Month: February 2023

More Than These

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon on Matthew 4:1-11.

Today marks the first Sunday in our church’s journey through the 40 days of Lent. Christians have traditionally thought about this season as a time for “repentance” in preparation for the Feast of Easter. For many people, the word “repent” conjures up the mental image of a televangelist shouting through the TV screen in Elizabethan English: “REPENT of thy sins, for the end of days draweth nigh!”

If we were somehow able to ask that preacher, through the TV, what he thinks the word “repent” means, he would probably say it means to fall on our knees and grovel before the Almighty, wallowing in guilt for our many transgressions. For many people, both inside and outside the church, that’s what the word “repent” means. There’s only one problem with this definition: That’s not what the word “repent” means.

In the New Testament, which was written in Greek, the word that gets translated as “repent” is metanoia. If we break this word down into its constituent parts, we get meta, which literally means, “change,” and noia, which means, “mind.” So, the word “repent,” in its original meaning, actually means, “to change your mind” or “to think differently.” “Thinking differently,” rather than “wallowing in guilt,” is the definition of “repentance” I’d like us to keep in mind as we begin our journey through Lent, toward Easter.

In today’s gospel, Jesus invites us to think differently about who we are, as human beings. This story, ostensibly about Jesus’ temptation by the devil in the wilderness, is also a story about all of us. The temptations that the devil puts before Jesus are not mainly about moral evil, per se, but the instinctive draw to identify with one part of our nature instead of the whole people we were created to be.

In the first temptation, the devil says to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” Now, I think we can all agree there’s nothing morally wrong with making bread. After all, if Jesus had the power to do so, wouldn’t he use it to end world hunger? The deeper meaning of this temptation becomes clear when we see it as a symbol of the human instinct for survival.

According to evolutionary brain science, the basic survival instinct is located in the brain stem and cerebellum. This part of our brains, called “the reptilian brain,” evolved earlier than any other part. The reptilian brain is concerned with the three S’s: Safety, Sustenance, and Sex.

Safety is the fight or flight response. If you’re alone at night and hear a loud noise behind you, your stomach will probably jump. In that moment, adrenaline will start coursing through your body, preparing you to run fast or fight hard, depending on what the situation requires. You’ll be scanning the area for the cause of the noise because this is the instinct God gave you in order to keep yourself safe from danger.

Sustenance is the craving you have for sugars, fats, and salts. These items were rare in the time before McDonald’s existed, so our evolutionary ancestors developed a craving to consume as much of them as possible. This instinct kept them alive through the lean times, so they generously passed them down to us.

Sex, of course, is the way in which we pass our genetic material to the next generation. Without reproduction, a species is in danger of immediate extinction, so God gifted us with this natural desire in order to continue to the story of humanity for another generation.

Safety, sustenance, and sex are all very normal and natural parts of our humanity. But they, by themselves, cannot create the kind of abundant life that God intends for us. If we live only by the power of these basic instincts, we will quickly tear ourselves apart and damage our capacity for human flourishing, so God gave us additional instincts to hold our animal urges in check. This is why Jesus quotes the Torah, in response to the devil, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ “ He was saying that there is more to life than the gratification of our natural impulses.

In the second temptation, the devil takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem. He says to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ “ This symbolizes the drive that humans have for affection and esteem.

The pinnacle of the Temple was the most public place in Judaism at that time. If Jesus performed a death-defying miracle in that place, the crowd would surely see it and give him their undivided attention, not to mention their admiration. In scientific terms, this is the social instinct, corresponding to the brain’s limbic system, which evolved tens of millions of years ago in the first mammals. This part of the brain holds our more basic instincts in check. For example, if I eat all the food without sharing, mate with whoever I want, or kill anyone who makes me angry, I run the risk of being kicked out of my family group. The social instinct balances out my selfishness and makes it possible for us to live in groups and families.

The problem is that this instinct, by itself, causes problems like jealousy, people-pleasing, and codependency. If we live our whole lives according to our need to be liked, we end up compromising on things that really matter and divide ourselves into tribes that battle for supremacy. There is more to life than being admired. This is why Jesus quotes the Torah a second time, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ “

In the final temptation, the devil takes Jesus to the top of a high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world. He said to Jesus, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” This is the temptation to power, which corresponds with the most recently evolved part of the human brain: the neocortex.

