Soft Power and Hard Choices

This sermon was preached at our annual Blessing of the Animals service at St. Francis in the Keys church. The scriptures referred to are Hebrews 1:1-4 and Mark 9:38-50.

There is a cartoon by Dan Piraro that shows a man in heaven astounded to see on God's throne not a human figure but a dog in a white robe. And the dog says, “The joyful, loving, eternally forgiving nature of dogs never tipped you off?”

The Bible says that human beings were created in the image of God, not dogs. Yet it would be strange if animals did not reflect the nature of their creator to some extent. In fact, in the second chapter of Genesis God says, “It is not good for man to be alone,” and then he creates and presents to Adam animals and birds as possible companions. Eventually God decides to make man a mate instead. But this story underlines the fact that animals are good companions to us and are capable of love. Without some kind of love, life is hard. We often have pets in order to soften the harshness of our lives.

You could say that everything in this world is either soft or hard. A kitten is soft. A bird's beak is hard. A ripe fruit is soft. The tree it grew on is hard. Your bed is soft. The walls of your house are hard. Both hardness and softness are necessary. And few things are completely one or the other. A rock is all hardness. A jellyfish is all softness. But a kitten has bones. A bird has feathers. The fruit has seeds. The tree has sap. Hopefully your bed has some firmness. When I first slept on a really soft bed after 140 days of sleeping on hospital beds, the next morning my back felt as if someone had hit it with an ax.

Generally you want some measure of hardness to give things structure and protection and some measure of softness to make them livable. Even the knight wore soft padded garments under his armor to buffer the impact on his body. What softness affords us is some cushioning, some "give," some degree of adaptation to us and to our bodies. And we need both hardness and softness in every area of life.

Socially we need structure as well as some hard and fast rules: no killing, no stealing, no cheating. But we need some give, some adaptation to the fact that occasionally everybody messes up. We don't summarily execute people who drive 55 in a 45 mph zone. For that matter, we even recognize degrees of homicide. The law of Moses made provision for manslaughter, the unintentional, unpremeditated killing of a person. (Deuteronomy 4:41-42) While the Old Testament is usually seen as full of hard rules laid down by a hard deity, it also reveals that God has a soft spot for the disadvantaged. There are literally hundreds of verses about how God expects us not to mistreat but to help the poor, the alien, the sick, the disabled, the elderly, the fatherless, the widow. The word “mercy” appears in the Hebrew Bible more than 200 times. More than half of the uses of the word “love” occur in the first part of the Bible. The 2 Great Commandments to love God and our neighbor are found in the Torah, the core of the Jewish Bible. 

Remember, tiny Israel was surrounded by empires. So they primarily focused on God as their protector and on his law as a way to impose order on what would otherwise be a chaotic life. But God is also revealed to show parental love towards his people, to be concerned about justice for all and even to be willing to forgive foreigners who repent, like the morally clueless inhabitants of Nineveh, the capital of the ruthless Assyrian Empire. God says to his reluctant prophet Jonah, “...Nineveh has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?” (Jonah 4:11) Notice that God cares about the cattle as well.

When we get to the New Testament, this side of God's nature is clearer, especially in the life and ministry of Jesus. In fact, Jesus' main opposition comes from those who have made the law of Moses even harder, by adding rules that make it more difficult for the disadvantaged. And Jesus goes out of his way to show that he is not the kind of hard, militaristic king most folks expect the Messiah to be. Jesus uses his power to heal, to forgive, to feed the hungry, not to conquer or force people to follow him. Jesus uses words and stories and uncommon wisdom to bring people to his point of view. It is what we call “soft power.”

This does not mean Jesus is a pushover or will ignore evil. In today's gospel his opponents try to force him into the middle of a controversy. At that time, and still today within Orthodox Judaism, divorce was something only a man could initiate. He could simply present his wife with a get, a certificate of divorce (Deuteronomy 24:1),  which basically says “She is not my wife and I am not her husband.” And with that the marriage is over. In Jesus' day, a man could, according to Rabbi Hillel, get a divorce for almost anything: for not pleasing him, or burning his meal, or if he found a younger woman. Whereas, in Matthew's version of this controversy, sexual immorality is the only reason Jesus allows for divorce. However, a Jewish woman could not divorce her husband for such reasons. Plus women were often treated as property. And a woman abandoned by her husband was on the bottom of the social and financial strata. Now remember that most marriages were arranged marriages so a woman had no say in whether or whom she would marry nor whether she would be divorced. That's why Jesus says this situation exists because of “your hardness of heart.” The woman was powerless and her well-being depended entirely on her husband's disposition back then. It may seem strange to us in the 21^st century but by opposing divorce Jesus was once again standing up for the disadvantaged.

