Suddenly a man came up to Jesus. Keeping a safe two meter social distance he asked, “Teacher what good thing must I do in order to be safe in this time of corona virus?”
“Why come to me with the questions about what to do?” Jesus
retorted, “You know what the authorities are saying, do that.”
“What are they saying?” he asked.
"Christ and the Rich Young Ruler" by Heinrich Hofmann. Public domain.
“You know,” Jesus answered, “wash your hands for twenty seconds, cancel all gatherings, keep a safe social distance of two meters. Self isolate if there’s any chance you have been exposed. Do these things and you will live.”
“But I’m doing all of these things,” the man answered. “I
have even stored up a great supply of surgical masks and gloves and essentials
in my basement, but still I do not feel safe.”
“There is one thing more,” Jesus answered, “you must give
away all of those masks and gloves and essentials to the people who actually
need them. Even more important you need to let go of the notion that the things
that you have are what will keep you safe. It is only by making sure that
everyone has what they need that we can all be safe.”
“When the young man heard him say that, he went away very
sad. He had a lot of stuff stored in his basement.”
Jesus said to his disciples, “I’m telling you the truth: it’s very hard for a rich person to get into the kingdom of heaven. Let me say it again: it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s Kingdom.”
This paraphrase was inspired by N.T. Wright's translation of Matthew 19:16-26 in Lent for Everyone Matthew, Year A (Westminster John Knox Press, 2013). A few of the phrases are lifted verbatim.
For commentary on this paraphrase, see the video devotional at the top of this page.
The Prophet Samuel was just feeling so depressed. He wasn’t sleeping, he hardly ate and he could hardly even work up the passion to punish any sinners or slaughter any foreigners. He had it in a bad way. And what was it that was depressing Samuel so much? Well, it was Saul. He just felt let down. He had invested so much in Saul. When Saul was just a young man, Samuel had found him and anointed him and made him king over Israel – the first king the nation had ever had. Saul had been so tall and so handsome – a good head taller than any other man in his tribe. He just really stood out from the crowd.
And what
a king he had made! Saul had rescued the city of Jabesh and attacked the
outpost of Geba. He had won at Gibeah and beaten the Moabites and the Amonites
and the Edomites and the kings of Zobah and the Amalakites. There had been so much
blood, so much death and mayhem. Ah, good times… good times.
But, all
good things must come to an end sooner or later. Saul had messed up big-time.
Samuel had told him that he had to do it – that he must kill all of the Amalekites
and not leave one alive, but had Saul listened? No. He had gone and left one of
them alive. So, Samuel really had no choice. He had to tell Saul that he was
finished, that God had rejected him as king over Israel.
But
Samuel just couldn’t get over it. If he couldn’t have Saul – could never enjoy
the thrill of battle and the smell of blood at the side of that beautiful, tall
man again – well then, what was the point of anything? What was the point of
living!?
Those are
the kind of dark thoughts that Samuel is dealing with in the opening of our
reading this morning from the book that bears his name. That can be the only
reason why God would come to him and say,“How long will you grieve
over Saul?” Samuel was stuck. He couldn’t get over what he had lost in
Saul, something that had given meaning to his whole life. And he didn’t know
how to get past it.
And I’ve got to say that I’ve got all the sympathy in the world for Samuel
here because we’ve all been there, haven’t we? Every single one of us has lost
something that mattered to us. I realize that there are some who have lost
loved ones who have passed away and that loss can be tremendous. But even if
you haven’t suffered that, you no doubt know the meaning of losing, in some
sense, someone or something that meant the world to you. We’re probably also
all struggling today with the loss of things like social contact and even just
good old-fashioned physical contact. It is really hard to get over any loss
and, honestly, often the last thing you need to hear is someone saying to you, “How long will you grieve?”
There is an important place for grief – we should always allow the space and
the time for the processing of it – but it can become a problem if we are
failing to work through our grief and allow it cut off our own health and
growth. I suspect that was what was happening to Samuel. And God called him on
it. God called him on it because, as much as God does respect your grief, God
is always interested in helping you to embrace a larger vision for your life.
God’s intervention with Samuel in this moment has a great deal to say to us
as we deal with the challenges of life these days. I see a lot of grief in our
world today – not just with people who have lost loved ones but also those who
have lost in other ways. People are grieving the many changes in our world. Every
time you hear somebody say, “Remember when…” or “Back in my day…” they are
probably about to express their grief over a loss. It is especially something
that we do in the church a lot. We love to talk about the church that used to
be – the good old days when there were hundreds of kids in Sunday schools and
the pews were packed. We have come to believe that that was the real church
(even though, in many cases it was only a blip that lasted for a few decades)
and that what we have in the church today just doesn’t measure up in
comparison.
But what if God is saying to us in the church today, and sometimes in
society today, “How long will you grieve?” How long will you grieve the loss of
the church that used to be? How long will you grieve the changes of the modern
world? How long will you grieve the loss of the power and influence that you
once enjoyed? This is not because grief in itself is bad, but because God has
some things for us to do: “Fill your horn with oil and set out.” God
wants us to set out for new horizons and new beginnings but, so long as all we
can do is grieve the loss of the way things used to be, it will prevent us from
doing that.
Samuel was stuck. That much is clear, not only from what God says to him
but also from what he does. Samuel does, perhaps reluctantly, do as God says. He
takes a hollowed-out ram’s horn and he fills it up with oil and sets out. The
meaning of this act is clear. They didn’t crown kings back then, what they did
was anoint them with oil and the oil is to go on the head of a new king.
But even as, in outer form, Samuel obeys, it is clear enough that he is
still mourning for the past. How do I know that? I know that because when he
arrives at the home of Jesse, the family to which he has been directed, his eye
immediately falls on Jesse’s eldest son, Eliab. And what is it that attracts
Samuel’s attention to Eliab? Well, this is what God says when he notices Samuel
looking at the boy, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his
stature.”
Clearly, Samuel had noticed two things about the boy: he was really, really
good looking and he was tall. That’s what made him think that Eliab would make
a good king. Hmm, can you remember anybody else who’s most distinguishing
feature that he was really tall and good-looking? Oh yeah, that was Saul, wasn’t
it? Clearly, Samuel maybe looking for another king, but he’s looking for a king
just like the one that just got away. He might say he’s over Saul, but
he’s not over Saul because clearly the only new king that he can imagine looks
a whole lot like the old king.
That is the danger when we do not process our grief or loss in the ways
that we ought to. It is alright to feel the ache of loss, it is alright to miss
what you miss and it is alright to remember with sadness, but if you can only
manage to imagine a successful future as basically a rerun of the past, then
you have a problem.
I know that this is a problem that we run into in the life of the church
all the time. I don’t know how many times I have walked into a different church
and had somebody tell me, almost within the first minute, everything about how
things used to be in that church. “Well you know,” they’ll say, “fifty years
ago, they used to have to bring in extra chairs and have people sit in the
aisle because there were so many people here for some services!” “Forty years
ago, our youth group was so big that we had twenty weddings in the space of two
years.” “And thirty years ago, there were so many kids in that Sunday school
that we used to have to hold a class in the Men’s room!”
Oh, you give me ten minutes with most church people and I’ll be able to
tell you everything about their church several decades ago, but almost nothing
about how it is now. (And, by the way, I have learned that, if you say to them,
“Wow, you had that many kids in Sunday school thirty years ago you must have so
many people in their thirty and forties now, they tend to get really quiet.)
They just aren’t as excited about talking about what is going on now.
And it is not even because there aren’t exciting things about their church
now. There are often some pretty wonderful things going on now but, because
they still define success in terms of that past and the exciting things that
are happening there now don’t really fit with that definition of success, they
don’t quite know how to talk about that. “Oh church, how long will you grieve
over Saul? Fill your horn with oil and set out.” God has a new adventure for
you.
