Sunday, March 17, 2024

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 3rd 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.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Popular Ain't Always Good



The scriptures referred to are Ephesians 2:1-10 and John 3:14-21.

Someone defined a politician as a person who goes after people's votes by promising to protect both the rich and the poor from each other. Politicians know that if you want to win votes, it's more important that your policies are popular than that they are consistent or make sense or actually work. No matter how much debt the country is in, you will never hear a politician say that he will raise your taxes, just as he will never say he will cut defense spending, despite the fact that the US spends more on defense than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan and Ukraine combined.

Senator Harry Truman from Independence, Missouri got noticed for chairing a committee to reduce waste and inefficiency in the military and was selected by FDR to be his vice president. When Roosevelt died, Truman succeeded him as president. People may say they revere Truman but he wouldn't be elected today. Even in his own time he came so close to losing that one major newspaper didn't bother to wait for the final vote tally and printed a story that his opponent, Thomas Dewey, had won. The most famous photo of Truman is him holding up the erroneous headline and beaming at the irony of it.

Truman's problem was that he was outspoken. His nickname was “Give Hell Harry.” Truman said he just told people the truth and they thought it was hell. Harry Truman wouldn't make it in today's world of polls and spin doctors.

Did you know that the art of public relations was invented by Sigmund Freud's nephew? He took his uncle's insights, which are that people are (1) motivated by their subconscious and (2) avoid uncomfortable truths, and weaponized them. Whereas Freud sought to help people face unpleasant truths about themselves, his nephew realized that, as T.S. Eliot put it, “mankind cannot bear too much reality.” Public relations is all about giving people attractive alternatives to harsh truths. So tobacco companies ran ads saying 9 out of 10 doctors recommended their cigarettes. Rock Hudson's agent had his secretary marry the star rather than disillusion fans who saw Hudson as the perfect romantic foil to Doris Day or Susan Saint James. And we baby boomers watched public safety films that assured us that nuclear war was survivable as long as you “duck and cover.”

Nothing's changed. We are told that the economy is healthy so long as the stock market shows that large companies and rich people are making lots of money, despite how hard things are for the average person. We are told that our for-profit healthcare system is the best in the world, though we rank 30th among nations for healthcare quality and 66.5% of bankruptcies in the US are due to medical bills. Diet plans tell us that this superfood or this regimen will help us lose weight when it usually boils down to eating less and exercising more.

We live in a consumer society. We tell people what they want to hear so they will vote for us, or buy our products, or go to our churches. God forbid we say anything unpopular, no matter how true it might be. People don't want to hear a jeremiad, which is a tale of woe and condemnation. It gets its name from the prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah would have liked to say things that pleased everyone but he was called by God to preach to his people in the twilight of the kingdom of Judah. Egypt and Babylon were major powers in the Middle East at that time and they were fighting over the corpse of the Assyrian empire. After the death of the righteous king Josiah, Judah was ruled by puppets of either Egypt or Babylon. Jeremiah, who probably had a hand in the religious reforms of Josiah, felt compelled to warn these new kings, the priests and the people that they were straying from God's ways. He also counseled against opposing Babylon, which got him branded as a traitor. (Jeremiah 15:10) King Jehoakim was so displeased that he cut the scroll of Jeremiah's prophecies into strips and burned them, piece by piece. (Jeremiah 36:23) God told Jeremiah to write them down again.

Jeremiah not only told the truth to earthly powers, he was also honest with God. He asked God why his people had to suffer. We get an answer in 2 Chronicles 36:15. “The Lord God of their ancestors continually warned them through his messengers, for he felt compassion for his people and his dwelling place.” God knows you can't make a bad situation good by lying about it. To solve a problem you start by being perfectly honest about it.

One of my favorite shows was House M.D. and not just because the main character was based on Sherlock Holmes (who in turn was actually based on a real doctor, Joseph Bell.) The fictional Dr. Gregory House, if you remember, was a brilliant diagnostician with the world's worst bedside manner. His chief complaint was that everyone lies and that, in doing so, they are keeping from him the very information that might save their lives. House was merciless in his quest for truth and his success rate was astounding. The truth is, though, that in the real world his lack of tact and disdain for legal niceties would get him fired faster than a politician's speechwriter if he was too honest. But it is true that if you hide unpleasant details from your doctor, you can get the wrong diagnosis and thus the wrong treatment. God can sometimes be blunt. He has little use for the games we play or the ways we diminish and deny our harmful thoughts, words and deeds. But we ignore or water down or add to his words at our own peril. (Deuteronomy 4:2; Proverbs 30:5-6; Revelation 22:18-19)

Speaking of adding to God's word, there is another famous person associated with Independence, Missouri. But unlike Harry Truman, Joseph Smith told people what they wanted to hear. Smith told men that they all could receive prophecies from God, because, if they were good Latter Day Saints, they would become gods of their own worlds after death. He also told them they could have as many wives as they wanted. These doctrines, not found in the Bible, caused problems precisely because they were so popular (with his male followers, that is.) But if every man could be God's spokesman, you suddenly had all kinds of contradictory prophecies. More troubling to Smith was that if every man was a prophet, his position in his own church ceased to be unique. So Joseph Smith had another revelation that only he could have revelations.

But the genie was out of the bottle and the Mormon church has continued to splinter as various men decided they were God's mouthpiece. Today there are numerous small western towns from Mexico to Canada ruled by Mormon fundamentalist “prophets” who dissent from the official Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. These men all believe the church should never have abandoned the polygamy doctrine. However, according to Jon Krakauer in his book Under the Banner of Heaven the plural marriage commandment “very nearly shattered the church, brought about Joseph Smith's death at the hands of a lynch mob, and has been reverberating through American society ever since.” Krakauer's investigation of these communities shows that girls as young as 14 are pulled out of school to marry men 2 or 3 times their age, that these men have absolute authority over their wives and that multiple marriages can so complicate family relationships that a woman can become the stepmother of her own stepmother. So, women, appreciate your rights and that your husband only has one wife—you.

