Spiritual Hiccups - Make Me a Star

Thanks largely to reality television, a new category of famous people has emerged in recent years: people who are famous for being famous.  I think of folks like Paris Hilton and the Kardashian clan.  They are a different sort of star from movie stars or sports stars.  I don't know that this makes them any worse or better, simply different.

I'm thinking about famous people, about "stars," because in today's reading from Philippians, Paul calls the Christians at Philippi to become stars.  More specifically, he calls them "in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation... (to) shine like stars in the world." 

I wonder how many Christians think of themselves as "stars."  Americans tend to think of faith as a private thing, and it is hard to be a star in private.  As a pastor, I get up in front of the congregation each week, and there is some sense that I am "on stage."  But this is not before the world.  It is within the closed doors of the faith community.  In terms of the world, my preaching remains private in much the same way American faith tends to do. 

Paul's description of Christians as stars comes in the context of a call to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure."  Private faith tends to think of salvation as having to do with my internal, private beliefs.  But Paul seems to think of salvation as more dynamic, God at work within us so that we act in ways that make us shine like stars in the world.

In one of his teachings, Jesus speaks of how no one hides a light under a basket.  Paul speaks of us shining because God is at work in us.  In other words, we become stars because we reflect God's light and people see God at work in us. 

I wonder if anyone sees God reflected in me?  God, make me a star.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Real Enough to Fear?

Yesterday I posted something on facebook saying that I was struggling with exactly how to handle the anniversary of 9-11 in worship this Sunday.  Judging from the handful of comments, most understood my quandary, though some didn't seem to appreciate that my struggle was about how a national day of remembering fits within a time of worshiping God.  Similar issues arise when July 4th comes on a Sunday.  Is celebrating our loyalty to a nation appropriate in a time set aside to worship God and profess our absolute loyalty to Christ as King and Lord?

Interestingly, today's gospel reading features Matthew's story of wise men (no number is given) from the East.  When they come to Herod's palace in Jerusalem, seeking the child born king of the Jews, their search strikes fear in the hearts of Herod, "and all Jerusalem with him."  The source of Herod's fear is obvious.  He is king, and a new king is a threat to his status.  But what about "all of Jerusalem?"  Presumably their fear is about the change and upheaval a new king might bring.  Herod wasn't actually a Jew, but he rebuilt the Temple and he maintained the Jewish traditions.  He was a known quantity and everyone knew the rules and how the system worked.  A new king threatened all that.

I seems to me that the lordship of Jesus, his claim to be King, is a threat to all other powers, lords, and loyalties, even in our day.  And yet, I have rarely experienced much fear around this.  The Old Testament frequently encourages people the "fear Yahweh," and the Old Testament reading for this coming Sunday tells of the Israelites crossing the Sea on dry ground as they escape Egypt and Pharaoh's army.  Afterwards, "the people feared Yahweh."  Yet I have rarely feared God.

Perhaps my lack of fear comes from knowing a loving God, from such an intimate relationship with God's love in Jesus that this has removed all fear.  It would be nice to think so, but I suspect my lack of fear more often is the product of being unimpressed by God.

God isn't much of a threat to my comfortable routines and patterns because, more often than not, God isn't all that powerful a presence in my life.  Jesus' lordship isn't real enough that turning the other cheek or loving my enemy actually seems like an option.  Trusting God and following Jesus even if this leads to suffering (much less death) are not really things I think much about.  But the juxtaposition of worship and 9-11 remembrance uncomfortably reminds me of how little my faith impacts my life.

I've never allowed worship to display much patriotic fervor because my theology taught me well that God is sovereign and that Christ is Lord of all.  I "know better" than to let the day lose its focus on being a "sabbath to Yahweh."  But my theological correctness is not the same as becoming a new creation in Christ.  It is not the same as experiencing God's presence so vividly and trusting God's love so fully that I want to bow down and say, "Whatever you ask, I will do.  Wherever you send my, I will go.  Whatever the cost, I will gladly bear it."

