Tag: Jesus

She Has A Name

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized3 Comments
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JESUS MAFA. Jesus absolves the pentitent sinner, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48384 [retrieved June 16, 2013].

When she walked into the party, they were sizing her up like a piece of meat.  She was that girl: the one with a reputation. 

They had all kinds of ideas about her.  Who knows if any of the rumors were actually true?  It didn’t matter.  Somebody had to occupy the bottom rung of the social ladder and it might as well be her.

Those religious folks, the upstanding citizens, made a good show of cutting her down in public.  They said people like her were the problem with society these days: no morals and values, no respect for the law. 

They said this world would be a better place without people like her.  But secretly, she knew: they needed people like her to exist.  Without the scumbags and lowlifes, who would they have to look down upon?  Their self-righteousness was built on appearances and comparisons.  They only seemed high and holy next to people like her because they did a better job of hiding their faults.  They put on a fancier show, that was all.

The problem was that everyone else in town accepted the reality of their show.  Heck, she almost accepted it herself.  That’s the problem with labels: when you hear them enough, you eventually start to believe them yourself.

Maybe I am worthless, she thought.  Maybe no one will ever love me.  Maybe this world would be better off without me in it.

That’s a pretty thick mental fog to get lost in.  It can lead to some pretty severe and irreversible rash decisions.  For all we know, she might have been on the verge of one such decision herself.

But then she met Jesus.

No, I don’t mean to say that she found religion, saw the light, or got born again.  That’s too easy.  Too cut and dry.  Besides, those folks in the “upright citizens’ brigade” love that stuff.  They eat it up like candy: the wayward sinner reforms her ways and comes back home where she belongs.  Classic redemption story.  Good propaganda.  It reinforces their assumptions about the world and makes them look like loving and gracious heroes to welcome someone so despicable as her.

But this Jesus guy was different.

They didn’t seem to like him very much either.  At first, he seemed like one of them: he was a religious teacher, people called him Rabbi, and he had a lot to say about God.  He knew the Bible pretty well too.  He was always quoting from it, but every time he did, all the religious folks in the crowd would get real red in the face and start clenching their jaws, like he had just said something to annoy them.  Didn’t they love that stuff?  Wasn’t the Bible kind of their “thing” after all?  Then why would they get so mad when Jesus recited parts of it in their presence?  I guess they didn’t like what he had to say about it.

Maybe he was making them uncomfortable.  After all, he was a rabbi, but he didn’t act like other rabbis.  For one thing, he hardly ever went to synagogue.  Most of the time, he was hanging out in the streets with folks who wouldn’t be caught dead in a synagogue on the Sabbath… people like her.

Nobody knows how it happened.  They just seemed to come from everywhere.  Jesus said it was God drawing them, but that didn’t even make any sense.  What would God have to do with people like them?  Still, something inside of her made her stick around on that first day.  She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.  That same feeling kept her coming back around for as long as he was in town.

The things he had to say made sense to her.  He certainly knew the Bible but he didn’t throw it in her face.  He knew all about the Temple and its elaborate rituals, but he didn’t seem to care much about it.  He kept saying the day would come when “not one stone would be left on top of another” in that place.  He seemed pretty irreligious for a religious teacher.

He said, “The place where God lives is within you and around you.”  He spoke from the heart and didn’t bother with all of that fancy philosophy and theology that the other rabbis used.  When people asked Jesus about God, he usually pointed to whatever happened to be in his line of sight at the time:

“Do you see that woman baking bread?  That’s what God is like.  Do you see those crops growing in that field over there?  God is like that.  Do you see that farmer sowing seed, that woman sweeping out her house, or those merchants in the market?  God is like all of those.”

He even saw signs of God’s presence in the lilies of the field and the sparrows of the air.  That didn’t sound like any rabbi she had ever heard before.  What’s even weirder is that he didn’t seem to be bothered by all the freaks and misfits who kept gravitating toward him.  In fact, whenever zealous devotees came up to pledge their allegiance to him, Jesus kept turning them back to those very same freaks and misfits.  “These people are my family,” he would say, “Whatever you do for them, you do for me.”

Family? Did he mean her?  Nobody had ever talked to her like that before.  People called her a lot of things, but never “family.”  She hadn’t even spoken to her own family in years…

Why would anyone want her of all people in his family?

All the same, she kept coming back, drawn by that inexplicable something.  Who knows?  Maybe Jesus was right and it really was God that was drawing her?

She loved listening to him.  She loved the way he stuck it to those religious hypocrites, using their own Bibles against them.  She loved his stories and the way he looked at the world: finding God everywhere in it.  But most of all, she loved the way he looked at her.

Men often looked at her, but not like that.  They usually looked at her with some perverted combination of disgust and desire.  Regardless of whether or not the rumors about her were true (some were and some weren’t), they believed them all and treated her accordingly.  But Jesus called her family.  He saw what she was capable of, not just what she was (or what she represented to everyone else).  When he taught, his eyes would sometimes momentarily lock with hers, as if he was speaking directly to her.  She would swell with pride and sit up a little straighter, imagining that he really was talking to her. 

He wasn’t of course.  She was just a woman, and a bad one at that.  Women weren’t allowed to study under rabbis in that day.  Even socially respectable women would only be allowed to sit in and listen to his lectures.  But then why did he keep looking at her?  Why did his words make so much sense?  She was getting it!  Could it be possible that maybe (just maybe) he really was speaking to her?  I don’t know… but she kept coming back.

And something was happening inside of her.  She was looking at the world in a whole new way.  It was as if she had been blind all along and was really starting to see things clearly for the first time ever.  It was almost as if she had been some lame beggar by the roadside and Jesus was taking her hand, lifting her up onto her own two feet, and teaching her how to walk her own path.  For the first time in a long time, she felt like a person again, a real human being.  It felt like those cold, numb, dead spaces inside of her were coming alive again when she was around Jesus.  Who knew that was even possible?

Earlier that afternoon, she was hanging around town as usual and she heard some folks talking.  They said Jesus would be moving on tomorrow, headed to another town.  She felt her stomach jump with fright.  Leaving?  He was leaving?  To where?  Would he be back?  Was this the last chance she would ever have to see him and feel that amazing feeling?

She had lost track of time those last few days.  They seemed like an eternity to her.  She was so caught up in everything he was saying, everything that was going on, it didn’t occur to her that Jesus wouldn’t be staying there forever.  What was she supposed to do?

Something inside her heart told her she should do something, but she didn’t know what.  Shouldn’t there be some kind of religious ritual for thanking or blessing a rabbi who was leaving?  It seemed like there should be.  After all, those religious folks had prayers, and blessings, and rituals for just about every other occasion, why not this one?  But what would it be?  She wished there was someone she could ask, but certainly no other rabbi would ever give her the time of day, much less let her ask a question.  Besides, most of those blessings and rituals could only be performed by men.  She would only get to sit out and watch, if she was lucky.

But that didn’t sit right with her.  That didn’t do justice to the kind of person Jesus was.  She might not know the correct thing to do, but she had to do something.  It was getting late.  The sun was almost down.  There wasn’t time to plan anything elaborate.  Besides, she heard that Jesus already had plans.  He was invited to dinner at some big shot Pharisee’s house.  They would have all kinds of fancy food and entertainment there.  Nothing she could do would measure up to that.  They would never even let her in the door, anyway.  It was a hopeless cause… unless…

Nah, that’s too crazy… it would never work… but then again…

She had this jar.  It had been with her a long time.  Nobody knows how she got it.  It was the only thing she had that was worth anything.  It was filled with a very rare and expensive perfume, worth about as much as a full year’s salary for a working man.  Once upon a time, that jar of perfume was worth more than her life, but not anymore.  Jesus had showed her that she was worth so much more than that.  The dignity she had discovered through him made that jar seem cheap and worthless by comparison.

