Ritual Abuse

The scriptures referred to are Mark 5:21-43.

Bathtime, bedtime, story: that's the usual ritual with a kid. And when you read a child the same story every night, or chapters of the same book, and you do voices for the characters, you have to be consistent. Your audience demands it. So the character with a querulous high-pitched voice had better not switch to a low gravely voice. If you do that, it spoils the ritual. And children are very conservative when it comes to rituals.

We all love rituals. We are exposed to them and we adopt some of them. We even create our own. Rituals are comforting. They give us stability in a changing world. And sometimes they are smart and efficient ways to do things. The checklist a pilot and copilot go through before every flight is both a ritual and a vital safety measure. The problem is there are 2 ways in which you can mess up a ritual. One is by not doing the ritual correctly, like, say, skipping steps. The other is to be so wed to the routine of observing the ritual that you forget its purpose, like absent-mindedly checking something off rather than stopping the ritual to see, say, why the light didn't come on immediately when you flipped the switch, or why, while on, it is flickering a bit. In that way a ritual can anesthetize you to what it actually going on and the whole reason for the ritual.

My videos of me reading the Bible on Facebook are getting shorter. That's because I am alternating between chapters of Joshua, which are mostly narrative, and the Psalms, which are fairly straightforward expressions of common emotions. When I was reading the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, I usually had to make lots of clarifying comments at the end to explain things involving translation, culture, and the various rituals. Of the 613 commandments in the Torah, more than 200 apply to the temple, the sacrifices, the priests and Levites. In addition, there are about 40 relating to the dietary laws, and several that have to do with what the Israelites should wear, how to maintain and restore ritual purity, festivals and holy days, not to mention civic laws for the ancient kingdom of Israel. Some are classified by the rabbis as chukim, laws which Jews observe even though there seems to be no logical or ethical reason for them. By the way, only 28 of the 613 commandments, or 4.5% of them, have to do with sex, mostly prohibiting all forms of incestuous relationships. All in all, about 1/3 are ethical rules which are directly applicable today or can be used to derive ethical principles, such as those about how judges, leaders and business owners should conduct themselves in performing their jobs and duties.

The reason I am bringing this up is that in our gospel today we see 2 instances of Jesus breaking laws set down in the Torah. In the first instance he is touched by a woman who suffered a flow of blood for 12 years. And according to Leviticus 15:25-27, not only would she be unclean, anything and more importantly anyone she touches is ritually unclean. That's probably why she simply tried to touch Christ's clothes. Still Jesus should have bathed, washed his clothes and remained ritually impure till sunset. Which is why she was trembling with fear when she confessed to him what she had done. But instead of being angry, Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

And instead of then going through the ritual cleansing, Jesus continues to the next person who needs him, in this case a deathly ill child, though by the time he gets to her she has expired. Now if touching a bleeding woman would make Jesus ritually impure till evening, touching a corpse would make him unclean for an week! (Numbers 19:14-16) Yet Jesus takes her by the hand and tells her in her native Aramaic to get up and he restores her to life.

The point is that Jesus puts God's ethical laws before the ritual ones. To heal and to save lives are more important than rituals and supersede them. Breaking ritual laws for reasons of mercy do not dishonor God. Indeed as Jesus says in regards to the man born blind, the works of God are displayed in his healings. (John 9:3) Jesus glorified God by what he did (John 17:4) even if he did not follow every rule in the law of Moses.

And yet some Christians, though freed from the ritual parts of the law (Romans 3:28), often put technicalities above acts of mercy and grace. As Jesus bluntly put it to his critics: “Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! 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 others. Blind guides! You strain out a gnat yet swallow a camel!” (Matthew 23:23-24)

Jesus is not deviating from God's values when he does this. In the very first chapter of Isaiah, God says, “Do not bring meaningless offerings; I consider your incense detestable! You observe new moon festivals, Sabbaths, and convocations, but I cannot tolerate sin-stained celebrations! I hate your new moon festivals and assemblies; they are a burden I am tired of carrying. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I look the other way; when you offer your many prayers, I do not listen, because your hands are covered in blood. Wash! Cleanse yourselves! Remove your sinful deeds from my sight. Stop sinning! Learn to do what is right! Promote justice! Give the oppressed reason to celebrate! Take up the cause of the orphan! Defend the rights of the poor!” (Isaiah 1:13-17) Later in Isaiah he says of his people, “They lament, 'Why don't you notice us when we fast? Why don't you pay attention when we humble ourselves?' Look, at the same time you fast, you satisfy your selfish desires, you oppress your workers. Look, your fasting is accompanied by arguments, brawls, and fistfights. Do not fast as you do today, trying to make your voice heard in heaven....No, this is the kind of fast I want. I want you to remove the sinful chains, to tear away the burdensome yoke, to set free the oppressed, and to break every burdensome yoke. I want you to share your food with the hungry and to provide shelter for homeless, oppressed people. When you see someone naked, clothe him! Don't turn your back on your own flesh and blood!” (Isaiah 58:3-4, 6-7) The empty performance of rituals doesn't impress God. He wants real acts of goodness.