Another glimpse of God's nature is seen in Jesus' concern with children. We noted a few weeks ago that he said that anyone who harms them would be better off flung into the ocean with a millstone around his neck. (Mark 9:42; cf. Matthew 18:5-6) In our gospel for today, the disciples are turning away parents bringing their children to Jesus to be blessed. They probably thought Jesus was too busy. We know it was hard for him to find time to eat and sleep. (Mark 4:37-39; 6:31) But Jesus was indignant. He says, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

In the Bible, belief is not so much about thinking a list of ideas are true as it is trusting God. Sadly, adults are not as trusting as children are. Adults get cynical. Adults think that they have outgrown their need for God. Adults think they must rely on themselves alone and don't need any help. Children know this isn't true. So do pets, who will paw your arm and look at you when they want something. They know they need help. They are smarter than we are.

“And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.” Again we are seeing the softer side of God, who loves his creation and blesses his creatures, the way he does when he creates them in the very first chapter of the Bible, Genesis 1.

I don't want to leave you with the impression that Jesus was only soft. We see his strength when he defends people against their enemies. Perhaps the clearest example is the story of the woman taken in adultery. We just saw how strongly Jesus feels about adultery. Yet when an adulterous woman is dragged before him and her accusers are trying to get Jesus to agree that she be stoned, as is laid down in the law of Moses, he first stoops and writes in the dust. When they persist in asking him he stands and says, “Whoever among you is without sin may be the first to throw a stone at her.” Then he stoops to write again. What he writes, we don't know. Perhaps it was a list of the sins of her accusers. Perhaps it is the question, “Where is the man?” Adultery generally takes two, you know. Was this a trap they set for the woman? Anyway her accusers drift away, one at a time. When they are all gone, Jesus asks the woman where her accusers are, she says that no one is left to condemn her. Jesus says, “I do not condemn you either. Go and sin no more.” Jesus didn't approve of what she did but he would not be party to the persecution and death of a vulnerable woman. Jesus was not a bully. He is God's love incarnate and love forgives and love protects.

And love makes sacrifices. In his death on the cross in our stead, we see most clearly God's love for us embodied in Jesus. As Paul says, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) Would you die for a bunch of people who would just as soon kill you to shut you up about the truth? That was a hard choice but Jesus made it. In the Garden of Gethsemane, before Judas found him, he prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Yet not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42) He could have run away. Bethany, where his friends Lazarus, Martha and Mary live, was just 2 miles away, on the other side of the Mount of Olives. Jesus could have slipped away under cover of darkness. He didn't. 

A dog will risk its life to save you without thinking. A human will find it harder to make such a sacrifice because he knows the nature of the danger. Unlike animals, we humans are acutely aware that we can and will die someday. Jesus knew exactly what kind of torturous death he faced. He knew how Rome punished those whom the crowds hailed as king. Yet he went through with it. To save us. Out of love.

If you want to know about the nature of God, look at Jesus. In him we see what God is really like. And because we are created in the image of God, though it may be buried under all our crap and disfigured by the self-destructive things we do, in Jesus we see what we can be, what God intends us to be. Basically, Christianity is about becoming more like Jesus by following him and letting his Spirit guide us and shape us.

There is a song that goes, “Lord, help me be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.” They think we are godlike. We say “Let there be light” and flip the switch and the lights go on. We travel in chariots to exciting places. We provide them with food. We tell them when they are bad and praise and pet them when they are good. We keep them healthy, even if it means some pain to them when they are getting shots or undergoing treatment. We can be hard for their good and for their protection and we can be soft when they need love and comfort. They trust us. We should be that way towards God. Because, as the old saying goes, D-O-G spelled backwards is still man's best friend.