The neocortex is the computer part of the brain. This is where we do all the things we think of as “thinking.” We make calculations and predictions, envision hypothetical scenarios, and develop plans for action. Humans have an amazing ability, more than any other animal, to recognize patterns of cause and effect. We can formulate universal moral values that transcend our basic instincts and tribal loyalties. Through the power of reason, human beings have cured diseases, explored the solar system, and developed systems of political and economic organization that govern the whole planet.

But, here too, there is a dark side. Those same rational abilities have also given us the power to deceive ourselves, manipulate others, create weapons of mass destruction, and develop social systems that privilege the greed of the few over the needs of the many.

Jesus says “No” to all of that;
Jesus says “No” to racism and sexism;
Jesus says “No” to homophobia and transphobia;
Jesus says “No” to socialist oppression and capitalist exploitation;
Jesus says “No” to mass extinction;
Jesus says “No” to men who use their positions of power in order to take sexual advantage of the women who work for them;
Jesus says “No” to unarmed black men being gunned down by police officers;
Jesus says “No” to churches who tell their teenagers they are going to hell for being gay or trans;
Jesus says “No” to immigration systems that put children in cages;
Jesus says “No” to countries who build nuclear bombs when their schools can’t afford textbooks;
Jesus says “No” to a world where children die of malaria, for lack of a 25 cent vaccination.
Jesus says “No” to all of that.
Jesus says, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ “

All of these temptations lead us back to one question: “Who are you?” When the devil approaches Jesus with these temptations, he begins with a challenge, “If you are the Son of God…”

Bear in mind that, in the passage immediately before the one we read today, Jesus was baptized by John in the River Jordan. When “he came up from the water,” the Scriptures say, “suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ “

Jesus was able to resist the devil’s temptations to identify with his survival instincts, his need for social status, and his desire for power because he knew who he really was, as God’s beloved Son. The very same thing is true of you, today.

You, whoever you are, are the beloved child of God.
You are more than a bundle of cravings for rage, lust, and gluttony;
you are the beloved child of God.
You are more than your need for social esteem and affection;
you are the beloved child of God.
You are more than your desire for power and control;
you are the beloved child of God.

All of these are parts of you that deserve to be welcomed with compassion, but none of them gets to dominate the whole,
because you are more than these things;
you are the beloved child of God.

Any inner voice that tempts you to believe otherwise is the original liar from the pit of hell. Don’t listen to that voice. Listen instead to Jesus, who says, “You are the beloved child of God. Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”

Going Backward is Not the Answer

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon on Matthew 17:1-9.

Back when I was in the fourth grade, I had a great year. My teacher at school, Mrs. Gustafson, was amazing. I made friends with a new kid who had just emigrated from Poland. I really felt like I was on top of my schoolwork and I was actually enjoying my life, for once. But then, disaster struck.

The name of my particular disaster was “The Fifth Grade.” I didn’t like my new teacher. My friend from Poland got placed in another class. The schoolwork was way harder than it had been the year before. I was miserable.

But then, I had an absolutely genius idea. “If I’m not happy where I am,” I thought, “then I should go back to the last place where I was happy.” So, I went to see my school’s guidance counselor, Mr. Arnold, to share my genius idea.

“I don’t think I’m ready for fifth grade,” I said, “so I think I need to go back to fourth grade and do it all over again.”

Mr. Arnold, if you can believe it, did not find my idea as brilliant as I did. In fact, he laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair. I was puzzled.

“You’re not going back to fourth grade,” he said, “you’ve already done that. You did well. You graduated. And I hear you when you say that this year has been rough, but believe me when I tell you: you are ready for this challenge. Going backward is not the answer.”

Growing up is hard, but going backward is not the answer.

I want to invite you to think of a time in your life when you faced a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. What parts of you wished you could go back to the way things used to be? In what ways did you want to just give up on this new challenge and stick with the old problems that felt comfortable and familiar? How did you react when you realized that going backward was not an option, so the only thing to do was to keep putting one foot in front of the other?

