Who's in Charge?

(Note: Long time readers may get a sense of deja vu with this sermon. The fact is, with surgery and a visit from the bishop on my schedule this week, I  didn't have time to do a fully original sermon. So I reached back into my archive and rewrote and updated an older homily. It still has a lot to say, even many years later.)

The scriptures referred to are 1 Corinthians 1:10-18.

Want to see a church's growth explode? Put a charismatic preacher in the pulpit and give him a lot of power in running the church. Want to see that church die? Watch him die or retire or get into a huge scandal. And we have seen that over and over again. Many evangelical leaders—Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggart, among others—have had to step down and their churches and ministries suffered because they were built around their personalities. Sometimes a church tries to replace a charismatic preacher with someone else, as the Crystal Cathedral did when Robert Schuller retired and was succeeded briefly by his oldest son. He wasn't as popular as his father and was removed. The TV ministry and megachurch tried using a series of preachers and eventually elevated Schuller's daughter to senior pastor. The church went into bankruptcy and is now a Roman Catholic church. The point is that we should heed what Isaiah said: “Stop trusting in human beings, whose life's breath in in their nostrils. For why should they be given special consideration?” (Isaiah 2:22)

The impulse to give a single person special consideration, especially a religious leader, is a very old human trait. And unfortunately it leads to cults. There are many signs of a cult but they all coalesce around a charismatic leader. His personal impact upon people is so great that they cease to question him no matter how outrageous his ideas or his actions get. He can even start to contradict what Christ said, because, after all, if you are a cult leader Jesus is your ultimate rival. You have to depose him because Jesus closes off so many unethical avenues that make it really inconvenient if you wish to sleep with followers or become wealthy off of them. And so the word of God becomes whatever the cult leader says, not what the Bible clearly states. In the worst case scenario the followers of a David Koresh or a Jim Jones let them get away with more and more until they precipitate a disaster. If they are lucky, it will only split the church and not end up in a massacre.

In today's passage from First Corinthians Paul is dealing with a problem that is in danger of splitting that church. Personality cults are developing. Some people are identifying themselves as belonging to Paul or to Cephas or to Apollos or to Christ. They haven't yet broken away from the church but they are pulling it apart. The Greek word that Paul uses for divisions, schismata, literally refers to tears in a garment. The church at Corinth is starting to look like a shredded shirt.

Who were the leaders who were the foci of these divisions? One was Cephas. That's the Aramaic word for “rock,” the nickname Jesus gave Simon. He was the foremost of the original 12 apostles, so it is natural that some Christians would feel that Peter had primacy. However, Paul had founded the church in Corinth and so many felt loyal to him. Apollos, as we learn in Acts 18, was a gifted preacher with a vast knowledge of scripture. He had visited Corinth after Paul and because of his eloquence, some preferred him.

And then there was the group who claimed they were the true followers of Christ. Why does Paul include them among the schismatics? Perhaps, like so many who say they belong to Christ, they had undergone that subtle shift where what they really meant was that Christ belonged to them. In other words, instead of seeking to be on God's side, they were actually insisting that God had chosen their side. It's a common fallacy that first we decide the issues and then God signs on. It may not occur to us that God disagrees with us or even that some issue we have elevated to supreme importance is of no interest whatsoever to God.

Through his entire missionary career, Paul preached unity. Usually, the problem was between those who came to Christ from Judaism and those who came from Gentile backgrounds. But here the situation is more complicated. People are not clinging to what they were before they became Christians; they are fighting about what form of Christianity is best.

Now how do we know that this was about more than just a preference for the preaching styles of these leaders? For one thing, we have no evidence that Peter ever visited Corinth, nor, of course, had Jesus. Those parties who said they belonged to Cephas or to Christ had not experienced them in the flesh and so their allegiance, like the others, must be to what they perceived was their take on the gospel. We still see that today. What distinguishes the preachers people follow is not just their personal charisma but also what they tend to emphasize.

I don't watch much religious TV but you only have to to catch a few minutes while channel surfing to know that one preacher always seems to be talking about the End Times; another concentrates on people's feelings; one pushes hot button issues on sexuality; another can't stop talking about creationism. Each has a following as witnessed by the millions of dollars they raise to keep their shows on the air. All would say they believe the Bible and I bet each would be able to subscribe to that basic summary of Biblical truths, the Apostle's Creed. But that core gets lost in the trappings of their personal styles and all the other issues they flog.

Paul gets right to the point. He doesn't criticize his rivals. He uses himself as the example. “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Drop the word “Paul” and insert any Christian leader—Joel Olsteen, T.D. Jakes, Kirk Cameron, N. T. Wright, or even C.S. Lewis—and the sentence becomes a good way to see if we are usurping Christ and replacing him with one of his servants. No matter how holy they are, they didn't die on the cross for us. We must always be careful lest we fall into idolatry. When we say “Jesus is Lord,” it means nobody else can be. We must always be aware of and respect this vital distinction.

