Personal
Stranger
Once in Wales
Did
someone ever teach you that lesson?
The biblical call to the church
Once in Wales, so legend
goes, there was a king at war with a neighbouring prince. The
king had power, land, even a beautiful young daughter – the princess –
but the prince with whom he was at war had amassed quite an army, and
so the king feared that defeat was inevitable. He consulted
his wise men and advisors and they made a suggestion that was difficult
for the king to accept. There was a Chieftain, in the south,
in the Gower, at Pennard Castle. He was known to excel in
battle. None had defeated him, and everyone feared
him. The Chieftain was vicious in combat, a brutal man, and
neither he nor his soldiers paid any mind to the decencies of the
civilized world. He was just the kind of person the king
usually kept at a distance from his kingdom.
But the king was desperate. And so he sent word to Pennard
Castle promising full and generous rewards in exchange for
aid. Within an hour the Chieftain’s troops were on the
move. In short order they were at the king’s gates, and they
met the forces of the prince. The fight was swift.
The Chieftain was the model for military leadership. He
himself felled more of the prince’s knights than any three of his own
men. And so the prince was thwarted on the battlefield, and
fled into obscurity that very day.
At the festivities following the
conflict, the king and the chieftain spoke. The king was
uncomfortable. The chieftain was uncouth, rude, like he’d
never learned an ethical lesson in his life. And so the king
was horrified when the Chieftain, with partially chewed food in his
beard, named the reward he desired: the king’s beloved
daughter; the princess. She was young, she was beautiful, and
she was innocent. She was favoured, so said the Welsh in
those days, even by the fairies. Unfortunately, she was also
easily flattered. When the Chieftain had expressed his
interest, and the king made the request known to his daughter, she
agreed too quickly. The warrior Chieftain’s charm sustained
her affection for a short time. Within days she and the
Chieftain were married, and next thing she was on the back of the
Chieftain’s horse, on her way to her wedding celebration at the
Chieftain’s castle at Pennard.
That night as the festivities started,
the princess knew she was in for a hard time. The people were
so different, so vulgar, so strange, so unaware of the right way to do
things, and by dark she was in sorrow at her own wedding
celebration. She got herself alone in an upper room and
looked out a window into the night and began to weep.
But just then, a light appeared in the
distance; then another. Towards the castle, a host was
approaching. The princess squinted and with joy recognized
her friends. The fairies were coming to dance at her
wedding! But just then a horn blew. The Chieftain’s
men on the battlements didn’t recognize the fairies, they simply saw
strangers with torches moving with speed. And so within
seconds a volley of arrows was into the air, horses were out of the
gates, and the fairies were engaged. But the arrows and
blades found only air – at first contact, the fairies had
vanished. The night sky went black – the stars and the moon
disappeared – and a sudden wind came up from the beach. By
morning, sand had filled the whole castle, and so every soldier, the
Chieftain, and even the princess, were buried alive and lost.
The ruins of Pennard castle are filled with sand to this day . . .
Cultures, people, have made up stories like this because we fear
strangers as dangerous. The king should have known never to
open his life to people so . . . outside – but once he’d let them in .
. .
Did
someone ever teach you that lesson? Have you taught it to
someone else?
In 3 John we hear about a man named Diotrephes who rejected people sent
his way by John. It’s hard to imagine isn’t it?
This Elder, the beloved disciple, the last remaining Apostle and
personal friend of the Lord Jesus himself, sends out missionaries for
the sake of the name of Christ, and Diotrephes not only turns them
away, but stops others in his church who want to host them, and then
gives them the boot. Who’s this guy think he is?
To be fair, it was a confusing time for the early church.
Other Apostles and leaders had died. Sometimes even those
leaders hadn’t seen eye to eye. In the New Testament we find
that Paul and Peter saw things differently from time to time.
In his 1st letter to the Corinthians, Paul has to tell the people not
attach themselves to particular personalities or positions.
They were not to follow ‘Peter’ or ‘Paul’. They were to be
built on the foundation of Jesus Christ alone, and so sectarian
strategies were to be rejected. But of course we understand
that the fact that Paul needed to write those words – you can find them
in the 3rd chap of 1st Corinthians – means that divisive positioning
was a reality in the early church.