That’s how I imagine the early Christians felt in the time when Matthew wrote his gospel. The people to whom Matthew was writing were scared because they had just been excommunicated as heretics by the leaders of their religious tradition. Some of them probably wondered whether this whole “Jesus the Messiah” thing had been a big mistake and they should go back to practicing the faith of their ancestors, as it had been taught to them.

Matthew’s point, as you heard me say in my last few sermons, is to demonstrate how the movement that Jesus started stands in continuity with traditional Judaism. But he also points out the ways in which this Jesus movement is a step forward into a new way of understanding the faith of their ancestors.

The early Christians were branded as heretics because they had the audacity to proclaim they had experienced something, through this person Jesus, that had never been seen before. The God of their ancestors, they said, had somehow become embodied in a human being. In Christ, the immediate presence of God could be seen, heard, and felt. The early Jews and Christians had no theological category for this kind of experience. Some rejected it as heresy while others accepted it as mysterious truth.

The story of the Transfiguration, which we heard in today’s reading from Matthew’s gospel, tells us about a time when Jesus’ first followers get a brief glimpse of the divinity that flows through him. For just a moment, the veil of this world is pulled back and the disciples witness things as they really are. Through his conversation with Moses and Elijah, Jesus stands in dialogue with the Torah and prophets of Jewish tradition. By the light that radiates from within him, Jesus represents a new revelation of divine glory that leads the tradition into places it has never been before.

The early followers of Jesus realized that this new experience of God in Christ would certainly make people uncomfortable, but they also realized that going backward was not the answer. In this way, they were a bit like the famous scientist Galileo, who used his telescope to prove that the Earth is not the center of the universe. The ecclesiastical authorities in 1633 forced Galileo to sign an official denial of his findings, although the mounting evidence eventually led the Vatican to apologize and admit that Galileo had been right… in the year 1992.

New experiences can sometimes make us feel uncomfortable, when they go against our previously conceived notions of reality, but experience itself shows that, if we can open our minds, we will find ourselves in awe of an expanding universe whose creativity exceeds our wildest expectations. The scientific word for this is, “emergence.”

Physicists tells us that, in the first few seconds after the Big Bang, only the most basic elementary particles existed. Almost 400,000 years later, the first stable atoms began to form. Sometime after that, those atoms collided to form molecular bonds, making chemistry possible for the first time. 9 billion years after that, on this planet anyway, complex chemical reactions stabilized in a way that allowed single-celled life to form. This was the beginning of biology. And then, about a billion years ago, those single-celled organisms figured out how to work together so well that they formed complex beings with specialized nervous systems and brains. And then, in the last 2 million years, those brains became advanced enough to develop psychological self-awareness in the form of human beings.

With each new level of emergence, from physics to chemistry to biology to psychology, the universe gave birth to new ways of relating that were previously impossible and even inconceivable. No one could have predicted, at the beginning of time, how the elementary particles of the universe would one day take the shape of human beings with names like “Barrett” and “Karen.”

This is how the creativity of God works: Constantly leading us out of our narrow-but-familiar comfort zones and into new levels of experience. Faith, in this expanding and complexifying universe, is about trusting in the creative process, even when (especially when) our experience of that creative process challenges our preconceived notions about reality.

The first followers of Jesus understood this. They realized that their experience of divinity in the person of Christ would change their idea of God forever. They knew that this experience would get them excommunicated from their religious tradition. Yet, they continued to trust in their experience of Jesus because they knew, as Mr. Arnold once told me, that going backward is not the answer.

Well, as it turns out, Mr. Arnold was right. Going back to fourth grade was not the answer for me. The rest of fifth grade continued to be pretty rough, but I got through it and kept moving forward. The years to come presented me with new challenges. Sometimes, I admit, I felt like giving up again but I kept putting one foot in front of the other and got through those challenges too. Along the way, I met new teachers I loved, made new friends, and got to learn things that set my mind and heart on fire in ways I would have missed, had I spent the rest of my life in the fourth grade.

When you look at your life, in what ways do you sometimes feel like going back to the way things used to be? What seemingly insurmountable challenges are in front of you today that make you want to give up and stick with the old and familiar ways of being? I won’t deny that it feels scary, because I sometimes feel scared about it too.

