Tag: Jesus

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment
"What, Me Worry?"

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is John 14:1-14.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

These are good words to hear from Jesus on the morning after the end of the world.  According to Harold Camping, president of Family Radio, the Final Judgment of humanity was scheduled to begin last night (May 21, 2011) at 6pm.  Mr. Camping came up with this conclusion using a combination of literal and symbolic interpretations of certain biblical texts and then combining those interpretations with some fancy mathematics.  Judging from the fact that so many of us are still here today, I think we can safely say that Mr. Camping’s calculations were (at least) slightly off.

This is not the first time someone has made such precise predictions about the Apocalypse.  In fact, Mr. Camping himself previously insisted that the end of days would arrive promptly on September 6, 1994.  Before him, there was the very famous case of the Millerites.  This sect of believers followed the teachings of one William Miller, who predicted that Christ would return and the world would end before March 21, 1844.  After this day came and went without incident, the deadline was extended to April 18 and then October 22.  After his third failed prediction, Miller’s followers gave up on him.  However, several of them went on to found the Seventh Day Adventist and Jehovah’s Witness churches in subsequent years.

So yes, apocalyptic enthusiasts are nothing new to Christian history.  In fact, Jesus even warned us to watch out for folks like this.  When the disciples asked Jesus about the end of the world, he told them in Matthew 24,

…if anyone says to you, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah!’ or ‘There he is!’ —do not believe it. 24For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. 25Take note, I have told you beforehand. 26So, if they say to you, ‘Look! He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look! He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Instead, Jesus comforts his followers with these words from today’s gospel reading:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

When it comes to this “end of the world” business, Jesus is essentially saying, “Don’t worry about it” and “Trust me.”  Nevertheless, there always seems to be someone out there who claims to have the inside scoop on when and how the world is going to end.  They claim to know “the way” to secure one’s eternal destiny in light of the coming devastation.  Well, Jesus had a thing or two to say about that as well.  He reminded his followers they already knew “the way” to God.

“Wait a minute,” one of them said, “what ‘way’ are you talking about, Jesus?  I don’t remember you saying anything about a ‘way’!”

“Sure you do,” Jesus said, “It’s me.  I am the way.”

Now, if you’re still feeling confused as you read this, don’t worry.  It’s supposed to be confusing.  This is another classic example of Jesus talking right over the heads of his disciples.  He uses these cryptic images in order to shake people out of their normal way of thinking.  Jesus wants to expand their (and our) minds to operate on a spiritual level, far above that of ordinary reasoning.

With this famous phrase, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”, we are venturing into territory that makes Christianity unique among the religions of the world.  In many world religions, there is usually founder or other figurehead who acts a messenger for the Divine.  That person is given a message that will guide the world toward salvation or enlightenment.  Moses received the Torah, Muhammad received the Qur’an, and the Buddha received the Eightfold Path.  In each of these cases, it’s the message, not the messenger, that’s most important.  The unique thing about Christianity is that the messenger is the message.  God is not revealed through a book or a teaching, but through a person, namely, Jesus of Nazareth.  To know Jesus is to know God.  If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.

This makes people uncomfortable.  A personal God is too unpredictable and too intimate for most people.  The only way to be in a relationship with a personal God is to come to know, love, and trust that person.  Most people (including Christians) feel much more at ease with a God who can be contained within a body of teaching (like the Bible) or an institution (like the Church).  Protestants do it just as much as Catholics.  So-called “liberal” Christians do it just as much as so-called “conservatives”.

Let me give an example:

Many people in our society are quite familiar with the traditional evangelical presentation of the Christian message: Jesus Christ was born, so they say, in order to die on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of humankind so that people can go to heaven when they die.  The way to God is through the cross of Christ.

On the other hand, many people are also quite familiar with the progressive and “liberal” presentation of Christianity: Jesus Christ was an inspirational activist and philosopher whose teachings offer humankind a system of ethics that will lead us toward a more spiritually enlightened society.  The way to God is through the teachings of Jesus.

I think both of these perspectives fall short of Jesus’ intention.  Both the cross and the teachings of Christ are of paramount importance in the larger scheme of things, but they are only parts of the whole.  It’s the person of Jesus Christ who is the final revelation of God to humankind.  Jesus is the way.  If we want to get to know God, we must get to know Jesus.

