Today is Palm / Passion Sunday. From the gospels, we heard about the final suffering and death of Jesus. Today also happens to be the 33rd anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.
I brought this icon to church and set it upright on the Communion Table as I preached.
Instead of my own sermon, I preached Archbishop Romero’s final homily: the one he was preaching when he was gunned down in a hospital chapel on March 24, 1980… one week to the day before I was born.
I have tears in my eyes to think that I was able to bring his words to life again this morning. One of the little old ladies at my church commented on her way out that what he said is even more relevant today than when he first preached it.
It is as the good Archbishop himself said: “If they kill me, I shall rise again in the Salvadoran people.” Not only Salvadoran…
By some amazing coincidence, the gospel text for Romero’s last homily was John 12:23-26:
Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be.
Maria, sister of Lazarus, meets Jesus who is going to their house (1864). By Nikolai Ge. Image Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
My favorite part of our church’s mission statement is the part at the end where we declare that we are “open to all and reaching out to the world in love.” I like to remind you of those words at the beginning of worship every Sunday because they speak volumes about who we are and what we do in this community. The world at large desperately needs to hear this message about a community that is truly “open to all”. So many other groups and organizations, even churches, divide themselves from one another along ideological lines. Here in this church, it is my privilege to be a pastor to so many people from so many different political and religious backgrounds. I can testify from experience that the Spirit who binds us together is deeper and broader than any one set of ideas or opinions. This is a church that has been built from the heart up, not from the mind down.
Almost everywhere else you can go in the world, the exact opposite is true. Most people want to know if you agree with them before they enter into a relationship with you. But we are different. We’ll move over and make room for you in the pew no matter who you are, where you’ve been, or what you think. We’ll just keep on telling you that we love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it!
Yup, we’re “open to all and reaching out to the world in love”. I want you to know this morning how rare and unique that is, especially for a church. I personally believe that this part of our identity is the key to our future as a church. This commitment to openness is what makes us different from so many other Christians, who make people pass some kind of dogma test before they’ll accept them.
Recently, I was engaged in an intense discussion with one of these “other Christians”. This person said to me, “You think it’s okay, in God’s eyes, for people to practice other religions. So then, why would anyone want to be Christian if it’s not the one and only true religion?” I thought that was a great question. Why would anyone choose to be Christian if they could also choose to be Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim?
I was reminded of this conversation when I read this week’s gospel passage from the lectionary. It’s the story of a woman named Mary of Bethany, who knelt at Jesus’ feet, anointing them with expensive perfume and wiping them with her hair. This was an incredible act of affection and devotion toward Jesus. Mary obviously loved and cared about him very much.
That got me thinking: if I was in Mary’s place, what is it about Jesus that would make me fall down on my knees in love and devotion? What is it about Jesus that makes me want to commit my life to him? Why am I a Christian?
I think this is a question that each and every one of us should ask. Whether you’ve just started coming to church or you’ve been here your whole life, you’ve decided to be here for a reason. We owe it to ourselves and the world to know what that reason is. I can’t answer that question for you. But what I can do is tell you why I’ve decided to be a Christian. I hope that my answer to this question might help you answer it for yourself.
So here’s what Christian faith means to me. This is what has driven me, like Mary of Bethany, to kneel down before the feet of Jesus and offer him all that I have and all that I am:
For me, being a Christian is all about love. Love is what I have experienced in and through the person Jesus of Nazareth. When religious scholars quizzed Jesus about the most important part of the Bible, he told them it all comes down to love: “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”.
Jesus embodied love in the way he lived his life. He broke bread with tax collectors, Jews who sold their own people out to the Romans in order to make a quick, dishonest buck. He pardoned the sin of a woman caught in adultery when the rest of her village was ready to stone her to death. He nurtured relationships with Samaritans, the ethnic and religious rivals of the Jews, and saw the best in them. He praised the faith of a pagan Roman soldier. He reached out and touched a leper, who had been shunned and exiled from society because of his disease. Finally, he spoke words of forgiveness to his executioners as they waited for him to die. This is love.
Love, he said, is the first duty of any religious person.
When he wasn’t around, Jesus called upon his followers to love each other in his place. Any good deed rendered unto the most despised and forgotten members of society, Jesus said in Matthew 25, he would count as service rendered unto him. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,you did it to me.”
The love that shone through Jesus came to have a profound impact on his followers. The apostle Paul declared that, if it wasn’t for love, all his words, knowledge, and faith would be meaningless. John the Beloved went so far as to let Jesus’ example of love redefine his idea of God: “God is love,” he said, “and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
What I learned through Jesus is that God is not some angry judge, sitting high up on a cloud, hurling down lightning bolts at people he doesn’t like. No, God is that dynamic energy of love that flows out from within us. God works through persuasion, not coercion. This divine love takes on an infinite variety of forms, depending on the person and the situation. As we open ourselves up to this love more and more, we are continually filled with God’s Spirit, and we begin to resemble Jesus. Love, then, is the measure of our faith, not religious dogma.
Through Jesus, I learn how to love and I learn that I am loved. Jesus didn’t just teach people about love, he didn’t just point to love. No, Jesus embodied love in his very being and person. Love shone through his every word and deed. That’s what I mean when I praise Jesus as the Son of God and the Incarnation of God: Jesus is the embodiment of divine love who invites me to do and be the same, in whatever imperfect and limited way that I am able.