It is also an interesting exercise to insert an issue in place of Paul's name in those two questions and ask if we are enthroning it above our Lord. Were you baptized into the name of the pro-life movement or the pro-choice movement or family values or gay marriage or a particular stance on war? Of course not. It's not that these aren't important issues but they are not essential to being a Christian. Anyone who thinks differently is buying into the heresy C. S. Lewis calls “Christianity and _____.” If your pet cause is as important as your loyalty to Christ, be careful that it doesn't eventually come to supplant your faith or that your faith doesn't become merely an extension of your cause. We should derive our ethics from following Jesus Christ, our incarnate, crucified and risen Lord. Our following Jesus should not be dependent on whether he endorses our causes. Otherwise a, say, vegan may discover that the Passover meal Jesus shared with his disciples involved eating lamb and then have to choose between his deity and his diet.

The problem even occurs when the issues are matters of theology. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches split over the use of icons. Other divisions in the church have taken place over whether baptism should be by immersion or pouring, whether the bread and wine used in communion physically become Jesus' body and blood or not, whether Jesus had two natures, divine and human, or just one, whether we have free will or not, who could interpret the Bible and how a church should be organized. All of these were important issues in their day. Some are still important issues. But we should not let them get between us and God, nor between us and our fellow Christians.

When I was actively working as a nurse, I didn't bring up religion unless my patient did and I didn't argue religious issues with them. Yet there was this woman I had been treating for years and we liked each other. She had a church which met in her house. And this one time, she started denouncing my denomination because it had a national headquarters. Aside the fact that all national churches, as well as nationwide organizations and companies, do as well, it's hard to understand how they could coordinate things otherwise. Anyway, it really bugged her. And finally I said, “My salvation doesn't depend on my church or anything other than Jesus: who he is, what he did for me on the cross and how I respond.” The issue never came up again.

I like to think that she knew her scripture well enough to recognize in what I said an echo of what Paul says here: that we should be wary of nullifying the power of the cross. On the cross Jesus took upon himself the full impact of the evil we have unleashed on the world by our sin, like our arrogant insistence that we are always right and to hell with anyone who doesn't agree with us.

What put Jesus on the cross was people worried about everything other than the crucial question of who he is. The leaders of his day didn't think twice about whether he might be the Messiah. Despite having no right under Roman law to execute Jesus, the religious authorities didn't let that stop them from finding a way to silence him for speaking inconvenient truths to power. Pilate could find no fault with Jesus but was too much a politician to stand up to the crowd or even to his own emperor to spare an innocent man. The soldiers who nailed him to the cross were just following orders. The crowds were just piling on a man already condemned by the authorities and for whom they were not willing to stick out their necks. Jesus was crucified because everyone thought that something else was more important than he was. How often do we recrucify him over our own fiercely held, terribly important agendas?

Jesus didn't say that the world will know we are his disciples in that we agree with one another on everything but rather by how we love one another. And we are to love each other as he loves us, with real self-sacrifice. What we do to the least of his siblings we do to Jesus. Should we snub each other, vilify each other, judge each other because we like this person or that, or hold to this opinion or another? Because Christians who happen to be Nazarenes and Pentecostals and Southern Baptists and Lutherans and Methodists and Episcopalians and Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox and Messianic Jews and Presbyterians and fundamentalists and United Church of Christ and Moravians and Amish and Evangelicals disagree on a lot of issues. Do you think God's going to give us a pop quiz on all these things at the pearly gates? Do you think he will only admit those who are 100% in agreement with him on absolutely everything? If so, get out your handbaskets; we're all of us in for a hot time.

By the way, are you taken aback by the range of groups on that list? Are you offended by the inclusion of some of them? Tough. They are all part of the family. You don't have to agree with them; you don't have to vote like them; but you do have to love them. And let us be more concerned about our following Jesus than about how others are doing it. A sure way to stumble is to take your eyes off the leader's path. Peter forgot that once and asked the risen Christ what would ultimately happen to the one called the beloved disciple. To which Jesus replied, “What is that to you? You follow me.”

Behind the Words

The scriptures referred to are John 1:29-42.

When encountering something new, we tend to look for comparisons among what we are familiar with. When encountering the unknown, we try to find analogues among what is known. The Bible does this all the time. Every time it tries to describe or label God it uses a metaphor from the time and culture in which it was written. Therefore God is spoken of as a shepherd, not a boss or general manager. In Jesus' parables a king or landowner or farmer or father is a stand-in for God, not a president or an agribusiness CEO or a legal guardian. Jesus compares the Spirit to the wind to illustrate that he has great power though he is unseen. Paul speaks of the church as the body of Christ, not the machine of Christ. And while we are free to use modern metaphors for such things, though carefully, to understand such expressions we need to go back to the time and culture of the Bible to understand just what they mean.

In today's gospel John the Baptist calls Jesus “the Lamb of God.” To work out what John meant we need to examine its meaning to Jews of that time. The most commonly sacrificed animal at the temple was the lamb. One was offered up each morning and evening for the sins of the people. (Exodus 29:38-39) As the son of a priest, John knew that well. And so did every other Jew. So he may very well have meant that Jesus was the one chosen by God to deliver people from their sins through his sacrifice. 

