Facing Fears

The scriptures referred to are Jeremiah 20:7-13 and Matthew 10:24-39.

All of us driving on US-1 that day could see what was going to happen. The Key deer was obviously in distress. He was running in tight circles in the parking lot of the Dion's Quikmart. He kept lurching toward the highway and then spinning away. He wanted to cross the road but the traffic had him scared. All of the drivers slowed. And suddenly he shot across the access road and US-1, heedless of the moving cars. If we hadn't seen him and starting braking, he would have been hit—perhaps several times. All the drivers on Big Pine Key have noticed this on other occasions. If a deer is on the side of the road and starts acting skittish, odds are it will not wait until the road is clear to cross, but will, without warning, bolt right in front of an oncoming car. Panic leads to bad decisions.

It is not only the so-called dumb beasts that can be panicked into disaster. In the 2002 film, The Sum of All Fears, based on the Tom Clancy novel, CIA analyst Jack Ryan discovers that terrorists are going to detonate a nuclear bomb in an American city. When he is unable to prevent it, he then must stop Russia and the US from launching World War 3. What is chilling is how plausible the situation envisioned in the movie is. After 9/11 the fear that terrorists would use a nuclear weapon was all too justified. It even has Russia involved in an invasion of Chechnya, just as they are in Ukraine today, making tensions in the world high. As the movie shows, fear can push our nations into precipitating precisely what we most dread—all-out nuclear war.

Matthew 10:16-39 is all about fear. Jesus is preparing to send the disciples out and he is telling them they can expect the worst. “I am sending you out like sheep surrounded by wolves...” They can count on opposition—from the religious authorities, from the government, even from members of their own families. On the face of it, this is not the best recruiting speech. But greater than the fear of what you know is fear of the unknown. Horror novelist Stephen King says the hardest part of his craft is making the monster live up to all the dread he has been generating. If you remember the other version of his book IT, the 1990 miniseries with Tim Curry, the actual sight of the pre-CGI monster, a giant spider puppet, is a tremendous let down after the creepy buildup. It was scarier when you didn't know what it was. In the Tom Clancy movie the presidents of both Russia and the US are trying to make life and death decisions based on very limited knowledge of what is going on. This causes them and their advisors to speculate and magnify the true nature of the threat they are facing. Ryan realizes he must let both sides know what really happened if he is to diffuse the fear that is driving events.

So in this passage Jesus is replacing fear of the unknown with a realistic view of what the disciples are likely to face. And he is obviously talking of future generations of Christians more than the immediate mission of the Twelve. For the first 300 years of the movement Christians did face persecution and even death. And that's because their opponents were afraid as well. The Jewish authorities feared what they saw as a popular heresy among their fellow Jews. The Roman rulers feared the idea that Christians felt they owed a higher allegiance to Jesus than to the emperor. Caesar, not Jesus, was the king of kings and divine ruler of the Roman citizen. To say “Jesus is Lord” was treason. Parents were hurt and outraged when their children abandoned their Jewish or their pagan faith and practices in order to worship a man executed in the manner of a slave or traitor. Many a convert was declared dead to his family when he chose to follow Jesus.

Family was important to both Romans and Jews. Jews especially did not think of themselves as individuals first but as part of their people. Solidarity with their fellow Jews was essential. This concept is what Paul is talking about in Romans 5:15-19. If all humans are members of one family, and Adam is our father, then his sin becomes our sin. As the Tom Clancy movie illustrates, the decision of the head of a people determines the fate of those people. A bad decision by the leader of a country can have devastating effects on his nation. Adam's decision mired us all in sin and its consequence: spiritual death. But if we follow Jesus, then his grace liberates us from sin and death. He puts us in the same loving relationship with God that he has.

Jesus said he is bringing not peace but a sword to the earth. What he means is that, without his desiring to, his very presence will divide people, causing them to take sides and sever even intimate relationships. In which case people will have to make a painful decision: to stay in the family in which they were born or to choose to be born anew into the family of Christ. Exile from your loved ones is a terrifying prospect. But sometimes something is so important that you must separate yourself from those who were closest to you. Recovering alcoholics and people in toxic family situations often find themselves in this position. At one point in the Clancy movie, Ryan asks about the condition of the hospital where his girlfriend works. He doesn't know if she has survived the explosion and cannot contact her. But unlike most Hollywood films, Ryan doesn't go off searching for her. The fate of the world is more important than the woman he loves. His message can save the world and it must have the highest priority.

In today's passage, Jeremiah suffers because of his message. It is unpopular and he sometimes feels as if God has tricked him into being his prophet. But he knows better. He cannot hold in the truth. It burns within him like a fire in his bones. He must deliver the message God has given him and put his trust in the Lord.

Consistently near or at the top of the list of fears that most people have is speaking in public. There are classes and seminars and organizations devoted to helping people overcome their fear of speaking in front of others. But there's no technique that makes an unpalatable truth acceptable to the majority of people. That's why politicians rarely take stands that are unpopular with their voters and why we have the leaders we deserve. We either get the bland leading the bland or the outrageous leading the outraged. The candidate who tells voters you cannot both cut taxes and increase the benefits they get from the government doesn't get elected. The diet plan that says the only way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more isn't going to top the bestseller list. The Christian who tells the world that following Jesus means putting God before self, giving up some pleasures, taking on some hardships, and actually loving everyone, including your enemies, is going to be at best a laughingstock and at worst a martyr.

Quite the catalog of fears, isn't it? Unpopularity, ridicule, being an outcast, the loss of loved ones, death. And speaking in public. What is the answer to these fears?

Let's start with speaking up for Christ. The root of this fear is not knowing how to express oneself. We fear we will say the wrong thing and look foolish. As a priest who once notoriously forgot to say “Thou shalt not commit adultery” when we were reciting the 10 commandments one Lenten Sunday and who another time announced a hymn as “thongs of thankfulness and praise,” I can assure you from personal experience, you do not literally die of embarrassment. What's in danger is not yourself but your inflated image of yourself. It's important to be able to laugh at yourself. The pompous die a thousand deaths. Hence the popularity of the show Frasier and its announced revival. Humility is a good thing to take with you as you mount the pulpit.