This is what takes my breath away when it comes to Jesus. This is why I want to fall down at his feet and offer everything I have and all that I am, so that I might be part of that love too. This is the kind of God that I can believe in.
For me it is no contradiction to believe that the dynamic God of love I discovered in Jesus can be active in the lives of people from every time, place, culture, and religion. I hear the voice of this God whispering to me in the pages of the Bible and singing to me in the clouds at sunset. Jesus has opened my eyes, ears, mind, and heart to experience the presence of God in all things. For this, I am amazed and give thanks. What else can I do but collapse to my knees before Jesus and worship?
That is why I am a Christian. It has nothing to do with creeds, dogmas, or being the one and only true religion. It has everything to do with love. I hope and pray that the people around me will experience through me, in some degree, the love I have received through Jesus (whether they recognize it by that name or not).
How about you? Why are you here in church today? If you call yourself a Christian, why do you choose that label for yourself? I want to encourage each and every one of you to answer that question for yourself today. Something has brought you here. You are not sitting in this church by accident. It is therefore incumbent upon you to ask yourself: Why?
In your imagination, put yourself in Mary of Bethany’s place: kneeling at the feet of Jesus, offering the very best of what you have and who you are. What has brought you here? Even as you acknowledge and respect the faith of others who are different, something about this faith and this person, Jesus, has captured your attention. What is it?
Answer that question for yourself and don’t be afraid or ashamed to share your answer with the world. There are people out there who need to hear what you have to say. Go out there today and tell them.
“Preach the gospel always… use words when necessary.”
May your words and your deeds say to the people of this world: “I love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
The eyes of the nation have been on Central New York this week as Kurt Myers ripped through the villages of Mohawk and Herkimer (a half hour drive from my house) with a shotgun, killing four and wounding two, plus killing one police dog. Lydia Dittrich, one of my newest congregants at Boonville Presbyterian, had this to say on Facebook:
I am probably going to be throwing gasoline on sparks here but I just have to say……
I am saddened and distraught at the loss of 4 lives today here in Central New York. My heart goes out to everyone affected by this, from the families left behind, to the parents anguishing over their children’s safety at school, to the law enforcement officers who wake up with a job to do praying today is not that day.
It is a difficult thing when tragedy hits you where you live. It makes fear surge to the front of all other emotions. Adrenaline surges and the defensive response of “I will do whatever it takes to protect what is mine” kicks into high gear. You want to do nothing more than hole up with your family and count each hair on their head until the storm passes. Next comes the wave of community reaction, outcry and grief at the loss of life in their back yard.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is the definitive work on Grieving. There are five stages that each of us will go through as we begin to process and absorb the events of today’s attack in Herkimer NY. Denial (I can’t believe this is happening where I live), Anger (that sonofabitch ought to burn in hell for this), Bargaining (If only we could get those beloved people back, If only we could have prevented this–I would do anything), Despair (there is nothing I can do, and we failed) and Acceptance (it is terrible that tragedy has found us, but we are a community and we will come back stronger from this than ever before).
We all have different views on how the government and our communities will respond to this tragedy politically. Another strong reason for every person that can vote SHOULD vote…every election, every time.
My only request to my Facebook friends and family is that we accept each others’ points of view with grace on this topic. We don’t have to agree on it (how boring would life be if we did?) but the real crime in this tragedy will be the resulting social schism this senseless violence leaves behind if we stoop to word wars and status updates blasting the NRA, the government, our nations mental health system, the VA or any other entity that might be involved. Be KIND TO EACH OTHER and remember that everyone will respond to this in their own way, in their own time. Simply because we may disagree politically, does NOT mean it is worth hurting a friend that is still here.
To borrow my pastor’s favorite closing (thank you J. Barrett Lee)
I love you all, God loves you all, and there is NOTHING you can do about it. Be blessed, and be a blessing.
This community is going to need it.
Lydia and her family will be formally joining our church on Easter.
Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son (c.1663-1665). Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
The last one hundred and fifty years or so have borne witness to more technological and scientific advances than any other equivalent period of time in human history. From industry to the internet, from the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk to the first moon landing at Tranquility Base, from outer space to cyberspace, we have traveled farther, communicated faster, and dug deeper into the mysteries of the universe than previous generations could have dreamed possible.
In all this time, perhaps the greatest mystery we have encountered is the mystery of each other. Without a second thought, I can pull a hand-held device out of my pocket and initiate an instantaneous conversation with someone on the opposite side of the planet. Compare this ability to explorers like Magellan, whose trip around the globe cost him his life, four out of five ships, and all but 18 of his 270 crew members. Compare it to the life of the average peasant in medieval Europe, who would likely never travel more than 5 miles away from the spot where he was born. Our experience of the world in the early 21st century is so much more connected and cosmopolitan than our ancestors thought possible.
But it hasn’t been an entirely utopian experience, of course. This heightened interconnectivity has brought us into contact with people very different from ourselves. These people talk, dress, think, and worship very differently than we do. Our knowledge of the world has given rise to more questions. The most vexing of these questions have to do with religion. Once the average person became aware of so many different religions on this planet, and especially once they began living next door to people who practice these religions, how are we supposed to make sense of such diversity? With so many varieties of belief and so many opinions about the ultimate nature of reality, surely someone has to be right while everyone else is wrong, right?
