Last Things First

The scriptures referred to are James 3:13-4, 7-8a and Mark 9:30-37.

We are looking at the life of Jesus in our weekly Bible study and so I have been doing research. Since the backdrop of Jesus' life includes the Roman Empire, I have also been listening to podcasts and watching documentaries about the era and the people of the time. I saw this documentary on Julius Caesar, the man who destroyed the Roman Republic when he became its first dictator. He came from a wealthy family which fell on hard times. He joined the army and worked his way up, always with an eye on getting political power. For instance he wanted to merit a parade through Rome, which could only happen if he had a military triumph which killed at least 5000 of the enemy. So Caesar made sure he killed that many people. However his obvious ambition and ruthlessness created opposition to him. As he reentered Roman territory from Gaul without disbanding his troops, he triggered a civil war. He went up against Pompey, Rome's previous greatest general and Caesar's former supporter. Pompey, defeated, eventually fled to Egypt. Caesar pursued him there, only to be presented with Pompey's head compliments of the Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra.

Cleopatra was also very ambitious, wanting to rule the empire that Alexander the Great had ruled. She couldn't do that without conquering the Romans but she did the next best thing. She killed her brother, who was also her husband, seduced Caesar and had a child by him. However, her plans to have her son inherit his father's empire died when Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Roman Forum. So she began an affair with Caesar's second-in-command, Marc Antony, getting pregnant by him. But when Antony had a falling out with Caesar's great nephew and adopted son, Octavius, those plans fell apart. Cleopatra tried to bribe Octavius but he didn't bite. As his troops besieged Alexandria and Antony and Cleopatra's armies failed to stop Octavius, the doomed lovers made a suicide pact. Cleopatra researched the best poison to use by testing them on prisoners and noting the results. As Antony reviewed his defeated troops, he received a message that Cleopatra was dead. He fell on his sword. But the Queen of Egypt was very much alive. Despite the fact that historians think Antony really was the love of her life, Cleopatra was still trying to become an empress. When Octavian captured her she tried to seduce him but he turned and walked out of her presence. Then 11 days after Antony had died, Cleopatra, fearing she would be paraded through the streets of Rome as Octavian's captive, took poison. Octavian murdered her children by Caesar and Antony and became the first official emperor of Rome, Augustus. It was during his reign that Jesus was born.

In today's lectionary both James and Jesus warn us of selfish ambition. And yet we admire the ambitious people of our time and revere ambitious men and women of the past. And I think it is because we don't distinguish between selfish ambition and other reasons to pursue excellence. In his management book Good to Great, Jim C. Collins presented his research on the factors that helps a good company go to a great one. A key factor is having a leader who is a “paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will,” driven not by the desire for personal aggrandizement but the desire to do what's best for the company. These folks are rarely the superstar CEOs who get all the attention in the press but men and women passionately focused on what the company is best in the world at doing and which also happens to make money. After his book came out, Collins was surprised to see it adopted by churches and non-profit organizations. One thing that interested them was what he called the “Level 5 Leader.” It is very similar to the concept of the “Servant Leader,” whom Robert K. Greenleaf wrote about. And in today's passage from Mark, Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

Let's face it, most leaders put themselves first. They are concerned about their power and their prestige and having not just their needs but their desires met. The Twelve were not above this. In the very next chapter of Mark, we find the disciples once again getting into a conflict on the matter of who was greatest and Jesus says, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 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 10:42-45) And to make the point as vividly as possible, just before the last supper, John's gospel tells us how Jesus stripped off his outer garment, tied a towel around his waist and washed his disciples' feet, a task usually given to the lowest of slaves. Afterward he says, “Do you understand what I have done for you?...You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things you will be blessed if you do them.” (John 13:12-17)

As Jesus pointed out, most hierarchies put the leader before everyone and often everything else. Jesus says that, instead, the leader should put his people before himself. And Jesus didn't just talk the talk, he walked the walk. Besides washing the disciple's feet, he stepped forward at his arrest and said, “If you are looking for me, then let these men go.” (John 18:8) And of course, he goes to the cross to save humanity. Compare him to people like Hitler and Cleopatra, who were willing to throw anyone else under the bus to get what they wanted. Each sacrificed a viable future for their nation on the altar of a grandiose dream of an empire under themselves.

It feels odd to come out against ambition, though, at least here in America. Don't we want kids to dream big and reach their potential and accomplish great things? Yes but there is another motivator that has nothing to do with simply wanting to be top dog: love. Remember what Collins found out about the leaders who took good companies to being great ones; their passion was focused, not on themselves, but on doing what they do best. Most renowned scientists, movie makers, medical researchers, artists, reformers, teachers, and innovators achieve their greatest accomplishments because they are love what they do. I am reasonably sure that Jane Goodall did not think that studying chimpanzees was the road to fame. She was intensely interested in learning all she could about our closest relatives. That passion drove her to do what she did as well as she could. Van Gogh only sold one painting during his life; he was motivated by his passion to capture the beauty of what he saw. Dr. Jonas Salk did not patent his vaccine for polio which would have made him rich; instead he let everyone have it because he was passionate about wiping out this scourge that was crippling and killing people. They weren't chasing fame and money. They were pursuing their passions. By focusing on those things rather than themselves and by honing their skills and constantly improving how they did what they did they have made lasting contributions to the world.