Samuel doesn’t anoint Eliab, the new Saul; he ends up anointing David who
is kind of the opposite of Saul. Where Saul was the tallest, David is the
smallest of Jesse’s children. Where Saul had a noble bearing that immediately
made the people hail him as kinglike, David was ruddy which probably meant that
he looked kind of rustic and common. The future was going to look very
different from the past but that didn’t mean that there would not be success in
that future, it just might look very different from the success that they had
known in the past. So it will be for the church. God is giving the church
success and will give it, I believe, even more abundantly in the future. But if
we don’t stop grieving for Saul, for the church that used to be, we will probably
miss it.
All of this seems very relevant today, doesn’t it? There is a lot of change
in the air. This virus has so disrupted everything that, not only is it going
to take a long time for things to go back to normal, I’m beginning to suspect
that “back to normal” is not really going to be possible. At the very least, today
I am probably as far as I ever have been from being able to say that I have the
faintest idea of what the future might look like. That is a scary thought. It
is a scary thought for the church, and it is a scary thought in a lot of other
ways. But should we be scared? No, the future is in the best place that it
could possibly be – in the hands of God. Just because the future is different,
doesn’t mean that God can’t be in it. In fact, as many of the illusions of this
world and how it worked fall away, it might even be possible that the kingdom
of God is closer now than it has ever been before.
But do you know what might make us miss out on whatever new thing God is
doing among us? We might miss it if all we can do is imagine the future in
terms of the past. We might miss it if we define the success of the future in
terms of what seemed like success in the past and we will especially miss it if
we are looking for a new Saul and God is putting a David in front of us.
Grief has its place and you may well find yourself in the coming times
looking back and missing things that you loved and that you liked and that made
your life easier. That is fine and don’t be afraid to express that grief. But
when God comes to you and says “fill your horn with oil and set out,”
you had better get ready to believe that the future success that he wants you
to anoint will be something different from what it might have looked in the
past – not Saul but David – and that is a good thing.
My second "Devotion for People at a Social Distance." This one is inspired by the famous words written 400 years ago by John Donne, a British priest desperately ill in epidemic stricken London.
What can Donne's "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions," say to us today? Lots!
I have committed to do what I'm calling a series of "Devotions for People at a Social Distance." Every day, I will be speaking to and praying with people who are isolated and maybe afraid and worried about the future. Where is the hope and comfort. This devotion is based on the story of the disciples afraid in a boat on the lake.
First of all, here are four videos of the morning worship:
Part 1: Prelude to Life and Work of the Church
https://youtu.be/nFuZsZWNFMg
Part 2: Scripture Readings and Hymn
https://youtu.be/TXOYtPDIOdM
The Readings of the day were Exodus 17:1-7, Psalm 95:1-11, Romans 5:1-11 and John 4:5-40
Part 3: Sermon -- When there is no water on the journey
https://youtu.be/YD0TWaaXvKc
You may read the full text of the sermon below.
Part 4: Offering, a lovely offertory by Margaret MacKenzie-Leighton, and the end of the service.
https://youtu.be/eME08q6_X1k
As I say in the invitation to the offering, this is something very important for everyone to be involved in now. Here are some links that you can use to give.
The children of Israel were tired of their journey and, you know what, I don’t blame them. It is a hard thing to pass through a desolate territory. Resources are scarce. You don’t know where your next meal is coming from, where you are going to be able to set up your tent or whether some wild animals might decide to invade the camp. I’ve gone camping before – been out in the wild and away from all of the conveniences of modern life. I’ve really enjoyed it – for about four days. At least for me, that was when a real weariness kicked in.
So, when the people arrived at a place called Rephidim – a
green oasis in the midst of the desert – it would have immediately raised their
expectations. This was just the kind of place where they could finally relax a
bit – where water would be plentiful for a change and they might not have to
worry for a few days. So, you can imagine how they reacted when they discovered
that the spring in that place had ceased to flow. The promise of the oasis
turned out to be nothing but a great boulder that loomed in the place where the
spring ought to be. Now, that’s got to be frustrating – to have water so near
and yet so out of reach!
Now, make no mistake, that was a big problem. Access to water
supplies when you are travelling in the desert is not a matter of luxury; it is
a matter of survival. They had a legitimate reason to be concerned. So why did
Moses get so upset with them? I think it might have something to do with how
they phrased their complaint: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us
and our children and livestock with thirst?” they asked. The problem with
that is that it is what we always do. Whenever God is leading us though some
new and unfamiliar situation, and the going gets rough, we always default to
what is old and familiar. It doesn’t even matter whether the old thing was a
good thing. In this case, they are pining for a situation where they were
literal slaves!
God calls us to move forward. God calls us to take risks
for the sake of the kingdom of God. Obviously, when that is the kind of thing
that you are involved in, there are going to be problems. There are going to be
bumps along the road and difficulties to deal with. The problem comes when our
response to those difficulties is merely to look back and complain about the
loss of what we were once used to. The real problem comes when our attachment
to the past traps us and keeps us from embracing the opportunities that God
places before us and that was what the children of Israel seem to have been
doing. So I cannot help but feel that, if the church is going to find its way
through whatever challenges God may be placing in front of us today, we’re
going to need a better example and model than the children of Israel passing
through the desert place. Fortunately, we have one.
Jesus was tired of his journey and, you know what, I don’t
blame him. For one thing, he was heading for Jerusalem which was the place that
was so dangerous and so stressful to him that it would actually be the death of
him eventually. He was also passing through a very stressful region if you
happened to be a good Jew like he was. You might even say it was a cultural
desert to him. He was in Samaria and Jews hated Samaritans; the feeling was mutual.
So, though he was surrounded by people, he really had nothing in common with
them. They might as well have spoken in a different language. But that was not
the worst part. The worst part was when Jesus arrived at a place called Jacob’s
well, a place famous for its pure, clear water, and he couldn’t drink any. The
problem was not that a great boulder was blocking access to the well, but it
was almost as hard to overcome: Jesus had nothing to draw water with. Now, that’s
got to be frustrating – to have water so near and yet so out of reach!
Now, if Jesus had just followed the example of his
ancient ancestors in the wilderness at this point, what would he do? He would whine
and complain about how God had brought him to this cultural wasteland so that
he might die of thirst. He would talk about how this kind of thing never
happened when he was back in Galilee among “civilized” people. But Jesus marked
a sharp departure from that whole way of thinking. Instead, he looked around
and asked himself the question, what possibilities has God placed in front of
me in this place?
And that is why, when a woman came along carrying a water
jar, Jesus didn’t react as his ancestors would have done. He didn’t say, “Well
I can’t talk to her because that would give her the impression that she’s a
human being instead of a filthy Samaritan. And I certainly mustn’t give her the
impression, as a woman, that she’s worthy of being addressed in public by a man!”
He should not have even acknowledged her existence. Is that what Jesus did? Did
he define his actions in the moment by what had worked for him in the past or
by the traditions that he had received? If he had done so, he would have
remained thirsty and frustrated.
Now, what Jesus did say: “Give me a drink,” makes
it sound as if Jesus is only concerned with his own needs in the moment. But
think, for a moment, about how extraordinary that is. He genuinely has a need
that only she can meet in that moment. How should we interpret that? Here we
have the only begotten Son of the heavenly Father, the living Word of God who
was a participant in the creation of the universe vulnerably acknowledging his
need to this foreign woman.
That is an important part of the example Jesus gives us
here because, out of his vulnerability and need, arises a whole new way of
relating to a group of people who had been, up until that point, cut off from the
good news that Jesus had brought. Out of that begins an entire ministry among
the people of Samaria.
