Today is the feast of St. Stephen, deacon and martyr.
Folks think of deacon’s work as charity, but that was certainly not the case according to Acts. The office of deacon was created as a ministry of social justice to overcome racial inequality and ensure a just distribution of resources. The apostles thought this work was so important, they created a separate ordained office. Stephen also became known as a great teacher and healer. According to the Book of Common Prayer, part of the deacon’s job is to “interpret to the church the needs of the world.”
St. Stephen’s life ended with him becoming a victim of religious intolerance and an example of nonviolent resistance. He practiced what he preached to the end.
Great defense of Pope Francis’ statements about poverty, plus a bonus introduction to one of my all-time favorite theologians: Walter Rauschenbusch… and it’s written by his great grandson, Paul Brandeis Rauschenbusch
It is commonly agreed that for the first time in human history we can put an end to extreme poverty if we have the economic, political, moral and spiritual will to do it. Let’s do it.
In the meantime, if you are Christian and someone calls you a Marxist just because you are questioning why extreme poverty persists in era of such extravagant wealth, know that you are in good company — because Jesus did it first.
Do you like to be right? Of course you do. Who doesn’t? I don’t think there’s a person on this planet who, at least once in a while, doesn’t like to be the one with the right answer to a question or the solution to a problem. It makes us feel important. It makes us feel useful. It makes us feel like our lives have a purpose, like maybe we can make a positive difference in this world. It’s a good feeling.
But have you ever noticed that there are times when being right can go oh-so-wrong? Being right might feel good but, like anything that causes good feelings, it can also be addictive. Have you ever met someone who is chronically addicted to being right? Have you ever been in an argument with someone who was right, who had a valid argument, but you didn’t want to concede the point because he or she was just being so mean about the whole thing? I won’t ask for names, although I’m sure we all could list at least a few. And if we’re really, really honest, I think we can all admit that there have been times (moments, in the very least) when each and every one of us has “chased that feeling” of being right a little too hard and run the risk of sacrificing something or someone that, in the long run, is far, far more important than our need to look good and be right.
Now, I should mention here that there are indeed times in life when conscience calls upon us to make certain sacrifices for the sake of what’s right in the face of great injustice. Where would we be without those men and women who pledged “[their] lives, [their] fortunes, and [their] sacred honor” to the causes of justice and the common good? It’s important to acknowledge that call. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about that unhealthy, selfish, and compulsive need to be right (or at least appear to be right) at all times that only serves the cause of one’s own ego. This is what I’m talking about. This is the kind of addiction, like any addiction, that can cost people jobs, relationships, family, trust, goodwill, and (perhaps most ironic of all) credibility.
It may require a great deal of self-awareness to be able to do this, but I think we need to ask ourselves in those moments of heated debate, “Am I standing up for what’s right or for my need to be right?” We need to ask ourselves this question because there is so much more to winning an argument than just being right. How we argue and why we’re doing it is just as important as what we’re arguing about.
I’d like to turn your attention toward our Epistle lesson this morning, taken from St. Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. Paul was writing to these Roman Christians to give them some pastoral advice about an issue that was very near and dear to his heart. There was a conflict going on in that church and one party in that conflict was clearly in the right, as far as Paul was concerned. The issue at hand was the inclusion of Gentiles (i.e. non-Jewish people) in the life and ministry of the Christian church.
This issue was the single greatest hot-button issue for first century Christians, just as the abolition of slavery, racial integration, the ordination of women, and marriage equality would also become hot-button issues for future generations. There were those in the church who argued, citing the Bible and theological tradition as precedent, that Christianity itself was Jewish and therefore church membership should be limited to Jews alone. “Jesus was Jewish,” they said, “all of his apostles were Jewish, therefore anyone seeking to follow Jesus should also agree to follow the commandments of the Jewish Torah (e.g. be circumcised, follow certain dietary restrictions, and celebrate certain rituals and holidays).”
Paul, on the other hand, was of a different opinion. He believed that the Christian church was meant to be an international, multi-cultural community made up of people from “every tribe, language, people, and nation.” He believed that the whole human race was meant to live as one family where the walls of division, distinction, and discrimination would be torn down and there would be “neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.”