In Luke's version of Jesus' scathing critique of the so-called experts in the law, one of the things he says they neglect is love for God. (Luke 11:42) And remember, when asked to pick out the greatest of the 613 commandments, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, saying, in essence, we are to love God with all we are and all we have. And he throws in, unasked, the second greatest commandment, from Leviticus 19:18, that we must love our neighbors as we do ourselves. Why? Because, as the Bible says, we are created in God's image. And so, as Jesus said, what we do to others, no matter how destitute, disabled, disadvantaged or despised they are, we do to him. (Matthew 25:40)

In Mark's account of the pronouncement of the 2 greatest commandments, Jesus says, “There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:31) What I can't figure out is why people who supposedly know the Bible forget this verse. Jesus is saying that above all of the laws in the Torah, above every commandment of God and definitely above any law of man, stand these two: to love God and to love other human beings.

And yet we have so-called Christians who want to demote these two commandments, if not repeal them altogether. Because there are other laws they like better. Some, such as the Westboro Baptist Church, want to put the prohibition on homosexual acts, mentioned only twice in the Torah, and at most 7 times in the entire Bible, ahead of everything else. And there are some who wish to put abortion, which was known in Biblical times, but is nevertheless mentioned nowhere in Scripture, ahead of every other commandment. And that despite the fact that neither of these two are mentioned in the Ten Commandments, nor even by Jesus. Again, what Jesus does say is that above all else we are to love God and love other people.

Jesus also says that these two great commandments underlie all the other ones. (Matthew 22:40) In other words, the other commandments depend on and can be seen as expressions of the two commandments to love. And that is easy to see in the commandments not to lie, steal, cheat, harm, or exploit others. It is obvious in the commandments to treat foreigners as fairly as we do native-born citizens, to give to and to uphold the rights of the poor, the fatherless, the widows, and the disabled.

It's also easy to see that much of the ritual law in the Bible cannot be fulfilled now. There is no temple and there are no sacrifices. Jesus' death on the cross ended that. There is no more requirement that followers of Jesus observe the Jewish dietary laws. About all that's left are the ethical laws, which govern how we treat God and each other. And that's what's essential, says Jesus.

In Mark chapter 7, Jesus looks at the ritual laws and traditions, like the dietary laws, and says, “'Don't you understand that what goes into a person from outside cannot defile him? For it does not enter his heart but his stomach and then goes out into the sewer.' (This means all foods are clean.) He said, 'What comes out of a person defiles him. For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from within and defile a person.'” (Mark 7:18-23)

So why do some Christians ignore this and get more hot and bothered about Biblical technicalities and things not mentioned by Jesus or not mentioned in Scripture at all? Because it is easier to observe such external things than to love others self-sacrificially as Jesus loves them. It is easier to pass laws that penalize marginalized people than to help the poor, the sick, the disabled, the mentally ill, the homeless, the immigrant, the outcast, the mother abandoned by her partner, the child without a father, the person with an addiction, and the worker who is being exploited. These aren't political issues, by the way. They are mentioned more than 800 times in the Bible. These are the people in whom we are to see Jesus and toward whom we are expected to act just as we would toward Jesus.

In his only parable detailing the criteria for the last judgment, Jesus only mentions sins of omission, specifically not helping those who need it. (Matthew 25:31-46) But aren't we saved by grace through faith? Yes, but what is the nature of being saved? Is it a mere technicality or matter of reclassification—you've gone from Team Satan to Team God? No, it is to be transformed into a new creation in Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17) It is to become ever more Christlike, having the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5) and the Spirit of Christ. (Romans 8:9) Good works don't save you but those who are being saved naturally do good works. They are the signs of spiritual health. You cannot go to heaven, that is, you cannot bear to be in God's presence, if you are a selfish, hateful, violent, greedy, envious, arrogant, or deceitful person. Because God is love and those qualities do not come from love and cannot be reconciled with real love. It would be intolerable—for you! In the presence of the holy, purifying fire of his love, you'd probably go up in flames.

