however, CEO’s are claiming office space on the first floor, while those down the ladder have to move to the top floors.  What has changed?  9/11.  It is a move determined by fear, but also by the conviction that certain members are more expendable than others.

But the Body of Christ moves in the opposite and strange direction.

According to Paul, we all need each other.  The early church father, John Chrysostom, in reflecting of this passage focuses particularly on the small parts. “The small parts,” he writes, “make no small contribution, and their removal often harms the greater parts.  What part of the body could be less important than hair? But remove this small thing from the eyebrows and the eyelids, and you destroy the beauty of the entire face and the eyes no longer appear lovely…” (cited in Kovacs, 1 Corinthians)

How strange that one of the great theologians of the early church writes about the eyebrow when he is encouraging his readers to be the fullness of Christ’s body for the world.

Even more, according to Paul, we as church do not get to arrange ourselves. In a culture that emphasizes choice, independence and autonomy, such a claim can sound like the removal of personal freedom.  But in Corinthians, we read, God “arrange(s) the members in the body, each one of them, as [God chooses].” (v. 18)  Such a way of thinking runs counter to the consumer assumption that we decide where and how we want to be.  We are not to choose our place; we are to allow God working through others to show us our place in the body.  This sounds risky.  What if a few with power try to direct others where they want them to be? What if we end up in some place we don’t want”  We might recall the disciples, James and John (with the strong support of their mother) wanting to sit at Jesus’ left and right hand in his glory.  But the disciples, Jesus tells them, don’t get to decide where they place themselves.  This is prepared by God the Father. Faithful discipleship rather involves mutual submission to each other and Christ.  “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:26).

John Wesley (the founder of Methodism) tells of sailing to America with the Moravians and behind shocked (and horrified) that some of the men, key leaders in the group, were doing the menial work.  He questions them.  They respond, “It is good for our proud hearts.” This unusual response displays their odd willingness to allow God to direct our place and service in the Body of Christ.

We are many members;  each brings different gifts as well as different needs to the body.  We bring our particular needs because without these there would be no purpose for the exercise of gifts.  If for example, I am wounded such that my sense of identity is weak, then I need the confidence of the brother or sister who sees in me what I can’t see in myself.  In fact, God has “so arranged the body, giving greater honor to the inferior member.” (v. 12)

There is a story about one of Mother Teresa’s nuns caring for a man with no feet because of leprosy.  An repulsed onlooker says, “I wouldn’t do that for a million bucks.”  The nun replies, “Neither would I.”  Not money but love of Christ directs her place of service.

You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.

We are called to live not determined our fears but by the love of Christ. 

The promise that Paul stresses is that God provides for the body of Christ what it needs to be faithful.  Not all can be prophets, not all teachers or healers or leaders and so forth.  Not all can be a foot or an eyebrow.  But we can trust that God gives us together all that we need to be Christ’s body for the world.   God’s love has been poured into our hears through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us (Romans 5:5).  It is significant that this is in the plural: the Spirit is the gift to the whole church.

This is a strange looking body.  It transcends both space and time.  It is a body that includes those early Christians at Corinth; it also includes those Christians in Zimbabwe, in Nicaragua and around the world.  Even the Amish are not alien to us since we are baptized into one body, one Lord and one faith. 

In a culture that idolizes youthful looks, the body of Christ embraces the widow.  In a culture that favors the healthy and rich, this body tends to the sick and the poor. In a culture that embraces productivity and income power, the body of Christ privileges the supposedly non-productive, like the mentally handicapped.  In a culture often determined by fear and gated communities, the body of Christ practices hospitality to the stranger, and even the enemy.

Come to think of it, the body of Christ has always been a rather odd assortment of folks.  But God works in the world in strange and mysterious ways.  Our challenge and calling is to be open to the surprising ways God is with us and among us.  In so doing, may we be more fully Christ’s body for the world!