However Passover was near. The gospel of John mentions it in the very next chapter. So it is possible that the Baptist was thinking of the major holiday fast approaching and was comparing Jesus to the Passover lamb. This was not, strictly speaking, thought of as a sacrifice but a meal. Yet the blood of the lamb was supposed to be smeared on the door frame. On the original Passover, the idea was that in executing judgment on Egypt, God would spare and death would pass over the houses on which the blood of the lamb was painted. (Exodus 12: 5-7, 13) So John may have meant that Jesus is the one chosen by God to deliver people from death by his blood.

There is a third possible source for John's metaphorical title for Jesus. In the 53^rd chapter of Isaiah, the fate of servant of the Lord is described. We are familiar with this passage because of the uncanny way it fits what happened to Jesus: that he was despised and rejected by people, that he experienced pain, that he bore the punishment for our sins, that he received an unjust trial, that he willingly submitted to death, that he should have been buried with criminals but was laid in a rich man's tomb. And in verses 6 and 7 it says, “All of us had wandered off like sheep; each of us had strayed off on his own path, but the Lord caused the sin of all of us to attack him. He was treated harshly and afflicted, but he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughtering block, like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not even open his mouth.” (NET Bible) Again we have the idea of a lamb led to slaughter upon which everyone's sins are laid. In fact, according to the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, in Aramaic, the dialect that most of the Jews of Jesus' day spoke, the word talya can mean both “lamb” and “servant.” If he was thinking of Isaiah 53, John may have had both meanings in mind.

William Barclay adds an intriguing thought. In between the Old and New Testaments, Israel gained its independence from the Hellenistic rulers of Syria. And the symbol of the great freedom fighter, Judas Maccabeus, was the lamb, specifically a horned lamb. He died in battle in a war that ultimately freed Israel. Barclay said that, unlikely as it seems to us, thereafter the lamb stood for the champion of God.

So which of these meanings did John intend and which was understood by his audience? Whenever it comes to the Word of God, I have no trouble seeing multiple layers of meaning. Were knowledge of God reducible to one thing, we wouldn't need the whole library of books we find in the Bible. So John could have been thinking of one of these images or more than one. And the church may have seen things in the phrase “Lamb of God” that did not occur to John. What is common to all of these is the idea of sacrifice and salvation, that the shed blood of one delivers others from sin, oppression and death.

There is another symbolic animal in this passage and that is the dove. In Matthew and Mark it is Jesus who sees the Spirit alight on him in the form of a dove. Luke doesn't specify who saw the dove. In today's account John says he saw the Spirit come down as a dove and remain on Jesus. What is the significance of the dove?

Like the lamb, the dove was also used as a sacrifice. In fact it was the animal offered by those too poor to afford a lamb. (Leviticus 5:7) Besides being a offering for sin, doves and pigeons were offered as sacrifices for purification after childbirth and for cleansing of leprosy and other things.

But a much more prominent role for the dove was when Noah was waiting in the ark for the flood waters to recede. Three times he sends out a dove to see if any land has emerged from the waters. The first time the dove returns having found no place to rest. The second time it returns with a olive leaf. The third time it does not return, having found a place to nest. As the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery puts it, “Although Noah's dove is seemingly nowhere mentioned or even alluded to in the Bible outside of Genesis 8, the image of a dove with an olive branch in its beak has appropriately become a sign of peace: the storm is over.”

But how do we get to the dove symbolizing God's Spirit? It all goes back to the second verse of the first chapter of the first book in the Bible. Right after telling us that God created the heavens and the earth, Genesis says, “...the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the water.” Usually this is translated to say the Spirit was “moving” over the face of the water, but the Hebrew word's basic meaning is “hovering.” In other places of the Hebrew Bible where it is used of birds, it is translated as “fluttering.” It is related to a word in the middle Aramaic dialect Syriac that means “brooding,” as a bird does over its eggs. The Talmud also sees it that way. In Genesis 1, the Spirit of God is brooding over a new creation about to hatch. And so it is appropriate that the Holy Spirit manifests itself as a dove, hovering over Jesus as he comes out of the water because he is the one who inaugurates God's new creation.

Furthermore Jesus is said to be the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. Again what does this mean? The Greek word for “baptize” basically means to “dip” or immerse,” as when a cloth was dipped into or soaked in a dye. But the word was flexible enough to simply mean “cleanse.” It was also used of cleansing tables which would hardly involve immersing them in water. The early church did baptize by immersion, though. When on a study trip in college to Rome, Greece and Israel, our group came upon the ruins of an ancient church. Archaeologists had unearthed a huge cross-shaped baptismal font. The priests and deacons would stand chest-deep in three of the arms and the candidate for baptism in the fourth arm. The new Christian would be lowered into the center of the water-filled cross and rise again. But in the first century, before there were church buildings, people were baptized in the local river, as Jesus was by John. So to be baptized with the Spirit means to be immersed or soaked in the Spirit.

The involvement of the Spirit is essential. Neither baptism nor the Eucharist are magical. They do not work if the person doesn't receive them in the proper Spirit. As Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, “I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.” (1 Corinthians 10:1-5, NRSV) (That weird thing about the rock is based on Jewish lore that the rock Moses struck to give the people water in the wilderness must have accompanied them the whole forty years of their wandering.) Paul's point is that the water, the wine and the wafer have no magical properties in themselves to save us or grant us immunity from evil. Luther emphasized that the water of baptism must be accompanied by the Word of God and by faith to be effective. Again we see that grace is participatory. God gives us the opportunity, the means and the power but consent and cooperation on our part is required. We must receive and use them in the right Spirit.