I love the study of theology and think it invaluable to the Church.  But what I need in the core of my being is not better information about God, but a more vivid experience of God's presence, one that shakes me and moves me and transforms me.  Come, Lord Jesus!

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Spiritual Hiccups - Forgetting Who I Am

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
     and why are you disquieted within me? 
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
     my help and my God.  (from Psalm 42)

Last week I attended a church conference where at one point a presenter showed a clip from the animated Disney movie The Lion King.  If you've never seen the movie I'm not sure I can sufficiently set the context, but the story revolves around Simba, the cub of the lion king, Mufasa.  Simba is heir to the throne, but Mufasa's brother Scar, the villain in the story, hatches a plot in which Mufasa is killed and Simba blames himself for the death.  Simba runs away, leaving the pride to the evil rule of Scar.  In the scene I saw at the conference, others have come pleading for Simba to return, to throw out Scar before he totally despoils the kingdom's lands.  Simba resists, but with help of the wise sage Rafiki, he has a vision of his father who tells him, "You have forgotten who you are, and so you have forgotten me... Remember who you are."  (It helps if you imagine James Earl Jones speaking these lines.)

When my soul is cast down, there is often forgetting going on.  I forget that in my baptism God has claimed me and called me a beloved child.  I forget that Jesus has called me and promised to be with me always.  I forget that the Spirit dwells within me and will equip me to do all God asks.  Oh, I can remember to say such things, but deep down I have forgotten.  Deep down, I don't remember or know who I am.


Why are you cast down, O my soul,
     and why are you disquieted within me? 
Hope in God;

Hope is about the future, but it is also about remembering.  Hope comes from somewhere, and I think it comes largely from remembering.  When I forget who I am, I also forget God, much like Simba forgot his father.  But when I remember that I am beloved, called, blessed, and empowered by God, it becomes possible to look the the future, even when things are bleak, with hope.

"You are my son.  You are my daughter."  So God says to us all.  Remember who you are.  Remember.

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Sermon video - What To Wear

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Sermon text - What To Wear

Romans 13:8-14

What To Wear

James Sledge                                                         September 4, 2011

There is a catchy little ad campaign that you may have seen on television for something called freecreditreport.com. All the ads feature a young man and his band mates singing about how someone stole his identity and now his bad credit score has unexpectedly kept him from buying a house or getting a new car, a good cell phone, and so on. He sings that if he had only used freecreditreport.com this would never have happened. The songs are snappy and the characters in the commercials are funny, and I would not be surprised if it had won some sort of advertising award.

There is one part of these commercials that is easy to miss. It may appear in tiny print at the bottom or is spoken so quickly by an announcer that you can scarcely understand it.  So I’ll slow it down for you. “Offer applies with enrollment in Triple Advantage.”

It turns out that your free credit report is not quite free. You can get a free report which does not include your actual credit score if you sign up for their plan. Then, you will get this useless, free report, free as long as you realize that you’ve just signed up for a $19.95 a month plan that kicks in if you don’t cancel your membership within seven days. If you actually want your credit scores, you have to pay a dollar up front for them, as well as sign up for the program that starts billing you $19.95 a month if you don’t cancel it in a week.

The crazy thing about all this is that you can get your credit scores at absolutely no cost directly from the credit agencies. By law they must give you one free report every twelve months, and the companies that compile credit reports have even created a website called AnnualCreditReport.com where you can request reports from all three companies at once.

Now to my mind, the folks sponsoring those catchy commercials are engaged in a kind of fraud.

They use a misleading name and commercials where the band sing “free” over and over, even spelling it out, in the hopes of getting you to sign up for a pay service you don’t need. And indeed this company has occasionally been sued by attorneys general from various states. These suits have sometimes required them to alter their commercials or put clearer disclaimers on their website, but as long as they tell you somewhere that score isn’t really free, their misleading advertising isn’t actually against the law.