And then we have the opposite: people who are famous just for being famous. Can you tell me one thing of excellence that the Kardashians have accomplished outside of merely living their life in the limelight? I don't even seek out news about them and yet I know more intimate stuff about them than some people I am interested in, because you simply cannot avoid hearing about them. Social media has made stars out of otherwise obscure people, again, not because they have made the world a better place but simply because they have made themselves heard. You don't even have to be literally loud. There is a woman on You Tube who narrates really boring mundane tasks and yet has 20 million subscribers because she speaks very softly and there are folks who get pleasure out listening to her voice. As an obsession, it is a relatively benign one but 20 million subscribers? Charlton Heston reading the Bible on You Tube only gets 8000 views. The Jesus movie, a Hollywood quality dramatization of the gospel of Luke, which you can watch in its entirety for free on You Tube, gets 4 ½ million views. A woman whispering for 4 hours got 15.8 million.

Small wonder people promote themselves, even if they haven't really done anything truly wonderful or life-changing. The world pays attention to the the flashy and the novel and the outrageous. We reward such behavior, even if it is not conduct we would tolerate in our friends or in our family. I saw this firsthand at a radio station I worked at in Brownsville, Texas. The station hired two shock jocks for the morning drive time. The outrageous, highly sexualized talk of these guys did raise the station profile. It brought the rock station from number 12 to number 6 in the ratings. But the problem is that to keep from getting stale shock jocks have to keep crossing the line of what is acceptable. And eventually they go too far even for the people who hired them. And then they get fired. There was one shock jock in my hometown of St. Louis who made the rounds of most of the rock stations that way. He'd create controversy and raise ratings, say something totally beyond the pale, get dumped by that radio station and get picked up by another, coveting the attention he would draw. Until he pushed the envelope too hard and the cycle would repeat. I once heard a DJ joke about the nudity of concentration camp prisoners in a Holocaust film. Too bad not all such vulgarians can simply be fired.

Jesus says that in the kingdom of God, those who come in first in this life will be relegated to the end of the line. Those who did not promote themselves will be elevated. It's quite possible that the most honored mere human in the new creation will be someone most of us never heard of or thought much about. Like one of those janitors or librarians who live frugally and then upon their death are discovered to have left a million dollars to some charity. They could have lived large but instead they showed themselves to have large hearts.

The key is putting others and their welfare ahead of yourself. This is what Jesus means by disowning oneself and taking up your cross. Jesus' didn't carry his cross for himself; he did it for us. Our cross is not our daily problems but the ones we take on in order to help others. As Paul said, “Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2) Or as the 3 musketeers put it, “All for one and one for all.”

Following Jesus is about loving God and loving other people. In Paul's famous passage about love, he writes, “Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5) Love is not about oneself but about others. Self-centered people don't really love others. They see them as a trophy or as an extension of themselves. The older rich man has a much younger, impossibly beautiful woman on his arm to advertise how successful he is. If he could he would emblazon his name on her as he does his films or products or companies. “This is mine,” he is saying.

We are to say to Jesus, “I am yours.” We are to look for Jesus in everyone we meet, even those whom we do not know. And we are to treat them as we would Jesus, especially those who need help. And just as you would not brag in front of or try to steal the spotlight from Jesus, you should not do so when you encounter other people. Instead focus on them and treat them as you would relatives of Jesus (Matthew 25:40), even if you think they are the black sheep of his family, so to speak. Jesus loves them and those loved by your beloved, you try to love as well.

One of the side effects of this is that, as the 12 step programs say, helping helps the helper. It takes you out of yourself. It shifts your focus from your problems to those of others. It can also help you realize that you are not alone in your problems. There are others that have the same struggles that you do. And if their problems are worse than yours, it can make you realize that perhaps you are being too whiny about the difficulties you let upend your life and maybe you should be more grateful for the troubles you don't have to wrestle with.

And using your knowledge, experience, and skills to help others can help you feel needed and useful. You learn that you can make a difference in the lives of others. It can lead you to discover your gifts and possibly even your purpose in life. Your purpose is usually found at the intersection of what you are passionate about, what you are good at and what the world needs.

When we call Jesus the Christ or Messiah, we are essentially calling him our King. And yet our King came not to be served but to serve. He did not use his power to make his life more comfortable or easier or more opulent. He spent his time healing and feeding and teaching and forgiving others. His ministry was fueled not by ambition or selfishness but by love.

We may read about or dramatize the lives of Julius Caesar, Marc Antony or Cleopatra but nobody in their right mind wants to be like them. They titillate us but they don't inspire us. With the exception of the Julian calendar, the achievements they were most proud of have been buried in the dust of history. Yet Jesus, who never built a monument, or conquered a nation, or even wrote a book himself, is still energizing people and motivating them to make their lives and the lives of others and this world better, more just, more peaceful, more forgiving, more loving. They do it not by seeking to make a name for themselves. As a Jesuit named Fr. Strickland wrote more than 150 years ago, “A man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it.” Let us do all the good we can and let the credit go to the one who personifies God's grace.

As Paul wrote, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The Power of Words

The scriptures referred to are James 3:1-12.

Animals communicate in many ways. They do it visually, such as when a male peacock displays and shakes his tail in an elaborate mating ritual. They do it by touch, such as when monkeys groom each other to solidify their relationships. They do it chemically, such as when cats rub things to mark them with their scent. They do it vocally, by singing, howling, screaming, trumpeting, purring, barking, etc. But what they communicate is rather simple and straightforward. Bird song is primarily about proclaiming their territory and what a good mate they will be. Social animals warn each other about predators. They may growl or hiss to warn off a threat to them or their offspring. Animals even laugh. Really. It turns out you can tickle rats, dolphins, dogs, meerkats, owls and penguins and make them laugh.