The interesting thing is that the supposed basis for the idea of polygamous marriage was those of the biblical patriarchs. And yet none of those marriages are depicted as harmonious. Barren Sarah offers Abraham her handmaid, which was a custom of that time and place. But then she harasses the poor woman when she gets pregnant as planned. (Genesis 16:3-6) David's dynasty was threatened by the intrigues of his wives and heirs. And sex must have become a chore for Jacob as each of his 4 wives angled to be his favorite by trying to provide him with the most sons. The passage in Genesis in which Jacob fathers 12 kids in 29 verses in a rapid fire “birthathon” comes across as a farce. (Genesis 29:31-30:24) But look closer and you see resentment, jealousy and competition rather than cooperation. Men, read this and appreciate your one wife.

As usual, what is touted as fundamentalism becomes, as one scholar calls it, a radical superficialism. That is, the reading of the scriptures of the religion becomes literal but shallow. Nuances, distinctions and context are glossed over. Furthermore most fundamentalists tend to overemphasize some aspects of the faith while ignoring others. Krakauer documents how often in the Mormon splinter groups their polygamy leads to actual incest and other forms of sexual abuse. Some of these Mormon fundamentalists also justify violating other very explicit Mormon commandments against drinking and taking drugs. Krakauer's book began with the horrific murders of a bright young Mormon woman and her infant daughter by her husband's fundamentalist brothers. Her crime: knowing the Book of Mormon well enough to stand up to her radicalized brothers-in-law. When these “mouthpieces of God” could not answer her very appropriate questions, they decided to shut her up. Permanently.

Joseph Smith added to God's revelation in the Bible and his LDS church is one of the fastest growing faiths today. Other people try to attract followers by subtracting from God's word. The Jesus Seminar is a group of religion professors who determine what parts of the gospels are historical by voting with colored marbles. They have concluded that Jesus said only 18% of what is attributed to him. Many of the individual members of the Jesus Seminar have put out books with their own recontructions of what the Jesus of history, as opposed to the Christ of faith, was like. This so-called scientific approach has yielded a different Jesus for each scholar. As Harry Truman said of economists, if you laid all these scholars end to end they'd all point in different directions.

Dr. Luke Timothy Johnson points out that their common methodology consists of first dismissing various objectionable parts of the oldest documents we have on Jesus, that is, the New Testament writings. Then they fill in the gaps with speculation, some based on history and culture and some on their personal interpretations. Small wonder that each writer finds a Jesus who reflects his own views: an apocalyptic preacher, an enigmatic philosopher, a social reformer, or just another rabbi. Johnson notes that in each case the reconstructed Jesus is so unremarkable that it makes you wonder why anyone bothered to crucify him or why his movement is still growing 2000 years later. Dr. Johnson points out that the Jesus who changed history was not one of the variants found in these scholars' books but the one found in the gospels. It's the entirety of the Jesus in the Bible—his teachings, life, death and resurrection—who has inspired so many to follow him.

Whether we add to or subtract from the Bible the results are the same: we create a God in our own image. He has our prejudices and our moral, political and social outlook. Such a God may be comforting but he is unlikely to tell us anything we don't already know or confront us with anything we don't wish to face. Such a God doesn't so much forgive us our sins as excuse them. Or turn them into virtues. One politician claiming to be a Christian says he has never asked God for forgiveness. He just tries to do better. If so, why did Jesus go to the cross for him? Or did he? Perhaps this politician, like many so-called Christians, finds the image of Christ crucified a bummer. Perhaps he worships the “Buddy Christ” that Kevin Smith so astutely introduced in his satirical movie Dogma. With his big smile, friendly wink and cheery “thumbs up” the Buddy Christ is the smiley face of today's positive thinking form of theology.

You see this inoffensive, nice guy Jesus more and more. We don't really want to hear about sin or self-denial or judgment or hell. We only want to hear about love—but movie love, not real love. We don't want to hear about dealing with imperfection or pain or sacrifice or having to forgive the one you love or asking for forgiveness from them—much less loving our enemies, though that's what God does when we oppose him. We don't want those truths. We don't want reality. We want fantasy.

So those of us who take the Bible seriously, in all its complexity, are now called fundamentalists, with the same vehemence that conservatives use for the term liberals or liberals use for the term conservatives. People try to force Christians into one of two camps: those who overemphasize God's righteousness and those who overemphasize God's compassion. Christians who do not fall into those neat superficial categories are marginalized or ignored, rather like those who, in politics, are neither right-wing or left-wing. Because nuance is so hard to reduce to a snappy sappy bumper sticker slogan or a stirring rallying cry.

Jeremiah, who records more of his personal feelings than any other prophet, would understand. He didn't want to tell people bad news. (Jeremiah 20:9) But if you don't know how bad things are, how will you recognize or understand the good news that they can be fixed? How can you understand redemption without grappling with sin? How can you appreciate how essential God's grace is to our salvation if you haven't acknowledged how impossible it is to save yourself by your own efforts? How can you see the importance of light if you haven't found yourself groping around in the darkness? How can you understand the joy of Easter without facing the pain and horror of Good Friday? So how can we know God's love and forgiveness and transforming power and then preach popular views rather than the good news?

Originally preached on March 26, 2006. There has been some updating. 

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Outside In

The scriptures referred to are Exodus 20: 1-17 and John 2:13-22.

Judaism says God gave them two bodies of law. One is the written law, which is found in the Torah or first five books of the Bible. The second is the oral law, the tradition of commentary on the Torah and its application to specific situations, which was eventually written down in the Talmud. An example of how the two work is found in Exodus 23:19, where it says, “Do not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.” There is no explanation of why one would or shouldn't do this. Rabbis call such commandments for which there is no apparent reason chukim. Modern scholars think that this may have been a Gentile practice and so Israel had to be different. Over the years, rabbis felt the best way to avoid this was to never eat meat and dairy at the same meal. An observant Jew could never eat a cheeseburger. And to further prevent the mixing of the two, Orthodox Jews have two sets of dishes, one for dairy and one for meat.

When I was studying in Israel 50 years ago, a rabbi there jokingly explained to us Christian students how they got two sets of laws with this story: Long ago, God drew up his laws and went about trying to find a nation that would accept them. He went to one nation and asked, “Would you want my set of laws?” The people of that nation asked, “What's in your laws?” “Well,” God says, “they say, 'Thou shalt not steal.'” “Sorry,” said that nation, “but our whole culture is based on stealing. We stole the land we're on. We steal from the poor and defenseless and give it to the rich. We steal each other's ideas and take credit for them. We don't want your laws.”