And herein lies a serious problem with laws. Most everyone agrees that people shouldn’t be allowed to steal, but creative folks are forever figuring out new ways to separate someone from property or money without technically violating any laws. There are so many laws that no one can keep up with them all because someone is always figuring out yet another way to lie, steal, or cheat not covered by existing law. This is the reason people sometimes say, “You can’t legislate morality.” People always find a new way.

But according to the Apostle Paul, love fixes this. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and that solves the problem of never being able to create laws that cover everything. Love does no wrong to the neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Paul doesn’t simply mean that by loving your neighbor you insure that you stay within the law. He also means that love is the end toward which the law means to direct us. Truly to love your neighbor as yourself, to put the other person’s needs on a par with your own, brings us to the full intent of God’s commandments, the creation of true community where everyone has enough and where everyone finds his or her place and all live in the kind of mutual harmony that the biblical book of Acts uses to describe the early church in Jerusalem.

For Paul, the possibility of living in a true community of love is not some “pie in the sky” hope for another day. Paul knows full well that much of the world does not share in his hope. He knows that the current ways of our world, or of the flesh, are not in keeping with the new day that Christ’s death and resurrection have begun to bring. But Paul is certain that those who are in Christ can fully experience a life governed by love, a life that does not belong to the ways of the current world but to the world that is drawing near. That is why Paul speaks so frequently in his letters about being “in Christ” and why he calls us this morning to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

When you got ready to come to worship this morning, you put on clothes. In all likelihood, you picked some clothes over some others. Worship dress codes have certainly changed in recent years, but most of us have some things we wouldn’t wear to worship.

And what to wear isn’t just about coming to worship. There are “appropriate” clothes for many different occupations. A lawyer had better not go into the courtroom in shorts and flip flops. And many schools have dress codes or even uniforms, and you can’t come into the school building without wearing the proper attire.

Speaking of uniforms, if I were standing here this morning wearing shoulder pads, jersey,  and a helmet, I would look quite ridiculous. But everyone would know just what I was dressed for. What I had put on would reveal that to everyone.

Paul seems to think that putting on Jesus is a bit like this. It not only equips us for what we are going to do, but it also identifies us as those who are engaged in the peculiar activity of revealing the ways of God’s coming kingdom to the world.

If you are anything like me, the state of the world sometimes bothers you. In fact, I sometimes find it downright depressing. Whether it is an obsession with sex that treats people as objects, encourages meaningless “hookups,” and even creates sexy outfits for toddlers, an economy that seems to be creating less and less jobs but a greater and greater gap between rich and poor, a political system that seems to be both toxic and broken with an “us versus them” mentality where anyone who disagrees is my enemy, or our inability to live in community and do things for the common good, there is much in the world to lament. Sometimes I even think that the terrorism that so plagues our world is but a slightly less restrained version of the same hatreds and divisions we see in our own country.

But Paul says there is another possibility. We can become part of the light that shows a new way. We can clothe ourselves in Christ so that we are no longer caught up in hatreds and darkness. We can begin to live now in that new day of hope and love. When we put on Christ we will have what we need to live lives of love that fulfill God’s law. And it will be obvious for all to see because we will no longer be caught up in the destructive behaviors of this world because clothed in love, we will no longer desire to do any wrong to a neighbor, to anyone.

What a wonderful possibility. No hatred. No treating others as sexual objects. No arguing and fighting. But to join in this possibility, you have to dress right. You have to put on the right clothes. So what are we going to wear?

Spiritual Hiccups - Extravagance, Love, and the Poor

"For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me."  These words, or at least some paraphrase of them, seem to be quite well known.  Jesus utters them in response to his disciples' scolding of a woman for pouring an extremely expensive jar of perfume like ointment on Jesus.  (The jar of ointment apparently cost nearly a year's salary.)  The disciples think that this extravagance would have been better used if it had been sold and the money used to help others, and 300 denarii would have been able to do quite a bit of good.  But Jesus praises the woman for what she has done.

