Scary

The scriptures referred to are Romans 3:19-28.

For many people today is Halloween and I do not mean a contraction of All Hallow's Eve, the vigil before All Saints Day, when we commemorate the saints and the recently dead. I mean dressing up in costumes and putting up decorations that make light of death. It has transmogrified from Scottish and Irish traditions that celebrated the end of the harvest season to one in which people are symbolically whistling past the graveyard.

But for us, this is Reformation Sunday, the day a monk in Saxony nailed up nearly hundred theological points he wanted to debate. And even though nothing much else happened that day 500 years ago, it did light the fuse on a revolution in thought and religion and even secular society that still affects us today. We see it not as a day of confronting fears but of embracing faith. But if you go back to the beginning, what Martin Luther did had to be a very scary thing.

Perhaps not on October 31, 1517. He was just seeking a debate. But almost exactly a year later, when he returned to Wittenberg from his first encounter with a representative of the Pope, at the Diet of Augsburg, he had reason to be afraid. He not only didn't get his debate; he was a wanted man for not recanting his writings. Worse, in the next year, the church would argue that since the Pope was infallible on matters of faith and practice that anyone who disagreed with him was a heretic. And we all know what they did to heretics. That's scary. But worst of all, they appealed to canon law and said the Pope could not be deposed, even if he led multitudes to hell. That was so unChristlike that to Luther it meant that the head of the church, the only church he knew, was essentially a, if not THE, Antichrist. And that's really scary. Now what was he to do?

First, let us reflect on how, up to now, Martin Luther was a fearful man. After all, it was a near-miss lightning strike that caused him to bleat out a vow to become a monk, if St. Anne would spare his life. And as a monk he feared God so much that he actually hated him. He spent hours in the confessional, dredging up every misstep he could think of, driving his confessor to say, “Martin, go out and commit some sins worth confessing!”

But when he was assigned to teach the Bible and he actually read what Paul said about how we receive salvation, he was changed. Luther's fear of God was rooted in trying to follow all the commandments and to be morally perfect, something the monk knew was impossible. But in Paul's letter to the Romans, he reads “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:17) Or as it says of God in our passage today, “he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.” Faith or trust, the foundation of any relationship, is the key to being righteous in God's eyes. At first Luther believed this meant believing that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In other words, it is faith in God's condemnation of you in his law. But later he realized it was faith in God's promise that we “are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus...” Everything is God's doing; we just accept the gift.

And the burden of guilt and fear that weighed down Luther was lifted. This was good news indeed. And that is what the word “gospel” means: good news. Luther, appointed not only to teach at the University of Wittenberg but to preach at its church, was keen to let his parishioners know this. And then the whole indulgences controversy arose.

Luther was appalled that his parishioners were paying for papal indulgences that were supposed to lift any punishment they or their loved ones were to receive in purgatory. There were a lot things wrong with that—95 to be exact—but basically it went counter to the gospel, the good news that Jesus took everyone's punishment for sin and that salvation is a gift from God that cannot be earned by doing so many good works or giving so much money to the church.

And bolstered by the plain sense of scripture, Luther spoke up. It is interesting to speculate how things might have gone had anyone actually debated his theses with him. But nobody would. He was simply told to recant and shut up, first at Augsburg and then, famously, at the Diet of Worms. And Luther, who, along with a lot of people, simply wanted to see the Roman Catholic Church reform itself, found himself excommunicated, declared a heretic and a criminal with a death sentence on his head. The man who became a monk out of fear now faced the full force of the official displeasure of the Pope and the Emperor, both Church and State...and he refused to back down. Unless he could be convinced by scripture and reason that he was wrong in how he read God's word, he would not not go against his conscience. Here he stood.

Now that he was a wanted man, Luther went underground. He was hidden by his prince, the aptly named Frederick the Wise. As he lived in Wartburg Castle under an assumed name, awaiting his books, what was going through his mind? He had not planned to replace the church, just reform it. But those in charge wouldn't think of it. What now?

Think of how scary his position is. Not just for him personally but for all Christians who were under a corrupt system. Many had heard his criticisms and read his books and agreed with him. But just as there was no place for him in the Roman Catholic Church of his time, there was no place for those who believed as he did in God saving us by grace through faith. So does Luther dare start another church?

He was a monk and a professor. He was not an abbot nor a bishop nor the Pope. How does one go about reimagining and reorganizing an institution that existed for a millennium and a half and is involved in just about every aspect of people's lives?

And here's one of the things I most admire about Martin Luther: he did it on the fly! He was brilliant enough to come up with good solid solutions to the problems that arose in the Reformation. How many sacraments should there be? How should communion be offered? What about priestly celibacy? What about monastic vows? How are we to educate Christians in the basics of the faith? How are we to reeducate pastors? This is a long way from debating indulgences. But Luther was up to it, by, as I'm sure he'd say, the grace of God.

All the other reformers, like John Calvin who was 8 years old when Martin nailed his theses to the church door, had Luther as a starting point. The ground work had been done, the foundation laid for all the other Protestant churches that came after. They would take his ideas, use this one, reject that and tweak the other but the basic materials came from Luther's insights into faith, grace and scripture.

As I said, Luther was not alone in seeing that the church of his day needed to be reformed. But he was the one who was brave enough to not only say so but continue to say it when it became dangerous. In fact he was in more danger than when he took his vow to become a monk during the thunderstorm. The lightning bolt that prompted his change of profession was not targeting him. The people who opposed him were.

Yet Luther faced his fears and did what was necessary. One of the major strengths of the church is that it periodically undergoes reformation. When it gets too far from its original mission, from what Jesus envisioned, people start noticing and speak up and work to reform it. Usually this happens internally, such as the reforms that took place under Pope Gregory VII, or the ones led by religious orders such as the Cluniacs or the Franciscans. Nor is the church done reforming. The Protestant Reformation should not be considered the last word on the matter. There are now and always will be tensions between what sociologist Rodney Stark calls the church of power and the church of piety. The temptation to try to marry the kingdom of God with earthly nations or parties or personalities or ideologies has always been present. But that is always an unhealthy relationship, one inevitably headed for the rocks.

To switch ships and metaphors, it is not clear sailing for the church today. It is battered and taking on water. It has succumbed to the siren song of political power and steered right into the storm of temporal power plays. It has lost its moral compass and its compassion for those who are powerless. Lest we end up on the rocks of irrelevance and repudiation of God's principles, we need to listen to Christ's clarion call to love God and to love others and to preach the good news of his forgiveness and transforming grace. The ship of the church is not on a luxury cruise to give us a good time; it is on a search and rescue mission for those who are adrift and and wrecked and about to go under.