So we are not the only species to communicate vocally. But differences in degree can be so great that they might as well be treated as differences in kind. The sheer number of things we humans can communicate verbally far outstrips what any other animal can do vocally. We can also change reality by what we say. For instance, if you didn't already know that penguins could laugh, that means I have just changed your brain. I have made a physical connection between 2 neurons that did not previously exist. I can say things that induce a positive emotional state in your consciousness, or a negative one. I can hurt your emotions. If I do it powerfully enough or often enough, I can damage you psychologically. Verbal abuse is really a form of physical abuse.

When we think of sins we tend to think of things like murder or certain sexual acts or theft. We don't usually think of what could be called sins of the tongue. Yet the Bible mentions the ways we can misuse the gift of speech more than 100 times. I've got to admit I didn't think seriously about some forms before researching this sermon.

Lying is the first thing that comes to mind. One of the Ten Commandments forbids giving false testimony against your neighbor. We naturally think of how bad it is to falsely accuse someone of a crime, but Proverbs 24:24 also condemns saying that a guilty party is innocent. Proverbs 12:22 says, “The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are truthful.” In Zechariah God tells his people what he expects from them: “'These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts; do not plot evil against your neighbor, and do not love to swear falsely. I hate all this,' declares the Lord.” (Zechariah 8:16-17)

Recently I heard a discussion on NPR about the difference between lies and falsehoods. Lying is when you knowingly and intentionally say something that isn't true. A falsehood could be something you say without knowing that it is untrue. It could be the result of ignorance. But the Bible condemns that as well. Again Proverbs tells us, “The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly....The discerning heart seeks knowledge, but the mouth of a fool feeds on folly.” (Proverbs 15:2, 14) In other words, know your facts before you disseminate them. Nowadays that is a lot easier since you have access to virtually all the knowledge of the world through your phone.

But saying what is factually wrong is not the only way you can misuse speech. The Bible also has problems with flattery and boasting. Flattery is not merely complimenting another person; it is giving false compliments to manipulate the person. The root of the Hebrew word for “flatter” is “to be smooth.” You flatter a person usually to make things smooth between you. And it is good to compliment someone on their real strengths. But none of us is perfect. The problem is that overpraising a person makes it harder when you need to be honest with them about their flaws. It's not true and not helpful to tell anyone that they are the smartest or greatest person ever or that they never make a mistake. When they inevitably fail, it may be difficult for both of you to admit it and to fix the resulting problem. Would you rather have a doctor lie and say you are in astonishingly excellent health or level with you about your blood pressure or problems your EKG reveals about your heart or how you need to change your diet because of a family history of diabetes?

Boasting can be thought of as self-flattery. As it says in Psalm 36 about the arrogant person, “For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin.” (Psalm 36:2) And the flipside of having an overinflated view of yourself is that you must denigrate others. If I am the greatest, anyone displaying similar greatness is a competitor and needs to be taken down a notch. As it says in Jude 16, “These men are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.” Again it is not boasting to report you won an award or to say that you are pleased with something you accomplished. As usual, the sin is a distorted or exaggerated version of a virtue. It is accurate to say that John Legend, having won an Emmy for producing the recent televised version of Jesus Christ Superstar is the second youngest person and first black man to be an EGOT, that is, someone who has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. That's a big honor. There are only 16 such people. It would be wildly over the top, however, to say that he is the best actor to have become an EGOT, seeing as he did not win for playing Jesus and other actors to have achieved EGOT status include John Gielgud, Helen Hayes, Whoopi Goldberg, Rita Moreno and Audrey Hepburn. Nor, I hasten to add, did he ever say such a thing. In fact, he was reluctant to adopt Legend as a stage name and only did so at the suggestion of poet J. Ivy.

If overly hyping others or oneself are bad, so is putting people down. The Bible says, “Do not accuse a man for no reason—when he has done you no harm.” (Proverbs 3:30) Jesus, Paul and James are in agreement with the Old Testament in condemning slander. We are not to defame anyone, especially if the report is false. It can do great damage. Fatty Arbuckle was the number one comic actor in the era of silent films, bigger than Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, to whom he gave their starts. And then an actress who had gotten sick at a party he threw died of peritonitis several days later and a friend of hers alleged that the comedian had assaulted the actress and ruptured her bladder. The accuser's story was so obviously false that although an ambitious DA prosecuted Arbuckle, he never called the accuser to the stand to testify. Instead the woman did newspaper interviews and told her story on the vaudeville circuit, ruining the comedian's reputation. Arbuckle was not only acquitted but the jury actually read an apology to him. Yet the scandal killed his career. And people still remember him for the blatantly false charge of having raped a woman to death with a Coke or champagne bottle. When I was a kid, I remember hearing the saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” That is definitely not true. Slander can harm a person.

Gossip is another thing that can damage people's lives. A gossip may not have made up the stories he or she passes on but they make sure that everyone knows all the details. It is worse when the content was supposed to stay between two people. The book of Proverbs says, “A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret.” (Proverbs 11:13) Mind you, we are not talking about a whistleblower revealing hidden evil but a person who was told something with the understanding that it was not to be spread around. Let's say a friend confides in you that her or his marriage is going through a rough patch. That is nobody else's business and making it common knowledge might in fact harm efforts on the part of the couple to reconcile. Or let's say that delicate negotiations are going on. Letting everyone know the details being discussed could derail the negotiations. And gossips are not noted for their accuracy but for the juiciness of the details they pass on. If the real narrative is dull, the gossip will go for the more sexy, more scandalous version. It makes a better story.