These questions have sparked an ongoing debate about who God is and what God wants that has lasted to this day. It seems like there’s always some nut-case out there who is more than willing to stand up on national television and claim with unwavering certainty to have the one and only right answer about what God’s will is. Too many people, longing for something to hold onto in these confusing times, are only too willing to buy into such easy answers. As we have seen, time and again, these peddlers of snake-oil and easy answers can make their followers say and do the unthinkable. In exchange for absolute certainty about the will of God, people are willing to hand over the money in their bank accounts, cut off relations to friends and family, and even fly airplanes into buildings. The philosopher Voltaire said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” I like to pray a prayer I once saw on a bumper-sticker: “Lord, protect me from your followers!”
In these times of complication and confusion, the promise of absolute certainty feels like a virtue but turns out to be a vice. As it turns out, the way we hold our questions with our values is far more important than the answers we come up with.
In Jesus’ time, there was a group of people who claimed to have all the answers. They were the Pharisees. Erudite scholars of the Torah, these well-respected citizens seemed to possess a monopoly on the truth market. Their rabbis fielded questions of theology and ethics so well that they established themselves as defenders of the faith and guardians of family values. Theirs was a world of black and white easy answers. Faith and certainty went hand in hand with no room for mystery, doubt, or mercy.
You can imagine then that when Jesus came along, he really messed with their worldview. We read in the opening verses of this morning’s gospel passage that Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees were quite offended by this gesture, since eating with someone in that time and culture implied that you accepted that person just as he or she was. From their point of view, Jesus was sending the wrong kind of message for an upstanding citizen and an acclaimed rabbi. In response to their offended sensibilities, Jesus told them a story. It’s the famous story we now know as the parable of the prodigal son.
The story begins with a fictional man with two sons. One day, the younger of the two decides that he doesn’t want to sit around and wait for his father to die before collecting on his inheritance. He asks for it ahead of schedule. Basically, this move was his way of saying to his dad, “You’re dead to me.” And his father, in spite of what must have been immense heartbreak over this rejection, acquiesces to his younger son’s demand.
The next thing we learn is that this son takes his share of the estate and burns out on the party scene of some far-away city. But when the good times stop rolling, the son is hard-up for cash. He ends up taking the most disgusting job possible for a young Jewish person: feeding pigs. He was do hungry that even the hog-slop was starting to look and smell pretty good to him.
Finally, in a moment of desperation and clarity, the son selfishly cooks up a half-decent apology in order to get himself back into more stable living conditions. And then he makes his way back home with his tail between his legs. He wasn’t really sorry, mind you, he was just miserable enough that he would do anything, put up with any amount of humiliation, if it meant a warm bed and three square meals a day.
This is where the story gets really interesting. Jesus says, “…while [the son] was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” Taken aback by this enthusiastic greeting, the son nevertheless begins his feigned apology speech, but his father never lets him finish. He cuts him off by calling for his servants to bring a robe, a ring, and sandals. He kills the fattened calf and prepares a celebration feast. In this moment, we get a clear picture of this father’s true nature as a man overflowing with love and generosity for his children.
Most tellings of the story end here, with the prodigal son’s redemption via forgiveness. But that’s not where Jesus ends the story. He keeps going.
Enter the older brother, the father’s firstborn son. He has been the dutiful heir to the estate. He has his stuff together, so to speak. He has always done everything right. But he’s not the hero of this story, not by a long shot.
It turns out that this older brother, in his quest to be the perfect son, has severely misjudged the kind of person his father is. When he sees the welcome that his younger brother receives, the older brother gets angry and shouts at his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.” He thinks his father is a cranky old miser who demands absolute obedience without question. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Jesus’ cautionary tale about the older brother is a biting indictment of the leaders of the religious establishment in his day. Like the older brother in the story, their devotion to certainty and obedience has led them to believe that their God is just as judgmental and small-minded as they are.
On the other hand, it is the tax collectors and sinners around Jesus, no strangers to imperfection and doubt, who have the keenest insight on the nature of reality. Through Jesus’ acceptance of them as they are, warts and all, they are coming to have faith in the power of grace.
What is grace? Well, a theological dictionary would define grace as “unmerited favor” but here’s my favorite definition of grace: God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Sound familiar? It should. It’s how we end our sermons here every week.
But more than that, grace is one of the central religious values of our Presbyterian heritage. In the 16th century, when established religious authorities once used guilt and fear to manipulate and control the people, the Reformers countered that there is nothing a person can do to garner favor with God. Grace is a given. It is God’s basic orientation toward human beings. All we have to do is decide how we’re going to respond to it.
Will we, like the older brother and the Pharisees, storm off in a huff over the scandalous nature of grace? Or will we, like the younger brother and the sinners, open our hearts to this undeserved love? Will we allow it to transform us from the inside out, until we start to look like Jesus?
When I look around our world in the 21st century, I see a planet in desperate need of grace. We’ve had more than enough of pompous, self-righteous fanatics who claim to hold all the right answers to life, the universe, and everything. What we need now is a deep, abiding faith in the mystery of grace.
We need imperfect people, full of doubts and faults, whose lives have nevertheless been touched by the knowledge that they are loved, no matter what. Such people know how to love in return. Theirs is the only message that can successfully defend against the attacks of judgmentalism, fundamentalism, and terrorism.