How do we do that?  I don’t have an answer to that question.  Sure, I could hand you a list of activities (like reading the Bible or going to church) that are supposed to help you get to know Jesus, but that would be just another way of putting God into a manageable box that can be unlocked with the right formula.  The fact is that there are as many ways of getting to know Jesus as there are ways of getting to know any other person.

Think about the last time you were really in love or had a crush on someone.  What did you do?  You spent a lot of time thinking about that person.  You hung on his or her every word.  You gazed longingly over your shoulder whenever that person walked by.  You studied every feature on his or her face.  You spent as much time as possible with that person.  Your friends probably got sick and tired of hearing you talk about it.

In the same way, getting to know Jesus is more like falling in love than signing a contract.  The only difference between us and his earliest followers is that we don’t get the luxury of his physical presence with us.  We have to get to know Jesus in other ways.  I can’t tell you how it’s going to happen for you, because it’s different for everybody.  However, I can offer you some ideas about how it might happen.

For some people, getting to know Jesus happens dramatically and suddenly, like falling head-over-heels in love.  For others, it happens gradually over a long period of time, like sharing a cup of coffee with an old friend.  For some people, it happens through conventional channels, like going to church or reading the Bible.  For others, it happens in very surprising and unconventional ways.

My favorite story of an unconventional encounter with Jesus comes from the autobiographical work Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott.  (I should warn you that this vignette will be edited for content, as Anne is known for being a somewhat foul-mouthed saint.)  This scene opens with Anne living on a houseboat at the end of a dock, deep in the throes of her addiction to alcohol and drugs.  One week prior, she’d had an abortion and was still bleeding profusely.  During this time, she would occasionally visit a Presbyterian church near her house, but would always sneak out before the sermon.  Anne continues:

Several hours later, the blood stopped flowing, and I got in bed, shaky and sad and too wild to have another drink or take a sleeping pill.  I had a cigarette and turned out the light.  After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my [late] father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone.  The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there—of course, there wasn’t.  But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus.  I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.

And I was appalled.  I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen.  I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”

I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with.

Finally I fell asleep, and in the morning, he was gone.

This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood.  But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in.  But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever.  So I tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming my houseboat door when I entered or left.

And one week later, when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape.  It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling—and it washed over me.

I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, “F**k it: I quit.”  I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right.  You can come in.”

So this was the beautiful moment of my conversion.

The Harvest is Here

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments

St. Photina, "The Enlightened One". Traditional name for the Samaritan woman at the well. Legend has it that she was martyred after spitting in Emperor Nero's face.

Today’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is John 4:5-42.

Over the past few decades a lot has been said and written on the topic of church growth in North America.  Most sources agree that there has been a tremendous decline in membership for older, mainline congregations like ours.  Many popular sources are selling the idea that the key to reversing this trend lies in imitating the worship style and the theological leanings of evangelical mega-churches.  However, I’m not convinced.

Here’s why: I heard about an Episcopal church in Colorado.  This was a small, traditional parish.  Their numbers were dwindling.  Almost all the members left in the pews were grandparents or great grandparents.  There was nothing about this parish that fit the popular model for church growth.  Closure seemed inevitable.

Several of these aging church members felt led to start a youth group.  They were praying for an opportunity to start one.  But even their priest was telling them not to hold their breath over it.  Their big opportunity came one day when that same priest was sitting in a local coffee shop.  He was wearing a clerical collar, which clearly identified him with his profession.

The priest looked up and suddenly, there was a teenager was standing in front of him.  This rough-looking young man was clad in leather and had piercings in every conceivable orifice.  “Hey.”  He said, “Are you one of those ministers who can do funerals without the body there?”  After taking a second to compose himself, the priest asked the teenager to sit down and talk.  As it turns out, he had a friend who had recently died of a drug overdose.  His family lived out of state and had shipped the body back east for burial.  None of his local friends had a chance to grieve their loss.  The priest said yes, their church could certainly have a memorial service for this young man.