This was Paul’s opinion and, as history would have it, he was right. Most scholars agree that it was this cosmopolitan character of the early church that allowed it to survive, spread so far and wide in the Roman Empire, and ultimately become one of the most important religious movements in the history of the human race. So yes, Paul was right and he argued for his position in churches across southern Europe, Asia Minor, and the Middle East. Most of the time, he had to speak up for the full-inclusion of Gentiles, disparaging any notion of second-class citizenship for non-Jews in the church, but not in Rome. In Rome, he had the opposite problem.
You see, the Roman church agreed with Paul. They took his multi-cultural message of inclusion to heart. Jews and Gentiles worshiped together in the Roman church until the year 49 CE, when the emperor Claudius expelled all Jews from the city of Rome. When they were allowed to return five years later, the Jewish Christians discovered that certain prejudicial, anti-Semitic attitudes had begun to spring up among their Gentile brothers and sisters.
In those years of Jewish absence, the Gentile Roman Christians got to thinking that maybe this was a sign that the Jews had been rejected as the chosen people, only to be replaced by Gentiles. “After all,” they thought, “It was the Jewish religious establishment in Jerusalem that conspired to have Jesus the Messiah wrongly executed; it was Jewish synagogues that instigated so much rivalry, tension, and conflict in those cities where synagogues and churches co-existed; and it was Jewish Christians who were opposing Paul’s teaching and trying to force their culture on Gentile Christians.” Maybe their number was up and their day was done? Who needs those weird old traditions and stories anyway? The Romans no doubt saw themselves as very enlightened and progressive for taking this stance.
This is where Paul comes in. He wasn’t used to dealing with this kind of problem. It was usually the Jewish people who were excluding the non-Jewish people, but in this case it was the other way around. These Roman Christians were basically right in their theology; they agreed with Paul, but they took it too far by excluding their Jewish brothers and sisters instead. Paul’s dream was for a church where everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, would be welcome as part of the family. This kind of reverse-discrimination simply wouldn’t do.
So Paul tries to put the brakes on the situation. He reminds the Romans that it’s not their place to judge others, just as Jewish Christians had no right to force their culture on Gentiles. Moreover, Paul contended that the conflict between Jews and Christians was not a sign that Jews had been rejected as chosen people. Paul highlighted the debt that Christianity owed to Judaism for its very existence. He urged the Romans not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, especially when it came to the Jewish scriptures. “Whatever was written in former days,” he said, “was written for our instruction.” In other words, he’s saying that the writings of the Torah aren’t just a bunch of kooky old superstitions that don’t apply to people today. Those writings are a chronicle of Israel’s ongoing spiritual development and the Christian church, according to Paul, stands in continuity with that movement. In fact, Paul goes on to quote a verse of the Torah for them from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 32, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with God’s people.” Paul is saying that there is place for them in this tradition and there is a place for this tradition in them. He’s not backpedaling on his stance of inclusion, but he’s sticking to his conviction that the church should be “a house of prayer for all nations,” Jews as well as Gentiles.
Paul goes on to tell them, “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” And again, in this gloriously climactic verse that sums up his whole argument so beautifully, he says, “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I love how, in those two verses, Paul connects the bridging of gap between Jews and Gentiles with the life and ministry of Jesus. By crossing the divide between you, Paul says, you are living in a way that is consistent with what we believe about Jesus.
As you know, we are now in the season of Advent, when we prepare to celebrate what Christians have called the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ. What this means to Christians is that, in the birth of Jesus, a gulf was crossed, a gap was bridged between time and eternity, between heaven and earth, between divinity and humanity. And if Christ has crossed so great a divide to be near us, then who are we to refuse to cross those comparatively little divides that run between us and our fellow human beings? That’s why Paul tells the Romans, “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you.”
The Roman Christians were in the wrong, even though they were on the right side of the issue. Christianity isn’t about being right, it’s about being in right relationship with God, with your neighbors, with yourself, and with the earth. It’s those relationships that matter most.