Their scandalous message of grace, never popular or pragmatic, applies equally to liberals as well as conservatives, Muslims as well as Christians, North Koreans as well as North Americans. Grace is the great equalizer. Grace is the central value by which we know that we can never out-stay our welcome in the kingdom of God, and it is the enlivening force that empowers us to go out from this church this morning, saying to one another (and to the whole world):
“I love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
When I was in seminary at Regent College, there was a professor there named Loren Wilkinson. Loren was famous for regularly inviting students to join him and his wife Mary Ruth at their farm on Galiano Island, just off the coast of British Columbia’s lower mainland. This trip to the Wilkinson farm became one of the central hallmarks of the Regent College experience for many students, myself included.
Now, this trip was no mere vacation, mind you. No, when you went to Galiano Island, you went there expecting to work. Loren got you up early and gave you a task to complete somewhere on the farm. There was always something to be done, and with groups of students visiting almost every weekend, there were usually enough hands to get it all done. Many students, like me, came from urban or suburban backgrounds, so we had never experienced life on a working farm before. Loren made sure that we got our hands dirty and broke a sweat during the day.
And then, at night, the real treat came: dinner. After work, the other thing you were expected to do at Galiano Island was eat. And, oh my goodness, did we eat! Homemade delicacies of every imaginable variety were set out before us in abundance. Nobody left that table hungry. And it wasn’t just the quantity of food that was abundant, it was the quality as well. Everything was organic, homemade, and delicious.
Loren and Mary Ruth lived very simple lives on the island, but the main thing we learned during our stay with them is that simple need not mean austere. Visitors never got the sense that these people were sacrificing or going without the creature comforts of life. They live in abundance.
I thought about my trip to Galiano Island and the abundance I discovered there when I read this week’s scripture passage from the book of Isaiah:
Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price…
…Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Later on in the passage, the prophet compares the word of God to the life-giving qualities of rain:
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
Finally, at the end, the prophet leaves the people with a promise of even more abundance, which is yet to come:
For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
The power of these images is undeniable. The earth itself is veritably bursting at the seams with life and blessing. More than just “the way it is”, to this Jewish prophet, the abundance of creation is a divine revelation: it tells us something about God: the Ground of all Being, the core nature of reality itself. We humans live, move, and have our being in a vast ocean of abundant blessing and amazing grace.
Why then don’t we see it? Why don’t we believe it? Why don’t we live our lives as if this was the most central truth of our existence?
It can be hard to embrace the abundance of creation when we are surrounded by a cacophony of voices and circumstances testifying to the contrary. Every time we change the channel, it seems like there’s one more voice reminding us how close we are to the brink of Armageddon. Politicians and advertising executives make their livings off of our fear that there is not enough to go around. Popular media would have us believe that poverty and starvation are problems too big to be solved. We tell ourselves there’s simply nothing we can do. However, according to the World Hunger Education Service, the earth produces enough food to provide every man, woman, and child with 2,720 kilocalories per day… that’s over 1,000 times the amount of calories needed for a healthy diet. Regardless of this fact, people all over the world (mostly in Asia and Africa) are dying of starvation while Americans are dying of an obesity epidemic.
Is the problem really that there’s not enough to go around? Or is it that too much has been hoarded into one place? Could it be that powerful, fear-mongering politicians and executives are holding the rest of us hostage with delusions of scarcity?
What makes it worse is that the powerful people who propagate these lies have come to believe in them so strongly that they are making decisions for the rest of us. They lob their ideological grenades at one another on TV, meanwhile the children of God line up outside soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Senators and CEOs drive around in bullet-proof limousines while the people of this country stand in unemployment lines. Friends, I daresay this is a sin against heaven itself. Something is radically wrong with our collective worldview if we truly believe the lie that there is simply not enough to go around.
This morning’s scripture reading calls us to change this worldview. First, the prophet gets our attention:
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
And then warns us:
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts
The details of this passage are worth paying attention to: the problem, according to the prophet, is not the bounty of creation but the small-mindedness of its inhabitants. Presumably, they want to live and live well. What is needed then? We must forsake our wicked ways and unrighteous thoughts. The problem is not with the world itself, but with our way of thinking and living in it. Average people are envious of those who have more than they need, so they run roughshod over the rights and needs of the poor in an attempt to emulate the powerful.
The prophet gives us the remedy:
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live…
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts
In other words: it’s high time to change our stinkin’ thinkin’.
It’s time for us to stop shouting at the sky about how big our problems are and start shouting at our problems about how big the sky is.
Instead of looking out for number one in our small-minded, self-centered little worlds, we need to cultivate an attitude of gratitude and sharing. The abundance of creation is a free gift to all. We lose it when we try to keep it all for ourselves. It’s time for us, as people of faith, “to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” I borrowed that phrase from our neighbors in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
The simplest answer is that it’s time for us to learn how to share. I’m not just talking about opening our wallets on occasion; I’m talking about opening our minds on all occasions. We have to expand our definition of the word family. We need to nurture global family values, but that’s a tall order, so why don’t we start with localfamily values? When we hear about that sickness, that layoff, or that foreclosure for our neighbors, let’s not harden our hearts or turn our backs saying, “It’s not my problem.” Because it is our problem. When we live in community with one another, not just proximity to one another, options, possibilities, and resources begin to open up. All of a sudden, we don’t feel so desperate or alone anymore. Together we find hope, strength, and courage to overcome adversity and make it through the darkest night. In short: we begin to manifest the freely given abundance of creation that is our collective birthright. We start small and work our way up. As they say, “Think globally, act locally.”