The members of the church wanted to get involved too, but they were at a loss as to how to do it.  They had nothing in common with this group of hard-edged, punk rock teenagers.  When they prayed for a youth group, they were thinking of a cadre of nicely-dressed, well-behaved high school students who attended Bible studies and held bake sales.  What were they supposed to do with this motley crew?

After giving it some thought, they could think of only one natural way to relate to these youth: they were all grandparents.  Why not act like it?  On the day of the memorial service, they made their fellowship hall as warm and cozy as possible.  They made tea and hot chocolate.  They set out fresh-baked cookies on hand-crocheted doilies.  And when the youth arrived, everyone agreed to pretend they were their own grandkids.

Most of the youth stuck around for the reception.  Amid a sea of black leather and glinting lip rings, one could see an entire rainbow of artificial hair colors.  The event was such a success, they decided to invite the teenagers back at the same time next week.  To their surprise, most of them came back!  Week after week, the most unlikely relationships formed between these folks in their eighties and this scary-looking group of punk-rock teenagers.  They got the youth group they had been praying for, but it looked nothing like they expected!  Moreover, it bore no resemblance to the trendy programs that are supposed to attract youth to a congregation.

This kind of thing has happened before in Christian history.  In today’s gospel reading, we read about Jesus’ unconventional model for church growth in the most unlikely places.  It happened among a group of Samaritans.

This was the last place where Jesus’ disciples expected to find a warm welcome.  Samaritans and Jews shared common ethnic and religious roots, but the Samaritans were regarded as heretics and half-breeds.  No self-respecting Jew would be caught dead with a Samaritan in public.  Some Jews traveling from Galilee to Judea would go almost a hundred miles out of their way in order to avoid Samaritan territory.  It was bad enough that Jesus had decided to go through Samaria instead.  Did he have to talk to them as well?

As it turns out, these Samaritans gave this Jewish rabbi a warmer welcome than any synagogue.  Even in Jesus’ own hometown, they had tried to throw him off a cliff!  But these half-breed heretics had opened their doors and welcomed Jesus and the disciples with open arms.  When the members of the village heard Jesus speak, they all believed in him.  A church sprang up overnight in this Samaritan village.

What’s even more surprising is that the catalyst for this explosive church growth was not the local mayor or clergyperson, but the village pariah.  It was almost unthinkable that Jesus would even talk to her in the first place.  First of all, she was a Samaritan.  We already talked about the inborn hostility there.  Second, she was a woman.  Nice Jewish boys didn’t talk to women in public (not even their own wives).  Finally, she was even outcast from her own people.  The text tells us that she met Jesus by the well at noon.  In that world without air conditioning, it was ridiculous to go to a well at noon, when the sun was beating down.  Most people would go at sunrise or sunset, when the weather was cooler.  The village well is where people would gather to chat and gossip.  The only reason to go to the well at noon was if you didn’t want to bump into anyone else.

Later in the story, we learn a little more about this person.  We find out that she’d been married five times and was currently living with a man outside of wedlock. Even today, two millennia later, most people who read this story assume that she was a serial divorcee who hopped from relationship to relationship.  But here’s an important detail about ancient Semitic culture: women were not allowed to initiate a divorce.  A husband could divorce his wife for any reason (even if she burned his supper) but a wife had no rights.  She may have been abused and discarded by man after man until she landed in her current situation, where the man she was with didn’t even have the decency to make the relationship legitimate.  We don’t even know that this woman was divorced at all.  In a country with such a low life-expectancy, it’s entirely possible that she was simply widowed five times over.  It seems that she could have landed in her situation through no fault of her own.  Nevertheless, she was still considered “damaged goods” by her neighbors.  Her story would provide ample fuel for the local gossip engine.

Yet, in spite of all these barriers, Jesus chooses this woman to be the agent of transformation in her village.  He engages her in theological conversation.  He effectively ordains her as an evangelist to the village.  Through her, the entire village comes to faith in Christ and opens their arms in welcome to this band of strangers.  Jesus’ model for church growth makes use of the most unlikely people in the most unlikely places.  But, apparently, it works.

What did the disciples think of all this while it was happening?  Well, we read in the text that they were “astonished” at Jesus’ incessant boundary pushing.  It was bad enough that they had to go through Samaria at all, but then Jesus starts talking with this woman, and then they end up spending two days there: eating and sleeping with these untouchable, half-bred heretics!  If their old rabbis ever heard about this, they’d all be kicked out of the synagogue for sure!