So, in this coming Christmas season, I want to invite you to work on those relationships. As you gather together with friends, neighbors, and family whose opinions about politics or religion might irk you for one reason or another; as you sit down to dinner next to someone with whom you have been feuding for years; as you listen to those political pundits and op-ed columnists who make you want to throw the newspaper in the trash or chuck your remote at the TV screen, remember that it’s not about being right; it’s about being in right relationship with one another. That’s the only thing that really matters and it’s the only present that Jesus wants from us this Christmas.
That’s what the sign at the top of the cross read. The irony was not lost on those who saw it, nor was it lost to history. Kings were usually crowned while sitting on thrones, not hanging from crosses. But this Jesus was a different kind of king. For him, the cross was his throne.
In the ancient world, it would have been unthinkable for a cross to serve as a throne. Crucifixion represented everything that was the opposite of kingship. Kings were blessed but crucified people were cursed. Kings were honored but crucified people were ridiculed. Kings were dressed in flowing robes but crucified people were stripped naked. Kings were beautiful but crucifixion was ugly. Yet, in spite of this, unbelievably, the cross was his throne.
Crucifixion was not just any old punishment. A criminal was not crucified for stealing bread or cheating on his taxes. No, crucifixion was a special punishment reserved for a special kind of criminal. The criminals crucified with Jesus were what we would now call terrorists. They were insurrectionists, religious fanatics bent on a violent agenda to overthrow the Roman government. If one wants to get a clear picture of just how radical it was for Jesus to forgive the sins of the criminal next to him, one should imagine that criminal as Osama bin Laden, because that’s who he most closely resembled. It was rare for crucified people to be buried in that time because most of them were simply left there to rot: their bones picked clean by birds and eventually scattered across the landscape. Their families were so ashamed that most would never again so much as speak the name of their crucified loved one. Most crucified people were utterly lost to history, but not King Jesus. No, for him, the cross was his throne.
When we look back at Jesus’ life as it is presented to us in the New Testament, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that this King of kings would reign from a cross, rather than a throne. After all, how did he come into the world? Did he come riding a white horse with banners unfurled and a terrible swift sword at his side? Did he appear at Caesar’s palace in Rome saying, “Hey Caesar, I just want to let you know that your days are numbered!”? Was he born into a wealthy family at the center of the halls of power? No, he was born in a manger, in a stable, outside an overbooked motel, in a teeny little one-horse town, in a forgotten corner, in a troublesome province, in a distant part of the Roman Empire. His parents were working-class peasants. Our Christmas pageants and Nativity scenes have made the story of Jesus’ birth into a sweet, warm fairy tale, but the reality would have been quite different. He was born in a barn. Have you ever smelled a barn where animals are kept? It doesn’t smell very good. His mother placed him in a manger. A manger is a place where pig slop went. It probably wasn’t very sanitary either. In today’s terms, Jesus’ mother would have given birth in a dumpster behind a Motel 6. And the shepherds who visited him? They weren’t very pretty either. Shepherding was not considered an honorable profession in those days. They would have been treated with the same indifference and contempt that truckers, janitors, garbage men, and McDonald’s drive-thru workers receive today. So you see, from the very beginning of Jesus’ life, we can pick up hints that he would not be a king like other kings, so that we wouldn’t be surprised to discover in the end that the cross was his throne.
As he set out into his life’s work, Jesus continued to defy expectations for a respectable monarch. He held court with tax collectors and sinners. His royal advisors were fishermen, his treasurer was a thief, and his attendants were prostitutes. They probably couldn’t have a royal cupbearer because the wine would have run out before the cup ever got to the king. And they almost certainly didn’t have a court jester because, let’s face it: they were all court jesters in some way. Based on the company he kept, it’s no surprise that the cross was his throne.