Coming up in a few weeks, on Easter Sunday, our congregation will be participating in a single, unified manifestation of abundance for people all over the world. It’s called One Great Hour of Sharing. This ecumenical effort was begun over sixty years ago to pool the efforts of multiple denominations in the fight against global poverty and hunger. Our forebears realized they could do more together than any of them could do apart. To date, we have raised as much as $20 million annually to assist with disaster relief and development projects around the world.
Throughout the season of Lent, you will notice inserts in your bulletins that outline a different project each week that is supported by One Great Hour of Sharing. Take these inserts home with you, pray for the project highlighted that week, and please consider pooling your resources with ours on Easter Sunday so that we might collectively manifest the abundance of creation for the good of the whole.
These are our global family values. This is our faith-based alternative to the politics of fear and the economy of scarcity. It has nothing to do with the powers that be in Washington or on Wall Street. The kingdom of heaven-on-earth doesn’t belong to the powerful; it belongs to the little ones of this world, it belongs to the local communities of average Janes and Joes who reach out to care for one another in the midst of good times and bad.
In a few minutes, we will gather as a church around the Communion Table to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. In this feast of the abundance of heaven and earth, all people are invited to come, eat, and drink without money and without price.
I pray that the message of this feast will not return empty, but will accomplish the purpose for which it was sent: bringing forth life and growth, manifesting the abundance of creation for the common good. May the meaning of this mystery take root in the soil of your soul, and as you go out from this place today, fed and filled with Word and Sacrament, may you go out in joy and be led back in peace, may the mountains and hills burst into song before you and the trees of the field clap their hands.
May you know the abundance of creation as you share it with everyone you meet. May you be blessed and be a blessing in the knowledge that I love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Hidden in the annals of Christian history are stories we’d rather not tell.
The Church of Christ has not always done well at emulating the life and love of its Lord and Savior. As a matter of fact, we’ve been downright evil for much of the time. One need only mention the Crusades or the Salem Witch Trials to get an idea of what I’m talking about. One such example comes from the very roots of our own Presbyterian tradition:
Back in the 1500s, when John Calvin was preaching in the Swiss city of Geneva, a guy named Michael Servetus blew into town. He was on the run from the Catholic Church after being arrested for heresy and then breaking out of prison. Servetus was a Unitarian, meaning that he did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity: the belief in one God, consisting of three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The fugitive Servetus made a bad choice in putting Geneva on his travel itinerary. John Calvin, whose opinions had a powerful influence on city politics, had no more love for Servetus than the Catholic authorities had. Calvin himself had previously written to a friend, “If [Servetus] comes here… I will never permit him to depart alive.” And Calvin made good on his threat. As soon as someone recognized Servetus attending worship at Calvin’s church, he was arrested, tried, and burned at the stake for heresy. Michael Servetus’ last recorded words were, “Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have mercy on me.”
This is part of the dark side of Presbyterian history. John Calvin is still remembered as the founder of the Reformed Tradition, of which the Presbyterian Church is a part. In 1903, Calvin’s spiritual heirs in the city of Geneva erected a monument to the memory of Michael Servetus on the spot where he was burned. The inscription on that monument condemns Calvin’s error and acknowledges that the true spirit of the Reformation can only exist where liberty of conscience is allowed to flourish.
It’s too little, too late for Servetus, but the gesture acknowledges that we’ve at least made a little progress in half a millennium.
In so many of these cases of heresy trials and stake burnings, there is an oft-repeated label that has been misappropriated from the New Testament and applied to the opponents of established orthodoxy. That label is: “Enemies of the cross of Christ”.
You might have noticed that very phrase appearing in this morning’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Paul wrote, “[M]any live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.”
And just who are these “enemies”? Paul is not clear on that. At various points in church history, this term has been applied to Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Unitarians, and basically anyone else who’s theological views differ from the person applying the label at the time. “Enemies of the cross of Christ” is a derogatory epithet used to identify others as “outsiders” and “heretics”. Most of the time, it has been applied to emphasize doctrinal differences between religious groups.
I believe that such use of this phrase does violence to its original meaning in Paul’s letter to the Philippians. You see, in that letter, Paul never suggests that one’s religious affiliation or theological orientation are determinant of one’s status as an enemy of the cross of Christ. For Paul, the truth goes much deeper than that: so deep, I would say, that the essence of this message can be found in the spiritual teachings of every mystic and every sage in every culture, every place, and every period of history. Paul’s message of the cross is the story of people graduating from their small, self-centered lives to the larger, reality-centered Life. Some have called it conversion, some salvation, some liberation, and some enlightenment. For Paul, as for most Christians, the central symbol for this process of transformation is the cross of Christ.
The cross is the single most recognizable Christian symbol in the world. Historically speaking, it was of course the instrument of torture and execution on which Jesus was killed. Symbolically speaking, Christians have attached multiple levels of meaning to its significance. Starting about a thousand years ago, a full millennium after Jesus was born, a British writer named Anselm of Canterbury came up with the idea that theologians now call “substitutionary atonement”. You might not have heard that phrase before, but you probably have heard some preacher on the radio or television saying, “Jesus died for your sins.” Substitutionary atonement is currently the most commonly known and accepted interpretation of the significance of the Jesus’ crucifixion, but the idea is only about half as old as Christianity itself.
