
I was recently invited to be the visiting preacher in a
congregation in my community. The text for the day was Acts 16: 9 - 10,
which reads:
“A vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man from Macedonia was standing
beseeching him and saying: ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ And when he
had seen this vision, sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had
called us to preach the gospel to them.” The text goes on to say that
“Immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us
to preach the gospel to them.”
I do not know why this particular passage was selected, or
why the theme “Listening,” was given, but I told the congregation that I
thought they had picked one of the most important, timely and controversial
passages possible. I commended them for their boldness.
When I was a child in Sunday school and later in seminary, I
learned that the Christian movement began as a Jewish sect centered in
Jerusalem. At the Council of Jerusalem, the Apostle Paul, the champion of the
liberals, successfully argued against Jewish Christians that Gentiles could
become Christians without converting at Judaism first. From that moment on the
Christian movement spread throughout the Mediterranean and far beyond. There
was no central plan. Followers of the Way of Jesus went to Africa, India, Asia,
but in the New Testament account we have the impression that Paul was a central
figure in spreading the message of the gospel. According to our tradition,
Paul, more than anyone else, was responsible for spreading the message of the
gospel beyond the enclave of Jerusalem.

In these verses from the Book of Acts, Paul is in modern
day Turkey when he receives a vision of a man, an angel some would say, standing
on the shores of Macedonia calling to him and saying: “Come over and help us.”
Paul and his colleagues immediately pack their bags and go to Macedonia.
According to the tradition, this visit is the first time the Christian message
is brought to Europe. Rome eventually replaces Jerusalem as the center of the
Christian movement, and Europe becomes the center of the Christian faith.
Fast forward to 1492 when Columbus sailed the oceans blue. Christian
kings and popes believed that they heard the Angel of Macedonia calling again. This
time they wedded Paul’s vision and the summons to “come over and help us” with
the Great Commission found at the end of the gospel according to Matthew, where
the resurrected Jesus tells his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on
earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit . . .
Lo, I am with you always to the close of the age” (Mt. 28: 19 -20). In other
words, the church claims for itself the mission of spreading Christianity
around the world to the end of time.

Fortified with these texts from Matthew and Acts, for the
last 400 or 500 years Euro-American Christians have claimed that the mission of
the church is follow the example of Paul, heed the call of the Angel of
Macedonia and the words of Jesus, and go forth to civilize and Christianize
primitive people, pagans and heathens, who are locked in darkness. When
Christian missionaries went to the Hawaiian Islands and when they went to India
they went to civilize and Christianize people whom they decided needed their
help. When missionaries came to North America they said that the indigenous
people were “wild animals” and “beasts.”
For all these long centuries the
mission focus of the Christian movement has been to civilize and Christianize non-Christians.
It has been a history of conquest justified in large measure by these two
texts: the Great Commission to go into all the world and baptize everyone until
the end of the ages, and by the vision of the angel of Macedonia standing on
the shores of the New World calling to Christians to “come over and help us.”

It is important for us to know this history. Even as it
makes us uncomfortable, we need to know it. When we see white politicians
wearing black face and Ku Klux Klan hoods, when we witness white supremacy, we
need to know that there is a religious subtext to all of this.
A significant
number of people, learning of this history, have said: “If this is what Christianity is, and if this is
what the church is about, count me out. I’m done with it.” They are leaving the
church because of its hypocrisy. But it isn’t that simple. We cannot just close
the book, blow out the candle, ring the bell and walk away. Missionaries who
came to civilize and Christianize non-Christians were acting in good faith.
They believed that they were doing the right thing. There are Christians today
who still believe that this is the right thing to do.
Those of us who want to change the story have to come to
terms with this history--which is our history. Scott Momaday, a Native American
author and scholar, says in one of his essays that “white Americans are willing
to take on the burdens of oppressed people everywhere, but we are decidedly
unwilling to divest ourselves of the false assumptions that impede our good
intentions.” We need to divest ourselves of these false assumptions. In order
to do this, we need to go back to texts like this passage in the Book of Acts
and reinterpret it and give it fresh meaning. Let me share with you what I
mean.
The Christian movement in Paul’s time was not Rome’s
favorite religion. In the first and second centuries there were serious
religious persecutions of Christians, so much so that a second century church leader
named Tertullian was able to say that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of
the church.” Paul himself was in and out of jail many times. When he writes in
Second Corinthians: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed,
but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not
destroyed” (4: 8-9), it’s not hyperbole. Christians in Corinth and Christians
in Macedonia knew first-hand what Paul was saying.

The Macedonians were not asking Paul to help them become more
like the Romans. They were part of a resistance movement and they wanted Paul
to help to organize a resistance movement to the Roman Empire. The early church
was a genuinely counter-cultural movement. That’s why it was persecuted.
The Book of Acts tells the story of Pentecost--people heard
the gospel in their own languages. No one was forced to learn Hebrew, or Latin,
or Greek. No one was forced to attend a Christian boarding school or abandon
their native language and learn English as the language of the civilized. They
spoke in their native languages. They kept their own names. Their cultures were
honored.
In Acts, Chapter 4, verse 32, we read: “The company of those
who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said any of the things he
possessed were his own, but they had everything in common.” The measure of the
economy was the elimination of poverty and want. That’s what this text means.
The early church did not want any of their members to be homeless or to go
hungry. They wanted to create an economy as if people mattered. And they
organized themselves and their communities accordingly.
In the letter to Galatians, Paul writes: “There is neither
Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free; neither male nor female; for you are all
one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). The classic strategy of divide and conquer does
not work if people refuse to recognize the divisions. Over and over again in
his letters Paul reminds us, “In Christ you are a new creation.” The mission of
the church, the reason Paul went to Macedonia, was not to civilize and
Christianize heathens and wild beasts. He went there to organize a resistance
movement, to show the world that there is a better way to live.

In the complexity of our times, I submit, that the angel of
Macedonia is calling us to be part of such a movement. Politicians may wear
black face or revert to racist language and images, but the reality is that
interracial families and communities are here to stay. Anti-immigrant rhetoric
is hot, and some of our leaders seem intent on stoking fires of fear of
Muslims, or Jews, or Gays, or whomever is the next target, but the reality is
that people are coming together in communities all across the land to meet each
other and talk with each other so that we can find ways to work together to
make our communities better places for everyone to live.
This past week I’ve
met with union organizers who are working in our largest grocery chain to
expand union membership and combat wage theft, job mis-classification, and other
forms of unfair labor practices.
Only a
few years ago we hardly heard any public discussion about poverty, or debt, or
health care. Today these topics are being talked about at kitchen tables in
lunch counters everywhere.

So today I am asking you to think of the text in a new way.
The angel of Macedonia is calling you.
Find your passion. Get engaged in the
struggle for justice and equality. Find out what you can do to make this
community a better place for everyone. This is the word of our tradition for
today.
Rev. David Hansen, contributor
Biblical references are from the RSV.