It was right then that she knew what she had to do.  Maybe she didn’t know the proper ritual for blessing a rabbi, but she would make one up to demonstrate to Jesus and everyone else what it was that he meant to her.

She went home, grabbed that jar, and made a bee-line for the house where Jesus was having dinner.  Her heart was pounding and her adrenaline was pumping as she got closer.  Right up to the front door she walked.  And right through.  The bouncer happened to look the other way for a second and so he didn’t notice her until she was already inside.  He shouted and tried to grab her, but it was too late.  She had already made it to the place where Jesus was sitting: reclining actually, with his feet stretched out behind him.

She looked down at those feet.  Just like everyone else’s, they were disgusting.  Without paved roads or organized sanitation, city streets in the ancient world were cesspools of filth.  A person’s feet would get caked with mud and excrement just from walking around.  Nobody liked to touch feet or wash them.  It was the worst job, even for a slave.  Feet were gross.

The woman looked down at Jesus’ feet.  Then she looked back at the jar in her hand.  After pausing for a second, she broke the jar open and dumped its precious contents onto Jesus’ feet.  The pungent smell of lavender filled the room.  She had never opened the jar before.  She always wondered what its contents might smell like.  Now she knew.  It was beautiful.  It reminded her of the way that Jesus made her feel inside.  Through him, she had come to be aware of her own inner beauty for the first time ever.  She was like that jar of perfume: broken open, poured out, precious, and beautiful.

As the weight of this truth hit home for her, she began to cry for joy.  Her tears dripped down off her cheeks, chin, and nose and onto Jesus’ feet.  Looking down, she realized the tears mixed with the jar’s contents were washing away the layer of filth left from the long, hard road.  She could see his beautiful, soft, brown skin showing through.  Bending down even further, she took each foot in her hands, undid her long, dark hair, and used it like a towel to wipe away those last remnants of slime, continuing to weep as she did it.  This felt right.  It was all she had: the only thing she could think of to do.

The host of the party was, predictably, indignant.  He pulled out all those nasty names and labels that people called her.  But somehow, those names didn’t phase her as she ran her fingers over Jesus’ smooth, clean, sweet-smelling feet.  In that moment, she was prepared to let him talk and say whatever he wanted, but Jesus wasn’t.  Jesus interrupted the Pharisee’s tirade with a single word: Simon.  That was his name, the Pharisee that is.  Jesus called him by name, not by his status or position.  “Simon,” he said, “I have something to say to you.”

You better believe that shut him up quick.  Jesus then told another story about debts being forgiven.  “Do you see this woman?”  Obviously, Simon didn’t.  All Simon saw was another sinner, another woman who didn’t know her place, another scumbag lowlife.  Simon didn’t really see her but Jesus saw her, so he asked Simon, “Do you see this woman?  I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.”  Did she just hear him right?  Did he just say forgiven?

Seeing the shock and confusion on her face, he said it again just to drive the point home.  He spoke her name… she didn’t even realize that he knew her name, but he called her by it.  She looked up and their eyes met again.  He repeated, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Forgiven.  She never thought she would hear that word spoken to her, but somehow she knew he was right.  That was what she had been feeling all along.  Forgiven.  Restored.  The shame and stigma washed away.

And Jesus wasn’t just making it happen for the first time either.  He was announcing a reality that had already come true.  She was already loved, forgiven, and clean.  Jesus’ words were only sealing the deal and making it real to her.  She was a person with a name and dignity, no matter how hard society might try to take that away from her.

Almost as soon as Jesus had said this, the room erupted into theological debate over who has the authority to announce such forgiveness.  The religious machinery was hard at work, already pumping out Bible verses and quoting rabbinical commentaries on the matter.

Jesus just rolled his eyes, shook his head, and looked back at her smiling.  And then, leaning down to whisper in her ear while the debate raged on around them, Jesus spoke her name again and said, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

This woman, whose name has been lost to history but was known to Jesus, was not the only one who experienced such wholeness at the feet of Jesus.  There were other women among his disciples as well.  We read about some of them this morning: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna.  They were an integral part of his ministry, contributing a vital part.  There were men too, of course.

And the amazing thing is that all of them together… all of us… from first century Palestine to twenty-first century New York, are still hearing in our hearts and proclaiming with our lives that same message of forgiveness that continues to resound through the halls of history:

“I love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Be blessed and be a blessing!

Beginner’s Mind

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

This past week, it was my honor to offer the blessing at the Utica Observer-Dispatch’s Teen All-Stars Breakfast.  Distinguished high school seniors from our area were awarded for their good deeds, accomplishments, and acts of service to the community.  I was invited to participate in this event by Dave Dudajek, who I know through his daughter, Jaime Burgdoff (one of our congregants here in Boonville).

It was amazing to hear about these local teenagers and everything they’ve managed to do in high school.  My memories of high school mostly involve staying up late, watching B movies, and driving around town with friends when we had nothing better to do.  But these folks are already making an impact on their world in the name of what they believe is right.

At this event, Donna Donovan (president and publisher of the OD) gave an address where she talked about these students’ upcoming freshman year at college.  They would be challenged and inspired to grow in new directions and their horizons would be expanded far beyond what they could possibly imagine at this point.  She also told them that this would only be first of several “freshman years” they would experience throughout the rest of their lives.  Each new experience, journey, accomplishment, and challenge will lead them into yet another experience of being a wide-eyed and wet-behind-the-ears “freshman” who is just now figuring out who they are and what life is all about.

In Zen Buddhism, this is called “Beginner’s Mind”.  A person has Beginner’s Mind when she or he is absolutely open to each new moment, each new experience in life.  All of life, the whole universe even, becomes a teacher to a person who has Beginner’s Mind.  Each and every moment is the moment when Enlightenment might happen.

I think this is what Jesus meant when he used the word “repent”.  We associate that term with guilt and sorrow for one’s sins, but in the original Greek the word “repent” is metanoia (“change the way you think”).  When he says “Repent”, Jesus is inviting us to think differently and look at the world through a different set of eyes, open to what the Spirit of God might be saying and doing in any particular moment.  The kind of awareness and openness that metanoia entails corresponds quite closely with the Zen concept of Beginner’s Mind.

In today’s reading from the gospel of Luke, we can see Jesus issuing just such a call to repentance (metanoia, Beginner’s Mind) even though he never actually uses that particular term.

The story opens with a rare and unlikely character: a Roman Centurion.  He was a soldier in a hostile, occupying army.  Imagine that, instead of first century Judea, this story was taking place in Paris, France in 1941.  In that setting, this Roman Centurion would have been a Nazi Commander talking to a local priest.  The hostilities between nations would have created a barrier between these people that was almost impossible to overcome.  After that, there are also the barriers of race and religion.  These invading European pagans would have been offensive in the extreme to Jewish inhabitants of Judea.  The people of Judea, in turn, would have seemed backward and barbaric to the Roman Centurion, who was trained to think of himself as a great hero of the Empire: making the world safe for Roman order and peace.  There is no reason on earth why this Roman Centurion and these religious Jews should have any amicable contact whatsoever.

However, something seems to have already happened before Jesus ever set foot on the scene.  We learn that there is a private relationship between this Centurion and the Jews.  Seemingly insurmountable obstacles and prejudices had already been conquered.  The Centurion had become a benefactor of the Jewish people, even laying down the money to sponsor the building of their synagogue.  The Jewish leaders, in turn, had come to respect this one Centurion in spite of his being a Roman soldier.

The Jewish leaders probably thought of themselves as quite liberal and progressive for having made such a stretch in their worldview to include him.  When Jesus was passing through and the Centurion sent a request to him through the leaders, they took advantage of the opportunity to highlight what a good relationship had developed.  As Jesus was hearing the request, the leaders interjected, “He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.”

What a lovely moment of intercultural understanding and the power of respect to overcome differences in even the most hostile circumstances!  Too bad Jesus came along and felt the need to ruin it.