We do not live in a largely agrarian society today. Most of us have little or no contact with sheep outside of a petting zoo. Many people have parrots and other pet birds but rarely have doves or pigeons unless they race them. Very few people outside of Santeria have sacrificed an animal or had one sacrificed for them. That's why it is necessary to try to understand these things.

This might help. As a nurse I have an affinity for medical metaphors. So if Lamb of God doesn't resonate with you, think of Jesus as the Organ Donor of God. People today may have a hard time with the idea that the sacrifice of a lamb had a positive effect on one's spiritual life, but we know of people giving blood, bone marrow or some other vital part of themselves to save others. We may even have been the recipient of such a costly gift. In the case of replacing a failing heart, it requires the death of the donor. And indeed the Bible uses language that makes this metaphor not as bizarre as one would at first think. In Ezekiel, God says, “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26) Our culture speaks of a person repenting as "having a change of heart.” It is not that far a leap to think of Jesus as our heart donor. After all Jesus gives his life that we might live. As it says in 1 John, “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life...He is true God and eternal life.” (1 John 5:11, 12, 20) Jesus Christ is life. Our new life is Christ's life. As Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)

Last week I spoke of thinking of the Spirit as your physical therapist. When I awoke from my coma 4 years ago and learned of what had happened to me and how the doctors had saved my life and put me back together, I knew that the key to me getting better was doing physical therapy. And some days it was a real struggle and some days it hurt. It wore me out at times. But I kept at it because I wanted to walk again. It says in the verse in Ezekiel that comes after the one I quoted, “I will put my Spirit within you; I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.” (Ezekiel 36:27) And sure enough the instructions the therapists gave me became part of me. You would not believe how complicated walking is. It involves 9 major muscle groups. You need to think about stride, heel strike, shifting balance, alignment and a lot of other stuff. And toddlers master this without specialists advising them! But when you are broken it becomes a challenge and you need help. As you walk your therapist holds you and watches you and gives you advice on each step if necessary and encouragement throughout. That has been my experience with the Spirit, though it doesn't come in the form of audible words. Mostly I feel the Spirit tap me on my shoulder and point to what I am doing wrong or what I need to do and often give me a shove in the right direction.

A few weeks ago we had the large extended family of a Lutheran pastor worshiping with us and as we talked after the service, I mentioned my penchant for using medical metaphors for spiritual realities. And one of the pastors in the family suggested that baptism was like getting vaccinated. I kinda like that! A vaccine protects your health against certain infectious agents. Next time you are in a very old cemetery, look at the ages of children who died more than 100 years ago. Up until we had vaccines nearly half of all children died before the age of 5. Vaccines are the reason life expectancy nearly doubled in the 20th century. Just so, being baptized also offers protection. While I can't find statistics on whether the people studied were baptized, scientists, using the only solid metric they could find--church attendance, have shown in multiple studies that people who go to church weekly reduce their risk of alcohol, tobacco and drug abuse, are less likely to indulge in sexual promiscuity, don't get ill as often, recover faster, tend to decrease their blood pressure, boost their immune systems (just like a vaccine!) and add about 3 years to their lives. People who regularly attend church have stronger social support and less depression. They are less likely to get divorced, tend to have more sex, and find a purpose in life.

And those are just the earthly benefits. Through baptism we are reconciled to God, united with Christ, become part of God's family, members of the body of Christ, receive forgiveness of our sins and new life in the Spirit. And since this earthly life is temporary, the spiritual benefits of life everlasting are more important.

All metaphors break down. Unlike a sacrificial lamb or a heart donor, Jesus didn't stay dead. Unlike a dove, the Spirit doesn't leave a mess on your car and unlike a physical therapist, the Spirit doesn't only work during business hours. Unlike a vaccine, you don't need to get rebaptized periodically like a booster shot. But if these word pictures help you understand certain aspects of God and spiritual matters, then good! If the ones I provided don't help you, drop them. See if you can come up with your own. As you read the Bible ask yourself, how is God both like and unlike a father? How is Jesus both like and unlike a bridegroom? How is the Spirit both like and unlike the wind? Metaphors give us glimpses of the reality; just don't mistake them for the reality itself.

Our experience with God can add to our understanding of God. Francis Schaeffer said what we learn about God in the Bible is true but not exhaustive. John's gospel says as much in its final verse: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21:25) And indeed, he is still doing things. He is doing them through the body of Christ on earth. He is doing them through you.

I, for one, can not wait to see the next chapter.

Going Beyond

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 42:1-9 and Acts 10:34-43.

