613 to 10 to 2

This was preached on November 2, 2008. There has been some updating.

Much of what TV calls reality shows are anything but. Let's face it: these programs put people into extremely unrealistic scenarios. 99.9% of us will never live in a mansion with an eligible bachelor or bachelorette that we and others staying there are trying to marry. Nor will we ever be in a jungle where our survival depends on playing games. Nor will we have our spouses switched with someone who is their exact opposite in personality or personal philosophy.

My favorite reality shows are those done by the BBC or PBS in which modern people must live in a situation that is as close as possible to how their ancestors had to live. It is fascinating to see how a contemporary person or family fares when faced with a culture that lacks our modern conveniences. Especially when their survival depends, not on contrived challenges or betrayals, but on planting and harvesting crops, or drawing water, or keeping the fire going. In series such as Victorian House or Frontier House you realize just how hard our ancestors had to work. Their goal was not so much to live well, as we desire to, but to simply continue to live. In Colonial House what became clear was how absolutely vital it was for the entire community to work together and follow certain rules. If you ever wondered why sloth (laziness) was considered one of the seven deadly sins, just consider how the fate of a whole settlement was endangered if someone shirked their responsibility to do the role assigned to them.

Life in earlier times was extremely regimented and roles were strictly defined, not because everyone was a jerk, but because the entire community or tribe could be wiped out if just one person didn't carry out their duty to nurture the crops or keep the livestock healthy or repair the equipment or guard the town walls. It took almost military discipline on everyone's part for all to survive.

Similarly, things like envy or gossip or excessive drinking or violating the sanctity of your neighbor's marriage or lying or theft or disproportionate anger or disobedience to authorities could destabilize relationships and threaten the unity of the community. The resulting dysfunction didn't just hurt feelings; it could actually harm the ability of the group to work together and survive. If you've ever wondered why we have entire psalms that just praise God's law, just remember how crucial it was to the community's unity and continued existence.

Today's sermon suggestion asks, “Why do we only talk of the 10 commandments? Aren't there more?” Yes, there are. In fact, rabbis counted all the commands in the Torah, the first 5 books of the Old Testament, and came up with 613. They start right after the giving of the 10 commandments in Exodus 20 and cover things such as violence, property, restitution and maintaining just courts. A good deal of the commandments concern the making of the tabernacle or portable worship space, as well as offerings, sacrifices, the priesthood, and observing the Sabbath. There are also quite a few on dietary restrictions, like not eating pigs, vultures, shellfish and certain insects. Finally there are those which excite the most interest today: the list of forbidden sexual relations in the “Holiness Code.”

When scholars talk of the “Holiness Code” they are generally speaking of Leviticus chapters 17 through 26. The title for this section comes from the frequent refrain, “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” The word “holy” means “set apart” and in regard to humans and objects it means “set apart for a sacred purpose.” These passages deal with a lot of issues, only some of which are matters of ritual purity. So chapter 17 of Leviticus concerns sacrificing animals and forbids the eating of blood. Chapters 21 through 26 concern priestcraft, tabernacle furnishings and holy days. Chapter 19, however, covers various subjects from idolatry, to making provision for the poor and resident aliens, to not abusing the disabled, to slander, to not taking vengeance on others, to honesty in business and more. It also includes the commandment, “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin.” So contrary to what some say, the Holiness Code is neither completely antiquated nor entirely irrelevant to modern moral issues.

Chapter 18 is the one everybody is interested in because it contains 18 verses concerning forbidden sexual relations. Contrary to popular belief, most of them we still oppose: incest (14 verses) and bestiality (1 verse). In addition there is 1 verse condemning child sacrifice and 1 verse condemning sex between men. Note that on the basis of the number of mentions alone, you can't either elevate homosexual sex above the behaviors mentioned more often, nor dismiss it, because child sacrifice is also only mentioned once in the passage. If we single out sex between men as either exceptionally important or unimportant, we are doing so for other reasons than how often it is mentioned.