So God went to another nation and asked, “Would you want my set of laws?” Those people asked, “What's in your laws?” “Well,” God says, “they say, 'Thou shalt not covet.'” “Sorry,” said that nation, “but our whole culture is based on coveting or desiring what others have. We have a consumer economy and to keep people buying more stuff we have to keep inflaming their greed. We don't want your laws.”

So God went to yet another nation and asked, “Would you want my set of laws?” Those people asked, “What's in your laws?” “Well,” God says, “they say, 'Thou shalt not commit murder.'” “Sorry,” said that nation, “but our whole culture is based on murder. One whole sector of our economy is based on devising ever more efficient ways to murder more and more people. We also export these devices to other nations. Our news is dominated by murder and much of our entertainment is based on simulated murder. We don't want your laws.”

God went to nation after nation but they all had reasons to reject his laws. So finally he went to the Jews and asked, “Would you like my set of laws?” And they said, “How much are they?” Surprised, God said, “They're free.” “In that case,” said the Jews, “we'll take two!”

Well, we got two doses of the Ten Commandments today. We recited them in the penitential order and heard them again in today's passage from Exodus. That's good because we don't hear all of them that much otherwise. For a supposedly Judeo-Christian culture, I doubt that out of a hundred people you could find even a handful who could recite more than three of them.

We pay lip service to the Ten Commandments and some people want them displayed in the courtroom and the classroom. But let's face it: we are like the cultures in the rabbi's story. We systematically violate all the commandments. We make idols out of politicians and singers and sports figures and movie stars. We worship material things, like when we line up for the latest smartphone. We misuse God's name, not only by swearing but by saying he endorses all kinds of terrible things. We disrespect mothers, fathers and all in authority. Of all of the rich Western nations, we are the most violent with a shockingly high murder rate. Adultery destroys countless families and our idolized celebrities and politicians regularly commit the act with very little censure. We have discovered that many of our wealthiest corporations have gotten that way by cheating, stealing and lying. Politicians and lawyers regularly triumph over their opponents by saying or implying false things about them. And, yes, much of our economy is based on coveting what others have: their homes, their possessions, their lifestyles, bodies and talents. Is it any wonder that other religions think that our so-called Christian nation is hypocritical?

And it doesn't help our cause if we point out their own inconsistencies. It simply makes it look as if our morals are no better than anyone else's. We are to be a light to the world. But we not only hide it under a basket but under a garbage can, overflowing with the rubbish of our lives. (Matthew 5:14-15)

We don't need the Ten Commandments on our walls; we need them in our hearts and in our lives. And if we wear crosses, they shouldn't be worn as magical talismans but as labels to identify our content and uses. We demand truth in labeling of food and yet people regularly wear crosses while doing the very things that caused Jesus to be nailed to his.

Of course it is hard to keep the commandments. Paul knew that. When he was a Pharisee, he tried to keep all 613 commandments found in the Torah. And he couldn't do it. Not because he couldn't remember them all but because something in his nature rebelled against them. His sinful nature even used the commandments to tempt him to new sins, the same way that telling your kids not to do something gives them ideas they didn't have before. In Romans 7, Paul gives us a raw and honest look at the psychological dilemma of the good person gone wrong. “I do not understand my own actions,” he writes. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind....” (Romans 7:15, 22-23)

Can you see yourself in Paul's portrait of his own predicament? Have you ever found yourself about to step into sin despite the fact that you knew better? Have you ever, knowing that you would hate yourself afterwards, nevertheless let yourself be drawn into an act, a statement or an attitude which was unChristian?

I found a certain documentary riveting in spite of the fact that it is just an old woman talking. It is a feature length interview of Hitler's secretary. With the camera unblinkingly focused on her face, she recounts what it was like to work for and even socialize with one of history's greatest monsters. And as she talks, she must confront her complicity in his evil. To her credit, she does not make excuses. But neither can she say why she didn't do what was right. The documentary ends when she is overwhelmed by the realization of what her unreflective subservience made possible and she can't go on. She died hours after the film's premiere.

There are many pressures that try to suppress the good in us: our own desires, our assurance of our own infallibility, the urge to belong and go along, the desire for approval, the fear of rejection and missing out. We each have our own Achilles' heel, our specific weaknesses that trip us up again and again as we try to follow in Christ's footsteps. What are we to do? Or as Paul puts it, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24)

“Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus our Lord,” Paul answers. (Romans 7:25) The fact is that we cannot tread the path of Christ on our own. We need a guide, a rescuer, a trustworthy companion. And we find all those in Jesus. As the writer of Hebrews tells us, “Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” (Hebrews 2:18) Our God is not up there, far above the battle. He lived here in this tempting and sinful world and was assaulted by its allures from infancy on. Again the book of Hebrews reminds us, “For we do not have a high priest incapable of sympathizing with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) And now he is here among us, a divine presence in our lives, in our minds and in our hearts, not forcing us to do what's right but offering us help if we ask.

I am, of course, speaking of the Holy Spirit, who works unobtrusively around us and in us—if we let him. If we think about him less than the Father and the Son it is because he works backstage, so to speak. Anyone who has ever been in a stage play knows how invaluable the backstage personnel are. Without them there would be no play. The curtains would not open, the lights would not come on, the props would not be where they should be, the makeup would not be right, the costumes would not be good, the sound cues would not play when they should and no one would remind us of when to enter the stage. And yet most people do not realize how much is done by these hardworking, creative, invisible people. The Holy Spirit is like that. He is always at work behind the scenes to provide us with what we need when we need it. He even prompts us to say our lines. (Mark 13:11) Without God's Spirit, we would be stumbling in the dark, groping for what we must do or say next.

The Ten Commandments are really treaty stipulations. They spell out our part of the covenant God makes with us in return for freeing us from our self-destructive sins. Jesus summarized them in two commandments: to love God with all one's being and abilities and to love our neighbors with the same consideration we show ourselves. (Mark 12:29-31) And Jesus' definition of who is our neighbor is vast. It includes whomever we come into contact with, whether family, friend, stranger or enemy. (Luke 10:29-37; Matthew 5:44) That's a tall order and one we cannot hope to fulfill without divine help.

And just as we are always surrounded by people whom we should see as our neighbors, that divine help is also there. In fact, he is always with us. (Matthew 28:20) In today's gospel Jesus refers to his body as a temple, and we too are temples of the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 3:16) The love that moves the universe lives in our hearts. (John 14:17) He helps us make God's laws a part of us. (Ezekiel 36:27; Jeremiah 31:33) And there is no end of the good we can do if only we access the power we possess from our gracious God. (John 14:12)

Originally preached on March 23, 2003. There has been some updating.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Who Dares Wins

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Romans 4:13-25 and Mark 8:31-38.