I think I am safe in saying that, along with hospital food, no one raves about jail food. If inmates have money they can buy other foods from the commissary. But that is not sufficient for 3 types of people: those who for medical reasons need to be on a specific diet, those whose religion requires they follow a special diet, and those who just don't like jail food. As chaplain, I spend a lot of time trying to distinguish between the 3 types of diet requests. If your religion requires a specific diet, we are required to provide it, within reasonable bounds. Thus observant Jews and Muslims can ask for a Kosher diet, Hindus for a vegetarian diet and Buddhists for a vegan diet. And since religious diets are primarily about eliminating some or all animal protein, the food service does not serve anyone either pork or beef. But since Kosher meals require special ordering and handling, we do try to make sure people aren't just asking for it because they believe it tastes better. (It doesn't.) So when someone requests it, we look at what they declared as their religion when they were booked. A person who comes in as a Catholic but asks for a Kosher diet raises questions. As does someone who insists they are an observant member of a religion but cannot provide the name of their clergy or the synagogue, temple, mosque, ashram, etc, they attend or even its address or city. Or someone on a religious diet who buys foods from the commissary which violate it.

Religious diets can be seen as “badges of faith.” They distinguish a person from members of other religions. The most obvious differences are those of beliefs but they aren't as readily discernible as behaviors, like diet or dress. Those can more clearly signal that you belong to a particular religious group. Thus Sikhs wear turbans, untrimmed beards and carry ceremonial daggers. Orthodox Jewish men keep their heads covered at all times and Hasidic Jews have obvious earlocks or peiyot. Some Hindus sport a bindi or red dot in the middle of their forehead. Christians in general do not have any required religious diet or dress, though some sects do, like the Amish, as well as members of some religious orders. Nowhere in the Bible are followers of Jesus told they must wear crosses or put Jesus fish on their vehicles. Although it does seem to be an unwritten rule that the higher clergy go in the hierarchy of any religion, the odder the hat they are supposed to wear.

Some of these badges of the faith exist simply because religions tend to originate in specific cultures or ethnic groups and those traditions get carried over into the religion. There is no requirement in the Quran that Muslim women wear the burqa. That is a custom, derived from the pre-Islamic tradition of face veiling in the Byzantine Empire and Middle East. It is justified, however, by conservative interpretations of ambiguous words used in the Quran for women's wraps. And Muslim scholars have argued over these interpretations for centuries.

What's odd is that Christianity, coming out of Judaism, never seems to have developed any badges of faith in the form of manners of dress or required diets, or at least none which have stuck. My alb and stole are derived from garments worn in the Greco-Roman world but not all Christian clergy wear them. The same is true of my collar. And, aside from dressing modestly, there is no prescribed kind of clothing ordinary Christians should wear. Though again, some sects do try to impose standards from earlier periods of history, specifically when it comes to women on matters of cutting their hair or covering their heads.

One of the reasons that such things rarely stuck in Christianity was that it didn't stay a Jewish sect for long. Paul was converted somewhere around 35 AD, maybe 5 years after Jesus' resurrection. His first missionary journey took place around 46 AD. His unexpected success among the Gentiles led to the council at Jerusalem 4 or 5 years later, where it was decided that Gentile converts did not have to become Jews first. By the end of the first century, the church was mainly composed of Gentiles. That is, while a Christian could be a Jew, he could also be a Roman, a Greek, an Egyptian, a North African, a Persian, an Arab, or someone from Asia Minor. No one culture or tradition dictated how a Christian looked, sounded or acted. God's people came from everywhere.

That's the point of Epiphany. Jesus came as the Messiah the Jews hoped for, but his mission and message weren't exclusively for Jews. And even in the Hebrew Bible, like our passage from Isaiah, God says as much. God presents his servant and in the very first verse of Isaiah 42 says, “He will bring forth justice to the nations.” In Hebrew the word for nations is goyim. Translators of the Bible, like St. Jerome, rendered it “gentiles,” from the Latin word for “clans” or “tribes.” Ironically, it originally was used to designate someone as “not a Roman citizen” but somehow morphed into meaning “not a Jew.”

Again in Isaiah, God says, “I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations...” God's focus was not exclusively on his people. And his servant is to establish justice, not just in the land of Israel, but “in the earth, and the coastlands wait for his teachings.” The earth encompasses every nation and the coastlands of Palestine were the areas occupied by the Philistines at that time. They were hostile to the Jews and yet Isaiah sees a time when they will be waiting for the Messiah's teachings. And during his ministry Jesus goes to Tyre in Phoenicia and heals a Gentile woman's daughter. (Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30)

Remember that most deities back then were thought to be, if not limited to one locality, only interested in the wellbeing of one people. Parts of the Hebrew Bible can lead you to think that is true of Yahweh. But from the beginning God told Abraham, the ancestor of the Israelites, that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. (Genesis 12:3) God did not choose the Israelites because they were a large and powerful nation (Deuteronomy 7:7).Throughout their existence they were dwarfed by a succession of empires to their north, east and west. Rather God chose for them to act as a model nation. In Deuteronomy Moses says, “See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.'” (Deuteronomy 4:5-6) The Bible is pretty clear that Israel often failed to live up to its mission.

The other purpose of Israel was to be the people who gave the world the Messiah. As we've said before, they were expecting a Jewish Messiah setting up a kingdom of God for Jews. There was also an expectation that Gentiles would flock to Zion and convert to Judaism on the Last Day. And while there is some evidence of Jewish missionary activity to outsiders, there is also evidence of some Jews assimilating and even intermarrying into the Gentile world, which made others resist the incursion of Gentile culture. And indeed Jesus seems to focus his earthly ministry on Jews. When he sends out the Twelve on their first mission, he says, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matthew 10:5-6) Why?

