Belief Becomes Behavior

The scriptures referred to are 1 John 3:16-24, Acts 4:5-12 and John 10:11-18.

Sociologists point out that religions have 3 main components: beliefs, behaviors and belonging. If you were living in almost any ancient culture, regardless of your beliefs, your religious behaviors would consist mostly of making sacrifices to the gods. This was not because you believed the gods cared about you. You were feeding or appeasing them or trying to win their favor. Basically your local gods were like Mafia dons. They were powerful and you wanted to keep them on your side. They were, however, not particularly moral beings. Most of Greek mythology would disappear if Zeus could keep it in his pants. Human wars were just the earthly manifestation of wars between the gods. You did not look to the gods for moral examples or direction, only protection.

Ethical monotheism, the idea that there is only one God and that God is the source of moral standards and principles, originated with Judaism. For instance, practically every culture has a story of a great flood that almost wiped out humanity, but the reasons the gods do it usually have nothing to do with morality. In the epic of Gilgamesh, the gods are hungover from drinking too much and find the humans to be too noisy! That's the reason they try to drown them. Whereas in the Torah, the reason is “The earth was ruined in the sight of God; the earth was full of violence.” (Genesis 6:11) This was morally wrong because humans are made in the image of God. And afterwards God makes a covenant with Noah and his descendants that he will not flood the earth again and they will not kill one another. Instead they are to fill the rebooted earth with life. (Genesis 9:6-7)

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the emphasis is on how God wants us to treat one another with love. (Leviticus 19:18, 34) His people are to take care of the poor, the widow, orphan, the resident alien, and the disabled (Exodus 22:21-23; 23:6; Leviticus 19:14). We are to be honest in our dealings with one another. (Leviticus 19:11-13) God's main ethical principles are put forth in the Ten Commandments. (Exodus 20:1-17) Jesus summarized these in the 2 greatest commandments: to love God with all one is and has and to love our neighbors as ourselves. (Mark 12:29-31) When his people violate these commandments, God turns his face from them and lets them suffer the consequences of their sins. (Deuteronomy 31:17) This causes God's people to turn back to him (the basic meaning of the Hebrew word for “repent” is “turn back”) and so he turns back to them and rescues them. This happens repeatedly. It's the basic narrative of the Old Testament. (Psalm 106:43-45)

But God always warns his people first that they have done what is wrong. And it is always about those two greatest commandments. The people are either worshipping things other than God or just going through the motions when worshipping God, and they are also mistreating the disadvantaged. In Isaiah God says, “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I look the other way; when you offer your many prayers, I do not listen, because your hands are covered in blood. Wash! Cleanse yourselves! Remove your sinful deeds from my sight! Stop sinning! Learn to do what is right! Promote justice! Give the oppressed reason to celebrate! Take up the cause of the orphan! Defend the rights of the widow!” (Isaiah 1:15-17) The consequences for not loving God and our fellow human beings never come as a surprise. God always warns people to change their ways. God tells Jeremiah, “There are times when I threaten to uproot, tear down, and destroy a nation or kingdom. But if that nation I threatened stops doing wrong, I will cancel the destruction I intended to do to it.” (Jeremiah 18:7-8)

Still, people often think of God as unreasonable. Yet just after those verses in Isaiah he says, “Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins have stained you like the color red, you can become white like snow; though they are as easy to see as the color scarlet, you can become white like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18) In Joel it says, “Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and boundless in loyal love—often relenting from calamitous punishment. Who knows? Perhaps he will be compassionate and grant a reprieve, and leave a blessing in his wake—a meal offering and a drink offering for you to offer to the Lord your God.” (Joel 2:13-14) God is always ready to forgive because God loves us.

We see God's mercy and compassion most clearly in Jesus. Paul, after talking about how extraordinary it would be for anyone to die for another person, except maybe if that person was exceptionally good, writes, “But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) In this instance God does not wait until we repent before he offers forgiveness. He acts first. He anticipates that people will, in response to his self-sacrificial action in Christ, repent and turn to him. God loves us and so we should return that love.

And in today's passage from 1 John, we read, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” And here we see clearly the principle of ethical monotheism. We do these things because this is how God acts. God loves other people as well and so we should love them too.

Mentioning that we should lay down our lives for others may make us uneasy. We know, for instance, that at the time that the Revelation to John was written, Christians were being persecuted. (Revelation 2:10, 13) In fact the book of Revelation seems to have been written to assure Christians that while persecutions will happen, God will triumph in the end and so they should persevere. (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21)

But in 1 John we see a broader meaning is given to the phrase “lay down our lives for one another.” The very next verse asks, “How does God's love reside in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?” The Greek describes this literally as the person “closing off his heart from” the person in need. So laying down one's life can mean not only giving up one's life for someone but giving up some of one's possessions to help. It is being open-hearted and generous to the person who needs help. It means helping not only with our treasure but our time and our talents. And if a person doesn't do as little as that, how can they be called a Christian?

So he continues, “Little children, let us love, not in word and speech, but in truth and action.” So we know that even in the first century there were people in the church who talked the talk but didn't walk the walk. And one of the biggest problems we have today is that people have ceased to believe that Christians mean what they say when they claim to be followers of Jesus. Because they are reluctant to lay down any parts of their lives or any privileges they have for the sake of others. That means their behaviors are at odds with their beliefs. As James says, “...faith without works is dead.” (James 2:26)

Jesus said, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) He also said, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:27) And remember, our cross doesn't mean our own troubles. Jesus carried his cross not for himself but for us. Our cross is the burdens we assume for the sake of others. As Paul puts it, “Carry one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2) And what law is that? Jesus said, “My commandment is this—to love one another just as I have loved you.” (John 15:12) He said that on the night he was arrested and sent to the cross for us. As it says at the beginning of our passage in 1 John, because Jesus laid down his life for us out of love, we are to do the same for one another.

We see this in our passage from Acts. Peter and John were arrested by the Sanhedrin, the very people who had arrested Jesus and turned him over to Pilate to be crucified. These were the people from whom the disciples were hiding in the locked room on that first Easter. Yet here they are boldly telling them that they healed a man who couldn't walk in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, a man who couldn't stay dead because he was the Christ, the Messiah. Their faith wasn't a private matter of praying by themselves. Their beliefs, that Jesus was in fact “the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead,” compelled them to behave in the way they did: helping others and proclaiming this good news. (Acts 3:15) They were no longer afraid of death, nor reluctant to lay it down for others.

And in this they were behaving like Jesus, who, in today's passage from John's gospel, says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” The disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying at the time. But after his resurrection, they got what he meant. The hired hand may run from the wolf, as indeed the disciples did at Jesus' arrest. But like a good shepherd faces the wolf at the cost of his life, Jesus faced the forces of pain and death and in the end overcame them.

Had Jesus not been raised from the dead, his followers would have eventually disappeared as did those of John the Baptist. Paul encountered a dozen of John's disciples at Ephesus but there are none today. (Acts 19:1-7) It was the risen Christ who gave Peter and the rest the courage to spread the word, despite the risk of death. And if the disciples hadn't put their beliefs in the risen Jesus into action, we wouldn't be here.

