Sermons and thoughts on faith on Scripture from my time at Old Presbyterian Meeting House and Falls Church Presbyterian Church, plus sermons and postings from "Pastor James," my blog while pastor at Boulevard Presbyterian in Columbus, OH.
Lots of Christians speak of "believing" the Bible. I suppose that most Christians believe something about the Bible, but believing the Bible requires first figuring out just what it is saying, no easy task. We struggle in the United States to agree on what our US Constitution says, and it's only a few pages. The Bible is a huge document written by lots of different people over hundreds and hundreds of years. It has passages that seem to contradict one another, and it has many sorts of writing: laws, songs, prayers, letters, stories, history, etc. How does one believe a song?
Today's gospel reading is a miracle story. Jarius, a synagogue leader, asks Jesus to come and heal his young daughter, but on the way, Jesus is delayed when a woman comes up to touch him, hoping this will heal her from a long ailment. Jesus stops to find out who has touched him, and by the time he's finished, word comes that Jarius' daughter has died.
What is this story about? Is it about Jesus' healing power? That is certainly there. Is it about how Jesus, no matter how busy he is with important work, always has time to stop and restore someone to wholeness? (This woman's condition would have made her religiously unclean.) Is it about Jesus' power over death?
I suspect that if you asked Jarius and the woman with the hemorrhage what had happened in the story, you might get very different accounts. They probably saw very different things happen. Even the gospel writers themselves often tell the same story a bit differently, each thinking the meaning of the story lies in a slightly different place.
Do you, in some way, believe the Bible? We Christians might all get along a bit better if we agreed that different folks can believe in the Bible fervently without agreeing on exactly what it says.
When Jesus heals a Gerasene demoniac, there is some significant collateral damage. As he prepares to cast out the demons, Jesus honors their request to be sent into a herd of pigs rather than "into the abyss." But the pigs immediately charge headlong down the bank into the lake and are drowned. And while Jews might not have much use for pigs, I'm sure the pigs owners were none too happy about this. When the swineherds run and tell everyone what happened, all the folks come out to see. Finding the former demoniac in his right mind, they are afraid and ask Jesus to leave. Presumably the power of Jesus causes fear, but I wonder if economics figure in at all. Who else's pigs or livelihood are in danger because of Jesus?
This isn't the only time this sort of thing happens in the Bible. The book of Acts reports two different times where Paul is charged with causing economic harm. One time he casts out a "spirit of divination" from a slave girl, costing her owners the money they made from her fortune-telling. Another time the silversmiths at Ephesus riot, fearing a shrinking income from "shrines of Artemis" because of Paul's converting people to the Way. I suppose in these two cases, the damage is done to folks who are, in some way, working at cross purposes to God. But the pigs, their owners, and the folks employed as swineherds truly seem to be collateral damage.
Apparently the Kingdom is threatening to the status quo, even when the status quo looks fairly benign. The people of the Gerasene region seem to realize this and ask Jesus to leave. But the Church seems to have forgotten this. Despite those other passages in Luke that say God "has brought down the powerful..." and "sent the rich away empty..." Despite Jesus saying "Woe to you who are rich... who are full now... who are laughing now..." and "when all speak well of you..." we generally view the Kingdom as no threat at all. And if there is any danger, it is only on a personal, salvation level.
Not so for Gerasene pig farmers. And I can't help but wonder what parts of our world, that seem perfectly acceptable to us, are likely candidates for collateral damage from God's Kingdom.
When I do pre-marriage counseling, I try to prepare couples for the nearly inevitable progression that happens with most serious, long-term relationships.There is a beginning that is filled with wonder, with joyous discovery and a deepening passion that causes everything else to recede.It’s the sort of passion that produces such lines as “I only have eyes for you.”And that is true to some extent.Nothing else is so wonderful.Nothing else is so important.And so nothing else is in clear focus.Nothing else quite gets full attention.
When people are experiencing the full throes of “in love,” logic and reasonableness sometimes take a holiday.People will spend hours on the phone even when they have things they need to do.They will engage in all sorts of extravagant behaviors, from acting in ways they would have previously thought silly and foolish to lavishing their beloved with expensive gifts that require cutting expenses in other places.
But almost without fail, the throes of “in love” begin to wane.Over time, as couples settle in for the long haul, as they set up a home together, as they marry and have a family, the passion diminishes.It’s natural.That initial intensity is hard to maintain, and lots of other things, sometimes other passions, compete for attention.Children, careers, hobbies, causes, and so on all vie for their share.
Sometimes couples realize they’ve come to take each other for granted, that their life together is mostly about routines.There may not be any big conflicts and the relationship may be comfortable enough.There is care and concern for the other, but all the passion is gone.Some relationships begin to falter at this point.Small things can grow into big conflicts and couples may find themselves wondering, “Can this relationship be saved?”
I think that relationship with God can go through a similar sort of progression.People can move from a passionate relationship to one that is comfortable to something where the relationship gets taken for granted and is mostly habit and obligation.Blessings from God are merely what God is supposed do, and troubles in life feel like God failing us.
I wonder if nine of the lepers in our gospel reading today hadn’t fallen into this sort of relationship with God.I’m assuming that they grew up in the faith and tried to live good lives.They went to synagogue, kept the law, made standard Temple offerings, and attended the big religious festivals.But after all this, they found themselves suffering with leprosy.
We need to realize that leprosy in the Bible is not the horrible disease of leper colonies, not the illness portrayed by Hollywood biblical movies such as Ben Hur.Leprosy in the Bible is a catch-all term for any skin disorder, some serious and some less so.Things we would call a fungal infection, psoriasis, or eczema would all be termed leprosy.But regardless of the severity, all of them got you labeled “unclean.”And when you were unclean, you couldn’t have contact with others without rendering them unclean.And so leprosy would make life difficult.Besides physical discomfort, you weren’t going to be invited over for Passover dinner, or any other dinner for that matter.You wouldn’t be welcome at the synagogue or Temple and so on.