So the number of commandments go well beyond the 10 we learn in Sunday school. Why do we focus on those 10 laws? For one thing, they are mentioned first and separately from the others. And they are not only written in Exodus 20 but are repeated in Deuteronomy 5.

Secondly, they are much more general in scope and so they serve as the basis for the other commandments. The prohibition against using deceptive weights and measures (Leviticus 19:35-36; cf. Proverbs 20:10) is derived from the commandment “You must not steal.” The insistence on neutrality in the courts (Leviticus 19:15) is consistent with the commandment “You must not testify against your neighbor as a false witness.” The condemnation of making sacrifices to fertility gods flows logically from the commandment to “have no other gods before” Yahweh.

Yet the idea that the 10 commandments are the most important has been changed by Jesus of all people. When asked which of the commandments is the greatest, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Unprompted, he adds a second one, this time from Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Then he says that all of the law and the prophets hang on these two. (Matthew 22:40) He also says no other commandment is greater than these two. (Mark 12:31)

And, indeed, you can split the 10 commandments into those that concern God and those that concern our fellow human beings. You can also boil down the prophets' criticism of their societies to these 2 main areas as well. First, they declared that the people were either worshipping other gods or not worshipping Yahweh sincerely but just going through the motions. Second, they point out that society is treating the poor unjustly. (Isaiah 1:11-17) The implication is that the second commandment flows from the first. This is something Jesus makes explicit when he says that how we treat the unfortunate is how we are treating him. (Matthew 25:31-46)

But Jesus' truly unique contributions to morals are his extensions of the second greatest commandment. Now that commandment is hard enough. It is not always easy to love your neighbor. He might be the sort of person who trims your trees without your permission, or who doesn't pick up after his dog uses your yard as its toilet, or who blasts his music both night and day. Nowhere does the Bible say you have to like him. But you must pray for him and work for his good. You might want to get to know him and understand why he does what he does. The odd thing is if you do the things someone would naturally do if they cared about someone else, eventually you will come to care about that person after all.

But in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44) Here he is extending the circle of those we must love. He is including not just the person next door, or your coworker, or your acquaintance, all of whom might annoy you a bit. He is saying you must act lovingly towards someone who acts maliciously towards you. Don't hate him or ignore him but love him, says Jesus. Pray for him. As Paul and Peter put it, don't repay evil with evil but repay evil with good. (Romans 12:17, 21; 1 Peter 3:9) That's a tall order and it may take you some time to be able to fully achieve it. But we must do it. After all, that's what Jesus did while we were his enemies, opposing his will for us and for the world. We are afraid to do the same because it seems to be too costly. It was for Jesus.

And on the night he was betrayed into the hands of his enemies, Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment: “Love each other as I have loved you.” (John 13:34) Here Jesus extends the standard by which we are to love others. No longer are we to do so in the imperfect way we love ourselves. We are to follow Jesus' example and love others in the same self-sacrificial way he does.

Since Jesus' 2 greatest commandments, and especially his 2 expansions of the 2^nd one, are so far reaching, are we excused from obeying the rest of the 613? Yes and no. Jesus makes a distinction between human rules and God's laws and between laws concerning rituals and laws concerning moral issues. And there is a difference between observing the letter of the law—fulfilling it technically—and obeying the spirit of the law—acomplishing what it was intended to do. (2 Corinthians 3:6) So Jesus touched the sick and the dead even though it made him ritually unclean. He healed on the Sabbath and let his disciples pluck the heads off grains though the Pharisees said that violated the commandment not to work on the Sabbath. In response, Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for the sake of humans; humans were not made for the sake of the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27) For Jesus, a law should benefit people, not harm them.

This principle is also central to Paul's thinking. Among the things that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross freed us from were aspects of the Torah that simply differentiated Jews from Gentiles: circumcision, the dietary laws, Sabbaths. These cause division in the body of Christ where there is no Jew or Gentile for all are one in Christ. (Galatians 3:28) Christians now live by grace. But that doesn't mean we can disregard morality. The same Spirit who inspired the authors of the Old Testament now lives in Christians and guides them, if they let him. The moral law is to be internalized. And Paul is not shy about spelling out how Christians should and should not live.