Unfortunately the church in North America and Europe is shrinking. I believe that is because we have divorced our behavior from our beliefs. Studies have shown that most Christians do not live very differently from those who don't believe. And people have noticed this. We may proclaim the gospel with our lips but we do not put it into practice in our lives. And that more than anything else has turned people off to Christianity. They don't see a lot of real Christians in the world. As Carl Jung said, “You are what you do, not what you say you will do.”

G.K. Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” It's like sobriety. As they say in A.A., it works if you work it. But when we hit difficulties, we begin to doubt ourselves, lose heart and give up. What we need is a spirit of boldness.

And that is what we are given. Because of what God did for us in Jesus, we are saved from sin and death. And knowing this truth, our passage says, our hearts do not condemn us. John's letter continues, “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness from God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.” The Greek word translated “boldness” also means “confidence” and “resolve.” We can be bold because, as Paul put it, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31)

Notice that we can ask anything from God because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. If a soldier is ordered to go on a mission, he will be provided with whatever he needs to fulfill that mission. He will not be provided with anything in the world he happens to desire. Just so, we can ask God for whatever we need to fulfill the mission he has given us. That does not mean he will give us winning lottery numbers or a supermodel girlfriend or movie star boyfriend. As it says in James, “You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so you can spend it on your passions.” (James 4:3) But if we need it to do God's will, we can ask and we will receive it.

And what are our orders, so to speak? “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he commanded us.” Trust Jesus and love one another. But remember we must love not just with our words but with our actions, as Jesus did. He healed people; he fed people; he made a real difference in people's lives. And if in Jesus' name we make a difference in people's lives, they will be more likely to be drawn to Jesus.

Finally our passage from 1 John says, “All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them.” The word translated “abide” means to “reside” or “stay.” If we put our trust in Jesus and love one another, we reside and stay in him and he resides and stays in us.

“And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.” We tend to think of the Holy Spirit as passive but he is dynamic. After Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. (Mark 1:12) After that we are told, “Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee” and began his ministry. (Luke 4:14) The Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. (Romans 8:11) Before he ascended, Jesus told his disciples, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you...” (Acts 1:8) We are not to sit on a mountain like some guru, waiting for people to come to us and receive wisdom. We are to go out, as Jesus did, in the power of the Spirit and show his love in all that we think, say and do. We can do it “...because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:5)

Huey Lewis and the News did a whole song about the power of love. They sang that the power of love could “make a bad one good, make a wrong one right...” and that while it may seem cruel sometimes “...it might just save your life.” We know that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son to save our lives, which meant he would end up dying, painfully, at the hands of those very sinners he came to save. Jesus knew his mission would become a suicide mission. But he trusted God and believed in his promise to raise him again on the third day. And so he acted on that belief. He went to the cross out of love for us. And if we really believe that Jesus laid down his life for us, then we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

Eclipsed

The scriptures referred to are 1 John 3:1-7 and Luke 24:36-48.

Last Monday there was a total eclipse of the sun. And although this happens every 1 to 3 years, some people were predicting that it was a sign that the end of the world was here, based on some questionable interpretations of the Bible and an inability to count the number of North American towns named Nineveh in the path of the eclipse. So, of course, Facebook and other social media were full of jokes about it. And, once again, for the undiscerning, it looked like all Christians believed this and thus were fools. But not all Christians believed this, just as not all Christians believe in the pretribulation rapture, an idea not held by the early church but which has only become popular in the last 200 years, thanks to John Nelson Darby, the notes in the Scofield Bible, the book The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series of novels and movies. But in all of this hoopla, people missed the fact that something other than our star, the sun, was also eclipsed by something much smaller than itself: Jesus, God's Son, got obscured by a mountain of silliness and trivial concerns generated largely by a small group of people who claim to be his followers.

That Jesus will return is found in the Bible. Yet it is interesting that 3 of the gospels only devote a chapter each to Jesus' most detailed discussion of the matter (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21:5-36) and John has only a couple of verses (John 14:2-3). Jesus' teaching about his return in the first 3 gospels can be summarized thus: (1) Watch out that no one deceives you, especially false Christs or Anointed Ones (which is what Christ means.) (2) Don't be alarmed by wars, revolutions, earthquakes, famines and plagues. These things are like the beginning of birth pains. The end will not come immediately. (3) Christians will be persecuted. Jesus says nothing about a 2-stage return to rescue Christians from this. “And if those days had not been cut short, no one would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.” (Matthew 24:22, emphasis mine) (4) Jesus' return will be obvious to all nations. (5) “But as for that day or hour no one knows it—neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son—except the Father.” (Mark 13:32; cf Acts 1:7) While he was on earth, not even Jesus knew when the end would take place. Therefore we are not to try to figure it out. We are not smarter than Jesus. (6) In the meantime, other than being alert, we are to be busy doing the work Jesus gave us to do. (Matthew 24:45-47; Luke 12:42-44)

And what is that work? Jesus said we are to love God, love others, including our enemies, and spread the good news about him. (Mark 12:29-31; John 13:34-35; Luke 6:27; Matthew 28:19-20) Which is exactly what the world needs when things are getting bad. It doesn't need false hope in the form of a secret second return of Jesus to pull Christians out of the trials and tribulations the world is going through. It needs the body of Christ, which is what we as his followers are a part of. (1 Corinthians 12:27) It needs the embodiment of his Holy Spirit, doing what Jesus did. (1 Corinthians 3:16; 12:4-11)

Unfortunately, excessive attention to the details of Jesus' return has eclipsed what we are supposed to be doing now. It has eclipsed all other aspects of Christianity. Christianity is about becoming like Jesus. To do that we must focus on Jesus: who he is, what he has done for us and is doing in us and what our response should be. By focusing on the date of Jesus' return, which he told us we shouldn't do, we are ignoring the true end of the story of God and humanity.

Our passage from the first letter of John puts it like this: “Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” The true end or goal of the story is that we will in fact be like Jesus. We were created in the image of God. (Genesis 1:27) That image has been marred and obscured by our sins, our destructive and self-destructive thoughts, words and actions that have damaged us and those around us. But as the letter to the Colossians says of Jesus Christ, “He is the image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15) So if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. And because through him the image of God in us is being restored, if you want to know what we can be like, look at Jesus.

Now that doesn't mean we will be transformed into first century Jewish men. Just as the image of God in us is not physical but spiritual, so it will be when we are completely like Jesus. And while, as 1 John says, we don't know exactly what we will be, we do know we will be like Jesus. So what do we know about what Jesus is like spiritually?

We know that Jesus felt compassion for people who were in need. (Matthew 14:14) He healed a leper out of compassion. (Mark 1:40-42) He healed two blind men out of compassion. (Matthew 20:30-34) He fed the 4000 because he had compassion for the hungry. (Matthew 15:32) He had compassion for the widow at Nain and raised her son from the dead. (Luke 7:12-15) He even taught people out of compassion. (Mark 6:34) So to be like Jesus is to show compassion for others.

We know Jesus did not let the traditional interpretations of God's law get in the way of helping others. He healed people on the Sabbath, which the scholars of his time interpreted as work and therefore forbidden. Jesus pointed out that (1) God works on the Sabbath, keeping creation going. (John 5:16-17) (2) Despite all their prohibitions of work, his critics would help an animal or a person who fell into a pit on the Sabbath. (Matthew 12:11; Luke 14:5) (3) He said, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.” His critics forgot that the Sabbath was about God making us rest regularly. It wasn't supposed to be a straightjacket, keeping us from doing what's good. (Matthew 12:12) So to be like Jesus is to not let a technicality stop us from helping a person in trouble or distress.