But Jesus promises that we will not be alone when we speak up for him. “Do not worry about how to speak or what to say, for what you should say will be given to you at that time. For it is not you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” (Matthew 10:19-20) Listen to the Spirit. If you are in touch with God's Spirit he will give you the words.

Or not. My predecessor, the Rev. Lynn Jones, told me that when she stood before the Commission on Ministry and was asked about her call to become a priest, she found herself choked up. She was so emotional she could not express herself. Because of that she was sure that she would not get approval to become a candidate for ordination. Afterwards a member of the commission approached her. He told her that when that question was asked, he thought that, with her being a lawyer, she would have some slick answer to charm them. But when she was suddenly speechless, and all of these emotions played out on her face, he knew how important and how real her call was to her. Her reply was written on her face. And so he voted for her. Sometimes the right answer is an eloquent silence.

As someone who used to write and record radio ads, I'm going to let you in on a secret: the most important thing in an ad is not the words you use, or the music you play under it, or whether the announcer has a deep resonant voice. Those things can help. But what is essential is what you are offering people. If you have what they want at a price they are willing to pay, you will have their attention, regardless of how artlessly it is presented. Judge for yourself. One commercial announces in a beautiful baritone, “And with every purchase you will receive a bag of manure.” The other says in a scratchy voice, “Every customer will get a sack of gold free.” Which would you respond to?

The gospel is gold. It says that at the heart of the universe is a God who loves you and offers to adopt you as his beloved child. He will forgive you for all the bad you've done and will help you become the person he created you to be. He will never leave you or forsake you. And the proof of his love is that he became a human being just like you, lived the blameless life you wish you could, suffered as you have, died as you will one day, and conquered death as you will as well if you trust him and open your heart to him and follow him. It's that simple.

Say that in your own words and people will listen. They may ridicule it but it will stick in their brains and hopefully will bear fruit someday. Trust God, commune with his Spirit, read his words and meditate upon them and they will be there when you need them.

As to the fear of pain and death, Jesus says there are worse things than that. “Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.” We all have to die. The question is whether we die spiritually intact or compromised and corrupt. Do we die a friend of God or his enemy? Will Jesus commend us or deny us?

But we just said that God is a God of love; why are we saying we must fear him?

You have no doubt heard of the Darwin Awards, an internet site where true stories of incredible and often fatal stupidity are posted. They are called the Darwin Awards because these people have taken themselves out of the gene pool and possibly improved the world's population by leaving it. For instance a man on a jetski tried to recharge its battery by using jumper cables. This might have worked had he not first hooked them up to his car and then jumped into the water with the other ends. He did not have a proper respect for the laws of physics and electricity. Others do not respect the laws of nature. When I worked in Yellowstone Park one summer, the rangers told me about tourists who, in order to get “cute” pictures of their children interacting with wild bears, would smear the child's face with jam so the bear would lick them. In other words, associate their kid with food in the bear's mind. Or they would try to get a photo of their baby riding on the back of a bear. Recently there has been a spate of stories about people trying to pet the wild bison with predictably painful results. Their reckless lack of appropriate fear often leads to avoidable tragedy.

Fear can be a gift. A healthy fear of the proper things can keep you alive. It's like the healthy respect a good sailor has for the sea and the weather. He knows they are powerful and outside his control. He is at their mercy so he doesn't take them for granted. God is loving but he is also powerful. It is wise to have a healthy respect for him. He is not a teddy bear. As C.S. Lewis said, he is not tame but he is good. Disobeying the laws he gave us for our own wellbeing is foolhardy.

A healthy respect for God can actually give you courage. It is said that Scottish reformer John Knox so feared God that he was afraid of no man. Many a person brought up to respect and obey his parents can tell you that he avoided the problems some of his friends got into because he feared what his parents would say or think of him. Parental prohibition can be a great protection against peer pressure. God is our heavenly Father, whose strength we can draw on when we have to stand up to others on some matter of principle. Martin Luther refused to go against his conscience when asked to recant the truths he wrote about God even though he knew he might be killed for it. Corrie Ten Boom and her family defied the Nazis rather than God and were sent to the camps for hiding Jews. Only Corrie survived. Pastor Dietrich Bonhoffer opposed the idea that Nazism and Christianity were compatible and was sent to a death camp. He was hung. Death holds no fear for those who follow the one who died for us and rose to life again.

The ultimate answer to fear is the knowledge that God cares for us. God is aware of each part of his creation, even the common sparrow. How much more is he concerned for us.

When a new parent takes their baby into their arms for the first time, they instinctively count their fingers and toes. Jesus said God has counted the hairs on our heads. Admittedly that's not very hard in my case but what a wonderful picture of God's parental love and intimacy.

With such a God on our side how can we let fear of disdain, disapproval or even death stop us from carrying out our mission? We serve a powerful God who has every right to reject us for our betrayals of him but who forgives us and loves us instead. He doesn't ask us to be great speakers or big successes in the eyes of the world. He only asks us to be faithful witnesses to his love so that others will come to know him. 

Without a Net

The scriptures referred to are Matthew 9:35-10:15.

One of the scariest statements in becoming a health care professional concerns learning medical procedures. The saying goes: “See one, do one, teach one.” In other words, as you start to practice in the field you often get to see the procedure once and then you are called upon to do it. And eventually to teach someone else how to do it. Now obviously, as a nursing or medical student, you have read up on the procedure. You've been quizzed and tested on your knowledge. You have seen your instructor do it on a real patient. And your instructor will be there, supervising your initial attempt. Still, it's stressful when you are standing over a patient, about to introduce a tube or a needle into his or her body for the first time while your teacher and fellow students scrutinize your every move.

So imagine what the disciples felt when Jesus sent them out to do as he had done—not just to preach but to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” Sure, they had seen Jesus do it hundreds of times but now it's their turn. When someone carries in his sick child, pale and feverish, it's them, not Jesus, who's expected to cure her. When someone raving and shrieking is dragged before them, they must restore him to his right mind. When someone covered in a loathsome skin disease approaches them, they have to reach out and heal him. When a tearful family presents them with a recently deceased loved one, they are supposed to bring him back to life. And you thought your job description was tough!