Life is full of risks. And yet for some people that's not enough. So they gamble. They buy lottery tickets, bet on sports or go to a casino. They forget that the odds are always in favor of the House. More people lose money than win money. That's because of statistical probability. There are fewer winning combinations of lottery numbers or numbers on the slot machine or cards or place on the roulette wheel than there are losing combinations. And to keep you losing, casinos give you loyalty cards with incentives to use them. It allows the casino's computers to track your gambling. After a while they learn how much you are willing to lose before you stop. When the computer sees you are approaching your “pain threshold” it alerts the casino. They radio someone on the floor to approach you, and offer you a free drink coupon or a free meal at the restaurant or free tickets to the show with a big name entertainer. They want you to keep playing longer than you ordinarily would, so you will lose more money than you ordinarily would. And casinos are ruthless towards folks who seek to change the odds, whether they are cheaters or simply people who are good enough at doing the math in the heads that they can count cards and bet smartly. Even honest professional gamblers will get banned from casinos if they are too successful. The bottom line is that if the casino likes you, it's because you are a loser. Your losses are their profits.

Unfortunately, we have now based our economy on gambling. It wasn't supposed to work that way. Originally Wall Street was literally a market where entrepreneurs and investors met. If you had a good business idea, backed up by good talent and a willingingness to do good work, you could get financial backing. If your business prospered so did your investors. There was risk but it was reasonable. But people learned to game the system. And now as one financial reporter pointed out, investors treat the stock market as a casino. Investors move their money around like gamblers at roulette putting their chips on red this turn and on black for the next. Nobody is interested in a sound business strategy that's sustainable if it doesn't pay off big and regularly. They just want a huge return on the next quarterly report. That's how we got the Great Recession of 2008. There was a huge amount of money in the US housing market. Subprime mortgages were invented. Banks were giving loans to anyone with a pulse regardless of their ability to pay the loans back. Then it all came crashing down. It even hurt people who hadn't been investing. And suddenly nobody could get a loan. The Federal Reserve Bank had to figure out a way to get banks and businesses to take reasonable and necessary risks.

Even without the artificial risks of gambling, life entails taking risks, whether you are aware of them or not. The fact that you are here on a Sunday morning means you did so despite the fact that the risk of having a heart attack is 40% higher between the hours of 6 am and noon. And, no, this isn't an excuse to skip church. The risk is higher for the first 3 hours you are awake, no matter what time or day it is. It's just that most people wake up in the morning so, statistically, that's the most common time for heart attacks overall.

Most of us drive to church or work or school or the store even though the majority of car accidents occur within 25 miles of home. Living in the sunny Florida Keys gives you a higher risk of skin cancer. And so on. We don't usually change our lives drastically despite these risks. Otherwise we would just stay in bed all the time. Which would increase your risk of poverty, loss of the ability to care for yourself and bedsores. Nothing is totally safe, not even doing nothing.

You have to take some chances just to live. And without risk takers, society stagnates. This country would not exist had not a group of people decided it was worth the risk of breaking away from the biggest, wealthiest superpower of that day to try governing themselves. That's something that had never been done on that scale before. We would not have had a black president had Lincoln not decided it was worth the risk of a civil war to end the near universal institution of slavery. We would not have civil rights for people of color and women had not people like Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony and others risked imprisonment and in some cases their lives to win freedom.

Today's lectionary texts are all about how vital risk taking is to our faith. The subject of our Old and New Testament readings is Abraham. At an age when most people would retire he took the risk of relocating from Ur in Mesopotamia, the heart of civilization, to the largely rural land of Canaan. Granted, he did it because God asked him, but would you? Would you leave home to go to an undeveloped country simply because God asked you? We'd like to think so but most of us secretly would like God to tell us to just stay put and don't change anything. But Abraham shows the true meaning of having faith in God by totally turning his life upside down. Why? Immortality, basically.

As we go through the Bible and get more of God's revelation, the picture of the afterlife gets clearer. While in the New Testament we hear of both heaven (paradise) and hell (exile from God), in the Old Testament, the fate of the dead isn't that clearly delineated. All the dead, righteous or wicked, seem to be consigned to the shadowy realm called Sheol. And in the earliest parts of the Bible, people simply hope to live on through their descendants and the remembrance of their name. To Abraham, this last avenue to immortality seems closed as well because he and his wife are too old to have kids. God, however, promises them lots of descendants and changes his name from Abram to Abraham which means “father of multitudes.” Sarai becomes Sarah which means “princess.” Though both of them find the idea of parenthood at this time of life laughable, Abraham comes to trust God's promise. And in a passage 2 chapters before today's reading we are told that God counts this trust in him as righteousness on Abraham's part. (Genesis 15:6)

The fact that Abraham's trust puts him right with God is at the heart of our passage from Romans. The apostle Paul had been a zealous Pharisee, who was devoted to a meticulous observance of the Jewish law. This included not just the 613 commandments found in the Torah, the five books of Moses, but also literally thousands of interpretations and applications of these laws. These could get extremely technical and legalistic. For instance, rabbis argued about whether you could eat an egg laid on the Sabbath or would that be supporting a form of work on the Sabbath. But after he encountered the risen Jesus, Paul came to see that all these legalities got people sidetracked from the essence of what following God should be. Paul realizes that the great ancestor of the faith, Abraham, had a righteous relationship with God hundreds of years before the existence of the Law. His relationship was based on trust. Trust allowed a person to be radically obedient to God and to do things that otherwise seemed unacceptibly risky.

Today's gospel comes immediately after Peter tells Jesus that the disciples think Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus begins to teach the twelve that he must suffer and die. This is so totally contrary to the popular conception of the Messiah that Peter takes it upon himself to correct God's anointed King. He sees no contradiction between saying to Jesus “You're God's chosen one” and “You are wrong about what God wants you to do.” So Jesus makes the contrast between what people expect of their leader and what God expects of his disciples as stark as he can. “If you're going to follow me, you must disown all rights to yourself, shoulder the instrument of your own torture and death and then follow my lead.”