The principles that stand behind the written laws in the Bible are still valid but the ways they are manifested in each time and culture may vary. For instance, in Paul's day a prostitute would cut her hair and did not wear a head covering in public. So Paul says a woman can prophesy in church provided her head was covered. (1 Corinthians 11:5) A woman having an uncovered head no longer means she is a prostitute in our culture, so we don't require head coverings in church. Modesty is expressed differently. Again I remember when tattoos were seen as a sign that a person had loose morals. Now tattoos are so common that what they used to signify is no longer true. And who knows what the fashion will be by 2050? But it will never be acceptable for a Christian of either sex to wear certain lewd and crude and belligerent T-shirts sold nearly everywhere these days. The principle is that Christians should not send mixed messages about their personal morality and it is still valid. Its expression, however, has and will continue to change.

This means there will be clashes at times between aspects of contemporary culture and Biblical morality. Sometimes we are called to stand out in contrast to a culture gone wrong. As did certain Christians during the civil rights movement in this country and as did members of the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany. They rightly understood that there was a clash between what the 2 great commandments said and what authorities did to oppress certain ethnic and racial groups.

There is still value in studying the commandments of the Old Testament, even if we no longer follow some of them. With a good commentary we can understand why they were important issues in their day. You will also be surprised, as I have been, by how enlightened such ancient laws were on some topics. It is also a good mental and spiritual exercise to tease out how each is an expression of the principles of the 10 commandments and in turn, the 2 greatest commandments.

One last word on this. And it is the word “command.” We still call the laws in the Bible commandments. But this obscures the fact that they are commands from our King. The moral commands are not optional. We are commanded by Jesus to love God with all we are and all we have and to love all others, including our enemies, as he loves us. Like the strict laws our ancestors followed, we disregard the laws to love at grave risk to our community and our lives. They, like the restful Sabbath, were given for our benefit. Because the law to love God and others is itself an expression of love. In obeying it we find true freedom to be God's beloved children.

The Siren Song of Despair

This was preached on May 18, 2008. There has been some updating.

“ First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If anyone unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men's bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them.” (The Odyssey, where Odysseus is being warned about his voyage home)

I was 13, 14 tops. I was walking home from my girlfriend's house. Correction: ex-girlfriend. She had just dumped me. And as I walked the 6 blocks from her place to mine, it started to snow lightly. Even with my heart breaking, I was enough of a film buff even then to think, “Where's my soundtrack?” I wanted music to compliment the snow which so perfectly represented the bleakness of my soul.

That was my first taste of the siren song of despair. I rather liked the image of myself trudging through a cold despairing world as I grieved the end of my first love. But music would have made it so much more acceptably sad and romantic. That is the continuing appeal of sad songs, tragic novels and 3-hanky films. They offer us catharsis. “Catharsis” comes from the Latin “to purge” and goes back to the Greek for “pure.” When properly approached such works of art can help us achieve emotional release and purge ourselves of debilitating feelings.

On the other hand there are artists who deliberately withhold catharsis. They do not give us happy endings or even acceptably sad endings. Sometimes they don't give us endings at all. They may do this out of artistic integrity. After all, in real life neat endings and stories with clear morals are not that common. Sometimes artists withhold catharsis to provoke the audience—into discussion or social action or just outrage. But sometimes it is because they believe that happy endings and hope are lies. They think the world is as uncaring and unforgiving as it seems at our darker moments. And they believe that darkness is the ultimate truth.

I am not speaking of those who are suffering from clinical or even situational depression. There is nothing voluntary about those feelings. They require therapy and sometimes antidepressants. Still, most therapists will tell you that dwelling on negative thoughts will only make things worse and that a person must distinguish between their feelings and the real state of things. Yes, this part of your life is bad. For now. There is no sense projecting it onto everything else and forever. Night only covers part of the earth and only for part of the 24 hour day. It doesn't mean the sun is a lie.