And talk about performance anxiety! Jesus has been doing his ministry for about 2 years at this point. Everyone has heard of him. So when the disciples enter a town and announce they are acting in his name, people are going to expect big things from them. After all, the disciples are representing Jesus, an incomparable healer, wonder-worker and preacher. The disciples know they have someone extraordinary to live up to. They can't afford to fail.

So what are their qualifications? At first glance, they don't look like much. They are a ragtag group of fishermen, tax collectors and the like. Only a few have vivid personalities. We have biographical information on just a handful of them. Most are only names to us. We know less about them than we know about the first rejected contestant on a reality show. But that's not important. What we know or see is irrelevant; it's what Jesus saw in them that counts. And apparently he saw people capable of doing this work.

We know that even Jesus couldn't heal those who didn't put their trust in him. (Mark 6:4-6) But we know that the faith of the healer is just as important as that of the person seeking healing. (Mark 9:23) In the Book of Acts, Luke tells us of some non-Christian exorcists in Ephesus who try to cast out demons “in the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches.” Not only doesn't this work but the possessed man beats the would-be exorcists so severely that they flee his house, naked and bleeding. (Acts 19:13-16) Obviously they themselves didn't believe in Jesus.

So Jesus chose 12 disciples who really trusted him. They believed his message and they believed in his character. They didn't always understand him (Matthew 13:36) and they weren't terribly sure yet he was the Messiah, because of how different Jesus was from the popular conception of God's anointed prophet/priest/king, but they trusted him. They knew he was doing good and was acting in God's name. They were committed to him and to his cause and that was more important to Jesus than their resumes.

So Jesus summoned them and gave them authority. For the first time they were apostles, people “sent out” as ambassadors, envoys, and heralds of the kingdom of God. But the only reason they could do this was that Jesus empowered them to do it.

He didn't make it easy on them either. He tells them not to take money with them. This makes them dependent upon the hospitality of others. In the Middle East, hospitality was considered a major virtue. It was not unusual for a poor family to invite a stranger into their home, feed him and offer him a place to sleep. Still, people are people and you can't always expect to encounter such generosity, even in a culture that encourages it. (Luke 16:19-20) So the disciples had no choice but to stay with whomever invited them in and eat whatever was served.

Jesus also forbids them to bring a bag. This may have been for carrying provisions or may have been a collection bag, used by itinerant preachers to collect offerings in much the same way a street musician uses his guitar case to catch coins. So they couldn't even beg for what they needed.

Then Jesus tells them not to take 2 tunics. The Greek indicates that he is talking about a person's basic undergarment. This was a kind of sack with head and arm holes. The average person in Jesus' day didn't have a closet full of clothes. However it might have been nice to change your undergarment occasionally.

Jesus also says “No” to sandals. This seems rather harsh. In Mark's version Jesus tells them to take sandals (Mark 6:9) so Matthew may be referring to not taking a second pair. And it's not like Jesus is talking about Birkenstocks. In his day, a sandal was just a sole made of leather, or wood, or dried grass, tied to the foot with straps. It was better than being barefoot but only just.

Finally Jesus forbids them to bring a staff. Now a walking stick was nice to have on a long hike but it also made a handy weapon if you were attacked by bandits on the road.

Why is Jesus making these demands of his apostles? William Barclay makes the interesting observation that, according to the Talmud, people entering the temple had to leave these things behind. He suggests that Jesus was comparing entering villages and humble homes with entering God's temple. This mission was a holy one and they are representing God and acting on his authority. So I suppose leaving your sandals behind makes sense. Moses was told to take off his shoes in God's presence. (Exodus 3:5)

But I think Jesus' purpose was to take away all the things that the disciples relied on, all their crutches and security blankets, and to make them rely on God alone. They would have to trust him for safety, food and shelter. Because that was the only way they could succeed at their mission.

When you have a lot of possessions, you tend to put a lot of trust in them. For instance, a study found something surprising about owning an popular model of car. If you're in a accident, you are more likely to die if you are in an SUV! The researchers weren't sure why. It may be that an SUV holds more people and if more people are involved in an accident, it increases the odds that one or more may die. It may be the fact that SUVs are more likely to roll over in an accident. Or it may be that, when you are in such a big and heavy vehicle you feel more secure than you would in a smaller car and so you might neglect to buckle your seatbelt. Complacency kills.

Jesus was taking away the margin of safety for his apostles. He wanted them to work without a net. He was kicking them out of the nest and he knew they'd never learn to fly if they had parachutes. He wasn't being cruel; he was preparing them for when he would be gone. They needed to know they could operate on faith alone. If they had money or an emergency stash of food or a collection bag or a hefty staff, they wouldn't realize how much they could rely on God alone.

Jesus was also forcing his disciples to become part of the communities they were entering, if only for a while. If they were to bring God's love to others by word and deed, they were also to rely on the providence of God, mediated through others. Today our electronic advantages lessens our immediate need for and even contact with other people. We think we are self-reliant. Cocooned in our air-conditioned homes, wired to the world, with hundreds of cable channels and loads of streaming channels, plus a device full of 10,000 songs, we live in gilded isolation. Which, as we saw in the pandemic, is not healthy. It is not good for humans to be alone. (Genesis 2:18) Plus we forget that all this is dependent on a massive infrastructure, which is vulnerable to all kinds of external interference and problems.

We in the Keys ought to be especially aware of how much of an illusion our security and welfare are. Just imagine what would happen if a hurricane took out but one bridge between here and the mainland. What if it took out the power lines and water and cell towers? If so, do you know your neighbors? Do you know which person in your neighborhood is a nurse? Do you know who has a ham radio? Do you know who has a cistern or a well? Do you know who has a boat big enough to take you to a hospital or the mainland if you are hurt and the road or bridges are out? Do you know who has diabetes and might need you to refrigerate their insulin using your generator? Those apocalyptic movies and shows make you think that all you need to survive a disaster is weapons. But what you'll really need is a caring community.