Given all this it is hardly surprising that when these ten lepers hear about Jesus and his reputation for healing, they go to see him.They keep their distance from Jesus as the Law mandated for “unclean” folks, and they plead for help.Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priests.Priests had to certify that formerly unclean people were now clean, and so Jesus’ command implies the promise of a healing, and the lepers head out immediately.All ten believe Jesus can heal them, and all ten are in fact healed.But one returns to Jesus, praising God and throwing himself at Jesus’ feet in a grand show of thanksgiving.And he was a Samaritan.
Samaritans believed in God and the Law of Moses, but they were regarded as heretics by Jews, as well as being a despised ethnic group.They were outsiders in every sense of the word, and I suspect that explains why this Samaritan is praising God and running back to thank Jesus.This Jewish rabbi, Jesus, had healed him, a Samaritan.The other nine, presumable all Jews, seem to take God’s blessing more for granted, and they simply return to their daily lives.
I suppose the Samaritan returns to his old life as well, but before he does, he receives something the others don’t.All are healed, but Jesus tells the Samaritan that his faith has “saved him.”Our translation says it has “made him well,” but I pretty sure that’s a bad translation.Luke has used two other words to say the lepers were “made clean” and “healed.”But Jesus singles out this Samaritan and tells him his faith has saved him.This may not be a get-to-go-to-heaven saved the way some of us hear that word, but it is a restoration, a renewal much bigger than simply being made well.
This Samaritan has a passionate experience of God while the other nine do not.As an outsider, he seems to have an advantage.He finds it easier to get excited about what God has done for him.And I fear that we church folks are often more like the nine than this Samaritan.Sometimes our faith has lots of routine, and not much passion.
How do we become more like the Samaritan and less like the nine?I think the answer depends on who you are.If you are more like the Samaritan to begin with – and by that I mean that you’re not a longtime church person, that you’re new to this in some way – then you may actually have an advantage.Like a young person falling in love for the first time, it may be easier for you.But as with falling in love, you will need to do certain things.You will need to spend time with God, with Jesus.That means prayer and reading the Bible.It means doing things with God, which is another way of saying finding spiritual practices and activities that suit you, things you and God enjoy doing together.
But what about the rest of us, those who’ve been around God for a long time and have gotten in some pretty deep ruts?Well, what would you tell couples who had lost their passion in a marriage?I would suggest that first they need to create some space for passion.They need to push some other relationships and activities off to the side, to get rid of some of the busy, stretched-too-thin lives many of us lead so that there some room for passion.
And then you have to fall in love all over again.Like young lovers, you spend time together and find new things you enjoy doing together.You begin lavishing the other with attention, gifts, and little extravagances.You want to do things that you know the other enjoys, and you happily cut back on things for yourself in order to do so.
Of course falling in love is a two way street.The other must move toward you as well.And in Jesus, God does that with remarkable passion, even to the point of risking death.Too often the Church has depicted this in the language of contracts and formulas.But dying for another is the language of love.“I would die for you” is a line for a love song.
A Samaritan, surprised to discover how much Jesus loved him, found himself in the throes of passion that left him yelling, singing, and throwing himself at Jesus’ feet.And Jesus says this passion is a sure sign of something more than a healing, a sign of renewal and restoration, of being fully alive.
Jesus, let me know this passion.Let me be fully alive in you.
The other day, Diana Butler Bass posted a picture of a church sign on Facebook It was one of those signs that had the church's name with a space below where messages could be written with black, plastic letters. In this space it read:
TRADITIONAL WORSHIP
THE WAY
YOU REMEMBER IT
I'm not sure the sign itself requires much comment. But it does make me ponder what we mean when we talk of letting our light shine, when we use terms such as "evangelism" and "witness."
A church I served once held and "Bring a Friend" Sunday. We had a big lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the worship service, and, in terms of numbers, the day was a big success. But as we looked at the pew pads where people write in their names and, if they are so inclined, contact information, we made an interesting discovery. Every single guest that Sunday left contact information was a member of another church. People had indeed invited their friends, but it had not involved reaching out to anyone who was different from them. If some of those guests were not happy at their current church, it might had been recruitment, but it surely wasn't evangelism.
We tried to rectify this when we later held another "Bring a Friend" event. We made it clear that this was a chance to reach out to people who were not part of a church. Our members heard us and complied. They did not invite friends from other churches. Unfortunately, this meant that, for the most part, they did not invite anyone. From an attendance standpoint, our second "Bring a Friend" Sunday looked like any other.
I don't mean to be hard on the members of this church. I suspect that many of them did not have many friends who were not Christian. But they were also folks who had grown up in a very "churched," Southern culture. They tended to view the community around them as Christian. And so evangelism for them was mostly a matter of competition with other churches. If you think that most everyone is Christian, then churches are like grocery stores, and the only real question is which one they will go to.
And so we seek to serve our niche market. We hold "traditional worship the way you remember it" or some other version of church for folks with similar tastes to us. But in a culture that is no longer Christian in almost any sense of the word, catering to folks with similar tastes looks more and more like hiding our light from any but those who know just where to look for it.
"This little light of mine; I'm gonna let it shine..." for people who look like me, act like me, and like the same things I like.
There is a scene in the movie, Saving Private Ryan, where the now old Ryan visits one of the WWII era military cemeteries in Europe. Accompanied by family members, he locates the grave of one the soldiers sent to rescue him after his brothers had been killed in Allied invasion of France. Finding the headstone, he falls to the ground weeping. As his wife and family reach out to him he pleads, "Tell me I've lived a good life. Tell me I've live a good life."