But for some reason, Jesus' remark about there always being poor folk has received much of the attention.  I have often heard the passage used as a general justification for not helping the poor.  After all, you'll never solve the problem.  Go ahead, enjoy whatever extravagances you want.  Jesus did.

Of course that is not at all what Jesus said.  To begin with, Jesus is talking to his disciples, and quite clearly the problem of poverty will not be solved in their lifetime.  And so they will have ongoing opportunity to show kindness to the poor, as Jesus clearly expects them to do.  And the extravagance in this passage is not a personal gift to oneself.  Rather it is an act of love, the sort of extravagance one lover gives to another.  This sort of extravagance is not self serving or manipulative.  It rushes from the heart, sometimes without much rational thought.

It seems to me that Jesus points out to his disciples, and us, that faith is not a purely utilitarian enterprise.  Yes, he does come to bring good news to the poor, but Jesus is about more than a social agenda.  He is about love, both love of God and love of neighbor.  And love often has a tendency to issue forth in extrvagance.

By personal inclination, I'm a bit inclined to side with the disciples.  When you consider all the money that gets spent on religion, couldn't it be better used to alleviate hunger and suffering?  And indeed, some of the marvelous church architecture, music, and artistry is a mixed bag.  It is sometimes hard to tell if these are extravagances offered to God or monuments to those who created them.  But I think Jesus' words are meant to be of help to us here.

Jesus does not provide us any easy litmus test.  Rather this is a heart matter.  The question is whether or not the extravagance is an act of love given to another.  All extravagances don't count.  The old joke about a husband giving his wife another very expensive gift each time he cheats on her is an obvious example of a self-serving extravagance.  It seems less motivated by love than by guilt or fear or the idea of a payoff.  But loving God with all your being and your neighbor as yourself produces a different sort of extravagance, or at least an extravagance with very different motivations.

Institutional religion sometimes breeds institutional faith.  And I suspect that the fascination with spirituality in our age is in part a hunger for something a little less institutional, something that flows from the heart.  Jesus praises this woman's costly gift because it is a heartfelt extravagance offered in love.  But the minute we start trying to deduce formulas from this episode, to justify not doing more for the poor and so on, we have left the realm of love and the heart.

I wonder how much of my faith life actually emanates from love?  How much of my work, my service, my worship, my giving, my prayer, etc. is an extravagance that pours out from my heart, offered as a present to God or to "the least of these" in whom Jesus is found?  And how much of my faith life is a bit more calculated and self-serving.  I don't think any formula can answer such questions.  The answers require looking deep within my heart.

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Spiritual Hiccups - God Can't Be Very Happy

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
     whose hope is in the LORD their God, 
who made heaven and earth,
     the sea, and all that is in them;
        who keeps faith forever;
     who executes justice for the oppressed;
        who gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets the prisoners free; 
     the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. 
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
     the LORD loves the righteous. 
The LORD watches over the strangers;
     he upholds the orphan and the widow,
     but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.    (from Psalm 146)

Like most parents, I love my children.  I want the best for them.  If they were in a difficult situation, I would be "on their side."  But being on their side is not the same thing as supporting whatever they do.  Thankfully my experiences with this have been of the minor variety, but loving a child sometimes means saying "No."  It sometimes means correcting or even punishing.

Most parents, and even lots of children, can appreciate what I'm saying.  Yet very often we Christians seem quite unable to receive correction from God.  Christians of all stripes tend to latch on to a portion of the biblical message and then claim God's blessing and sanction for their side.  The stereotype, to which there is some truth, is of liberal Christians focusing on loving and helping others while ignoring issues of purity and morality, while conservative Christians do the reverse.  And at times, both sides can be rather arrogant in their claim to be the ones right with God.