The upstanding citizens of the moral majority and the religious right in his day had nothing good to say about Jesus. They were the self-proclaimed protectors of traditional family values and Jesus was the biggest threat to their agenda. He called himself a rabbi, but they knew that no real rabbi would build such a rag-tag, permissive, tolerant, and inclusive community. Jesus questioned their established theological dogmas. He reinterpreted the Bible in ways that made them uncomfortable. He seemed to have little respect for their traditions, so they had little respect for him. Based on his relationship with the religious leaders of his day, we can see why the cross was his throne.
Finally, we come to the end of his life, the moment his followers had been waiting for, when all that he had been building toward came to its fulfillment. He rode triumphantly into town on a donkey’s back in a staged fulfillment of a prophecy from the book of Zechariah. He barged into the temple, flipping over tables, and sent the moneychangers packing. He said he was about to clean up this town and make his Father’s house into a house of prayer for all nations once again. His followers were understandably stoked at this new development. They realized that this was the moment when the King of kings and Lord of lords, the long-awaited Messiah, would ascend his throne and establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. But what they didn’t realize is that the cross was his throne.
On the day of his crucifixion, his royal robes were stained with his own blood, his crown was made of thorns, and the cross was his throne.
Above his head hung that awful, ironic sign, “This is the king of the Jews.” From the outside, the whole scene seems like a horrible, macabre parody of kingship. But here’s the thing: he really was a king. For Christians, he is the King of kings. In spite of (or perhaps because of) his unconventional life and ignominious death, Jesus has gone on to touch and inspire more people than any other single person in history. For those of us who are his followers, who pledge our allegiance to his kingdom of heaven on earth, Jesus is our paradigm: his life provides us with the lens through which we interpret our lives. As we make our way out into the world, we go as Christ’s ambassadors. The way in which we represent him to the world should be consistent with the way he himself walked through the world. And remember: the cross was his throne.
The king who reigns from the cross is fundamentally different from the king who reigns from a throne. The kings of this world, the powers that be, force their will on others through bullets, bombs, bucks, and ballots. Let me show you what I mean: when you dive around town, do you try to keep pretty close to the speed limit? Do you do it because you love America? Probably not. Most of us drive the speed limit because we don’t want to get a ticket. That’s the power of fear. Private companies get you to buy their products by appealing to your sense of greed, lust, or vanity. They promise you a better, longer, happier life, but they don’t really care about you. They just want your money and they will tell you anything you want to hear in order to get it. That’s advertising. That’s the power of manipulation. But Jesus is different. He doesn’t depend on the power of fear or manipulation as his weapons because the cross is his throne.
Jesus rules the world from within through the power of love. Love is amazing. People will do things for the sake of love that they could never be forced into by law or the barrel of a gun. Love gets new parents out of bed in the middle of the night for 3am feedings. Love leads partners and spouses to sacrifice time, money, and energy for the sake of the relationship. Love led Rev. Frank Schafer, a Methodist minister, to put his ordination credentials on the line when he officiated at his son’s wedding to another man, a crime for which he was tried and convicted by the United Methodist Church, just this past week. Love led Mother Teresa to the streets of Calcutta to care for orphans. Love led Rosa Parks to defy a racist law on a bus one evening in 1955. Love led Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Oscar Romero to speak out against injustice at the cost of their own lives. Love led King Jesus to the cross, and the cross was his throne.
The people all around Jesus at Calvary kept shouting, “Save yourself! Save yourself!” but Jesus chose to save others instead. Jesus could have ordered his followers to rise up and kill, but Jesus chose to die instead. That’s the power of love. It was love, not nails, that kept Jesus on the cross. And that’s why the cross, which once signified shame and death, has become for us the symbol of faith, hope, and undying love. From the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ reigns in our hearts by the power of love and so it is that the cross is his throne.
I’d like to say a few words this morning on the subject of life after death.
“What happens to us after we die?” is one of those religious questions that people in our culture are accustomed to asking at least once in their lives. When I taught philosophy at Utica College, I used to give a whole series of lectures on this subject. I’ve paired down and digested some of those lectures for today’s sermon, so you’re getting a little taste today of what it was like to be one of my students (but don’t worry, there won’t be a pop quiz at the end of church).
There are not a few voices out there today claiming that the whole point of being religious is to secure for oneself a more pleasant afterlife. But this hasn’t always been the case.