Jesus interrupts their astonishment with an invitation.  He tells them it’s time to let go of their expectations and their pre-conceived notions about other people.  Jesus says, “Look around you.  You think the harvest is still a few months off, but I’m telling you that the time for the harvest is now!  So, get out your sickle!”  Jesus tells them it’s time for them to open their eyes and see what God is doing around them (even in this least-expected place).  He wants them to “enter into the labor”, to be part of what they see God doing here and now.  For Jesus, this is the key to effective church growth, not a bunch of fancy programs.  Jesus gets it.  The Samaritans got it.  The disciples were starting to get it.  The Episcopal church in Colorado got it.  What about us?

In spite of what popular sources say, I’m not ready to pronounce our church dead yet.  I think God still has a harvest for us here in Boonville.  It won’t look like the “good old days” all over again.  1955 has come and gone.  Likewise, it won’t look like these evangelical mega-churches.  That’s not who we are as a church or a community (besides, we don’t have the parking space).  It will involve letting go of our old expectations and pre-conceived notions.  The good news is that this is already happening.  You’re already doing it.  When you started your search for a new pastor over a year ago, who would have thought that you would be interested in calling an Episcopal priest with a pony tail?  But here we are!

What other “astonishing” surprises does God have in store for us?  Where is the harvest happening here and now in Boonville?  That’s the question we have to ask ourselves as a church.  I have a few of my own ideas about how we might answer that question.  I see this church as a haven for people who, for whatever reason, have been made to feel unwelcome at other churches in the North Country.

I’m thinking of people like intelligent skeptics who are interested in faith, but have a lot of honest questions about it.  Too many churches out there tell people to “shut up” and “get in line” with traditional doctrine.  I see this church as a place where people can ask their honest questions without fear of rejection.  Maybe we won’t even know the answers, but we can ask those questions together.

Likewise, I also see our church as the kind of place where people who are gay or lesbian can find a welcoming church home.  Too often, people in our society face exile from their churches, their families, and their homes when they “come out of the closet” (which means being honest and open about their attraction to people of the same gender).  Among youth, it’s one of the top causes of suicide and homelessness.  I believe that our church can be a place in the North Country where that doesn’t need to happen.

I envision this church as a haven where people can come, with all their doubts and their differences, and be welcomed as one of “us” rather than one of “them”.  I see this church as a place where people can come looking for belonging, and through that, find themselves believing.  This is the gospel harvest that Jesus has prepared for us.  Are we ready to “look around us” and “enter into the labor” of this harvest?  I think so.

Born Again… and Again… and…

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment
Nicodemus?
Nicodemus?!

This week’s sermon from First Pres, Boonville.  The text is John 3:1-17.

There’s a guy with whom my wife went to high school named John.  In many ways, John was a stereotypical rebellious teenager.  He was really into parties and some drugs.  He questioned authority on everything. He walked around with enough chips on his shoulder to fill a Dorito bag.  But there was one way in which John did not fit the stereotype: he went to church every week.

Let me be clear about a few details: First, his parents didn’t make him go to church.  He decided to go on his own.  Second, John didn’t put on a pious façade for his church family.  He didn’t pretend to be one person on Saturday night and another on Sunday morning.  In fact, John was just as bitter and cynical at church as he was at home or school.  When people asked him why he bothered to go to church at all, he openly told them, “I don’t practice Christianity.  I don’t believe it.  I don’t get it at all, but I keep thinking that someday I might, and I want to be here when that happens.”

In a lot of ways, John reminds me of Nicodemus in today’s gospel reading.  He doesn’t “get it” either.  Jesus talks to him about being “born again” (or “born from above”) and “the wind blowing where it chooses” but it all goes straight over his head.  If anything, Nicodemus walks away from Jesus with more questions than answers.

At the beginning of the passage, it says that Nicodemus “came to Jesus by night”.  Most biblical scholars agree that this isn’t just talking about the time of day.  Rather, the author is trying to tell us something about Nicodemus himself.