Like many today, Luther believed that he was living in the end times. The spirit of the Antichrist was abroad. Riots, revolts and wars were taking place. A plague broke out in Wittenburg. The Ottoman Turks were invading Europe. Society seemed to be breaking down. And many were blaming Luther's radical ideas.

But it wasn't the end of the world, though it was the end of the world as they knew it. And they weren't Luther's radical ideas; they were God's radical ideas, which the church had quietly buried under mounds of church law and unexamined tradition and bad theology and corrupt practices, and which were now being resurrected. What's radical is that God doesn't hate us sinful creatures but loves us. What is radical is that he doesn't want to send us to hell but sends us help in the form of his Son Jesus Christ. What is radical is that God in Christ has taken onto himself the painful work of reconciling us with him. What is radical is that we don't have to earn his love or forgiveness. We just have to swallow our pride and accept them as gracious gifts by faith in his Word and promise. Luther didn't create those ideas; he just rediscovered them in God's word and announced them to the world. And he didn't let the powers-that-be silence his proclamation of the good news. And then others began to proclaim it. And just over 20 years ago the Roman Catholic Church and the World Lutheran Federation officially agreed that Luther was right: we are saved by God's grace through faith in Christ.

But 500 years ago proclaiming that was scary. Doing the right thing when those more powerful than you try to stop you is always scary. It is much scarier than imaginary monsters. The antidote to fear is faith in the God who is love revealed in the teachings, life, death and resurrection of his Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Jesus didn't let the threats of the powerful stop him. Luther didn't either. Nor should we.

A Likely God

A horse goes into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender says, “You come here a lot. Are you an alcoholic?” The horse says, “I don't think I am,” and immediately disappears. Of course this joke is based on the assumption that you've heard of philosopher Rene Descartes and his famous conclusion, “I think, therefore I am.” I could have mentioned that first but that would be putting Descartes before the horse.

Don't blame me; blame the person who posted that on Facebook.

But I do want to start by talking about epistemology, the investigation of what we know and how we know it. People used to think we could be certain of at least some things. And then Descartes, in his thought experiment, realized he couldn't be sure that anything truly existed, outside of himself. And he knew he was not an illusion because he could think of things like “I have no sure knowledge that anything is real except me.”

Now the idea that reality is just an illusion might seem absurd to most people. And I will wager that the people who can't entertain the idea that what they see is an illusion have never laid in an ICU for weeks doped to the gills and hallucinating, like I did. I was absolutely convinced that I was being kept in a parking garage or in a cultic site in the wilds of Big Pine or in a 1950s diner. I talked to people I thought were standing in front of me. I only knew I was hallucinating when I realized while holding a conversation that my eyes were closed. And when I opened them, most of the people in the room vanished. But they looked as real to me as you all do now. (Are my eyes open?)

Descartes' philosophy began with what he felt absolutely sure of and then he reasoned from there to the existence of the rest of reality. I am not here to defend his philosophy. I think we can concede that while his observation that everything might be an illusion is possible—after all, some scientists do think we are living in a simulation—it is, nevertheless, extremely improbable. And, in general, it is better to count on what is probable than what is possible but highly improbable. The mechanics of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None or Edgar Allan Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue are within the realm of the possible but very unlikely. If a police officer came across those situations in real life and proposed the solutions in those stories, he would have to explain why all of the more probable solutions were impossible.

For instance, we prepare our homes for hurricanes but not for strikes by meteorites because of the higher probability of the first and the much lower probability of the second. Although in 1954 a woman in Alabama was hit by a grapefruit sized meteorite that went through her roof, bounced off her console radio and hit her as she lay on the couch. And yet we don't reorder our lives according to threats that are possible but wildly unlikely.

So let's do a thought experiment. We are here to worship God. Many people think there is no God. And we have no absolute proof God exists. But we can ask how likely that is.

First, like Sherlock Holmes, let's eliminate the impossible. Contrary to popular belief it is impossible to prove that God doesn't exist. Because it is logically impossible to prove a negative. I can't prove that unicorns don't exist. I don't have all the data. They might exist on another planet. They might have existed here on earth and we just haven't found the fossils yet. Hitherto unknown dinosaurs get discovered all the time. I can only say that based on the evidence I have examined I doubt that unicorns exist. I can reasonably be agnostic on the matter. However, to declare oneself an atheist, to assert in no uncertain terms that there is no god, is to admit one doesn't understand logic and its limits.

I do think there is good evidence God exists, but not absolute proof. So, as we said, the real question is: is the existence of God likely? And to make the subject manageable, let's limit the argument to a Creator. Is it likely that the universe has a Creator?

What is the alternative? That the universe was not created but just happened. Which means the laws that govern it on a micro and macro level, the fact that we have a coherent reality that we can study and understand, and that we can use what we learn about it to predict phenomena and alter parts of reality are just the fortunate result of an unimaginable series of random accidents. Our existence is just a matter of our winning a lottery with literally trillions of factors that just happened to go our way. Now Israeli scientist Gerald Schroeder points out that the number of particles in the universe—protons, neutrons and electrons—is 10 to the 80^th power or 1 with 80 zeros after it. Of all the possible combinations of the particles, the odds that this combination happened by random chance is so astronomically unlikely that the universe, at 13 ½ billion years, is not old enough for all that to play out. That math was one of the things that got Antony Flew, the philosopher who set the agenda for modern atheism, to change his mind about the probability of there being a God. It's possible that everything from the forces that hold your atoms together, to the code in every cell of your body that determines who and what you are, to the natural laws that allow life to exist came about entirely by blind chance...but it is so unlikely that the most addicted gambler wouldn't take that bet. It is much more likely that our amazingly organized universe has a Creator.

If so, would such a Creator be more likely to love or hate its creation? Let's not get sidetracked by the possibility that the Creator might not be completely happy with how everything turned out, because people love imperfect things all the time. Most inventors, writers, coders, artists and performers will admit their creations or performances aren't perfect but it doesn't mean that they aren't proud of them or fond of them. J.R.R. Tolkien kept revising his Lord of the Rings saga, to the point the publisher had to take it away from him to get it in print. But Tolkien never renounced it, even though he agonized over how he got moon phases wrong. So how likely is it that the universe's Creator, having spent so much thought and eons of time on it, would hate it? I, for instance, have a few sermons and some stories that I have written that I really like, though they do not compare to the works of Shakespeare or the sermons of Barbara Brown Taylor or the stories of C.S. Lewis. But if I created a planet, or a galaxy, much less an entire cosmos, I would be delighted with them; I would not disdain them. Is it likely that a Creator who made butterflies and orchids and otters and the painted desert and geodes and the Great Barrier Reef and parrots and puppies and the Milky Way and the atom and the double helix and tardigrades would hate it all? Or would such a Creator delight in it and pronounce it good? Again, it's possible that a Creator might feel like Kafka, who told a friend to destroy all his stories after his death. But the universe is a much grander achievement than a story where a man turns into a bug. I think it's much more likely that the Creator would love its creation.