Still there is the allure of giving up hope. It can be considered cool. A hero's stature is increased by the odds against him, so how much more heroic is it if a person faces a whole cosmos which is at best indifferent and at worst hostile? Plus there's the whole self-pity thing. If there's no hope you have permission to mope. From House, MD to Angel to Torchwood, there have been a lot of brooding heroes, bravely facing a universe in which there is ultimately no hope. That's the siren song.

Bart Ehrman, a professor of religious studies, wrote a book called God's Problem, in which he tells how he lost his faith because of the problem of suffering. There is so much of it in the world that he could no longer believe in a loving God. And certainly when one hears about disasters that kill thousands, not to mention when one suffers more personal losses, it can be tempting to give up the idea that there is any kind of God at all.

But this is not so much an intellectual problem as a cry of rage or pain. It is akin to the moment in Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital when George C. Scott's character contemplates the sorry state of the embattled institution he serves and roars, “We cure nothing! We heal no one!” Even though this is a satire, what he says is not true in his world. In fact, at the end of the film, he turns down a chance to run off with Diana Rigg in order to stay at the hospital and try to heal it. But his previous fiery nihilistic declaration is an arresting moment. And when we are frustrated or bereft it is tempting to howl along with the siren song of despair.

But the existence of evil doesn't even come close to disproving the existence of God anymore than the existence of darkness disproves the existence of light. In fact it does the opposite. If there was nothing but darkness in the world, how would you know what darkness is? Darkness is the absence of light. Cave fish who live in a world of darkness are blind. They see nothing. Darkness is just the way things are. If you see any shadows at all, you must remember that shadows are only possible if there is light. Shadows show that something is in the way of the light. In the same way, nothing can be evil if there is no such thing as goodness. After all, how could you define what illness is if there were no such thing as health?

Evil is indeed God's problem but not in the way Ehrman meant. It is only an intellectual problem for armchair philosophers and theologians who contemplate it in the abstract. For God it is a problem in the same sense that disease is a doctor's problem. It is a practical problem. How do you prevent it from spreading? How do you limit its damage? How do you cure those suffering from it?

In the Bible God tells us how he is dealing with the problem of evil. Like any good health organization he gets the information out about what is healthy and what isn't. So first, God sets out what is good and what isn't. The values that are proclaimed as good throughout the Bible are justice, peace, generosity, love, wisdom, mercy, faithfulness and humility. God has given us rules for spiritually and morally healthy living. But it is obvious that we are too sick to live by such rules. Our hearts are not up to it.

So he sent his son both to model spiritual and moral health and to bring healing to us. To extend this medical metaphor, Jesus is our donor. His blood saves us. Like a heart donor, his death means life for us.

But even after a lifesaving operation, there is still much to do. For those recovering, there are goals. Every physical therapist sets up goals for a patient: that he will be able to walk a certain number of feet or be able to bathe or dress herself or increase his strength or increase the range of motion for an injured limb. The goals God sets are his commandments. And we don't like them any more than rehab patients like the exercises the physical therapist expects them to do every day. It's hard work. At times it hurts and every fiber of your body rebels against it. Often it seems like there's too little progress over too long a period of time. And sometimes it feels like no progress is being made at all.

And believe it or not, some patients give up on getting better. They would rather sit in their wheelchairs or beds and take their painkillers and complain and wallow in self-pity, rather than work towards health and independence. As a nurse I've seen this happen. They succumb to the siren song of despair.

We see the same thing in society. God's commandments are too hard. It's too hard to have a just society when you are dealing with refugees and terrorists and mass shooters. It's too hard to be faithful to one person when you're dealing with biological urges. It's too hard when you're dealing with complex issues and people who oppose you. It's too hard to help the poor when you have profits to make and new smartphones to buy and badly run corporations to prop up. It's too hard to love my neighbor. It's too hard to love God. It's too hard to hope.

Against the siren song of despair, the Holy Spirit, like any good therapist, encourages us. He gives us strength. He pushes us to do more than we would normally do, to move out of our comfort zone, to challenge ourselves to do more than we thought we could.

