Tag: Jesus

An Unexpected Party

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Image
A generic picture of a hobbit by Antoine Glédel. For the sake of argument, let’s just call him Bilbo. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

 

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”

Don’t you hate that?  I sure do.  And what I hate most about it that it rings so true.  There is no plan so perfect, no system so airtight, and no arrangement so ideal that life cannot find some way to mess with it.  Sometimes, I just wish the universe could just leave well enough alone for once.  But, as we all know, that never happens.  Eventually, something comes along to change every circumstance, for better or worse.  Those of us who are invested in the way things are usually have the toughest time adjusting to the new situation (especially when we feel like we were just getting used to the old situation).  Life is frustrating that way.

Of course, we don’t mind sudden and unexpected change so much when it happens to other people.  In fact, we kind of relish it.  I think this is because it makes us feel better about the chaos in our own lives to watch others go through it and survive.  Just think: how many of your favorite books, TV shows, and movies involve plots where the hero is thrust into action against his/her will? 

Lately, I’ve been reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic, The Hobbit, with my four year old.  For those who haven’t read it, it’s the story of a hobbit, a little person, named Bilbo Baggins, who lives in a quiet little village in a land called the Shire, where life is simple and no one ever goes on adventures or does anything unexpected.  Hobbits like to eat, drink, work in their gardens, and watch fireworks.  Anything else is far too exciting for them.  Those who seek greener pastures and broader horizons are frowned upon by the rest of hobbit society.

Then, one fine day, a wizard named Gandalf the Grey shows up on Bilbo’s doorstep with a band of rowdy dwarves.  Suddenly, Bilbo finds himself unwittingly thrust into a most dreadful adventure, full of goblins, dragons, lost treasure, and one magic ring (that later proves to be most significant indeed).  He never asked for it and didn’t even really want to go on the trip.  He just wanted to stay home, read books, and smoke his pipe.  But the remarkable thing is that Bilbo only becomes the hero he’s destined to be because of all the unexpected things that happen to him along the way.  Those chaotic changes, for all their inconvenience, enable Bilbo to discover who he is and what he is capable of.  As readers, we can definitely agree that The Hobbit wouldn’t be much of a story without the unexpected changes.  After all, who would bother to read a book or see a movie where the hero never leaves home and never has any problems of any kind?  Nobody, that’s who.

Chaos, change, and conflict drive the plots of our favorite stories.  As it is in fiction, so it is in life.  If our lives didn’t keep getting interrupted by unfair and unwelcome changes, they wouldn’t be very interesting.  We would never learn what we are capable of.  We may hate the change and curse the chaos, but we need them because they make us into the heroes we’re meant to be.

This is what evolution looks like: the unfolding emergence of life through struggle and chaos.  When unexpected change comes, it is not the devil trying to steal your peace, it is God’s way calling you to new adventures of the spirit.

Jesus knew how to embrace the flow of this constantly unfolding process in life.  He talks about it somewhat enigmatically in today’s gospel reading.  He says in the beginning, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

If you look past the metaphors of fire and baptism, you can see Jesus talking about something that is not yet finished.  He is telling his followers that he is involved in something that is not yet completed.

Going on from there, he elaborates, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”  This is an unusually harsh thing for Jesus to say.  We’re used to thinking of him as the ultimate champion of world peace and family values, but here he talks about conflict and the breaking up of families due to his influence.  What are we supposed to make of that?

What I hear Jesus saying in this passage is that his job is not to uphold the status quo in life or society.  “The way things are/have been” is of little or no interest to Jesus.  His job, as he sees it, is to shake things up.

Understandably, this agenda would have been particularly frustrating to the religious leaders of his day, who saw it as their solemn and sacred duty to maintain the status quo and defend traditional family values.  In the eyes of the people, they were the ones who had all the answers when it came to issues of faith and morals.

But Jesus is challenging their authority.  He makes the claim that their so-called insight is really nothing more than pretense.  “You hypocrites!”  He says, “You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

Jesus is exposing their so-called insight as deficient.  They, with all of their sophisticated arguments and developed systems of ethics, really have no special knowledge about the nature of reality beyond that which is available to everyone.  The word hypocrite, which Jesus uses here, is actually the Greek word for actor.  These leaders have built their reputation on pretending to have knowledge and insight.  They keep up appearances and see to it that the show goes on.

The implication is that, if they really had insight, they would be able to see this unfolding process that Jesus was describing in images of fire and baptism.  The truly wise among them would know that growth requires change and change is hard.  If they knew “how to interpret the present time,” as Jesus said, they would be open to interpreting the challenges of the future as opportunities presented by God for our growth and development, our evolution, as people of faith.  But, as it is, these close-minded authorities are simply standing in the way of God’s work with their beliefs, their tradition, and their family values.

This is a hard and enigmatic word that Jesus gives us today.  We mainline Protestants in the 21st century are really not all that different from the Pharisees of the first century.  We too are concerned about preserving what we have, especially when it comes to church, tradition, and family.

There’s nothing wrong with that.  In fact, I think it’s quite admirable to honor the best of what has been handed down to us from previous generations.  However, we have to always keep before us a sense of the renewing nature of faith in each generation.  The challenges that our grandparents faced are not the challenges that we face.  We would do their legacy a disservice if we were simply to repeat and regurgitate what they had passed down to us.

Our task, as believers in this day and age, is to make the Christian faith our own as we reinterpret and apply its message today.  Sometimes, this means doing away with old ways of thinking or doing things.  We have to be open to each new challenge, not as a threat against the integrity of our faith, but as an opportunity presented by God for our growth and development.

Holding this kind of perspective, which I call ‘seeing with the eyes of faith,’ will keep our attention focused where it needs to be: on the unique possibilities presented by each new situation as it arises.  As believers, we are called to face the future with the conviction that we are being loved and led into new beginnings.  That’s what faith is.

Our ancestors had to do adopt this risky perspective in times past.  The earliest Christians found their experience with Jesus to be at odds with traditional Judaism; John Calvin found his study of the Bible leading him to challenge established Catholic doctrine during the Protestant Reformation; other Christians at various times have been led to adopt new ways of thinking and living in relation to issues like the abolition of slavery, the theory of evolution, the ordination of women, and marriage equality for gay and lesbian people.

Change is nothing new for us Christians.  It goes all the way back to the very beginning of our faith, including Jesus himself, if we take today’s passage seriously.  For almost two thousand years, the Spirit of Christ has been kindling a fire in the hearts of people the world over.  This spiritual fire has put them at odds with their peers and mentors, who couldn’t understand that what was happening through them was the work of the Holy Spirit.  If we would honor our ancestors’ legacy, then we must open our hearts to that same inner fire of the Spirit.  We have to look at the constantly changing chaos around us as God’s gift for our evolution.

This church is about to enter into yet another one of these times of change.  After three wonderful years as your pastor, I will soon be moving on to a new call at another church.  I recognize that it’s easy for me to stand here this morning and ask you to embrace change with openness because I know exactly where I am going next and what I will be doing when I get there, while you remain here without so much knowledge.  It might even seem trite or cruel to hear these words from me, but I wouldn’t be your pastor if I didn’t challenge you to look beyond these present circumstances and see, with the eyes of faith, the hand of God leading you into new opportunities as a church.

Whatever the future looks like, it will not look like the past.  I can’t even guess what new realities will emerge for you from the womb of possibility.  What I do know, and what I can tell you is this: If the Holy Spirit is calling me to a new ministry, then the Holy Spirit is also calling you to a new ministry.  The question for you to answer is: what might that new ministry be?  I can’t answer that one for you.  What I can tell you is that the God who has been “our help in ages past” will continue to be “our hope for years to come.”  The same God who loved our ancestors into their new beginnings is faithful to love us into ours.  That much I know.  This much I trust.

My prayer for you, as I prepare to leave next week, is that you, as the Church of Christ, will embrace the challenge of the coming days in the spirit of faith, which looks for opportunities and possibilities.  Silence in yourselves the voices of fear and despair.  This church is neither dead nor dying.  We are alive with potential and bursting at the seams with possibility.  This church is a powder keg, waiting only for the fire of the Spirit to ignite us into explosive new realities. 

Trust this.  Be open to each new opportunity as it comes.  Like Bilbo Baggins, become the heroes you’re meant to be.  Honor the legacy of your ancestors by showing yourselves to be the kind of Christians who “know how to interpret the present time” through the eyes of faith.

Do Not Be Afraid

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

They say growing up is hard to do.  And I think they’re right.  Because growing up involves change and kids generally like to have a regular, predictable routine.  I remember one time when life interrupted my routine and I had to adjust to a new way of doing things.  It happened at the beginning of fifth grade.  I was having a hard time adjusting to my new classroom, my new teacher, and more challenging homework assignments.