When the children of Israel were in the desert place and
had no water, all they could think of to do was grumble and complain about how
things used to be. They did, in the end, get some water, but that was it. They
merely survived. When Jesus was in a cultural desert without water he took a
different course and ended up not only with the water he needed to survive but
some pretty amazing new opportunities for the gospel.
Which brings us, of course, to the particular desert
where we find ourselves today. We are not in a literal desert, nor are we in
the kind of cultural desert that Jesus found himself in that afternoon in
Samaria, but we are in a desert, my friends. Let’s call it a church desert.
There was a time when churches like ours – I’m talking
about Presbyterian, Anglican, United, Lutheran, Catholic churches and the like –
were known as mainline churches. It is a word that is still sometimes
used to talk about such churches, but the word no longer means what it once
did. What that used to mean was that those churches were plugged into the main
line of the culture and society. The church had power and influence.
When, for example, the government of Canada was looking
around for someone to run Indian residential schools, it was some mainline
churches who stepped up, and took on those contracts in what was seen as a
win-win type situation for both the church and for the government. Of course,
it was anything but a win for Canada’s indigenous people, but obviously that
was not a really big concern at the time. So, for good and for ill, and there was
a lot of ill in some circumstances like the one I just mentioned, churches had
their finger on the pulse of Canadian society. We were in the main line.
But we’re not really in that position anymore. For good
or for ill, we find ourselves pretty much on the sidelines of culture today. And
the thing is this, when you are used to being in the mainline, when you’ve been
used to having a certain voice and a certain position that people automatically
respect, when you start to lose that, it doesn’t just feel like a loss of
privilege. It can feel as if you’re suddenly dumped out in a desert place.
When you are used to being the people who set the tone
for the whole culture and you suddenly find yourself in a place where the
culture doesn’t much seem to care what you think, it can feel like you are in a
cultural desert. And what happens then? Well, when you have depended upon your
position and clout in society to get everything that you need, it can feel like
you have arrived at a freshwater oasis only to discover that there is no water
and you begin to worry that maybe you’re not going to make it.
We all end up in that sort of situation sooner or later.
The question is how will you react? Will you react like the children of Israel?
Will you whine and complain about the loss and talk about how good we used to
have things while we say, “Couldn’t we all just go back to Egypt?” If you do
that, yes, God might give you what you need to survive and muddle through. He might
make the water flow from the rock, but I suspect that you will have missed out
on an incredible opportunity that God is offering you when he brings you to
this desert place.
I would much rather see you do what Jesus did when he
came to that well in Samaria. I think it might be more appropriate where we
find ourselves today as well as more successful. What might that look like?
Well, first of all I think it might mean recognizing that we are, to a certain
extent, on foreign territory here. Yes, maybe at one time we were the ones who
established the cultural norms in this place, that’s no longer the case. We are
like Jews who have wandered into Samaritan territory and it is a strange
country to us. Secondly, and even more importantly, we, like Jesus, need to not
be afraid to be vulnerable and ask for help in this place. When we go around
pretending like we have all the answers and that nobody can tell us anything,
it creates an impossible distance between us and the people who live in this
place.
Jesus knew that a little bit of vulnerability can
actually go a long way to create connection. In the story of Jesus and the
woman by the well, it certainly creates a connection and an opportunity for
deeper conversation and honestly that is what we need to have with the society
around us. And it is in the midst of that conversation, after he has confessed
his own need, that Jesus is able to offer to the woman what he and he alone can
give and that is the living water that will quench a thirst that she maybe
doesn’t even know that she has.
We still have that water to offer. We have it in the
words of the gospel that we can share. We have it in the faith and trust in
Christ that we can model. And we have it in the supportive model of Christian
community that we are called to live out. And you better believe that that
living water can make a difference in people’s lives that is much needed. But
no one will ever get that living water from us if we are unable to have the
kinds of conversations that Jesus has with that woman by the well and never
forget that that conversation begins with Jesus being very tired and weary from
his journey and frustrated that is not able to get the basic thing that he
needs to survive and it begins with him being vulnerable to that woman and
choosing to treat her, contrary to everything that he’s been taught as a good
Galilean Jew, as a person who has value and importance.
Friends, we are tired and thirsty wandering through some
sort of desert these days. Lots of things make us feel that way. And of course
it is frustrating to come to the spring and find that there is no water. But
consider that perhaps God has led us to this place, that God is calling on us
to engage with the strangers who live in this strange land. Will you engage
with those people? Will you let your guard down, even show your vulnerability?
If you do, God has some opportunities for genuine ministry that might blow your
mind.
Now the Lord said to Ashurbanipal, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Ashurbanipal went, “What, are you crazy, Lord? You want me to leave behind
everything that is familiar and comfortable, the land that I’m supposed to
inherit from my father and all of the family supports that are supposed to
protect me from all the unpredictability of life. That’s okay, Lord, you can keep your blessing.
But the Lord
was not discouraged and he went and said to Utnapishtim, “Utnapishtim, same
command. Leave your country and everything and you can have all these
blessings.” But Utnapishtim said, “Lord,
I am very flattered and everything, but I am totally swamped this month, can I
get back to you later on your plan.”
So, the Lord
went on to others – to Nahshon, Ammishaddai and Zuriel – but nowhere could he
find someone to take on the challenge of what he commanded them – until he
found Abram. And Abram, to everyone’s surprise, he just got up and went.
That is the kind of amazing thing about the story of the
call of Abram in the Bible, isn’t it? There really was nothing special about
Abram before that. He hadn’t done anything, hadn’t proven his value in
any way. When we first meet him in the Book of Genesis, there is only one thing
that sets him apart, one thing that indicates that he is different: when God
says go, he goes. He doesn’t talk back. He doesn’t ask questions or hesitate.
He goes.
That is what made me wonder how we’re supposed to read
this story. Was Abram the only one that God spoke to, or where others given the
same offer? Do we not hear about those others – are they entirely lost to
history – simply because they turned God down?
And if the only thing that Abram did to set himself
apart, at least at first, was respond to this command, what is the significance
of that? What did Abram do right? You might think that it was his instant
obedience that impressed God, which would mean that God is really only
interested in what you might call “yes men” (for lack of a more inclusive
term). What God wants more than anything else is someone who, when God says
jump, only says, “How high sir?”
But no, that cannot be it. If God were looking for
nothing more and nothing less than unquestioning obedience, he could have
chosen to adopt unthinking beasts instead of a human family. No, what set Abram
apart was not the instant obedience itself but the thing that made him react
that way, and that thing was faith.
In our reading this morning from his letter to the
Romans, the Apostle Paul is referring to a later event in Abram’s life when he
writes, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” but what
he says there certainly applies to this earlier event. What set Abram apart
right from the very beginning was his willingness to believe the promises that
God made to him. Paul goes on from there to explain what belief in God means in
that kind of situation, “But to one who without works trusts him who
justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.” Paul says
that the faith that God is looking for is a willingness to trust God.
As I thought about the season of Lent this year, I
noticed that there was a certain theme that kept coming up in our readings for
Sunday mornings – a theme that is most clear in this Genesis reading this
morning. The readings are full of stories of people who step out and embrace
new things, new concepts and ideas, who leave things behind because they feel called
to something new. We see that theme, for example, in our gospel reading from
this morning. We see it as Nicodemus engages with Jesus of Nazareth who pushes
him to rethink just about every aspect of the Judaism that he has held onto as
a teacher of Israel. If Nicodemus is going to embrace what Jesus is saying to
him (which apparently according to this gospel he eventually does) he is going
to have to let go of many of the ideas and ways of thinking that have told him
who he has been up until this point in his life.
So, looking at that, my question was why are these the
stories that seem to be coming up during Lent? Lent has always been a very
important season in the life of the church. It is a time of reflection, of
repentance and of rededication. In the early church, it was also a time for focusing
on the basics of the faith. Throughout the season new members of the churches
would be taught what it meant to be followers of Jesus in preparation to be
baptized on Easter Sunday. So I think that we should also think of it as a
season when we focus on the absolute essentials of what makes us followers of
Christ.