Because the idea is to make us better, to lead us to triumph over what is crippling us, and finally to discharge us from this place. That is why the world is so full of pain and suffering: because it is a hospital and rehab center, albeit one under siege like the one in the Chayefsky film. It is hell to those who do not wish to get better, who keep harming themselves and others, who prefer self-medication to rehabilitation, who don't really want to get better and go out into a bigger world.

It's an imperfect metaphor but it is a more balanced one than the idea that the world is nothing more than a slaughterhouse. People do get better. People do help others.

But we have to resist the siren song of despair, lest we die spiritually. And we must dare to hope that there is life outside the hospital. If we don't, there is nothing to do but wallow in our spiritual and moral sickness and use it as an excuse not to try to get better. But, remember, we all get discharged from this world at some point. Will it be because nothing more can be done for us? Because we are resisting treatment? Or will it be because we are ready for the next step, to live the life we were meant to?

In the gospel of John, Jesus says, “In my Father's house there are many places to stay...I go to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:2) Some commentators say the Greek word translated “mansions” really means something like rooms in a hostel or way-station, not a place to live permanently. Because heaven is only where we rest after getting out of the hospital until our real home is ready. Heaven is not our final destination. Instead God promises us a new earth where there is no sickness or suffering or death. (Revelation 21:1-5) In other words, the new earth will be a place where there is no need for a hospital, a place where we can start a new life. Isn't that the purpose of a hospital? To get us to the point where we can leave it? It only exists so we can get better, go home, join our loved ones, and live a very different and very healthy life. And so we can stop listening to the siren song of despair and learn some new, more joyful songs. (Psalm 96)

3 Questions

This was preached on October 19, 2008. There has been some updating.

“Why do Jehovah's Witnesses show up so 'faithfully' at my door on Saturday morning?” asks our sermon suggestion, rather plaintively. Well, as it turns out JW's, as they are called for short, blog. And on one blog named Stuff of Interest to JW's there is a story from the San Antonio News about their door-to door ministry. Called “publishers,” these 8.7 million Witnesses aim to reach every household in the world at least once a year. So they carry laminated “territory” cards about each neighborhood and make notes on each household that talks to them, noting concerns like crime and the meaning of life. (Although last week I saw them use a tablet.) They've gone to court several times to keep their right to do this form of evangelism. But if people don't convert, that's fine. Their only duty is to share their message. After that, it's up to the individual to accept or reject it.

Bishop Frade loved to tell this joke: “What do you get if you cross an Episcopalian with a Jehovah's Witness? Someone who knocks on your door and then doesn't know what to say.”

Even if you dislike having JW's showing up at your door, you have to admit that they are at least acting on their beliefs. Their version of the Bible, like ours, has the book of Matthew ending with the Great Commission: “Go then and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.” The spread of Christianity throughout the world is directly attributable to this commandment. And contrary to what you might think, not everyone has heard the gospel. Even here in America, where only 20% of the population attend church every Sunday, trends indicate that an decreasing number of our children will ever go inside a church, except to attend weddings and funerals. This is especially true if their fathers don't go to church. We live in a post-Christian world.

The good life we have been living since the end of the Second World War has distracted most Americans from pressing spiritual concerns. And when folks do sense that something is missing from a life devoted to meeting physicial needs and gratifying material desires, there are plenty of options. There are both Eastern and Western forms of meditation. There are both religious and secular cults. There are even atheist kinds of spirituality. And there are 33,000 Christian denominations.

Because of the proliferation of denominations, many American Christians don't feel there's any need to spread the gospel in our own country, certainly not in our own neighborhoods. No wonder every major denomination, including the Southern Baptists, are shrinking. Many reasons are given by experts for this, but I think it all boils doen to the fact that many Christians can't answer the 3 questions that Adam Hamilton wrote in his book Leading Beyond the Walls.

The first is “Why do people need Jesus Christ?” And I believe the thing that makes it a tough question for most people is the word “need.” It begs the question “Do people really need Jesus?” People are free to believe what they wish, and many don't believe they need Jesus. Of course, what people believe and what the truth is are 2 different things, even when it comes to what they need. As a nurse, I met patients with anorexia who didn't believe they needed to eat. So the question is how essential is Jesus to one's life?