So then in making this vast universe and populating at least parts of it with life, is it likely that the Creator would include nothing that would be like the Creator and reflect its nature? (And just to eliminate the awkwardness of expression, I will now use alternating personal pronouns for this hypothetical Creator, because of the fact that, unlike Greek, English has as yet no genderless singular personal pronouns.) Anyway, living things make other living things that are like them. We call them offspring. And artists from Rembrandt to Van Gogh to Picasso have made self-portraits. Writers and actors use parts of themselves in creating characters. James Bond is very much an idealized version of author Ian Fleming. In My Dinner with Andre, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory used their own names for their characters and admitted to playing somewhat heightened versions of themselves. So is it likely that in this vast universe that its Creator would not make some version of him or herself? That he would not create a being in his image, a being with his intelligence, his creativity, his ability to make choices, his ability to love? Would any artist not put her signature on her work? I think it unlikely that the Creator wouldn't at least put into his creation a being capable of appreciating it and of using its mind to explore and commune with the mind of the Creator.

Then is it likely that the Creator, having put into the creation she loves beings like her, would not care if such beings do not also love that creation? Would a Creator who loves his creation and the creatures bearing his image be indifferent if they hate each other and hurt and destroy each other? Or would it be more likely that the Creator would care very deeply that her creatures also love and help and nurture and protect each other? I think it highly unlikely that a Creator who invested so much into those creatures would be neutral on whether they should harm each other or be in harmony with each other.

So would it be likely that a Creator who cared that her beings be good to each other and not act badly towards their fellow beings, then not try to communicate that desire to them? Would it be likely that the Creator would not in fact try to lay down rules of good behavior for them to follow? Wouldn't it be more likely that the basics of these rules, like treating others the way these beings would prefer to be treated themselves, would end up in some form in every version of the rules? And as soon as writing was invented wouldn't this Creator see to it that the rules and the reasons behind them be set down and preserved? Or is it more likely that despite his love and care for these beings made in his image that he would refrain from communicating the basic rules for loving him and loving each other? I find the idea that a Creator who cares for her creatures and loves them would then stay silent about those basic truths a very unlikely possibility. I would think it more likely that a loving Creator would find a way to communicate his expectations of how his creatures should treat one another.

But then would it be likely for a Creator, having communicated her rules for behaving justly and lovingly towards each other, simply leave it at that—just words, no actions? Would the Creator, seeing his image-bearing creatures ignore the rules they received, nevertheless decide not to work with at least some of them to try to get it right? Wouldn't the Creator try to have some of them be an example for the others to emulate? Wouldn't the Creator try to incentivize this by rewarding good behavior on the part of the group of creatures she chose and actively discourage their bad behavior? Or is it likely that the Creator not work with the creatures on these rules but simply leave them to their own devices? I think it more likely that, like a loving parent, the Creator would get involved with the creatures and direct their efforts to put the rules of love and justice into practice.

So if the creatures still were not successful at following the rules, would it be likely that the Creator decide not to step into the situation herself and show by the example of one of their own how to act lovingly and justly towards others? Would it be likely that the Creator not create a body for himself and the Creator-turned-creature not show through his actions how the rules should work? After all, if you want something done right, you do it yourself. If so, would it be likely that the Creator-turned-creature not restate the rules, stripping them down to the basics, so as to not let people hide behind technicalities nor misuse the rules to hurt and harm rather than help others? And wouldn't it be likely that the Creator would anticipate opposition to this and even foresee the ultimate hostile reaction? And wouldn't it be likely that, to show that acting lovingly towards others is paramount, the Creator-turned-creature not retaliate but let the creatures do their worst? But then would that Creator-turned-creature let that hostile act towards him be the final word and not make some decisive act to reveal that he is the Creator and source of life? I think it likely that the Creator-turned-creature would act and react lovingly to profoundly communicate her unconditional love towards her creation and creatures.

And finally, having shown his power to enter into one being and demonstrate a life of love and justice and mercy, would it be likely that the Creator, seeing creatures having trouble imitating his life, refuse to enter into those beings and help them get things right? I think it more likely that the Creator would have a back door, so to speak, by which she could enter into her creatures and help them as they try to change from their dysfunctional way of doing things to a better way of living with each other and with the Creator. And having taken billions of years to create their habitat, and millions of years to get the species to this point, isn't it likely the Creator would be willing to take a few thousand additional years to let the message of his project spread and give everyone a chance to get on board with it?

I think all this is much more likely than not. I think this is a likely picture of what God is like: a Creator who loves his creation, who wants his creatures to love it and each other, who communicates that love as a rule of life, and then chooses to show how it works, first through an experimental group of people, and then by entering his creation himself, showing how the rule of love looks in practice, even in the face of the worst opposition his creatures could mount. I think that Creator would not let his creatures think they won against his love and permanently silenced the Creator-turned-creature but would reintroduce himself into creation. I think he would also give help to those who wish to follow him in spite of any internalized negative experiences by working with them internally. I think this is much more likely than that the universe is a vast and intricate machine with trillions of parts that accidentally came together or that a Creator would either hate or be indifferent to his creation and its fate.

This is just the outline of the argument. There are numerous details to work out. And as I said, while there is evidence for it, there is no absolute proof of it. I will grant that it is possible that at some of the points of the argument things might take a very different, if highly unlikely, turn.

But this likely scenario does resemble to a great degree what the Bible reveals and what we believe. And I think an intelligent person could follow this train of thought and even give assent to it.

But this is just a thought experiment. It is an hypothesis, a proposed explanation of the evidence we have which can serve as a starting point for further investigation.

So this is where we turn the thought experiment into a real experiment. If you actually want to test the reality of this, you need to open your mind and open your heart to the Creator who very likely made you in his image and then entered into his creation in the person of Jesus Christ and who can also enter into your life through his Spirit, and then say, “Lord, make me like Jesus. Make me a clear image of your love and justice and mercy. Make me an example that your ways are better than the ways of the world. Make me living proof that you exist and you love us and you forgive us and you transform us and you restore us to the persons you intended us to be. Purify my soul, illumine my mind, set my heart on fire for you. I ask this in the name of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ and through the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Two Paths

 The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 53:4-12 and Mark 35-45.