Jesus, you see, has this strange knack for cutting to the heart of a matter, turning things around, and getting you to see the world from an upside-down, inside-out perspective.  In this case, he does just that by answering the religious leaders’ inclusive magnanimity with a snide remark: “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

Did you get that?  Jesus said, “not even in Israel”.  Who are the Israelites?  They are!  Jesus is saying that this pagan foreigner actually has more faith than the religious leaders of his own people!  What would that be like in today’s terms?  Imagine if the President of the United States pinned the Congressional Medal of Honor on an Al Qaeda terrorist, saying that this soldier represented the very best in America.  People would be outraged!  They would take to the streets in protest!  They would call for the President to be impeached and tried for treason!  Well, that’s the same level of outrage that the Jewish elders would have felt when Jesus said that a Roman Centurion had more faith than any of them.  How dare he?!  Just who does this Jesus guy think he is, anyway?!

Well, here’s what Jesus is doing in this situation: he’s creating an opportunity for his compatriots to adopt a Beginner’s Mind.  He’s dropping a truth bomb on them so huge that it will hopefully shock them out of their preconceived notions about reality.  If they can stay with him in this moment and be open to what he is saying, they’ll find themselves looking at the world in a whole new way.

Up until now, they’ve had a very ego-centric view of themselves and their role as “God’s chosen people.”  To them, being “chosen” meant that they were endowed with a certain kind of special status that made them inherently superior to every other race, culture, and religion on the planet.  So, from their perspective, they really were being quite kind and generous in their endorsement of this Centurion as “worthy” to receive the benefits of Jesus’ healing ministry.

But Jesus saw right through their generosity and exposed it for what it really was: Arrogance.  Implicit in their charitable endorsement of the Centurion was the presumption that they themselves occupied the center stage in God’s unfolding drama in the world.  Sure, they were presenting a kinder, gentler form of religion in that moment, but it was still a very self-centered vision (no matter how open or welcoming it might appear to be). 

In reality, it’s not up to them to decide who is worthy or unworthy.  In reality, being “God’s chosen people” has less to do with status and more to do with being part of what God is doing in the world.  In reality, God’s work in the world extends far beyond the borders of any one nation, religion, race, or culture.

By highlighting the superior faith of the Roman Centurion, Jesus is drawing our attention to that reality.  Jesus is inviting us to repent in that metanoia sense of the term, to think outside the box, to cultivate a Beginner’s Mind, an open heart, and an expanded consciousness.  Like Donna Donovan said to the youth at the Teen All Stars Breakfast, it’s about engaging in a lifelong series of “freshman years” that challenge us and invite us to an ever greater sense of openness to life’s opportunities.

Here in the church, even when we’re being quite open, accepting, and progressive, it’s still quite easy to fall back into that ego-centric sense of superiority about being “God’s chosen people”.  It’s easy to think that it’s all about us and our church.  What Jesus wants to remind us of today is that it isn’t.  We are part of what God is doing in the world.  God’s mission includes us, but it’s also bigger than us, and it’s certainly not about us.

In order to participate in God’s larger mission, we have to move beyond the seductive idea of being a welcoming or even a growing church.  We have to look for a faith that’s greater than our own and ask ourselves, “What is God doing in the world at large and how can we be a part of it?”  And then our next task is to commit all of our resources to pursuing those ends, even if it costs us our very lives.

Where do you see God at work in the world at large?  Who are the “Roman Centurions” in your life, outsiders whose faith and participation in God’s mission might go unrecognized by established religious authorities?  How is God calling you to partner with these religious outsiders and participate in God’s larger mission?

These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves as a church and as individual Christians.  This is the mentality, the Beginner’s Mind, that we need to cultivate day by day so that we can be more open to what God is doing and more faithful followers of Jesus, whose great big love honors and embraces the faith of all people: Israelites, Centurions, and even Presbyterians.

Human Dignity in the Service Sector

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Last year, Pastor Alois Bell of Truth in the World Deliverance Ministries in St. Louis, MO famously stiffed her server at Applebee’s of her tip.  This event made headlines as Chelsea, the server in question, was later fired for publicizing the event with a photo of the receipt:

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The icing on the proverbial cake was the arrogant note Pastor Bell scrawled on the paper before signing it with her name and title: “I give God 10% why do you get 18”.

Why?  I tell you why.  First of all, because it’s company policy for parties that large.  If you don’t like it, don’t eat there.  Second, and far more important, is because your server is a fellow human being, made in the image of God, worthy of respect and dignity for that fact alone. 

The role of server is one that Jesus blessed and took upon himself when he washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper.  Jesus, of all people, had the right to lord his status over others, but he didn’t.  He came to give and serve.  After voluntarily completing this act of degrading service, he commanded his followers to do the same, saying, “Just as I have loved you, so you also must love one another.”  Who are we to then treat our servers as anything less than the very presence of Christ in our midst?  Jesus also said, “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.”

Finally, professional clergy who act in this way absolutely ruin our collective witness to the power of the gospel.  Like it or not, people see us as representatives of the tradition we follow.  If we want to encourage others to love and follow Jesus, we must demonstrate that same love in our words and deeds.

Pastors, priests, ministers, and other clergy, hear me loud and clear: The way we conduct ourselves in public and the tips we leave our servers preach more than a thousand sermons ever could.  And don’t stop with your dollars either.  Make an effort to remember their names, especially if you are a frequent customer.  These people are treated like machines all day long, imagine the effect it will have on them when you make an effort to build community, nurture relationships, and love like Jesus!

As an act of collective repentance for what Alois Bell did in the name of pastors, I would like to share the following photo from a recent visit to Applebee’s in Rome, NY, where many of the staff members, including Alison, Lester, Matt, Amanda, Heather, Michelle, Natalie, Liz, Destiny, and Tristan, have become precious friends to our family, even though we only see each other in this one context.

Many thanks to our beloved server, Alison, for posting this photo and helping us redeem the world a little from the stain of hypocrisy left by Pastor Bell.

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Alison posted the photo to Facebook with this comment:

J. Barrett Lee I put it up finally!!!!!! Thank you for being an amazing customer and more importantly an amazing person and friend! To everyone else: I didn’t know Barrett before I worked at Applebee’s. He came in one night (a particularly rough one) with his daughter and sat in my section. He treated me like a person( a concept that we have talked about many times since) an they made my night 1000 x better. They have now become friends of mine and I love seeing them. It doesn’t hurt that Barrett and his wife Sarah produce amazingly beautiful children

Anyway, my point is that servers are people too, along with the cashier who rang up your groceries wrong or who couldn’t let you use your coupon. Everyone has a story and sometimes they just need someone to listen to it! Spread the love!!!!!!

Housing Crisis for Sex Offenders

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I am a guest columnist in today’s Utica Observer-Dispatch!

Many thanks to Dave Dudajek for doing me a favor and allowing me this slot.

Here is an excerpt:

When we as a society compare our sex offenders to garbage, we do the same thing to them that they did to us. In doing so, we stoop to their level and perpetuate the cycle of violence.

American society at large endorses such violence because no one is said to be more despicable than a sex offender. We seem to have made it OK to dehumanize and hate these people because of what they have done to others. We use them as scapegoats and a “dumping ground” for our own rage, frustration, and self-hatred. Again, we do to them what they did to us. We become what we judge.

With this housing crisis, I believe God is presenting us with an opportunity to rise above revenge and break the cycle of dehumanizing violence. We have a chance to stand in solidarity with Jesus, who ate with tax collectors and sinners, the scapegoats and “sex offenders” of his day and age.