That depends on what a person thinks Jesus came to do. There are those who feel that he simply came to enlighten us. And certainly Jesus provided us with unprecedented insights into human ethics and the nature of God's love. And that would be sufficient if, as Plato believed, humanity's chief problem is ignorance. But while ignorance accounts for some of the troubles the world has, it doesn't explain why some of the better educated countries have been the source of some of the greatest evils in the last few centuries. Wars of conquest, the slave trade, concentration camps, racial segregation and genocide were dreamed up by some awfully bright people and carried out with the frightening efficiency of industrialized nations. And they knew what they were doing. That makes the world's problem not ignorance but willful evil.

But that's just some people, right? I mean the majority of people are good, aren't they? The majority of Germans didn't put Jews, Slavs, physically and mentally ill people, gays, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Romany people (“Gypsies”) to death. But neither did they rise up against a government that did. How many white Americans protested our government removing Native Americans from their lands and moving them to reservations? How many actually approved of it because it meant more land for them? How evil is it to simply stand by and profit by evil done on our behalf? What do we make of the ordinary people who posed for photos in front of the corpses of black men at public lynchings? How about the average folks at political rallies calling for the imprisonment and even the deaths of opposing candidates?

“There is a way that seems right to a person but its end is the way that leads to death,” says Proverbs 14:12. If there is a just God, and if we are honest, none of us would fare well before his judgment. Our only hope is for someone to step between us and our rightful punishment.

I needn't tell you what Jesus did to save us from the bad things we do and the good things we don't do, that is, our sins. And that is the answer to the question of “Why do people need Jesus?” They need him to deal with the evil in each of us. It's not a matter of ignorance. You don't commit adultery out of ignorance. It's called lust. It's not just a matter of desperate people doing desperate things. You don't dream up elaborate schemes to, say, con poor people into buying homes they can't afford and then turn the loans into risky investments out of desperation, which led up to the Great Recession. It's called greed. Throw in arrogance, too.

We need someone who can deal with the evil that is deeply rooted in the way we think and feel and live. That's why we need Jesus, and not merely another merely human philosopher. Not only can he save us from the penalty of sin, but through his Spirit within us, he can save us from the power of sin by transforming our hearts and minds and lives. So why are we so reluctant to tell others this good news? If we knew of a doctor who could cure cancer, we'd tell people. But for some reason we can't bring ourselves to tell them about the Great Physician who will restore them to spiritual health.

Adam Hamilton's second question is harder to answer: “Why do people need the church?” By this he means not one particular denomination but the church universal. There are a lot of people who will concede that the world needs Jesus but aren't sure that anyone needs the church. As in Hamilton's first question there is a word in his second one that brings up objections. It's the word “church.” It tends to bring up images that largely depend on one's personal experience. If to you “church” means dressing in uncomfortable clothes, sitting for long periods of time on uncomfortable benches, and listening to some guy drone on, or if it means a place where rigid, hypocritical people make judgments about you, then naturally you feel that nobody needs that. Some people selectively think of negative episodes in the church's history or of the flaws in some of the present day churches and dismiss it altogether. But why single out the church? Why not reject all goverments, all courts, all medical centers, all schools, all charities, all non-profits, since all of them are flawed and have shameful periods in their histories? True, the church is supposed to be special. But it is also made up of sinners seeking Christ. To complain that the church isn't perfect is like complaining that a hospital is full of sick people or that A.A. is full of drunks. That's kinda the point.

We in the church are supposed to be seeds of the kingdom of God, the people Jesus redeemed bringing others to him. We are also supposed to be a group of people following in Christ's footsteps, coming together to experience him and to carry out his command to love our neighbor. That's hard to do if you don't come to church where you are more likely to encounter folks other than just family and friends. Of course, it's much easier to think you are emulating Jesus if you don't put that to the test by actually venturing outside your everyday circle of acquaintances. It's harder when you become part of a group of imperfect folks engaged in the often unpredictable task of trying to model the kingdom of God, but that's what we are supposed to be doing. If you replaced the word “church” with the phrase “community of people making concrete the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ” then more folks might concede that, yes, people do need that.