When I finally had all I thought I could handle, I made an appointment to see the school guidance counselor, Mr. Arnold.  I walked into his office with my mind made up.  I had a plan.  I thought I already knew the solution to my problem, so I told him: “Mr. Arnold, this fifth grade stuff is too hard.  I don’t like my teacher, I can’t keep up with the material, and I’m just not happy here.  I’m obviously not ready for this.  I think I just need to back to fourth grade.”

Well, you can imagine what Mr. Arnold’s response was.  When he finally stopped laughing, he told me in no uncertain terms that returning to the fourth grade was not an option.  Then he introduced me to a new word, one that I’ve carried with me ever since.  To be honest, I think he made it up, but it describes so well what I was doing by asking to go back to fourth grade.  Mr. Arnold’s word was awfulizing.  He said, “You’re awfulizing this situation, and no, you can’t go back to the fourth grade.”  And then he explained what he meant by that:  my ten-year-old self was choosing to see only the negative parts of fifth grade and blowing them out of all rational proportion until I convinced myself that the only solution was to go backwards and stay in my old comfort zone.

Growing up is all about facing the future.  We all have to do it: as individuals, as churches, as a society, and we Christians have a choice to make in that regard: we can either face the future with fear or we can face it with faith.

In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus has a lot to say about the future.  As usual, he’s speaking metaphorically; he’s telling stories.  In the first story, he describes the coming future as a bridegroom coming back home after his wedding.  In the second one, he describes the future as a thief breaking into a house in the middle of the night.  What this says to me is two-fold: first, the future is full of the potential for great joy; second, the future is full of great potential for danger.  Both of these realities are true in the same place, at the same time.  Neither the joy nor the danger outweighs or cancels out the other.  Both are simply true.  That’s how reality is.

The only thing we have to decide is how we will respond to this dual-reality of joy and danger, which the future presents us with.  Again, ours is a choice between facing the future with fear and facing the future with faith.

We already have a pretty good idea of what it looks like to face the future with fear.  We see people do it every day because fear is the easier of the two choices.  When individuals choose fear over faith, it looks like despair, cynicism, sarcasm, and broken relationships.  People give up on themselves and each other in order to lead lives of “quiet desperation” as Thoreau said.  People give up on life because they’re scared that things might not turn out like they’d hoped or planned, so they’d rather just shrivel up and get cold and hard inside while life passes them by.

When whole communities like churches, businesses, or countries choose fear over faith, the consequences are far more dire.  The people in these communities turn inward and get defensive, circling their wagons against the onslaught of a hostile environment.  They build walls and weapons to protect themselves from anyone who might look, think, love, or pray differently than them.  In a world governed by fear, rather than faith, the best defense is a good offense.  It’s kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, so you’d better get it while the getting’s good and do unto others before they do unto you. 

That’s fear.  It gets you nowhere.  Whether we’re talking about people, churches, or countries, living in fear just perpetuates the cycle of violence over and over again for generation after generation until there is nothing left of this world but a smoldering trash heap.

Isn’t that what we see happening on the news every day?  People are scared; they’re hurting each other because they’re scared; they think that will keep them safe, but it won’t.  It’s just going to make the problem worse.  Mahatma Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye, and eventually the whole goes blind.”

But Jesus said there is another way.  We don’t have to choose fear.  We can choose faith instead.  Faith in what?  What is the basis for choosing faith over fear?  Jesus said, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Let’s break that sentence down and take a closer look.  First of all, who is Jesus talking to?  The “little flock.”  Who is that?  Who were the people who liked to hang around Jesus in his day?  The riff-raff, ragamuffins, tax collectors, sinners, outcasts, insignificant people, sick people, and poor people.  In a nutshell: people who don’t matter.  Jesus had a reputation for hanging out with these kinds of folks.  It made all those decent, church-going, uptight upright, law-abiding citizens sick to their stomach to see Jesus eating dinner with that “little flock” because, in that culture, people eating together meant that they accepted each other with no questions asked.  When Jesus did it with the most forgotten and outcast members of his society, he was saying, “I love you and I accept you, just as you are.”

Question: Who occupies that space in our culture today?  Who is the “little flock”?

Let’s keep going.  The next two words I want to look at are “good pleasure.”  What does that mean?  It means, “This is what makes God happy,” and “God gets a kick out of this,” and “This makes God laugh.”  Jesus is saying that God is playing a great big joke on us and here’s the punch line: “…it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

What is the active word there?  Is it God’s good pleasure to sell you the kingdom?  Is it God’s good pleasure that you earn the kingdom by how well you behave or by what you believe?  None of the above.  It is God’s “good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

The active word is give.  It’s a gift, a free gift.  Theology-types have a word for this: grace.  Grace is unconditional love and unmerited favor.  Grace is God’s basic orientation toward us.  We didn’t earn it, so we can never lose it.  Furthermore, because we didn’t earn it, we don’t get to have any say in whether or not God extends that same grace toward anyone else (which she does).  It’s a free gift, given to all without discrimination.

Finally, what is being given?  The kingdom.  This is a very important idea for Jesus.  In fact, it’s the central idea of his ministry.  For Jesus, the kingdom of God (sometimes called the kingdom of heaven) is not some happy place where people go when they die.  No, for Jesus, the kingdom of God is a vision of this present world, not as it is, but as it should be: turned upside down and transformed from the inside out.

So, let’s put it all together now.  What Jesus is saying is that God, ever since the beginning of the world and continuing until its end, has been playing a joke on us.  While we have been fighting with each other in our rat race to protect what we think is ours, God has been working slowly and quietly beneath the surface and under the radar of the powers that be.  What really makes God laugh are those moments when true peace and justice are established on earth, not by the big shots with their bombs, bucks, and bureaucracies, but through the “little” ones, those forgotten lives who don’t matter to the powerful, working in small, local communities to actualize Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

That’s who God is, according to Jesus.  That’s how God works in the world: slowly, gently, never stopping, and never giving up.  The kingdom belongs to these little forgotten ones because God has freely given it to them.  That truth, according to Jesus, is our basis for choosing faith over fear when we face the future with all its potential for great joy and great danger.  We can choose to have faith in the laughing God who always works slowly and patiently through the little things of this world in order to turn it upside down and inside out.

God is doing this, God has been doing this for all time, and God will keep doing it for all time.  That’s why Jesus can say, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Facing tomorrow with this kind of faith has a profound effect on the way we live our lives today.  Because we believe it is God’s “good pleasure to give [us] the kingdom,” we are now ready to hear Jesus say, “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Fear seeks only to get things for itself; faith wants to give to others.  True believers are those who are able to trust in the reality of this mystery we call God and then live, in grateful response to that mystery, with open and generous hearts toward their fellow creatures.  That is what it means to be the church; that is what it means to possess Jesus’ kingdom of heaven on earth; that is what it means to face the future with faith, rather than fear; and that is all we need in order to turn the world upside down and transform it from the inside out.

Shifting Perspective

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Image
The Rich Fool by Rembrandt (1627). Retrieved from Wikipedia.

 

Grief is an unpredictable thing.  It tends to bring out the best or the worst in people.  Everyone grieves a loss differently, so it’s not up to anyone else to tell another person how they should or shouldn’t cope with a loss.  Some people want to laugh and reminisce about the best and favorite memories of their loved one while others might need to just be sad and have a good cry; some folks need to keep busy while others need to stop and sit down; some might need to be alone while others crave human contact.  All of these are good ways to grieve and the best thing to do whenever someone you care about is grieving is to let that person deal with their loss in whatever way they feel they need to.  You don’t have to say or do anything in particular, just be there for them, hug or give space as needed, and listen when they speak.  After all is said and done, they probably won’t remember what you say, they’ll just remember that you were there for them.

The only exception to this, the only time that grief can go wrong or turn tragic, is when a person allows the pain drive a wedge between those who are left behind.  This can happen in lots of unfortunate ways.  In cases of sudden or early death, someone might start pointing the finger of blame at others, believing that the loss could have been avoided if only the situation had been handled differently.  Even worse, some folks turn really nasty when it comes to dealing with estates and inheritances.  I’ve seen tragic situations where siblings turn against one another over the distribution of property or money in the wake of a parent’s death.  These are the only situations where I, as a pastor, want to intervene and suggest that they find another way to face the pain of loss.

In such situations, the issue at hand is rarely the money or the property itself.  Most of the time, family members are simply overwhelmed with pain and are looking for some place toward which they can direct the energy of their sadness.  In our culture, which glorifies strength and despises weakness, finding something to get angry over feels a lot easier and safer than just admitting that we’re feeling sad or lonely.  So, we hide our grief behind fights over things and never really get to the bottom of what’s really going on in our hearts: the sadness we feel over losing a loved one.  We’ve missed the point entirely and, in the process, damaged or sacrificed our relationships with the ones who might have helped us get through the pain and find our way toward healing together as a family.