Click here to read the full article

The Great Ends of the Church: The Promotion of Social Righteousness

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Image is in the public domain. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Image is in the public domain. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

My wife played me a recording this week from an NPR program called This American Life.  The entire episode was about the way kids think and the funny (sometimes profound) things they say.  It was originally broadcast in 2001:

It all began at Christmas two years ago, when my daughter was four-years-old. And it was the first time that she’d ever asked about what did this holiday mean? And so I explained to her that this was celebrating the birth of Jesus. And she wanted to know more about that. We went out and bought a kids’ bible and had these readings at night. She loved him. Wanted to know everything about Jesus.

So we read a lot about his birth and his teaching. And she would ask constantly what that phrase was. And I would explain to her that it was, “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you.” And we would talk about those old words and what that all meant.

And then one day we were driving past a big church and out front was an enormous crucifix.

She said, who’s that?

And I guess I’d never really told that part of the story. So I had to sort of, yeah, oh, that’s Jesus. I forgot to tell you the ending. Well, you know, he ran afoul of the Roman government. This message that he had was so radical and unnerving to the prevailing authorities of the time that they had to kill him. They came to the conclusion that he would have to die. That message was too troublesome.

It was about a month later, after that Christmas, we’d gone through the whole story of what Christmas meant. And it was mid-January, and her preschool celebrates the same holidays as the local schools. So Martin Luther King Day was off. I knocked off work that day and I decided we’d play and I’d take her out to lunch.

We were sitting in there, and right on the table where we happened to plop down, was the art section of the local newspaper. And there, big as life, was a huge drawing by a ten-year-old kid from the local schools of Martin Luther King.

She said, who’s that?

I said, well, as it happens that’s Martin Luther King. And he’s why you’re not in school today. So we’re celebrating his birthday, this is the day we celebrate his life.

She said, so who was he?

I said, he was a preacher.

And she looks up at me and goes, for Jesus?

And I said, yeah, actually he was. But there was another thing that he was really famous for. Which is that he had a message.

And you’re trying to say this to a four-year-old. This is the first time they ever hear anything. So you’re just very careful about how you phrase everything.

So I said, well, yeah, he was a preacher and he had a message.

She said, what was his message?

I said, well, he said that you should treat everybody the same no matter what they look like.

She thought about that for a minute. And she said, well that’s what Jesus said.

And I said, yeah, I guess it is. You know, I never thought of it that way, but yeah. And it is sort of like “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you.”

And she thought for a minute and looked up at me and said, did they kill him, too?

The NPR story ends there, but the answer to the little girl’s question is, of course, Yes.  They did kill Dr. King too, and Oscar Romero, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the prophet Isaiah, and the apostle Paul.  It seems that the treatment inflicted upon Jesus has also been visited on those who stand up for what is true and right in any age.  The apostle Paul himself, before he was beheaded by the Roman state, famously said, “In my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.”  Paul seems to have picked up on the inherent connection that exists between what happened in Christ on the cross and what happens in those whose lives are similarly extinguished by unjust powers.  In the mind of God, these events are not separate: They are one.

Jesus himself articulated a similar sense in Matthew 25 when he said to his followers, “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.”  The suffering of the hungry, naked, sick, and imprisoned people of this world is one and the same with the suffering of Christ.

We Christians don’t always understand this truth.  At least, we don’t live as if we understood it.  We separate these events in our minds.  We separate the social from the spiritual.  We say things like, “The church shouldn’t get involved in politics.”  While I agree with this statement when it comes to religious institutions endorsing candidates or receiving state funding, I disagree with the idea that our most deeply held beliefs and values should not shape the way we organize our life together.  Politics, on the most basic level, has to do with relationships, and relationships are what Jesus is most interested in.  When someone once asked Jesus about the most important part of the Bible, he said it all comes down to relationships: your relationship with God and your relationship with your neighbors.

The quality of our relationships is the measure of the quality of our religion.  In fact, we read in this morning’s scripture readings how religion should even take a back seat to relationships.  In our first reading, from the book of Amos, the prophet tells the people that Yahweh their God is disgusted with their religious rituals and fed up with their pious posturing.  He says that God isn’t even listening to the sound of your hymns anymore.  Why not?  Because what God really wants is for “justice [to] roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”  In other words, God listens for the harmony and not the melody.  God wants harmony between people, not just musical notes.  That’s what the words justice and righteousness mean in this passage.  God wanted nothing to do with their religion because their relationships were all out of whack.  There is an inherent connection between the way people behave toward each other and the way they behave toward God.  Injustice toward a neighbor is a sin against God.  The spiritual is political.  The quality of one’s religion is measured by the quality of one’s relationships.

In our New Testament reading, we see Jesus cleansing the Jerusalem temple.  As he drove out the money changers, he shouted, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?  But you have made it a den of robbers.”

He was quoting a passage from the book of Isaiah.  In that section, the prophet was setting forth a vision of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem as an international, multi-cultural center of faith and learning.  People from all over the world, not just Jews, would one day be welcome in the house of God.  The place designated for this activity was the Outer Court, also called the Court of the Gentiles.  It was the only part of the temple where non-Jews were allowed to participate in worship.  It just so happens that this was the very place where the money changers and animal dealers had set up their shops.  They had robbed the Gentiles of their rightful place in God’s house.  And for what?  To make more money.  By placing profit over people, they undermined the legitimacy of their spirituality.  They made the house of God into “a den of robbers”, according to Jesus.  Like Amos, Jesus wanted to see “justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”

Again, the quality of our religion is measured by the quality of our relationships.  What we do for our neighbors, we do for God.  There is a connection between the suffering of people and the suffering of Christ.

This morning, we are continuing with the fifth sermon in a five-week series on the Great Ends of the Church.  We’re asking the question, “Why does our church exist?”  We’ve already given four answers to that question.  We said the Great Ends of the Church are the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind, the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God, the maintenance of divine worship, and the preservation of the truth.  This week, we’re adding a fifth Great End: the promotion of social righteousness.

This one tends to get us into trouble sometimes, because many (including some within the church itself) say “the church shouldn’t get involved in politics.”  They cringe when preachers bring up controversial social issues from the pulpit, preferring instead that preachers would just “stick to the gospel.”

But here’s the thing: a good preacher can’t preach the gospel without getting into relevant social issues.  Any minister who just wants to save individual souls for heaven isn’t preaching the gospel of Jesus.  Jesus said the quality of our religion is measured by the quality of our relationships.  Jesus said, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,you did it to me.”  Jesus drove the money changers out of the Gentiles’ place in the temple and told his followers to leave their offerings at the altar and make peace with their neighbors before coming to worship.  Jesus said that God preferred the compassion of the Good Samaritan over the ritual purity of the priest and the Levite.

No Christian who actually reads the Bible can preach the gospel of Jesus without engaging in the promotion of social righteousness.

Now, as I said before, this doesn’t mean that churches should be endorsing candidates, telling people how to vote, or accepting money and power from the state.  What it does mean is that we should all have a clear enough understanding and a firm enough commitment toward our beliefs and values that we are willing to speak up and act up when the culture around us promotes practices and policies that contradict said values.  Do we believe at all people are made in the image of God?  Then we should have something to say about equal opportunity for all races, classes, and genders in housing, education, and employment.  Do we agree that Jesus had a special place in his heart for poor and outcast people?  Then we should not just make room for them in our hearts, homes, and churches; but we should also re-locate and re-orient ourselves to be where they are: in the slums, bars, and jails of Oneida County.  Do we believe that God loves everyone and never gives up on anyone?  Then neither should we.

