Sometimes we forget what the Bible actually sounds like. We expect it to sound like an overprotective parent – telling us what we should or shouldn’t do. We expect it to sound like a cheerleader – rooting for us as the “good guys” and booing all those other people who don’t quite measure up. We expect it to sound like a grandmother – offering us warm cookies and milk after a hard day. We expect it to sound like an insurance salesman – offering us protection from any potential harm to us or our stuff. We expect scripture to promise us salvation, everlasting life, and the keys to the kingdom – and at the same time, we expect the rules to be easy and the burden to be light.

Walter Rauschenbusch, a pastor –theologian who lived and wrote in the latter half of the 20th century, did much to dispel those very same kinds of individualistic expectations for how people were reading the Bible in his own time. He spoke of our human blindness when it comes to reading, understanding, and really living according to Jesus’ teachings in scripture. He said, “We see in the Bible what we are taught to see there. We drop great sets of facts from our field of vision. We read other things into the Bible that aren’t there.” It’s true. Rauschenbusch himself came from an impressive line of pastors – for 6 generations before him – but it took serving a German Baptist church in “Hell’s Kitchen” – a section of New York City known in his day for its poverty and atrocious living conditions to teach him how to read the Bible with new eyes.

It was in that setting that Rauschenbusch began to conceive of an understanding of scripture that has been dubbed thereafter the Social Gospel. Now the teachings were there all along. The words of the Bible haven’t changed, but when he truly experienced the deep needs of his congregation that suffered from a number of maladies brought on by poverty, awful working conditions, bad food, and no medical attention, he started to read the prophets and Jesus a whole lot differently than he had been taught. He had been taught, like most of us, that Jesus died for our sins, and that bringing others to confess Jesus Christ as Lord is the primary purpose of the church. But after a while, he became frustrated with this limited view of scripture. He thought our understanding was too self-centered, and too narrowly focused. Jesus didn’t die because someone in England beat his wife years ago, and Jesus didn’t die because some idiot got drunk in Tennessee just last week. Instead he believed that Jesus’ death revealed to us the great societal sins that weighed heavy on us then, and still weigh heavy on us today. He wrote that six public sins conspired to kill Jesus, and he says that “Insofar as the personal sins of men have contributed to the existence of these public sins, he [Jesus] came into collision with the totality of evil in mankind.”

The six public sins he considered responsible for Jesus’ death were, “Religious bigotry, the combination of graft and political power, the corruption of justice, the mob spirit and mob action, militarism, and class contempt.” And he goes on to say that, “every student of history will recognize that these sum up constitutional forces in the Kingdom of Evil. Jesus bore these sins in no legal or artificial sense, but in their impact on his own body and soul. He had not contributed to them, as we have, and yet they were laid on him. They were not only the sins of Caiaphas, Pilate, or Judas, but the social sin of all mankind, to which all who ever lived have contributed, and under which all who ever lived have suffered.” (Wikipedia on Walter Rauschenbusch)

I could easily go on telling stories about this passionate pastor that lived a century ago. In my studies this week, it was hard to stop reading about him so I could start writing. The life of Walter Rauschenbusch is fascinating, and has served as an inspiration for the likes of Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others who would follow in his footsteps. But what I really want you to know is how important it is that we take the same step he did and recognize that our faith tradition does teach us to make a difference in the public square. Not much has changed in a hundred years. Too often religion is considered private, an individual thing – just between me and God. It was the same way in his day. The poor would be saved if they believed enough in Jesus. No need for good Christians to get involved in the messy work of improving job conditions, or health care, or sanitation. No need for us to care about or care for the sick and dying. We, who are privileged enough to do so, sanitize and personalize our faith until we believe only that which keeps us safe and comfortable.

That kind of thinking is wrong, oh so wrong. The prophets make it abundantly clear that that God’s justice will be terrifying, especially for those who have paid little attention to the conditions of their neighbors. “Seek the Lord,” Amos says, “if you want to live.” Amos reminds us of God’s power and might. The one who made the stars, the one who turns deep darkness into the morning, the one who can call up the waters of the sea – well, the Lord is his name and destruction is his game.

As The Message translates verse 10 of the Amos reading, “Raw truth is never popular.” It isn’t popular to acknowledge that we are guilty of ignoring the injustices rampant in our society hoping that they would just disappear. We have contributed to those very same social evils that sent Jesus to the cross, and the injustices that continue to take food out of the mouths of the poor. The prophets, like Amos, recorded multiple times and in multiple places that whenever God looks upon the widening gap of rich and poor, there will be anger behind those holy eyes. God will take action to even the playing field. Those who build mansions will be foreclosed and not able to live in them. Those who plant vineyards will not taste one drop of the wine they produce. God knows the extent and enormity of our sins, our very public sins that Rauschenbusch identified as evil’s best forces. But those sins have developed masks to try to blend in when they appear in the public square. Religious bigotry mimics as religious certainty, graft and political power mimic as ambition, the corruption of injustice comes to the party as “getting what we deserve,” mob mentality as unity, militarism cloaks itself in patriotism and love of country, and class contempt comes disguised as economic success. God sees right through our charades. God desires true justice, and hopes to kindle in us the love of righteousness.

When justice rolls down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream – watch out! A flood is coming. When evil becomes epidemic, “decent people throw up their hands. Protest and rebuke are useless, a waste of breath.” (The Message, 5:13) The biblical prophets and more contemporary prophets like Rauschenbusch had times they felt like dismal failures. It’s never as easy as it seems to hate evil and love the good. It’s even harder to establish justice at the gate, in public, in full view of everyone. Monitoring our own material desires is important; caring about the needs of our neighbor is crucial. Scripture reminds us that our lives are intertwined with one another’s, with our neighbors, with the poor. We seek good and not evil so that we, being the big collective we, can live.

I admire that this church has always had an affinity for the Social Gospel tradition, and that you care very deeply about how your public actions work to meet the needs of our surrounding community. Whether your connection to this tradition has ever been explicitly named or mostly remained unnamed, it is obvious to me that if you shake hard enough Walter Rauschenbusch might just fall out of your family tree. Even though we all have our times of bending to the strong temptations of all the social sins, your heart keeps returning to the need to preserve justice and call for social righteousness. What I hope you will take away with you today is a renewed appreciation for your commitment to justice and a little reminder that this tradition was absolutely founded on Biblical principles. The prophets and Jesus especially beat this drum – loudly. It isn’t enough to have faith if we leave our brother trapped in prison; it isn’t enough to have faith if we let our sister walk away without food for her children. Working for the good of all matters.

I’ll close with one of Rauschenbusch’s own prayers, preserved by his great-grandson Paul who spoke at the first annual Rauschenbusch Center Dinner in October – 2001. It’s called “The Little Gate to God,” and if you’re unfamiliar with the term “postern” as I was, a postern gate is a small gate often concealed at the back of a fort or other significant structure. I invite you to pray with me this prayer:

The little Gate to God

In the castle of my soul is a postern gate. Whereat, when I enter, I am In the presence of God.

In a moment, in the turning of a thought, I am where God is, This is a fact.

When I enter into God, All life has a meaning, Without asking I know; My desires are even now fulfilled, My fever is gone.

In the great quiet of God. My troubles are but pebbles on the road, My joys are like the everlasting hills. So it is when My soul steps through the postern gate Into the presence of God.

Big things become small and small things become great. The near becomes far, and the future is near.

The lowly and despised is hot through with glory - God is the substance of all revolutions; When I am in Him, I am in the Kingdom of God and in the Home (Fatherland) of my Soul.

Amen.