We know that Jesus forgave people. He forgave people who thought their illness was the result of sin. (Matthew 9:2) He forgave a woman who had a bad reputation in her town. (Luke 7:36-50) He refused to condemn a woman caught in the act of adultery, though we know he felt strongly about adultery. (John 8:3-11) Spectacularly, he asked God to forgive the men who were in the process of crucifying him. (Luke 23:34) So to be like Jesus is to forgive others and not condemn them.

We know that Jesus knew the scriptures well. He used them to counter temptations. (Matthew 4:1-11) He used them to correct misunderstandings. (Matthew 15:3-6) He used them to show which commandments were the most important. (Mark 12;28-31) He used them to get people to think about who he was. (Matthew 22:41-45) He used them to frame what was happening to him during his suffering. (Mark 15:34) And as we see in our passage from Luke today, he used them to instruct his disciples on what they must teach about him when they preach the good news. So to be like Jesus is to be well acquainted with the scriptures and able to use them appropriately.

We know that Jesus did what he did out of love for us. John tells us that on the night Jesus was betrayed, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now loved them to the very end.” (John 13:1) And it wasn't a selfish love. He didn't love them for what they could do for him. He said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) He even washed his disciples' feet, the job of the lowest of slaves. He said, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you too should wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example—you should do just as I have done for you.” (John 13:14-15) Later that evening he says, “My commandment is this—to love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this—that one lays down his life for his friends.” (John 15:12-13) So to be like Jesus is to serve others and to love them in a self-sacrificial way.

All of this comes from who Jesus is: God's Son, the true image of God. When in Genesis we are told that God created human beings in his image, we are not told just exactly what that means. But in Jesus we see that image in action. And a little later in 1 John, we are told the nature of the God in whose image we are made. “The person who does not love does not know God for God is love.” (1 John 4:8) John is not just being poetic here, meaning simply that God is loving, though that is also true. He says God is love. God is literally a love relationship. God is the Father loving the Son who loves the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. That divine, eternal love is the image in which we are made.

A few verses later, this is confirmed. “Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:11-12, emphasis mine) So no one has ever seen God but if we love one another, God lives in us, and so we can see God in the love we have for one another. Jesus said, “Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35) They will know it because they will see God in and through us as we love one another.

Notice that Jesus did not say that people will know we are his disciples because we agree on every little thing. One of the most loving couples I ever knew had very different political views. But they didn't let the fact that he was a staunch Republican and she was a strong Democrat diminish their love for one another. They loved one another to the day she died. And he never remarried.

Jesus is the God who is Love Incarnate. And that's what gets obscured by people who obsess over every detail of the end times and who seem to want God to end this world and judge everyone strictly on every point of doctrine that they believe. Though the one who will judge us is Jesus, who lived and died as one of us and who knows our every weakness. (John 5:22; Hebrews 4:15) We are told not to judge others. (Matthew 7:1) That's Jesus' job and he knows things about those he will judge that we don't. And he is both just and merciful. (John 5:30; Luke 6:36)

That Jesus will return is one of the basic beliefs of the faith. But as we've seen, we can't predict when he will return and while we are to stay alert, what we are to do in the meantime is to do the work he has given us to do. And that's to love everyone, not just with our lips but with our lives, and tell everyone the good news about Jesus. And while the sun at the center of this solar system will get eclipsed again and again, we must not let anything eclipse God's Son, Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us and wants us to do the same.

The Heart of the Problem

The scriptures referred to are Acts 4:32-35and 1 John 1:1-2:2.

A professor of mine once called Marxism a Christian heresy. That is, Karl Marx, who was raised as a Lutheran, proposed an economic system that highly resembles what we read in today's passage from Acts. “The group of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and no one said that any of his possessions was his own, but everything was held in common. With great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. For there was no one needy among them, because those who were owners of land or houses were selling them and bringing the proceeds from the sales and placing them at the apostles' feet. The proceeds were distributed to each, as anyone had need.” And this is mirrored in a principle of Marxism that the production and distribution of goods and services should come “from each according to his ability” and should go “to each according to his needs.” It sounds great! And it seems to be in accord with scripture.

The problem is that Marx thought religion got in the way of his economic system, eventually called Communism. He wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” In other words, religion numbs people to their suffering and pain in a world where the rich and powerful oppress the poor and prevents them from doing anything about injustice. Marx goes one to say, “The abolition of religion as the illusionary happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.” That is, religion is essentially about nice dreams. People need to wake up from those dreams, face reality and make their own happiness.

But did you see the contradiction in Marx's thought? He said just a few sentences before that religion is “the heart of a heartless world.” He wants people to give up the heart and soul and yet somehow make the resulting heartless and soulless world into a “workers' paradise.” But how did the early church accomplish what Marx was aiming for? Through their faith in Jesus Christ, the embodiment of the God who is love. Without that faith and love how were people to come up with the paradise Marx wanted? He desired the results of faith and love without the object of that faith and the source of that love. That's like trying to get all the benefits of our sun—light and warmth and energy—but without the sun itself. Marx wanted the Christian ideal of a generous and selfless society without Christ being involved. That's the heresy.

And how did these Communist and officially atheist nations do? Matthew White in his book Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History, found that in 1 century of existence Communism killed 20 million more people than all the religious conflicts in 25 centuries of history. He writes, “A friend once wondered aloud how much suffering in history has been caused by religious fanaticism, and I was able to confidently tell her 10 percent...” So if anything, it looks like religion is more often a restraint on most human suffering than its cause. And it means the other 90% of human suffering was caused by things other than religion. Things like human nature. Under Marx's system, put into practice in places like Russia, China, Cambodia, and North Korea, more people suffered, through political persecution, through starvation and through giving people, like Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung and his successors, power unchecked by the consideration that there is a God whom they ought to emulate and to whom they must one day answer. The reality is not simply that religion makes people tolerate injustice and oppression and so they must reject it. The reality is that when you give humans god-like authority, they will abuse it, whether they do so in the name of religion or of secular ideologies or for their own glory and benefit.

Communism and other utopian systems may look good on paper but as we see daily in the news, human nature can make even a good system function badly. People can exploit any economic or governmental or organizational system. We put too much faith in systems and ignore the human factor. Or as scripture calls it, sin.

Why didn't the communal sharing of goods and property that we see in our passage from Acts continue? Because of sin. In the very next chapter of Acts we see a husband and wife pretend to do what others have done. Ananias and Sapphira sell a piece of property and hold back some of the proceeds before giving the rest to the apostles to distribute. It wasn't the holding back that was the problem. As Peter says, “Before it was sold, did it not belong to you? And when it was sold, was the money not at your disposal? How have you thought up this deed in your heart? You have not lied to people but to God.” (Acts 5:4) In other words, Ananias was free to do what he liked with the proceeds. His sin was in lying about how much he had given to God. He wanted to keep some of his money for himself but he wanted to look like he was giving it all away to the people who needed it.

That's probably why this remarkable type of sharing among the first Christians came to an end. Selfish and self-serving motivations meant that the way Christian generosity was expressed had to be changed. When Paul urged the Gentile churches to help the poor Christians in Jerusalem, he said that this shouldn't be “something you feel forced to do.” (2 Corinthians 9:5) Instead he says, “Each one of you should give just as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corithinans 9:7) It had to be voluntary. Those who had more should, of course, give more than those who are poor. But even today, we see that poor churches tend to be more generous than rich churches. Probably because poor churches feel the needs of the poor more strongly.