That's crazy, right? Who would respond to such a recruiting speech? Who would take such risks? No one at first. John's gospel tells us that due to another difficult speech of his a great number of Jesus' followers turned away from him. (John 6:66) The twelve desert him at his arrest. (Mark 14:50) They go into hiding and even contemplate returning to fishing. But then the risen Jesus appears to them. He meets with them and eats with them and teaches them how all this was prophesied in scripture. And that changes things. They may have thought Jesus was God's Messiah before. Now they knew he was. That made the risks of following Jesus different. Yes, they might suffer. They might even die as Jesus did. But now they knew that death is not the end, not for those who trust God.

Today we in the West need not worry very much about physical martyrdom. But Jesus' final words in our gospel are prophetic. Are we ashamed of Jesus and his words? Do we fear, not dying for our faith, but living for it in this cynical, “your truth is not my truth” world? Are we willing to stand up against popular opinion when it's wrong? Are we willing to refuse to buy into the entire platform of any political party, left or right, because none of them totally line up with God's standards? Are we willing to both love and disagree with people when certain moral issues call for it? Can we manage to be both righteous and humble?

Returning to our illustration about the risks of investing, historian Niall Ferguson points out that money is based on trust, and financial crises are all about lack of trust. After 2008, nobody believed that anyone was worth what they said they were or that anyone could keep the promises they made. So nobody was giving anybody any credit for anything. It stayed that way until someone started taking the risk of trusting others. And only then was recovery on its way.

The same thing is true of Christianity. People don't trust Christians to be what they say they are: people following in the footsteps of the Jesus that we see in the gospels. And they don't trust us to fulfill the promises Jesus made about how his followers would act: with love and mercy and healing and help. Instead they see a church that plays it safe, a church unwilling to take the risks Jesus did: to reach out to the despised and the discouraged and the diseased and the despairing and to stand up for them against the powerful. People don't expect much from the church these days except disappointment. And in so far as we have not boldly lived out the words of Jesus, we are responsible for that.

The only way to get that trust back is for us to take the risk that Jesus is who he said he was and that his way of demonstrating self-sacrificial love for others is the right one. It means approaching moral questions not as a conservative or as a progressive but as a Christian. It means upholding both holiness and social justice. It means both comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. It means being willing to disown ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Jesus.

That would be a terrible gamble if the world really were a casino, if it set the odds, if it could really control all the factors so that the House wins and everyone else was a loser. But Jesus changed the odds. Now everyone can win but only if we refuse to play the world's game. Only if we dare to follow Jesus' rules for living. Only if we dare to love God with all we are and all we have. Only if we dare to love each other as Jesus loves us. Only if we dare to trust him. Only if we dare.

Originally preached on March 8, 2009. There has been some updating.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Trials and Temptations

The scriptures referred to are James 1:12-18.

Lent is a time of spiritual self-examination. So, in view of our gospel reading about Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, I thought I'd look at temptation, especially that of the traditional seven deadly sins, as articulated by Pope Gregory 1 in 590 AD.

When mystery writer and lay theologian Dorothy L. Sayers mentioned that there were seven deadly sins, a person with her asked, “What are the other six?” When it comes to temptation, everyone thinks of sex. But sex is not a sin; it is a creation of God. When God tells the man and woman in Genesis chapter 1 to be fruitful and multiply, he is talking about sex. Sex is a gift and not a sin; lust is. Lust is the abuse or misuse of sex. It is having or pursuing sex in the wrong way: when it is inappropriate, when the person you want to have sex with is inappropriate, like a close relative or someone else's spouse, or when the way you want to have sex is inappropriate, like rape or to inflict pain or to assert dominance. Sex is good when it is done as God intended it: with the right person for the right reasons and done in love.

As I've pointed out before, sex is not an individual need. It is, strictly speaking, only a need for the species. Without it, the species dies out. But not every member of the species must have sex. Individuals will not die if they go without sex. Eating, however, is a need for every individual. So how can it become a sin? Through its abuse, misuse or neglect. The average person should take in somewhere between 1000 and 2000 calories a day. Taking in a lot less leads to starvation. Most people who starve do so involuntarily. But some people do it deliberately, like models or movie stars, trying to fit an unrealistic picture of beauty. And many of us eat too much. I can't resist potato chips and will eat an entire bag if left alone with it. We also eat a lot of foods not found in nature, concoctions that are full of what we crave—sugar, salt, fats—and empty of the nutrition we should be getting. In 2012 a 17 year old British girl was rushed to the hospital with anemia, breathing problems and inflamed veins on her tongue. It turns out that ever since she was two all she ever ate were McDonalds chicken nuggets and fries. Doctors had to inject her with vitamins to stabilize her. Gluttony is another of the seven deadly sins. In this girl's case it was almost literally deadly.

Greed is another of the seven deadly sins. Examples of greed are not hard to find. A person I was talking with said that people having a hard time making a living is entirely due to capitalism. But the problem goes all the way back in time, due to the nature of human beings. Just recently I saw a documentary about a grave uncovered by archeologists. It's the wealthiest grave containing the oldest golden artifacts ever found and it dates back to the 4000s BC. It's in Varna, Bulgaria and it's older than the empires of Mesopotamia and Egypt. They found an individual wrapped in clothes with gold ornaments sewn into them, plus gold bracelets, necklaces, a scepter and even a gold penis sheath. This was more gold than found in the rest of the world at that time. And there was no such thing as capitalism back then. Just greed.

To be sure, capitalism has made it so that 10% of the world's adults hold 85% of the world's wealth and half of the world's wealth belongs to the top 1% of the rich. That leaves 15% of the world's wealth divided among the remaining 90% of people in the world. And to make things worse, we have hedge funds, which don't manufacture goods or provide services but just buy up companies and suck out all the money they can, leaving the dry husks behind. That's what happened to Sears, K-Mart, Toys R Us, Payless Shoes, Radio Shack and Sports Authority. And now hedge funds are buying up pharmaceutical companies, so the prices of medicines people need are going up. 80% of the drugs with the fastest-rising prices are owned by companies with a lot of involvement with hedge funds, private equity or venture capital firms. These elite investment groups aren't interested in the research and development of new drugs as much as they are in raising prices of drugs that already exist and are needed by patients. One drug that treats a particularly resistant form of tuberculosis went from $13.50 a tablet to $750 a tablet. There is no reason for this other than greed.