Most of the people in the world live like this, relying not on advanced technology but on their community and on God. Church attendance is down in the West, where we think we have everything we need. But it is exploding in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Unlike 2/3s of the world, we currently have a choice as to whom or what we will ultimately place our faith in. Will we put it in things or in God? External circumstances can cut us off from things. They can even cut us off from other people at times. But nothing can ever cut us off from God. (Romans 8:38-39)

However, we can cut ourselves off from him, just as we can cut ourselves off from fully experiencing what God can do through us. To counteract this, we must let go of the things we usually look to for security and learn to rely on him alone.

What mission is God giving you? What journey is he sending you on? Don't worry about your ability. Don't fret about doing something you've never done before. He has prepared it for you and he has prepared you for it, provided you are his disciple, a student of Jesus' teachings and life, and you follow him through his guiding and empowering Spirit. As Paul discovered, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. (Philippians 4:13) It doesn't matter if we are just ordinary people. What's essential is that we trust in an extraordinary God. Because nothing is too big or too hard for him.

Difficult or Impossible?

The scriptures referred to are Hosea 5:15-6:6, Psalm 50: 7-15 and Matthew 9:9-13.

Memes on the internet have killed all those comical faxed and photocopied cartoons and signs you used to see tacked up on office bulletin boards and taped above desks. You know, the ones that said, “Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Or “I can only be nice to one person a day and today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn't look good for you either.” My favorite is a quote from Mark Twain: “Eat a live toad first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” And then there is the ironic: “The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.”

One thing I like about that last one is that it differentiates between 2 things we often confuse: the difficult and the impossible. As I used to tell my kids when they balked at doing something, the two are not the same. But we frequently shrink from doing the difficult and act as if it's well nigh impossible. It's not merely the physically difficult things that intimidate us. Sometimes what we find the most daunting is what's psychologically difficult for us to do. Like facing a problem we would rather ignore. Or having to deal with someone, maybe even a family member, with whom we have a troubled history. Or acknowledging and trying to reform our most deeply embarrassing flaw. These things aren't impossible; they just feel that way. And yet inevitably we have to confront them.

Many turn to religion to shield them from the unpleasant facts in their lives. They seek a God who is all comfort and forgiveness. But by concentrating on only on these aspects of God, they ignore a great deal of God's nature and end up constructing a false idol, which we might call the cosmic teddy bear. This non-threatening god is just a bit of fluff to hug and bury their face in when reality rears its ugly head. He is something to curl up with at bedtime with hopes of Disney-like dreams. The signs these people put in their houses and over their desks and on their Facebook pages say things like “God will never give you more than you can handle.” Which is not biblical. For one thing, if you can handle all your problems yourself, why do you need God? And what happens to your faith when you get cancer or lose a loved one or have to deal with something else you really can't handle? Some things are too much for us alone. Which is why we need God's help.

And this soft and cuddly god is not the God who tells Abram to leave his home and family and journey hundreds of miles to an unknown land in hopes of getting property and progeny. This is not the God who appears to Moses as an unquenchable fire and commands him to confront a hard-hearted Pharaoh and lead his people out of slavery. This is not the God who does not let the cup of crucifixion pass from Jesus so that humanity might be saved from itself. Some things have to be done.

I haven't seen the sentimental old comic strip Rose is Rose in years but it did have an interesting depiction of a guardian angel. The angel usually looked like Rose's cute little son Pasquale only with a robe, a halo and wings. But when something threatens the little boy his guardian angel become a fierce flint-faced giant, with an enormous sword and shield. God is a little like that. He is loving and can be gentle when that's what we need but he is also formidable and may seem hard. Any parent who really takes her role as both nurturer and protector seriously can appreciate the paradox. There are times when you shouldn't be your child's pal; for his sake, you must be the one with authority. You must tell him or her what to do and what not to do. You may even have to discipline them to protect them from the more dire consequences of their behavior, especially actions that lead to injuring themselves or others. And you will have to endure them telling you they hate you for it.

God sounds very much like the exasperated parent in our passage from Hosea. “What shall I do with you?” he asks. “Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early.” Our affection for God does tend to evaporate when he gets tough with us.

We really hate it when God asks us to do the difficult. But that is part of his role as God. He is not our omnipotent butler; he is not here to make us comfy. He is here to save us from ourselves and that that means commanding us to do what feels like the spiritual equivalent of cleaning our rooms or scrubbing the toilet. It's not fun but it's necessary.

In ancient Israel when someone sinned, they were expected to go to the temple and offer an animal sacrifice. In an agrarian culture a bull or a goat is valuable. Giving one up to God is a sacrifice. For the Masai tribe in Kenya, cows are literally sacred. They give milk. They act as pack animals. They are food. They even act as money. A person's wealth is measured in cattle. To be without animals is to truly be close to starvation.

Columnist Leonard Pitt wrote of how the tribe raised $5000 to send one of their own to America to become a doctor. Of course, that amount didn't even begin to pay for a medical education. But then a medical school offered the young Masai a complete scholarship. When the African pre-med student returned home on school vacation he told them of how 3000 people were killed on 9/11. The tribe was horrified that anyone would do so much evil to a nation that was doing them so much good. So they gave America the biggest gift they could think of: 14 of their precious cattle. It was a great sacrifice for them.

In Biblical times, people thought of domesticated animals in the same way. But apparently some folks thought God needed the meat or liked the smell of barbecue. But, as God says in Psalm 50, he doesn't need the sacrifices. So why did he command them? To reinforce the idea that sin has consequences, negative consequences, and that somebody usually has to pay for them, even with his life. The point wasn't the animals sacrificed. As God says in Hosea, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6) The sacrifices were not magical but a teaching tool, to make us realize a deeper truth about the cost of sin.

The blood of bulls cannot really erase our sins. Ultimately the animal sacrifices were a preparation for the real thing, an enacted prophesy of the day when someone would have to pay for all people's sins. And that person was Jesus.