I've always thought this scene a wonderful illustration of God's grace and the Christian life. God seeks us, God draws us out, rescues us so that we might live the lives we are meant to live. And as Jesus' parable in today's gospel says, some respond to this rescue as Private Ryan does, but some don't.
I'm not trying to work out any ultimate answers about our standing before God. I'll leave it to God how God's love will respond to those who seem to live without any awareness of God's grace. But for those who have experienced the gift of God's love, the call of Jesus which invites us into the way of life, true human existence, Private Ryan is not a bad model. A good life, a life that bears fruit, a life that in some small way embodies the Kingdom, this seems the only real way to say, "Thank you."
I have to admit that I'm a little confused by some of the logic in today's gospel reading. The story is straightforward enough. Jesus is invited to dinner at a Pharisee's home, and while there a woman "who was a sinner" (this status is never a point of contention) comes into the home a begins to cry on Jesus' feet, wiping the tears with her hair, and then anointing Jesus' feet with ointment. Presumably this woman's status is well known to Jesus' host and many other of the guests, and they are understandably a bit mystified that Jesus permits this to go on.
Being polite host, the Pharisee says nothing, but Jesus doesn't let that stop him from having a discussion about the matter. Jesus asks his host a question about a creditor who forgives the debt of two who owe him money, one a great deal and the other a small amount. The host, named Simon, easily answers Jesus question about who would love the creditor more, and Jesus then applies this analogy to the woman.
And this is where I get a little lost logically. The woman seems to have "shown great love" prior to her sins being forgiven. Her behavior anticipates what has not yet happened. Or does it? Has she already recognized God's love for her in Jesus, already sensed God's embrace in Jesus?
I'm really not sure. But while the order is confusing, what seems certain is the relationship between love and forgiveness. As Jesus puts it, "Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little."
Left unanswered by Jesus is the question of what makes a person "one to whom little is forgiven." Is this a simply statement assuming some need lots more forgiveness than others. Or does it imply that religious folks who assume that they are right with God don't realize their own need for forgiveness, and hence do not show great love?
A lot of us like to believe we bring as much to our relationships as we take out. Many of us prefer the balance to be a bit in our favor, imagining that our friends and lovers are lucky to have us. I think it rarer for us to be in relationship where we say, "I can't believe this person wants to be with me." And I wonder how much of a problem this poses for relationship with God.
Although some gospel accounts leave us with the clear impression that John the Baptist recognizes Jesus as Messiah from the get-go, today's reading in Luke presents the Baptist as, at the very least, having second thoughts. John, by this time in prison, sends his disciples to Jesus asking, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
When Jesus gives John's disciples an answer, presumably he thinks it a convincing one. "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."
What is it that makes Jesus the Messiah? When Christians try to convince others that Jesus is the one, what is it that makes the case? A great many Christians focus on the topic of personal salvation. But Jesus' answer to John says nothing about this. Instead Jesus points to a new age dawning. All the things Jesus mentions are signs of the Kingdom, God's new day, that has come near. Many Jews believed that the dead would be raised at "the last day," and so the fact that Jesus raises the dead is an especially powerful sign of this day's nearness.
On top of all this, Jesus' remark about blessings upon any who take no offense at him sounds quite different from traditional Christian belief formulas. He doesn't say "Blessed are those who believe in me," or "Blessed are those who publicly profess my name." Instead he says "Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me, who doesn't stumble over me."
What makes Jesus the one? If we go by what Jesus says, and then say that nothing in the world has changed except the "saved" status of some individuals, we imply that Jesus was wrong about the Kingdom drawing near. Is Jesus the one? Do we see signs of God's new day? It's possible that these are pretty much the same question.
Growing up in the Church, I regularly heard stories of Jesus healing people and even raising people from the dead. I don't know if it was because of how I heard them or how they were presented to me, but what I primarily took away from these stories was what an amazing, powerful guy Jesus was. He was clearly from God. Look at what he could do.
Certainly these stories mean to point out God's power present in Jesus. But in more recent years I find myself seeing something different in them. I see them revealing something about God's heart.
Take today's gospel reading in Luke. As he journeys, Jesus happens upon a funeral procession. And it's not just any funeral procession. The dead man is a the only son of a widow. In that day and time, his mother was now terribly vulnerable, with no one to care for her. Luke tells us, "When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her..." When Jesus raises the son, it is an act of great, divine power, but it takes place because Jesus sees her predicament, and is moved.
I take comfort in knowing that God's heart is moved by human pain and suffering. I'll admit that I have no definitive answers for why a God so moved permits so much pain and suffering to go on, but if Jesus gives us our best glimpse into God's heart, then God must be moved by every moment that makes me ask, "Why?"
I have no easy platitudes for a world filled with hurt, but for those of us who would follow Jesus, surely our hearts must become more like Jesus' heart. We must be moved by pain and suffering whenever we see it. And if the Church is, in any real sense, to be the body of Christ in the world, then surely the Church must be filled with compassion and use all the power we possess to help.
On World Communion Sunday, the usual Prayers of the People was replaced with a sung prayer for all nations. Jeremy Roberts and Kay Rieve were soloists who sang the names of nations and peoples while the congregation prayed, "Peace be yours."
I know that some people detest sports metaphors, but I grew up playing sports and am a big sports fan, so I can't help myself. One pattern I've noticed over the years is football teams that have struggled on offense promising to "open things up," to bring in a passing attack that will rack up the points, only to see things remain the same. Coaches who've promised to throw lots of passes revert to old habits of running the ball up the middle. On occasions I've even seen a new coach brought in to jazz up the offense only to end up looking much like his predecessor.