People who come up with utopian ideas often forget about human sin. For instance, after the first World War, Germany became a democracy. Hitler was mocked as a buffoon but the right wing thought they could control him. Despite not getting the majority of votes, he put together a coalition of smaller parties that got him just enough support to be named Chancellor. After he got power legitimately he used martial law to abolish democracy. The people who set up Germany's democracy did not foresee how a really unscrupulous elected official could exploit the loopholes in their system because they did not allow for human sin.

The Boy Scouts of America has been a highly respected organization for most of its 114 years. Its mission is to “prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law.” But as we've seen, men who were more interested in satisfying their own desires than in helping boys become better citizens joined it and damaged both the lives of children and also the organization so badly that it had to go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy because of the sexual abuse lawsuits.

And of course the church has similarly been infiltrated by people who are more interested in benefiting themselves than in denying themselves, taking up their crosses and following Jesus. Christ foresaw this. He said, “Watch out for false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are voracious wolves.” (Matthew 7:15)

We are all sinners, including the guy in the funny collar saying this. We need to recognize this or we will keep falling short of what God wants us to become. That's why our passage from 1 John warns us that “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” When we put our trust in Jesus we have been saved from the penalty of sin. But the power of sin can still bedevil us if we do not continue to trust him and take up our cross daily and follow him. When the doctors finished the 6 surgeries on me after my car accident, I was saved from dying. But in order to take advantage of the life I now had after all they had done in putting me back together, I had to go through the process of following their orders and doing physical therapy, however painful. Our life as Christians is like that. On the cross Jesus made eternal life possible. But if we want to get the benefits of what he did, if we want to walk with Jesus, we have to follow the Great Physician's orders. Only when Jesus returns, will we be saved from the very presence of sin.

1 John says, “But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness.” A real Christian will, from time to time, do a spiritual self-examination and see how they are doing in following Jesus. When they see that they are not behaving like Jesus—being unforgiving, unkind, envious, unfaithful, unloving, easily angered, etc—they will stop and ask God for forgiveness. One sign that someone who claims to be a Christian really isn't is if they never admit that they are wrong or have sinned or that they need to ask forgiveness. That's a sign of arrogance, of feeling you can do it all without any help, including God's. The humble person knows he can be and at times is wrong and that he needs God's grace to be a follower of Jesus.

So real Christians course-correct their walk with Jesus. But what do we do about those wolves in sheeps clothing? Jesus said, by their fruit—by what they produce—you will know them. (Matthew 7:16) And Paul gives us a good rundown of the works that people just following their unredeemed human nature produce: “sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, envying, murders, drunkenness, carousing, and similar things.” (Galatians 5:19-21) So not only are they letting their desires and actions run riot and so mess up their personal lives, they are causing problems for others, too. And even if they seem to be doing spectacular things for Christ, remember what he said: “On that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. Go away from me, you lawbreakers!'” (Matthew 7:22-23)

What do we do about them? Well, we don't ignore them. Jesus said, “I am sending you out like sheep surrounded by wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:6) There are people in churches that don't seem to like any decision the leadership makes and are called by my colleagues “clergy killers.” That is, they can stir up discontent and make the atmosphere in a church so toxic that eventually the clergy either quit or are dismissed. But most church people are too polite to stop these folks from causing the church to divide on issues that are not essential to the faith. I saw two women in my church get into a very nasty argument over the reimbursement of stamps! Both left the church. I was only able to get one to return.

Jesus outlines a method for dealing with people who sin. He says to start by going to the person and talking with them when the two of you are alone. If that doesn't work, bring one or two other people and try again. If that doesn't work, then, and only then, should you bring it before the church. (Matthew 18:15-17) Unfortunately most people start with the second or third step and talk about the person with others first. And please note that this is about a person sinning, not merely offending you. People ignore that part as well, instead making issues out of perceived political or theological opinions or out of someone's personality rather than about actual sins.

But if the person repents of a sin, we are to forgive them. Remember asking for forgiveness requires acknowledging the wrong you've done and humbling yourself. If a person can do that they are truly seeking to follow Jesus. And Jesus wants us to be very forgiving. (Matthew 18:21-22) If we want God to forgive us, we must forgive others from the heart. (Matthew 18:23-35)

The heart of all our problems is not that we need perfect systems or more and more laws or stricter punishments. The heart of our problems is found in our hearts. The reason why God decided to reboot humanity with Noah was that he saw that “Every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil all the time.” (Genesis 6:5) Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) Jesus said, “For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly.” (Mark 7:21)

Just like a person with terminal heart failure must turn to a doctor to receive a heart transplant, we must turn to God when our hearts are bad. He says in Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26) God tells Jeremiah that he will make a new covenant with his people, and the difference from the old covenant is “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

Systems and laws can always be improved but until we change our hearts they will be vulnerable to being exploited and corrupted. We must say to God as David did in his great penitential psalm, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me...Certainly you do not want a sacrifice, or else I would offer it; you do not desire a burnt sacrifice. The sacrifices God desires are a humble spirit. O God, a humble and repentant heart you will not reject.” (Psalm 51:10, 16-17) Unless we start there, we will never get to the heart of the problem.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

The scriptures referred to are mentioned in the text.

Small children tend to believe what adults or even older children tell them. They trust people and they trust in the power of words. And then comes the day when they realize that people can say one thing and do something else. Or do nothing. And as their heart breaks, they say, “But you promised!” And they learn they cannot trust everyone and they cannot always trust in words. They learn that actions speak louder than words.

In the first chapter of Genesis, there is no difference between God saying something and doing it. He said, “Let there be light!” and there was light. That's how he creates for the most part: he says it and it is so. Then he goes about separating things and putting them in order. God is active. His Word is active.

A peculiar thing happens, though, when humans are involved. God tells them not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, saying, “for when you eat from it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) Yet when they break this rule, the only prohibition in the world, they do not die—physically. You can argue that they die spiritually. But we see God act mercifully. The humans do become mortal. They are barred from eating the fruit of the tree of life. But God not only lets them live, he clothes them. That is grace, God's undeserved goodness towards us. It is the first of many times when God is merciful and gracious. When Cain kills his brother, God banishes him. When Cain worries that someone will now kill him in return, God puts a special mark on him that protects him. The first murderer doesn't deserve this. It is God's grace. (Genesis 4:10-15)

When God promises good things, he fulfills those promises. He promises Abraham that he will be the father of many nations and that the world will be blessed through him. (Genesis 12:2-3) And the Old Testament shows how God works through the descendants of Abraham all the way through David to carry this out. This climaxes in Jesus Christ, the descendant of David, the Son of God.

Last week we talked about how Jesus' death saved us from what our sin would ordinarily result in: spiritual death and exile from God's presence. But if Jesus' story simply ended with his atoning death, we wouldn't be here worshipping. Socrates was unjustly condemned to death and forced to drink poison. And while he gets a lot of respect as a philosopher, not a lot of people go around today saying they are followers of Socrates. There are many martyrs throughout history. We may honor them and quote some of their sayings but we don't radically change our lives. Their words have some power but their death shows that they were simply mortals, only a bit more insightful than others.