But it is the third question Adam Hamilton asks that haunts me. It takes everything we've talked about and puts it in a very tight focus. It is perhaps the reason why Bishop Frade's hypothetical JW/Episcopalian is speechless. It is a question I don't have an answer for. It's a question that it will take all of us to answer. And we must find an answer to this question. Because the answer will determine whether there will be anyone meeting in our sanctuary in 5 years. And the question is this:

“Why do people need our church?”

Do they need it? Are we a necessary part of the community? If we were to disappear, would we be missed by the people of the lower Keys?

To answer those questions, for the next few months, we as a parish are going to be reflecting on our core values. Who are we? We will be trying to articulate our core purpose. Why are we here? We are going to be asking ourselves, “What are we best at?” I'm not going to be answering the questions for the parish. We have to find these answers together. And when we are satisfied with the answers, we are going to ask, “How do we make sure that the core values and core purpose of our church are carried forward into the future?”

But let's start with Rev. Hamilton's third question. I want you to consider it every day. I want you to put it in your prayers. I want you to wrestle with it as if our survival depended on it.

Because it does.

Be not afraid. I believe there is an answer. There is a reason why God put our church here. And the journey of self-discovery we must embark on will be immensely beneficial to our parish and to each of us.

So with faith in Jesus Christ and in confident hope for our future, let's begin:

“Why do people need our church?”

Nicene Creed

The scriptures referred to are in the text.

There are those who say it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you are sincere. Apparently these people never heard of the so-called “Aryan Christians” who sincerely believe that non-Caucasians, as well Roman Catholics and Jews, are inferior to whites. What about terrorists who sincerely believe that God wants them to kill people who disagree with them? Sincerity of belief does not mean that belief is true or helpful or even harmless.

Obviously the content of your belief system is important. Otherwise there would be ecumenical talks going on between, say, Nazis and Quakers. As Christians, our belief system is derived from the Bible. But as a mission statement it is a rather unwieldy thing to give to an inquirer who wants to know the basics. So from the beginning Christians have sought to summarize the essential features of the faith into creeds. The word creed comes from the Latin “Credo” which means “I believe.” We have what look like proto-creeds in the book of Acts (Acts 2:22-36) and the letters of Paul (Philippians 2:5-11; Colossians 1:15-20). Gradually creeds were developed as concise statements of essential and distinctive beliefs, for use in worship and as outlines for teaching the faith. The best known are the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed. The Apostles Creed was not developed by the apostles but it does bring together the basics of the apostolic faith. Though it reached its final form around 700 AD, it seems to have been based on the Old Roman Creed, which dates back to the second century. We still use it at baptisms.

The Nicene Creed is actually older than the final form of the Apostles Creed. But it is not exactly the creed that came out of the Council of Nicea. If you read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code you might think you know something about this Council. Sadly, while Brown gets an A in thriller-writing, he gets a D in church and art history. Constantine, upon becoming emperor, made Christianity first a tolerated, that is, legal religion and later a favored one. Like the pagan emperors before him, Constantine hoped to make religion the cement of his vast empire. So he was unhappy to find out that a huge controversy over the divinity of Christ was dividing the church. And when his representative, Bishop Hosius of Cordoba, was unable to negotiate a reconciliation of the two sides, the emperor convened the first churchwide council in 325 AD. As many as 300 bishops came together to debate and decide the matter. The result was a statement of the faith that closely resembles our present day Nicene Creed, right down to the part that says, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” That section was expanded later after a controversy about the divinity of the Holy Spirit. By the late 400s AD, the Nicene Creed, pretty much in its current form, was being used at the Eucharist and it spread throughout the church in the West and, with one difference, in the East.

The suggestion I drew from the sermon suggestion box did not ask for a lecture on the creed, however, but a sermon. And it is important to realize that what we have here is not a dry formula of ancient Greek theology but something akin to the constitution of the church. Each article has direct and vital implications for how we should see God and act towards him and the world. So let's look at each section.