I don't know if coaches who say they're going to run a more wide open offense are just saying what they think fans want to hear, or if they seriously intend to throw the ball more but simply slip back into comfortable patterns. However, I do know how easy it is to be attracted to a new way of doing things but then fall back into old habits. And Christians sometimes look like football coaches who have seen a new and better way, but then act as they always have.
Jesus encounters such in our gospel reading. He is addressing people who are drawn to him, who I suppose could be said to "believe in him" when he says, "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I tell you?" To apply sports metaphors ad nauseum, "Why do you call me a coaching genius, and not do what I say?"
Human beings are creatures of habit. As a pastor I see this every Sunday when people come in and sit in exactly the same place they sat the week before, and the week before that. This is not all bad. It's nice not needing to decide where to sit every week. But we will persist in habits that are not helpful, even persist in habits that we say we want to break. We're also pretty good at insisting our existing habits are just fine, even that they are sanctioned by God. It wasn't so long ago that mainstream American Christianity proclaimed segregation God's will.
Old habits die hard, but the first step in killing off bad ones is to recognize them. Do our habits align with what Jesus told us? Do our habits fit with being a disciple of Jesus, or have we simply gotten so used to the way we live that we presume it must be fine with Jesus?
Love your neighbor, including the enemy. Help the poor. Offer kindness to the stranger and the alien. Care for the hungry. Those who try to save their lives will lose them while those who lose their lives find them. Do not return evil for evil. All these things and more are at the heart of Jesus' message, and yet many of us follow habits that don't always align very well with what Jesus says.
"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I tell you? Do our habits help us do what Jesus tells us? Jesus says that developing habits that do builds our lives on a solid foundation that will stand the test of time.
How many of you believe in Jesus? I know that seems a rather odd thing to ask at Sunday worship, but play along with me. How many of you believe in Jesus? Raise your hands. Okay now, how many of you came to worship today because you were worried that you were about to stop believing in Jesus, that it had become so difficult that you might not be able to keep it up? Raise your hands again.
Seems that this is not a big issue for most of you. Not many are worried that your belief in Jesus is so fragile it could collapse at any moment. I realize that a show of hands might not be the best proof of this. Many might not want to admit such a thing publicly in the sanctuary. But still most of your are probably not struggling just to maintain belief in Jesus.
So let me try a different question. How many of you would say you have faith? Raise your hands. Still a lot of hands, but different looks on people’s faces. This question is a little different because people can mean a number of different things by faith. What does it mean to you? How do you define faith?
This is not the first time I’ve ever asked such questions. And in my experience some people think of faith as pretty much the same thing as belief, but others think of faith as more complicated, including belief but also things such as trust. But of course trust itself is a bit complicated. Some folks mean trusting that if you believe in Jesus you will get into heaven, and others mean trusting Jesus enough to actually do as he says.
But even though faith is complicated, I’m going to artificially simplify it for the moment. I’m going to divide faith into two camps. In Camp 1, faith is mostly about belief and things associated with belief, about believing in Jesus and any hoped for benefits from that. Its concerns tend to be about believing the right things. For those in this camp what is distinctive about their faith is the particular things that they believe.
The other camp is mostly about following Jesus and doing as he says. For this camp, faith is about trusting Jesus’ instructions enough to actually follow them. For those in this camp, what is distinctive about their faith focuses on the actions they take. Can they truly pray for and do good to their enemy? Will they let go of their own money and possessions and give to the poor? That sort of thing.
Again, this division is huge over-simplification. What one does is impacted greatly by what one believes. Still, I think there is merit to this division, and I think that many of us can identify more with one camp or the other. With that in mind, I want to look at the request the disciples make to Jesus about faith. When they cry out, “Increase our faith!” what exactly are they asking?
It’s a little hard to imagine that these disciples need help believing in Jesus. Some of the doubts that can arise with us were probably not problems for them. They had seen God’s power at work in him in the most dramatic ways imaginable. And so they probably don’t need much help believing the right things, but doing the right things is something else.
Jesus has just spoken to the disciples about their work shepherding the faithful, how they must not cause others to stumble and how they must correct sinful behavior but be ever ready to forgive. The disciples seem to be worried about their ability to do this, and they cry out to Jesus, “Increase our faith!”
Jesus’ response seems far from pastoral. “If you had even a hint of faith, you could do remarkable things. And even then, they should regard yourselves as ‘worthless slaves’.”
Some of you will remember that in my first couple of years we brought in an Alban Institute consultant named Al Bamsey to help us work through lingering problems associated with the traumatic departure of my predecessor. Al did a number of interviews with groups of members and staff and leaders. Out of this he wrote a report that included our recent history as well as some conclusions about where we were as a congregation. He also held a Saturday event to explain the report and to work on any issues that might keep us from moving forward.
Al was concerned that there might be some latent conflict that needed to be addressed. And so for a long time he queried the 75 or so of us gathered that day about those conflicts. This produced several flip-chart pages worth of comments, but Al got more and more frustrated as this went on because none of these comments described conflicts. Instead, they were programs or activities that people wanted to see. Al kept pleading, “These are wants. I’m interested in conflict.” But only more wants were forthcoming.
Finally, Al’s frustration reached the point where he lost all pastoral restraint, and he blurted out, “You bunch of babies! There are 75 of you here, and you could do every single item on this list if you just decided to do them.” Naturally, many people took offense, and he had pretty much lost control of the meeting. But that “You bunch of babies!” line was a memorable one, and I’ve heard it repeated in conversation many times over the years.
It strikes me that, from a pastoral standpoint, what Al Bamsey said had a similar feel to what Jesus said about worthless slaves. And on the surface, the content of what Al said may seem similar. The tasks before you seem daunting, but you could do them if you just try. But in actuality, what Al and Jesus say are not similar at all. Al Bamsey was talking about a long to-do list of programs and activities that people thought we should do, or ought to do, or that they wanted offered. Jesus is talking about something quite different, what he commands us to do.