I want to invite you, as you face these challenges, to remember the words that my guidance counselor once told me: Going backward is not the answer. I want to encourage you with the image of Peter, James, and John with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. God revealed something new through Jesus that had never been seen before. It changed the world in ways that we still don’t fully understand. Keep trusting in this creative process and follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who leads you down this mountain and into a bigger world that shines a little brighter than it did before.

Not Dying, But Growing

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments

This week’s sermon is on Matthew 5:13-20.

My name is Barrett and I am a Recovering Fundamentalist.

When I was a teenager and young adult, I became part of a religious subculture that prided itself on the virtue of absolute certainty. The Bible, so they thought, was meant to be taken literally and contained the answer to any question one could ask, regardless of the subject. Their interpretation of the Bible, so they told us, was the one-and-for-all absolutely correct interpretation. Anyone who questioned or disagreed with their understanding of the faith was surely a heretic, deceived by Satan, and bound to face divine punishment.

I bought into this ideology for a while. It was comforting, as a young person growing up in a large and complicated world, to have absolute certainty about what was true and right. It felt safe to be able to appeal to a trusted authority whenever I felt confused or conflicted about a situation I was facing. Whatever happened, I thought, I could comfort myself with the knowledge that I had held fast to the infallible standard of truth and morality, revealed from the very mouth of God.

But life, it seems, has a funny way of messing with your sense of certainty. When I grew up and went away to college and later seminary, I began to be exposed to facts about the world that called my certainty into question. It began slowly, as I learned things about science and other cultures. I saw incontrovertible evidence that the universe is more than six thousand years old and human beings had developed gradually from other forms of life. I met Christians who disagreed with my interpretation of the faith and learned about other religious traditions, but quickly discovered that these were not hell-bound heretics, but wonderful people who live good lives and just so happen to see things a little bit differently from me. Later, I learned that the Bible is not a monolithic book but a complicated library of many voices, all having a conversation about what matters most in life. Finally, I came to the conclusion that I had been wrong about many of the ideas that I had held onto so tightly. I realized that my comfortable and comforting certainty was actually quite harmful to myself and others.

On that day, I realized, I had begun to experience my first crisis of faith. I felt lost, betrayed, and forsaken. I wondered, “If I could be so wrong about one part of my faith, then who’s to say that the rest of it isn’t total bologna as well? Am I still a Christian? Do I even believe in God anymore?” These were live questions for me and the consequences felt very real. My faith had sustained me through all kinds of trials and tribulations, but now it felt like that faith was dying.

Have you ever found yourself in a mental or emotional place like this? Maybe, like me, it happened when you found yourself questioning the religious or political beliefs you had grown up espousing. Maybe, for you, it happened when a role or relationship, by which you had identified yourself, suddenly ended. Empty-nesters, divorcees, and retirees will all know what I am talking about here. As humans, we naturally identify with the most significant roles and relationships in our lives. Whenever we meet new people, we ask them about their job, spouse, or kids. We ask them where they grew up and what sports teams they root for. As we get to know them, we might learn more about their political and religious affiliations. As humans, we mix all these things together and say, “That’s who they are.” We might even mix them together for ourselves, look in the mirror, and say, “This is who I am.” So, it makes sense that, when one or more of these arbitrary categories is changed or challenged, our felt sense of identity begins to unravel. We take a second look in that mirror and ask, “Who am I, anyway?”

This state of affairs, while difficult, presents us with the most pregnant opportunity for spiritual growth that we may ever have.

The Christian Church, in its first century of existence, found itself in exactly that kind of situation. Matthew’s gospel, as you heard me say in last week’s sermon, was written with the explicit intent of demonstrating Christianity’s continuity with traditional Jewish religion. This is important, because Jesus never intended to found a new religion. He only ever thought of himself as a good Jewish boy, just as Martin Luther only ever thought of himself as a good Catholic (not a Protestant) and John Wesley only ever thought of himself as a good Anglican (not a Methodist). Jesus was Jewish. All of his Apostles were Jewish. So, it made sense, then, that the early Christian movement thought of itself as a Jewish movement. But then a few significant things happened that called their Jewish identity into question.