I was reading an article that listed 25 characters in TV shows and movies that the writers originally intended to kill off. Rambo, Poe Dameron from the recent Star Wars trilogy, Castiel from Supernatural, Ron Wesley from the Harry Potter series—all were slated for death but, usually due to their popularity, they continued to live. This goes back to Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wanted him to stay dead after his encounter with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. In fact he didn't write another story about Holmes for 10 years and when he did, he back-dated The Hound of the Baskervilles to before Holmes' death. But the reception of the book and monetary incentives made the author reread The Final Problem and work out a clever way to save the detective. Ian Fleming similarly sought to kill James Bond at the end of From Russia With Love but then came up with a plausible way to keep him alive for the next book. All of these writers ran up against something deep within the human psyche: we don't want our heroes to die. Because we see dying as failure. That's not what lies at the end of the hero's journey. That's where the path of the bad guy leads. Heroes are winners.

We don't want real life heroes to die either, though we know they will. So we hope heroic deaths await them but they seldom do. Patton died, not gloriously in battle, but of pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure after 12 days of paralysis caused by having his neck broken in a car accident. Richard the Lionheart survived the third crusade only to be shot in shoulder by a boy with a crossbow while Richard was trying to take a virtually unarmed castle. He died 11 days later of gangrene. Doc Holliday, who helped Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral, did not die in a gunfight with his boots on but of TB lying shoeless in a health spa. Even when those who live by the gun, die by the gun, it is not like the movies. While the real life Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were surrounded by soldiers, like the film, they didn't die in a hail of bullets, nor was it over in seconds. Instead it looks like after hours of exchanging fire with the soldiers, Butch dispatched the fatally wounded Kid before shooting himself. Hollywood cleaned it up.

At the very least the hero should die achieving his goal with his last breath, like John Wayne in The Shootist or Neo in the Matrix trilogy or Samson taking out 3000 Philistines. What's not heroic is being betrayed and then executed by your enemies before accomplishing your objective. That's what demoralized the disciples whenever Jesus predicted his being handed over to the authorities and crucified. That was not the Messiah they expected or wanted: a loser. They wanted another David, a holy warrior who would defeat his enemies and reign over a kingdom of God on earth to a ripe old age. James and John wanted to sit on thrones next to Jesus. Heroes are supposed to be winners.

You can even get that idea if you only read certain parts of the Bible, like various psalms and select sayings in the book of Proverbs. But then we have Isaiah 53 which describes God's servant suffering and dying. And not by using the “I'm taking all my enemies with me” strategy of Samson. Samson got himself into that position because of his sins. (Judges 16) He is the classic tragic hero who is brought down by his flaws.

But Isaiah is describing “the righteous one, my servant” (v.11) who is not getting the good things he deserves, the rewards due a winner. Instead “he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities...” (v.5). We screwed up but he is paying for it. That feels like, as our passage says, “a perversion of justice.” (v.8)

This is the cup and the baptism Jesus is talking about in our passage from Mark. James and John don't get it but this is Jesus' mission; this is the path he is called to follow. And the paradox is that in taking this path, Jesus doesn't just take away the sin in our lives; he fills those who accept and trust him with grace, God's unreserved, undeserved goodness

God's servant is not merely absorbing the consequences of our sins, and we are not merely benefiting by not being punished. Isaiah says, “...upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” While he receives pain and death for what we have done, we are receiving his eternal life, which gives spiritual wholeness and health. That's how “The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous.”

Look at it this way. If EMTs find someone who has overdosed on opioids, they administer naloxone, a drug that reverses the effect of the narcotic. This can stop someone from dying. But it doesn't make their addiction go away. It just means the person isn't going to die...this time. Naloxone doesn't stop the craving for the drug.

But what if the EMTs could also restore the person to a mentally healthy state where they were able to overcome their craving for the drugs they were addicted to? We are not talking about making the temptation go away because that would involve removing the addicted person from the world. Sure, if you were on a desert island, you would have to quit drugs, not out of willpower but because you can't take what you don't have. Similarly, people in jail have to give up smoking and drinking and drugs but once they are out of jail, those things are available to them again and so is the temptation.

So what if rather than the temptation being gone, you received the power to overcome it? What if instead of merely stopping you from going down the wrong path, the path to personal destruction, you were given the power to turn from the wrong one and take the right path, the one that leads to spiritual health and continued growth instead?

Too often we picture good and evil as static states. You are one or the other, Team God or Team Satan. But in fact, being good or evil are dynamic processes, like dying or recovering your health after being sick. Like diverging paths, you are moving more towards one destination than the other. Spiritually, you are either growing closer to God or drifting farther from him. You are either becoming more like Jesus—more faithful, more hopeful, more loving—or less like him. Everyone walks one path or the other.

Hitler did not begin as the figure we now use as a byword for utter evil. He started on that path as a bitter veteran of a lost war. Then he was the spokesperson of a small political group, long on rhetoric but short on actual power. Then he was the leader of one of many small political parties in the German government. Then he was the head of the nation. Then he was an aggressor who kept taking land from other nations. Then he was the instigator of a massive war. Then he was the force behind a systematic program of genocide. He didn't start as the worst version of himself. He became that way over time.

In contrast, Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone was the indulged son of a wealthy silk merchant. He loved to dress well, hang around with his rich friends and spend money. He wanted to be a troubadour and a knight. On an military expedition he was captured and imprisoned for a year. He had a vision and lost interest in his worldly ways. He joined an pilgrimage to Rome and begged with the poor. In a rundown church, he had a vision of Jesus telling him to repair his church, which Giovanni took literally. He changed paths. He sold some of his father's cloth to help the priest there. In response to his father's anger and his demand he repay him, Giovanni renounced his father and his inheritance. He stripped himself of his fine clothes and the local bishop covered his nakedness with his own cloak. Giovanni became a mendicant, begging for stones with which he rebuilt several small chapels. He nursed lepers and preached brotherly love and peace. He developed a following and created a simple rule of life for them. He went to the Pope and got permission to form a new religious order of friars. During the fifth crusade, he went to Egypt to convert the sultan or die trying. The sultan accepted him graciously and listened to him and let him return unharmed. He handed over the governing of his religious order to others. He is the first person to receive the stigmata, or 5 wounds of Christ, and he died at age 44 singing Psalm 141. We know him by the nickname his father gave him as a child, Francis, as in St. Francis of Assisi.