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul presents an entirely different understanding of the cross. For Paul, the crucifixion event cannot be understood apart from the story of Christ’s resurrection. According to Paul, these two events form a unified whole. Neither one makes any sense without the other.
The crucifixion and resurrection, taken together, form the central image of the Christian spiritual journey. In the process of transitioning from a self-centered to a reality-centered life, every Christian must undergo a kind of death and resurrection. As Paul himself wrote elsewhere, in his letter to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” Earlier in his letter to the Philippians, he writes in a similar vein:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
In this early Christian hymn, Paul lays out the path of self-emptying, the path of the cross, which leads to resurrection and exaltation by God. And this, he says, is not only the journey of Jesus himself, but also of every Christian who claims to bear his name. Paul begins his hymn with the exhortation: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”.
A Christian then, in Paul’s eyes, is one who walks the path of the cross, who dies to the old, self-centered life and rises to the new, reality-centered Life. One could say that a Christian is a “friend of the cross of Christ”.
By contrast, those who are “enemies of the cross of Christ” are those who refuse to walk this path of metaphorical crucifixion and resurrection. The Buddha might call them “unenlightened”. Muhammad might call them “infidels”. Harry Potter would probably call them “muggles”.
What can we learn about these “enemies of the cross of Christ”? Well, since this status has more to do with one’s way of life than with one’s religious affiliation, I think we can say that they might belong to any tradition or no tradition at all. We’re just as likely to find them in pews as in bars.
Here’s what Paul has to say about them: “Their end is destruction; their god is the belly”. This is an interesting way of putting it. When Paul says, “their god is the belly” he obviously doesn’t mean their physical abdomens. The belly is where one’s food goes after it is consumed. The belly, in this sense, is the seat of desire. The people who refuse to let go of their small, self-centered lives are worshiping their own desires and addictions. What they want/need is most important to them.
For them, the primary concern is “my food, my money, my country, my church.” Everything is all about I, me, my. There is no big picture or larger context in which they see their lives. That which benefits them is universally good. That which hinders them is universally bad. In every story, these folks never fail to cast themselves as either the heroes or the victims. They’re always on the side of right. They have all the answers. Anyone who disagrees with them is a heretic who deserves to be burned at the stake. This is what self-centered worship looks like. These folks are what Paul refers to as “enemies of the cross of Christ.” There is no self-sacrifice for them. There is no denial of desire for the greater good. There is no responsibility beyond one’s responsibility to one’s own self. Self-centered existence.
What is the end result of this way of life? Paul says it quite clearly: “Their end is destruction”. This self-centered way of thinking and living can only lead to pain and death. This is not some mysterious, mystical idea. Think about it: what kind of world would this be if neighbors never went out of their way to help each other? What if friends and family never forgave each other? What if no one answered the call of charity or the obligation of justice for those who suffer? I don’t know about you, but that’s not a world I would want to live in. That selfish mentality can only lead to destruction, as Paul warns us.
The way of the cross is the way of sacrifice. Jesus could have called upon his mass of followers to rise up and fight if he so desired. Instead, he chose to walk the path of nonviolence. He chose to suffer pain, rather than cause it. He chose to die, rather than kill to protect what was rightfully his. In so doing, Jesus set himself apart from every other revolutionary movement leader of his time. His selfless sacrifice did not go unnoticed or unremembered. He left his followers with a symbol and an image that would change the way they look at the world.
Christ’s willing submission to crucifixion, according to Paul, is the basis for his sovereignty over all creation. For his followers, it is the model we follow for living our lives in the world. The end-result of crucifixion is not death, but resurrection. “Humiliation”, according to Paul, is transformed into “glory”. Followers of the way of Christ must befriend the cross because it is the only way into the “abundant life” that Jesus intended for us to have.
Paul’s warning about the “enemies of the cross of Christ” is not a wholesale condemnation of those who hold different theological views from Paul’s, or John Calvin’s, or mine. Paul’s warning applies to all of us, no matter what religion we espouse. With tears, Paul is pleading with us to realize that our little lives, ruled by our own selfish desires and preferences, lead only to destruction.
The flip side of Paul’s warning is that those who befriend the cross, who walk the path of self-sacrifice for the greater good, like Jesus did, are sure to receive resurrection, salvation, and enlightenment. These are the true saints, the blessed ones who discover the meaning of life. These are the real Christians: the friends of the cross of Christ.
May it be so for you, for me, and for all who seek the greater good, the life abundant, in the name (or the spirit) of Jesus Christ.
Whenever I say that word, a part of me wants to say it like an old-timey southern gospel preacher: Temp-TAY-shun!
I could tell you stories…
I’ve been to southern revivals, after all.
I could go on about the wrath of God and the fires of hell for those who give in to temptation. But I’m going to that to you. I sat through enough of those sermons as a teenager to know that they don’t really work. Those hellfire-and-brimstone sermons didn’t really make me and my friends into better Christians or better human beings.
In fact, they didn’t even help us to resist temptation. All they did was scare us into thinking that God was an angry judge up in the sky who wants to throw people into hell for eternity.