By the time only one of the first apostles is left, the church is
spread across the Roman Empire, and the gospels and letters are first
circulating, things have become more complicated. False
teaching is popping up. And in the letters of John that we’ve
been looking at these past weeks, you’ll have seen that that false
teaching has been an issue. Early Gnostic teaching denied
that Jesus had come in the flesh – to talk about Jesus, for them, was
more to talk about the secret words of God mystically revealed through
a divine spirit being. There were other strange teachings
too.
And so it becomes very important for the early church to define what is
true, and what isn’t. False teaching is dangerous, and
dealing with it is a legitimate effort. The thing is, that
challenging false teaching is almost always also challenging a person
or people who advocate it. That means that there is an
overlap between the two questions of what the church teaches, and how
the church relates. That makes it hard, sometimes, for the
church to function when a lot of people have a lot of different ideas.
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And so Diotrephes is undoubtedly a man who feels the burden of that
responsibility for his church. He’s a leader faced with those
two questions. Maybe if he doesn’t draw a line against
certain teachings, against certain people, no-one will? From
what we can tell, Diotrephes has drawn a line, and the line he’s drawn
is so strict, so tight, that even the missionaries sent by John don’t
fit. Elsewhere in John’s letters the primary concern is that
some have swallowed false teaching and so have gone astray.
John’s concern is that they’ve lost track of the truth, the ‘what we
teach’ question. But in this letter, in this case, Diotrephes
appears to present a different kind of problem. Here’s a man
who’s kept track of the truth, and lost something else. He’s
so certain that his perception is right, so sure that his way is right,
so committed that the decisions he’s made are the right ones, that he’s
cutting off anyone who doesn’t fit his standards. He’s
passing in the ‘what we teach’ area, but he’s failing in how he
relates. In his case, the issue is pride.
Diotrephes’ love for being first – being in charge, in control – is a
kind of practical pride that has festered so long that he’ll even twist
the truth to hold on to his power.
Frank Miller writes about a corrupted politician, a senator, who is
threatens a police officer. The officer has tried to bring
about justice by shooting a vicious criminal who is actually the son of
the senator. The senator stands over the police officer and
waves a gun in his hand, and he says, “Let me tell you a thing or two
about power! Power doesn’t come from a badge or a
gun. Power comes outta lying.”
Diotrephes may once have started out well, but he has let his need to
control the risks of false teachings and strangers rise above the need
to trust Christ. And so those festering sins have grown such
that now Diotrephes has to control everything, and the only way he can
maintain that power, is to lie. He gossips maliciously about
the Apostle John and his people. What might he have been
saying? Well, one of things about which John reassures the
man he’s writing to, Gaius, is that the missionaries he’s sent have
gone out for the sake of the name of Christ, and that they’ve received
no help from pagans. That smells a lot to me like a defensive
statement – why bother stating that kind of fact unless someone has
suggested otherwise? And so I wonder if that’s what
Diotrephes was saying? Maybe like the following?
“Those guys from John – we need to watch out for them too.
Things aren’t like they used to be. Back in the days of Paul
our churches had a pretty good handle on truth – but John, man, he’s
just too lovey . . . he’s too soft now. He doesn’t understand
the problems of today, he’s not taking the risk of corrupt teachings
seriously enough. Do you know what, I bet he’s even letting
people into the church who don’t really belong. I wouldn’t
surprised to find out that there’s pagan money behind these new guys
he’s sending out. He wouldn’t be the first to become too
loose in his teaching. We’re just not going to have anybody
from him. We have our own missionaries – why doesn’t he help
us out more with
ours?”