These Christian values, if we live them, will inevitably put us at odds with American values.  We will have to go against the grain and the flow of the larger culture in order to hold it to a higher standard.  It will be uncomfortable.  It will make us unpopular.  It might even be dangerous.  But let us remember what our Savior taught us: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

People throughout history, from Martin Luther King to the apostle Paul, have followed Jesus on the path of the cross.  Their suffering and his suffering are one in the eyes of God.  They didn’t just preach the gospel, they were the gospel.  And they share in the resurrection life of Christ, who overcomes the bonds of death and proclaims a new reality in our midst, a new community that is overthrowing and replacing the old domination systems of this world: the kingdom of heaven-on-earth.  When the church challenges the unjust practices and policies of the powers-that-be, we show ourselves to be citizens of that kingdom with the saints in light.  The church’s promotion of social righteousness is not separate from the proclamation of the gospel or in addition to it, it is an essential part of it.  Our actions in relationship with our neighbors comprise the text of the silent sermon we preach every day to the people around us.

Wetbacks: Following El Buen Coyote

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Image by Manfred Werner. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Image by Manfred Werner. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Reading Jesus as a coyote who brings us into God’s reign against the law at no charge, or presenting baptism as making us all equally “wetback” strangers and aliens, are understandings coming directly out of years of working with undocumented immigrants struggling with the constant reality of possible deportation…

Reading Paul with undocumented immigrants, inmates, and “criminal aliens” cam clearly bring new life to worn-out texts.  Reading these Scripture passages in a way that holds onto the radical grace that infuses them requires faith and risk.  Though I am fully aware of other texts that emphasize the importance of being subject to governing authorities (Rom. 13:1-7) and of walking by the Spirit and not by the flesh (Gal. 5:16-26), I do not believe that people always need to be presented with the “whole picture.”  Most people on society’s margins assume the Scriptures are only about lists of dos and don’ts and calls to compliance.  Reading with people whose social standing, family of origin, addictions, criminal history, and other factors make compliance with civil laws or scriptural teachings impossible requires a deliberate reading for and acting by grace.  The good news alone must be seized by faith as having the power to save, heal, deliver, and liberate.  This good news is no one other than Jesus Christ himself, who meets us through the words of Scripture and the sacraments, and through the flesh of his family of buen coyote followers.

–Rev. Dr. Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible With the Damned, p. 179-180, 195-196

 

The Great Ends of the Church: Love Conquers All

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment
European Bee-eater (Merops apiaster): a distant relative of the legendary Phoenix? Image by Pierre Dalous. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons, European Bee-eater (Merops apiaster): a distant relative of the legendary Phoenix? Image by Pierre Dalous. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons,

Before I say anything else, I think it would be appropriate on this particular Easter morning to express thanks for the brave work of the men and women of the Boonville Volunteer Fire Department in their handling of the fire that destroyed part of downtown Main Street this week.

I don’t know if you heard, but there was a class of kindergarten students that was looking at a picture of a fire truck with its crew and trusty Dalmatian close at hand.  One student asked the teacher why fire trucks always traveled with Dalmatians.  The teacher didn’t know, so the kids began to speculate.  One said, “Maybe they help control the crowds.”  And another one said, “Maybe it’s just for good luck.”  But in the end they all agreed that the best answer came from the third kid who said, “They must use the dogs to find the fire hydrants.”

Like Dalmatians on fire trucks, there is so much in this world that we simply accept as present without asking why it’s there.  Take the church, for instance.  A lot of people go to church their whole lives without ever really asking why.  What is the purpose of the church?  Why is it here?  Is it just to keep the pipe organ and stained-glass window companies in business?  Is it just to give our pastor a place to bring all his corny jokes that no one else will laugh at?  Is it a civic organization where people can gather as a community to reflect on their beliefs and values?

According to our ancestors in the Presbyterian tradition, the church does have a particular purpose.  Actually, it’s a six-fold purpose.  It was most clearly delineated and written down a little over a hundred years ago by the United Presbyterian Church in North America, one of the predecessor denominations to our current national church: the Presbyterian Church (USA).  The statement written by our forebears is called The Great Ends of the Church and it reads as follows:

The great ends of the church are:

  • The proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind
  • The shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God
  • The maintenance of divine worship
  • The preservation of the truth
  • The promotion of social righteousness
  • The exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world

Now, I don’t expect you to remember all of these points at once.  But starting today, we’re going to spend some time with the great ends of the church over the next several weeks (not including next week, when I’ll be away from the pulpit).  One by one, we’re going to look at these related ends and ask ourselves why we are here.  My ultimate hope is that our discussion of the great ends of the church might lead us to explore questions about what it is that God might be calling our particular congregation to be and do in this community and the world at large.

Today, we’re going to look at the first great end of the church: The proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind.

Now, that’s a mouthful of theologically loaded terms that don’t always conjure up the most positive mental images of the church.  When the average person hears church-folks talking about “proclaiming the gospel” and “salvation”, the first thing they tend to think of is proselytism (the active recruitment of converts to one’s religion).  In other words, they think of people going door to door with Bibles in hand, winning converts for Christ and saving souls for heaven.  At best, people see this kind of activity as misguided and self-seeking.  After all, aren’t these people just trying to grow the ranks of the church and fill the offering plate?  Most folks (understandably) would much rather be left alone from this kind of “gospel”.

So what else might we mean when we say that the first great end of the church is the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind?  Well, we’ll have to take a closer look at the words “gospel” and “salvation” in order to get a clearer picture about that.  The word “gospel” simply means “good news” and the word “salvation” comes from the Latin word “salve” which means “to heal or make well”.  So we’re really talking about some piece of good news that has the capacity to bring wellness to the entire earth community.  When I let that definition roll around in my head, I imagine a TV news bulletin interrupting regularly scheduled programming in order to inform the public about some momentous discovery, like a cure for cancer, for instance.

For Christians, we see the life of Jesus as representing just such an occasion of good news.  We see in him a way to heal the darkness, chaos, and brokenness of this world.  We hear it in his teachings.  We see it in his actions.  Most of all, we believe this good news to be embodied in the stories we tell about Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Whether or not we take these stories literally, we see them as expressions of truth: the truth that the pure Love living in Jesus could not be silenced or held back by the hateful, violent, and power-hungry forces of this world.  No, this Love that he revealed to us is more powerful than all the crosses, all the bombs, and all the schemes of all the nations of the world.  Death itself is not strong enough to keep this Love down.  This Love is so powerful that we would even call it divine.  We would go so far as to say that the Love revealed in Jesus pulses in the nucleus of every atom, in the core of every star, and in the heart of every person.  No matter what you try to say or do to it, the divine Love of Jesus lives.

In other words: God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

That’s it.  That’s the message of resurrection.  That’s the story of Easter.  That’s the gospel: the good news that brings wholeness and well-being to all.

The first great end of the church, the first reason why we exist at all, is to make this good news known to as many creatures as possible.  The Love we see in Jesus should be apparent in our words and deeds as well.  Our lives, as Christians, should make it easier for others to believe that Love does indeed conquer all (even death).  Every service, every prayer, every hymn, every sermon, every building, every service project, every committee meeting, every rummage sale, and every dollar raised or spent should be directed toward making this one truth more clear and visible to the world:

Love conquers all.

God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Can we say that our church currently embodies this truth in everything we do?  If not, how do you think we can do it better?  What concrete steps can we take toward that end?

How about your individual life?  Do people ever look at you and say, “Wow, that person’s life makes me want to believe that Love really does conquer all”?  If not, then what concrete steps can you take to make the reality of Love more apparent in your life?  Maybe it’s even something as simple as learning the name of your server in the diner where you eat lunch today?

There are bigger ways we can do this as well.  This Easter morning, our congregation is collecting the One Great Hour of Sharing offering, which will go to support national and international organizations that provide, disaster assistance, hunger relief, and self-development resources to people all over the world.  Grants funded by One Great Hour of Sharing go to support initiatives like the Water for Life project in the African country of Niger.  Since 2006, Water for Life has dug six large wells for drinking water, 85 small gardening wells, and ten water-retention pools.  “As a result,” according to the website of the Presbyterian Hunger Project, “19,892 people in 3,292 households, as well as 28,000 livestock animals, have benefited from improved access to potable water for drinking and food production.  Additionally, over 853 acres of land have been cultivated with food crops and over 4,942 acres have been reforested.”