Part of it is that, as it says in the article on Gentiles in the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, “For Jesus the present is the time of the Jews; the future is the time of the Gentiles.” God has been preparing his people for the Messiah and his message for some time. He needs to get the foundation solidly set before building anything more elaborate on it. Only after Jesus made atonement for the whole world on the cross and rose again to vindicate who he was would it be time to take the message to the whole world.

I also think that, due to the fact that Jesus heals the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman, the Roman centurion's servant (Matthew 8:5-13), and the man living among the tombs in Gerasenes (Mark 5:1-20), as well as the fact that he took the initiative in speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-42), it was not that Jesus wouldn't minister to Gentiles. I think that Jesus did not feel the disciples were ready yet to effectively talk to and deal with people who were so outside their experience. Even after his resurrection and his giving of the Great Commission to go into all the world, the disciples are reluctant to reach out to Gentiles. Our passage in Acts is preceded by a triple vision given to Peter by God to persuade him to meet with Cornelius and his family. God had to give him a big push.

One other thing noted in the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels is that in his preaching Jesus did not emphasize the then common theme of God's judgment and vengeance upon the Gentiles. Jesus called all to repent, both Jew and Gentile. And he also foresaw them responding to the gospel. When a Roman centurion says he knows that Jesus can heal his servant without going to his house, Jesus is impressed by this Gentile's faith and he says, “But I say to you that many will come from the east and west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 8:11) And in the earliest gospel, Mark, the only person to recognize and say that Jesus is God's son is the centurion at the cross, a Gentile! (Mark 15:39)

The mission to spread the gospel broadens in scope when the risen Jesus sends the apostles into every nation to make disciples. And so we see Philip baptize the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-38) and Peter bring the gospel to Cornelius and his family. The Lord calls Paul specifically to carry Jesus' name to the Gentiles. (Acts 9:15) Mind you, Paul would go to the synagogue of whatever town he entered and preach there. And while some Jews came to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, his message also created a lot of controversy among his people. Some became adamant opponents of his efforts. And Paul saw that he was making more headway with the Godfearers, Gentiles who attended synagogue but didn't go as far as to convert to Judaism. Eventually Paul realized that his calling was primarily to take the gospel to non-Jews. In Romans 11:13 he actually called himself “the apostle to the Gentiles,” though still hoping that his people will come to God through Jesus. And he spent a lot of his time in his letters to the churches promoting peace and unity between Gentile and Jewish Christians.

Remember: like Jesus, all of the original disciples were Jews. And yet they come to realize that God is not interested in his people being a small exclusive club. In Revelation John has a vision of “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people and tongue” gathered before God's throne in worship. (Revelation 7:9) John 3:16 says that God sent his unique son because he “so loved the world”--not just one people, or one race, or one nation, or one hemisphere. He loves the whole world. He made it; he pronounced it good; and he will make it good once more. As it says in Job, God despises no one. (Job 36:5) This tends to get lost when one reads the Bible selectively.

God is not interested in externals like badges of faith that make you appear different. He is interested in people who are different inside. He is not concerned with what you look like but what you actually are. He is not that focused on rituals you add to ordinary life but rather in how you live everyday. He cares about whether you care about and care for others—all others. In his parable about loving your neighbor, Jesus deliberately chose to make his hero a Samaritan, a heretic half-breed in the eyes of his audience. Because what was important was not his religion, his race, or any accidental difference; what was important was what he did when faced with human suffering. The man used what he had—his donkey, his wine, his oil, his time and his money—to help someone he didn't know. Jesus wants us to be people who act with compassion, even at our own expense, to help those in need.

If that doesn't come naturally, don't worry. God has provided a way. For instance, after the surgeons did what they could to save my life and fix my broken body, my care was put in the hands of physical and occupational therapists. Working with them, I got stronger and more flexible. At the proper time, they got me on my feet. Walking beside me, with a belt around my waist to help me stay upright and catch me as I fall, they helped me go from baby steps to climbing stairs. In the same way, after Jesus gave his life to save ours and put us right with God, the Spirit helps us get back on our feet spiritually. He helps us get stronger and more flexible. He helps us get better at walking with God and is there to help should we stumble.

A warning, however: just like a physical therapist, the Spirit will push us beyond our comfort zone. Left to ourselves we will not try to expend much effort trying to love and serve those outside our social circle. And so we get spiritually weak and flabby and out of shape. God is love and we are made in the image of God. God's love is not limited and neither should ours be. As the first Christians got over their prejudices and biases and reached out to those not thought of as God's people, so must we. Jesus went to the outcasts of his society and so should we. He touched those considered untouchable, forgave those considered unforgivable, and offered grace to those who were seen as graceless. So should we.

As someone once said, a person wrapped up in himself makes a very small package. The same can be said for a group wrapped up in itself. To become larger you have to grow. To become a larger soul, you have to grow spiritually. When animals with exoskeletons, like crabs, grow, they must molt and shed their tough outer shell. It leaves them soft and vulnerable for a bit but if they don't, they will die. Another advantage is they leave behind parasites and barnacles that have attached themselves to their old shell.