As John says, the person who does not love does not know God. (1 John 4:8) Jesus said, “On that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. Go away from me, you lawbreakers!'” (Matthew 7:22-23) Now based on what we have learned, what laws did these people likely break? The 2 greatest ones, to love God and to love our neighbor. Or how about this one: “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34) In other words, love as Jesus does, putting aside rituals and technicalities when they get in the way of forgiving, healing, and helping the people Jesus died for.

Danger!

The scriptures referred to are 1 Samuel 17, 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 and Mark 4:35-41.

When I was a kid, they had what we called monster movies. They were about people encountering Dracula or the Frankenstein monster or the wolfman or the mummy and eventually destroying them. Yes, the monsters killed people but (a) they tended to be extras or minor characters and (b) it was usually bloodless and often off-screen. You would see the monster approaching the victim, slowly (monsters weren't in a hurry in those days). You would see a close up of the victim with his eyes and mouth wide open but too scared to say anything. Then the camera would switch to a close up of the monster getting closer and closer. Then the film would cut to another part of the castle, where the rest of the group was gathered. There would be a long drawn-out scream and someone would say, “Listen! Isn't that Professor Von Der Trottel?” And by the time they got to where the scream came from, the professor was dead. We may not even see the body. People would look down and react in horror, leaving the state in which the monster left the professor to your imagination.

And like I said, the monster was always destroyed at the end of the film. The monsters were formidable but they all had weaknesses: crosses, garlic, silver bullets, holy water, sunlight. In the book Dracula, and at least one film version, Van Helsing actually uses the host, the body of Christ, to repel the fiend. The monster might come back in some improbable way in the sequel but this story about him had a happy ending. Good triumphed over evil. So we watched for the thrills. And while I might have watched from behind the sofa, I never worried about the monster being in my bedroom or coming to my house. The monsters were creatures of fantasy, quite unlike anything in real life.

Boris Karloff didn't like the term “horror films,” preferring to call them “terror films.” Because, he said, he wanted to scare you, not make you lose your breakfast. Today's films in this genre are truly about horror, about awful, graphic and drawn-out deaths, done with the most convincing special effects. Nothing happens off-screen. And there is an emphasis on watching the suffering of the victims, which has given rise to some of them being called “torture porn.” Also the monsters are rarely killed off at the end of each film. The movie ends when the last of the victims has been dispatched. Which isn't so much horrifying as depressing. I understand why we liked the scary fantasy films of my childhood but I have a hard time understanding why people watch today's nihilistic horror movies.

Of course you could wonder why we like stories about people in danger at all. Most people do not wish to be thrust into peril. Why do we find it entertaining to see a hero we identify with nearly be decapitated by a booby-trapped ancient temple or almost cut in two by an industrial laser when we would not enjoy being in that position ourselves? I think we like having our pulses raised and our adrenaline triggered by dangers that are experienced vicariously, as I enjoyed watching a thrilling tale involving creatures I knew I would never encounter in real life. And we like being a hero if only through our proxy.

In real life, if a wizard called you to fight an actual dragon, or you found yourself in possession of information a real assassin was after, or you were accused of a murder that you had to rely on yourself to solve, you wouldn't be entertained. You'd be horrified. Or terrified. You wouldn't willingly take part in such a dangerous mission.

We like comfort. And let's face it, that's why a lot of people come to church. To be comforted. To be assured that God is in control. To be told everything will be all right in the end. And all of that is true. But it's not the whole story.

In Track One of our lectionary, Psalm 9 does speak to our desire, indeed our need to take refuge in God. But the other 3 lectionary passages speak not of comfort but of challenge.

Our passage from 1 Samuel recounts the famous story of David and Goliath. Goliath is a giant who challenges the Israelites to end the conflict between them and the Philistines by facing him in single combat. He has no takers. But then David comes to drop off some food for his brothers who are in the army. He volunteers to take on the champion of the Philistines. At first King Saul balks. David is a boy and Goliath an experienced warrior. Furthermore David is unused to armor and finds it hinders rather than helps him. Despite the danger, he goes out on the field of battle armed with only his sling and 5 rocks. And a firm trust in God to be on his side. And we know how the story ends.

In our New Testament passage Paul gives us a whole litany of dangers he and his team faced in spreading the gospel: afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger. The comfort Paul got from following Jesus was not protection from physical or mental or spiritual challenges. It was the fact that he was undergoing these things for the right reason: to spread the good news of the God of love revealed in Jesus Christ. I think Paul would agree with the sentiment “I'll rest when I'm dead.” Of course, he is now enjoying his rest with Christ till the day of resurrection.