For the ancient Israelites, the problem of life after death was a non-issue. It’s not that they didn’t believe in it; it’s that they never even thought to ask the question. For them, the great religious question was not “What will happen to me after I die?” but “What will happen to our people in this life?” The blessings and curses of the Torah all have to do with Israel’s collective prosperity in this world.
The closest the ancient Israelites got to asking and answering the question of life after death is in their concept of Sh’ol. Sh’ol is the Hebrew name for the realm of the dead. They never speculated about what that realm was like. One’s status in that realm was not dependent upon one’s actions in life. There was no concept of eternal judgment, reward, or punishment. For the ancient Israelites, Sh’ol was just “the place where dead people go.” Modern English versions of the Bible have typically translated Sh’ol as “the grave.” When people die, they are simply “in the grave.” Life stops at death. That’s as far as the ancient Israelites got with the question.
By the time of Jesus, the Jewish people had been influenced by several of the cultures around them. Many of these cultures had a more elaborate view of the afterlife. For the first time, that question showed up as a blip on their theological radar. Jewish thoughts on the matter went on to influence the early Christians in their thinking. By the time we get to the apostle Paul in the mid to late first century, Christians had come to believe that there would be a day in the future when Jesus would physically return to earth and the dead would be resurrected, raised back to life like Jesus was, physical bodies included. This was the dominant view of life after death that one finds in the New Testament and in the early church.
As the centuries went by, Christianity became more and more influenced by Greco-Roman culture and less influenced by its Jewish roots. People started reading some of the great Greek philosophers like Plato, who taught that the mind and the body were separated at the moment of death. The body dies, but the mind lives on in an ideal realm where it can contemplate goodness, truth, and beauty in their pure forms, unencumbered by the limitations of physical existence. Christians who read this found it appealing. Translating Plato’s ideas into Christian terms, they decided that the “ideal realm” was the kingdom of heaven, where God lives. After our bodies die, they thought, our souls go to heaven where they can see God directly.
This last perspective is the one that has become most prominent in Christianity today, which is interesting for Christians because we say that our faith comes from the Bible, but the belief that people’s souls go to heaven when their bodies die actually comes from Greek philosophy rather than the Bible. But even within the pages of Bible itself, we can see that there is more than one concept of life after death.
In this morning’s gospel reading, we can see two of these worldviews at war with one another. On one side, you have the Sadducees, who believed in Sh’ol, the grave: that life stops at death. On the other side, you have the Pharisees and the Christians, both of whom believed in resurrection. Luke probably decided to include this story in his gospel as a defense of the early Christian position over and against the Sadducees’ position, but I don’t particularly care about that aspect of the question, right now.
We could sit here all day and speculate about the technicalities of the afterlife (i.e. “What goes where, when, and how?”) but I would rather focus on the questions “Who?” and “Why?” when it comes to life after death.
The “Who?” is God. In the Bible (Acts 17:28), the apostle Paul quotes the Greek philosopher Epimenides, saying that we “live, and move, and have our being” in God. Later, in Romans 11:36, Pauls says that all beings are on a journey “from God, through God, and to God.” So, when we die, in the words of biblical scholar Marcus J. Borg, “we do not die into nothing; we die into God.” The same God who loved us into existence and loves us and holds us now in life will continue to love and hold us after death. When we die, we do not wander into the darkness; we are welcomed into the light. When we die, we are not enveloped by oblivion; we are embraced by eternity. When it comes to the “Who?” of life after death, the answer is that we put our trust in God, “in whom we live, and move, and have our being,” “from whom, through whom, and to whom are all things,” “the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,” “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”
When I imagine our return to God at the end of this journey, I like to imagine rain drops falling into the ocean. When the rain drop hits the surface of the ocean, what does it experience? In one sense, it ceases to exist; it becomes nothing. But this isn’t entirely true, because the water molecules that made up that rain drop are still there, they’re just part of the ocean now. So, in one sense the rain drop becomes nothing, but in another sense it becomes part of everything. Likewise, when the rain drops of our souls return to the infinite ocean that is God, what will we experience? Will I still know that I am Jonathan Barrett Lee? Will you still know that you are you? I honestly don’t know and I won’t try to speculate or offer you a theory that may or may not later prove to be true. Any analogy I make right now will most likely fall short of reality, anyway.