I chose Hitler and Francis because in their extremes they show how far people can go in either direction if they don't impede the process. Both Francis and Hitler could attract followers. Hitler turned his nation into a cult. Francis could have made his order a bit of a cult and had a good life, being the powerful head of a wealthy order. But the difference is that ultimately Hitler was all about having people serve him, even those being worked to death in concentration camps, whereas Francis was all about serving Jesus and other people. And as Jesus says in today's gospel, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” He said this to disabuse his disciples of the idea that following Jesus was the path to worldly power and success and glory. Jesus was not the obvious winner that people wanted; he was the suffering servant of God they needed. Neither pain nor death could make him turn from this path or change his mission.

Another option for Francis, the spoiled rich kid, was to have just paid lip service to God on Sunday and drop a small fortune in the offering plate paying for masses to be said for him. But instead he patterned himself on Jesus, sacrificing much to follow his mission, the path he was called to take. And his example did do a lot to repair the church of his day that was drifting away from God on a current of wealth and temporal power.

We're in much the same situation today. We have so-called Christians who see heroes the way the world does—as the disciples did in today's gospel!—as the rightful winners of glory and power over others. Ask yourself this: how many of the TV evangelists and pastors of mega-churches would change the paths of their lives and give up their wealth and comfort and expensive clothing and wander around preaching to the poor and nursing the sick and outcasts, like Francis? For that matter, would any of them voluntarily let their enemies strip and beat and torture them to death, like Jesus? Yet Jesus' qualifications for being his disciples were that they deny themselves and take up their crosses and follow in his footsteps. (Mark 8:34) Do the most prominent Christian leaders and popular preachers fit that description?

Do we? Do I? I'm 67 years old today. From my vantage point, I can say that I've seen God's hand at work in my life and I have heard his call and I have tried to follow Jesus. I even have scars on my hands and feet and sides. But it wasn't from imitating Jesus; it was from a stupid car accident. The resemblances, both physical and spiritual, are superficial; since taking this path as a teen, after more than half a century, I've still got a long way to go to be like Jesus.

Which is why we need to hear passages like Isaiah 53 and the passion accounts and Mark 8:34 and 10:45. Because otherwise we get comfortable and we don't notice the uncomfortable truths about our world. We are harming our children and our fellow human beings and our fellow creatures and the world God gave us through our arrogance and our laziness and our lust and our greed and our rage and our envy and our gluttonous self-indulgences. And if we want to be good stewards of what God has given us, we need to make some personal sacrifices. We need to stop living for ourselves and for the here and now. We need to stop taking the easy way out rather than the right way through each crisis.

At the garden in Gethsemane, after asking God to take away the cup of suffering and death, Jesus could have run the 2 miles to Bethany and avoided all that pain. But he didn't. He made a real sacrifice to save us. We needed it. Only he could do it. His commitment to saving others is what has attracted people to follow him.

But if the official organizations named after him do not show the same commitment to living out a life of loving service to others, then people will turn away from his path. And if you ask me that is why so many young people are leaving the church or never even trying it. They hear Jesus being preached about but they don't see the body of Christ doing the things that Jesus did. There is a huge gap between the ideals of Jesus and the reality of the church. At worst, churches and church leaders have cynically betrayed Jesus' vision of the kingdom of the God who is love. At best, we have congratulated ourselves prematurely on having achieved our aspirations or nearly so.

So we need to check that we are in fact on the right path, and not just dressing up earthly values in holy robes. Then we need to realize that, even after 2000 years, we really have just started. We haven't reached the kingdom of God at the end of the path. We have only sporadically produced the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We haven't gotten very close to embodying Christ on earth. We need to commit to Jesus' mission as he did.

While it is true that the church is not a museum for saints, when we say it is a hospital for sinners, I think what we are really thinking of is a hospice for those who want care and comfort before leaving earth for heaven. Instead the church should be seen as a rehab center, offering not just rest but also encouragement and challenges for us to meet. Hospitals make folks feel better but rehab centers help them get better at the life skills they need. Hospitals save lives; rehab centers help people have a life again. God doesn't want perpetually passive patients. He wants folks whose chief desire is to be able to stand up and walk with him along whatever path he leads them.

But to do that, we have to be committed to following the Great Physician's orders and to working with his Spirit to make that possible. We have to be willing to do what Jesus, the Divine Healer, tells us to do, no matter how painful, like to love and forgive others. We have to be willing to shed our dignity and sacrifice our pride and anything else holding us back. Nobody wants to use a walker or a cane, just like nobody wants to carry a cross. But if it's the price of getting better, of not being stuck where you are but getting where you need to be, then you just need to grab it and get moving.

And if it hurts—and it will—and you want someone to complain to and you want to talk to someone who understands that pain, talk to Jesus. He's been there, done that, and got the crown. And with his help, we can, too.

The Living, Breathing Word

The scriptures referred to are Hebrews 4:12-16.

I've decided to give up trying to get down to my original weight. 8 pounds, 5 ounces was unrealistic anyway.

That's one of thousands of jokes going around the internet. And as Isaac Asimov said, like most humor, it is based on a sudden shift of perspective. When people talk about going back to their original weight, we rarely realize that what they consider it to be is actually an arbitrary number that they reached in their early 20s or before they got married or before they had kids. The fact is that as living, growing beings, after the first week, we will always weigh more than we originally did. If we didn't, there would be something very wrong with us. One sign of a healthy baby is it gains weight; it grows. Nothing living stays exactly the same over time.

So what does the author of Hebrews mean when he says “the word of God is living and active?” How can words written 2000 and more years ago be “living and active?”

Life is a tricky thing to define scientifically, because there are so many varieties of living things: animals, plants, fungi, bacteria. There are certain basic characteristics of biological life but we can safely say the author of Hebrews was not a scientist. So let's stick to features people back then observed about living things. Growth is one. Another is breath.

In the very first book of the Bible we are told that God breathed into the first human the breath of life and they became a living being. (Genesis 2:7) Even before medical science, people knew that living persons and animals breathed and dead ones didn't. (Psalm 104:29) And today the first 2 things you check before doing CPR on someone is whether the person's airway is open and whether they are breathing.