The real trick in those moments is to stop, step back, and take stock of what’s really important and what life is really all about.  Is fighting over money or stuff really going to bring back the dead or help us to deal with the pain of loss?  No, not really.  Life is not about getting money or stuff.  In our better moments, we all know that.  But we forget it sometimes when the pain becomes so great that we would rather think about anything other than the fact that we are hurting right now.  I’ve seen this happen more than once and it breaks my heart every time.

In this morning’s gospel reading, the scene opens with just such a situation brewing.  Two brothers have lost their father and a dispute over a contested will has arisen between them.  We don’t know many of the details, but we get the basic outline of the situation as they bring their fight to the rabbi Jesus for a just resolution.

But Jesus, as usual, declines to answer directly the question he’s just been asked.  He says, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”  Once again, Jesus is not conforming to the role that would normally be expected of him as an itinerant rabbi traveling among rural villages.  He continues, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

I hear something deeper in Jesus’ words to these disgruntled siblings.  I hear him saying, in effect, “What you are asking is not what you really need.  You’ve missed the point entirely.”

The key phrase in his response, which is also the central phrase in this entire passage, is, “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

That one word, “life,” is super-important.  Jesus isn’t just talking about life in the sense of biological survival, he’s talking about that rich, full, and meaningful (i.e. abundant) life that God intends for us as human beings.  Jesus is talking about really living and not just getting by.

This is a particularly important (and particularly challenging) message for us to hear in 21st century America.  We live in an extremely wealthy and powerful culture.  Capitalism has given rise to consumerism in our post-industrial society.  Our sole purpose on this earth, it seems, is to produce, buy, and consume products that keep our economy going and growing at any cost.  The American dream is an ideal of security through economic prosperity.  We dream of having a white picket fence and a car in every garage.  We are inundated with literally thousands of advertisements every week, each one insisting that their product is the key to achieving true happiness in life.

Yet, one needs only look at those who occupy the top spots in the heap of consumption.  Celebrity gossip columns give a regular indication that those who “have it all” are NOT actually any happier than the rest of us.  They keep on spending their millions in the “pursuit of happiness,” only to discover that there are some things that money really just can’t buy.  Or, as Jesus put it, “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

For those of us who live in this consumerist society, I think Jesus wants to extract us from the cult of MORE and initiate us into the church of ENOUGH.  And the first step in this process is to step back and really look at who we are and what we’re doing.  The meditation teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn calls this an “orthogonal shift.”  That word, “orthogonal,” comes from geometry, where it refers to a set of lines that run perpendicular to one another.  In the sense that Kabat-Zinn means it, an orthogonal shift is one where we step back and shift perspective in order to get a different point of view on our lives.  Kabat-Zinn says this is like moving from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional point of view: we rise above the flat level of everyday existence, survival, and concern in order to get a clearer view of the whole chessboard on which our lives are laid out.

This, in a general sense, is what we do every week here in church (and hopefully every day in our private devotional lives): we take an hour to remove ourselves from our culture’s rat race of constant production and consumption and we remind ourselves of where it is that true life, abundant life, is really to be found.  We remember that life is so much more than stuff.

The first thing we realize when we step back, make that orthogonal shift and get a three-dimensional perspective on our two-dimensional world is that we live on a planet of tremendous blessing and abundance.  We are all already spilling over the brim with “enough-ness”.  Most scientists believe that Earth has more than enough resources to safely support life for the number of people who live here, so there’s no real reason why anyone should have to experience starvation.  I won’t bore you with the statistics, but I’ll just encourage you to take your spirituality outside with you.

I mean that literally: take a hike, sit by a river, fish, hunt, or even sit on a park bench for a while.  Just get out there and appreciate the free gifts that Earth has to offer.  From what I’ve seen, those who do so come back with a much deeper sense of gratitude and appreciation for just how lush and green life can be.  That’s one way to make that orthogonal shift and get some perspective.

Another way is to keep a financial journal.  This is a great exercise, and it’s an easy one too, if you’re used to keeping good records.  The thing to do is keep track of every single penny that comes in and goes out of your bank account for a month.  And I don’t just mean balancing your checkbook, I mean really take stock of where and how you spend your money.  At the end of the month, add everything up according to category: rent, food, utilities, entertainment, charity, etc.  Where does your money actually go?  And here’s the hard question: how does that match up with the values you claim to hold as a Christian?  Are you meeting your needs before satisfying your wants?  Would a stranger, looking at this record of your earning and spending, be able to tell what your most deeply held beliefs and values really are?

Both of these exercises can be ways in which Jesus is able to lead us to that point of shifting our habitual perspectives and reminding ourselves that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

Really living, according to Jesus, is about so much more than that.

One of the interesting things about this gospel passage is that Jesus doesn’t spell out the answer for us.  For example, with those two grieving brothers, Jesus doesn’t explain to them what their problem is or how to fix it.  He simply refuses to get involved in their dispute.  Instead, he challenges them (almost dares them) to make that shift in perspective themselves and see that the real source of their conflict is grief over the loss of their parent that has been misdirected as anger toward each other.

Jesus, in this situation, is drawing the brothers’ attention to the questions they didn’t even think to ask, initially.  He tells a story about a greedy farmer with the same problem.  This farmer had a huge bumper crop one year, but instead of looking to share the wealth, devised ways to build bigger barns to store keep his own massive profits to himself.  This farmer never stops to think about his wider community.  His focus is solely on “my money, my property, and my needs.”  Once again, Jesus doesn’t spell out the answer, but says more in his silence than most people do in a thousand words.

The implication, which would have been crystal clear to Jesus’ audience of hungry peasants and should have been clear to the farmer in the story, is that an abundance of blessing is meant to be shared.  We have a moral and spiritual obligation to care for one another, not just through taxes and donations to social programs, but with our own time, energy, and resources.  That, Jesus implies, is where life, real life, can really be found.

The Old Rugged Cross: Rene Girard and the Resurrection of Substitutionary Atonement

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized9 Comments
Image
St. Martin’s Cross, Iona Abbey. Image by Colin Smith. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Friends and commentators from all over the theological spectrum have mentioned that I don’t seem to have given susbstitutionary atonement theory its due in my post from earlier this week, The Wrath of God and the Presbyterian Hymnal.

In that post, I leaned heavily on presenting substitutionary atonement as “cosmic child abuse” (an excellent turn of phrase I’m borrowing from Sarah Sanderson-Doughty).  I wrote:

…penal substitution sets up a scenario where Jesus saves humanity from the rage (not the wrath) of an out-of-control, abusive parent.  When all is said and done, the church gathers around a crucifix and hears, “This is your fault.  Look at what you made God do.  You are so bad and dirty that God had to torture and kill this beautiful, innocent person so that he wouldn’t do the same thing to you.  Therefore, you’d better shape up and be thankful or else God will change his mind and torture you for all eternity.  And don’t forget: this is Good News and God loves you.”  If any human parent did that, he or she would be rightly incarcerated, even if the innocent victim was willing.  If that’s what Christianity is, then you can count me out.

Sadly, this (admittedly extreme) depiction accurately portrays substitutionary atonement as it was presented to me by fundamentalist pastors and teachers I encountered in high school and college. 

However, I realize that thoughtful evangelicals and catholics will cringe at my presentation, since they accept the theory, but not in its “cosmic child abuse” form.  For them, it represents the epitome of love and sacrifice.  I remember seeing an art project made by a teenager that showed one person pushing another out of the path of an oncoming car with John 15:13 written across the top: “Greater love hath no man (sic) than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”  For them, substitutionary atonement is precisely the opposite of child abuse: it is the ultimate standard of loving sacrifice, established by Jesus himself, to which every parent, spouse, and friend should aspire.

I understand and respect this angle, but I suspect that many of these more informed and compassionate evangelicals and catholics may not realize what is being propagated in their name.  The heresy of “cosmic child abuse” is alive and well in traditional, orthodox congregations and parishes the world over.  Curious outsiders and wounded insiders are being exposed to violent, hateful theology and end up rejecting Christianity at large based on this misrepresentation.  That’s why I think it is incumbent upon liberals, evangelicals, and catholics alike to think well about what their atonement theology does mean to them and then speak up (loud and often) to counterbalance the voices of violence and hate that dominate public media in Jesus’ name.

With that in mind, I thought I might revisit the subject of substitutionary atonement today and present what I think are some of the more positive contributions it might make to the Christian theological project, writ large.  Sections of this article have been lifted and adapted from my reply to a comment on the previous post.

Many of the New Testament passages dealing with substitutionary atonement center around interpreting the significance of Jesus’ crucifixion through the lens of sacrificial worship in Second Temple Judaism. The use of such a schema made total sense as an apologetic strategy in that time and place (much like Anselm’s strategy made sense in feudal Britain).