With all of that in mind, how should we think of this theme
that seems to be introduced by this decision of Abram to just get up and go,
leaving everything that is familiar, just because God says so? I believe that
this is meant to teach us something absolutely essential about faith and what
it means for us as followers of Jesus Christ in the world today.
Let me ask you, how is faith generally perceived in our
society today? I would suggest that a very big stereotype of people of faith is
that they are people who cling to the past. That perception is not always true
about Christians, of course, but it is persistent, and it is not based on
nothing. There are many Christians today, for example, who cling to beliefs and
ways of seeing the world that are outmoded and largely discredited – those who
insist, for example, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the
world was all created about 6,000 years ago, and that it was all created in a
span of six 24-hour days. There are those who would claim that believing that,
in the face of all that contrary evidence, is a perfect example of what faith
is.
But it’s not just in matters of what people believe that
Christians can be particularly stuck to the past. It is also in matters of
practice and ways of doing things. We cling to old songs and old forms of
prayers and old traditions. Have you ever heard that favourite old hymn that
goes, “give me that old time religion, it was good enough for my father; it’s
good enough for me.”
And I am not saying that that is a horrible thing in and
of itself. Just because something is old doesn’t mean that it can’t be good. Old
traditions can obviously still be meaningful and comforting. Old truths can
still be true, and we should never abandon the truth. There is no problem if we
simply value these things and hold on to them appropriately. The problem comes
when we confuse blindly clinging to these things with faith; the problem comes
when we start to see stubbornness in itself as a virtue. And I’m afraid that we
often think in exactly that way.
If faith really were what we often assume it is, then
Abram would not be the ideal example of faith. He would be a negative example.
If faith was just about stubbornly clinging to the familiar and comfortable, then
the example that we would be celebrating today on this second Sunday of Lent
would be Ashurbanipal or Utnapishtim or whoever else turned God down flat
before Abram said yes. But there is a good reason why nobody knows who they
were.
The season of Lent is often compared to a journey. We
talk about how it is the path we have to travel in order to arrive at the sad
but beautiful truth of what happened on Good Friday when God’s love for us was
demonstrated so powerfully. It is a journey towards the incredible victory of
Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. But every journey towards something is
also a journey away from something else; that is the truth that Abram
demonstrates to us so clearly. When he left on God’s orders, what he was
journeying towards was very nebulous. God hadn’t even actually told him where
he was going yet – had only promised to let him know when he got there.
But if Abram destination was unclear, what he was leaving
was anything but. He knew exactly what he was giving up and what it was costing
him. And that is often how it works and that is why change is hard, why it is
so much easier to cling to what you know than to embrace what you have not yet
seen.
And so, if we are going to think of our passage through
Lent this year as a journey, I’m going to propose that, instead of focussing
just on where we are going, we think about what God might be calling us to let
go of in order to get there. As you may know, it is a tradition in certain
churches to give up something during the season of Lent. People might make a vow
to stop eating chocolate or desserts or to stop doing some favourite activity
during the forty days of the season. That is may be close to what I’m talking
about here, but I think we may need to look for something a little bit more
serious than that.
I’m not talking about giving up something you like for
just a short period of time. I’m talking about giving up permanently the things
that are keeping you from grasping the full truth of what God did for you on
Easter and on Good Friday.
Let me ask you, what might you be clinging to, not
because it a good thing or a healthy thing, but simply because it is what is familiar
or comfortable. Perhaps it is an old grudge – something that you have been
holding against somebody for so long that you may have even forgotten why it
was that you were mad at them in the first place. Holding on to something like
that might make you feel good – there is a comfort to it – but it is not doing
anyone any good, least of all you. I would suggest to you that part of the
Lenten journey that God is calling you to is a journey away from that grudge.
Or maybe you’ve been resisting something – some change in
your personal life or something that you are involved in – even though you know
deep down inside that the change is inevitable. Change is hard and God
understands why we resist it, but your Lenten journey this year might well
involve you walking away from the resistance. That will mean that you will walk
into something new and unfamiliar and probably disturbing because of it, but
the walk forward is a walk of faith for you as much as it was for Abram.
I just think that you need to be reminded that, if your
faith is merely something that makes you hold onto what you’ve always known,
resist change and complain about any disturbance to what you are used to, it is
not the faith of Abram. It is not the faith that prompted God to bless Abram and
make him a nation that would bring blessing to the whole world. Walking away
from some of that will be hard, of course, but the same promise of blessing
that God gave Abram is the promise he is offering to you this Lenten season. So
let’s embark on the journey together.
When, six days later, Jesus came up to Peter, James and John and quietly said, “Hey, what do you say that the four of us take a hike and climb up to the top of that mountain over there?” did they have certain expectations about what he was saying and what might happen? There are all kinds of reasons to think that they did.
Ever since human beings (or maybe even their primitive
ancestors) first stood up on their hind legs and raised their eyes to the
distant horizon, those eyes were drawn to the hills and mountains that punctuated
that horizon. And from very early times, they seem to have come to see those
mountains as significant mostly because they were places where extraordinary
things happened.
In Southeastern Turkey, not far at all from the place
that the Bible seems to be talking about when it describes the location of Garden
of Eden, there is a mountain called, in the local language, Göbekli Tepe. In
recent years, archeologists have made some amazing discoveries at that
location. They are unearthing structures made of massive stones carefully
arranged in circles with even bigger t-shaped stones standing in the middle of
them.
The site was clearly built up over many centuries, but
the truly surprising thing about it is that there are absolutely no signs of inhabitation
– there are no remains of houses, of fire pits, or of the garbage heaps that
human beings seem to be so good at leaving wherever they go. Nobody actually
lived there, but large numbers of people built it and visited it over many many
generations. Even more astonishing, the site is over 11,000 years old.
Do you have any idea how old that is – 11,000 years? That
is older than the invention of agriculture. So it wasn’t built by farmers but by
people who are sometimes called “hunter-gatherers.” At some point, there were
primitive hunter-gatherer people who lived in that part of the Anatolian
Peninsula, what is today Southeastern Turkey, who one day looked up and saw, in
the distance, that mountain of Göbekli Tepe and said to one another, come, let
us go up that mountain and spend enormous amounts of time and energy
constructing massive circles of stone on that mountain, but let’s not live
there, let’s just visit from time to time.
Now, hunter-gatherers don’t necessarily
have a lot of extra resources to spare. They tend to live at pretty close to
subsistence levels. So, this was no minor decision they were making. It would
have cost them a whole lot. Why, then, did they do it? The only theory that the
archaeologists can come up with that makes sense is that they believed, in some
sense, that if they went to the top of that mountain and built those massive
structures, they would be able to encounter God, or maybe gods, there.
And that speaks to something that I suspect is built into
the human psyche. We seem to think of mountains as places for divine
encounters. This is something that cuts across all people and all cultures. The
ancient Celts spoke about the idea that there are places in this world, they
refer to them as “thin places,” places where the boundaries between this world
and some other reality that we can’t even imagine are easily penetrated. And
mountains seem to be particularly thin places for many peoples. Maybe this was
an idea that first occurred to people because they thought of their gods as
living in the heavens and mountains were as close as you could get to the
heavens while still remaining on earth. But I think that this is about more than
just geography.