Rage is another of the deadly sins. People who shoot up offices and schools and churches are filled with rage that they take out on others, including those who never even interacted with the shooter before. Death threats sent to politicians have become so common that many need to have security and bodyguards—in a supposedly free society. Women who are public figures and say anything controversial receive not only threats to their life but threats of rape. We cannot politely disagree anymore. We can't agree to disagree. No, if you don't agree with someone 100%, you are considered to have lost your rights to life and liberty. And often the people making the threats do so in the name of the constitution—or of God!

Envy, another deadly sin, is a staple of our media. The lifestyles of the rich and famous are dangled before us as things to pursue. We want what they have. We want to dress and even get surgery so we look like our favorite celebrities. Envy of what others have drives our economy. We are encouraged to buy more and have more. It's not just the ads. Our music is rife with singers rhapsodizing about jets, mansions, Rolex watches, and Lamborghinis. And yet studies show that once we get enough to take care of our needs and our modest desires, more money doesn't make us that much happier. Winning the lottery brings headaches and conflicts with family and friends. Studies show that after a few months the winner's happiness level reverts to what it was before they won. Depression is more common in wealthy countries than in less wealthy ones. Perhaps it is that we are trying to fill the emptiness in our life with material things. And when that doesn't work, we are tempted to do it by getting more stuff.

Today a lot of people want to be celebrities but they don't want to spend years learning to play an instrument, or working their way up from being an actor doing a dog food commercial to being a movie star, or toiling away at inventing something people want. They just want to go onto social media and be an influencer. Because it seems to be less work. That's laziness, another of the deadly sins. Elizabeth Holmes came up with a great idea: invent a machine that can test for 200 different diseases using just a drop of blood. But she didn't want to finish college or spend a decade or more trying to work out just how to do it. So she created a company called Theranos, that announced it could do what she promised. Meanwhile her employees couldn't get the prototype to work and had to fake the results to convince investors to give her billions of dollars for what was still simply a dream. She made a deal with Walgreens to put the machine in their stores but patients got the wrong diagnoses, endangering their lives. It all came crashing down, of course. But she wasn't willing to do the hard work of first inventing a method that worked and only then marketing it. Lasting achievements are not the result of laziness.

The final and worst of the deadly sins is arrogance. The old word for this was pride but this is really about thinking you know better and are better than others. And that is often the gateway to the other sins. The story in Genesis 3 is a paradigm of temptation. It starts with doubts about God's motivation and goodness. The tempter tells the first humans, “You certainly will not die, for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5) The next verse is all about how we rationalize doing the wrong thing: it looks good; it feels good; the end result is desirable. They thought they knew better than God what was the right thing to do. Thinking we are smarter than God has always been at the root of our problems. We want to do something we know we shouldn't and we tell ourselves, “Just this once won't hurt.” Or knowing that doing the same thing did not work out well for others, we say, “Well, that won't happen to me.” And then we find out we are not the exception to the rule.

James makes an excellent point about temptation. He says that temptation doesn't come from God; it comes from our own desires. We often have a problem distinguishing between needs and desires. You need food; you desire sweets. You need shelter from the elements; you desire a million dollar mansion. You need love; you desire a sexy celebrity. You need some control over the vital aspects of your life; you desire absolute power over other people.

Not all desires are bad. It's okay to desire that things be better than they are, especially when you are not in a good place. It's okay to desire better and more nutritious food, or a home that doesn't leak, or a spouse who is helpful and not harmful, or to not be living paycheck to paycheck. But our desires can get away from us. Notice that the seven deadly sins are desires for things like forbidden sex, for piles of money, for what others have, for others to feel your pain, for more of what tastes or feels good than is good for you, for getting rewards without effort or for total independence from God because you know better than he does.

James warns us that when our desires get out of control, they can give birth to sin. And a little later in his letter he explains how. “What causes the conflicts and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle inside you? You desire but you do not have, so you kill. You envy what someone else has and you cannot obtain it, so you quarrel and fight.” (James 4:1-2, my translation) Actually the Greek word translated “fight” literally means “to make war.” Aren't most wars about one side wanting something the other side has? Nations fight over territory, resources, power over other people or all three. Putin says he invaded Ukraine to fight neo-Nazis. The fact that Ukraine has ports that Russia wants, and that it is a major producer of wheat, and that it is the flat plain through which everyone from Napoleon to Hitler has invaded Russia so that Ukraine joining NATO makes Putin even more paranoid, has absolutely nothing to do with it. Or so he says.

James is right. People who are content with what they have rarely have internal conflicts nor do they get into conflicts with others. Among the fruit of the Spirit Paul lists peace, or well-being. (Galatians 5:22) The Greek word means “tied together into a whole.” If you feel that all the essentials in your life have come together, you have a sense of wholeness and peace.

The Swedish have a word for it. It is lagom and it means “not too much, not too little but just enough.” This is a common theme in Swedish culture. Which is why they have striven to balance out capitalism with high taxes that fund social programs that cover everyone. It's why Sweden is consistently ranked in the top 10 countries with the highest levels of satisfaction. It's not perfect however. An economic downturn in the 90s led the country to slash taxes as well as spending on social services. This has led to more income inequality and violence. So the country is trying to regain their sense of lagom.

Getting everything you desire does not ultimately make you happy. Having a lot of stuff does not give your life meaning or a greater purpose, two things that are associated with happiness. Paul put it this way: “For to me living is Christ...” (Philippians 1:21) He knew he was part of something bigger than himself. He was bringing people the good news that God loves them and that he demonstrated his love through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Unlike the pagan gods, the God revealed in Jesus cares about human beings—Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves and free people. Unlike the pagan gods, the God who is love is moral and cares about how we treat one another. He is just and merciful, giving and forgiving. He created us in his image and expects us to live up to that. He adopts us as his children and through his Spirit helps us to become more like his son, Jesus. Paul knew that even when he was gone the good news would continue to spread and bring people together. That gave him joy.