A little background information might help that make sense:

The author of John’s gospel has a lot to say about Jesus being “the light of the world”.  Light-imagery comes up again and again in John.  Jesus is the light, while the rest of the world, by contrast, is dark.  So, when John says that Nicodemus “came to Jesus by night”, it means that Nicodemus exists in a state of spiritual darkness.

That being said, Nicodemus doesn’t seem to be such a bad guy.  First of all, he addresses Jesus with an unusually high degree of respect.  He uses the title “Rabbi”.  This is not what one would expect.  Nicodemus was a socially prominent, educated, and pious Jew.  Jesus, on the other hand, was without formal education and hailed from Nazareth, a place not known for producing prodigies.  In today’s terms, it would be like a Harvard professor walking up to a country bumpkin and calling him “Doctor” or “Reverend”.  Listen to what he says to Jesus: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

We meet Nicodemus again in John 7, when he defends Jesus against the attacks of the religious leaders.  Finally, he shows up in John 19, where he helps to bury Jesus and honors him with an expensive funeral fit for a king.  Nicodemus never has a distinct “born again” moment of conversion.  In fact, it’s unclear if he ever actually became a Christian.  Ancient legends indicate that he did eventually join the Church, but the scriptures themselves don’t state that explicitly.  Based on what we do know of him in John 3, 7, and 19, it seems like Nicodemus was on a slow and gradual journey of spiritual growth.

He feels genuinely drawn to Jesus, but he still struggles.  He’s curious enough to ask questions, but he’s not yet ready to make a leap of faith.  He wants to believe, but something inside is holding him back.  Does any of this sound familiar to you?  It does to me.

Like Nicodemus, I don’t have a distinct “born again” moment in my life.  I too have been on a slow and gradual journey of spiritual growth.  I’ve often been challenged with new ideas that go straight over my head at first.  I’ve had to go back to the beginning to reread and reinterpret my Bible so drastically that I felt like a kid in Sunday school all over again.  In that sense, you could say I was “born again… and again… and again.”

The NRSV translates “born again” as “born from above”.  When it says “from above”, it’s kind of like when a jazz musician says to the band, “Let’s take it from the top.”  It means, “Let’s start all over again.”

So, what causes this kind of “starting over” to happen?  We know straight away that it’s not the direct result of intellectual argument.  Throughout this passage, Nicodemus is trying to have a philosophical discussion with Jesus, but Jesus isn’t playing along.  Nicodemus keeps asking, “How can this be?”  And Jesus keeps throwing out these images that seem to make no sense.

In this way, Jesus is acting like a Zen master who is trying to expand his student’s consciousness.  Zen masters do this by presenting their students with something called a koan.  A koan is a kind of riddle that can’t be solved with rational thought.  The point is for the student to meditate on the riddle until she learns to break out of old habits of thinking.  For westerners, the most well-known koan is, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”  Jesus’s words about being “born from above” and “the wind blowing where it will” are kind of like a Christian koan.  He’s trying to help Nicodemus expand his thinking to a spiritual level.

The realm of the spirit is far bigger than the realm of the mind.  On a spiritual level, people are able to grasp certain truths that defy rational explanation.  For example: Christians believe that God is both three and one; Jesus is fully divine and fully human; the bread and wine are also the body and blood of Christ.  These ideas are contradictions when we try to understand them rationally, but they make sense as spiritual truths.

Presbyterian and Reformed Christians have often emphasized this “more than rational” quality of faith and spirituality.  For us, “faith” is more than a list of doctrines to which we give intellectual assent.  We believe that faith is a gift.  Faith doesn’t come about from sophisticated intellectual arguments.   It grows in us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is God at work within us and around us.  The Spirit leads us in the direction of faith, goodness, and wholeness.  This is taking place, even before we profess our faith in Christ.  Look at Nicodemus: the text tells us that he was still in “darkness”, but something was attracting him toward Jesus, the light of the world.

There’s a particular image in this text that really stood out to me this week.  Jesus tells Nicodemus that one must be “born of water and the Spirit” in order to enter the kingdom of God.  What does that mean?  Some scholars think that this is a reference to the sacrament of baptism, and they may well be right about that.  Other scholars think that Jesus is comparing two different kinds of birth: natural and spiritual birth.  We know that when a baby is born into this world, a lot of water is involved.  For the first nine months of its existence, a baby lives in the darkness of the womb, surrounded by this amniotic fluid.  The fluid (this “water”) protects the baby and feeds it with vital nutrients until it’s ready to be born “into the light” of this world.