The Bible records many divine
encounters on mountaintops. Most significantly, God invited Moses to the top of
a mountain to give him the law. And it just seemed to make sense to everybody
that such an important encounter had to happen in such a place. Such dynamic
revelations could only happen in elevated places. Later, it would make sense to
everyone that the only place to worship God was upon his holy mountain, as we
read in our Psalm this morning: “Extol the Lord
our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy.” The impulse to seek to encounter
God on a mountaintop is deeply ingrained into our human souls. Maybe it has
been ever since Göbekli Tepe
So yes, it seems quite likely that, when Jesus invites the
three to go up the mountain with him, they are expecting that they might
experience something divine. And indeed they do! They have an experience that
is very much a parallel to the story of Moses on that other mountain. There is
the same encompassing cloud, the same frightening light and Moses himself even
shows up for the party.
There has been a lot of talk down through the centuries
about what actually happened on that mountain and what it means. The story has
a certain otherworldly quality to it, as if it is not quite real. Jesus himself
refers to what happens on that mountain as a vision, which adds to that impression.
But, whatever it was, what they experienced there seems to have been a powerful
confirmation of what they had only begun to suspect about Jesus: that he was
not just an ordinary person and that God was uniquely present in him.
This was not something that was clear under ordinary
circumstances. Surely, as Jesus moved through the towns and villages of
Galilee, he appeared to be nothing more and nothing less that an average Jewish
male just like anybody else. But the unique setting of the mountaintop was a
place where the inner truth of who Jesus was could literally shine through.
God’s presence in Jesus became undeniable.
I think that we are all offered moments like that in our
lives – moments when God is present in powerful ways. They may not all be quite
as dramatic as this gospel story, but they are real. God does break through
into our reality at certain times and places. There is a universality to such experiences.
Not every individual has them, of course, but every society seems to have
individuals who experience such things. I think our hunter-gatherer ancestors
experienced such things on Göbekli Tepe. Maybe their understanding was limited
and they couldn’t interpret what they saw as clearly as Moses would on his
mountain or Peter, James and John would on theirs, but that doesn’t mean that
God wasn’t there for them on their hill.
I think we do have such experiences, but the real
question in this story is how are we going to respond to them. Peter’s first
impulse is significant. His idea is to make three dwellings, one for Jesus, one for Moses
and one for Elijah. There is something about that that seems very familiar to
me, something that has been there in the human spirit for at least 11,000
years. Just as the ancient hunter-gatherers encountered something divine on top
of Göbekli Tepe and said, “Guys, we have got to build something up here. I
don’t care if it takes us centuries and consumes all of the extra energy of our
primitive hunter-gatherer societies, we are going to build something on top of
this to contain and preserve this experience so that we never lose it.” Peter
is possessed by that very same spirit.
Why do we do that? Why do we build shrines and temples
and churches on those locations where we, or perhaps where our ancestors many
generations before, had those significant experiences with God? I believe it
stems from a desire to tame or control such powerful experiences. We want to
bind the experience within a structure or institution so that we can maybe come
back and visit it from time to time, but it doesn’t escape and begin to change
everything in our lives.
Remember how I said that the ancient people who built Göbekli
Tepe expended all of that time and effort building the shrine but that nobody
actually lived there on the mountain? That was all about keeping the experience
of God at a distance – letting God or the gods know that they don’t have a
place to speak to our daily lives but that we promise to visit them on special
occasions.
Well, things really haven’t changed in the many millennia
since. Peter is still reacting just like the hunter-gatherers who had come to
Göbekli Tepe. Though he calls what he wants to build “dwellings,” (some
translations have “tents” or “tabernacles”) it is clearly not because he wants
to live on the mountain. He wants Jesus and Moses and Elijah to stay on the
mountain so that he can go on with his life without Jesus, Moses and Elijah
interfering too much. He wants to keep the powerful experience of God safe and
remote on the mountaintop.
And again, all of this is quite understandable. It is, as
I say, what people have been doing to their powerful experiences of God for at
least 11,000 years! The really surprising thing about the story of the
transfiguration is not that they had that really extraordinary encounter with
God, the really surprising thing is that they learned that day to deal with the
experience in a new way.
God speaks. God steps into the story in a very powerful
way at this point as the voice of God thunders from the enveloping cloud, “This
is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” That is
a pretty impressive way of making sure that we pay very close attention to what
Jesus says next. Peter is given a warning that, if he ignores the next thing
that Jesus says, he will be doing so at his own peril. And with such a setup,
you might expect that Jesus will have a lot to say. He, like Moses was when he
was covered by the enveloping cloud, is in a perfect position to deliver an
entire law code and Peter, James and John would be bound to receive it as a new
law.
So, our anticipation builds; what is Jesus going to say?
What he does say, of course, doesn’t seem to live up to the hype. All he says
is, “Get up and do not be afraid,” and then he presumably says, “Let’s
go back down the mountain.” That is it: don’t be afraid and let’s go. But what
he says must be loaded with meaning because we have been warned to pay heed to
it.
And indeed it is. It marks a stunning new teaching,
undoing the thing that has been built into humanity since Göbekli Tepe. For
Jesus is announcing to us that, because he has come, the experience of God is
not something that we have to respond to in fear. We don’t have to keep the
presence of God locked up in some safe spot in a temple, dwelling or tabernacle
on some mountaintop. We do not need to live in fear of it because Jesus has
come and brought God near.
But old habits die hard, don’t they? I think that, in
many ways, we are still very much like those hunter-gatherers on the ancient
Anatolian Peninsula. We still want to keep God at a safe distance in some
special place. Sometimes we treat our holy places, like for example, this sanctuary
here, as if they were on some remote mountaintop far removed from our daily
lives. We visit here, but we don’t bring our whole selves here. We leave the
rest of our lives out there and we try not to let the one affect the other.
When Jesus said that he came to announce the arrival of the kingdom of heaven, which
was his way of saying that that separation was over, God’s reality was about to
spill over into the daily world.
This is not a place for you to merely visit from time to
time and reconnect with God, this place is where the revolution that the world
still needs is supposed to begin. God is not safe here, kept apart from the struggles
of the real world. The God you meet here in Jesus Christ is going with you and
before you out into the world and into daily life. If that sounds like
something that might change everything, you’re right it is. Jesus came to
change everything, especially about how we relate to God in our daily lives.
How would you recognize an immature Christian – someone who was just starting out in their walk of following in the way of Jesus Christ? I’ll bet if you surveyed your average group of Christians, you would probably find a great variety of answers. Say you went to a fairly normal congregation like this one and asked people, confidentially of course, who they felt were the most mature Christians among them, they might say something like, “Well, brother Bob over there has taken many courses in theology and Bible study and he probably understands more about God than just about anyone. He is a very mature Christian.” And then someone else might say, “But look at sister Susan over there, she has served as an elder for so many years she has chaired many committees and even headed up that big building project. Now there’s a mature Christian for you.” Or someone else might point out brother Phil, who can pray like nobody’s business, or maybe sister Catherine who has taught generations of students in that Sunday school room.
Those are the kinds of things that we look at. We look at
education, leadership, ability and service. We look at what people have
accomplished and sometimes just it how long they’ve been around to judge
whether or not they are mature in how they live out the Christian faith. And, I’ll
be honest, that is generally how I think about it too. And I will say that I
have certainly been blessed, down through the years, to have known many mature
Christians according to those criteria. That is why I was kind of shocked when
I realized what it was that the Apostle Paul was saying in our reading this
morning from his letter to the Corinthians.
Paul speaks to the Christians in Corinth and sadly tells
them that he can’t treat them as mature Christians. In fact, he says that they aren’t
just immature, they are babies. He has to feed them milk, he says, and not
solid food. Paul is speaking here as if he were a nursing mother with a little
baby. Nobody knows for sure how long mothers nursed their children in the
ancient world. There are some indications that they may have nursed them until
they were at least three or four years old! But they still must have introduced
solid foods well before that age. Perhaps they exclusively fed their children on
milk for about the same period of time that modern mothers are recommended to
do so by the experts today: about six months
So what Paul is implying to the Corinthians is not merely
that they are immature. He’s suggesting that they are little more than newborn infants.