We are to grow God's kingdom. We can't do that if we cling to things that unnecessarily constrict us. We must leave behind our old form. To switch the metaphor, badges of faith can be walls which can keep people out and keep us from venturing out in the larger world, the world which God made and which Jesus died to save. As Paul said, “How are they to call on the one they have not believed in? And how are they to believe in one they have not heard of? And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!'” (Romans 10:14-15) Time to leave those badges of faith behind and put on your hiking boots. We've got good news to share.

2020 Vision

The scriptures referred to are Jeremiah 31:7-14.

The first time our family had to evacuate from a hurricane, we were living in Brownsville, Texas, where I worked as Production Director and copywriter at a radio station. Gilbert was called the storm of the century and, unlike in the Keys, we had 2 possible routes out. We could go north, up the coast towards Corpus Christi. The problem is that we wouldn't be putting a lot of distance between us and the Gulf of Mexico, where Gilbert was intensifying. The alternative was going northwest, towards El Paso. If the storm followed us inland it would be reduced to a heavy rain storm by the time it got to us. Apparently our thinking was not that original and we crawled along the choked highway. As we approached El Paso, we tuned to local radio stations only to hear that every hotel in the area was filled. So we turned north. About 11 pm, after passing innumerable “No Vacancy” signs, my daughter began having severe stomach pains. It was obviously her anxiety over our having no clear destination for the night. Seeing a Best Western that was sold out, I was reminded of their radio jingle, which put their national reservation phone number to music. There were no cellphones or internet at that time, so I pulled into their parking lot. As I walked to the reservation desk, the clerk was about to tell me they had no rooms available when I cut her off. “I realize you are full but could you call your national reservation number and ask where your nearest vacancy is?” She did so and we made the reservation in San Angelo, in the middle of the state. It was another 4 hour drive but reassured that we had a place to stay, my daughter's tummy ache receded and she went to sleep. 14 hours and hundreds of miles after we started, we arrived at a safe place to ride out the disaster. Ever since then, the first thing we do when evacuating from a hurricane is select a city and a hotel and make a reservation before setting out.

If you don't want to wander through life, you first pick a destination. Then you can plot your route to get there. People do not become professional athletes or doctors or ordained members of the clergy or tops in any field of endeavor by accident. You might at first stumble onto the idea or into an somewhat related job without intending to. But to actually achieve any worthwhile goal, you have to plan and work hard at it. And to maintain your position, you have to keep up on the latest developments, reading and taking continuing education courses. Only the gullible and con artists think there is a way to bypass the hard work and magically achieve enduring success.

But it starts with having a vision of what you want as the final outcome. No cathedral was the result of just putting one stone on top of another and seeing what happens. Shakespeare didn't just begin by putting random words on a page and then trying to to rearrange them into characters and a plot. Scientists come up with an hypothesis before designing their experiments. If you are going to be a good archer, you first need a target to shoot at.

When humanity started to misuse and abuse each other, God didn't wing it. He had a vision for how the world should be. And he communicated it over and over through the prophets. In their book Kingdom Ethics, David Gushee and Glen Stassen look at the prophets and Jesus' teachings and point out 7 marks of the kingdom of God. The kingdom is characterized by deliverance or salvation, justice, peace, healing, restoration or rebuilding the community, joy and the experience of the presence of God. You see all of these elements most fully in Isaiah but our passage from Jeremiah contains some. And we can look to Jesus for the rest.

It starts with joy. “Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise...” We often forget that one of the elements of having a relationship with God is joy. It is the second fruit of the Spirit Paul mentions after love. God is the source of all goodness. Every good gift comes from him: love, the beauty of nature, the order and stability of the laws of physics, our creativity, the very fact that we can understand and enjoy such things. We get jaded as we age. We need to rediscover the joy children take in exploring and interacting with the world God created.

The immediate cause of the joy in this passage is the salvation and deliverance God promises. “Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel.” Jeremiah is writing about the exile. Israel was defeated, the nation decimated and every person deemed valuable by their conquerors was marched to a distant land, leaving only the poor behind. The people were devastated. God's promise to bring them back home was a reason to rejoice. And take note: this is not a merely spiritual return to God. They needed to physically come back to their homeland. They needed to see Jerusalem again. Too often we Christians spiritualize everything and this lets us evade actually doing something about a situation. We talk a good game but we often fail to back up what we say about things like justice and peace and reconciliation. Had the Jews not come back from Babylon, I doubt their faith would have survived for long. God's faithfulness was seen in how he followed through on his promise to rescue his people.

Much of our passage is about the restoration and rebuilding of the community. “See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth...” The far flung people of Israel will be gathered together and brought home. And it won't just be the strongest. “...among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor together, a great company, they shall return here...” The Babylonians took only the cream of society into exile. But God includes everyone. And he will make provision for those who would otherwise find the journey impossible. “I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble.” There is a similar verse in Isaiah, which expands on this: “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” (Isaiah 42:16) In Isaiah the blindness is probably metaphorical. Which makes God's accommodation of the blind all the more gracious. Physical blindness is not usually the fault of the person suffering it. But spiritual blindness is abetted by willfully looking away from the truth.