Jesus said a lot of things that people like, such as “Treat others as you would like them to treat you,” (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31) and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31; Matthew 22:39; Luke 10:27). But Jesus also said things a lot of people don't like, such as “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” (John 14:6) and “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23 and 14:27) These are just some of the things that many people wish Jesus never said. Because they demand that we do things that are hard. We are to follow only Jesus. And we must do so by denying all rights to ourselves, and carrying with us something that could mean our death and following in his footsteps. That's asking a lot of us—too much in the eyes of some.

So if we are going to go that far, we might ask Jesus to show us that he means those things. Actions speak louder than words.

And he does. Jesus asked his disciples to leave their homes and their families for his sake. (Matthew 19:29) And we see that Jesus left his hometown of Nazareth. (Matthew 4:13) He left his family (Mark 3:31-35). He had no home and often just camped out in the wilderness. (Mark 1:45; Luke 9:58) He does what he says we should do.

Jesus said, “Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27, 35) And he did. At the last supper before his death, he washed all the feet of all the disciples, including Judas. (John 13:2-5) He celebrated the first Lord's Supper, declaring the bread and wine his body and blood and giving them to all his disciples, including Judas. (Luke 22:14-21) And from the cross he said of those who were in the process of executing him, “Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) He does what he said to do.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” (John 11:25) And he raised the dead: Jairus' daughter (Matthew 9:18-25; Mark 5:22-43; Luke 8:41-55), the son of the widow at Nain (Luke 7:11-15), and Lazarus (John 11:1-44). And, after Jesus predicted his death and resurrection at least 3 times (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:32), God did indeed raise him from the dead. He did what he said he would. This confirmed that Jesus was more than just a philosopher or a prophet. This meant his words were more than just the ravings of a cult leader or would-be messiah. His resurrection vindicated all he had said. He was truly God's Anointed One. And more. He was God's Word made flesh.

And resurrection was a promise made long before Jesus. There aren't a lot of references to resurrection in the Old Testament but they are there. Job says, “As for me, I know that my redeemer lives, and in the end he will stand upon the earth. After my skin is destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I will see for myself, and whom my own eyes will behold, and not another.” (Job 19:25-27) Isaiah says, “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.” (Isaiah 26:19) Daniel says, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Daniel 12:2) And in Jesus we see that resurrection isn't just wishful thinking but a promise that our merciful and gracious God fulfills.

Of course there are skeptics. We don't have it on video. But that's true of everything in the ancient past. Everything we know about the historical past is based on archeology, which is the discovery and study of rubbish, ruins and remains, and on writings which have survived. And the earliest writings we have about Jesus, Paul's letters, were written only about 20 years after Jesus' crucifixion. And in every one of the letters that he wrote to the churches he proclaims that God raised Jesus from the dead. In his first letter to the Corinthians he gives us the earliest account of Jesus' resurrection appearances. “For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received—that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as though to one born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8) Did you notice him saying that of the 500 who saw the risen Jesus, most were still alive? That is in effect saying, “If you don't believe me, go ask any or all of them.” I think the reason the gospels were written later was because eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus, like Peter and Paul, were being martyred and people like John Mark, who worked with both men, decided he must write down what they remembered about Jesus' life and teachings. Matthew, Luke and John followed his lead.

Secular historians won't say that Jesus rose from the dead but some will admit it is hard otherwise to explain why the shameful death of a construction worker in a relatively unimportant part of the Roman empire didn't bring his movement to an end the way it did those of other leaders. It becomes even less understandable when you consider that the first people to say he was alive were martyred and that eventually it became dangerous even to say you were his follower. Yet the might of the largest, most merciless empire of the time could not crush this movement. Within 300 years even the emperor was a Christian. 2000 years later 2.3 billion or 31% of the people in the world say they are Christians.

God backed up Jesus' words with the most spectacular action imaginable: he raised him from the dead. And how did his followers respond? By taking action, telling everyone who Jesus is, what he did for us and what he can do in us through his Spirit.

What should our response be? To take Jesus seriously and do what he said to do: love God and everyone else, whether neighbor or enemy. Love each other as he loves us. (John 13:34-35) And to go and make disciples of all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded. (Matthew 28:19-20)

Unfortunately we have treated Jesus as if he were our mascot rather than our Master. We have not acted as his disciples but rather as dilettantes, showing mild interest in his teachings rather than serious intent to put them into practice. When what he said comes off as too idealistic for us, we treat him like a crazy uncle, a member of our kin, rather than our King.

God not only speaks to us but he acts. His Word took flesh and his words became actions. And so he doesn't want us to merely serve him with our lips but also with our lives.

Jesus' brother, James, says “Be sure you live out the message and do not merely listen to it and so deceive yourself.” (James 1:22) He also says, “Show me your faith without works and I will show you faith by my works.” (James 2:18) He may be remembering how his brother Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter into the kingdom of heaven—only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21) Every time we say the prayer Jesus taught us, we say, “May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10)

Jesus said that God's will is that we put our trust in him. If your doctor says “Stop drinking and smoking or you will die” and you trust him, you do what he says. If you were in a burning building and a fireman said, “Follow me and I will save you,” and you decide to trust him, you would follow him no matter how scary the way he was leading you looked. Jesus says, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 6:23-24) If we truly believe in him, we will disown all rights to our way, take up our crosses daily and follow him.

Jesus said, “For this is the will of my Father—for everyone who looks on the Son and trusts in him to have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” (John 6:40) That's a huge promise. But Jesus can back it up. Actions speak louder than words. And on this day, many years ago, God raised Jesus from the dead. And when his followers saw him, the victim on the cross who had become the victor over death, they acted and turned the world upside down. (Acts 17:6)

Do we trust him? Are we willing to act on his promise? Are we willing to share our hope with a world drowning in despair? Are we willing to proclaim the good news not only with our lips but with our lives?

And what is that good news?

Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Good? Friday

One of the most riveting sermons I've ever heard was preached by the Rev. Pat Geerdes on this holiday years ago. I still remember the opening and closing lines of that sermon: “They call this Good Friday but to me it is the day of death.”

Today we commemorate the death of Christ, the execution of God Incarnate by those created in his image. So why do we call it Good Friday? Are we being ironic?

On that original Friday, the disciples would have been horrified at the thought of calling it good. They would have had a lot of feelings about it, none of them good.

Some of them would have been in shock. It would have seemed unreal. They would have been confused, unable to take it all in. Just a week ago, Jesus was hailed by crowds as he rode into Jerusalem. Now there were people screaming for Jesus' blood. How could things have changed so radically in so little time?

Some of them may have been devastated and depressed. They have lived with Jesus for 3 years. They had seen him heal the sick, cast out demons, multiply food, calm the winds, and walk on water. They were sure he was the Messiah. Now he's crying out, “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” How could this happen? How could they have been so wrong?

Some of them felt guilty—guilty of not stopping his arrest, guilty of running away in the night when the best and wisest man they knew was hauled away by soldiers. Peter in particular would have been heartsick. He denied Jesus 3 times, the last time within Jesus' hearing. The Lord turned and looked at him. How could Peter forget that look? How could he go on, knowing that that was the last time they would see each other? Now he will never hear the words he heard Jesus say a thousand times to others, “Your sins are forgiven.” The big fisherman must have been wept bitter tears all that night and all this day.