But Jesus is the Messiah, God's anointed prophet, priest and king. What good is he dead? Perhaps that is one of the things Jesus was thinking about in the garden of Gethsemane. He has accepted his role as Messiah. He has taught the people; he has gathered the disciples, the nucleus of the new people of God. Now God is asking him to take on the consequences of the whole world's sins. Jesus, fully human as well as fully God, naturally doesn't want to. Yet he puts his will in harmony with his Father's and goes to the cross.

God may ask us to do the difficult at times but he asked Jesus to do the impossible: to pay for all the wrongs and injustices of all the people in the world. To defeat death. To die and yet rule the living. But for God nothing is impossible. Jesus' resurrection is God's sign that nothing can stop, nothing can hinder, nothing can thwart his love for us.

Faced with this, how can we refuse when God asks us to merely do what is difficult? Look at what Matthew does.

Matthew was a tax collector. Which means he was probably rich. He was most certainly hated. Because the Romans taxed everything. They taxed the land one owned. Plus one tenth of a farmer's grain or one fifth of his fruit went to the emperor. In addition the Romans collected a 1% income tax. There was also a poll tax on every male aged 14 to 65 and on every female 12 to 65. These were statutory taxes. They were checked against the census and every cent had to go to maintaining the military empire.

So why would any Jew become a tax collector and receive all the hatred for helping those oppressing their people? Greed. There were other, less easy-to-monitor taxes. There was a duty of 2.5 to 12.5% on all imports and exports. There were taxes for traveling on main roads, taxes on crossing bridges, taxes on entering markets, towns and harbors. There were taxes on pack animals, taxes on the axles and wheels of carts, taxes on goods bought and sold. And on these things, the tax collector could add a surcharge for himself. Or he could take bribes from the rich in order to reduce their official taxes. Which made tax collectors rich.

No wonder tax collectors were hated. Here were people fleecing their neighbors and countrymen. They were considered traitors. They were barred from the synagogues, and treated as if they were as unclean as pigs. They were classified  with robbers and murderers by the rabbis. So of course they associated with the other outcasts of society. Who else would be friends with them?

Jesus would. And maybe that's why Matthew reacted as he did. He had money but no real friends. He had a nice house but he could not enter God's house. He had plenty of food but his soul was hungry for God's love. He was materially wealthy but spiritually destitute. Then this rabbi, Jesus, comes to him. Matthew has heard talk of him. He's heard of his words and his works of wonder throughout the district that Matthew administers. Perhaps he has talked with Jesus before as he collected taxes from him and his disciples. But now Jesus says to him, “Follow me.”

Matthew stares at Jesus. Does he mean me? he wonders to himself. Jesus stares back, waiting for an answer. And now everybody is looking at Matthew. What is the rabbi doing? Why is he talking to that—that tax collector?! Surely he is not inviting him to join us, his disciples think.

Matthew knows what this means. This means an end to his cushy job and comfy life. This means leaving his nice chair and instead walking miles around the country with Jesus daily as he spreads the word. This means no longer sleeping on his soft bed in his fine house but on the hard ground outdoors. It means a difficult life.

But it also means the end of his being shunned by God and man. It means the end of his exile and the beginning of a new life with real friends and a master he can respect. Matthew knows an opportunity when he sees it. He may not get another chance. He jumps up from his table and invites Jesus to one last feast, a big farewell party to his old life. Matthew is making a big sacrifice but he is gaining so much more.

What Matthew did, giving up his wealthy life, was difficult but so was what Jesus did every day: eating and drinking and sometimes arguing with sinners. How could he tolerate their coarse jokes and immoral lifestyles? How could he stand self-righteous critics who found fault with how and when he chose to heal the sick and suffering? How could he bear to be around such people? The same way a doctor can bear to probe a dirty wound or drain a pus-filled abscess or try to get through to a patient who is resisting his efforts to make them better. Because that is his calling: to help and heal all who come to him.

Our calling is also to do what is difficult: to approach the unapproachable. To forgive the unforgivable. To love the unlovable. Because Jesus did that and more. Jesus did the impossible: though holy and immortal, he died for us sinners. The least we can do is live for him. 

Three Ways of Knowing God

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 1:1-2:3 and Matthew 28:16-20.

It was Christmas and my mother and my brother thought it would be nice if Santa actually handed out the presents. So they bought a Santa suit and told me to wear it. My niece was just old enough that she might see through the disguise if her father wore it but she might not if I did. As for my son, he was just over a year old. He might be taken in. He was—and he began to scream and cry. I guess it was one thing to talk about old Saint Nick and to read about him and even to see him on TV. But to have him standing in front of you, in the flesh, not as a concept or as a story but as a huge man in red...well, it was terrifying. Nobody ever wore that costume again.

11 men go to Galilee to meet a man they saw die. And when they see him, they are overwhelmed with awe and worship him, even though some entertain doubts. And then he gives them a mission: to go to all the nations in the world and make the people his followers. It's a daunting task. But he promises them they will not be alone. He will be with them every day, every step of the way.

After Pentecost, the success of the apostles' preaching brought them into conflict with the same religious authorities who engineered Jesus' execution. So the reconstituted 12, with Matthias selected to fill Judas Iscariot's place, spread out and took the gospel to the ends of the known world. We read of the early careers of some of them in the book of Acts but the exploits of others we only know through legend. Matthew is said to have evangelized Ethiopia and died a martyr there. Bartholomew went to Armenia and was skinned alive in Azerbaijan. Thomas brought the gospel to India where he was impaled by a spear. Thaddaeus traveled through Syria and ended his life in northern Persia. Simon the Zealot is supposed to have visited northern Africa, Spain and Britain. Philip may have reached southern Russia. Peter died in the imperial city of Rome, as did Paul.

These men were given the task of turning the world upside down and they didn't balk. They undertook this immense mission with enthusiasm. Why? Because they had incredible news to tell the world. And they had 3 reasons to believe it.