Even my favorite ocean metaphor doesn’t really work because the truth is that we are already living, moving, and existing in and through the ocean of God right now. We don’t have to wait until we die to experience that. The infinite ocean of God is already within you and me, and around us in the earth, sky, sea, and stars.
And if the apostle Paul is right in saying that we “live, and move, and have our being” in God and that all things are on a journey “from God, through God, and to God” (and I think he is), then the illusions we create for ourselves of separateness and superiority are nothing more than lies we make up in order to stroke our own insecure little egos. If we truly realized how loved we are as children of God, we wouldn’t need to make distinctions like “I’m better because I’m white/male/straight/American/Christian and she’s black/female/gay/Korean/Muslim.” If we really embraced who we are in God, we wouldn’t need to split those hairs (because they’re all growing on the same head). But because we do live in a world where people don’t know who they really are in God, we do have to spend time rectifying those errors and healing those divisions. We are called upon by God to participate in what the apostle Paul called “the ministry of reconciliation,” which leads me to my final point: the “Why?” of life after death.
Why do we ask these questions and formulate these theories about life after death? We do it because we need to know that our efforts on behalf of this “ministry of reconciliation” are not done in vain, but have lasting value. We need to know that our little stories are part of some Great Story being woven by the ages. We need to know that life matters and we are not alone. And as we put our parents, friends, lovers, and children into the ground, we need to hear that there is a love “strong as death” and a passion “fierce as the grave.” As the lid on that coffin closes, or when we lie in hospital and our breathing becomes more labored as the end draws closer, something within us is screaming. Something within us feels the urge to sing with that great poet, John Donne:
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee…
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
We feel the urge to sing in the face of death and sing we do. “Even at the grave, we make our song.” We sing to remind ourselves that there abides with us a Love that wilt not let us go.
In defiance, we sing:
I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless, ills have no weight and tears no bitterness. Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory? I triumph still if thou abide with me.
In faith, we sing:
O Love that wilt not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee; I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths it’s flow may richer, fuller be.
O Light that followest all my way, I yield my flickering torch to thee; my heart restores its borrowed ray, that in thy sunshine’s blaze its day may brighter, fairer be.
O Joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain that morn shall tearless be.
O Cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee; I lay in dust life’s glory dead, and from the ground there blossoms red life that shall endless be.
Brothers and sisters, I’m here today to tell you what happens after we die. I’m not here to talk about the “What/Where/When/How?” of life after death. I’m here to talk about the “Who?” and the “Why?” The “Who?” is God and the “Why?” is because your life does matter and you are not alone.
So, when your day comes (and it will), whether it comes sooner or later, whether you are old or young, whether it comes suddenly or gradually, whether you are alone or surrounded by loved ones, I give you permission, as you feel yourself fading, to close your eyes for the last time in the peace that comes from the knowledge that “you do not die into nothing; you die into God.” The God who has loved you in life is the same God who will continue to love you in death. As you go, you are not enveloped by oblivion, you are embraced by eternity. You do not wander into the darkness, you are welcomed into the light.
I just read an article about a fascinating guy, but I’m not going to link to it, seeing how it comes from one of the extremist publications of the religious right. However, the subject of the article (who is blasted therein) seems like a pretty stand up dude. His name is Phil Wyman and he’s a pastor in Salem, Mass who was expelled from a Pentecostal denomination for building a ministry with the expressed goal to “make friends with witches and atheists.”
Here’s what Pastor Phil has to say for himself:
“We did something few other Christians in the world were doing… We loved the witches and they loved us back.”
He doesn’t try to convert Wiccans to Christianity because:
“Theology doesn’t work like that. I don’t think I have the capability of converting anyone… I don’t look at the Christian salvation thing as a sales pitch. That’s God’s job. I talk about practical things. Why can’t I just have a regular relationship and talk about the Red Sox?”