But at the risk of making that same mistake myself, I feel the need to comment on the political right's frequent claim to be in God's camp.  I have no problem with them speaking openly about their faith and how it impacts their politics.  If their faith had no bearing on their politics it would strike me as a pretty meaningless faith.  But for politicians to publicly wrap themselves in Christian faith and then actively pursue policies that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor cannot be pleasing to the God of the Bible.  One has to read the Bible in an incredibly selective manner to miss how much God is on the side of the poor and oppressed.  I cannot recall any passages where God promises to help the rich get more, but I can recall quite a few that promise to topple the rich and powerful and have them exchange places with the poor and weak.

Besides all this, those who would speak for God should expect to be held to higher standard.  Pastors aren't any "better" or less sinful than other folks, but because we so often proclaim God publicly, it becomes very important for our lives not to undermine our proclamation.  The same sort of thing applies to politicians who wrap themselves in their faith.  And those who invoke the Christian mantle as a key element of their political service imply that their policy positions are somehow sanctioned by God.  But just as I would be very upset if a child of mine did something wrong and said, "My father said I could," I think God is probably pretty worked up about  the behavior of some folks who say, "God supports what I'm doing."

No doubt all of us upset God on this account from time to time, but Jesus and the biblical prophets  reserves their harshest criticism for those who wear their faith conspicuously while failing to care for those they deem "beneath them."

But finally, I wonder if God is not most upset with the Church.  For it is the Church which has fostered a faith that easily claims the label Christian without opening a Bible or learning what Jesus commands us to do.  Jesus' last words to the Church in Matthew's gospel are about making disciples of all people, "teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."  But the Church has substituted, "Believe in Jesus, come to worship now and then, and drop a little money in the plate."  God can't be very happy with us.

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Sermon video - Jesus Is Lord and Other Subversive Statements

Sermon also available on YouTube.

Spiritual Hiccups - Generation to Generation

Today's psalm speaks of one generation lauding God's works to another. That makes perfect sense. Generations generally try to pass down what they deem important to the next. Children more often than not learn the things that really matter to their parents. In my suburban neighborhood, it is almost unheard of for a child not to attend college. A college education is simply expected and a child has to really go against the grain to go into the workforce straight out of high school.

The parents I know wouldn't dream of allowing their children to drop out of school at age 16. Many require their children to participate in sports or other extra curricular activities. But when it comes to faith, many parents I know, even ones who are very active in church life, leave say that issues related to faith are a personal choice that they leave to the children. The age when they allow children to decide for themselves about faith participation varies, but I often see it as young as 10 or 11.

Now obviously the time comes in every child's life when religious participation becomes his or her choice. But I wonder what it says about the faith of previous generations that so many do so little to pass that faith down. In fact, I'm not so much arguing for more forced attendance at Sunday School as I'm wondering about how insignificant faith must be in many of our lives based on how little we attempt to pass it on.

When I look at some of my own failings at handing down the faith, it doesn't so much cause me to question my parenting as it calls me to carefully consider how central faith is to my own life. What about yours?

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Sermon audio - Jesus Is Lord and Other Subversive Statements

Sermon text - Jesus Is Lord and Other Subversive Statements

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Jesus Is Lord and Other Subversive Statements

James Sledge                                         August 21, 2011

“Praise the Lord!  Jesus is Lord!”  These phrases roll easily off the tongues of Christians.  But for many of us, Lord is a peculiarly religious word.  We know that England has a House of Lords.  We’ve watched movies where people say to the king, “Yes, my Lord,”  or seen Sith lords in Star Wars.  We’ve heard of people “lording” it over someone.  But “lord” is not a part of our everyday language.  And so it often never occurs to us what a politically charged and even subversive statement it once was to say, “Jesus is Lord.”