Gossip can tear people apart. Again Proverbs says, “A contrary man spreads conflict and a gossip separates close friends.” (Proverbs 16:28) This naturally can lead to quarreling. One person confronts another over something they heard he or she had done or said. The other person denies it and gets defensive. Name calling commences and pretty soon the matter escalates. Others in the group or the families of the persons take sides and irreparable damage is done. As scripture says, “Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down.” (Proverbs 26:20) When people stirred up things in the church at Corinth, Paul wrote, “For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.” (2 Corinthians 12:20) Paul knew that gossip can destroy lives as well as groups like churches.

Another cause of quarreling and dissension is needless argument over matters that are neither essential nor important. Paul warned his colleagues Timothy and Titus about the person who “has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions...” (1 Timothy 6:4) He writes, “Do not have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels.” (2 Timothy 2:23). And again, “...avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless.” (Titus 3:9)

Sadly, you find this a lot among certain people, folks who not only love to get deep into the weeds about a matter but who cannot see the forest for the trees. They get obsessed with small details and define words and concepts narrowly and use them in ways that run contrary to how the majority of people use them. They construct highly artificial scenarios ("But what if...") and refuse to see how their assertions fail to describe or adhere to reality. If they can't impose their interpretation upon others they can at least create chaos and feel important that way. And such people are not found exclusively in religious circles. They thrive in law and politics and in fandom, where I first encountered them and developed an immunity to much of this. These are the people who get so worked up about details the movie got wrong about the original book or the fictional character that it drives them into a rage. They lose sight of the main reason for the movie or the book, which is entertainment. In the same way politicians of this stripe forget that the main purpose of politics is to govern wisely and justly for the common good. Religious people who are like this forget that the purpose of their faith is to get closer to God.

Finally, out of the 33,000 verses in the Bible I only find 2 that condemn filthy language. (Colossians 3:8; Ephesians 5:4) You may think this is a lost cause these days. We all have slipped and said something we shouldn't. And if you think you haven't, try taking care of that living recording and playback machine called a toddler! But certainly we should try not to pepper our speech with random obscenities. We all know people who use the F-word the way other people use “um” or “uh.” It can be wearying. More importantly, it can diminish what you say in the eyes of others. It sounds like you have an impoverished vocabulary. Dennis Miller was a comedian who could use clean language brilliantly on Saturday Night Live. When I saw him on his comedy special I was surprised and eventually irritated by the fact that instead of his usually dazzling display of verbal humor, he was muddying up his speech with more unnecessary curse words than a drunken sailor who stubbed his toe. Albert Brooks said that during his stand up days he knew that if his material was not going well he could always get an easy laugh by throwing in some bad language. But he'd rather try to get the laughs by legitimately coming up with funnier material. Rather than curse people should use better descriptive language. As Christians we should avoid saying anything that will distract or detract from our message, the gospel.

Speech is powerful. It can do a lot of good as well as a lot of evil. It can be used to hurt and even harm people or it can be used to help and to heal, to divide or to unify, to spread falsehoods or to spread the truth. As followers of Jesus, we need to use the gift of speech wisely and for the good of all. Therefore we are told, “Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.” (1 Timothy 5:1) Towards enemies we are to “...bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:28) As for the vulnerable and powerless, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” (Proverbs 31:8-9) And in general, “Do not let any harmful talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building up those in need, that it may benefit those who listen.” (Ephesians 4:29)

And of course we are to proclaim the gospel, literally the good news. Which means we have to understand it. We need to know what is truly essential about the gospel: who Jesus is, what he has done and is doing for us, and what our response should be. It means not letting ourselves get diverted into arguments that are ultimately useless. It means realizing we are not here to win debating points but to give life-changing and life-saving information to those who need it. Which means we need to be kind, gracious, wise and encouraging in all we say.

“Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.” (Proverbs 16:24) As I wrote this I realized that our speech should be like that of an ideal nurse: truthful but not harsh, realistic but encouraging, informative but not bringing up every detail, especially if irrelevant. And I can't say that I was ever that ideal nurse. But I use the word “nurse” because we are not the Great Physician. We carry out his orders and act as an intermediary between him and the person needing healing and as an advocate for that person. Everything we do is to make people better.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” we are told. (Proverbs 18:21) Or as James says, a tongue is like a fire. It can cause a lot of pain and destruction if misused but if used wisely it can give light and warmth to a dark and cold world.

Loving Justice

The scriptures referred to are Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23, James 2:1-17 and Mark 7:24-37.

Babies don't like bullies. That's the finding of a study where babies watched a puppet show that consisted of 2 shapes with googly eyes. When one shape hit and squished another, babies preferred to play with the victim. But if the two did not fight then they had no preference. It looks like they have an inborn sense of justice.

We've seen that monkeys also have a sense of justice. Capuchin monkeys are fine being rewarded with a cucumber for doing a task...until they see another monkey given a grape for doing the same task. Then they throw the cucumber back and loudly protest. But it was the monkeys getting the raw end of the deal that were unhappy. I couldn't find anything saying the monkeys getting the grapes would strike in sympathy with their unequally paid friends.

We want justice for ourselves. Few of us will work for justice for others. And almost nobody will work for justice if that involves us getting penalized for breaking the rules or making a sacrifice so others have more. But justice is only worthy of the name if it applies equally to all. Anything less is injustice.