Ever met a Diotrephes? They go to bed angry and
tense. Their tomorrow is always a day with someone to be set
straight, some truth to be expounded, some soul to be
lectured. Every conversation with smiles and laughs is a
secret test to check whether the other person is still on
side. Every good work is a bribe, paid to keep the power in
his hand. Every critique and slight and twisted truth is
woven into a tapestry of things other people have said, and other
people have seen, so he can pretend he doesn’t actually own the lies
that come out of his mouth. Diotrephes is spiritually
sick. His disastrous condition is where we can end up if we
begin to believe that we, personally, are the final definers of what is
true. Because, if we step into that role, if we take
seriously only the question of what we teach as truth, and we ignore
the question of how we relate, then we can only ever really befriend
those who agree with us – and that makes every other person a stranger
to us – and worse, an enemy.
The
biblical call to the church is for us is to hold these two questions of
truth and relationship in a healthy tension. If we pick one
over the other exclusively, we have not heard what the bible has to say
about the Christian life. When Christ set up his church, he
laid a solid foundation which is sufficient to keep the church faithful
after his own heart until his return. And that foundation is
Himself. His own presence and power. Paul wrote
that way to the Ephesians’ church. His prayer was that the
Spirit of Christ would dwell in their hearts so they could be rooted
and established in love. And on that foundation, Paul called
for them to “make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through
the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit – just as
you were called to one hope when you were called – one Lord, one faith,
one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all
and in all.”
Paul goes on to tell them that Christ has apportioned grace so that the
various leaders in the church are able to prepare or equip God’s people
for works of service, so that the church can be built up. And
that building up is to continue “until we all reach unity in the faith
and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to
the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
Christ’s desire is that his church be
built up – and that includes not only knowledge of the Son of God,
(what we teach), but unity in the faith as well (how we
relate). The measure of the maturity of the church around the
world is not only a question of the theological things we think we
know, but it is also the degree to which we function in
unity. Diotrephes may have got much of his theology
right. John didn’t seem to be worried about that.
But he got unity wrong. And that’s not ok.
There’s a particular spiritual gift
that’s designed to help us with this problem. A gift of God’s
Spirit that can help the church find the right balance. Paul
commands it while talking about spiritual gifts in Romans 12:
Hospitality. The gift of hospitality is not just being really
good at having people over for tea. That may be a side effect
of the gift . . . but the real thing is actually love for strangers.
When Paul and Peter command the recipients of their letters to practice
the spiritual gift of hospitality, the word they use means literally
the ‘love of strangers’, or ‘friend of foreigners’. Our bible
uses other words as well, there’s a word that means to host strangers,
another that means to take up the cause or needs of others, another
which means to be friendly in thought. But at its core,
hospitality is about our attitude to the strangers around us.
When Gaius first met the men sent from
John, he probably couldn’t have said much about the particulars of each
person’s thinking about Christ. That’s what John tells us,
“Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers,
even though they are strangers to you. They have told the
church about your love.” Gaius received them not primarily as
an expression of agreement on everything they thought, but out of
faithfulness to the command to love and practice unity. And
in the same way, John can write so openly to Gaius about the tensions
he’s experiencing, not because they’ve had a theological summit – but
because he’s received word of Gaius’ love. And for John, that
love, that hospitality and unity, is real evidence for him of Gaius’
rightness in the faith. That love and practice of unity is
the real sign, for John, that Jesus Christ is genuinely the foundation
of Gaius’ life.
The only way to practice this kind of
hospitality in the church, and between churches – the only way to
balance the questions of what we teach and how we relate – is to settle
ourselves on the course of intentional humility. There come
moments for all of us, within our church, between churches, when the
call for us to practice unity and so deal with the question of how we
relate, must match our desire to see things rightly said and rightly
done. And when that is hard, when our sense of what we know
to be true flares up like a burning bush and we are instantly ready to
set ourselves apart from a brother or sister in Christ who sees or
reads or thinks things differently, we must remember then that we are
not God, that our reading of the bible may be missing something, or
that our sibling may have seen something we’ve missed. Paul
himself said that ‘we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when
perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.’ That means, that
we are today in the state of imperfection. And the practice
of real unity gains traction in that climate where we live in humility
with others.
And who knows – maybe those strangers you face are actually sent of God
– to change and transform you . . . maybe the soldiers
approaching your gate have come of God for your victory? Or
even to celebrate with you? Trust Christ and be together.
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