Jesus dealt with both kinds of blindness, shining light on moral issues, both murky and clear, and healing those who literally couldn't see. And Jesus saw his healing as a very clear sign of the kingdom. When John the Baptist sent disciples to ask if Jesus was the one they were waiting for, Christ said, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and good news is proclaimed to the poor.” The majority of those things are healings. Again God is interested in more than spiritual health. He wants to restore people to physical health as well.

Jesus also talked about justice and peace in the Beatitudes. When he says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled,” we tend to interpret “righteousness” in terms of a personal virtue, according to Gushee and Stassen. But the Greek word used has “the connotation of justice.” And the probable Hebrew word Jesus actually used means delivering justice. They write, “In the Old Testament, 'righteousness' means preserving the peace and wholeness of the community, and is sometimes parallel with 'shalom' (peace) and, more often, 'justice.'” So they would paraphrase the 4^th Beatitude as “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for a justice that delivers and restores to covenant community, for God is a God who brings such justice.”

And Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” As God brings peace between himself and those who are sinners, so we are to bring peace between ourselves and those who are our enemies. The sad thing is that a lot of high-profile “Christians” have been going out of their way to make enemies, even with other Christians. They have been making deal breakers out of issues that are seldom or never mentioned in scripture and ignoring essential matters. Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You give a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, yet you neglect what is more important in the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness! You should have done these things without neglecting the other.” He compares their nitpicking to straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel. (Matthew 23:23-24) Jesus reprimanded the disciples for trying to stop someone outside their group who was successfully healing people in his name. He said, “For whoever is not against us is for us.” (Mark 9:40) And he never said that people would identify us as Christians if we agree on everything. He said, “Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35)

Since peace or shalom means total wellbeing, healing riffs in the community counts as peacemaking. I recently saw a documentary called Church of Felons, about Polk County in Wisconsin which has the highest rates of alcohol and drug addiction in the country. That state has no minimum drinking age. The film focuses on 4 people whose addiction led to crimes that had severe impacts on themselves and others, including burning an historic chapel, a drug overdose, double amputation, and traffic deaths. Each of the people involved is trying to make their second chance work. No punches are pulled and no unrealistic hopes are given but we see how, years into recovery, they are sober and their lives are better due in part to their church which embraces and supports them.

Which leads to the last of the 7 marks of the kingdom of God: experience of God's presence. Remember how last week we said that in John's gospel God's glory or presence was revealed primarily in Jesus' works? Indeed it seems that throughout the Bible, people are more likely to see God in his acts, such as his interventions when liberating his people from slavery in Egypt and his leading them to the promised land. In contrast when God was seen as statically residing in his temple, people got complacent. This is why Jesus contrasted himself with the temple, saying both would be destroyed but he would be resurrected. (Matthew 24:1-2; John 2:19) He took its place as the locus of God's presence, empowered by God's Spirit. And at Pentecost his Holy Spirit is poured out on the church. So we are now each a temple of God's Spirit. (1 Corinthians 3:16) Of course, that's easy to say. The proof is in what we do with that fact.

God's grace has never been completely one-sided, him doing everything and we being totally passive. God led the Israelites out of Egypt but they had to decide to follow. Jesus healed the man lowered through the ceiling by his friends but then he had to get up, take up his mat and walk. Gushee and Stassen call it participatory grace. God gives us the opportunities and the power; we have to use that power to take full advantage of the opportunities presented.

So the vision of the kingdom of God is a place where there is joy because God is delivering justice, peace, and healing, while restoring and rebuilding community through acts that let us experience God's presence. And if that is God's vision for his kingdom, our church, this particular outpost of the kingdom, is part of that.

We cannot do everything a megachurch can do. There are some whose list of ministries look like a college course catalog. But we know this community and its needs—there are our opportunities—and we all have gifts given by the Spirit to perform ministry—that is our power. What we need is a vision for this church that fits within the larger vision God has for his kingdom.

Small churches can effectively provide simple focused outreach ministries. They take into account their assets: their land, their facilities, and the time and talent of their members. Some offer daycare for children or for seniors. Some do car care clinics. Some visit the homebound. Some help the homeless with basic supply kits with toiletries, bandaids, water and snacks. Some give out baby supplies for new mothers on limited incomes. Some sponsor a classroom. Some plant a community garden. Some offer grief groups.

Not that we want to become merely a social service agency, as ELCA Presiding Bishop Eaton warned. But long before Maslow came up with his hierarchy of needs, Jesus knew that until people have their physical needs met, they aren't likely to look to their spiritual needs. So he healed and fed people. They saw God in what he did and then they listened to hear what God had to say.

Proverbs 29:18 in the King James version says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." We have been drifting too long. We need a clear destination, a direction in which to take this church, a vision of what it can be to the people in this community. I am challenging you to pray and listen to God for his vision of what he wants this church to do and be. And then share it with us, so we can see what we can do to serve Jesus through serving others. And if they see God at work in our lives, then and only then will they listen to us tell of the glorious vision of deliverance, healing and restoration in God's joyous, just, and peaceful kingdom.