There are roughly 3 ways to know something. One is to reason it out. Throughout time, most people have believed in a creator god because it seemed the most reasonable explanation. The world could be the result of an incredibly long series of fortunate accidents, the equivalent of winning the lottery trillions of times. Or it could be the way it is by design. Today many scientists note that the universe in general and our world in particular seems fine-tuned to give rise to life. If the freezing point of water was just a little different, if earth's distance from the sun were slightly less or more, if earth's axis wasn't tilted just right, if we didn't have a moon, life would not be possible, let alone a lifeform like us capable of understanding the cosmos to the degree we do. So it could be just a lucky confluence of innumerable coincidences—or it could be planned. Occam's razor, the principle of logic that says the explanation with the least number of necessary elements is usually the correct one, would seem to come down on the side of a creator. And the consensus of great thinkers throughout the ages is that there was a creator god. The Bible doesn't even argue the idea. It accepts it as its fundamental premise.

The disciples were Jews. They believed in a creator God. Furthermore, they believed the creator had a special relationship with their race, not because he was playing favorites, but because he had a special purpose for them. God intended them to bring a blessing to the world. (Genesis 12:1-3) But they didn't seem to be accomplishing that. They were a tiny nation usually at the mercy of their larger and more powerful neighbors. And they were not always faithful to their covenant with God. Still God was faithful to them. He had liberated them from slavery in Egypt. He kept them from being utterly destroyed or completely absorbed by the empires that dominated the Near East and the Mediterranean. They survived as a people through their shared history and traditions and faith.

That's the second way of knowing something: it's passed on to you by someone you trust. This applies to just about everything we learned in school, as well as what we get from the news and what we read. Scientists learn much of science that way, through learning the history of whatever branch of science they are specializing in. They don't redo every single experiment that led up to today's state of knowledge. They trust their instructors and mentors and textbooks. Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists in history said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Science, like most human endeavors, requires faith or trust in someone else.

For instance, we all know that our country declared independence in 1776. How? Do we have photographs? Video? No. We trust the writings of the people who were there, who witnessed it, and who participated in it. No historian seriously thinks that they made most of it up as mere propaganda or that we became a country in a totally different way.

Similarly a large part of the Hebrew Bible is the collected history of the Jews. Archeology confirms most of the historical sections, like the existence of the Davidic kings, the exile, the return under the Persians, and the worship of Yahweh. In fact, at one point scholars doubted the existence of the Hittites, because they couldn't find archaeological evidence of them. But archeology depends on finding ancient ruins, remains and rubbish. Dig at the wrong spot and you could miss something important by just a few yards. But eventually the evidence was discovered and today you can even study the Hittite language.

Secular scholars have problems with the part that God plays in the narrative. But the same people who wrote the historically confirmed parts wrote the theological portions. To believe one part while distrusting the other says more about one's philosophical approach to life than about the trustworthiness of the documents themselves.

The disciples knew their Bible. And they knew that God promised to send a Messiah, an anointed prophet, priest and/or king, to free their people. Then they encountered Jesus. They saw his healings and heard his teachings. They ate with him, traveled with him, spent nearly 3 years in his company. They knew he was different. They hoped he was the promised one. However, when he was killed, they thought they were wrong about him. (Luke 24:21) But when he rose from the dead, they had to rethink who Jesus was.

They passed from the second form of knowledge to the third: experiential. They had firsthand knowledge of Jesus. He wasn't merely a prophet; he wasn't merely a man. A person who did what he did, who said what he said—that he and his Father are one, that he is the resurrection and the life—and who then conquered death must be divine.

Those 3 forms of knowledge were their 3 reasons to fulfill the great commission laid upon them by Jesus. They reasoned that the world had a creator. They knew the history of their people and their relationship with God. And they personally knew a man who could only be God. Then came Pentecost. The Holy Spirit was poured out on them and they now experienced God in a new way: internally.

Today is Trinity Sunday. The Trinity is not an easy concept to grasp. Usually when I talk of the Trinity I explain it in terms of the relationships or roles of the persons in the Trinity. But another way of thinking about it is the 3 ways in which we know God.

We know God as creator. We can see his hand in the beauty of nature, in the wonders of the subatomic world, in the stars in the sky, in our brains which have more connections than there are stars in the Milky Way. We affirm this when we say, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”

We can know God through the writings of those who encountered him, especially the gospels. We can trust the recollections of those who knew Jesus and were willing to die in foreign lands for the privilege of carrying the good news of their incarnate, crucified and risen Lord. This is not a distant God who creates the world and walks away from it but one who enters it to redeem it. Through Jesus we know that God is a God of love, who became one of us, as the creed says, “for us and for our salvation.”

And now we come to the unsettling part. We can know God through the action of the Holy Spirit within us. We can...but do we?

One reason the Spirit is so foggy in most of our minds is that we are uneasy about encountering him. It is all very well to talk about him and read about him but to actually face him, to let him come into our lives...well, it's just too terrifying.

But letting him in is the point. God is not real to us until he is a part of us. Our God is not abstract or remote. He is not up there or out there but right here—within us. We not only know that he exists and what he is like but if we open ourselves to him, we know what it feels like to be living in him and to have him living in and through us.

We feel him as we pray, as we worship, as we encounter the world with integrity and empathy. His are the thoughts that break in on us suddenly and inspire us with awe because we could never have come up with them on our own. His are the words of wisdom that we cannot believe are coming out of our mouths just when they were needed. His are the acts of courage and conviction and compassion that we find ourselves doing despite the fact that they are what we least want to do. We see him in others and we perceive his presence growing stronger in ourselves.

The Holy Spirit is what makes God a Trinity and what connects us to God. He completes the circuit, so to speak. We know live circuits are dangerous. They are also powerful.

You could think of the Spirit as our DSL. A DSL or Digital Subscriber Line gives us high-speed access to the internet. The Spirit is our link to God. Sign on with him and all the riches of his grace are ours to download. To continue, however, we will have to upgrade things at our end. And he will help us do that as well.

There are other analogies for our Triune God. He is our destination, our path and the power to walk it. He is the author, the hero and the story itself. He is the composer, the performer and the music. He is the original idea, the word or perfect expression of it and the power that communicates it to us.