The story in our gospel is also about danger but it's a bit different. David knew the danger he faced. So did Paul. The disciples are on a boat trip that suddenly hits a storm. They didn't ask for this. But we forget that aboard were at least 4 experienced fishermen: Peter, Andrew, James and John. We mustn't imagine them just standing around and wringing their hands. They had encountered storms before. No doubt they were employing everything in their skill set to keep the boat afloat. Ultimately there was nothing more that they could do. The boat is taking on water. So they turn to Jesus, hoping no doubt that the man who saved people from the forces of disease could do the same for their situation.

And he does. He tells the wind and sea to cut it out and they do. Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” He seems to be implying that even if he had not been awakened, they would have made it. He was still with them. They can trust him even when they don't see him up and about.

What can we learn from these stories?

First of all, we learn that believing in God and following Jesus doesn't mean you won't have problems. In fact, you may have more. David could have dropped off his sandwiches or whatever to his brothers and gone back home, figuring someone would take care of Goliath eventually. It was Someone Else's Problem. It needn't be his. Similarly Paul could have stayed in Antioch with the church there, preaching and letting someone else be the missionary to the known world. It needn't be his problem. When Jesus told the disciples to cross the sea of Galilee, the experienced fishermen could have said, “At night? The weather looks a little unsettled. Let's wait, Lord.” Why take instructions from someone who wasn't a sailor?

All of them—David, Paul and the disciples—felt called by God to act in this way. And they did it despite the danger. They trusted that the Lord knew what he was asking them to do.

And, as our gospel story shows, we are to trust him even when he is silent. Jesus is in the boat with them but sleeping. And his questions to them after they wake him and he quiets the storm imply that they would have gotten through the storm even if they hadn't wakened him. His presence should have been enough.

Does that mean the boat wouldn't have sunk if they hadn't awakened Jesus? I am not saying that. After all, in Acts 27, we read Luke's firsthand account of a shipwreck that happened when Paul was being taken to Rome for trial. Before the wreck Paul tells everyone about his assurance from God that all will survive. He tells them, “So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me.” (Acts 27:25) The ship does not make it to land but all 276 on board do. Whatever happened to the boat Jesus was in, all the disciples would have lived.

So in addition to faith, we need to have hope. Hope has been defined by someone as the future tense of faith. We put our trust in God for the present and put our hope in him for the future. But it's easy to do that when everything is going well. So is that really hope? As Paul says, “Now hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees?” (Romans 8:24) You don't generally have any anxiety about achieving what is within your grasp. Hope is for situations where you can't see what will happen. The disciples could not see the shore or else they would not have been panicking. The fierce wind and the towering waves and the dark of night overwhelmed their senses and their sense of where they were and their sense that Jesus could save them. So they wake Jesus and shout, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

Jesus, as usual, answers a question with questions. “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” In other words, why are you afraid that you are perishing? What makes you so sure that you know what the outcome will be? What makes you think that with me on board the outcome will be terrible? Have you still no trust in me and what I can do?

At the end of the 13^th chapter of 1 Corinthians Paul says that the 3 qualities that will endure are faith, hope and love. The chapter is about love so we focus on that. But faith and hope are also essential. Faith, trust in God now, and hope, trust that he will make everything turn out right in the end, are not merely states of mind but virtues. They are moral qualities we are to cultivate and exercise, just like courage and justice and wisdom and self-control. And they are necessary because of the world we live in.

If we try to follow Jesus, proclaiming the good news, which comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable, which speaks truth to power and empowers the powerless, we will find opposition. We will find ourselves sailing against the winds of popular opinion and the usual way of doing things. We will be battered by storms of controversy. The attacks will threaten to swamp us and we will be tempted to sink into despair.

But Jesus is on board with us and with the mission he gave us. Even when he seems silent he is there. He will never leave us or forsake us. (Hebrews 13:5) Indeed when he sent out the disciples Jesus said, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) In him we put our faith and our hope.

As someone said, the safest place for a boat is in the harbor. But that's not what a boat is for. Nor is the church meant simply to be a shelter against the storm. It is meant to take us through the storm. It's meant to get us where Jesus wants us to go. He never said there would be no danger. In fact he said, “In the world you will have trouble and suffering...” Following Jesus will not get you off the hook from those things. He never promised that. Instead he continued, “...but take courage—I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

And that fact is vital to following Jesus. We are not in danger from monsters, at least not of the inhuman kind. We face pushback from those who resist God's kingdom because in it there is no place for greed or violence or lust or envy or overindulgence or laziness or arrogance. The harm we face is not so much physical as spiritual. The danger is to who we really are, to the persons God created us to be and who we are to become in Christ. The destruction of that, our true selves, is what Jesus protects from. And for these dangers and challenges we need not carry around special magical items. We carry within us the Spirit who empowered Christ, the light who shines in the darkness which the darkness cannot overcome. (John 1:5) He is all we need.