This is Love in action, embodied at a distance for people we’ll never meet.

On a more local level, I’d like to draw your attention to the post-fire recovery effort currently underway at the Boonville United Methodist Church.  From the very beginning of this crisis, before the buildings had even stopped smoldering, the Methodist Church opened its doors as a command and resource center for victims.  Donations of food, clothing, and supplies have poured in from all over our community.

Rev. Rob Dean tells me the one thing they need most right now is people who can come down to help sort and distribute donations.  Starting Tuesday, I’ll be spending most of next week over there as well, lending a hand and assisting Rev. Dean with any pastoral care needs for the families.  You’re invited to come along as well.  We could really use the help.

I spent yesterday afternoon over there.  When we sat down to dinner last night, we had more food than we knew what to do with.  In that upper room together were displaced families, dedicated volunteers, exhausted firefighters, and two bewildered pastors who still had services to lead and sermons to write for Easter Sunday.  Looking around the room last night, I discovered this sermon.  I realized that I was witnessing resurrection in action, right before my eyes.  In the midst of these people: suffering, hugging, laughing, and eating together.  Within them and among them, new life was rising up from the ashes and taking flight like the Phoenix of Greek legend.

Friends, this is not just charity, nor is it simply a worthy cause.  This is the good news that brings wholeness and well-bring.  This is the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind.  This is the first great end of the church.  It is why we are here.

Why Be A Christian?

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon8 Comments
Maria, sister of Lazarus, meets Jesus who is going to their house (1864). By Nikolai Ge. Image Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Maria, sister of Lazarus, meets Jesus who is going to their house (1864). By Nikolai Ge. Image Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

My favorite part of our church’s mission statement is the part at the end where we declare that we are “open to all and reaching out to the world in love.”  I like to remind you of those words at the beginning of worship every Sunday because they speak volumes about who we are and what we do in this community.  The world at large desperately needs to hear this message about a community that is truly “open to all”.  So many other groups and organizations, even churches, divide themselves from one another along ideological lines.  Here in this church, it is my privilege to be a pastor to so many people from so many different political and religious backgrounds.  I can testify from experience that the Spirit who binds us together is deeper and broader than any one set of ideas or opinions.  This is a church that has been built from the heart up, not from the mind down.

Almost everywhere else you can go in the world, the exact opposite is true.  Most people want to know if you agree with them before they enter into a relationship with you.  But we are different.  We’ll move over and make room for you in the pew no matter who you are, where you’ve been, or what you think.  We’ll just keep on telling you that we love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it!

Yup, we’re “open to all and reaching out to the world in love”.  I want you to know this morning how rare and unique that is, especially for a church.  I personally believe that this part of our identity is the key to our future as a church.  This commitment to openness is what makes us different from so many other Christians, who make people pass some kind of dogma test before they’ll accept them.

Recently, I was engaged in an intense discussion with one of these “other Christians”.  This person said to me, “You think it’s okay, in God’s eyes, for people to practice other religions.  So then, why would anyone want to be Christian if it’s not the one and only true religion?”  I thought that was a great question.  Why would anyone choose to be Christian if they could also choose to be Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim?

I was reminded of this conversation when I read this week’s gospel passage from the lectionary.  It’s the story of a woman named Mary of Bethany, who knelt at Jesus’ feet, anointing them with expensive perfume and wiping them with her hair.  This was an incredible act of affection and devotion toward Jesus.  Mary obviously loved and cared about him very much.

That got me thinking: if I was in Mary’s place, what is it about Jesus that would make me fall down on my knees in love and devotion?  What is it about Jesus that makes me want to commit my life to him?  Why am I a Christian?

I think this is a question that each and every one of us should ask.  Whether you’ve just started coming to church or you’ve been here your whole life, you’ve decided to be here for a reason.  We owe it to ourselves and the world to know what that reason is.  I can’t answer that question for you.  But what I can do is tell you why I’ve decided to be a Christian.  I hope that my answer to this question might help you answer it for yourself.

So here’s what Christian faith means to me.  This is what has driven me, like Mary of Bethany, to kneel down before the feet of Jesus and offer him all that I have and all that I am:

For me, being a Christian is all about love.  Love is what I have experienced in and through the person Jesus of Nazareth.  When religious scholars quizzed Jesus about the most important part of the Bible, he told them it all comes down to love: “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”.

Jesus embodied love in the way he lived his life.  He broke bread with tax collectors, Jews who sold their own people out to the Romans in order to make a quick, dishonest buck.  He pardoned the sin of a woman caught in adultery when the rest of her village was ready to stone her to death.  He nurtured relationships with Samaritans, the ethnic and religious rivals of the Jews, and saw the best in them.  He praised the faith of a pagan Roman soldier.  He reached out and touched a leper, who had been shunned and exiled from society because of his disease.  Finally, he spoke words of forgiveness to his executioners as they waited for him to die.  This is love.

Love, he said, is the first duty of any religious person.

When he wasn’t around, Jesus called upon his followers to love each other in his place.  Any good deed rendered unto the most despised and forgotten members of society, Jesus said in Matthew 25, he would count as service rendered unto him.  “Truly I tell you,” he said, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,you did it to me.”

The love that shone through Jesus came to have a profound impact on his followers.  The apostle Paul declared that, if it wasn’t for love, all his words, knowledge, and faith would be meaningless.  John the Beloved went so far as to let Jesus’ example of love redefine his idea of God: “God is love,” he said, “and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

What I learned through Jesus is that God is not some angry judge, sitting high up on a cloud, hurling down lightning bolts at people he doesn’t like.  No, God is that dynamic energy of love that flows out from within us.  God works through persuasion, not coercion.  This divine love takes on an infinite variety of forms, depending on the person and the situation.  As we open ourselves up to this love more and more, we are continually filled with God’s Spirit, and we begin to resemble Jesus.  Love, then, is the measure of our faith, not religious dogma.

Through Jesus, I learn how to love and I learn that I am loved.  Jesus didn’t just teach people about love, he didn’t just point to love.  No, Jesus embodied love in his very being and person.  Love shone through his every word and deed.  That’s what I mean when I praise Jesus as the Son of God and the Incarnation of God: Jesus is the embodiment of divine love who invites me to do and be the same, in whatever imperfect and limited way that I am able.

This is what takes my breath away when it comes to Jesus.  This is why I want to fall down at his feet and offer everything I have and all that I am, so that I might be part of that love too.  This is the kind of God that I can believe in.

For me it is no contradiction to believe that the dynamic God of love I discovered in Jesus can be active in the lives of people from every time, place, culture, and religion.  I hear the voice of this God whispering to me in the pages of the Bible and singing to me in the clouds at sunset.  Jesus has opened my eyes, ears, mind, and heart to experience the presence of God in all things.  For this, I am amazed and give thanks.  What else can I do but collapse to my knees before Jesus and worship?

That is why I am a Christian.  It has nothing to do with creeds, dogmas, or being the one and only true religion.  It has everything to do with love.  I hope and pray that the people around me will experience through me, in some degree, the love I have received through Jesus (whether they recognize it by that name or not).

How about you?  Why are you here in church today?  If you call yourself a Christian, why do you choose that label for yourself?  I want to encourage each and every one of you to answer that question for yourself today.  Something has brought you here.  You are not sitting in this church by accident.  It is therefore incumbent upon you to ask yourself: Why?

In your imagination, put yourself in Mary of Bethany’s place: kneeling at the feet of Jesus, offering the very best of what you have and who you are.  What has brought you here?  Even as you acknowledge and respect the faith of others who are different, something about this faith and this person, Jesus, has captured your attention.  What is it?

Answer that question for yourself and don’t be afraid or ashamed to share your answer with the world.  There are people out there who need to hear what you have to say.  Go out there today and tell them.