Jesus, of course, is presented as the priest and the sacrifice that supersede the Temple cult. The temple authorities claimed exclusive access to God through their rituals and institution. The early Christians, on the other hand, used this priest/sacrifice imagery to legitimate their own Christocentric practice while demonstrating its continuity with traditional Judaism. The language of temple, priest, and sacrifice would have helped the gospel make sense to a first century Jewish mind. Obviously, the strategy worked: Christians and Pharisees were the only forms of Judaism to survive the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. This interpretive schema gave Christians the framework they needed to survive without a standing Temple.

The Pharisees, for their part, had the Torah, the synagogue, and the family home as centers for their faith-practice. They went on to complete the Talmuds and form the basis for modern rabbinic Judaism as we know it today. The Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots all pretty much died out as movements by the end of the second century.

Substitutionary atonement, understood within the cultural context of Second Temple Judaism, makes total sense as a first century apologetic strategy. It’s actually rather brilliant and obviously effective, given the lasting impact it’s had on the development of Christian atonement theory. The scholastic Anselm further developed the idea susbstitutionary atonement in the 11th century as part of his own brilliant and timely apologetic effort.

My only problem with it is when it is used as the primary or only legitimate atonement theory in our day. Such a narrow focus ignores the multiple other models for salvation presented by scripture and tradition. I fear that a one-sided emphasis on individual guilt and forgiveness through substitutionary atonement is unnecessarily handcuffing our evangelistic efforts by ignoring the many ways in which the gospel might be interpreted, preached, understood, and received by people today.

In addition to priest and purifying sacrifice, Christ can also be embraced as a physician for the sick, a liberator for the oppressed, a light in the darkness, food and drink for hungry souls, or a friend for the lonely. My hope is that Christians today might let these many images take root in our imaginations so that we might be inspired to become more faithful and effective witnesses of Christ in word and deed.

Rene Girard is one writer whose work presents, in my opinion, some rich possibilities for understanding the crucifixion of Jesus as a substitutionary sacrifice.  A Roman Catholic scholar of mythology, Girard identifies patterns of mimetic violence at work in the development of religions and societies.

From birth, human beings are presented with models that we are meant to imitate.  This happens on a primal level with one’s parents and siblings.  As societies grow, our caches of models will grow as well.  Post-industrial consumer capitalism in the Information Age presents us with a greater supply of models than any other culture in the history of the planet.

As imitators of models, we compete with one another.  Over time, our competition grows fierce.  The “war of all against all” (thank you, Hobbes) threatens to unravel the fabric of society and return us to primal chaos.

At this point, according to Girard, a scapegoat is chosen: someone at whom the rest of society can redirect the energy of their internal conflict and self-hatred.  The scapegoat is made to bear the blame for this conflict and is summarily sacrificed.

In the wake of the sacrifice, the mimetic conflict is temporarily relieved and the community enjoys a period of relative peace and stability.  Previously blamed for the violence, the scapegoat is now credited as the source of the temporary peace and is deified as a god.  Girard’s theory is that this is how the deities of classical mythology received their identities.  The cycle of violence then resets and repeats itself.

Applying his theory of mimetic violence to his own Roman Catholic theology, Girard presents Jesus as the willing scapegoat.  Jesus deliberately enters into the cycle of mimetic violence with the intention of stopping it.  He is aware of what is involved in that process and embraces the role of scapegoat.

According to this reading of the atonement, Jesus is still “sacrificed for our sins” but the wrath he is appeasing is not the wrath of God, but the rage of sinful, selfish humans.  He substitutes himself in the place of all other scapegoats who endure the unjust violence of society.

In the resurrection, God intervenes to vindicate the scapegoat, unmasking and disarming the patterns of mimetic violence.  Christians, as followers of Jesus the willing and vindicated scapegoat, are called to side with all future scapegoats and end the cycles of violence and exclusion, even if it means being crucified ourselves.

Rene Girard’s theory presents us with a way of unserstanding susbtitutionary atonement that can redeem it as a viable apologetic strategy in this consumer capitalist society, just as Anselm of Canterbury and the New Testament authors used it in their respective eras.

In this Girardian sense, I am able to reclaim substitutionary atonement and “cling to the old rugged cross”.  I see in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection the end of all hate and violence.  I look forward to a time when all humanity will “exchange [the old rugged cross] one day for a crown” as cycles of mimetic violence come to an end.

(Reblog) Why Millennials Are Leaving The Church

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized2 Comments

The Notorious RHE has done it again: hit the nail squarely on the head, Jesus style.

I wouldn’t consider myself a fan and I don’t regularly follow her blog, but just about everything she’s written that’s come my way has struck me as insightful and cutting to the core.  I predict that she’ll be one of the primary voices from my generation that gets remembered and quoted for decades, if not longer.  In short: she’s good.

In this particular piece, I felt like she had a tape recorder going inside my head.  Like her, I exist on the chronological borderline between Gen X and Millennial.  To all you pastors, parents, teachers, and church members who desperately want to know how to attract people my age (33) and younger: THIS IS YOUR ANSWER. Read it and read it well.

Let me say it again in no uncertain terms, just so we’re clear: This is what we’re thinking. This is what we’re looking for. If you really, actually want us in your church (and not just to stroke your ego and pad your pews, but because you’re interested in actually doing ministry with us), then these are the values you need to learn and internalize.  Here are the highlight’s from RHE’s article…

Reblogged from CNN

By Rachel Held Evans

Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions– Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc. – precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic.

What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.

We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against.

We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers.

We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation.

We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities.

We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers.

You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there.

The emphasis added on that last sentence is mine because that’s ultimately what it comes down to, not just for us, but for every generation.  This is the perennial problem and I’d bet dollars to pesos that you once said the same thing about the church in your parents’ generation and I’m going to hear that same complaint from my own kids one day…

Click here to read the full article

Jesus is the Problem

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

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I chuckle to myself sometimes when I drive around and I see bumper stickers and billboards with hokey slogans like “Jesus is the Answer” because that phrase makes me want to say something snarky like, “Could you repeat the question?”

I find that folks who resort to one-liners like that are too quick to boil down the deep, rich complexity of two thousand years of Christian tradition to a cheap, one-sided formula and I just don’t think you can honestly do that if you actually read the Bible and wrestle with the things it says.  When I think about the person Jesus of Nazareth and the kinds of things he said and did, I’m frankly puzzled and disturbed more often than not.  One of the things that keeps me engaged with Jesus as my Lord and Savior is the way that he challenges me time and time again to grow as person and to break out of old, destructive ways of thinking and living.  Most often, he does this by telling stories and asking questions of his audience.  So yeah, I laugh when I see signs that say “Jesus is the answer” because, frankly, the one I want to slap on the back of my car would have to say, “Jesus is the problem.”

Jesus is a problem.  If you actually read the gospels, you’ll see he’s that perpetual, prophetic pebble in the shoe to those who think they hold all power and know all the answers to every question ever asked.  It’s literally impossible to hang around Jesus for any length of time and not get your worldview seriously knocked off-balance in some kind of significant way.

And in today’s gospel reading, Jesus is once again doing just that: knocking things off-balance as usual.

Today’s reading is all about Jesus’ teaching on the subject of prayer.  What he has to say about it challenged people in his time and continues to challenge us in our own time, although in a slightly different way.

In the ancient world, the story Jesus tells about one friend begging bread from another friend in the middle of the night would have been heard, not as a story about prayer, but as a story about public protest.

In this story, a friend shows up at his friend’s house in the middle of the night, asking for bread, “Friend,” he says, “lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.”  And the other friend says, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.”

But, according to Jesus, this conflict is preordained to end in the first friend’s favor because “even though [the second friend] will not get up and give [the first one] anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.”

Now, the key word in that last sentence is persistence.  In some older translations, the word they used was importunity.  But the original Greek word here is anaideian, which literally means “shamelessness”.  By behaving so shamelessly in public, in the middle of the night, the first friend is demonstrating the abject desperation of his situation and appealing directly to his friend’s moral character.  The second friend, on the other hand, is now honor-bound to respond because refusing to do so would cost him respect in the eyes of the village, and remember that respect in the ancient world was at least as valuable as money.  So, in the end, Jesus’ parable is really all about the character of the one being asked for bread.  Taken as a metaphor for prayer, this parable is about God’s character as the one being prayed to by believers.  The question ultimately being asked here is not, “How do I get my prayers answered?” but rather “Who is God?”

Among the religious authorities in that part of the ancient world, they believed that God answered prayer based on a kind of merit system in relation to the Jewish Torah.  Only decent, established leaders with proper pedigrees and credentials would dare to approach the almighty God with a request.  Jesus, on the other hand, is turning that cultural expectation on its head.  He’s saying that it’s not the character of the person that determines God’s willingness to hear prayer, but the character of God.  God, according to Jesus, is not a bean-counting judge who’s “making a list and checking it twice” before deciding whether someone’s prayers are worth hearing.  Rather, the God that Jesus believes in is a generous, loving presence whose office door is perpetually open to any and every broken heart that comes knocking in the middle of the night, looking for some sign that they matter and they are loved.  God doesn’t care whether you have the right beliefs or the right morals.  It doesn’t matter whether or not you deserve love, you get it anyway because that’s just who God is.  God is love.  Full stop.  End of sentence.  Nothing else matters.  There’s nothing you can do about it.  Deal with it.