Some must have felt grief-stricken. The beloved disciple was the only male disciple to risk being spotted and arrested by going to the cross. He sees his best friend, hanging naked and bloody on a tree, taunted by his enemies, treated with professional indifference by those detailed to oversee his death. He stands by his friend's keening mother, who is watching her child die in pain. Then Jesus looks up from his agony, shakes the blood and sweat from his brow, focuses on his mother and, struggling for breath, croaks, “Woman, behold your son.” A wail comes from deep within Mary. Jesus' eyes make an effort to seek the face of the pupil he especially loved. He takes another tortured breath and through cracked and bleeding lips says, “Here is your mother.” The disciple goes to Mary, who looks as if she is about to collapse. They cling to each other, seeking and giving the comfort they cannot share with the man they love.

At least one of the disciples reacted with despair. We don't know why Judas betrayed Jesus. Was it because of the money? John says that Judas, the treasurer, was stealing funds but we don't know why. And even though the price he was given was the equivalent of 4 months pay, he throws it away when he sees Jesus condemned. Why? Did he change his mind about wanting Jesus dead? Did he, as some suggest, think that by putting Jesus into the hands of his enemies he could force him to become the kind of Messiah everyone expected—God's warrior king? If so, how did Judas feel when Jesus told Peter to put up his sword, “For all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call upon my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled...?” As the soldiers dragged Jesus away, did it begin to dawn on Judas that he was mistaken about Jesus' messianic mission? When the Sanhedrin condemns Christ and takes him to Pilate, we are told that Judas is filled with remorse. Whatever his motivation, whether noble or not, he now sees it for what it is: evil and corrupt. An innocent man will die because of his actions. There is no justification for it. Sadly, his last act shows that he doesn't understand the gospel. In an inverted form of arrogance, he feels that his sin is too great for God to forgive. The truth is that he cannot forgive himself. He becomes his own judge, jury and executioner.

We do not know what the other disciples did. Did they react with anger? Did some of them try to find Judas and punish him? If so, they were too late.

Did some of them seek to forget? Did they buy some Passover wine and try to wash the reality of what happened from their minds?

Or did they simply succumb to the pain? Did they find some hole to crawl into, away from the ghastly spectacle outside the walls of Jerusalem, away from the people who arrested him and might arrest them?

Let us put ourselves in their place. The bottom has fallen out of their universe. Dying on the cross alongside Jesus is their faith in a good and just God. Dying on a gnarled tree, stripped of branches and covered in gore, are their hopes for the coming of the kingdom. Dying on the side of the road are the dreams of a new era for mankind. The nails that pinion his arms and legs paralyze them. The blood that runs in rivulets from his wrists and ankles and brow and back drains them of all energy to fight. The spear that pierces his heart stops their ability to feel anything but the emptiness of their hearts. As his body is wrapped and laid in a tomb, they tie up their expectations and put them on a shelf to molder unseen.

In Jerusalem this night, scattered among the festive pilgrims, are a small group of individuals whose 3 year journey has come to a dead end. The laughter of their neighbors celebrating the Passover only deepens their misery. They cannot think of tomorrow and the next day. All they see is an endless night of regrets, recriminations, and everlasting loss. For them it would be blasphemy to call this Good Friday for on this day, all that was good died.

It would take something huge and unexpected to change their minds.

This was originally preached on April 18, 2003. It has been slightly updated. 

The Good Death

The scriptures referred to are mentioned in the text.

After you've read a number of biographies, you start to hate finishing them. It's not exactly like reading a good work of fiction which you wish would never end. It's that you know it will end with the death of the subject of the biography. It's heartbreaking to read of the long drawn-out declines and final illnesses of such brilliant persons as Isaac Asimov and C.S. Lewis. It's even more dismaying to read of the self-destructive ends of young talented people like John Belushi. And you really dread to read of the assassinations of such reformers as Gandhi or Lincoln or Martin Luther King. So you usually finish even the best biographies a bit depressed. And many biographers know that and make the last chapter of their subject's life the briefest. After all, it's the person's accomplishments during his or her life that are important.

It therefore goes against the grain to structure a life story around the death of the hero. Yet each of the gospels devotes at least half of its length to the foreshadowing and then the unfolding of Jesus' trial and death. The week before his death at Passover gets a lot of attention as well. But why this reversal of the usual story of someone's life? Why concentrate on Jesus' terrible and shameful death by a method reserved for traitors, criminals and slaves?

Crucifixion was not exclusive to the Romans. The Celts, Indians, Persians, Greeks and other ancient peoples practiced forms of it. There is even evidence that the Jews used it before the time of Herod the Great. It was one of the worst ways to die. Yet by itself it did not harm any of the major organs, nor did it cause excessive bleeding. (The nails plugged the wounds.) Attached to a tree or some upright, his or her arms nailed or tied to a cross beam, the victim was left to die of a combination of exposure, shock, hunger, exhaustion and suffocation. In addition, the victim was stripped naked and the execution was done by the side of a major road, both to humiliate the victim and to warn anyone who contemplated committing the same offense. Often the bodies were not buried but left to the indignities of birds, beasts and decay. Small wonder Paul says that the proclamation of Christ crucified “is to Jews a stumbling block and to Greeks an absurdity.” (1 Corinthians 1:23)

Again, why would the church concentrate on the ignoble end of its founder? That actually begs the question, though: was it in fact his end? Without the events of Easter, I doubt whether Jesus' movement would have survived his death, at least not any longer than those of other would-be messiahs, of whom there are more than most people would suspect. But we will be looking at the significance of the resurrection next week. Right now we're going to concentrate on the meaning of Jesus' death.

When a great person dies at the hands of his enemies, the usual response is outrage. Abraham Lincoln was not all that popular as president. But his shooting on Good Friday, just days after winning the Civil War, combined with his being the first American president ever assassinated, made him the equivalent of a secular saint. It made the search for John Wilkes Booth one of the most extensive manhunts in history. Despite orders to capture Booth alive, an over-zealous soldier shot him as he fled a burning barn. Everyone who had any connection with Booth, including his landlady, was tried as a conspirator and half of them were hung. Dr. Samuel Mudd, who happened to set Booth's broken leg, was imprisoned right here at Ft. Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas.

I remember feeling similarly outraged as a child watching the crucifixion scene in the old Hollywood movie The Greatest Story Ever Told. I wanted the first century equivalent of the cavalry to arrive and rescue Jesus. I wanted an army of angels to come down and magically dissolve the nails and fly him to the ground. I wanted God to strike down the soldiers and mockers in a manner similar to the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark (although that film hadn't been made yet.) If I had been writing the story of Jesus, I certainly wouldn't have made his death the centerpiece of the tale.

But from the beginning of Christianity, the death of Jesus was central. It is mentioned 4 times in the 5 short chapters of the earliest piece of Christian writing we have, Paul's first letter to the church in Thessalonika. (1 Thessalonians 1:10; 2:15; 4:14; 5:10) What's more is that we are given the reason for his death: “For God has not destined us for punishment but for gaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us...” (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10)

Now how is that possible? Jesus didn't die in battle, saving his fellow soldiers. He was condemned for sedition, for proclaiming himself the Messiah, the long awaited king of the Jews, an affront to the Roman emperor. He was handed over to the Roman authorities by the religious leaders after they had found him guilty of blasphemy. We know from John's gospel that at the root of this action was the fear on the part of the Jewish leaders that Jesus would lead a popular uprising. They knew the Romans would put that down with extreme prejudice, possibly using it as an excuse to destroy the nation of Judea. (John 11:48-50) But these are the official, legal, religious and political reasons that Jesus died. In what sense can it said that he died for us?