Jesus employs the metaphor of a worthless slave, something that sounds terrible offensive and off-putting. But as I mulled over this metaphor, I began to see something liberating in it. A slave, especially a worthless slave, would not be asked to do too much. He would simply been given something simple to do, a task. Jesus seems to think he has done something similar with us. He has given us simple tasks. They sometimes require hard work, but we are more than capable of doing them.
However, we in the Church often make things complicated. We think we need the latest whiz-bang programs, innovative educational opportunities, and inspiring mission events. We need the latest and greatest thing that the church down the street has or that the big mega-church is doing if we are going to keep up.
But we don’t. We don’t need more and more. We simply need to listen and hear the work Jesus gives us. We need to set aside those things that come from our own egos or assumptions or expectations about what a church is supposed to be. We need to take a look at our lives, both here, at home, and at work, and ask ourselves, “How have we gotten ourselves overwhelmed and frazzled and burned out by chasing after things that do not truly matter?” We need to stop, to step back from our busyness, and listen for Jesus’ voice. Each of us needs to hear Jesus telling us what our work is, what our task is. Individually, and as a congregation, we need to separate religious busyness for the work Jesus gives us to do.
When we do that, the work may be hard, but it will not be overwhelming. It will not cause burnout, and our faith will be more than enough for the task. When we listen, Jesus speaks to us as he once did to those first disciples. “You already have faith aplenty. Just do as I have commanded you, and watch what happens.”
Most Christians are likely familiar with Jesus saying, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." Most of us are also familiar with how difficult this can be (along with how easy it is to chastise others for their failure to do so). But for some reason, a different part of today's gospel reading caught my attention. "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them."
Why is it that we love others? Why is it that we love anything? It certainly makes sense that we would love those who love us. In fact, this is probably how we learn to love. Children learn to love because they are loved by parents and family. And we learn to love in the way Jesus speaks because we are loved this way. As it says in 1 John 4:19, "We love because he first loved us."
Very often, loving our enemies is seen as one of those idealistic, impractical, even impossible demands of faith. But what if we viewed it more like the process of a child learning to love? A child who never learns to love is maladjusted and faces real difficulties in developing adult relationships. Might the inability to love those who do not love us work in similar fashion? Might it be a kind of maladjustment that severely hampers us in being the fully human creatures God desires us to be?
One popular understanding of Christianity says that believing in Jesus is the critical thing. Other stuff, such as loving you enemy, is in the extra credit category, a good thing, but not essential. Yet Jesus certainly doesn't talk this way. He commissions his followers to make disciples of all nations by "teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." And if Jesus is what it means to be fully human, then perhaps his telling us to love our enemies is like a parent telling a two year old to share a toy with a sibling. He is trying to teach us what is absolutely necessary if we are to live with others as we are meant to live.
Most of us are probably more familiar with the Beatitudes from Matthew's Sermon on the Mount than we are with the Sermon on the Plain in Luke. The blessings are so similar that both seem to be rooted in the same teaching of Jesus. But Luke's account contains something not found in Matthew, a corresponding list of woes, and so we see both sides, the blessed and the cursed.
The final woe or curse hits me a little hard. "Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets." Different things motivate different people, but one of the things I crave is the approval of others. Nothing strokes my ego like a "Good sermon," or receiving a number of positive comments on a blog post. So should I be glad when no one says anything, and should I worry when I receive a few extra pats on the back?
If you read through the list of woes, you'll probably find one or two that gore your favorites, but what does this mean? If would be fairly simple to get people to speak badly of me. I could preach sermons that condemned my congregation for its failures. But would that mean God was happy with me, that I was blessed.
At the risk of spiritualizing Jesus' words, I wonder if both the Sermon on the Plain and the Sermon on the Mount aren't about aligning ourselves with the Kingdom, with the new order of things that will exist when God's will is done on earth as well as in heaven. In our world, being rich generally requires others to be poor. And having people speak well of me often requires me to assure people that the way we live and the things we chase after are perfectly compatible with God's coming reign.
It seems to me that one of the most difficult things about following Jesus is genuinely receiving God's love while at the same time hearing God's call to become something we are not. How do we live in ways that reflect God's Beloved Community while being honest about the ways in which we fall horribly short? It is easy to live at either pole. It is easy to be a community of affirmation where God blesses every conventional aspect of every member's life. And it is easy (if less popular) to be a "prophetic" community that calls down God's wrath on every conventional aspect of society. More difficult, it seems to me, is genuinely to embody God's love while also embodying a call to repent, to turn and become more and more like Christ, agents of God's dream for Creation.
Today's gospel reading is an easy text with which to attack biblical literalism. Jesus' disciples harvest grain (albeit a tiny amount), and then they do a quick threshing operation to separate wheat from chaff. Both actions appear to be violations of working on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees call them on it. Jesus' primary defense is not all that compelling. "Don't you remember that David broke the rules, too?" Clearly this business of following biblical rules is complicated, and requires interpretation.
But as easy as it is to dismiss biblical literalism, we mainline Christians often fall into a kind of relativism that reduces the faith to something along the lines of "Believe in God and be nice." Nothing terribly wrong with either of these, but neither is there anything terribly significant. It's a little hard to imagine the risen Jesus commissioning his followers, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations by teaching them to be nice."
The problem with biblical literalism is that it tends to substitute a text, or some portion of a text ,for the living, dynamic God. And it presumes that a relationship with this God can somehow be reduced to a one-size-fits-all set of instructions.