Is your brain starting to overload? No wonder. God is by definition bigger than we can imagine. Any god we can totally comprehend is too small to really be God. And that kind of god is also too small to help us. So we mustn't be surprised if at the heart of God there is a paradox, a threeness that is also one. But we mustn't despair of knowing him either. You know better than anyone how your body functions even though you don't know every organ in it or know what every part of the code of your DNA does. And just because we can't possess exhaustive knowledge of God doesn't mean we can't have true and essential knowledge of him.

But we need to get over our fear of encountering him. We need to look at him and let him reach out to touch us. Only that way will we discover that the scary big guy is really our Father, laden with gifts of love.

The Gospel According to Ira Levin

The scriptures referred to are in the text.

Jimmy, a newly minted doctor, returns to his idyllic hometown to join the practice of Dr. Cook. Dr. Cook acted as a surrogate father to Jimmy when his own abusive father died. Everyone loves Dr. Cook, who has devoted his life to 2 things: the town and his garden. While working for the good doctor, Jimmy finds something disturbing. The patients' charts contain the same code the doctor uses in the card catalog for his award-winning garden. Specifically, the letter “P” appears in both. For the flowers it means “Prune.” So why is it also found in the charts of patients who have died, like Jimmy's father? The young man confronts his mentor and is horrified to discover that his town is so wonderful precisely because Dr. Cook has been “pruning” it of the bad people. The 2 men fight and Dr. Cook falls, clutching his chest. He asks Jimmy to go get his heart medicine. Jimmy starts to but then hesitates. If he does nothing, Dr. Cook will die and be remembered as a beloved man and not as a monster. The town need never know what he was doing. The dying doctor looks at the young man and recognizes that train of thought. His last words are, “You see how it starts.”

When I saw this movie of the week, Dr. Cook's Garden,  in 1970, I was blown away by that chilling last line. Here was a mystery that had a moral. Or rather it asked an ethical question. Is it ever right to play God in this way, eliminating evil by killing bad people? The writer was Ira Levin and many of his plays, novels and films revolve around that question. In Rosemary's Baby the question might be restated, “If you knew your infant was the Anti-Christ, would you murder it or nurture it?” In The Boys from Brazil a Holocaust survivor turned Nazi-hunter uncovers a plot to clone Hitler—several times over! At the end of the story he refuses to give the list of the boys' names and locations to a member of the Jewish Defense League for fear that they will kill the boys. He would be no better than Hitler were he to have children killed simply because of their genetic origin.

Though he was an atheist, perhaps it is the fact that Levin majored in philosophy that led him to pose these questions. Anyway, his thrillers, like The Stepford Wives, do tend to make us think about the ways in which we might be tempted to play God. And that was part of the reason I took a role in Marathon Community Theaters' production of one of his lesser known plays, Veronica's Room. (Well, that and the fact that the director kept after me about it for the better part of a year.) It is one of Levin's darker stories.

A young woman named Susan and a young man named Larry are at a restaurant on a date when a charming and elderly Irish couple approach her about how strongly she resembles Veronica, the long dead daughter of their deceased employers. They talk them into coming to the old mansion where they work, taking care of Veronica's ailing sister Cassie. They show her Veronica's room and eventually ask her if she would dress up as Veronica. They want her to assure Cassie, who has dementia and thinks it is still 1935, that her sister Veronica, who died of TB, hasn't abandoned her because she hates her. Susan consents. But when they go to get Cassie the couple locks Susan in the room.

In the second act, everything has changed. The older couple aren't elderly or Irish. They call Susan Veronica and treat her as a rebellious daughter who is making this Susan stuff up. They tell her it is 1935 and she has been locked in her room because at age 15, she seduced her younger brother Conrad and killed 13 year old Cassie to keep her from telling their parents. Susan vigorously denies this. Her hope of being rescued by Larry is dashed when he reappears as Dr. Simpson who is treating her for her delusions. She denies she is Veronica to him but when the 2 men hold her down to give her a sedative, she stops fighting and says they were right after all. She is Veronica, she did kill her sister and asks for forgiveness. The parents discuss this but the older woman says, “We don't forgive you, Veronica. We kill you.” And as the 2 men hold her down, she smothers her. Then the young man claims the body.

It turns out the older couple are Veronica and Conrad and the young man is their son, whom they simply call “Boy.” They have enacted this psychodrama before in an attempt to help Veronica feel that her terrible deeds with her siblings have been punished. But she doesn't feel that this time it's done the trick though Conrad reminds her this was to be the last time. He tries to get her to leave the room but Veronica still does not feel freed from her sins. She starts acting like she is 15 and imprisoned again. As she pleads with her parents to let her out, Conrad fearfully locks the door on his mad sister/lover.

Creepy, huh? So why would I, then a priest-to-be, want to be part of what my mentor Father Ed Winsor cheerfully called “a fine bunch of sickos?” Well, as repugnant as the subject matter is, it is not as far-fetched as we'd like to believe. While the play was in rehearsal, we, the cast, were shocked by a news story about a 15 year old girl who convinced her 10 year old brother to hold down their 6 year old brother while she killed him. And, as we see in Genesis, fratricide, killing a sibling, is a very old crime. (Genesis 4:1-16) Sadly, stories pop up from time to time about brothers and sisters in incestuous relationships. One such couple here in Florida not only had a large family together but the brother was suspected of fathering his own grandchildren. Shades of Lot and his daughters! (Genesis 19:30-38) When it comes to evil, as the writer of Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

But what actually interested me to this play was a new wrinkle to Ira Levin's obsession with people playing God. Here the issue is not merely ethical but theological. Veronica is not killing someone evil to prevent future evil from being committed; she is killing someone innocent to erase evil done in the past. She is trying to perform her own private substitutionary atonement.

When we say that Christ died for our sins, what do we mean? Do we mean that God needed to punish someone and Jesus volunteered so God took it out on him? That's what many people, including some Christians, think is going on at the cross. But that makes God a person with anger management problems. He doesn't care whom he hits as long as he hits someone. That sounds more like a diabolical spirit than the God of love Jesus preached.

Some treat sin as a purely legal issue. God makes laws. We break them. Someone has to be punished in order that the demands of the law are satisfied. So God and his son engineered this tricky way to let us off the hook. But is that what the universe is like? Is God just some slick lawyer? Worse than that, is God himself under the law so that he has to figure out a legal way to get around it?