“Preach the gospel always… use words when necessary.”

May your words and your deeds say to the people of this world: “I love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Prodigal Grace

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment
Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son (c.1663-1665). Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son (c.1663-1665). Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

The last one hundred and fifty years or so have borne witness to more technological and scientific advances than any other equivalent period of time in human history.  From industry to the internet, from the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk to the first moon landing at Tranquility Base, from outer space to cyberspace, we have traveled farther, communicated faster, and dug deeper into the mysteries of the universe than previous generations could have dreamed possible.

In all this time, perhaps the greatest mystery we have encountered is the mystery of each other.  Without a second thought, I can pull a hand-held device out of my pocket and initiate an instantaneous conversation with someone on the opposite side of the planet.  Compare this ability to explorers like Magellan, whose trip around the globe cost him his life, four out of five ships, and all but 18 of his 270 crew members.  Compare it to the life of the average peasant in medieval Europe, who would likely never travel more than 5 miles away from the spot where he was born.  Our experience of the world in the early 21st century is so much more connected and cosmopolitan than our ancestors thought possible.

But it hasn’t been an entirely utopian experience, of course.  This heightened interconnectivity has brought us into contact with people very different from ourselves.  These people talk, dress, think, and worship very differently than we do.  Our knowledge of the world has given rise to more questions.  The most vexing of these questions have to do with religion.  Once the average person became aware of so many different religions on this planet, and especially once they began living next door to people who practice these religions, how are we supposed to make sense of such diversity?  With so many varieties of belief and so many opinions about the ultimate nature of reality, surely someone has to be right while everyone else is wrong, right?

These questions have sparked an ongoing debate about who God is and what God wants that has lasted to this day.  It seems like there’s always some nut-case out there who is more than willing to stand up on national television and claim with unwavering certainty to have the one and only right answer about what God’s will is.  Too many people, longing for something to hold onto in these confusing times, are only too willing to buy into such easy answers.  As we have seen, time and again, these peddlers of snake-oil and easy answers can make their followers say and do the unthinkable.  In exchange for absolute certainty about the will of God, people are willing to hand over the money in their bank accounts, cut off relations to friends and family, and even fly airplanes into buildings.  The philosopher Voltaire said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”  I like to pray a prayer I once saw on a bumper-sticker: “Lord, protect me from your followers!”

In these times of complication and confusion, the promise of absolute certainty feels like a virtue but turns out to be a vice.  As it turns out, the way we hold our questions with our values is far more important than the answers we come up with.

In Jesus’ time, there was a group of people who claimed to have all the answers.  They were the Pharisees.  Erudite scholars of the Torah, these well-respected citizens seemed to possess a monopoly on the truth market.  Their rabbis fielded questions of theology and ethics so well that they established themselves as defenders of the faith and guardians of family values.  Theirs was a world of black and white easy answers.  Faith and certainty went hand in hand with no room for mystery, doubt, or mercy.

You can imagine then that when Jesus came along, he really messed with their worldview.  We read in the opening verses of this morning’s gospel passage that Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners.  The Pharisees were quite offended by this gesture, since eating with someone in that time and culture implied that you accepted that person just as he or she was.  From their point of view, Jesus was sending the wrong kind of message for an upstanding citizen and an acclaimed rabbi.  In response to their offended sensibilities, Jesus told them a story.  It’s the famous story we now know as the parable of the prodigal son.

The story begins with a fictional man with two sons.  One day, the younger of the two decides that he doesn’t want to sit around and wait for his father to die before collecting on his inheritance.  He asks for it ahead of schedule.  Basically, this move was his way of saying to his dad, “You’re dead to me.”  And his father, in spite of what must have been immense heartbreak over this rejection, acquiesces to his younger son’s demand.

The next thing we learn is that this son takes his share of the estate and burns out on the party scene of some far-away city.  But when the good times stop rolling, the son is hard-up for cash.  He ends up taking the most disgusting job possible for a young Jewish person: feeding pigs.  He was do hungry that even the hog-slop was starting to look and smell pretty good to him.

Finally, in a moment of desperation and clarity, the son selfishly cooks up a half-decent apology in order to get himself back into more stable living conditions.  And then he makes his way back home with his tail between his legs.  He wasn’t really sorry, mind you, he was just miserable enough that he would do anything, put up with any amount of humiliation, if it meant a warm bed and three square meals a day.

This is where the story gets really interesting.  Jesus says, “…while [the son] was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.”  Taken aback by this enthusiastic greeting, the son nevertheless begins his feigned apology speech, but his father never lets him finish.  He cuts him off by calling for his servants to bring a robe, a ring, and sandals.  He kills the fattened calf and prepares a celebration feast.  In this moment, we get a clear picture of this father’s true nature as a man overflowing with love and generosity for his children.

Most tellings of the story end here, with the prodigal son’s redemption via forgiveness.  But that’s not where Jesus ends the story.  He keeps going.

Enter the older brother, the father’s firstborn son.  He has been the dutiful heir to the estate.  He has his stuff together, so to speak.  He has always done everything right.  But he’s not the hero of this story, not by a long shot.

It turns out that this older brother, in his quest to be the perfect son, has severely misjudged the kind of person his father is.  When he sees the welcome that his younger brother receives, the older brother gets angry and shouts at his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.”  He thinks his father is a cranky old miser who demands absolute obedience without question.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Jesus’ cautionary tale about the older brother is a biting indictment of the leaders of the religious establishment in his day.  Like the older brother in the story, their devotion to certainty and obedience has led them to believe that their God is just as judgmental and small-minded as they are.

On the other hand, it is the tax collectors and sinners around Jesus, no strangers to imperfection and doubt, who have the keenest insight on the nature of reality.  Through Jesus’ acceptance of them as they are, warts and all, they are coming to have faith in the power of grace.

What is grace?  Well, a theological dictionary would define grace as “unmerited favor” but here’s my favorite definition of grace: God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Sound familiar?  It should.  It’s how we end our sermons here every week.

But more than that, grace is one of the central religious values of our Presbyterian heritage.  In the 16th century, when established religious authorities once used guilt and fear to manipulate and control the people, the Reformers countered that there is nothing a person can do to garner favor with God.  Grace is a given.  It is God’s basic orientation toward human beings.  All we have to do is decide how we’re going to respond to it.

Will we, like the older brother and the Pharisees, storm off in a huff over the scandalous nature of grace?  Or will we, like the younger brother and the sinners, open our hearts to this undeserved love?  Will we allow it to transform us from the inside out, until we start to look like Jesus?

When I look around our world in the 21st century, I see a planet in desperate need of grace.  We’ve had more than enough of pompous, self-righteous fanatics who claim to hold all the right answers to life, the universe, and everything.  What we need now is a deep, abiding faith in the mystery of grace.

We need imperfect people, full of doubts and faults, whose lives have nevertheless been touched by the knowledge that they are loved, no matter what.  Such people know how to love in return.  Theirs is the only message that can successfully defend against the attacks of judgmentalism, fundamentalism, and terrorism.

Their scandalous message of grace, never popular or pragmatic, applies equally to liberals as well as conservatives, Muslims as well as Christians, North Koreans as well as North Americans.  Grace is the great equalizer.  Grace is the central value by which we know that we can never out-stay our welcome in the kingdom of God, and it is the enlivening force that empowers us to go out from this church this morning, saying to one another (and to the whole world):

“I love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Befriending the Cross

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Michael Servetus (1511-1553)
Michael Servetus (1511-1553)

Hidden in the annals of Christian history are stories we’d rather not tell.