But if relationship with God is too complicated for an easy, neat, fit-every-situation set of instructions, that does not reduce the remaining choices to "Be nice." Consider the task of living in relationship with a spouse. There might not be an absolute set of rules that fit every situation, but long term, committed relationships require agreed upon standards of behavior if the relationship is to survive.
I come out of a stream of the Christian faith that has not tended toward literalism, and I personally find it overly simplistic, intellectually dishonest, and ultimately deadening to mature faith. But literalism is not the threat to my stream of Christianity. Thinking that following Jesus involves little more than believing a few things and "being nice" is.
Over the years I had a few encounters with parents who cared for a special needs child. In a couple of instances the disabilities of the child were profound, and it required tremendous amounts of time and energy from the parents. Sometimes the sibling of this special needs child felt a bit left out. I can only imagine what this must be like, with so much of their parents' attention focused on a brother or sister. It would be easy to be resentful, but those I've met have generally not seemed so. The sometimes lament their situation and are frustrated by it, but they recognize their parents are doing what they must do, what love requires.
I thought about this when I read Jesus' words in today's gospel. The religious folks are offended - as religious folks tend to be - that Jesus is hanging out with sinners. But Jesus insists that they need him more, saying, "I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance."
Many Christians like to think of God in parental terms, and some are insistent about referring to God exclusively as Father. (That this is a problem for a Trinitarian view of God is a topic for another day.) And yet some of these same Christians seem to conceive of God in the most un-parent like way, lavishing love and blessings on those who are "right" while preparing the most dastardly punishments for those who are not.
If God is in some way a loving Father, then is stands to reason that God might be a bit like the parent of a special needs child, lavishing special love and care on those who need it more. It isn't a matter of God loving the "good children" any less. It's a matter of some children needing more from God if they are to live full lives.
We Presbyterians don't have confessionals, and it is rare that someone comes to me to confess anything. But we do have confession as an integral part of our worship services. Each week, in some form or fashion, thousands of Presbyterian congregations (and other denominations) pray a prayer of confession together, have a time for silent personal confession, hear a prayer of confession offered on their behalf, or some combination thereof. And then, we're forgiven. "Believe the good news! In Jesus Christ you are forgiven," or something similar is said, and then we move on in the service.
I occurs to me that I've never discussed with very many people how they experience that moment. I have heard complaints over the years that prayers of confession are "downers" accompanied by a request to drop them. I've had people tell me they didn't think the prayer in the bulletin applied to them. But I've never heard much about what it means or how it feels to be forgiven.
Jesus finds himself in hot water over his "Your sins are forgiven you," in our gospel reading today. We toss around forgiveness as freely and easily as a "Hi, how are you," on Sunday morning. But to some of the religious folks in the synagogue with Jesus, his offer of forgiveness was a huge deal, something they couldn't believe he had the authority to do.
And so Jesus heals a paralyzed man as proof of his authority. Makes me glad no one ever challenges my authority to forgive. Faith healings have never been my forte. Not much likelihood of me causing a stir in the sanctuary one Sunday morning with people in awe, glorifying God, and saying, "We have seen strange things today."
I wonder what things they thought were the strangest. Healing a paralyzed man is no small feat, but the original issue is the authority to forgive. And for that matter, did Jesus think this paralyzed man needed forgiveness more than he needed healing? Strange things indeed.
I think one of my own troubles with this passage is a tendency to think of God's forgiveness in terms of a category, something I have or don't. This is often linked to notions of salvation, and so forgiveness becomes about categories of in and out. But I'm gradually coming to see forgiveness as a wellness issue, as something that addresses addresses what ails us both individually and corporately.
When I look at my own life and the relationships I have; when I look at our society and the current state of partisan rancor, it seems that I and many others carry around with us lots of hurts and wounds, lots of grudges and enmity, and significant difficulty trusting others. We need to protect ourselves against the other. Sometimes this other is our enemy or opponent, and sometimes this other is someone we love. And all these relationship problems get carried over into our relationship with God. When we are angry at God, we often won't admit it. We feel the need to hide parts of ourselves from God for self protection.
And so all of us desperately need forgiveness. Not the "You're forgiven and now on God's good side" sort of forgiveness, but the restored relationship with God and others sort of forgiveness. We all desperately need this sort of healing forgiveness that frees us to be more fully alive, that frees us to discover deep joy in loving God, self, and others.
Jesus said to those questioning his authority to forgive, "Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Stand up and walk'?" Strange things indeed.
How does God feel about the state of human affairs? What does God think about a world that is filled with war, where some are fabulously wealthy while others starve, where even in a rich country such as America, thousands of children live in poverty and receive a substandard education that will leave them trapped in poverty? How does God feel about a world that sees less and less need for God, that "believes" in God without that impacting people's behavior one whit?
One might expect God to be angry. Indeed many religious traditions speak of an angry God who stands ready to punish, who doesn't blink an eye over sending people into eternal torment.
Certainly God is angry in today's Old Testament reading from Hosea. It is the anger of a lover who has been betrayed. God is the faithful husband who has lavished gifts on a beloved, yet that beloved has sought other lovers. In pain and anguish, God threatens to lash out at this unfaithful spouse.
But then comes a most surprising turn. Out of God's woundedness comes an improbable therefore. "Therefore, I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. From there I will give her her vineyards, and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she shall respond as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt." Though God is the injured party, though God is the one who has been wronged, God woos Israel. God seeks to fan the flames of love and restore the passion that has been lost.
This is what God does in Jesus. God's anger, God's upset at human folly and waywardness, at our continual chasing after things more alluring than God, issues forth in the surprising "therefore" of the cross. It is heard in Jesus' longing as he weeps over Jerusalem.