Who Are These People?

The scriptures referred to are 2 Corinthians 5:6-17.

Some of the most horrifying parts of the recent pandemic were the decisions some doctors had to make when faced with more patients that needed respirators than the number of respirators on hand at their medical facility. Should they try to save younger people rather than those whose age was near or exceeding life expectancy? Should they try to figure out which patients they could help and which would die anyway? Should they choose to save a sick colleague over a person who seems to have a lower value to society? In medicine we swear an oath to do no harm and to treat all who come to us for help. This last year was a nightmare for all but especially for doctors and nurses.

But why? From a purely rational and scientific perspective, we know that all living beings die. Why should their age or manner of death bother us? On average, more than 150,000 people die everyday. The so-called “great men” of history have slaughtered millions. Jane Goodall discovered that chimpanzees, our closest relatives, go to war against each other and even resort to cannibalism at times. We too kill and we too die. We can at best delay death. But why should we? What makes humans so special?

For an answer, let's start with today's passage from 2 Corinthians. Paul says, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view.” What does he mean by that?

In the very first chapter of the very first book in the Bible we are told “God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27) And the importance of that is empathized in the very first covenant God makes. Just 8 chapters after we told that God made us in his image, we are told that murder is wrong for that very reason. (Genesis 9:6)

So because of that alone, we should not look upon anyone as “merely human.” That's why when asked for the greatest commandment, Jesus threw in the second one, the one about loving your neighbor as yourself. Everyone is made in God's image and should not be treated as less than that.

Yet we humans love to reduce complex things to something simpler. And we do that to people.

We reduce some to stereotypes. We pigeonhole people according to categories based on external features, like ethnicity or race or language or religion or sex. We put all such people in a nice neat box, even if sometimes we really have to work hard because reality resists fitting in nice neat boxes. But that's easier than recognizing the complexity of every single person.

We reduce some people to tools. In other words, we see them only as they relate to us and benefit us. So rather than loving them as people, we use them as if they were our servants or as if they were apps designed to help us with some task. We may order them around or manipulate them to do what we want. What we often don't do is consider that they have lives and needs of their own and ask, with no strings attached, if they simply want to help us. The ironic thing is most people do like to be helpful. But they also want to be acknowledged and appreciated for what they do and who they are. And, if they are your employees, they want to be properly compensated.

We reduce some folks to annoyances. Again, this comes from only considering people on the basis of how they relate to us. We act as if people who are in our way, who are hindering us from doing what we want, who are slowing us down, or who making things difficult for us, are doing so just to annoy us. We don't stop to think of other reasons they may be acting as they do or that (GASP!) it may have absolutely nothing at all to do with us. The car that breaks down in your lane wasn't thinking of you when it did it. Why do we assume that everyone whose personal problem becomes our problem has anything against us?

We reduce some people to enemies. And sometimes there is enmity towards us. But we assume it's totally without cause, as if comic book nemeses actually existed in the real world. But generally there is a reason. It may not be a good one. Maybe you were an annoyance to them and that got inflated in their mind and you got promoted to enemy. Maybe they had a conflict with someone like you and overgeneralized their anger to all people who are like you. But maybe they have a genuine beef with you.

Right now in the Middle East there are lots of conflicts on which both sides have genuine reasons to be angry with each other. Anyone who thinks either the Palestinians or the Israelis are evil or innocent doesn't understand the problems involved. Both sides have real grievances and neither side is blameless. But it doesn't help to reduce one side to the good guys and the other to the bad guys. For one thing, they are way more complex than that. They are human beings, not characters in a Victorian melodrama. For another thing, if you reduce one side to irredeemably evil villains, you will never be able to sit down with them and resolve the problems you both have. Which, after lots of people have been killed, is how all wars end anyway. There is no magic glove whose fingers you can snap to make all your enemies disappear. Eventually you will have to figure out how to live together. And the problems you didn't resolve before the war will still be there and will probably have been made a lot worse.