The Church of Christ has not always done well at emulating the life and love of its Lord and Savior.  As a matter of fact, we’ve been downright evil for much of the time.  One need only mention the Crusades or the Salem Witch Trials to get an idea of what I’m talking about.  One such example comes from the very roots of our own Presbyterian tradition:

Back in the 1500s, when John Calvin was preaching in the Swiss city of Geneva, a guy named Michael Servetus blew into town.  He was on the run from the Catholic Church after being arrested for heresy and then breaking out of prison.  Servetus was a Unitarian, meaning that he did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity: the belief in one God, consisting of three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The fugitive Servetus made a bad choice in putting Geneva on his travel itinerary.  John Calvin, whose opinions had a powerful influence on city politics, had no more love for Servetus than the Catholic authorities had.  Calvin himself had previously written to a friend, “If [Servetus] comes here… I will never permit him to depart alive.”  And Calvin made good on his threat.  As soon as someone recognized Servetus attending worship at Calvin’s church, he was arrested, tried, and burned at the stake for heresy.  Michael Servetus’ last recorded words were, “Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have mercy on me.”

This is part of the dark side of Presbyterian history.  John Calvin is still remembered as the founder of the Reformed Tradition, of which the Presbyterian Church is a part.  In 1903, Calvin’s spiritual heirs in the city of Geneva erected a monument to the memory of Michael Servetus on the spot where he was burned.  The inscription on that monument condemns Calvin’s error and acknowledges that the true spirit of the Reformation can only exist where liberty of conscience is allowed to flourish.

It’s too little, too late for Servetus, but the gesture acknowledges that we’ve at least made a little progress in half a millennium.

In so many of these cases of heresy trials and stake burnings, there is an oft-repeated label that has been misappropriated from the New Testament and applied to the opponents of established orthodoxy.  That label is: “Enemies of the cross of Christ”.

You might have noticed that very phrase appearing in this morning’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  Paul wrote, “[M]any live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.”

And just who are these “enemies”?  Paul is not clear on that.  At various points in church history, this term has been applied to Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Unitarians, and basically anyone else who’s theological views differ from the person applying the label at the time.  “Enemies of the cross of Christ” is a derogatory epithet used to identify others as “outsiders” and “heretics”.  Most of the time, it has been applied to emphasize doctrinal differences between religious groups.

I believe that such use of this phrase does violence to its original meaning in Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  You see, in that letter, Paul never suggests that one’s religious affiliation or theological orientation are determinant of one’s status as an enemy of the cross of Christ.  For Paul, the truth goes much deeper than that: so deep, I would say, that the essence of this message can be found in the spiritual teachings of every mystic and every sage in every culture, every place, and every period of history.  Paul’s message of the cross is the story of people graduating from their small, self-centered lives to the larger, reality-centered Life.  Some have called it conversion, some salvation, some liberation, and some enlightenment.  For Paul, as for most Christians, the central symbol for this process of transformation is the cross of Christ.

The cross is the single most recognizable Christian symbol in the world.  Historically speaking, it was of course the instrument of torture and execution on which Jesus was killed.  Symbolically speaking, Christians have attached multiple levels of meaning to its significance.  Starting about a thousand years ago, a full millennium after Jesus was born, a British writer named Anselm of Canterbury came up with the idea that theologians now call “substitutionary atonement”.  You might not have heard that phrase before, but you probably have heard some preacher on the radio or television saying, “Jesus died for your sins.”  Substitutionary atonement is currently the most commonly known and accepted interpretation of the significance of the Jesus’ crucifixion, but the idea is only about half as old as Christianity itself.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul presents an entirely different understanding of the cross.  For Paul, the crucifixion event cannot be understood apart from the story of Christ’s resurrection.  According to Paul, these two events form a unified whole.  Neither one makes any sense without the other.

The crucifixion and resurrection, taken together, form the central image of the Christian spiritual journey.  In the process of transitioning from a self-centered to a reality-centered life, every Christian must undergo a kind of death and resurrection.  As Paul himself wrote elsewhere, in his letter to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”  Earlier in his letter to the Philippians, he writes in a similar vein:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

In this early Christian hymn, Paul lays out the path of self-emptying, the path of the cross, which leads to resurrection and exaltation by God.  And this, he says, is not only the journey of Jesus himself, but also of every Christian who claims to bear his name.  Paul begins his hymn with the exhortation: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”.

A Christian then, in Paul’s eyes, is one who walks the path of the cross, who dies to the old, self-centered life and rises to the new, reality-centered Life.  One could say that a Christian is a “friend of the cross of Christ”.

By contrast, those who are “enemies of the cross of Christ” are those who refuse to walk this path of metaphorical crucifixion and resurrection.  The Buddha might call them “unenlightened”.  Muhammad might call them “infidels”.  Harry Potter would probably call them “muggles”.

What can we learn about these “enemies of the cross of Christ”?  Well, since this status has more to do with one’s way of life than with one’s religious affiliation, I think we can say that they might belong to any tradition or no tradition at all.  We’re just as likely to find them in pews as in bars.

Here’s what Paul has to say about them: “Their end is destruction; their god is the belly”.  This is an interesting way of putting it.  When Paul says, “their god is the belly” he obviously doesn’t mean their physical abdomens.  The belly is where one’s food goes after it is consumed.  The belly, in this sense, is the seat of desire.  The people who refuse to let go of their small, self-centered lives are worshiping their own desires and addictions.  What they want/need is most important to them.

For them, the primary concern is “my food, my money, my country, my church.”  Everything is all about I, me, my.  There is no big picture or larger context in which they see their lives.  That which benefits them is universally good.  That which hinders them is universally bad.  In every story, these folks never fail to cast themselves as either the heroes or the victims.  They’re always on the side of right.  They have all the answers.  Anyone who disagrees with them is a heretic who deserves to be burned at the stake.  This is what self-centered worship looks like.  These folks are what Paul refers to as “enemies of the cross of Christ.”  There is no self-sacrifice for them.  There is no denial of desire for the greater good.  There is no responsibility beyond one’s responsibility to one’s own self.  Self-centered existence.

What is the end result of this way of life?  Paul says it quite clearly: “Their end is destruction”.  This self-centered way of thinking and living can only lead to pain and death.  This is not some mysterious, mystical idea.  Think about it: what kind of world would this be if neighbors never went out of their way to help each other?  What if friends and family never forgave each other?  What if no one answered the call of charity or the obligation of justice for those who suffer?  I don’t know about you, but that’s not a world I would want to live in.  That selfish mentality can only lead to destruction, as Paul warns us.

The way of the cross is the way of sacrifice.  Jesus could have called upon his mass of followers to rise up and fight if he so desired.  Instead, he chose to walk the path of nonviolence.  He chose to suffer pain, rather than cause it.  He chose to die, rather than kill to protect what was rightfully his.  In so doing, Jesus set himself apart from every other revolutionary movement leader of his time.  His selfless sacrifice did not go unnoticed or unremembered.  He left his followers with a symbol and an image that would change the way they look at the world.

Christ’s willing submission to crucifixion, according to Paul, is the basis for his sovereignty over all creation.  For his followers, it is the model we follow for living our lives in the world.  The end-result of crucifixion is not death, but resurrection.  “Humiliation”, according to Paul, is transformed into “glory”.  Followers of the way of Christ must befriend the cross because it is the only way into the “abundant life” that Jesus intended for us to have.

Paul’s warning about the “enemies of the cross of Christ” is not a wholesale condemnation of those who hold different theological views from Paul’s, or John Calvin’s, or mine.  Paul’s warning applies to all of us, no matter what religion we espouse.  With tears, Paul is pleading with us to realize that our little lives, ruled by our own selfish desires and preferences, lead only to destruction.

The flip side of Paul’s warning is that those who befriend the cross, who walk the path of self-sacrifice for the greater good, like Jesus did, are sure to receive resurrection, salvation, and enlightenment.  These are the true saints, the blessed ones who discover the meaning of life.  These are the real Christians: the friends of the cross of Christ.

May it be so for you, for me, and for all who seek the greater good, the life abundant, in the name (or the spirit) of Jesus Christ.