Even the scribes and Pharisees felt that the law was an expression of God's nature. God is good and holy and just and so is the law. (Romans 7:12) God is eternal and so is his word, which includes his moral laws. (Psalm 119:89, 91, 144) His moral laws are like the laws of physics: they are descriptions of how the universe that he made works. They are not arbitrarily chosen rules of ethical etiquette. When the God who is love creates a world, it means things like murder and theft and unfaithfulness and envy and greed and arrogance run contrary to the principles behind creation. (1 John 4:8; Romans 13:10) Which means they have negative consequences which ripple through the fabric of our interconnected lives.

So why did God make it possible to break his moral laws unlike, say, the law of gravity? Precisely because he is a God of love. He made us in his image. And to truly love someone you must do so voluntarily. He could have made a sinless world. Disney has and you can tour it. Hundreds of cute robots cavort and sing a relentlessly cheerful tune of peace and harmony. But they have no choice. They are programmed to look and sound loving, but it is a sham, just like the sexy come-hither looks of models in ads. Real love involves choice. Real love involves risk. A world without choice and risk would be a small, small world after all.

God has allowed us to live in a large world with many possibilities for expressing our love for him and for others and for his creation. It is also a world in which we can choose not to love him or our fellow human beings. He calls this attitude towards life sin. And because sin goes against the principles of a healthy life it is a spiritual disease. Our individual sins are the symptoms of the spiritual malaise that causes us to turn from the source of love and pursue our selfish ends. Eventually, these turn out to be dead ends and they result in the death of our spirit which we call hell. Hell is a self-imposed exile from God. Just as Veronica is really imprisoned in her mind, we find ourselves so committed to our illusions of being in control of our lives and our pride in our knowing better than God about how we should live that we bar ourselves from true joy. We are locked into the course our lives take by our sins and our regrets and our compromises.

But if God has created a world in which the choice not to love is a possibility, he has also provided a remedy for that. The way out is not to deny our sins, nor to ignore them, nor to project them onto others. Veronica is trying to create her own personal scapegoat but, like most people, she doesn't understand what that means.

In ancient Israel on the Day of Atonement, 2 goats were brought to the high priest. One was sacrificed for the sins of the people and its blood was sprinkled on the altar and the objects in the tabernacle to cleanse them. The high priest would lay his hands on the head of the other goat and recite the people's sins, symbolically placing them on it. Then it was released into the desert where demons were thought to dwell. (Leviticus 16: 7-22) This enacted the 2 major consequences of sin: death and exile. Thus a scapegoat is not someone you blame for your sins. You must admit to your sins. (Leviticus 26:40; 1 John 1:8-9) Only then does the fate of the scapegoat bring redemption.

I do not mean to imply that what Jesus did on the cross was merely symbolically taking on our sins. It was not some extreme display of God's love for his lost creatures. Look at it this way. You may have heard of the butterfly effect. Chaos theory and quantum physics have turned cause and effect on their heads. The world is so complex that the flutter of a butterfly's wings in China may mushroom into a storm on the other side of the globe. The spiritual realm works the same way. Ever have a day where everyone at work seems to be having their own individual bad days and it turns into a group bad day? In his movie Do The Right Thing Spike Lee shows how the accumulated hate, pettiness, bickering and misfortune of several characters in a neighborhood can eventually come together and lead to a riot that nobody wanted. The general rebelliousness and disunity of the world affects everyone in ways we cannot always see and understand. Basically, the cross stands at the confluence of all of humanity's sins. Jesus put himself there and took the brunt of all the harm we have done.

Jesus' death on the cross was not merely a legal requirement for our forgiveness by God, nor was it a grisly object lesson. It was necessary for our redemption in the same way that for a dying man to receive a new heart, the heart donor must die. On some cosmic level, Jesus had to die for us to receive new life in Christ, that is, his life. And the source of all life had to undergo death in order to reverse its power over us. And reverse it he does. After 3 days days in the grasp of death, Jesus bursts from the tomb, transformed and transforming. Now there are no boundaries to stop the Lord of love; there are no dark corners he cannot illuminate; there is no guilt he cannot heal.

And we are not talking merely about guilt feelings. Veronica's family is trying to create a scapegoat to remove her feelings of guilt. But she is still guilty of her crimes and does not herself confess to them nor renounce them. She and Conrad still live in incest. Not only has she not come to terms with her murder of Cissie, but they are all guilty of the murder of who knows how many pseudo-Veronicas. And they feed the necrophiliac habits of the product of their twisted love, a child they never named but only call “Boy.”

A lot of people confuse guilt feelings with real guilt. But the 2 are not the same. We all know of people who, while guilty of some great evil, do not feel guilty. And we all know people who feel guilty about things that are not their fault. What Jesus did removes our actual guilt. When we acknowledge the outrages we have committed against God, against those created in his image, and against the rest of his creation, and then invite his Spirit into our hearts, we unite ourselves to him. And Jesus' death to sin and rising to new life becomes ours. Think of it as a blood transfusion. A donor gives her blood that it might give life back to someone dying. A part of her enters that person and heals him and revives him and unites him to her. You may remember Nicholas Green, that little boy who was killed by bandits while he and his family were vacationing in Italy in 1994. His parents decided to give his body over to be used for transplants. His eyes help others see, his heart beats in someone's chest, his liver cleanses and invigorates another person. He is in them and they are a part of him and they are now linked to each other through him. We too are united in the body and blood of Christ, whose gave his life for us and to us and whose resurrection promises possibilities we cannot conceive. (Ephesians 3:20)

The guilty project their sins onto the innocent and make them suffer for it. In that sense, Veronica's Room is just a grotesque parody of how we all victimize each other. But Jesus voluntarily takes on the role of victim only to transform it into the rule of the victor over death and sin. Only by facing our guilt, asking for forgiveness and granting it to others, by aligning our will with his and living in his Spirit, can we transcend those prisons of the soul that threaten to smother us and find instead the true freedom to act in love as we were created to do.