In the same way, Nicodemus is kind of like an embryo in this passage.  He’s not ready to be born.  He still lives in “darkness”.  But the Holy Spirit is kind of like the amniotic fluid of a mother’s womb.  The Spirit surrounds him and feeds him with nutrients until he’s ready to be born (again and again).

This image gives me hope for myself and other people like Nicodemus and John, my wife’s friend from high school.  None of us totally “gets it” when it comes to Christian faith.  We’re struggling, we’re doubting, but we’re also growing.  Nicodemus is repeatedly drawn to Jesus.  John was inexplicably drawn to church.  I am continually drawn back to the scriptures, trusting that God has yet more light to shed on my understanding.  It’s comforting for me to know that none of us is alone in this journey.  You may feel like you’re constantly starting over.  You may feel like you’ve got more questions than answers.  You may feel like you’re just wandering aimlessly.  But let me give you some hope this morning: you are being nurtured by the Holy Spirit and led from darkness into light.

If you sense that attraction at all, I encourage you to follow it.  Keep coming back to church.  Keep searching the scriptures, even if you don’t understand them.  Keep on reaching out to God in prayer.  Keep on coming back to be fed by the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ.  I encourage you to follow this attraction and see where it leads you.  It might not happen all at once, but I have faith that eventually, you will “get it”.  We all will.  Thanks be to God.

The Disaster of Compassion

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
The Banner for the Barmen Declaration, a statement written by Christians opposed to Hitler's agenda in Germany

Like anyone else in this country, I have my own political opinions.  Those who know me personally or read this blog are probably aware of the directions in which I tend to lean.  However, I normally try to avoid a direct discussion of partisan politics on this blog.  I fervently believe that the kingdom of God cannot be reduced to the platform a political party (of whatever ideological stripe).

In that vein, I normally choose to not acknowledge the polarized “infotainment” of both right and left.  It is my opinion that neither Michael Moore nor Glenn Beck are worth my precious time.  However, a recent rant by Bill O’Reilly has captured my attention.

Click here to read Mr. O’Reilly’s column in its entirety.

Mr. O’Reilly is responding to the question, “What does a moral society owe to the have-nots?”

“There comes a time when compassion can cause disaster. If you open your home to scores of homeless folks, you will not have a home for long…

…Personal responsibility is usually the driving force behind success.

But there are millions of Americans who are not responsible, and the cold truth is that the rest of us cannot afford to support them.

Every fair-minded person should support government safety nets for people who need assistance through no fault of their own. But guys like [U.S. Rep. Jim] McDermott don’t make distinctions like that. For them, the baby Jesus wants us to provide no matter what the circumstance. Being a Christian, I know that while Jesus promoted charity at the highest level, he was not self-destructive.

The Lord helps those who help themselves. Does he not?”

What strikes me is the similarity between Mr. O’Reilly’s comments and the following passage:

“We know something of Christian duty and love toward the helpless, but we demand the protection of the nation from the incapable and inferior… We want an Evangelical Church which roots in the national character, and we repudiate the spirit of a Christian cosmopolitanism.”

This sentence appears as part of the platform for the so-called “German Christians” who were ardent supporters of Hitler’s Nazi agenda during the Third Reich.  Pastors such as Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer vehemently opposed this agenda (some of them paid for their opposition with their lives).  I found the above passage in chapter 2 of Shirley Guthrie’s classic: Christian Doctrine, Rev.Ed. (WJK: 1994).

There are many things one could say in response to this, but I think I will let the passages from O’Reilly’s column and the “German Christian” platform simply stand side-by-side.

In his typical tongue-in-cheek manner, Stephen Colbert had this to say in response to Mr. O’Reilly:

“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we have to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition (and then admit that we just don’t want to do it).”

I highly recommend hearing Colbert in his own voice.  A link to the video is posted below:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/368914/december-16-2010/jesus-is-a-liberal-democrat