Oversimplifying humans is, ironically, a common human habit. It's behind racism, sexism, ageism, and every kind of “ism.” Yet Paul doesn't refer to the fact that each and every one of us is made in God's image. Instead he says, “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one died for all...” The Gentile Christians to which he wrote may not immediately have thought of the Jewish idea that we are all made in God's image. But they wouldn't be Christians if they didn't believe that Jesus died for them. However if they thought he died just for them, they wouldn't have a reason to care about all human beings. They could just feel that they were the elect, the favored ones. But Paul points out that Jesus “died for all.” So while not everyone is your brother or sister in Christ, everyone could be. Jesus died for them all and loves them all and that should guide how you treat them.

You can be a citizen of an earthly nation by accident of birth. Nobody is a native-born citizen of the kingdom of God. Even if you were born into a Christian family, there comes a time when you have to decide for yourself if you are actually going to commit yourself to following Jesus. So all of us were outsiders, aliens whom God graciously accepted into his kingdom. And anyone you meet could be as well.

That is why we do not look at anyone from a human point of view. They are not either extras or supporting characters or villains in our story. They are real, whole human beings, all created in God's image and everyone of them is someone Jesus shed his blood and died for. As C.S. Lewis put it, “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.” Who knows how they will appear to us when we are with Christ at last and see them glorified by him?

Paul then says something very interesting: “even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.” In other words, there may have been a time when we first learned of Jesus and thought of him as just a really good human being, a wise person who said some stuff we like and agree with. But, as happened with the disciples, when we really got to know him, we realized that we originally conceived of him in a very reductionist way. Socrates, Buddha, Mohammed, Marcus Aurelius, Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther, Gandhi, C.S. Lewis and others also said some very profound things. But they were ultimately human beings and not gods. They may have been good; they were not perfect. They all died but not as a sacrifice for the whole world. And none of them rose again. Nor are their teachings dependent upon their being raised from the dead.

But Jesus is different. Our faith in him definitely depends on his self-sacrificial death and resurrection. Without it, his ethics make no sense. Why turn the other cheek, why love your enemies, why deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus if there is no life beyond this one? Why treat others as you would like to be treated rather than treat them exactly as they treat you? Why not be like Jeffrey Epstein and get all the money and sex you can and then end your life when it looks like you are going to pay the price—if there is no resurrection and no last judgment, not to mention no having to live with what you have become for all eternity?

Paul said it: “If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” (1 Corinthians 15:32) Because if the dead are not raised then neither was Jesus. And that means the disciples were all either liars or lunatics to proclaim his resurrection. And if liars, then stupid ones because following Jesus got them all killed as well. And if lunatics, then unique ones who somehow all had the same hallucinations. Which all ceased on the fortieth day afterwards, with a shared hallucination of him ascending into heaven. And as a former psychiatric nurse, let me tell you: that is not how psychosis works. A psychiatrist once took 3 patients who all claimed to be Jesus Christ and put them together. There was no meeting of minds. Sometimes they came to blows. In the end, each thought the other two were nuts. The psychiatrist, Milton Rokeach, did not cure them. But, he said, “It cured me of my godlike delusion that I could manipulate them out of their beliefs.” So much for psychotics harmonizing their delusions.

If the disciples weren't liars or lunatics, what was Jesus? A liar who was dumb enough not to tell the truth when the lies could get him killed? A lunatic who was somehow coherent and showed good social skills? A narcissistic cult leader who totally missed the part of the scam where you use your power to get rich, have sex with your followers and let everyone else die and not just yourself? Jesus told the officials who came to arrest him, “If you are looking for me, let these men go.” (John 18:8) Jim Jones didn't do that. David Koresh didn't do that. Instead Jesus put others' lives before his own.

Weirdly, the most reasonable solution to the dilemma of who Jesus was is that he was who he said he was: the Son of God, the way, the truth, the resurrection and the life. Which means he is all of those things still. And if Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the be-all and end-all of existence, then we can still depend on him. His ethics make sense. People make sense. Because we have been given godlike qualities which enable us to shape the world and society in huge ways. And yet we use those powers to do great harm to the world, to others and to ourselves. In Jesus we see the true image of God in action.

It's human to reduce others to neat one-dimensional caricatures of humans. Which makes it easier to dismiss them. But Jesus shows us a whole new dimension to humans. We are not merely, as Shakespeare called us, “the paragon of animals.” We are not simply created in the image of God. We are people God loves so much that he sent his Son to restore that image in us, even at the cost of his lifeblood. You are someone Jesus loved enough to die for. As is the person next to you. As is the person next to them. As is the person seated in front of you and behind you. As is every person outside that church door.

Let's act like it.