James says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights...” God doesn't expect us to ignore the gifts he gives us. Paul says that God “richly provides us with all things for our enjoyment.” (1 Timothy 6:17) But we are not to hog them or hoard them. We are to pass them on. Studies have shown that getting something for someone else brings us more happiness than getting stuff for ourselves. As Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)

One person who seems to have gotten this message is J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. She went from being a single mother on welfare to the first author to be worth $1 billion. She was richer than the Queen of England. Then she dropped down to a mere millionaire after giving $160 million to create and fund charities for medical causes and for at-risk mothers and children. She said, “I think you have a moral responsibility when you've been given far more than you need to do wise things with it and give intelligently.” She identifies as a Christian and belongs to the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Now why am I talking about the rich in a setting where most of us definitely aren't? Because compared to most of the world, we are. The only countries that rank higher than the US in per capita purchasing power have much smaller populations with which to share that wealth. So while we are the 7th richest country by that measure we are the only large country in the list of top ten richest nations. There are more than 220 countries below us. And on average we live better than the kings of the past. They had jesters and singers and storytellers. We have access to thousands of TV shows, movies, videos, albums, and books in a little device we carry in our pockets. They had to move out of their city palaces in summer when it was hot. We have A/C. They needed stables of horses and people to feed and take care of them and their chariots or carriages. We have cars, usually with cruise control, as well as A/C and sound systems. And we can fly; they couldn't. Their beds were stuffed with reeds, hay, wool or feathers. We have soft, cushioned mattresses with pillow tops or even sleep numbers.

We take these things for granted. And we don't share them readily with those who don't have these advantages. The average American rents a home but more than 650,000 Americans are homeless. The average American eats 1000 to 2000 calories a day but 44 million Americans, including 1 in 5 children, face hunger. The average American has some form of health insurance but 26 million Americans are uninsured. Most health insurance policies have limited coverage for mental illness, even though around 20% of adults experience a mental illness in any given year and 10 million have a serious mental illness. 48.7 million people aged 12 or older have a substance use disorder, including 29.5 million with an alcohol use disorder. Yet only 6% receive treatment. 94% go untreated.

We say we are a Christian country but we are more focused on what we want other people to do or not do rather than what other people do not have. We have succumbed to the temptation of complacency and self-righteousness. Jesus scolded the Pharisees for paying way too much attention to little matters “yet you neglect what is more important in the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness....” (Matthew 23:23) Jesus said that he would judge us for how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, the poor, the sick, the imprisoned and the immigrant. He says that how we treat them is how we treat him. (Matthew 25:31-46)

Desires are all about ourselves. So one of the best ways to fight temptation is to get our minds off ourselves and think of other people. Instead of buying junk food for yourself, buy some extra cans of good food and give it to your local food bank. Instead of seeking out someone for a one night stand, call your grandmother or your mom or a friend you haven't talked to for a while and enjoy connecting to a whole person who actually cares about you. Instead of buying the latest unnecessary gadget or collectible on Amazon, go to Charity Navigator and look up organizations that help people and donate. Instead of soaking up the outrage of someone on TV or the internet, join an organization that makes things better like Habitat for Humanity or a disaster relief organization. Every major denomination has one. Instead of wasting your life playing video games for hours, unlock some real achievements like volunteering to read to the blind or driving people to doctor's appointments. Instead of basking in your superiority to others, read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) or 1 Corinthians 13 or the book of Proverbs and see how you measure up to those standards.

The Greek word for temptations also means tests or trials. It is often when we undergo trials that we get tempted to abandon God's ways and do what we want. But Paul says, “No trial has seized you except what is common to humans. And God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tested beyond your ability, but he will provide along with the temptation a way to escape so that you can endure it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13) This does not mean that you will not undergo trials that are more than you can deal with using only your own strength. But with the power of his Spirit within you and the gracious gifts he provides and the people he puts in your life who support you, you can overcome them. It takes persistence and patience and trust in him. But as Paul said of the trials that must have tempted him to give up, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, not depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 35, 37-39)

Sunday, February 11, 2024

Listen

The scriptures referred to are 1 Kings 19:9-18,2 Peter 1:16-31, and Mark 9:2-9.

You know the one character who appears in all 4 Monty Python movies and in the opening of their TV show? I'm not talking about the 5 writers and one animator who played almost all the parts.They always played different characters—except this one. It was God. He was usually a cartoon and sometimes just a foot that would descend from the heavens to squash something. In one sketch, a family is disgusted by finding dead bishops on their doorstep every day so they call the church police. The officers are dressed like English Bobbies but with crosses atop their helmets. Led by a detective who wears a priest's stole, they first ascertain the bishop's diocese (it's tattooed on the back of their necks) and then pray that God will reveal the murderer. A gigantic hand comes down and points to the culprit. As he is hauled away, the detective leads the family in a hymn.

Wouldn't it be great if God worked that way? If he always popped up the minute someone sinned, told them they were wrong and made them repent right then and there. Or, if someone was particularly bad, if he just zapped them with a lightning bolt or squashed them flat with a big foot? Wouldn't that be wonderful?

I don't think so either. Putting aside the whole issue of having to pick your way through streets clogged with folks who were either crispy or crepes, it would be very hard to function if God visibly and verbally intervened at every infraction, however minor. It would be as if your parents followed you everywhere. Apart from being annoying, it would lead to the world's population being afraid to do anything for fear of getting it wrong. People would flee from God like cockroaches flee from a light. It would even lead some people to choose open rebellion against God. We see this often in “preacher's kids.” Some of my colleagues were PKs and admit to deliberately cultivating a bad boy attitude as an overcompensation for the constant pressure to not only behave but be perfect.

God doesn't want robots. He wants people who obey him out of love. Maybe that's why God set up the world so that our every sin doesn't result in immediate pain or suffering. He gives us a margin of grace in most things. We have time to repent and change our ways. But if we continue doing the same sins over and over, the physical, social, emotional and spiritual damage will accumulate.

Still wouldn't it be nice if God talked to the world audibly sometimes? The Israelites didn't think so. At Mount Sinai, the God who took them out of slavery in Egypt spoke to all the people. And they asked Moses if, from now on, he would act as a go-between. Just as they thought that seeing God face to face meant death, hearing the creator of everything address them was a profoundly unnerving experience. (Exodus 20:19)

So from that point on, we see God speaking to and through his prophets. Even so, they were freaked out by these encounters. Isaiah was acutely aware of his extreme lack of holiness in God's presence. (Isaiah 6:5) Words fail to coherently describe what Ezekiel saw. (Ezekiel 1) Jeremiah stammered that he was too young. (Jeremiah 1:6) Maybe that's why God speaks so softly to Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Elijah is fresh from his triumph of exposing the false prophets of Baal for what they were and destroying them. But he fled from the threatened backlash for that to the mountain of God and now is depleted and depressed. He thinks he's the last prophet left in Israel. Standing at the mouth of a cave, Elijah sees quite a spectacle. A wind comes up suddenly, cleaving mountains and blasting rocks into powder. But the Lord was not in the wind, we are told. After that, the earth shivered as if in fear. But the Lord was not in the earthquake. After that, flames engulfed the view. But the Lord was not in the fire. Finally after all that, Elijah hears a “still small voice.” Some translate this as “a gentle whisper.” The new RSV renders it “a sound of sheer silence.” Whichever you prefer, God realizes that he needn't shout to get his point across. The content speaks for itself. Elijah hears that he is not alone, not by a long shot, and that God has a plan to depose the corrupt regime that rules Israel. Furthermore, there is work for Elijah to do to kick it all off. Encouraged, Elijah is ready to fight again.