Scientists have done studies on the effectiveness of those kinds of scare tactics for changing patterns of human behavior. What they found out is that, while fear and guilt do yield some short-term results, they lack the power to effect long-term change in the way people live. In order to do that, people need positive, stable communities where they know they will be accepted and encouraged to pursue worthy goals and common values. Furthermore, they need to have a sense of meaning and purpose in their connection to the larger community. Give people this and they will be more likely to develop healthy patterns of behavior that enable them to resist temptation.
So, you’re not going to get any fire and brimstone from me this morning. That’s not what this church is about, anyway. But we are going to talk about temptation. We’re going to talk about it in a way that gets us away from the blame and shame game.
In order to do this, I’m going to use two, very common, almost stereotypical examples of the kinds of temptation that plague men and women in this society.
For men, the stereotypical temptation and potential source of shame has to do with sex. The message we men receive is that we are animalistic Neanderthals who think of nothing but sex all day. We hear messages like this: “You’re looking at that person?! How could you?! Don’t you love me?! You men are all such filthy pigs! You couldn’t keep your one-track minds out of the gutter if your lives depended on it!” Sound familiar, guys? Ladies, I want to let you in on a little secret this morning: you’re not the only ones saying these things to us. We say it to ourselves. We live in a society that trains us to be simultaneously obsessed with and ashamed of our sex drives. With that kind of split thinking, even the best of us are bound to get confused on occasion. What’s worse is that this same society has also trained us to think that real men don’t talk about their feelings (especially with each other), so we end up thinking that we have to bear the burden of this confusion alone, lest we admit it and look like wimps to our fellow men and perverts to the women in our lives (who have themselves been trained by society to believe that women aren’t supposed think about sex, which is also not true). So, you can plainly see: there is a lot of shame and confusion going around about men and sex.
Now, let’s talk about women for a minute. Think about this: you’re at Applebee’s and a commercial comes on with some bikini model selling Budweiser, and every heterosexual male head in the restaurant is turning toward the TV. Now imagine this: the person sitting next to you at your table orders that double-sized piece of chocolate cake with the warm fudge topping flowing like lava down the slopes of a sweet, delicious volcano… am I provoking some kind of reaction with this mental image? How about this one: you come home after a long, bad day at work. Your significant other is away for the night, so you’re exhausted, on your own, and you happen to know that there is a mostly full container of rocky road ice cream in the freezer… do you see where I’m going with this? Be honest: are you even going to bother getting a bowl or is that spoon going right into the carton? I think you see my point: For women, the stereotypical temptation and source of shame has to do with food.
From an outsider’s perspective, this temptation might seem more benign or acceptable than sexual temptation. After all, when was the last time you heard about a politician being impeached over a bucket of fried chicken? But then there’s the pressure that society puts on women to conform to a particular body type. Even if you have the most loving and supportive spouse or parents in the world, they cannot drown out the screaming chorus of voices shaming you because of the way you look. And you’re told that it’s all because of your desire for food. What most men don’t understand is that this critical voice, when it comes from inside your own head, gets you saying things to yourself like: “I’m disgusting! What a pig! I can’t believe I just ate that. I’m going to look like beached whale!” The men who love you would never let another person talk to you that way, but we don’t get that the voice of shame in your head talks to you that way on a daily basis. And even though indulgence in food is more socially acceptable than indulgence in sex, the struggle between temptation and shame is just as real and just as damaging in its own way.
What I’d like to do today is explore some ways for dealing effectively with temptation that don’t involve launching people into these shame spirals that never lead anywhere positive. And I’d like to do that by looking at Jesus’ struggle with temptation in Luke 4.
The story opens just after Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River. During that ritual, Jesus has a vision of a dove landing on him and a voice from heaven telling him, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” The truth of who he is as the Son of God has just hit home with him. He needs to process this new information, so he heads out, away from civilization, to fast and pray in the desert.
While he’s out there, he is tested by the devil, who tempts him to misuse the gift he’s been given. The devil tempts Jesus to do three things: to turn stones in to bread, to bow down and worship him, and to throw himself from the top of the temple.
Some movies portray this scene in a very dramatic fashion. The devil is portrayed as a talking snake or a man in a business suit with slicked back hair who wants to make a deal with Jesus. Personally, I like to imagine Jesus hearing that voice as if it was coming from inside his own head.
It seems that Jesus was wrestling with his own sense of identity and purpose. In light of what he had just seen and heard at his baptism, Jesus had to work out for himself what it all meant. Should he use his status as God’s Son to offer quick fixes to the world’s problems, like ending global hunger? Should he opt for the way of power over the way of suffering? Should he make a spectacle of himself to gather followers and build a movement powerful enough to challenge the Roman Empire? In the end, Jesus said no to all of the above. Those ideas weren’t consistent with who he was and what he was meant to do in life. He came back from his time in the wilderness with a much deeper level of self-understanding and self-acceptance.
I think this story has some important implications for us as well. I think it gives us a paradigm for dealing with temptation in ways that don’t buy in to that old shame and blame game. Like Jesus, we too are on a journey to understand ourselves as beloved children of God. Those parts of ourselves that we wrestle with are divinely-given parts of who we are. We don’t need to despise them as dirty in order to keep them from throwing our lives out of balance.
We can even look at those parts of our lives from a more scientifically informed perspective that, if properly understood, can help us understand and accept ourselves better.