Also, he sets up confessional booths on Halloween, but with a twist:
“We didn’t have them confess to us, but rather, we confessed the sins of the Church and apologized for hideous things that had happened, not only down through history but in recent times… That was evidence that we cared.”
Like Pastor Phil, I am one who has repeatedly found himself in committed professional and personal relationships with atheists and pagans. I have worked hard to win their respect as a Christian who will listen to reason with compassion. The resulting friendships have been some of the longest and richest of my life. I have tried to be more Christ-like than Christian and often discovered Christ in them, even though our ideological boundaries don’t line up like one would expect.
In the Bible, Jesus often called his friends and followers to travel beyond the pale of established religion and morality. He ate with tax collectors and sinners, he touched the untouchable, he traveled through enemy Samaritan territory and gratefully received their hospitality, and he found more faith in one (pagan) Roman centurion than he had seen in all of Israel.
Jesus was never one to circle his theological wagons. He never deemed orthodoxy worthy of defense. He taught that love is the greatest commandment and the quality of one’s religion equals the quality of one’s relationships.
Do you ever feel like everyone wants a piece of you and maybe there’s not enough to go around?
You and I live in a transactional society where everything is quid pro quo: there’s no such thing as a free lunch, you get what you pay for, and you pay for what you get. This, obviously, is how we do business: a product or service is offered at a fair price that both parties agree on, the exchange takes place, and both parties go their separate ways. Ostensibly, this is also how we do government: public officials are elected to their positions for a term of service wherein they are authorized to exercise a certain amount of political power over the populace in exchange for their promise to protect the well-being of those they serve.
So, in sectors public and private, our society runs on the idea of transactions. Life, it seems, is one big game of Let’s Make a Deal. There are some people who find that thought appealing. Ayn Rand, for example, is a Russian philosopher whose work is often read and quoted admiringly by members of the so-called Tea Party movement. She believed that people are selfish by nature and self-interest is the only correct way to make decisions in life. Charity, compassion, goodness, love, and God are all ridiculous ideas, according to Ayn Rand. For her, self-interest is the only good and life is one big business transaction.
Personally, I would have a hard time living my life that way. Business transactions are necessary, useful, and good for those times in which they are appropriate, but they become toxic when the principle of self-interested exchange is applied to the whole of life. There are times in life when we are called upon to make sacrifices for which we will reap no material reward. Likewise, we would not be who we are, what we are, and where we are today if it hadn’t been for others who sacrificed for us and gave freely without any thought of seeing a return on their investment.
At the end of the day, when my energy is spent from all my wheeling and dealing, I need to know that I can lean on something deeper and more meaningful than a contract drawn-up in the name of mutual self-interest; I need to lean on some everlasting arms; I need to know that the amazing grace that has brought me safe thus far, through many dangers, toils, and snares, will also lead me home; I need to feel that the house of my soul is built, not on the shifting sands of self-interest, but on the solid rock of Love that is without condition, proviso, or exception.
In our gospel reading this morning, Zacchaeus found that kind of Love, or more accurately: Love found him. Zacchaeus, we know, was a tax collector. We talked about them last week. Tax collectors were some of the most hated people in ancient Israel. First of all, they were traitors: Jews working for the occupying Roman government. Second of all, they were liars: they overcharged people on their taxes and kept the extra for themselves. So, it would have been quite a shocking moment to Rabbi Jesus’ devoutly Jewish audience when he singled out the local tax collector in his search for a place to stay.
This gesture from Jesus was a bold, symbolic statement. Sharing someone’s home in that culture meant that both parties welcomed and accepted each other as family, without question. Zacchaeus had done nothing in the way of belief or behavior to deserve such public affirmation from Jesus. Those respectable folks in the crowd probably wondered whether Jesus realized the kind of message he was sending. How were sinners like Zacchaeus ever supposed to learn their lesson if they didn’t experience the full sting of rejection from God-fearing society?