Insulting the Spirit

The scriptures referred to are 1 Samuel 8:4-20 and Mark 3:20-35.

I have been reading a book called Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths in which the author does a deep dive into history of “great men” to show that most of them were, for all their achievements, psychopaths: people without fear, without empathy, and without regret. Using recognized historical sources, he cites a depressing list of atrocities committed by Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Ashoka, Atahualpa, Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, Constantine the Great, Alexander the Great and just about everyone called “the Great.” Yes, he mentions Hitler, but Stalin and Mao killed more people. And often these leaders used, and in some cases enjoyed watching, torture. He thinks the adulation folks heaped on such rulers had to do not so much with them being needed to protect the people from other nations but because slavish devotion was the only way to protect oneself from one's own leader. And adulation is how you appease a malignant narcissist.

Just this week a meta-analysis came out that looked at 437 studies involving more than 100,000 people worldwide and it found that “Narcissism is a significant risk factor for aggressive and violent behavior across the board.” People with an inflated sense of their importance and entitlement were not only more likely lash out with physical and verbal abuse and bullying but also more likely to do it in a cold and deliberate way. And narcissism doesn't even have to rise to the level of pathology to lead to aggression. But give a malignant narcissist great power and only the most craven sycophants are safe.

Most modern democracies have safeguards in place to keep any one person from having unchecked power. And yet some people want to give a strong man power, someone who is tough and ruthless if need be, who fights as dirty as our enemies, fighting fire with fire. Which is exactly what General Curtis LeMay did, dropping napalm on 66 cities in Japan and continuing even after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fire bombings killed as many as a half a million Japanese civilians. As we said, many people cannot imagine a different way of dealing with evil other than by using its own methods against it. And today's gospel has something to say about that.

Even then, people knew that diseases were caused by unseen entities. They called them demons. We call them bacteria and viruses. Communicable diseases are the top two leading causes of death in low income countries today. Lower respiratory infections are still the 4^th leading cause of death worldwide. And that's in a world where antibiotics and vaccines exist. In Jesus' day, a simple cut could get infected and kill you. There were no antibiotics or respirators or anti-psychotics or calcium-channel blockers or surgeries that would remove a cancerous tumor without killing you. But Jesus could and did heal people. That's why they flocked to him.

But Jesus did not abide by the ritual rules of purity. After touching a leper or a bleeding woman or a corpse, he should have gone away from people, washed, changed his clothes and been ritually unclean until sunset. That would have severely limited his ability to heal more than one person a day. But Jesus is healing as many as could get near him. And that's a problem for the scribes and experts in the law of Moses.

Healing is supposed to come from God. But so was the Torah. So how could Jesus accomplish one while ignoring parts of the other? The scribes' solution was that he was casting out the demons that caused disease through the power of the prince of demons.

Jesus immediately points out that this makes no sense. Is Satan at war with himself? Such a civil war would spell the end of God's spiritual adversary. What makes more sense is that God is more powerful than the forces of disease, destruction and death.

And then Jesus says, “Truly, I tell you, people will be forgiven their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” Jesus may have been thinking of the verse in Isaiah where it says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil...” (Isaiah 5:20) Or as the NET translates it, “Those who call evil good and good evil are as good as dead.” Nevertheless this is a disturbing statement and it makes some people worry that they may have committed the “unforgivable sin.”

Let's look at what Jesus is actually talking about. His critics are attributing what he is doing, in this case healing, to the devil. How badly screwed up must your thinking be to say that healing is coming not from the source of all goodness but from the chief agent of evil? Essentially they are confusing the Spirit of God with Satan. It is blasphemy, or in other words, an insult to the Spirit of God. And not only would such a person not go to Jesus for physical healing they would not go to him for spiritual healing either. Thus anyone thinking that Jesus is acting out of an evil spirit would not go to him for forgiveness, thereby rendering himself in effect unforgivable. But that means anyone who does go to Jesus and trusts him to forgive their sins is not blaspheming the Holy Spirit, who empowers Jesus and acts through him. If you are worried about blaspheming the Holy Spirit, you aren't. Those who do blaspheme him by thinking he is evil do not have such doubts about the rightness of their opinions and behavior. Rejecting God's forgiveness, they condemn themselves.

But I want to deal with the fact that they thought Jesus could use the power of evil to fight the power of evil. And since people were being healed, they must have thought that getting down on the devil's level is actually an effective method of dealing with evil. Which is a very human temptation.