So that’s what the parable means in the ancient world: prayer is about shameless audacity.  Prayer is not about the worthiness of the one who is asking, but the character the one who is asked.

Here in the modern world, Jesus’ parable on prayer has just as many challenging things to say to us, although in a different way.  Unlike the world of the ancient Middle East, our culture has been shaped by two centuries of industrial capitalism.  Our main question when it comes to prayer is, “Does it work?”

We’re obsessed with things working in the modern world.  We define reality by what we can observe and measure.  If you can’t see it or attach a number to it in some way, then it must not be real.  We are the only culture in the history of the human race to think this way.  Shouldn’t that strike us as odd?  Every other human civilization has left room open in their worldview for some kind of transcendent mystery.  Some parts of reality just can’t be measured.  Everybody else seems to get that but us.  So, statistically speaking, I think we enlightened, evolved westerners should at least ask ourselves the question: Could it be possible that we are actually the ones with the problem?

There can be no doubt that our means-ends rationality has taken us far.  We have made unparalleled leaps in the fields of science, technology, medicine, communication, travel, and exploration.  The modern mind has obviously been a blessing.  But we’ve also caused more death, extinction, pollution, annihilation, and oppression than any other culture in history, so we can’t stay high up on our pedestal for very long.  Without an overarching sense of meaning and mystery, we’ve managed to do a lot without knowing what it’s all for.  So I ask again: maybe ours is the culture with the problem.

When it comes to prayer, modern westerners have repeatedly come back to that rational question: Does it work?  And they’ve typically presented one of two possible answers.

On the one hand, you have some believers arguing that it absolutely does.  They say that prayer is like magic.  If you pray to the right person in the right way, you will get what you want.  If you don’t get the result you want, then you forgot to pray, or you didn’t do it right, or you didn’t have enough faith.  This is the ultimate form of “blaming the victim” when it comes to spirituality and suffering.  Needless to say, I think this “prayer is magic” philosophy is a pile of baloney.

On the other hand, there are lots of other modern folks who say that prayer is just a placebo: a psychological self-help exercise that just comforts people and brings communities together without making a real difference in the world.  I have to say that this perspective makes me just as uncomfortable as the “prayer is magic” approach because it too neatly divides reality into the material and the spiritual, with the material being regarded as the only part that’s really real.  In the five years that I’ve been a pastor, I’ve walked with people and families through some really hard times.  I’ve seen some amazing things for which I have no logical explanation.  One might even call them miraculous.  On the other hand, I’ve seen good, devout people face unimaginable tragedy with seemingly unanswered prayers.  I’ve seen innocent children suffer and die under the deafening silence of heaven.  So, when it comes to the observable, measurable effectiveness of prayer, I don’t have a one-size-fits-all direct answer.  It’s ambiguous.

The place I come to when I hear Jesus’ teaching on prayer is that getting things done is not the point.  If we’re stuck in that place where we’re asking, “Does prayer work?” then we’re asking the wrong question.

Just like the friend in Jesus’ parable, the question comes down to this: Who is God?  Prayer draws our attention to that same loving, open presence that envelopes us all, whether we deserve it or not, whether we believe in it or not.  Prayer is not about you and it’s not about getting things done.  Prayer changes us, regardless of whether or not it changes our circumstances.  Prayer gets us out of our narrow-minded, modern rationality and helps us to grow in our awareness of the great mystery within around us.  Prayer opens our hearts and minds to hear and to trust in that silent, inner voice that continually calls out to us, saying, “I love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Be blessed and be a blessing.

The Offensive Samaritan

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
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Landscape with the Good Samaritan by Rembrandt (1638). Image is in the public domain.

 

There are some passages of the Bible that people have read (or at least heard about) over and over again so many times that it’s hard to look at them with fresh eyes.  These passages bear the weight of certain cultural interpretations that aren’t easily discarded, even in the light of decent biblical scholarship.  This morning’s New Testament reading is one such passage: the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

The toughest part about writing a sermon on passages like this one is that people think they already know what it means, so they switch on a kind of theological autopilot in their heads and then zone out so that they only ever end up hearing what they already expected to hear in the text.  This is a dangerous theological habit to get into, although we all do it.  We tell ourselves the same old familiar stories again and again.  We never leave our spiritual comfort zone and so we rob the gospel of its radical power to touch and transform our lives.

Well, it just so happens that Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan is all about leaving your comfort zone and being radically transformed.  We’re used to thinking of it as a tale about human kindness.  We think Jesus was just telling people to do nice things for each other.  We call people “Good Samaritans” when they go out of their way to help others in need.  Some states even have “Good Samaritan laws” that require citizens to assist a victim when a crime has been committed.

But is that what this story is about?  It is certainly a story that has human kindness in it.  The image of the Good Samaritan has endured as a symbol for kindness in the intervening millennia since the story was first told.  But is kindness the point of the story?  I don’t think so.

Kindness is hardly the first word that would come to mind for a first century Jewish person who was hearing this story.  Actually, the first word to come to mind would probably be, “Ugh!” or “Eww!”  For first century Jews, the only Good Samaritan was a Samaritan that stayed very far away.

Samaritans, from a Jewish perspective, were heretics and half-breeds.  They were the leftover dregs of society who had interbred and mixed religious practices with the invading Assyrians in the 8th century BCE.  Not quite Jewish and not quite Gentile, Samaritans held a particular place of disgust in the first century Jewish mind.

Even more than that, this particular Samaritan in question appears to have been a trader by profession.  He rode a donkey, carried supplies like oil, and possessed a considerable sum of money (at least 2 days’ wages for the average working man).  Traders were also looked down upon in the ancient world.  They were not rooted down by place or tradition and often went wherever the money took them.  Like tax collectors, they were expected to be cheats and thieves.

Finally, this trader Samaritan takes his wounded stranger to an inn.  This was even more despicable.  In those days, an inn was not what we would call a hotel, it was a seedy dumping ground for the scum of the earth.  Nothing good happened there.  No respectable person would be caught dead in an inn if they could help it.

So that’s a little bit of background for you.  I’m telling you this in order to flesh out just how uncomfortable and maybe even offended Jesus’ listeners must have been when they first heard this parable.  It involves a Samaritan trader who books a room in an inn.  That fact by itself would seem seedy.  In today’s terms, Jesus might as well have told a story about a cross-dressing drug dealer in a crack house.  That fact alone would make for a story that you wouldn’t want to tell in mixed company.  But does that bother Jesus?  Not in the slightest.

So, let’s turn and take a look at why Jesus felt the need to tell such an offensive story to his audience of listeners.

It begins with a conversation between Jesus and a lawyer.  Now, the word lawyer here is a little bit misleading.  When we talk about lawyers, we usually mean trial attorneys.  But in this case, the lawyer that Jesus was talking with was probably more like a biblical scholar: someone who studied and interpreted the Jewish Torah.  In today’s terms, this person might be a professor at a theological seminary.  On the scale of religious and social respectability, this lawyer would have been the polar opposite of the Samaritan trader.

So, this lawyer (i.e. seminary professor) has some serious doubts about Jesus’ credibility as a rabbi.  After all, Jesus was a working-class hillbilly with no formal education to speak of, yet people were flocking to him in droves to hear what he was saying.  This scholar probably saw it as his professional and religious duty to expose Jesus, the unaccredited snake-oil peddler, for the fraud that he was.

The fight that ensues between the two of them is a battle of words and wits.  It’s all about having the right questions and comebacks.  The lawyer starts off with a question, “Teacher,” he says, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  In other words, “How do I live a life that’s really living, not just existing?”

Jesus answers his question with a question, “What does the Torah say?”  The lawyer then proves his competence by flawlessly quoting two commandments from the Torah, one about loving God and the other about loving one’s neighbor.  Jesus gives the lawyer a polite “golf clap” and says, “Bravo.  Right answer.  Do this and you will live.”  But the lawyer isn’t satisfied.  He’s proven his own competence, but he hasn’t yet stumped Jesus in front of his followers, so he keeps going:

“And who is my neighbor?”

This is an interesting question.  It’s all about how wide religious people can legitimately cast their nets of inclusion.  Different religious groups at that time had different standards by which certain people could join and others could not.  To use today’s terms again, the more conservative groups defined neighbor in narrow terms while the more liberal groups accepted a broader definition.  But there’s a problem with each of these definitions (the ancient scholar as well as modern liberals and conservatives) and it’s this: Asking the question about neighborliness in this way automatically assumes that the questioner is placing him/herself at the center of the circle (the center of the universe, in fact).  Everything else happens around and is related to him/her.  The lawyer’s question (“who is my neighbor?”) is an inherently self-centered question.