First of all, the early Church began accepting Gentiles (i.e. people of non-Jewish origin) into their membership without expecting them to convert to Judaism and observe Torah. This caused no small amount of controversy among the first Christians. Much of this fight is delineated in the pages of the New Testament. The Church was nearly split in half by this fight. Ss. Peter and Paul can be seen wrestling with the issue in their Epistles and in the book of Acts. But, as we know from history, the Church eventually decided to come down on the side of grace and inclusion. They could not deny the presence of the Spirit’s work among the Gentiles and they believed that their God was big enough to wrap those divine arms around the whole world.

This decision put those early Christians at odds with their fellow Jews. The traditional religious leaders accused them of diluting ancient bloodlines and assimilating to pagan cultural norms, all in the name of Jesus, who they had branded as a heretic, anyway. Christians, then, were summarily excommunicated from Jewish circles of fellowship.

As all of this was happening, St. Matthew was writing his gospel. Christians, especially Jewish Christians, were asking themselves, “Who are we? We followed this Jesus because we believe he is the promised Messiah of the Jewish people, but now those same people have told us we don’t count as ‘real Jews’ anymore. What do we do now?” These are questions that Matthew kept in mind as he was writing the gospel that bears his name. He wanted to make the point to his fellow Jewish Christians that Jesus, as well as the movement he started, stands in continuity with Judaism and not in opposition to it.

The gospel passage we read this morning highlights this effort on Matthew’s part. In verse 17, Jesus says, “Do not think I have come to abolish the Torah or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” This verse captures the essence of Jesus’ attitude toward the religious tradition of his upbringing. Some of his opponents accused him of trying to destroy Jewish tradition; some antisemitic Christians throughout the centuries have sincerely wished he would do just that. But Jesus, in his usual way, manages to transcend both extremes by honoring his heritage and leading it forward, at the same time. In response to his opponents’ accusations of heresy, Jesus says to his followers, in verse 20, “I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

At first glance, this is a most shocking statement. The scribes were the most learned scholars of the Torah; the Pharisees were a populist group dedicated to strict observance of traditional morals and values. I like to call them, “The Upright Citizens’ Brigade.” These people were thought of as the paradigmatic examples of Jewish righteousness. How could anyone be more righteous than them? Jesus might just as well have said, “You need to be more Catholic than the Pope!”

And that, I think, is precisely the point. Jesus is ushering his followers into an experience that historians call a “paradigm shift.” He’s changing their point-of-view, at a fundamental level. He doesn’t want them to beat the scribes and Pharisees at their own game; he wants them to stop playing the game.

The kingdom of heaven, as you heard me say last week, is not some destination in the afterlife, but Jesus’ vision of the way this world ought to be. Jesus is saying, in effect, “In order to build the kind of world that we are trying to build here, you have to learn to think outside the boxes you’ve been given.”

To Jesus’ original listeners, this would have sounded like an impossible challenge, but to Matthew’s community of struggling Jewish Christians at the end of the first century, it would have felt like a breath of fresh air. Finally, as they heard these words from the mouth of their Savior, they could begin to form an identity of their own, with roots dug deep in traditional Judaism and branches stretching wide enough to give shade to the whole world. For the first time, perhaps, these Jewish Christians were beginning to get the notion that their faith was not dying, but growing.

That was the same notion I began to get on the far side of my journey away from Fundamentalism. To some in the communities of which I was formerly a part, I am now a heretic who has abandoned the faith once delivered to the saints. I no longer live with the comfortable certainty that my understanding of truth and righteousness is infallible for all time. Thanks to many wise mentors and the books they wrote, not least of which is The Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer, I am coming to believe in a God who is infinitely bigger and better than the narrow-minded bean-counter I had imagined before. My faith is learning to embrace doubt, not because it is dying, but because it is growing. When I look in the mirror today and ask, “Who am I, anyway?”, I can honestly answer, “I don’t know!” But this I believe: That faith is not about having all the right answers, but is able to thrive in the rich dark soil of doubt and failure; that I am not the first Christian to ponder these questions, because Jesus and the earliest Christians have laid them out for me; and that I am loved by a Love that will not let me go, today or ever.

How about you? What do you believe when the storms of life beach your ship of certainty on the far shores of doubt and failure? Who are you when the tattered rags of your roles and relationships are stripped away and you stand in broad daylight, wearing nothing but what the Good Lord gave you?

May we all come to rest in the uncomfortable silence after these questions. May we embrace the not-knowing and trust in mystery in which we live and move and have our being.