The people who get the short end of the stick tend to be those who are already disadvantaged: those who are born into poverty or who are mentally or physically disabled or who belong to a racial, ethnic, religious or other minority. It is not impossible for such people to find justice but it is highly improbable. Those who are not operating under such burdens are almost always in control of society and do not readily give up their advantages. They are getting the grapes; why on earth would they settle for cucumbers?

For most of history, that was the way things were. Those who were born with money, land, or hereditary positions did well and those who were not born with those things just had to do without. Justice was mostly about keeping the well off from cheating or stealing from or harming others of their own class. There were no police forces because the law was not very interested in giving justice to the general populace. If someone stole from an average person in the Roman Empire the victim or his relatives or friends would have to catch him and deal with it themselves. If, however, you ripped off someone in power, they would make sure you paid. A noble could have your hand cut off for stealing from him. If you were his slave, he could have you killed. The more powerful the person you offended the more severe the penalty. There was no equal justice for all.

It's not that different today. If you don't have a lot of money, and you get accused of breaking a law, staying out of jail is difficult, if not impossible. A lot of the inmates in our jails haven't been found guilty of anything. They simply cannot make bail and thus have to stay in jail until their trial, when they will actually be found guilty or not. And they can be in there, not only for murder or theft, but just for open container or some other misdemeanor. In the meantime, they can lose their job for not showing up at work, their apartment for not being able to get the rent to their landlord at the beginning of the new month, and their car for not being there to feed the meter or not moving it for street cleaning. The car is usually towed to Impound where it can be auctioned off after a month. If the contents of the car or their apartment include their ID, their computer and/or the tools of their trade, those can disappear as well. Why don't they call somebody to bail them out? Sometimes they don't have family or friends here, or those they have don't have the money to put up bail. And they may not be able to reach them because like most of us they don't have the numbers in their head but in their phone, which is locked up in Property. And you can't make calls unless you have money on your phone account or have a family member to put money in your account for you. By the time you get out, even after a minor offense, even if you are found not guilty or have the charges dropped, you may have lost everything and so must start over, with only the clothes you were wearing when arrested and whatever was in your pockets.

You do have a right to an attorney even if you are poor. But if you have no money, you get a public defender who can easily have a 100 clients besides you. You rarely see him or her, have trouble even getting them on the phone, and when you do, they will often urge you to take whatever plea deal the prosecutor is offering. Remember, if you go to trial, you will be in jail longer, months or a year, and the verdict can be all or nothing. You may get acquitted but you may get convicted and your sentence will usually be for a lot longer than the previously offered deal. On the other hand, if you take the deal, it will stay on your record to cause you problems getting work and loans the rest of your life.

Compare that to what happens if you have lots of money and a good lawyer. Like legendary record producer Phil Spector. Though actress Lana Clarkson was found dead in his home with a gunshot wound to the mouth and several teeth on the floor, and though he told his driver, “I think I killed someone,” he was allowed to stay out of jail on $1 million bail. After 2 trials, he was convicted of murder in the second degree.

In today's lectionary we have several examples of God's special care for the poor, the sick and the disabled. As I've said before, there are at least 800 verses in the Bible about our duty to the disadvantaged. Why does God focus on them? Think how you would act towards one of your children if she or he was sick or disabled. You would make special provisions for that child. Or what if you had adopted a child from a different country or culture or race. You would make sure they were treated fairly everywhere they went. God loves us all but he is especially concerned for those who do not have the advantages others do. And he expects us to take proper care of them.

Cain's infamous reply to God's question about his brother Able—“Am I my brother's keeper?”—should be answered in the affirmative. That's obvious when you realize a better translation of the Hebrew should be “Am I my brother's guardian or protector?” Yes, we are. And we are, as the Key West bumper sticker says, one human family. While scientists do not see the early chapters of Genesis as scientifically verifiable, they do tell us that, ironically, we are in fact all descended from one woman and from one man. DNA shows that we all come from the Mitochondrial Eve and the Y-Chromosomal Adam, both of whom lived, by current estimates, approximately 150,000 years ago. Anyone you meet is at least a cousin several times removed. And if we are all related, we should look out for those members of the family who are in danger of being left behind or bullied or taken advantage of.

Peter Parker's Uncle Ben said it best; “With great power comes great responsibility.” Our longing for heroes is based on the idea that if you have great power you also have a responsibility to help and protect those who don't have that power. The Flash wouldn't be a hero if he used his speed to run away from danger. Had Tony Stark continued as an alcoholic playboy rather than become Iron Man, he wouldn't be a hero. Had Sherlock Holmes simply deduced that Professor Moriarty was the “organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected” in London and did not think it worth risking his life, he would not be a hero. A hero is not just someone who has power or can do spectacular things. That's a showoff. A hero is someone who acts on behalf of those who need help. A hero acts unselfishly. A hero is willing to make sacrifices.

We worship the greatest hero ever. God created us in his image, with powers of great intelligence and an unbelievable imagination and an astounding capacity to develop a dizzying variety of skills and the capacity to work with others across the boundaries of kinship. As the psalmist said, “You have made us little less than the gods.” And how have we used those godlike powers? To make things both better and worse. We have made amazing advances in medicine. The mortality rate today is a third of what it was in the Victorian era. We have also created weapons that could end all life on earth. We have improved the quality of life for many human beings and we are also making the world too hot for all creatures. We are the only animals who understand the balance of nature and the possibility of extinction and yet we are consciously throwing that balance out of whack and driving the extinction rate from 1 to 5 species every year up to literally dozens every day. We have used the godlike powers given us in diabolical ways and turned a potential paradise planet into hell on earth.