The point is that Elijah waited to hear what God had to say. Which is more than we can say for Peter in today's reading. Just a week earlier, Jesus asked them who they thought he was. Peter says, “You are the Christ.” And after congratulating Peter on his heaven-sent insight, Jesus starts talking about how he will soon be tortured and killed. Peter reprimands Jesus for saying such things and Jesus rebukes Peter for for not letting him be the kind of Messiah he was sent to be. Peter is hurt and confused. All he wants for Jesus is the best. So why was he called Satan for suggesting that Jesus is frightening the troops with all this death talk? (Mark 8:27-33)

Probably still upset by Jesus' teachings about what will happen to him, the inner circle of Peter, James and John accompany Jesus up another mountain. And then it all changes. Jesus' clothes look blindingly white. Moses, the lawgiver supreme, and Elijah, the paragon of prophets, are talking to Jesus. This doesn't happen every day, not even to Jesus. Frightened out of his wits, Peter starts babbling about camping out with these two heroes of the faith. That's when the cloud covers them and God tells them, “This is my son, the beloved. Listen to him!”

There's a lot that's important in this passage but for our purposes I want to focus on what God tells the disciples: “This is my son, the beloved. Listen to him!” A lot of problems in our lives could be avoided if we simply did what God says here—listen to Jesus.

After the success of the first film, an interviewer asked the Pythons what their next movie would be. Eric Idle quipped, “Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory.” Everyone thought they were just joking but they were seriously thinking of doing a religious satire. Then they studied the life and words of Jesus. They were struck by how wise and good he was and they didn't want to make fun of him. But they were inspired to make fun of the ways people blindly follow and distort religious and political ideologies. The Life of Brian is about a guy born in the manger next door to Jesus. All his life Brian keeps getting mistaken for the Messiah. The joke is that Brian doesn't want to be worshipped or have followers but can't shake his fervent disciples who zealously and wrongly interpret everything he says and does. People do this with Jesus too. One scene puts us on the fringes of the crowd listening to the Sermon on the Mount. They are so far away from Jesus that they can't quite make out what he's saying. “What did he say?” asks one fellow. “Blessed is the Greek,” another says. “Really?” the first guy says, “Which one?”

This reminds me of when Barbara Brown Taylor related the story of a poetry reading by W.H. Auden. The poet spoke so softly that not everyone could hear him. So other people tried helpfully to relay what they thought he was saying. Eventually the people trying to pass on what he said got so loud that no one could hear the poet himself!

We tend to get that in churches. So many people are speaking for Jesus that nobody can actually hear what he says. And sometimes people deliberately misquote Jesus. There are times when we look at what he said and go, “Oh, he couldn't have meant that!” And so we issue corrections like a White House press secretary trying to walk back what a president said. I actually heard a pastor say of a difficult passage, “Jesus couldn't have said that. Or if he did, he was wrong.” That's what Peter did when Jesus made the disturbing statement that he was going to die like a criminal. Just after telling Jesus he was God's anointed king, Peter immediately informed Jesus that he knew less about his role as Messiah than Peter did. That's why Jesus rebuked him. “You are not thinking as God does but as human beings think.” We get nothing out of the hard sayings in the Bible if we dismiss them. Instead we should grapple with them, like Jacob wrestling with the angel who declared, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” (Genesis 32:26)

Sometimes we blather on like Peter at the transfiguration. We find ourselves in an unfamiliar situation and we neglect to simply get quiet and listen to Jesus. The silence can be frightening at times. We don't want to wait it out. We want someone to please say something. And so we fill it with the first thing that comes out of our mouth.

But there are times when talking is unnecessary or even wrong. Like when a friend is dealing with the loss of a loved one. We may be tempted to say something like, “It was God's will.” Or “You mustn't feel sad. He's in God's hands.” The point isn't whether what you say is right or not. The point is your job may be to just shut up and listen. Let God speak to the person through your presence and love. The best thing Job's comforters do is just sit with him silently for the first week. It's when they open up their mouths and try to justify God letting this tragedy hit Job that they get into trouble. (Job 2:13; 42:7)

In 2 Peter, the writer says, “We did not follow cleverly devised myths.” (2 Peter 1:16) When people deliberately concoct myths they usually make them comforting. They tell us what we want to hear. They don't usually challenge us. That's why new religious fads don't tell people they are sinners, and why they tell them that they are automatically going to heaven. They don't usually tell people they must make painful changes in their lifestyles or habits. They will never say that the world is violently out of balance and we must put all our weight on the side of peace and forgiveness and self-sacrifice to put it right again. Most New Age gurus bless the status quo or attack some easy target like an abstract quality of society. “Stop being so materialistic! And buy my books, videos and merch!” The popular ones never say, “...love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you...” (Matthew 5:44) Or “But whoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well.” (Matthew 5:39) Or “If you want to come after me, you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23; Matthew 16:24)

That's precisely the sort of thing you will hear if you listen to Jesus. If we stop our babbling, stop our commentary, stop our excuses, and simply quiet ourselves, we will eventually hear in the sheer silence the still small voice of our Lord. And though there may not be any whirlwinds or earthquakes or fires, what that gentle whisper imparts to us will blow away and shatter our preconceptions, shake the foundations of our world, and burn within us like a fire in our hearts. (Luke 24:32) Eventually even Peter learned this. When Jesus lost a lot of followers with a difficult speech about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he turned to the twelve disciples and said, “You don't want to go away too, do you?” And Peter said, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:67-68)

This was originally preached on February 26, 2006. It has been updated a bit.