After all, don't our heroes win basically by using overwhelming violence against the bad guys? Superheroes win not because they are morally better but ultimately because they have stronger superpowers and can damage the bad guys to the extent that they can't fight back. The same goes for ordinary human heroes. Who doesn't remember the line in The Untouchables where the Irish cop tells Eliot Ness how to fight Al Capone? “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.” Forget an eye for an eye. For any threat or injury, if you're in the right, you can go directly to taking a life. You're entitled to. The problem is everyone thinks they're in the right.

People forget the reason for the flood in the story of Noah: “The earth was ruined in the sight of God; the earth was filled with violence.” (Genesis 6:11) God decides to reboot the world because it is filled with violence. People created in the image of God were harming and killing other people created in the image of God. So God's first covenant outlaws murder. It is symbolic deicide. Which is a kind of blasphemy.

King David tells his son Solomon that he wanted to build a temple for God, “But the Lord said to me: 'You have spilled a great deal of blood and fought many battles. You must not build a temple to honor me, for you have spilled a great deal of blood on the ground before me...'” (1 Chronicles 22:8) So Solomon, a man of peace, will build God's temple. For David, a man of blood, to do it would have been a kind of blasphemy.

So under his new covenant Jesus tells us, “I say to you, do not resist the evildoer. But whoever strikes you on one cheek, turn the other to him as well.” (Matthew 5:39) And “I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be like your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:44-45)

Notice that the reason that we are to love even our enemies is so that we are like God. And not in the egotistical or arrogant way a narcissist would see it; we are to be like the God who is love morally. God sends the rain and sun, vital to the growing of food, on all. God is good and gracious to all. As we read in last week's passage from John's gospel, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” (emphasis mine) If God loves the world enough to send Jesus to die for us sinners, we should love others, even those we class as enemies. Which means not using unloving, harmful actions on them.

Like violence, obviously. The world rightly condemns things like the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades and the witch trials as unchristian. I would call them blasphemies, insults to the Spirit of the God who is love. And so would Jesus. When Peter defended him by cutting off the ear of the high priest's slave, Jesus told Peter, “Put your sword back in its place! For all who take hold of the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:51-52) And then he healed the man's ear. (Luke 22:50-51) Healing is in line with the Spirit. Later Jesus tells Pilate that one sign that his kingdom is not from this world is that his followers weren't fighting to rescue him. (John 18:36). Both Paul, who violently persecuted the church before encountering the risen Christ, and Peter, the swordsman, learn to be like Jesus. They both write that we are not to repay evil with evil but with good. (Romans 12:17, 21; 1 Peter 3:9). Violently opposing people is not Christlike. And there are other methods that are ungodly.

Like lying. Anyone who tries to defend or promote Christianity with falsehoods is not doing so through the Spirit. At least 3 times in the gospel of John, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17, 15:26, 16:13) and says “he will guide you into all the truth.” Jesus famously calls himself “the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) Jesus said that “true worshipers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23) Psalm 31:5 calls the Lord “God of truth.” God is, of course, the ultimate truth of existence. So we must not succumb to the temptation to use what Plato calls “the noble lie” to push an agenda, however praiseworthy. Just as Jesus says his critics were misrepresenting the Spirit of God, so too are those resorting to lies to defend him. Lying in the name of the Spirit of truth is an insult.

Now I am not saying that these are unforgivable sins. After all, Paul violently persecuted the Jesus movement and so he must have felt that Jesus was, if not in league with the devil, at least blasphemous to claim to be God's Son. But then Jesus chose Paul to become one of his most effective missionaries. And this reinforces the idea that what makes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit unforgivable is that the person persists in seeing good as evil and doesn't seek forgiveness. Paul repented, trusted Jesus, and later humbly referred to himself as the least of the apostles. (1 Corinthians 15:9)

Paul condemns those who say, “Let us do evil so that good may come of it.” (Romans 3:8) Further we are not to avenge evil, lest we be overcome by evil. We are to overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:19-21) There is a real difference between the healing, forgiving, loving ways of following Jesus and the harmful, unforgiving, unloving ways that we, at our most narcissistic, resort to. But we cannot use violence, devilishly clever lies or other infernal methods to promote the kingdom of God. It is an insult to Jesus, our King, who did not shed the blood of others but let his blood be shed for others.

We must be guided by the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9). And if we are, the undeniable manifestations of the Spirit in our life will be “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23) Indeed, as Paul says, “For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, 'You must love your neighbor as yourself.'” (Galatians 5:14) Or as Jesus puts it, “This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you.” (John 15:12) Loving one another, including our enemies, as Jesus does, is never an insult to God. It's how we honor his Holy Spirit.