Ancient peoples did not have detailed knowledge of how our blood keeps us alive. But they knew that it, along with breath, was essential to life. “The life of the flesh is in the blood,” says the Bible and it's still accurate. (Leviticus 17:1) Oxygen, nutrients, clotting factors, immune factors and more are circulated throughout the body via the blood. If you lose too much blood, you'll die. So blood was a potent symbol of life. And because it was so precious, the spilling of blood in the form of animal sacrifice was a nearly universal practice, from Japan all the way through Europe and to the Celts in Britain. Usually it was done to feed the pagan gods. In ancient Judaism, however, animals were sacrificed to atone for sin. According to a popular commentary on the Torah, the person offering the sacrifice realized that the rebellion against God inherent in his sin means he personally should be the sacrifice, but that God in his mercy is accepting the animal in his place. It's also appropriate because the person, when he was sinning, essentially forgot his human soul and became an animal.

During the exodus, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest took 2 goats. One was sacrificed as an offering for sin. Its blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat, the place between the cherubim on the ark of the covenant, which symbolized the presence of God in the tabernacle. The priest then laid his hands on the second goat, transferring the sins of the people onto it. It was then driven out of the camp into the wilderness, taking the people's sins with it. This was the sin-bearer or scapegoat. Thus the people were taught that the penalty for their sin was death and exile, but God mercifully accepted the goats in the place of his people.

The pre-eminent sacrificial animal was the lamb. On the first Passover, it served 2 purposes: nutrition and protection. It provided a meal for the Hebrews on the eve of their emancipation from slavery in Egypt and their journey towards the promised land. And its blood, smeared on the doorposts and lintels of a house, made sure the inhabitants were passed over by the tenth and last plague to strike Egypt: the death of the firstborn. This was the last straw that forced pharaoh to let God's people go. After that dark night, freedom dawned.

John the Baptist called Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29) Paul called Jesus “our Passover.” (1 Corinthians 5:7) Both identify Jesus with the Passover lamb, who both nourishes life and saves life. In the Eucharist or Communion, Jesus feeds his people. By the spilling of his blood, he saves people from death and frees them from slavery to sin. Like the animal sacrifices in the temple, God mercifully accepts Jesus' death in our place. (1 Peter 3:18) And like the scapegoat, he bears our sins away into exile. I think this is what is signified when he says, “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” (Mark 15:34) Into what deserted place did the Son of God go that he could no longer sense the Father's presence and love? It is, in any meaningful sense, hell. God Incarnate entered the hell of betrayal and hatred and pain and official indifference and political expediency and legal sleight of hand and humiliation and abandonment and fear and despair and death in order that we might be delivered from all that.

How else could God confront the depths of evil? How otherwise could he get to the bottom of it but to hurl himself into its maw? What else could he do to atone for the sins of the whole world?

Jesus' death was not a pitiful coda to his life. It was the reason he was born. He entered hell so that we might enter heaven.

But that sounds barbaric. Who wants someone else to suffer for them? We do. Whenever the burdens of this world get too much for us to bear we want to take it out on others. When we have been hurt, we wish to hurt others. When we feel that we have been injured, we lash out at others. And sadly, we are seeing people do more than lash out with words only. Daily we hear of people looking for scapegoats and making others suffer and even die for the injuries they perceive were done to them.

As people feel their hopes are crushed, they go after others. Desperate people snap and seek to make someone else pay for the loss of their jobs, the loss of their dreams, the loss of their family life. They shoot up schools, offices, mosques, synagogues and churches. They want to inflict pain for pain, fear for fear, death of the soul for death of the soul. They seek to make someone, anyone, however innocent, pay in blood for the evil done to them.

But Jesus has already done that!

From the cross Jesus cried, “It is finished!” (John 19:30) Literally, in Greek, “It is paid!” It is over: the cycle of violence, the knee jerk reaction to loss and uncertainty, the cold fear in the pit of the stomach, the howling despair, the misdirected rage. It is over. Let it go. Let it die with me, Jesus is saying. It is finished.

The punishment, the reckoning, that is.

But God is not content merely to defeat evil. He once pronounced the world and everything in it good. He is determined that it will be good again. God's plan to set the world right has just begun.

And we'll talk about that next week.

This was originally preached on April 5, 2009. It has been slightly updated. 

Prayer Versus God's Plan

The scriptures referred to are mentioned in the text.

When asked why we pray, a wise man replied, “Because we can't help it.” When someone we love is sick or injured, when we find ourselves in desperate situations, when despair threatens to engulf us, most of us instinctively turn to prayer. When our loved one gets better, when our crisis is over, some of us spontaneously thank God. When we encounter the beauty of creation, on either a visual or a conceptual level, a few of us praise God. And a very small number simply pray every day.

The question from our sermon suggestion box is about prayer. But it is not about the psychological reasons for prayer but the theological reasons. Specifically, “If God has a plan, why do we pray?” If God is carrying out a program, why do we bother to ask him for anything or try to persuade him to do anything? If it is in his plan, he will do it. If not, he won't. Our desires do not enter into it. Right?

There is a certain logic to this position. If God is truly in charge and if he knows everything, how can we hope to influence his actions? Aren't we being egocentric to even think he would alter his plans simply because we asked him to?

Yet the Bible, the very book that reveals both God's omniscience and omnipotence, tells us to pray. (Philippians 4:6) It tells us that God does answer prayer. (Matthew 6:6) It even makes some rather breathtaking promises. Jesus tells us, “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14:13) That's a rather spectacular statement. How can it be true?

Before we answer that question, we must first deal with the original one: “If God has a plan, why do we pray?” Though the word “plan” never appears in the Bible, there is obviously a design or overall plot to the story of God and humans. Close to the beginning we are told that sin has caused a breach between God and us. Humanity tries and fails to bridge that gap and God takes the initiative. God chooses a people through which he will bless all of humanity. (Genesis 12:2-3) He educates these people about his nature. (Psalm 103)

The Bible starts with all humanity and then narrows the focus onto the descendants of Abraham, and then to the descendants of Isaac, not Ishmael, then the descendants of Jacob, not Esau, then the descendants of Judah, not the other 11 sons of Israel, then the descendants of David and finally comes to Jesus, in whom God reveals his love and his holiness, his justice and his mercy. Jesus' death atones for our sins and with his resurrection, his nature is bestowed upon the apostles. Through them we see the blessing of what God has done in Jesus is given to Jews and then Gentiles, and then spreads throughout the Roman empire and then onto the whole world. That is how God has worked and is working to redeem humanity.

So the question is: just how detailed is the plan? Does God have every tiny little thing nailed down? If so, then prayer would seem to be futile. But if God's plan was that minutely worked out, human beings would be reduced to mere pawns. On the other hand, if sin and evil are the result of our misusing our free will, and he is going to all this trouble, not to mount a puppet show, nor to coerce us but to woo us, then you would expect him to give us some role to play in this story. If God wants us to learn to act virtuously, he needs to give us some space in which to act.