Let’s look at the sex-drive again. We already covered the confusion and shame that surrounds this subject for most men. We think of ourselves as bad or dirty because we have these impulses we can’t shake.
But let’s think for a minute about the purposes those impulses served for our ancestors. The first is obvious: making sure that our genes are passed on to future generations. But that’s not all. Sex is also a social bonding ritual. We feel instinctively drawn toward one another in ways that go far beyond mere reproduction. We form families to pool our skills and resources. This capacity gave our ancestors the advantage they needed to survive in a world full of predators that were faster and stronger than them. Without that basic attraction toward each other, our species never would have survived. Sexual desire was the first impulse that made family and civilization possible. It’s a good thing. We need it. Human society wouldn’t be here without it. We should seek to understand and honor its presence within us before we pass judgment on it.
Let’s look at our impulse for food as well.
(By the way, I’m borrowing most of what I’m about to say from Michael Dowd’s book Thank God for Evolution, which our Monday night Vespers group is currently studying.)
The three so-called “bad” foods that we tend to crave most often are sugars, fats, and salts. Whenever we get the urge to indulge our palette, it’s usually an urge for foods in one or more of the above categories. Have you ever wondered why we so many cravings for those particular flavors?
Well, as it turns out, sugars, fats, and salts were pretty hard to come by in prehistoric times. Our foraging ancestors had to eat all they could find in order to stay alive in the jungle. Their craving for these foods gave them an evolutionary advantage over others. The folks who ate more sugars, fats, and salts were more likely to stay alive and healthy for their next meal. When we feel those cravings within us, we’re tapping into a part of our biology that has a noble and triumphant heritage. Our very existence is proof that our ancestors did well in eating all the sugars, fats, and salts they could get their hands on. We should be grateful for those cravings before we pass judgment on them.
So, those are the evolutionary explanations for our sex drive and food cravings. They are a part of who we are as human beings. We wouldn’t even be here without them. We should honor their presence and function in our lives. We should call them good because that’s exactly what they are.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s always a good thing to indulge such impulses. Sugars, fats, and salts were rare for our ancestors in the jungle, but we’re surrounded by them in our current setting. Likewise, acting on every sexual impulse is more likely to breakup a family than build one. We shouldn’t forget that nature gave us brains as well and expects us to use them for making good decisions. Accepting yourself and understanding yourself do not necessarily mean indulging yourself.
What self-acceptance and self-understanding do mean is that we can finally give ourselves permission to call a time-out on the blame and shame game. Just like Jesus did in the desert, you and I are coming to grips with who we really are. Our desires are part of that. Temptation is really just one of our natural survival instincts acting out of context and out of proportion. That, hopefully, is where our higher-level brains can kick in and override the software that would otherwise lead us to unfavorable consequences.
There’s no need to be ashamed. There’s no need to beat yourself up. Simply say Thank You to your temptations and honor the place those impulses hold in our species’ evolutionary past.
“God don’t make no junk.” That includes you and every natural thing about you. It’s all good. It’s all sacred. It’s all blessed. Remember that the next time you’re facing temptation, and maybe you too will hear that voice from heaven, saying to you, “You are my Son/Daughter, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
The past twelve months have been amazing for me on this blog. I’ve had two separate posts go semi-viral and catch the attention of some of the biggest movers and shakers in my denomination. Many of you have emailed me (and a few have even called) with encouraging words about what this blog means to you. Your words have kept me writing when I otherwise wanted to quit. Thank you.
I’ve come to see what I do here as part of my larger ministry in the world, no less significant than what I do from the pulpit on Sunday or in my classroom during the week. I have been especially touched by the messages left by those who self-identify as exiled or de-churched Christians. I hope that my presence in your life via this blog is part of your healing from the wounds of the past.
As social media occupy an increasingly central place in my life, I think it is imperative that I learn how to integrate them into my life in a harmonious and holistic way. Many others have voiced concerns about the effect that these media are having on our ability to communicate with one another. Our technology has outpaced our ethics. We need to occasionally step back and take stock of where it is that technology has brought us, how it is that we got here, and what it is that we want to do next.
I have noticed this technological imbalance in my own life. Whether I am at work or play, I spend most of my time in front of TV and computer screens. Things that need doing sometimes don’t get done because there’s just “one more thing” I want to watch or do online.
The liturgical season of Lent is, for me, a time for self-reflection and restoring the balance of life. During these next 40 days, I’ve decided to unplug from electronic entertainment and social media. I’ll be updating my blog with my weekly sermons and checking Facebook on Sundays (which don’t count as part of Lent). I’m also allowing myself to watch one half-hour TV show on Sundays because I don’t want to fall too far behind on the final season of The Office.
Other than that, you can find me reading a book, tuning my guitar, playing with my kids, and (believe it or not) cleaning my house. I hope to use this time to reflect on my relationship with technology and social media. I hope to return with a greater sense of clarity about what this technology is for and how it is that I wish to conduct myself in its virtual environment.
I’m not going totally off-grid, though: I’ll be checking email for professional purposes and answering the phone. If you need to talk to me for personal reasons, feel free to give me a call! I get the sense that I’ll be craving conversation.
I’ll see you again at Easter when this blog kicks back into action! Until then, make sure to check in weekly to read the sermons!
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 