God could be forgiven for writing us off, for letting us wipe ourselves out. But he came to us in the person of his son Jesus Christ, to show us what he is like, loving and forgiving, and what we therefore can be, and then heroically to give his life for and to us. Jesus shows us the right way to use power: to heal and to teach and to feed and to build up others. It is the power of all encompassing love.

And it is love for all from which we get justice. If I only love myself and mine, I can still be unjust to those outside the sphere of my love. Only if I love all people, those like me and those unlike me, those who help me and those who can't help me, can I be truly just. It's like having more than one kid. If you have an only child, you can spoil him or her. But if you have more than one, and you don't treat them all fairly, then you will fueling ever bigger conflicts. If they realize you will not let any one of your children get away with things the others can't and that you will hold each and every one to the same rules and the same consequences for breaking those rules, then you will have peace.

Peace comes from justice. Once a society becomes rife with injustice then strife arises and ultimately revolutions erupt. People only turn to change when the status quo becomes too painful to maintain. If, however, they feel that their society is just, that people are treated fairly, that those who break the rules do not get away with it and that those who follow the rules get just outcomes, then there is peace, which in the Bible means well-being.

Mind you, absolute justice can make absolute peace impossible. And absolute peace can veto absolute justice. Because people are imperfect. If every sin or infraction is punished ruthlessly, then everyone is in trouble. As Proverbs 21:15 says, “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.” Yet as Paul pointed out, “There is no one who is righteous, not even one.” (Romans 3:10) So if we seek the well-being of all then some injustices cannot be dealt with exactly as we think they should. Justice must be balanced with forgiveness. As it says in Zechariah 7:9, “This is what the Lord Almighty said, 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.'” Mercy and justice should go hand in hand, as our passage in James points out. As Hosea 12:6 says, we must “maintain love and justice.” [Emphasis mine] Again justice comes from love. God doesn't love abstract rules but us. As Ezekiel 33:11 says, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” God's purpose is not to punish bad people, which is all of us, but make bad people good again. He wishes to restore in us that image of the God who is love.

The harsher life is for people the harsher the justice they prefer. Perhaps because the consequences of wrongdoing is harsher for everyone. When your group is barely surviving, and someone is shirking their duty or cheating or stealing or disrupting the community so that the crops aren't harvested in time or the gates to the city aren't guarded or the unity of the people is broken, it could mean invasion or starvation for all. The more precarious the existence of the community the more military its organization and more rigid its rules. We see this in the Old Testament. Whether Israel was a confederation of tribes, or a tiny kingdom between bigger and better resourced empires, it didn't have the luxury to be lenient. Its rules were many and they would be stringently enforced.

Things have changed. We live in a wealthier, more secure society and so we have reduced some rules and loosened others. But if by doing that we make it easier for those who have power or wealth to get away with injustices, if we have tightened the rules only on those who historically haven't done well so that we create a bottleneck to their enjoying the same rights and benefits as those well off, then we are not acting out of love for all people and we are disobeying God.

The peaceable kingdom of God envisioned by Isaiah is not one where the wolf eats the lamb or the leopard chows down on the goat or the lion makes short work of the calf and the yearling but one where they live together in peace. (Isaiah 11:6) And I don't think that the message was aimed at animals, to get them to stop acting as natural predators. It was focused on us. We should not prey on our fellow human beings, yet some of us do. We don't put leopards on trial for killing a goat but we do when a person harms another. Because we are one species, one family, created in the image of our heavenly Father.

Even as infants we yearn for justice as we do for love. For Christians, talk about justice is not political but biblical. Our heavenly Father wants us to stop picking on one another, to stop taking all the good toys, to stop letting our friends get away with stuff we won't let others do. It's time we grew up. It's time we took the wisdom God gave us thousands of years ago and put it into practice. Are we not smart enough to figure out how to give everyone enough to eat and drink and a safe and comfortable place to live? I look at all the clever things we continually imagine and then create and I can't see that these problems are more complicated than gene splicing or splitting atoms or moving people through the sky thousands of feet in the air in planes or going to the moon. It's not that the laws of physics or biology make well-being and justice for all impossible. It is that we do not will it. It's not that we can't house the homeless; it's that we don't want to use our resources to do it nor have them live in our neighborhood. 

Stephen Colbert, who teaches Sunday School, said, “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.” Jesus' response to that is found in Matthew 25:41-46. But if we do help the disadvantaged, God says, “Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to bring the poor and homeless into your house—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to hide from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here I am.” (Isaiah 58:6-9)

Heart of Darkness

The scriptures referred to are Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

Human beings have a chronic problem separating what is essential from what is superficial. A study just came out this week that showed that how we judge people by their faces depends on whether we think that personality can be read in faces. Thus we tend to see those with roundish baby faces as harmless and agreeable. In older studies it has been shown that children tend to judge more attractive people as being better morally. And it turns out that a small sample of people can accurately predict who will win a political race somewhere else just by looking at the faces of the candidates, even if they don't know the party or the campaign promises of the people involved. Yet as Shakespeare wrote 400 years ago, “There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.” (Macbeth: Act 1, scene 4) Perhaps he realized this because as an actor as well as a playwright that was his job: to convincingly become other people despite his face.

In today's gospel Jesus is up against the common perception that one can judge a person by superficial means such as whether they perform certain religious acts. The immediate issue was the ritual washing of hands to purify oneself after having contact with something in the marketplace which may have been touched by a Gentile. This ritual was elaborate and not required by scripture. But it was shorthand for how religious a person is. And we still do this today.