So Jesus, in response, tells this seedy, PG-13 story about a dirty, low-down Samaritan traveler who stays in inns.  He holds up the Samaritan as a moral exemplar over and against a priest and a Levite, two Jewish religious leaders.

At the end of the story, when all is said and done, Jesus knocks the ball back into the lawyer’s court with yet another question, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  And this is where Jesus wins the argument.  He stumps the lawyer by forcing him to admit something he doesn’t want to admit.

The lawyer’s response is priceless as he is unable to even bring himself to name the dirty, rotten, low-down Samaritan as his own neighbor.  That would be unthinkable.  All the lawyer can manage to squeak out are the words, “The one who showed him mercy.”

Leaving the lawyer with an invitation to imitate his enemy, Jesus is basically saying, “Let that which you hate become your teacher.  Learn from what you despise.  Let it throw you off-center, off-balance, and out-of-whack.”

Again, the problem with both conservative and liberal models of neighborliness is that both of them place the questioner at the center as the subject/hero, differing only in how wide they prefer to draw their respective circles of inclusion.  Jesus, on the other hand, is inviting the Torah scholar (as well as all present-day culture warriors) to re-center their circles somewhere other than their own egos.

In Jesus’ parable, the Samaritan trader is not just a passive presence who is worthy of inclusion in the lawyer’s circle of neighbors, but an active agent who becomes a vessel of kindness to another (presumably Jewish) person.  The disgusting, no-good, low-down, half-breed, heretic Samaritan is now at the center of the circle, graciously including Jewish people in his own circle of kindness.  The lawyer’s moral universe has just been thrown off-center and now he has to adjust in order to get his bearings.

In Christian theological terms, this is exactly what God does in Christ.  The incarnation throws the universe off-center as the divine Ground of All Being takes on our finite, fallen flesh.  God’s own center of gravity has shifted in order for God to be experienced with us, here in the ordinary stuff of this universe.  According to the Christian story, God is not content to stay enthroned in heaven but meets us here out of deep compassion and solidarity.  In this way, God is more than simply loving, God is Love, as it says in 1 John 4.

As Christians in the world, I believe that we too are called to reorient our lives as our own little selfish worlds are thrown off-center.  Christ invites us to dethrone ourselves from the center of the universe and live, as he did, for others.  In doing so, Jesus says, we render to God the only kind of service God is really interested in: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

As you go out into the world this week, I invite you to challenge yourself and ask what/who do I truly despise?  Who is your disgusting Samaritan? 

Let that which you hate become your teacher, let your world be thrown off-balance, and may you discover the Spirit of the God who is love living and breathing in you, in everyone you welcome, and in all who welcome you.

Empowerment

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized4 Comments
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Ms. Rosa Parks with Rev. Dr. King in the background. Image is in the public domain.

 

Click here to listen to a recording of this sermon at fpcboonville.org

When I was in seventh grade, I used to get picked on a lot.  And I mean a lot.  It was a really hard time for me.  In fact, things eventually got so bad that the Vice Principal of my school recommended that I take Karate lessons for self-defense.  So I did just that.  And it went really well.  It was fun, I was active, and I really liked my teacher: Shihan Jessie Bowen.  Shihan Bowen was a 5th degree black belt and the founder of our school.  There was even a picture on the wall of him next to the kung-fu movie star Chuck Norris.

I, on the other hand, was an awkward twelve-year-old who was barely good enough for a beginner-level sparring class.  So, you can imagine how much trepidation I felt that night at the end of class when Shihan Bowen ordered me to stand up and fight him one-on-one in front of the rest of the class.

It was an epic five-point sparring match.  Shihan Bowen and I matched each other blow for blow with everyone watching.  In the end, I managed to land the final blow for my fifth point.  I couldn’t believe it: I had beaten Shihan Bowen, the Grand Master and the founder of the school, by one point.  For the first time in my life, I felt powerful.  That’s an amazing feeling for a lanky seventh grader who was used to getting beat up and pushed around.  I discovered pride and strength within myself.

Now, I can’t say that this one event solved all my problems at school or in my neighborhood, but I do believe that something of that experienced must have stayed with me because it wasn’t until almost fifteen years after the fact that I did the math in my head: Shihan Bowen was a 35-year-old Grand Master; I was a 12-year-old beginner.  It took me that long to realize one obvious fact: he let me win.

By the time I realized it, of course, I was a grown man.  I had long since grown out of my awkward middle school phase, but I’m grateful for what he did that night because he let me taste empowerment for the first time in my life.  For once, I was a victor, not a victim.  Something I did made an impact on the world around me.

This theme of empowerment is an important one, so we’re going to spend some time with it today.  It factors rather highly in our reading this morning from the gospel according to Luke.

The story begins with Jesus sending a group of his followers out on a mission to heal the sick, cast out demons, and proclaim the kingdom of God.  It’s not the first time he’s done something like this.  In fact, it’s the second.  Just a chapter earlier in Luke’s gospel, Jesus sent another group of disciples out with an identical mission: heal the sick, cast out demons, and proclaim the kingdom of God.  The first time he did it, Jesus sent 12 disciples out.  The second time, he sent 70.

Why do you think that is?  Is it just a random number?  Was that just the number of people who happened to be hanging around that day?  Well, no.  It’s not random.  Numbers had great symbolic significance for people in the ancient world.  Whenever two things or events have the same number in the Bible, you can bet that they’re connected somehow.

Let’s take the number 12, for example.  12 is the number of disciples Jesus had.  12 is also the number of tribes in the original nation of Israel.  Are these ideas connected?  You bet they are.  By sending out 12 disciples, Jesus was saying that his mission was not just for himself alone, but for the whole nation of Israel.  All of God’s chosen people had a part to play in what was happening through Jesus.

What about 70?  This one’s a little bit trickier.  It’s not so obvious to us modern American readers, so I’ll help you out by unpacking it a little.  70 is the number of the nations of the world named in the first part of the book of Genesis.  Genesis, the first book of the Bible, tells the story of the creation of the world and the beginning of all peoples, cultures, and nations.  And the final number of nations listed in Genesis 10 is 70.  So, when Jesus sends out 70 of his followers to heal the sick, cast out demons, and proclaim the kingdom of God, he’s taking his mission even one step further as if to say, “Hey y’all, what you see going on here isn’t just about me, it’s about our whole nation; in fact, it’s not even just about our whole nation, it’s about every nation.  The amazing things you see God doing in me and through me is meant to be shared with the whole world… everybody.”  That’s the symbolic significance of Jesus sending out the 70 disciples on a mission.

Now, let’s take a look at what that mission was.  What is it that God is doing in and through Jesus, the nation of Israel, and ultimately the whole world?  Well, we’ve heard about it already: heal the sick, cast out demons, and proclaim the kingdom of God.  This is what Jesus and his followers are all about.  But what does that mean for us?  Should we all become faith healers, exorcists, or televangelists?  Well, probably not.  In fact, I would advise against it.

When modern Christians talk about “proclaiming the kingdom of God,” they usually mean “preaching the gospel,” and it usually sounds something like this:

“You’re a real bad sinner but God loves you anyway.  So, you should accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, become a Christian, and go to church so that your soul can go to heaven when you die.”

That’s what modern, American Christians usually mean when they talk about preaching the gospel or proclaiming the kingdom of God.  But is that what Jesus was talking about in this passage?  Is there any talk in this passage about becoming a Christian or going to heaven when you die?  No, there isn’t.

Let me say something that might surprise you: Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God has nothing to do with religion or the afterlife.  What is it then?  Well, let’s look at it. 

What is a kingdom on the most basic, fundamental level?  It’s the place where a king or queen has authority and is in charge.  A kingdom is a king’s territory. 

Based on that definition then, what is the kingdom of God?  It’s the place where God is in charge.

What does this mean?  Whenever we allow peace, justice, and love to reign in our hearts, that’s the kingdom of God.  Wherever groups of people organize themselves into communities to care for those who suffer, seek justice for the oppressed, and embody Christ-like compassion in their lives, that’s the kingdom of God.

When Jesus told his followers to go out and proclaim the kingdom of God, he was telling them to plant a flag in the ground.  He was declaring war on the way things are.  He was saying, in effect, “Hey y’all, there’s a revolution going on and we are the insurgents.”  It’s not a battle we can fight with death-dealing weaponry, but with tools that build life.  That’s why healing the sick and casting out demons were so important to Jesus: he was announcing a reversal of the cosmic powers that kept the children of God under the yoke of oppression.  The forces of sin and evil were doomed to failure.  That’s why he said, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you.”  I’ll say it again: There’s a revolution going on and we are the insurgents.