Look at it this way. If you merely want to get your child from the car to the house, you can carry him. But if you also want him to learn to walk, you have to let him make the journey himself. Of course, the route he takes may be fraught with danger—not bumping into the car door, avoiding the anthill, navigating the stairs. And as he gets older, his path may become as circuitous as Billy's in one of those Family Circus Sunday comics, where he traverses the whole neighborhood rather than simply going from the car to the house. But he won't learn to walk if you keep him strapped to you like a papoose. God wants us to learn to walk with him. (Micah 6:8)

So God must leave some part of his plan to us. Think of a movie or TV production. With many millions of dollars on the line, a director cannot leave much to chance. But why hire gifted actors if you don't let them use their talents and insights? Jeremy Brett played what many think was the definitive Sherlock Holmes in the British TV series that ran in the 1980s and 90s. To get the authenticity right, the actor carried a copy of the original stories with him. As the series got popular, Brett worried about how his portrayal would affect the children watching. In the early stories we see that Holmes uses cocaine, just as in the books. In one of the later written stories Watson tells us that he did wean the detective from the drug. So when they were filming a story where Watson has taken Holmes to the seaside to recover, and they come upon a plot to murder people using a dangerous drug, Brett insisted they film a brief scene where, wordlessly, Holmes buries his syringe, and symbolically his drug habit, in the sand on the beach. It's not in the original story nor was it in the script but the director let the actor do this small scene because it was perfectly in line with what we know of Holmes.

A good actor knows that often it is the little details that reveal character: a look, a gesture, an inflection. While God doesn't allow us to dictate the direction of the story, perhaps he leaves us places where we can ad-lib. We need to stay in character, of course. Jesus rejected James and John's suggestion that they call down fire from heaven on a town that didn't receive him. (Luke 9:52-55) That wasn't in line with his Spirit or his mission. So we must ask ourselves “What would Jesus do?” But, within limits, God lets us suggest in prayer how certain parts can be done and how some subplots may unfold. Like a director, the final decision is God's, but our input is welcome.

This might also explain why Jesus makes such extravagant promises in regards to the answer to prayer. God will grant anything—as long as it is in accord with his design and in the spirit of his endeavor to redeem us and the rest of his creation. (1 John 5:14-15) The Bible never says you will get anything you ask for, period. The promises about prayers are always qualified. We must ask in Jesus' name. (John 15:16) We must ask in faith. (Matthew 21:22) 2 or 3 must be in agreement. (Matthew 18:19) God will give us what we need but not everything we desire. We cannot expect to receive the things we ask for out of selfish motives. (James 4:3) We are also told that our anger does not produce God's righteousness so we must not ask in that spirit. (James 1:2) Jesus even tells us not to approach God if we have a bad relationship with someone. “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your sibling has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your sibling and then come and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5:23-24) We cannot be in God's will if we are at odds with our brothers and sisters, just as we cannot ask for his forgiveness if we withhold our forgiveness from others. (Matthew 6:14-15)

So does God answer prayers? Of course. Sometimes the answer is “Yes.” Still God can't say “yes” to all prayers, even to what seem to be relatively harmless requests. In an episode of 3^rd Rock from the Sun, Tommy, an alien trapped in the body of a teenage human, is on his high school basketball team. When at a game his coach prays for victory over their rivals, Tommy notices that the other team is also praying. “So we're praying that our god will beat their god?” he asks. “No,” says his coach. “We're praying to the same God.” Dumbfounded, Tommy asks, “Does anybody else see the conflict of interest here?” God cannot grant mutually exclusive or inherently impossible prayers.

Sometimes God's answer is “Not yet.” Jesus tells us to be persistent in prayer. (Luke 11:5-10) We need to remember that God's timetable is not ours. (2 Peter 3:8-9) Sometimes other things have to happen first. Sometimes we need to get ready or be made ready for what we ask. Sometimes we need more spiritual maturity. I think that's the case in the story of Adam and Eve. Why was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil there in the garden in the first place if it was never to be used? I think God didn't want them to have that knowledge yet for the same reason we are not explicit with our children as to why they are not to get into a car with strangers. You aren't going to tell a little kid that the reason is that the person may rape and kill them. They are not ready to handle that. Just so, Adam and Eve were not yet ready to handle the knowledge of exactly how God's gifts could be misused for evil and to harm each other. Had they obeyed, there may have been a day when God knew they could handle it. So we may need to exercise patience. (Hebrews 10:36) Because the answer might be “Not yet.”

Sometimes God's answer to a request may be “Yes, but not in the way you think I'll do it.” Because God knows what we need better than we do, he may answer in the spirit of what we ask but not in the way we want it done. We may ask for someone to love or for wealth and, rather than find a spouse or win the lottery, we may find that he has instead enriched our lives with friends or family. Joseph had dreams of being in charge of his brothers. He never thought that he would first become a slave and then a prisoner and finally end up as second-in-command of Egypt, keeping his family and many others from starving during a famine. Just because it is not exactly what we asked for doesn't mean that it is not his answer to our real needs.

God's answer to a request might be, “Actually, I have something else in mind for you.” Paul was a brilliant rabbi and a zealous Pharisee. He never imagined that he would see Jesus, the resurrected founder of the heretical sect he was trying to wipe out. He never thought that he would become not only a follower of Jesus but his apostle to the Gentiles. We often have an idea of what God's will for us is but he might have a surprising and much better mission in store for us.

Sometimes God's answer is “No.” As we said, we cannot expect God to grant us what is contrary to his Spirit, nor things that go against his plan. But sometimes he doesn't grant what seems to us to be a perfectly reasonable, holy and loving prayer. The most famous example of this is found in the story of Jesus in Gethsemane on the night he was betrayed. He did not want to be beaten and whipped and stripped and nailed to a cross. He prayed 3 times that God not make him go through all that. But he ended each prayer saying “Not my will but your will be done.” (Matthew 26:39-44) It turned out there was no other way that God could save us from the evil we have done, so Jesus accepted God's will. It was hard. On the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Mark 15:34) I think that was what he dreaded the most: taking on the separation from God that should be ours as the result of our rejecting God. I think this is what the Apostle's Creed means when it says “he descended into hell.” To be separated from the one who has loved you from all eternity is hell. But Jesus accepted that because he trusted that this was God's way of absorbing all the evil of his creatures and transforming them into his children again. Jesus knew that even his most heartfelt desire as God's beloved Son could not veto God's loving plan to save us.

Perhaps God's reason for saying “No” is beyond understanding, the way your dog doesn't understand why you are not giving him a piece of your chocolate. He doesn't know that it could make him very sick. Or perhaps the suffering which God is not relieving is like the pain a baby experiences when he gets his immunization shots. He may even be feverish and achy the next day. The baby doesn't know that this is protecting him from the even worse pain and suffering of a disease that could otherwise leave him with brain or organ damage or just kill him. To the baby the shots seem to be both painful and unnecessary. We need to trust God just as the infant does its mother, even after she took him to the man with the hypodermic needles.

Although God has a plan and although we cannot fully comprehend certain parts of it, we mustn't think that God does not listen to us or that our prayers do not count. If anything, we are not bold enough in asking. The book of Hebrews says, “Therefore let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace whenever we need help.” (Hebrews 4:16) As Paul points out, since God “did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not, with him, also give us everything else?” (Romans 8:31)

Originally preached on April 2, 2006. There has been some updating.