It is not too much of a stretch to propose that the author of Hebrews was thinking along the same lines as Paul when he wrote to Timothy, “Every scripture is God-breathed...” (2 Timothy 3:16) That's the literal meaning of the word usually translated “inspired by God.” I breathe out, shape the breath with my throat, tongue, teeth and lips and thereby express myself. And all God-breathed scripture, Paul says, is “useful for instruction, for creating inner conviction, for setting straight, for training in righteousness.” ( 2 Timothy 3:16; my translation)

Of course, that could be said even if it were breathed out and expressed long ago. Everything dead once lived and breathed. But Hebrews says God's word “is living.” Which means the word is still alive and breathing, expressing God's message. The word is also “active.” The Greek word used is the one from which we get “energy.” It means “at work, effective, producing a result.” God's word is not a museum piece, like something a person created for his time and culture with nothing to say to us today.

But here's the thing: the Bible was written millennia ago using words and thought forms of a specific time and culture. So in Genesis it talks about God creating, not an atmospheric bubble around earth but a vault, because that's how the people at the time thought of the sky. Trying to explain that it was really a mixture of gases held around us by gravity would have gone nowhere then and distracted from the essential part of the message: God made the world we see and live in. As C.S. Lewis put it, science is like the footnotes to a poem. God's word is the poem itself. When Romeo says in the balcony scene, “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” there's no need to stop for a lecture on astronomy and the star in the center of our solar system; you get what he is saying about this radiantly beautiful girl he loves.

And while I highly recommend getting a study Bible and commentaries and Bible dictionaries and concordances and other books and apps for understanding the Bible in greater detail, the remarkable thing is that, even without these things, it can speak to you and you can get the essential meaning of it. It is not like one of those obscure art films that leave you completely in the dark at the end concerning what it was about. The Bible is about God creating a good world and when we ruin things, saving us through Jesus.

So in that way the word of God still communicates his message and is still effective in reaching people and changing their minds and their hearts. Though it was set down beginning in the late Bronze Age and going through the early Roman Empire, it still speaks to us in the early 21^st century. Just as it is popular to stage Shakespeare's plays in contemporary settings because the stories do not rely on all the trappings of the 16^th century to work. We can relate to the characters despite all that. And the Bible offers timeless wisdom and spiritual insight that has helped people for thousands of years.

But that is only true if we do not freeze the Bible in time. Instead it is like a photo album of the life of a still living person. You can look at the baby pictures and the school photos and graduation photos and note that you can readily identify the familiar eyes or smile of the person you know even back then. You can note the essential features that have persisted but you can also see the changes that have happened. And you can see some defining characteristics that will develop and grow stronger with time.

For instance in the world where the word of God was first spoken, slavery was a universal feature of all societies. But look closely and you notice that the Bible has laws that protect the slave. A fugitive slave was not to be returned to his master. (Deuteronomy 23:15-16) A slave permanently maimed had to be freed, even if only a tooth was knocked out. (Exodus 21:26-27) A master who killed a slave was punished. (Exodus 21:20) And after 6 years Hebrew slaves were to be freed. (Exodus 21:2) And even foreign slaves got to rest on the Sabbath. (Exodus 20:10) It is also where we get the concept and word “redeemer,” from the relative who redeems or buys back a kinsman from slavery. (Leviticus 25:25, 49)

In the New Testament, Paul reminds masters that they must “treat your slaves with justice and fairness, because you know that you also have a master in heaven.” (Colossians 4:1) In other words, treat your slaves the way you want God to treat you! Paul even tells slaves that if they have an opportunity to get free, they should take it. (1 Corinthians 7:21) And when he must, by law, return a runaway slave to his Christian master, Philemon, Paul tells him to go easy on the slave, Onesimus, charging to Paul anything stolen, (vv. 18-19) and treating him like a brother (v. 16) or as he would Paul himself (v.17). But he also strongly suggests that Philemon go even further and free Onesimus so that he can continue to help Paul in his ministry. (vv. 13, 21)

One of the reasons that slaveowners in the American South did not want their slaves to learn how to read, according to historian Henry Louis Gates Jr, is precisely because they did not want them to read the Bible! After all the central event in the Old Testament is God freeing an entire nation of slaves! And God and Jesus are characterized throughout the Bible as redeemers. (Psalm 19:14; 78:35; Isaiah 47:4; Jeremiah 50:34; Luke 24:21; Galatians 3:13; Titus 2:14; Revelation 5:9) So the slaveowners cherry-picked the scriptures that talked about slaves obeying their masters and ignored the ones that held them to account or talked about freeing people. They were like my grandmother who went through her picture albums and cut out the faces of the people she didn't like and didn't want to be reminded of.

But just like the distinctive features of children grow and become more pronounced, the distinctive features seen in the Bible are like snapshots of a living person and those features continue to grow stronger beyond that moment in time. And so Christians noticed this trend when it came to slavery. Their growth in understanding God's love led many early Christians to free their slaves. Some of their bishops had been slaves. There was even a bishop of Ephesus whose name was Onesimus, who may have been the same one who was the subject of Paul's letter. Later Christians led the movement to abolish slavery, beginning with Bishop Bartolme de la Casas, who opposed the the Spanish conquistadors making slaves of the native peoples in America. Christians like William Wilberforce in Britain and Francis Daniel Pastorius in the US led the movements to abolish slavery in their respective countries. And, yes, there were Christians who supported slavery and, yes, they quoted selected verses of the Bible, all the while ignoring the direction in which the living word of God was going. Yet scripture tells us we are to grow in Christ. (2 Peter 3:18; 1 Peter 2:2; Ephesians 4:15)

And here I want to draw attention to the wording in our passage from Hebrews. It says, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of joints and also marrow; and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of him to whom we must render account.” (translation and emphases mine)

Did you notice the surprising pronouns in verse 13? We are talking about the word of God but then the author uses the personal pronoun instead of the impersonal one we would expect. I omitted the uses of “it” because they are not in the Greek. This “him,” which is in the Greek, indicates that the word of God being spoken of is in fact Jesus Christ, identified as the Word of God in the first chapter of John's gospel.

Indeed, as C.S. Lewis wrote to a lady inquiring about the Bible, “It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to Him.” Jesus said, “You study the scriptures thoroughly because you think in them you possess eternal life, and it it these same scriptures that testify about me...” (John 5:39) In other words, Jesus is the Living Word of God and the Bible is the written word of God, which is about the living Word of God. In the Bible we get a true description of what Jesus said and did but it is a mistake to think that he has done nothing since. It is a mistake to think that he is not still speaking through his Holy Spirit and guiding us today.