In the days when Christian faith was born, there were others who claimed the title Lord, Caesar in particular.  It was common for people in the Roman empire to greet one another with the words, “Caesar is Lord.”  And so for the very first Christians, to say, “Jesus is Lord,” not only employed a term Jews had used for centuries as a deferential substitute for God’s personal name, it also stood as a direct challenge to the authority of the emperor.

The question of who is actually lord, to whom we owe total allegiance and obedience, is often a critical one for people of faith.  The faith statements that make up our denomination’s Book of Confessions include “The Theological Declaration of Barmen,” a rather cumbersomely named document in which German Christians took issue with their Nazi government’s claim to be lord over certain aspects of life.  The Declaration was written by Lutheran, Reformed, (that’s us) and other Christians who were troubled by the arrangement the state Lutheran Church had made with the Nazis, an arrangement that said Jesus was Lord over spiritual matters but the state was Lord over the realm of blood and iron.  The Declaration flatly rejected the idea that “there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords.” 

This insistence that Jesus alone was Lord, over and against Nazi claims to be lords over the political and military realms, was a dangerous statement, one likely to be seen as subversive by Nazi officials. 

And in that sense it was not unlike those first Christians saying, “Jesus is Lord” when others said it was Caesar.

Living as though Jesus or God is Lord can easily put people in conflict with others who would claim that title.  Like Caesar, Pharaoh claimed to be Lord, and he demanded absolute obedience.  And Lord Pharaoh said to the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, that they must kill all the Hebrew baby boys when they are born.  But the midwives feared God.  That’s the Bible’s way of saying they thought God’s claim to be Lord trumped Pharaoh’s.  Despite the awesome power Pharaoh wielded, Shiphrah and Puah were sure that God was Lord.  But that was a dangerous stance to take.

The midwives’ defiance undermines Pharaoh briefly, but he still insists, “I am Lord!”  And he commands that every Hebrew boy be thrown into the Nile and drowned.  But our story tells us of one mother who will not acknowledge Pharaoh’s claim to be Lord.  She hides her young son, and then devises a plan to preserve his life, a plan to circumvent Pharaoh’s claim that he is Lord.  But it is a dangerous business to challenge Pharaoh’s claim.

In one of the Bible’s more famous stories, this mother waterproofs a papyrus basket, places her son in it, puts it where she knows that the baby will be found, and strategically places her daughter to observe what happens. 

One of Pharaoh’s own daughters spots the child.  She recognizes right away that this is one of the Hebrew children, one of the boys under a death sentence from Lord Pharaoh, her father.  But for some reason, Pharaoh’s own daughter now denies that he is Lord.  She takes pity on the little boy and even joins in the very transparent little conspiracy with the baby’s sister and mother to defy Pharaoh. 

We have sometimes turned this into the cute story of baby Moses in the bulrushes, but this is dangerous, subversive business these women are engaged in.  Ancient kings and Pharaoh’s often thought little of killing one of their own children if that child challenged the authority of her father and Lord.

As the story of Moses unfolds, we will learn that God has big plans for him.  He will be a critical component in God’s plans to free Israel from slavery and establish them in the land of promise.  But the story of Moses is possible only because of the subversive behavior of certain women who refuse to recognize Pharaoh’s claim to be Lord.  Some may do so out of their strong Jewish faith while the compassion of Pharaoh’s daughter seems to recognize God’s lordship unwittingly.  But regardless, only because these women engage in the dangerous business of challenging Pharaoh does Moses have a story at all.

For some reason, the story of this God of ours is bound up in our stories.  When God calls Abraham and Sarah, there is the explicit promise, In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.  When the grown up Moses meets God at the burning bush, God says, “The cry of the Israelites has come to me.  I have seen how the Egyptians oppress them.  So come, I will send you to Pharaoh.”  Jesus says that when we encounter the sick and the poor and the hungry, we encounter him.  And the Bible says that we are the body of Christ, that God’s love and touch comes through us.  The divine story is all tangled up with ours, and very often it can move forward only in those moments when people challenge and defy others who claim to be Lord.