There are all kinds of examples of the kingdom of God breaking through into this world.  I could talk about the falling of the Berlin Wall or the end of Apartheid in South Africa.  But the example that stands out most in my mind this week is that of a middle-aged seamstress and a young pastor (age 26) who organized an entire group of people to right a wrong in their community through the power of nonviolent direct action.  The seamstress (Rosa Parks) and the pastor (Martin Luther King, Jr.) organized the Montgomery bus Boycott of 1955.  For entire year, the African American population of Montgomery, Alabama walked to work instead of riding the bus.  Their voices were heard and they paved the way for the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. 

Their movement was one moment among many that marks the breaking through of the kingdom of God into this world.  Toward the end of the protest, someone asked one elderly woman whether she was tired out from a year of walking at her age.  She famously replied, “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.” 

That, my friends, is the proclamation of the kingdom of God through the empowerment of (all) the people of God.  It is the dethroning of the powers of sin in this world, the casting out of demons, and the healing of our sick society.  It is the eternal revolution of Jesus and we (all of us) are the insurgents.

The end-result of this revolution is not mere political reform but spiritual transformation as the kingdom of God is established “on earth as it is in heaven.”  After describing the revolution to his followers, Jesus told them, “Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Through this empowerment, we the followers of Jesus wake up to who we really are.  All of us are invited recover our dignity as beloved children of God and temples of the Holy Spirit.  Each of us bears the image and likeness of God.  As Jesus said, our names are written in heaven.

Brothers and sisters, this is the truth I invite you to discover and recover as you go out into the world this week.  You may not be called upon to march in the Montgomery Bus Boycott or tear down the Berlin Wall, but there is still plenty of sin and injustice left in this old world.  Go out with your mind’s eye and the ears of your heart open to where it is that the Spirit of Jesus is calling you and empowering you to plant a flag as an insurgent in heaven’s revolution.  Heal the sick, cast out demons, proclaim the kingdom of God, and rejoice that your name is written in heaven.

Be blessed and be a blessing.

Serious as a Heart Attack

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized3 Comments
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Jesus’ Baptism.  Photo by David Bjorgen. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

Click here to listen to this sermon at my church’s website.

I’d like to begin this morning by stating three tragic facts:

  • First, while you were sleeping last night, around the world, 30,000 children died of starvation or malnutrition.
  • Second, most people sitting in church today don’t give a damn about it.
  • Finally, more people will be upset at me cursing in church than they are at the death of 30,000 kids.

Now, I realize that I just dropped a bomb in your lap a moment ago, so let’s press pause and step back to look at what’s going on.

First, I have to cite my sources.  This little stunt comes from a guy named Tony Campolo, who is a Baptist minister and college professor in Pennsylvania.  Believe it or not, I actually toned the language down from Campolo’s original version!

Second, I want you to pay attention to what happened inside of you just now.  Your heart probably skipped a beat and your adrenaline started pumping.  You might have been angry at what I said or fearful that a lightning bolt might strike me dead.  I certainly hope that it led you to a moment of insight and self-reflection.

What I just did here is employ the rhetorical technique of hyperbole.  Hyperbole happens when you overstate something in order to make a point.  In this case, the point I was trying to make was a point about our moral priorities.  Which issue is more important: mass starvation or bad language?  Starvation, obviously.  But which one is more likely to cause a ruckus in church?  Probably language.  Maybe we church folks need to rearrange our priorities?

Spiritual masters of many religions often use hyperbole as a favorite teaching technique.  For example, Lin Chi, a Zen Buddhist teacher from the ninth century, is thought to have said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”  This is another example of hyperbole.  Obviously, a Zen master would not want his students to assassinate the founder of their religion.  The point he was trying to make is that they shouldn’t idolize or attach themselves to anything in this world, even a religious figurehead.  They should exist in a position of openness to reality, willing to let go of their most precious possessions, ideas, and beliefs.  That’s what Lin Chi meant when he said, “Kill the Buddha.”

Don’t we all sometimes use hyperbole to make a point?  How about this one: “I’m starving!  I could eat a horse!”  Are you really?  Is your life actually in danger of ending due to malnutrition?  Probably not.  If someone barbequed up an entire horse and served it to you for lunch today, could you finish it?  Probably not.  You were using hyperbole to get people’s attention and let them know that you feel hungry and would like to eat food as soon as possible.

I’m giving you this crash course in the art of hyperbole because I think it’s essential to understanding the point that Jesus was trying to get across in this morning’s gospel reading.

In the second half of the passage, Jesus says some pretty offensive stuff to his would-be followers in three separate conversations (that have been conveniently condensed into one by the author of Luke’s gospel).

In the first conversation, the would-be follower says he’ll follow Jesus anywhere and Jesus replies, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

The second person requests permission to attend a parent’s funeral, but Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

The final person just wants to say goodbye to loved ones, but Jesus says, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Now, that’s some pretty harsh and offensive stuff!  In fact, it’s downright rude!  We imagine Jesus to be a person of great compassion, so why didn’t he ease up on someone whose father had just died?  This is anything but the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” we used to sing about in Sunday School.

Well, Jesus is using hyperbole to make a point.  He is being intentionally offensive and overstating his case.  What’s his point?  That discipleship is hard but it’s also the most important thing in the world.

Think about it: what could be so important that it would cause you to miss your father’s funeral?  It would have to be something pretty big, wouldn’t it?  You would pretty much have to have a heart attack in the car on the way to the funeral itself.  Well, that’s exactly what Jesus is saying: he’s as serious as a heart attack.  Following Jesus and proclaiming the kingdom of God is a drop-everything scenario: stop the presses, hold the phone, and pay attention.  You’re on your way to your dad’s funeral, you say?  Forget about it, this is too important, even for that.  Discipleship is hard and it will cost you everything you have, so you’d better be ready to let it all go.

Do we relate to our Christian faith like that?  I kind of doubt it.  Unlike most of our fundamentalist neighbors, we mainline Protestants don’t tend to use guilt and fear to manipulate people into faith.  For the most part, I think that’s a good thing.  Real faith should be an honest, authentic response from the heart, not something people do because they’re scared of punishment.  But we sometimes adopt a rather casual relationship with Jesus and we don’t always take him seriously.  The things he says should offend and disturb us.  Jesus is supposed to make us extremely uncomfortable.  If we’re not troubled by the things he says, then we’re probably not really paying attention.

Real Christian faith cannot be reduced to an institution, a tradition, or a system of beliefs.  Real Christian faith requires a total commitment of one’s whole being to the service of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.  Real faith, as theologian Paul Tillich put it, is a matter of “ultimate concern.”  To the Christian, everything else in life becomes secondary.  You have to let it all go, let the dead bury their own dead, put your hand to the plow, and never look back.  It’s as serious as a heart attack.  It will cost you all you have.

Many of us are already familiar with the idea of total sacrifice.  We would gladly give all we have, including our lives, for the sake of spouse, kids, or country.  We realize there’s a payoff that makes the sacrifice worthwhile.  In this case, when you let go of everything and commit your whole being to following Jesus, what you get back is your true self.  Bit by bit, you let go of your false identifiers (e.g. property, money, job, politics, nationality, religion, etc.), you get underneath them and discover who you really are.  This is frightening at first because we have been so thoroughly trained to identify ourselves by these things (e.g. I am an accountant, a mother, a son, a Republican, a Presbyterian, an American, etc.).  We think we are these things.  We’re terrified that if we let go of these things and they are swept away, there will be nothing left of us.  But Jesus shows us that this is not true.

Jesus said, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”  In other words: when we let go of our egos and our false identifiers, we discover who we really are.  This wonderful paradox is illustrated so beautifully in the sacrament of baptism: you go down into the water, where all that extra stuff gets washed away and you are left standing there: naked, wet, and shivering, just like the day you were born.  You are now born again.  And it is then (and only then), as you come up out of that water, that you are given your first glimpse of your true self: the heavens break open, the dove descends, and the voice speaks to you as it did to Jesus at his baptism: “You are my beloved child.”

Jesus knew this truth about himself.  That’s how we was able to walk so freely, securely, and courageously across the face of this planet, unbound by the fetters of attachment to stuff, status, religion, or nationality.  Jesus was free in his true self and he lived to show the rest of us the way to freedom.  He knew that journey would be long and difficult for us.  That’s why he was so urgent and serious as a heart attack.  He knew we have a long way to go and a lot to let go of: all that stuff that keeps us bound up and wound up like bedsprings.  But he also knew what waits for us on the other side of that process: freedom in the knowledge of who we really are as God’s beloved children.  This is the freedom to which Christ calls us.  This is the promised land, the kingdom of heaven on earth, the state of being where we can finally hear the words that the Spirit of God is eternally speaking into our hearts: “I love you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Possessed(?)