We see a Jesus fish on a car and assume the owner is a devout Christian. We see a flag on a car and we assume the driver is a political conservative. We see someone kneel rather than stand during the national anthem and assume they are not patriotic. But those symbols and acts can lead us astray. We are not Sherlock Holmes, who once deduced a man's wife had ceased to love him by the state of his hat. Besides, Holmes is fictional. In real life it is not that easy to discern a person's inner state from such superficial observations.

And on some level we know this. Think of all the neighbors shocked to find out the guy next door was a serial killer. Many celebrities maintain facades that belie their true nature. Charles Dickens was a beloved writer. At age 45, he left his wife for an 18 year old actress. He took custody of all of their children but one. He never divorced his wife but blamed her for the situation. Bill Cosby was a large part of my life from childhood on. I have all of his comedy albums. My family watched his TV show. But after being accused of rape and sexual assault by more than 60 women and his recent conviction on 3 counts of aggravated indecent assault, I have to admit he is not the person I thought he was. Peter Robbins, who as a child actor voiced Charlie Brown in A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, pleaded guilty in 2015 to offering someone $50,000 to murder the sheriff of San Diego County! Again Shakespeare nailed it: “...one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” (Hamlet: Act 1, scene 5)

Jesus accurately points to the inner person as the the true source of good and bad behavior. “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come...” Today we do not see this as that blinding an insight and yet we do tend to blame external things for people's evil acts. For instance, in the wake of the Parkland shooting, a new Florida law says that schools must post in a “conspicuous place” the words “In God we trust.” Most schools are doing this by simply putting a copy of the state seal on their front desk, since it includes the state motto, “In God we trust.” But the legislator who proposed the law, and who happens to run a Christian ministry, intended that by being exposed to it children would be educated about it. And the organization Americans United for the Separation of Church and State says that it is not the role of the public schools to see to it that children learn about faith. Both the legislature and the organization opposing this seem to think the words will somehow change the hearts of the children. This is magical thinking. Let's face it: few kids will notice it, fewer will read it and I doubt more than 1 in a thousand will contemplate it in any depth, much less change their life because of it. I remember after the Columbine shooting people felt one way to stop such things is to put the Ten Commandments in classrooms. I don't think the problem was that the shooters forgot the commandment against killing. The problem wasn't words on a wall but evil thoughts in their hearts.

And of course by “heart”, the ancient peoples meant “mind.” They may not have known which organ of the body was responsible but they knew that people had an inner life. And Jesus is pointing out that if that inner life is focused on the wrong things, that will come out, though not necessarily in the lack of observance of religious traditions. And the list of bad things coming from the heart which Jesus gives us is not meant to be comprehensive, but it does cover a wide variety of unethical behavior.

First, we get “fornication,” which in Greek meant not just sex outside of wedlock but all kinds of sexual immorality, including incest. It is derived from the Greek root word meaning to “sell off” so it is related to the word for “prostitute.” In addition it was used as a metaphor for idolatry. The idea was that worshiping another god was being unfaithful to Yahweh, the God of Israel.

Thefts, murder and adultery are all self-explanatory. Notice that they are acts that transgress against someone else's property or relationship or life. They are all acts that break the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. Here Jesus is speaking against acts that are matters of social morality, not personal morality, although doing these things are bound to change a person. Once you've stolen, or cheated on your spouse or killed someone it becomes easier to do it again. Maybe that's why in the Greek these are all plurals: fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries. People who do these things rarely stop at doing them just one time.

The next word is also plural in Greek. Avarice is a fancy word for “greediness,” but greedinesses is not a common word in English. Which is why one translation renders it “covetous desires or practices” But it has overtones of aggression so it could mean “extortions.” It basically means always wanting more. Bernie Madoff, one of the founders of the NASDAQ, was the guy who pioneered using computers to make stock trades and so changed Wall Street. Thus he didn't need to mastermind a $65 billion Ponzi scheme, but he wasn't satisfied with just having millions. And while he tricked a lot of smaller investors who were not financially savvy, there were also banks finding him big investors who should have been able to see that his numbers didn't add up. When people asked how he made such steady returns despite the market's ups and downs, he wouldn't tell them. And they didn't press him because if they did, he would tell them to simply take their money and leave. Greed kept them from doing so.

The word translated “wickedness” is better translated “malice.” Or it could be rendered “pain-spreading evils.” It too is plural, so maybe it should be termed “malicious plots.” In other words, we are not talking about acts that inadvertently harm others but acts designed to do just that. These mass shootings are rarely spontaneous. They are almost always planned well ahead of time. So they are not done in the heat of the moment. In fact, one shooter who was caught said he just kind of went into robot mode, methodically and without emotion seeking out and shooting victims. He did it intending to harm others.