God as wounded lover is an image that needs to be claimed especially by the Church. For it is in the Church that God is most especially wounded. Those who have never known any sort of relationship with God cannot wound God in quite the same manner we can. For we are those who profess our love, but then sneak off to cavort with other lovers. Yet even for us, God says, "I will allure you. I will speak tenderly to you, so that we may once again know that love where each of us had eyes only for the other."
On those Sundays when I am not preaching and hear rather than speak a sermon, I often find myself wondering what I would have done with the same scripture verses. One hazard of being a pastor is the difficulty of listening to another's sermon without critiquing. But besides that, I often make judgments about the scripture itself. Sometimes it is, "Boy, I wish those verses had showed up when I was preaching." Other times it is, "I'm glad someone else had to wrestle with that."
Today is somewhere in between. On the one had, Luke 16's parable of the rich man and Lazarus 16 is rich with sermon possibilities. But on the other hand, the text speaks a message that may not be all that palatable. And so this is also a text that often gets domesticated.
Like Mary's Magnificat earlier in Luke's gospel, this parable speaks of a radical reversal, of the poor lifted up and the rich pulled down. Such language is unpopular. We prefer that all be lifted up, but Luke says in several places that good news for the poor is coupled with bad news for the rich. Because of our discomfort, sermons on this text often turn the parable into a lesson on helping the poor. We take a little food to homeless shelter and feel good about ourselves even though we remain heavily invested in a world where our suburban lives are sustained by migrant workers, children in third world factories, and our nation consuming unfathomable and unsustainable quantities of the world's resources.
How do you preach from a text where good news for some means bad news for others, and you're among the others? How are the rich and comfortable to find some good word in Jesus' Kingdom parable of reversal? To be honest, I am not entirely sure. But I suspect that good news for us starts when, like members of AA, we admit who we are, when we admit that our things and our personal comforts often blind us to those who are first in the Kingdom of God. I'm not sure we can hear much good news in these verses until we take that step.
What must it have been like to encounter the earthly Jesus, to meet him as he went about his ministry? When the gospels attempt to share something of this with us, they are no doubt hindered by the impossibility of rendering such an experience in words. But a common refrain in the gospels describes Jesus as "speaking with authority." This is in our gospel for today along with another common refrain, demons recognizing Jesus.
I think that both of these refrains are attempts to describe Jesus' spiritual presence. Jesus taught just as many other rabbis did. He read from the same scriptures and his teachings sometimes had much in common with others. But even when he said the very same thing as others it sounded different, and people could sense it. "They were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority."
In the same way, demons recognizing Jesus speaks of this same spiritual presence. We don't live in the world of the gospel writers, a world that was filled with demons that caused all sorts of things we would attribute to other causes. But the fear expressed by these semi-divine agents of the First Century speaks to an incredible spiritual presence in Jesus, a vivid sense of God at work that could bend events toward God's will.
I think the Church would do well to focus more on this issue of presence. We need to realize that authority is less about facts and ideas well marshaled, presented, and argued, and more about God's presence. The hunger for spirituality in our day is in many ways a hunger for just such an authority.
The presence and authority that Jesus manifested was all out of proportion to the number of followers he had, the financial resources at his disposal, or his connections to people in power. It was the power of spiritual presence, of God actively at work in him. And as the body of Christ, the Church also must seek this sort of power and authority, one derived from God's presence palpably moving in our midst. Even in a day when congregations face shrinking numbers and financial resources, when we draw nearer to God, when we become more open to the Spirit, our authority grows, and we become truer to our call of being Christ to the world.
Jesus' visit to his hometown of Nazareth is narrated somewhat differently in the different gospels. And for my money, Luke's account is the most striking. Not only does Jesus explicitly identify himself with prophecies of a new age, of good news for the poor, captive, oppressed, and the coming of God's Jubilee, but he seems to go out of his way to upset and alienate the hometown folks.
In other gospel accounts, the good people of Nazareth are at first impressed but then remember that Jesus comes from no special background and has exhibited no remarkable qualities to date, and so they "took offense." But in Luke, while everyone is speaking well of him, Jesus gives offense. He starts talking about prophets not being accepted in their hometowns and then reminds everyone of times when God's saving power was offered to Gentiles and not to those in Israel. If Jesus wanted to be run out of town, he could not have done any better.
I don't know for certain why Luke chooses to tell this story so differently, but I suspect that his understanding of Jesus fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy, bringing good news to the poor and release to the captives, carries with it an inherently offensive message for many. This is perhaps even more so for "religious folks."
Religious people often anticipate and expect some sort of blessing from God for their religiousness. But the Kingdom that Jesus proclaims often seems to offer blessings to those outside the mainstream. Isaiah's prophecy speaks of the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed, and (in the Jubilee year) all those in debt and who have lost the family land over the years. According to Luke and Jesus, God's new day is about blessings showered on those in need, whom the world has not blessed, and this carries with it an inevitable offense to those who assumed they'd figured out the formula for God's blessing. And Jesus doesn't wait for the Jerusalem congregation to figure this out on their own. He goes ahead and smacks them over the head with it. (Jesus would have made a terrible pastor.)
Years ago, my wife wrote something she heard Bono (of U2 fame) say at a Washington, DC prayer breakfast. Bono quoted someone, but I don't know who. All it says on my refrigerator is, "Don't ask God to bless what you are doing. Get involved in what God is doing. It is already blessed."
Sometimes I think that many church folks, much like the good people of Nazareth, presume that we, as well as what we are doing, are somehow already blessed by God. Maybe that's why Jesus launches a preemptive strike that day in Nazareth. And I wonder what he would say if he stopped by one of our congregations and read a little Isaiah to us one Sunday.