He’s actually casting himself as a nursing mother with a baby who cannot even
handle pablum. But what is really surprising is how it is that Paul knows that
they are immature because he doesn’t look at any of the things that we would
look at. He doesn’t look at education or experience or service or ability or
any of that stuff. There is only one indication that matters to him. “For as long
as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human
inclinations?” The fact that they
are quarreling with each other is all Paul needs to look at to know that they
are spiritual infants.
What would it be like
if we in the church today had the same understanding of spiritual maturity as Paul?
Because I’ll tell you that we don’t tend to think that way at all. We often go
to the other extreme. What do you do, for example, if you have a person in your
congregation who is, let’s say, really forceful when it comes to getting their
point of view across, who has this way of making sure that everybody goes along
with their plans? What do we do? Well, we usually let them do whatever they
want because we are scared of how they might react if we don’t. We also tend to
look at them and say, “Wow, there’s a leader for you; there’s somebody who
knows how to get things done.” And so we advance them into leadership or put
them in charge of some project.
And then, before too
long, you find yourself in a position where almost all of your leadership team
is made up of exactly that type of person and if you don’t watch out you soon
have them butting heads with one another because, I’ll tell you, none of them
are about to back down on anything. We behave as if these people are the
spiritually mature, responsible leaders and not the spiritual babies that Paul
would have seen. We act as if quarrelling and fighting are an essential part of
being the church and even reward the behaviour.
And I know that we
often excuse it. We say that people are not really fighting because it isn’t
physical. We call it being passionate or forceful and often even push the blame
onto those who complain or feel hurt by the process – tell them that it is their
fault because they are being too sensitive. You know, maybe we ought to check
with Jesus before we say things like that.
Jesus said, “You
have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’;
and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment,’” and we agree. We think,
that because people aren’t murdering each other everything’s fine. We’d go even
further and say that so long as nobody’s having fist fights in the parking lot or
keying people’s cars, we must be all good. But here’s the thing. Jesus said
that in order to reject it and say that it wasn’t good enough. He said it in
order to say, “but I say unto you…”
Jesus is giving us, in
this short passage from the Sermon on the Mount, some instructions on becoming the
kind of mature Christians that Paul was looking for but didn’t find in Corinth
– the kind of Christian who doesn’t give into quarrelling and fighting. And this
first instruction is key. He says that it’s not just about not murdering
each other. It’s not just about avoiding actual physical violence. We
need to look at deeper questions about how we treat each other, how we speak to
each other and how we behave. Words can hurt just as surely as blows can. Raised
voices and aggressive movement can frighten and even terrify.
And I know that some
people might find that to be too much to ask. How can we censor our every word
and movement all the time? It is a lot to ask and I know that it is
something that we will all fall short of at least from time to time. I fall short
often enough. But Jesus never said it was supposed to be easy. He demanded more
of his followers and it is the kind of maturity that we may sometimes fail to
achieve but that we must always aspire to.
But that is just one
part of the advice that Jesus gives to us as he encourages us to maturity. He
also teaches us to, “Come to terms quickly,” when we are faced with such
strife. That is (I suspect Paul would agree) what a mature Christian should do rather
than quarrel and fight. Now, coming to terms is something that takes some work,
it takes some communication and in some cases it might take some mediation. It
might even take some give-and-take or what you call negotiation. Sometimes it’s
really hard and sometimes it is nigh impossible, but coming to terms is
something that we can all work towards together.
But I’ll tell you
something that coming to terms isn’t; it isn’t what we often do. What do you
do, for example, when you find yourself in a situation, whether in the church
or someplace else in life, and somebody begins to act inappropriately with
someone else – insulting them, making fun of them or maybe speaking in
inappropriate racial or sexual ways? I know how people often react and I’ve
done it, sadly enough, myself. People withdraw, look down as if they had
suddenly become very interested in their shoes. And I understand why we do
that, we are afraid to speak up, afraid of the discomfort of it or that maybe
the person who is misbehaving will turn his or her attack on us. We hope that
maybe, if nobody says anything, it’ll just be over and we can pretend that it
never happened. And, indeed, that is exactly what we sometimes do afterwards as
well. But let me ask you, is that kind of response what Jesus was thinking of when
he said that we should “Come to terms?” No, he was not.
But, of course, that
is just one way that we deal with the discord that sometimes arises among us.
Sometimes, when somebody has hurt you in some way, maybe even without realizing
that they have done it, you might respond by withdrawing from that person, becoming
cold and even hostile in your reactions to them. I get that reaction. It can
really feel so good, you almost feel as if you are getting back at them by
doing it. But, let me ask you, do you think that that’s what Jesus was talking
about when he said “Come to terms”? No, it was not.
Okay then, how about, “agreeing
to disagree”? Is that what Jesus was talking about when he spoke about “coming
to terms”? Sometimes, I will admit, that is a position that we’re going to have
to take. The simple reality is very clearly that we are not always going to
agree about everything. There is no escaping that. But sometimes I feel as if we
can say that in a rather cynical way, as if we are grudgingly giving someone
permission to be wrong from our point of view and somehow I really don’t feel that
that’s what Jesus was getting at when he spoke of “coming to terms.” Surely
there are ways to say that and to truly respect and honour that person who
holds a different point of view, to be willing to learn from them even if, in
the end, you don’t agree. I think that could be close to what Jesus was talking
about when he said, “come to terms.”
But most of all, what
I think Jesus was saying was that we need to truly love one another. And if you
truly love one another and you run into one of those inevitable patches when you
see something differently or are hurt by something that somebody does either
intentionally or unintentionally, then you are going to put in the effort and
the time to actually communicate what you feel and what you need. You will put
in the time and effort you need to understand where somebody is coming from and
why they might be feeling the way they are (which, I have found, often has
little to do with the disagreement at hand but with something deeper that might
be going on in their life).
It also means you are
going to be willing to tell somebody the hard truth, like how they might have
hurt others with their behaviour. That is a hard thing for anyone to hear, but
when it comes from a place of love, it can be a transformative moment. I think
that that might just be a piece of what Jesus was getting at when he told us
that we should come to terms.
Is any of that easy?
Of course it isn’t. Is any of us going to be able to do that all the time? Of
course not. We will all fall short at least from time to time. But, as Paul
makes very clear, our failures to do this do not mean that we are not followers
of Christ or that we have no place in the kingdom of heaven. It means that we
are immature Christians who can’t quite handle solid food. But full maturity is
what we should all desire. It is what Christ has called us to. So let us all
put in the work to get there.
God, I don’t mean to complain, but I’ve got to ask, what is the problem here? I mean, we Presbyterians, we have got it all figured out, don’t we? We believe all the right things. We have to because we work so hard at getting it right. We believe in God the Father the creator of heaven and Earth. We believe in Jesus Christ his only son and all the right stuff about his life and his death and his resurrection. We believe correctly about the nature of Christ and the nature of the trinity even if (if I can be candid here for a moment) it doesn’t make a lot of logical sense to us.
We believe all the right things about the church and how
it should operate. In fact, we are so careful about that that every time we
even think of making any change in church policy we send it out to all the
committees and go over the wording with a fine-tooth comb and make sure that we’ve
got it just right before we adopt it. We don’t care if it takes us years, maybe
even decades, we will not make that change until we get it just right.
We are so careful and so correct, and yet what do we see
happening in our church? As our friend, John-Peter, shared with us a couple of
weeks ago, we find ourselves today in a denomination that is undergoing a steep
decline, a decline that has been fairly steady and straightforward ever since
1959. Day after day we seek you and delight to know your truth and be correct
in all of it, and yet this is what you let happen to us?