One of the curious things about current day America is how one of our most popular lords has become the individual.  American notions of freedom and individualism have gradually been perverted into the notion of “the autonomous self.”  I alone am lord and master of my life.  And so it becomes increasingly difficult for politicians to act for the good of the whole or for voters to elect representatives who will do so because as autonomous selves, we are answerable to no one but ourselves.  And so we simply seek our own good.  We want low taxes but all of the benefits we enjoy.  Cuts must fall to someone else.  And there is no lord greater than ourselves to say to us, “You must sacrifice for the good of the neighbor!” at least none that we will listen to.

Christians say that Jesus is Lord, but we have become quite practiced at ignoring what Jesus actually says.  We have faith that Jesus will bless us or get us to heaven, but our lord is our own wants, desires, or preferences.  And we dare anyone, even Jesus, to tell us otherwise. 

But perhaps we need to ask ourselves whether we’re really cut out for this lord business.  To borrow a popular phrase, “How’s that working out for you?”

Seems to me that in a world where everyone is his or her own lord, we are becoming more and more fractured, more and more divided, less and less able to build community or a society that is good for all.  We cluster in groups of like-minded folks, and we often do not play well with others.  We get caught up in the animosities of your group versus my group. As lord, my views are and those of my group are right, and yours are wrong.  Making things better requires my winning and your losing, and so working together with those who differ from me becomes almost impossible.

But into this hopeless situation the faint memory echoes.  “God is sovereign.  Jesus is Lord.”  In Christ, God is moving history and creation toward God’s purposes.  But in the strange ways of God, this usually requires people to challenge and subvert those others who claim to be Lord.  This is often risky business, but in every age there are people of faith who rise to the task.  There are politicians who will say “No!” to self-serving ideologies and agendas of their own party.  There are people who will stand up to power and say, “God will judge us by how we treat the poor and the needy.”  In every age there are those who will say, “No nation or ideology or political party or religious tradition or economic system is Lord.  Jesus is Lord!  And I will defy any and all other lords to serve him.”

And each time that happens, the hope of something better draws a bit nearer; the dawn of God’s future shines just a little brighter. 

Spiritual Hiccups - Not Far from the Kingdom

Surely these are some of the better known words of Jesus.  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength... You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  Jesus is quoting from Scripture, what Christians now call the Old Testament, in response to the question,  “Which commandment is the first of all?”  But Jesus seems unable to give just one commandment.  Two are required to give an adequate synopsis of life as God intends.

Jesus has forever linked these two loves: love of God and love of neighbor.  And when the scribe who has asked Jesus the question agrees with Jesus, adding that these two loves are much more important than all the typical sort of rituals and activities associated with religion, Jesus says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Not far from the Kingdom.  That's a remarkable statement.  There is nothing here about faith statements or believing in Jesus.  Rather loving God and loving neighbor are the critical components of drawing near to the Kingdom.

In Mark's gospel, Jesus' very first words are, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the good news."  The good news of the kingdom requires a repentance, a reorienting of life that is expressed in a life shaped by these love of God and neighbor.  And Jesus insists that this unnamed scribe has understood the good news of the kingdom because he realizes what kingdom life looks like: love of God and love of neighbor.

Somewhere along the way, Christian faith began to emphasize belief to such a degree that love became secondary.  Though rarely articulated, many Christians find it perfectly acceptable to profess their faith while not showing the least bit of love to their neighbors.  In fact, many Christians find it acceptable to hate their neighbor if that neighbor is different from them or disagrees with them, or if caring for that neighbor might entail any personal sacrifice.

For those of us who want to claim the label "Christian," what is it that allows us to make that claim?  Can "believing" in Jesus make us Christian if we will not live as Jesus calls us to do?  If Jesus cannot speak of loving God without including loving neighbor, can we be God's people without embodying both these loves?

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