There are issues we must deal with that were not around in the days of the Bible. There were no machines that kept bodies alive long after they would otherwise have died, thus giving rise to end of life issues. There were no weapons of war that caused mass death or even threatened all life on the planet then but there are now. There were no factories that could poison rivers or make the air unbreathable then. There were no micro-plastics so pervasive that we all, including our children, accumulate a credit card's worth of plastic in our bodies every year. There was nothing like the internet to spread not only knowledge but misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric and self-radicalizing propaganda to every person on the globe with a phone. There were no corporations which could do whatever they wished to make money without regard for the wellbeing of anyone but their stockholders and who could use their political contributions to make the government turn a blind eye to chemicals and practices that endanger people at large. Since such things were not in the Bible, are we to ignore them now?

N.T. Wright has said the Bible is like a play with a missing act. We have the beginning, where God creates everything. We have the part where we ruin his creation. We have the part where he puts his plan to rescue us to work. And we have the part where the plan culminates in him sending his Son to do what we can't in order to save us. We even have the ending, where God steps in and creates a new heaven and a new earth. The missing act is what we do between the end of the first century and the ending of the play. That's the part the author has given us to improvise.

But we can't go against what has already been established in the story. If you were missing part of Hamlet you wouldn't fill it with Hamlet strangling Ophelia or him approving of Claudius killing the king and usurping the throne. It would be out of character with what he has already said and done. But we have seen so-called Christians who have done things which contradict what Jesus did and said, like the crusades or the inquisition or persecuting other faiths or even other Christians. Jesus told Peter to put down his sword when his disciple tried to defend him at his arrest. (Matthew 26:51-52) He even healed the man Peter injured. (Luke 22:50-51) Later he told Pilate a sign that his kingdom was not from this world was that his disciples were not fighting to rescue him. (John 18:36) In addition, he told his disciples not to stop someone who wasn't part of their group from doing healings in his name. (Mark 9:38-40) Jesus also said to turn the other cheek and to love our enemies. (Matthew 5:38-48) Committing violence or persecuting others in the name of Jesus Christ is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.

C.S. Lewis, in the letter I quoted earlier, went onto to say, “But we must not use the Bible (our fathers too often did) as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts (isolated from their context and...read without attention to the whole nature & purport of the books in which they occur) can be taken for use as weapons.” And though compared to a two-edged sword, since Hebrews talks about the word of God penetrating to the point that separates joint from marrow, I think that a modern analogy would be a scalpel. After all, it talks about laying bare thoughts and intentions of the heart. And Jesus said it was out of the heart that evil comes. (Mark 7:21-23) In Ezekiel, God actually talks about what we would call a heart transplant. “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) In Jeremiah God says of his new covenant, “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds.” (Jeremiah 31:33) The solution is not external things like words written on stone or paper but God's living Word, Jesus, in our hearts.

The word for “breath,” that vital sign of life, in both Hebrew and Greek also means “spirit.” And that is how we can understand and stay in character with what God has expressed in his living and active Word: by having the Spirit of Christ within us. (Romans 8:9; Galatians 4:6; Philippians 1:19; 1 Peter 1:11) Just as it would not be in the spirit of Sherlock Holmes to solve a mystery by flipping a coin, it would not be in the Spirit of Jesus Christ to think or speak or act in a way that does not show love for God and for our neighbor. But it is in his Spirit to forgive, to heal, to feed the hungry and to visit those who are sick or in prison and to welcome the alien. (Matthew 25:31-46)

It would also be in the Spirit of Jesus to greet new and unfamiliar situations in new ways that are also loving, healing and forgiving. That's what Jesus did when a centurion approached him about healing his slave and said Jesus didn't have to use his usual method of going to the sick person and touching him. The centurion trusted that Jesus could just say the word and heal him at a distance. Jesus was amazed by this man's faith and this becomes the first but not last time Jesus heals this way. (Matthew 8:5-13; 15:21-28; Luke 17:11-14; John 4:46-54) If Jesus can try something new, so can we.

You'd be surprised at the number of things we accept as Christian that do not go back to the Bible but were introduced later in line with the Spirit of God's living Word: church buildings, Sunday schools, hospitals, ministries set up for specific needs, like for the homeless, for those with substance abuse, or for those caught in natural disasters, seminaries, ordained clergy, personal Bibles, and all the reference books I used for this sermon. Most Christians would think of those as good and natural outgrowths of God's word.

Restricting the activity of the living Word of God, Jesus Christ, to the Bible is as good as putting him into the same category as inspiring figures of the past who are dead. The risen Jesus said to his disciples, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven; if you retain anyone's sins, they are retained.” (John 20:22-23) He didn't say, “Here is a fixed list of all the things, good and bad, you will ever encounter and how to deal with every one of them.” He said the Spirit “will guide you into all truth.” (John 15:13) The Greek word for guide means “to lead the way.” But you don't need someone to lead the way if you aren't going anywhere you haven't been before. Jesus knew we would encounter things not covered in the written word of God. So we must rely on him, the living Word of God, speaking and working through his Spirit.

Is that scary? Yes, but so is growing up and leaving home and making a life. But just as you can always talk to Mom for advice on what you are dealing with, we can always talk to our heavenly Father about the challenges we are facing in our lives. And we can ask ourselves, “What would Jesus want me to do?” And then listen to his Spirit.

What's God Like?

The scriptures referred to are Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12.

In a famous Monty Python sketch, a couple of clients are waiting in an office to hear the presentations of 2 architects on a proposed residential block. The first, Mr. Wiggin, played by John Cleese, points to his model and says, “This is a 12 story block combining classical neo-Georgian features with the efficiency of modern techniques. The tenants arrive here and are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort, past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives.” 

As Mr. Wiggin explains what happens to the blood, the clients interrupt. “Did you say 'knives'?” they ask.

”Rotating knives, yes,” says Mr. Wiggin. 

“Do I take it that you are proposing to slaughter our tenants?” the clients ask. 

Mr. Wiggin looks a bit confused. “Does that not fit in with your plans?” 

“Not really. We asked for a simple block of flats,” the clients say. 

“Oh,” says Mr. Wiggin, “I hadn't fully divined your attitude towards the tenants. You see, I mainly design slaughter houses.” 

Then the sketch, as is typical of Python, veers off in another direction, satirizing Freemasons, a group of which the British are inordinately suspicious.