Why
do we work so hard to be right, but you do not see? Why convince ourselves that
we’ve got the answers, but you do not notice? Well, I guess the only thing we
can do is just try harder to be all the more right all the time. Surly you will
soon come around and give us what it is that we most desire.
I puzzled for a long time over our reading this morning
from the Book of Isaiah. In it, the people of Israel are clearly going through
a difficult time. They are feeling as if God is not giving them what they think
they need. Now, I could probably tell you what it was that they were struggling
with. Biblical scholars actually have some pretty good ideas about the enemies
that surrounded them, the hard economic times they were dealing with and things
like that. But I really think that the point of us reading it today has less to
do with the things that they were actually struggling with and more to do with
the things that we today sometimes struggle with.
The main point is that they were struggling just like we
sometimes struggle. But they were complaining to God specifically because they
figured that they were doing everything right and so God ought to be giving
them a better time. And, honestly, I think there are times when we also feel
like that. So this passage suddenly seemed very relevant to me.
But here was my problem: the thing that they figured they
were doing right was fasting. Now, fasting is something that does come up in
the modern world from time to time, usually in the form of a diet craze. For
example, these days everyone is talking about the 5:2 Diet where you eat
normally five days a week and then fast two. But they weren’t fasting for
health or because they were hoping to lose some weight. They were fasting
because they had this notion that, if they went without food and suffered
because of it, God should notice and give them what they really needed. And,
what’s more, they figured that they had this fasting thing just right, that not
only did they have the hunger pangs, but they were also bowing down and
humbling themselves just beautifully. It was a perfect fast. That is why they
thought that their complaint against God was so legitimate. They were doing
everything right, but God wasn’t holding up his part of the bargain.
And I, honestly, have a bit of a rough time identifying
with that. I mean, I know that there are some Christians in the world today who
really get hung up over carrying out religious actions like prayers or fasting
or rituals and doing them just perfectly, but that’s not really how
Presbyterians or most Protestants think about these things. You would never
catch us suggesting that the only way to solve some problem we are having is by
finding a certain ritual and executing it perfectly. So, it really seemed like
there was no way for us to relate to the people that the prophet is addressing
in this passage.
But then I thought about matters of belief. Protestants,
you see, have this obsession about believing all the right things. I guess
that, when we understand that we access our salvation by faith, it does make a
certain amount of sense. If faith is so key, then surely what you believe
matters. What’s more, we all believe the truth matters and if truth matters,
well, then it matters that you believe true things.
That is all fair enough, but there is a dangerous leap
that we tend to make within that logic. We easily seem to fall into thinking
that faith is just a matter of believing the right things about God, about
Jesus, the Bible and a host of other things. And when we think that way, the
stakes are suddenly very high. Suddenly, if I believe one thing and you believe
something that’s maybe slightly different, that is not just a matter for
discussion, it becomes a matter of salvation! Suddenly questions of belief
become things to fight over, maybe even die over. We also begin to expect that
God should reward us and give us preferential treatment because we happen to
believe all the right things.
But just as the prophet came to the people of Judah in
our Old Testament reading this morning and said, “Do you really believe that
God is going to give you all of these things that you think that you need
simply because you do the right kind of fast?” so would God come to us today
and say, “Why should I grant to you, as a church, all of these blessings and victories
and growth because you think that you figured out all the right stuff to
believe?” Just as they were focussing on the wrong thing by trying to get their
fasts right, I believe we might be doing the same thing in our focus on belief
and doctrine.
Again, this is not because these things don’t matter. Of
course, they matter. They are of ultimate importance. But there is a great
danger when we put all of our energy into working out these things that we miss
the bigger aspects of our calling. What happens when, for example, we
substitute “right belief” for fasting in the prophet’s diatribe?
“Look,” he might say, “you may get your beliefs all
right, but you only seem to be serving your own interests as you do so. Sure,
you do an admirable job in figuring out the right things to believe, but you
seem to only do it in order to quarrel and fight with each other. Such good
doctrine will not make your voice heard on high. Is this the right belief that
I choose, creating perfect statements of doctrine and theology? Is this belief
that is acceptable to the Lord?”
Now, to be perfectly clear, the prophet was not trying to
suggest to the people of Judah that fasting and other similar religious
observances and practices were bad things. On the contrary, he believed that
fasting was a good thing. In the same way, the prophet would not chastise us
for our quest to work out a belief system that is most perfectly aligned with
the truth about God, the universe and everything. His caution was that the
pursuit of that good thing was preventing them from seeking the better thing.
Even worse, he was accusing them of substituting the good thing for that better
thing that was absolutely needed from God’s point of view.
And what is that better thing? That better thing is
justice. That better thing is the pursuit of a world and a situation where all
are treated fairly, where outcasts and marginalized people are welcomed in and
where those who are enslaved in any way are granted freedom. “Is not this the fast that I choose: to
loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the
oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?Is it not to share your
bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you
see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”
I
can only imagine how that was a problem with the ancient Judeans – how they
were so obsessed with pleasing God with their perfect fasts, piously going
without food and feeling so holy for it, that they totally failed to notice the
people next door or homeless in the streets who were going without food for anything
but pious reasons. I can only imagine how it was for them, but I know exactly
how it is a problem for us. When we get caught up in believing the right
things, it can be so easy for us to reject certain people because they do not
fit our idea of what a Christian is supposed to be or of what righteousness is
and, even if we may not intend it that way, the result is often rejection and
deep wounding.
Jesus
understood and believed in the importance of right belief. “Truly
I tell you,” he said, “until heaven and earth pass away,
not one letter,not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law
until all is accomplished.” But he taught that compassion and care,
especially for the outsiders, the rejected, the sinners and the forgotten, always
trumped the importance of right belief. For what was the point of having the
light of the knowledge of the truth if it did not shine before others. “No
one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the
lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your
light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory
to your Father in heaven.”
Our
Old Testament prophet is very clear about how that could happen. It was only
when you learned to prioritize justice, when you reached out to those living in
the margins and when you shared what you could with those who did not have enough,
that this promise was activated: “Then your light shall break forth like the
dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator go before you, the
glory of the Lord shall
be your rear guard… If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the
finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy
the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your
gloom be like the noonday.”
Jesus
understood that and agreed. It was what he was talking about when he spoke of
the lamp set up on the lampstand and the city built up on the hilltop. It is still
the only way for us to be what Jesus envisioned. So, by all means, do think
about and joyfully discuss the things that you believe. They matter and it
matters that you get them as right as you can (for none of us, I believe, will
ever understand it all), but know that, far more than that you believe the
right things, Jesus requires of you that you live out the faith in practical
terms, that you act with compassion, love and understanding, because Jesus really
does want your light to shine forth.
My friends, my brothers and sisters, I have some dire news for you this morning. The Christian faith, the Christian church and everything associated with the name of Jesus Christ is under attack. What is worse, the forces that are attacking it are likely to succeed in destroying it because they are unlike any other foe that we have ever faced.
So, what is this enemy? What is this foe unlike any
other? I know that some of you think that you know what I am going to say. You
think that I might be warning of the dangers of secularism. You may be thinking
that the greatest danger facing us has to do with the rising tide of people who
are pleased to orient everything in their lives without any reference to God,
without any reference to divine authority or writ. You may be thinking of the
tendency of society itself to make every decision without giving any
consideration at all to questions about God or religion.
Now, I will grant you that there are certain difficulties
that the general secularization of society has created for the church in our
times. Things were definitely easier for the church when the society deferred to
it and when it reserved certain days of the week for the almost exclusive use
of the church, for example. Things were easier when society and government
listened when the church spoke simply because it was the church speaking. It
was easier when being a Christian, in name at least, was the natural default
for just about everyone. Oh yes it was easier! But surely the lack of ease is
not possibly something that could bring about the destruction and end of
Christianity. If it were as fragile as all that, Christianity would have passed
away long ago. So, no, I do not think but the forces of secularization could
possibly be the thing that is bringing about the demise of Christianity.