I've always found today's reading in Acts somewhat curious. Paul comes across some fellows who are called simply "disciples" and "believers." There is no disciples of whom or believers in what, just disciples and believers. So these fellows must in some way be attempting to follow Jesus. But then we discover that these fellows didn't receive the Holy Spirit at their baptisms. In fact, their baptism apparently wasn't Christian but one connected with John the Baptist. (This doesn't necessarily mean that they had gone to be baptized by John in the wilderness. John's disciples were still active long after his death.)
So it would seem that these folks received a baptism of repentance from a disciple of John, and they also had heard and embraced the gospel of Jesus. But because they have not received the Holy Spirit, the story in Acts views them as not yet full Christians. They are almost Christian, but without the Holy Spirit, without being gifted by the Spirit in ways that would help build up the Church, they don't quite meet the minimum standards.
I once preached a sermon from this story that got one member terribly upset. She insisted that as long as she had faith she was "saved" (her word), and that was that. Everything else was icing on the cake. But these verses in Acts seem to disagree. They insist that if the Spirit is not present and at work in someone's life, they are not quite Christians, almost Christians. (I'm not talking here about the status of such folks when they die. I'm talking about whether or not they are part of the Jesus movement the Acts story calls "the Way.")
We Presbyterians have tended to be suspicious of things too associated with the Holy Spirit. We like things "decently and in order," and the Spirit is too unpredictable, too messy. Does that mean that we are almost Christians?
Today's reading from Luke continues the story of John the Baptist's ministry. Yesterday we heard John call those who came to be baptized "a brood of vipers." He warned them that the ax was poised to chop down trees that don't bear good fruit, and he said that whoever had two coats must share with anyone who has none; the same with food.
Today John says he is not the Messiah, but the Messiah is coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. Also, "His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." And after all these uplifting words about vipers, axes, winnowing forks, and unquenchable fire comes this, "So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people."
This is good news? The Messiah is coming, and he's ready to separate wheat from chaff, to chop down every tree that doesn't bear good fruit. This is something to get excited about?
Now one possibility is that Jesus is not exactly who John expected. He was hoping Jesus would give everyone their due but Jesus did a lot more forgiving than John foresaw. That's possible. But I think the reason Luke calls John's message good news is because it is the language of the coming day of the Lord, of God's Kingdom arriving.
The good news here is that God is about to inaugurate the new age. God is beginning the process of setting creation right, of lifting up the poor and freeing the oppressed. God has begun the work of transforming creation into what it was meant to be. Mary has already told us in her Magnificat that this will involve a leveling, a lifting up of some and pulling down of others. And John now uses traditional prophetic language to say this moment has arrived.
But still, I wonder how many of us with a lot more than two coats find this good news. When the inequalities of this world are in our favor, does a leveling sound like good news? I don't know about you, but I would prefer that people get lifted up to where I am rather than my being pulled down.
I wonder if welcoming the Kingdom doesn't require a radical sort of trust, trust that the things we count on for security are illusions, trust that letting go of what we have opens us to life that cannot be found in clinging to it, trust that I do not need to rise above others but need to move toward them. None of this is prosperity gospel type good news. But it seems to be good news in the eyes of God.
The governing board of the church I previously served once had a discussion about whether to sign a "commitment to peacemaking" from our denomination. Not a great deal is required of congregations that sign on, and it would seem a no-brainer given the Jesus says, "Blessed are the peacemakers." As a relatively new pastor, I had received something from our presbytery (that's our regional governing body) that indicated our church had never signed this commitment, and apparently presbyteries like to brag about having high percentages of congregations who have.
Assuming this had simply never come up before, I brought it to the next Session meeting and was stunned by the furor that ensued. Only a few board members were for signing the commitment, and the others thought this a blatant example of the church sticking its nose into politics, something it clearly shouldn't do. A couple of elders were offended and upset that this would somehow connect us to the Vietnam anti-war protests. By the way, this happened in 1997.
Today's gospel reading from Luke rattles off a long list of the politically powerful, beginning with the Roman emperor. Luke locates the ministry of John the Baptist squarely within the political structures of the day. And John tells the people of that day to get ready for something new. Interestingly, Luke specifically mentions tax collectors and soldiers, parts of the political structure of the day, among those who come to John for baptism. And what John tells them to do is contrary to the way the system worked. Tax collectors made their money by collecting "more than the amount prescribed," and it was expected that soldiers would use their power to supplement their meager salaries.
The verses that precede and that follow our reading also speak to the the political situation. The very fact that Jesus is a king and that he proclaims the kingdom of God speaks of politics. We modern Christians seem to forget that king and kingdom are political terms, and to proclaim an alternative kingdom to that of the Romans could get one killed. (Oh, that's what happened to Jesus, isn't it?)
The opening chapters of Luke are filled with political language. The poor are lifted up and the rich and powerful are pulled down. Jesus says he is the fulfillment of prophecies to release the captive and let the oppressed go free, that proclaim the year of God's jubilee, which by the way required the forgiveness of debts and the return of land to its original owners. What messy politics that would make.
There are certainly ways in which some Christians mix their faith and their politics badly, and this is the case for Christians on the right and the left politically. But there is simply no denying that John the Baptist calls people to get ready for a new day that is at odds with politics as usual. And Jesus calls people to become citizens of a coming Kingdom, a shift in loyalties that will, at the very least, call into question loyalties to current political structures and systems.
I don't think you can "spiritualize" the Kingdom Jesus proclaims. When it becomes divorced from how things are on earth, the status of the poor and oppressed; when it no longer calls the faithful to live in ways that conform to God's new day even if that causes conflict with this age, then the kingdom we proclaim is something quite different from what Jesus says has come near.
John the Baptist asks us all the question, What are we doing to get ready for a new regime, a new order, the one God is bringing? Are we living in ways that demonstrate our loyalty to the politics of our day, or are we living in ways that proclaim our loyalty to the promise, hope, and vision Jesus insists is drawing near?
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