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
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Image by Florian Siebeck. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

As many of you already know, in the years immediately following my graduation from seminary, I worked as a counselor at the Addictions Crisis Center, which is part of the Rescue Mission of Utica.  This is a great program.  They serve as the “first line of defense” that people come to when they’re beginning their recovery from dependence on drugs or alcohol.  They offer food, shelter, medical care, treatment, and counseling to folks in the earliest stages of recovery.  Some of them would even show up on our doorstep still under the influence of whatever substance they had been using.  As one friend of mine put it, “Basically, [we] meet people on the worst day of their lives.”

One of the most interesting (and often frustrating) things about people in those first few days away from their substance of choice is their adamant (and sometimes violent) resistance to the treatment, which was usually their last, best hope for healing and recovery.  They would kick, scream, and test every rule and boundary of our program.  Their substance of choice had such a hold on them that they would fight the treatment process, even after they realized they had a problem and voluntarily checked themselves in to our facility. 

Working with them for two years gave me a new appreciation for the meaning of the term possessed.  My clients’ addictions, their compulsive, uncontrollable desire for drugs or alcohol had taken over their rational faculties so thoroughly that they perceived our attempts to heal them as an attack.  The addiction owned them in a manner of speaking and led many of them to do all kinds of destructive things to themselves and others.  Most people in our facility had sacrificed money, friends, jobs, houses, and relationships to appease the false gods of their addictions.  There are many things worth sacrificing for in this world, but I think we can all agree that recreational substances are not among them.

A lot of people in the general public, people who don’t struggle with addictions, wonder why these folks can’t just stop what they’re doing and make better choices.  What most people don’t understand is that it’s not a moral issue.  Addiction is not a choice; it is a disease.  The electro-chemical processes in the brain have literally been hot-wired and hijacked.  And just like an airplane hijacked by terrorists: it’s not going where the pilot (the rational, moral part of the brain) wants it to go.  They are not in control.  They are possessed and they need help.

This, in a metaphorical sense, is what I see going on in today’s New Testament reading.  There is no mention in the text of any addictive, mind-altering substances being used.  All we know about the Gerasene man that Jesus encounters is that he “had a demon”.

In pre-modern times, all kinds of things were blamed on the activity of demons (e.g. seizures, mental illness, socially unacceptable behavior, bad luck, other religions, etc.).  They didn’t have the kind of knowledge or diagnostic equipment we have today.  For example, we now know that a person with schizophrenia doesn’t need an exorcism from demons, she needs anti-psychotic medication in order to make the voices in her head go away.  That’s not to say that there isn’t some kind of spiritual element to people’s problems, but I think we have developed a more informed, nuanced, and holistic way of looking at things than our ancestors had.

When people come to me as a pastor, asking for exorcisms (and they do, believe it or not), my first question for them is always, “Have you seen your doctor?”  I often end up making referrals, doing short-term pastoral care, praying with, and visiting these people in distress.  I find that a combination of medication, counseling, and prayer tends to resolve the vast majority of cases where exorcism was initially requested.

I don’t tend to think of demons as beings or entities in their own right.  The image of monsters with horns and bat-wings that take over your mind is the stuff of horror movies.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in the reality of the demonic.  I believe I encountered a kind of demonic possession every day when I was a substance abuse counselor.  The people I worked with were possessed by their compulsive need for a particular substance.  The things they did as a result of that compulsion were truly evil, you might even say demonic:  They lied, stole, neglected and abused children, some of them had even hurt or killed others.  Those who found recovery from their addictions often had to own up to and make amends for the horrible things they had done under the influence.

And the amazing thing is that, in spite of all this harm to self and others, they continue to refuse to let go of their addiction.  They cling to their substance of choice as if it were more precious than air.  Many of them would refuse treatment and walk out of our program.  The average recovering addict has to go through rehab four or five times before they finally get clean and sober for good.  Only about one out of every ten clients finds recovery.  The rest go back out, pick back up, and continue to use or drink, despite the consequences.  That’s what I call possessed.

The Gerasene man in today’s gospel reading was similarly resistant to Jesus’ efforts to heal him.  When Jesus commands the demonic spirits to leave the man alone, the man cries, “I beg you, do not torment me”.  Torment him?  Didn’t this guy realize that Jesus was trying to help him?  It was the demons that were tormenting him!  But then again, as we’ve already seen today: people sometimes prefer an old, familiar slavery to a new, unknown liberation.  Getting over that hump is often half the battle of recovery.

The good news is that this doesn’t seem to present a problem for Jesus.  He just keeps at it with this possessed man, this hopeless case, until he has sufficiently separated the person from the problem.  That’s a key difference between Jesus and the people of the Gerasene region.  They just tried to lock him up and forget about him, but Jesus went out to see and to save the man behind the madness.  I think our task, as followers of Jesus in the present-day, is to do the same with those outcasts in our society, those people our culture of achievement has given up on. 

Where God is concerned, there is no such thing as a hopeless case.

Now, it would be easy enough to leave things at that: the addict finds recovery, Jesus sweeps in and rescues the man from the demons, and everybody lives happily ever after.  But life is more complicated than that.

It would be so easy for us to sit here in our (semi)comfortable pews on Sunday and say prayers for those poor addicts down in Utica, never once taking the time to look hard at our own lives.  We tend to take notice of people addicted to drugs and alcohol because (A) those addictions are highly destructive and (B) they’re socially unacceptable.  But there are many other kinds of addictions out there as well, many of which don’t involve recreational chemicals of any kind.  In recent years, we’ve become more aware of behavioral addictions to things like sex, work, food, exercise, shopping, and gambling.  Scientific studies have shown that our brains can’t tell the chemical difference between these behaviors and drugs.  Either way, it’s a massive hit from a neurotransmitter chemical called dopamine that our brains get used to having and eventually come to depend on in order to feel normal.  The best single book I’ve ever read on this topic is Addiction and Grace by Gerald May.  I highly recommend reading it if you want to learn more about addiction from psychological, medical, and spiritual perspectives.

In addition to the aforementioned behaviors, I would go on to say that anything can be an addiction, depending on the place it holds in our lives.  Even good and healthy things like family, relationships, church, religion, country, and school can be addictive.  Whenever we let just one thing take over our whole field of consciousness for extended periods of time, we are in danger of becoming addicted or possessed in the way we’re using that language today.  Spiritually speaking, we are committing the sin of idolatry: worshiping false gods, serving a part of reality at the expense of the whole, or even treating a part as if it were the whole.  We can even be addicted to (possessed by) a certain way of thinking or way of doing things.  This last one especially applies to groups of people as much as individuals.

I find it interesting that, in today’s gospel reading, the demons themselves ask Jesus to let them stay in the area.  They ask to be sent into a herd of pigs that immediately goes berserk and destroys itself.  After that, the people of the Gerasene community approach Jesus and ask him to leave.  Why?  Because, according to the text of Luke’s gospel, “they were seized with a great fear.”

Isn’t that interesting?  When Jesus first tried to help the possessed man, the man cried out in terror, “I beg you, do not torment me”.  He was afraid of the very person who had come to help him.  Now, at the end of the story, that man is “clothed and in his right mind” while the rest of the so-called “normal” people in his community are suddenly terrified of Jesus the healer.

This is another aspect of this story that bears a striking and frankly eerie resemblance to my experience of working with people who have addictions.  More often than not, so often in fact that it became a predictable pattern, my clients would return home after completing treatment to discover that their families no longer know how to relate to them.  In the years while my clients were active in their addictions, their families adapted in order to learn how to function in a dysfunctional environment.  They were used to operating under the assumption that one member of the family would always be drunk, high, or absent.  This is what experts mean by the term co-dependency: one person in the family unit is chemically or behaviorally dependent while all the others are “dependent with” that person or “co-dependent”.  When the dependent person comes home clean and sober, ready to rejoin the family system, the family suddenly has to rethink their old patterns for relating to each other and learn new ones.  This process is difficult and scary because they think they have to maintain the old balance and fulfill their old roles in the dysfunctional family system in order to survive.  It’s not at all uncommon for families to go through stress or even break up when someone is in the early stages of recovery.

The solution is for family members to participate actively in their own recovery process alongside their loved one who is getting clean and sober.  Addiction is a family problem that requires a family solution.  That’s why support groups like Al-Anon exist: to help the co-dependents of alcoholic people with their own recovery

And the same goes for the rest of us in the broader community.  Participating in the work of building God’s kingdom on earth is not just about helping those poor, unfortunate souls who struggle with addiction.  It’s about facing our own addictions and co-dependencies (even the socially acceptable ones) so that Jesus can liberate us from our own demons and bring healing and wholeness to the entire community.

If we are open to that process taking place in us, if we can trust that Christ is here to help us and not to harm us (even when his healing presence feels scary and unfamiliar), then we can say that we are walking the path of faith toward the promised land of God’s kingdom of heaven on earth.