Ah, but some of you might say that the real threat that
is destroying the faith today is the reality of pluralism. Pluralism is the
name we give to the phenomenon of what we find ourselves in today: a society in
which there is a plurality of religions and faiths. Where once, in North
America, there was only Christianity in its various forms and almost nobody who
belonged to another faith. I mean, there were a few Jews here and there but
that’s about it. But today, it seems, it is far more likely that your new neighbours
will turn out to be Sikhs or Muslims or Hindus than that they turn out to be
Baptists or Catholics or Presbyterians. The mere fact that people who are
followers of non-Christian faiths (or even no faith at all) are all over the
place in our society means that Christianity no longer has that first place and
the privileges that go with it.
So, is that the foe that will destroy our Christian
faith? Is pluralism going to be what brings us down? No, that is not the danger
I am talking about. I realize that the loss of privilege and a first place
within society is hard. Sometimes it even feels like persecution. But actually,
the simple fact that Christianity has to deal with some competition in the
spiritual marketplace today should not worry us. Surely the Christian faith is
strong enough that it can endure in the face of a bit of competition for the
hearts and minds of people.
So, if it’s not secularism or pluralism, what is it? The true threat does not come from atheism or science or even from changes in societal morality. No, the true threats, the ones that are attacking the faith head-on, are Christians. And it’s not even that they are bad Christians – at least I don’t think most of them are – they are just frightened Christians. You see, they feel as if Christianity is under attack from all of those things that I’ve mentioned – the secularism, pluralism and other various trends that we see in the world. They feel as if they must fight against these things, must engage in what is called cultural warfare. The ironic thing is that by doing that, they are attacking the very essence of the Christian faith itself.
Let me show you what I mean. Just recently, Liberty
University, probably the most important Evangelical Christian Education Institution
in the United States created a new thinktank called the Falkirk Center for
Faith and Liberty. It is a way to bring together Christian intellectuals to set
the theoretical basis for the church’s interaction with the outside world.
Here is a part of Falkirk’s mission statement: “Bemoaning the
rise of leftism is no longer enough and turning the other cheek in our personal
relationships with our neighbors as Jesus taught while abdicating our
responsibilities on the cultural battlefield is no longer sufficient. There is
too much at stake in the battle for the soul of our nation.” Now think, for a moment, about what it is they are saying there. They are
saying that in order to defend the faith against the things that are attacking it,
things that they collectively call “leftism” (which I think is a very unhelpful
term) but which includes things like secularism and pluralism – that, because
these things are attacking Christianity in their view, we basically have to
abandon the very teachings of Christ in order to fight back.
Jesus taught us to
turn the other cheek; they’re saying that that’s foolishness and we ain’t going
to do that. So, what is the real threat here? Is it the forces of
secularization or “liberalism” if you prefer, or is it the people who are
abandoning the very teachings of Christ and teaching people that they must abandon
them because they feel threatened by these things?
The Apostle Paul predicted
that this would happen, as he wrote to the church in Corinth: “For the
message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us
who are being saved it is the power of God.” The simple truth is that the
message of Jesus Christ is seen to be ultimate foolishness as far as the world
is concerned. The message of the world is that the only way to defeat what is
evil in the world is through strength, power and violence. It is the oldest
story ever told but it is also the story that we keep telling all the time.
It is the plot of
about half of the movies that are made. When there is something wrong, some
evil that is being done, somebody is called upon to make it right. And whether
that hero is James Bond or Iron Man or the Mandalorian, how do they make
everything right again? Generally, they come in with guns blazing and start
blasting away until all of the enemies have been destroyed. That is the wisdom
of this world: only violence can answer violence, only power defeats the power
of evil and the only way to win is by fighting back.
And, you know what, if
that is how you see the world then, I’m sorry, but the message of Jesus is
complete and utter foolishness. I’m not surprised that Christians who feel that
they’re on some sort of battlefield have decided that they need to abandon
everything he stood for.
But that is the very thing that threatens the foundation
of the Christian faith, not only because it is a denial of everything that
Jesus stood for, but even more because it robs us of the true power and wisdom
that should be ours. For the kingdom of God will never be realized until we
learn to live up to what Jesus called us to be.
We read one of the most famous passages in the Gospel of
Matthew this morning: the beatitudes of Jesus, part of the Sermon on the Mount.
The ideal of the kingdom of heaven that Jesus presents here is another example
of the approach to the faith that some Christians are rejecting because they
feel that they cannot afford it because the faith is under attack. But it is
also more than that. What we have in this passage is the antidote to the line
of thinking that led us into this problem in the first place. In many ways, the
beatitudes represent the height of foolishness.
The key word, “blessed,” is a translation of the Greek
word Maka,rioi. It is a word that indicates a
state not only of blessedness but also of happiness and good fortune. Many
years ago, when the Good News translation of the Bible first came out, they
actually translated the beatitudes like this: “How happy are the poor in
spirit...” People reacted to that translation at the time and said that
they didn’t like it. I was just a kid at the time, but I still remember someone
reacting to that translation and saying, “That doesn’t make any sense; being ‘poor
in spirit’ means that you are unhappy! How can you be happy to be unhappy!”
But since that time, I grew up and studied Greek and biblical
translation and I can absolutely tell you that “How happy are the poor in
spirit” is actually a pretty good translation. It is what Jesus
meant to say. He was congratulating these people. And he also meant for people
to react in exactly the same way that that man from my church did; he wanted
them to say, “this doesn’t make any sense.” That was the point of all of these
teachings; none of it made sense according to the philosophy of the world.
But, by telling people
to be happy because they were poor and meek and hungry and thirsty and
despised, what Jesus was doing was redefining victory; he was redefining
winning. You see, the mistake that defenders of the faith are making today is
that they are defining the success of the Christian faith in the way that the
world defines it. They are defining it in terms of power, in terms of dominance
and in terms of influence. Jesus taught the opposite. He taught that the
victory that mattered would come through service, through submission and
through vulnerable weakness. When he said, “Blessed are the meek, for they
will inherit the earth.” What else could he have meant?
That is also what the
Apostle Paul meant when he wrote, “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human
wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” But think
about what that means, it means that every time we think of the church getting
ahead in terms of exercising power and influence within society and the world,
we are actually self-defeating. Every time we try to win in the way that the
world works, we move farther away from the success that God actually wants us
to have. And the reason why this is so hard for us is because for something
like the last sixteen centuries, that has been exactly what the church has been
doing in Western society.
And, what’s more, the
church was pretty successful at it as far as the world was concerned. We had
the power and we had the influence and it was great! We even actually did do
some good with all of that power and influence. The church created some of the
best education systems, health systems, some of the most beautiful music and
art the world has ever seen, just to name a few things. We should not be overly
critical of that legacy, but that was never how Jesus defined success for his church.
Today it seems as if
that has all changed and the church struggles with that loss of power and
prestige. Of course, it does create some hardships, but it also creates a great
promise. For the first time in over a thousand years it would seem as if the
church has an opportunity to seek the kind of victory and strength that Jesus
had in mind all along.
There are places in
the world where Christians are under attack or facing persecution. Of course,
we should do what we can to support them and help them and pray for them. But,
generally speaking, North America is not one of those places where the faith is
being threatened. It is not under attack except by those who would betray who
Jesus was and what he stood for because they feel threatened by some of the
ways in which the world has changed. The church is and always been in the hands
of its only King and head, Jesus who is God’s anointed one. To suggest that
Jesus cannot preserve his church despite some changes that may be occurring is
the failure of faith on our part. And if we renounce the message of Jesus
because of our fear and failure of faith, that will be the greatest failure of
all.