Why did I start my sermon with a 50 year old comedy sketch? Because of Mr. Wiggin's line about not fully divining the clients' attitude towards their tenants. And there are a lot of people, including some in charge of society, and even some in churches, who do not seem to understand God's attitude towards his creation and those who dwell in it. And part of that is due to a very selective reading of various scriptures that, pulled out of context, seem to support the idea that God wants his tenants to go, if not into rotating knives, then into hell. And this despite the one New Testament verse everyone knows, thanks to its ubiquity on bumper stickers and church sign boards and hand-lettered signs held up at televised sports: John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his unique Son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God's attitude? He loves the world of people so much that he sent his Son to save them.

Now usually the next topic would be the cross but I am following our passage in Hebrews which says, “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.” The author of Hebrews is basically saying what the gospel of John says in its first verse, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Or as the J.B. Phillips translation puts it, “At the beginning God expressed himself. That personal expression, that word, was with God and was God.”

Hebrews goes on to say, “He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being...” The Greek word translated “imprint” means a mold or a stamp used to make a coin. Just as a quarter or a silver dollar is the exact image the sculptor created, Jesus is the exact image of God's very being. In other words, Jesus Christ is God's personal expression of who he is. If you want to know what God is really like, look at Jesus. When people get God's attitude towards people wrong, it's usually because they get Jesus wrong.

We can literally see how people viewed Jesus by looking at Christian art. The earliest depiction of Christ, once we get past symbols like the ichtys (or fish) and the anchor, is that of the good shepherd, a beardless youth carrying a lamb on his shoulders. Jesus was also depicted as a baby, held by his mother. About 235 AD, he is portrayed as a young beardless philosopher, more typically Greco-Roman than Jew. And in scenes showing events from the gospels, such as his baptism or raising Lazarus, he is still seen as a youth, beardless and with short hair. Only from the late 3^rd century on do we see a bearded Jesus with long hair. And that may have been because beards became popular among Christians. So people were depicting Christ in their own image, not God's.

This becomes very obvious when Christianity is legalized by Constantine. Now that the faith is favored by the emperor, Christ starts being depicted as King, majestically enthroned and dressed in rich robes. Called Christ Pantocrator, meaning Christ Almighty or Christ Ruler of All, this version became one of the most common religious images in the East, where the emperor now resided. Christ's left hand holds a book for teaching and his right hand is raised in blessing. In the West we see a version of this called Christ in Majesty, where he's seated on his throne and surrounded by the 4 evangelists or other religious figures. A variant is Christ in Judgment, his hands pointing saints up to heaven and sinners down to hell. Those in power liked this version of Christ and fancied themselves to be like him, with the godlike power of life or death over others, even if it meant turning this world into a slaughterhouse for the people God created.

But how does Jesus describe himself? The title he most frequently uses of himself is Son of Man, which appears 84 times in the gospels. This phrase could mean simply a human being but Jesus' use of it makes it obvious he is thinking of the passage in Daniel that says, “And with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man was approaching. He went up to the Ancient of Days and was escorted before him. To him was given ruling authority, honor, and sovereignty. All peoples, nations, and language groups were serving him. His authority is eternal and will not pass away. His kingdom will not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14) 

And indeed the largest number of Son of Man sayings have to do with him coming in glory to judge those who are in the right with him or those who aren't. Yet those he judges as being right with him aren't usually the powerful but those who helped the poor and disadvantaged. Those who neglected to do so, even though they had the power, are the ones who are condemned. (Matthew 25:31-46)

The second largest group of Son of Man sayings have to do with his suffering, death and resurrection. He will be betrayed, abused and killed by the authorities. This was unique. Nothing in Jewish thought connected the Messiah with suffering and death. The only thing like it was the suffering servant of God found in Isaiah 53. And in contrast to the popular image of a king on a throne, the Son of Man's glory is revealed in his death on the cross. (John 13:31) Jesus, explaining why his followers must be servants to all, says, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) This is not your typical earthly ruler, then or now.

Instead, “the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (Matthew 8:20) “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) “The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10) even of those who speak against him. (Matthew 12:32) The Son of Man does not live for himself but dies for others. (John 12:23-24, 32-33) Or as it says in Hebrews, Jesus died “that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” Why? Because he so loved the world, he was willing to die to save it.

And while all Christians affirm that Jesus died for us, there is resistance to the logic that we are to be like him in selfless sacrifice. When Peter pushed back on Christ's saying that he must suffer and die, Jesus said, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and for the gospel will save it. For what benefit is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his life?” (Mark 8:34-36)

But the most popular forms of Christianity are precisely those that downplay disowning yourself and taking up the instrument of your death and following Jesus down that road. The biggest churches and the most popular preachers are generally those who say God wants you to be rich and happy and have the good life now. They tell you to claim it. It's yours if you only believe hard enough. Which means if you aren't rich and happy, it's your own fault for lacking sufficient faith.

That's a distortion of the gospel severe enough to be called a heresy, a false teaching. Jesus never guarantees anyone worldly riches and earthly pleasures. (John 16:33) In fact, one rich man, who loves his possessions more than following Jesus, is told to sell all he has and give it to the poor. When the man leaves Christ's presence, crestfallen, Jesus says, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” (Luke 18:18-23) His listeners, shocked because they thought God must favor the rich because of all that he has blessed them with, ask Jesus, “Then who can be saved?” To which Jesus replies, “This is impossible for mere humans, but not for God; all things are possible for God.” (Mark 10:27) Wealth is not evidence of God's favor, much less salvation. Those following Jesus must be willing to make sacrifices, as he did.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says, “You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:5-8) Jesus did not cling to his position as God but gave up his divine prerogatives and became one of us. He further humbled himself and willingly went to his death, the painful and humiliating death on the cross, for our sake. If he did that for us, how can we hold back from letting everything go and following him?

Paul continues, “As a result God exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow—in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:9-11) Likewise Jesus says that whatever we give up for him will be repaid by God 100 times over. (Matthew 19:29)

Who God is and his intentions toward us are clear if you look at Jesus. He does not hate or wish to harm us. God is love, self-sacrificial love for the lost and those who need forgiveness. (1 John 4:8-10) He is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to save us. And we are to follow his example.

Because not only is Jesus the exact image of God but we, too, were created in God's image. (Genesis 1:27) That image has been marred in us by our sin and selfishness and lack of love for God and others. But Jesus came to restore that image. As in says in 1 John, “...what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever it is revealed we will be like him...” (1 John 3:2) In other words, we will embody Christlike love for others, helping, forgiving, healing and reconciling them to God and to each other.

So if you want to know what God is really like, look to Jesus. And if you want to know what we can become, look to Jesus. But don't just look. Follow him. Leave behind what clings to you and tries to hold you back. It won't always be pleasant or easy. But it will be fulfilling and rewarding. And it is what you were created to be.