From immoral acts Jesus shifts to moral states, and this is signaled by his switching from plurals to singular nouns. The first is deceit or guile. The Greek word could be also translated as “craftiness” and is related to the word for “trick” and “bait.” That last word recalls one major form of deceit we encounter all the time on the internet, namely, clickbait. Those are the omnipresent articles with the deceptive headlines that are hard to resist: “20 Things Nobody Know About Andy of Mayberry,” (If nobody knows them who wrote the article?) “6 Foods a Government Nutritionist Will Never Eat; Number 4 Will Blow Your Mind,” (Whenever they have a list, they always throw in a number and it's never the first one; they want to get you at least halfway into the large number of pages over which they've dribbled this list before you see it's not that shocking and give up) or “She went to the Hospital Complaining of a Headache; You Won't Believe What They Found.” (I know what the company that posted this found: morbid curiosity and hypochondria will get folks to click on this.) At best these are deceptive ways to get you to look at a tsunami of ads. At less than best, they will infect you computer with a virus. At worst, they will prey on the minds of the gullible and give them totally erroneous information that will harm them or others. I am thinking of the anti-vaccination propaganda that has led to the resurgence of childhood diseases that we thought we had eliminated. Or the false news story that led one man to go to a Washington DC pizzeria with a gun looking for a pedophile ring that didn't exist in a basement which also didn't exist. Increasingly, deceit in the form of out and out lies has become the preferred tool of certain political movements. I recently saw a photo that showed a certain senator standing next to Bin Laden. It was Photoshopped, of course. Which means the people creating it weren't ignorant or misinformed but deliberately trying to deceive. Which is what you do when you realize truth is not on your side.

The next word is variously translated as licentiousness, wantonness, sensuality, or lewdness. A look at the Greek shows it means outrageous behavior. It is related to the Greek word for “brutal.” So it is conduct calculated to shock, a gesture of “violent spite,” as one source puts it. Now there are times when an issue you are dealing with is so harmful that you have to be brutally frank to get past the niceties that are covering it up. Recently a worldwide study found that the meager health benefits conferred by alcohol are vastly outweighed by the great number of health risks it engenders. And so they just spelled it out—alcohol is a leading contributor to death and disease worldwide. As one of the researchers said, “...we found the combined health risks associated with alcohol increase with any amount.” So forget the mild admonition to “drink responsibly” tacked onto all alcohol ads. Just say “Nope.” But Jesus, who could be brutally frank with the scribes and Pharisees, is condemning people who shock for shock's sake. If you are just trying to get a rise out of people, if you are not trying to alert people to a danger, nor attempting to show complicity in what is wrong, but merely getting pleasure out of causing discomfort, that is wrong. As I've said before, there is a difference between hurting and harming but if you are hurting someone unnecessarily, if you just want to cause pain, that is harm.

Next Jesus lists, literally, the “evil eye,” which most translations properly render as “envy.” The Greek word for “evil” here is related to that word that means “pain-giving evil.” Envy hurts us by making us wish for the impossible: to be someone else. It goes beyond coveting which is wanting their stuff. Envy is wanting their life. Or, barring that, destroying the happy life they enjoy. If we can't have it, neither can they. Envious people continually snipe at those they perceive to have it better than them. But envy also destroys any happiness we could have by focusing our attention on the unattainable other life. Envy is the opposite of contentment, of counting the blessings you already have. It is obsessing over the ones you weren't granted. At its worst, it is not trusting God's plan for your life, thinking he must have mixed up you with the person whose life you wish you had.

The next Greek word is blasphemia. It's pretty obvious what English word we get from it. But many translations render it “slander” or “insults.” Both are accurate. It means any kind of abusive or scurrilous language. Oddly enough its roots are the Greek words for “slow” and “reputation.” So it is also about being slow to say anything good about a person. Or perhaps slow to see what's bad. Anyway, insulting God is bad but so is insulting others. Jesus said, “But I say to you, that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you are answerable to judgment; if you insult a brother or sister you are answerable to the council; and whoever says, 'Fool,' is answerable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:22) Vilifying others may be tempting at times but again what we do to others we do to the God in whose image they were created.

I really don't care for the way the next Greek word is usually translated. The English word “pride” has changed. Today it can mean to be justifiably appreciative of something you've accomplished. But the Greek has overtones of “disdain” and “haughtiness.” I prefer the translation “arrogance.” It is overestimating your glory and worth and looking down on others. It is the opposite of humility, which is a realistic reckoning of one's strengths and a recognition of one's weaknesses and limits. As C.S. Lewis said, arrogance is the anti-God state of mind. If you think you are totally self-sufficient, the smartest and most capable person in the room or any other room, if you have no use for others and think they can contribute nothing to your efforts, you are not going to seek help, not from those to whom God gave gifts and abilities you don't have, nor ultimately from God. Arrogant people think they are God. Arrogance is the deadliest of the sins.

Finally we come to foolishness. Being thoughtless, careless and reckless may not seem to be a choice, but they are. The decision not to pause and think, not to consider the consequences of what you are about to do, or not to get advice if you are not sure how things will turn out is foolish. Wisdom is not always having the necessary knowledge but knowing where to find that knowledge. And then, of course, heeding it.

If the cause of many of our problems are self-created and if they consist of attitudes and acts conceived in our hearts and minds, as Jesus said, what are we to do? Get Jesus in there at once. After all, the person who comes up with the correct diagnosis is normally the one to prescribe the treatment. We need Jesus' healing Spirit within us. We need a new heart and a renewed mind. Instead of this Pandora's box of ills spilling from our hearts we need to produce the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.

And finally, you are what you eat. We need a steady diet of spiritually healthy food for thought. As Paul said, “...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about these things.” (Philippians 4:8) We human beings are drawn to the dark and scary and forbidden. It's very hard to find uplifting movies, TV shows, and social media posts these days. So we must make an effort to do what flowers do naturally and turn to the light, or in our case, to God, “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:17) Remember, if you can't see the sun, it is not because it isn't there, it's because something is blocking it. Make sure that if something is blocking the light of the Son of God, it isn't your own heart.