That’s the way their minds worked: they had a transactional relationship with their religion. They gave obedience to the laws of the Torah in exchange for inclusion in the life of society. They were shocked and offended at the thought that Jesus, as a rabbi and potentially the Messiah, might offer such a radical gesture of acceptance without first requiring that Zacchaeus repent of his old, scandalous ways.
But Jesus doesn’t ask that of Zacchaeus. He commits an act of civil disobedience and direct action against the morals and values of his culture: Jesus offers acceptance first. He asks nothing of Zacchaeus. There is no transaction happening here, no business deal.
This flies in the face of most traditional religious wisdom (Jewish and Christian), which says that repentance comes first, then forgiveness. Most folks think that God needs people to do, say, or think certain things before they can reap the rewards of heaven, eternal life, or acceptance in the church community. However, Jesus seems to take the opposite approach in this passage. He doesn’t ask Zacchaeus about how many times he’s been to synagogue in the last year, he doesn’t ask about which commandments he had broken or whether he was sorry, Jesus doesn’t even ask whether Zaccheaus believed in him as the Son of God and Messiah. Jesus simply accepts him as he is.
The amazing thing is that this makes all the difference. In the light of such unconditional love, which he had probably never experienced before in his entire life, Zacchaeus becomes a changed man. Something about that kind of grace made him want to pay it forward and pass it on. Jesus accomplished in one gesture of grace what so many others couldn’t do through years of judgment.
Can you imagine what it would be like if we ran our churches this way?
When I talk to people who don’t come to church about why they’re not interested in Christianity, they often (but not always) express some kind of faith in God and respect for Jesus, but most of them say that they are turned off by hypocritical Christians who are judgmental toward those who don’t believe or behave like them. In our culture so full of business transactions at every level, people are longing to experience a God and a church who will love them unconditionally and accept them as they are.
This, more than anything else, is the greatest gift we have to offer the world as Christians. We can follow in the footsteps of Rabbi Jesus, who wasn’t afraid to rise above the culture wars of his day and even go beyond the letter of the Bible in the name of love. Christ’s is a love that will not wait for you to get your act together and will not let you go once it gets hold of you. In contrast to conventional, transactional religious wisdom, the deep, deep love of Jesus offers grace and acceptance first, only then does it call forth transformation from within.
When that change comes, it will not look like simple observance of a set of commandments. Like Zacchaeus, your life will begin to overflow with the kind of radical grace and generosity that was once shown to you and you will make your way out into the world, proclaiming the good news to everyone you encounter: “I love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Myungsung Presbyterian Church (Seoul, South Korea) is the largest Presbyterian Church in the world. Image by Kang Byeong Kee. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Reblogged from KoreaBANG:
The Center for the Study of Ministry and Society recently published a report based on extensive interviews with Congregants, finding that while the reasons vary widely, the primary issue was disappointment with the behavior of the pastor and the congregation. ‘I didn’t like the way the congregation just did the same thing over and over again, getting swept up in emotion and sobbing out loud,’ said one thirty-year-old office-worker. Another respondent said, ‘it was hard to endure the sermons filled with allegories that didn’t make any sense in our lives.’ Other interview subjects criticised the naked pursuit of material benefits within the church. ‘If you talk about how it is better for the church to make more money, to have a bigger building and fancy facilities, then what is the difference between a church and a business?’
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.”
This is a reblog from my friend and colleague in the Utica Presbytery, Rev. Herb Swanson. Herb is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Lowville, NY. He previously spent 25 years working in Thailand where he was fostering greater understanding and dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism.
Here is an excerpt:
That’s worth thinking about—being a follower of Jesus but not a Christian. That’s what Paul was. Peter and the other disciples all died before there was a Christian religion. They followed Jesus while remaining devout, practicing Jews. One of the things that seems to be happening in our increasingly secular society is that small groups of followers of Jesus are reinventing the church in ways that make more sense in the 21st century than do traditional churches. Maybe something we should be aiming for is to be more Christ-like and less Christian. Worth a thought.
![By Fczarnowski (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://hoppinghadrianswall.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/koloseum_roma_fc01.jpg?w=640)
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 