“We believe...” In the original Greek, the word for “I believe” is pisteuo. It means more than just “I believe this to be true.” It means “I put my trust in this,” “I rely on this,” “I bet my life on this.” Biblical faith is not an intellectual exercise, played out in the head. It is a heartfelt relationship with God, played out in one's life, day by day. We see such faith in Abraham, leaving his father and family behind to follow God's call to a new land. We see it in Moses, reluctantly returning to Egypt, trusting that God would keep his promise to liberate his people from slavery. We see it in Paul, abandoning his career as a prominent rabbi to face persecution, beatings and imprisonment as an apostle to the Gentiles whom he used to despise. We see it in Francis of Assisi, stripping off the rich clothes his merchant father gave him to become a poor monk and a preacher of the gospel. We see it in Christians who risked their lives and those of their families to hide Jews from the Gestapo or those who led Southern slaves to freedom on the underground railroad. We see it in Jesus in Gethsemane, asking his Father to spare him from the cross if possible but saying, “Not my will but your will be done.”

And we say “we believe” rather than “I believe” because the church isn't a loose association of Lone Rangers, each doing his own thing. We are a community, the body of Christ, each with different gifts and functions, but all working for the benefit of each other out of love. As the 3 musketeers said, we are “all for one and one for all.” But we'd be fools to put our trust in someone untrustworthy. So in whom have we put our faith?

“We believe in God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.” We have chosen to rely on the God who made everything—as Eucharistic Prayer C puts it, “the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.” Notice that the creed doesn't specify how God created everything, that is, it doesn't give any scientific explanation. Because just as in Genesis 1, the mechanics of creation are not important; the purpose of creation is. And the purpose is love. God is love (1 John 4:8) and creation is both an expression of God's love and a means of sharing that love. We don't believe in an impersonal creator but one we can call “Father” because he made us in his image out of love. (Genesis 1:27) He is “Almighty” so nothing can separate us from his love. Nothing, that is, except our own stubbornness. We can choose not to return his love. We can choose to love the creation more than the creator. We can choose to love the things we create more than him. Nevertheless he has provided a way to bring us back to him.

And so “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God...” This was the crux of why the Council of Nicea was called. When we are dealing with Jesus, are we dealing with God or someone else? A popular preacher named Arius was teaching that Christ was a lesser being than God. He said Christ was created first, before everything else, but he was not truly God. That way you didn't have to wrap your head about that tricky Trinity. But that also meant that our salvation, the sacrifice that brings us back to God, was a job delegated to someone less than God. Why do presidents make trips to disaster areas? Because people want to know that their wellbeing is important to the person in charge and was not fobbed off on some flunky. For God so loved the world that he didn't send a secretary or, God forbid, a congressional committee, to save us. He sent his son, who is as divine as he is: “...God from God, light from light...” Just as the light of one candle is indistinguishable from that of the candle that lit it, so is the power of Jesus Christ equal to that of God his Father. When we are dealing with Jesus, we are dealing with God, not some vice president. It's hard to understand but good to know.

“For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” There is a story about a little boy who runs to his mother every time lightning strikes during a thunderstorm one night. The mother keeps reassuring him that he is safe in his room. She says, “God is always with you and he loves you.” “I know,” says the boy. “But I want love with skin on.” Jesus is God's love with skin on. Christ came to show us what God is like in terms we can understand: a human personality in a human body, subject to the same conditions we are. Not only does he reveal God's holy and loving nature to us, he also shows us what we can be—if we trustingly open ourselves to his Spirit. Jesus shows us that a lot of our limitations are of our own making—our fears and desires and lack of trust. Studies have shown that trusting your doctor is just as important to your healing as following his instructions. Jesus shows us that we can be like him if we really put our trust in him.

“For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.” If you think the troubles of the world are merely the result of ignorance and misunderstandings, then you don't see the need for a savior. But if you see the cruelty and abuse and greed and lust and rage in this world as symptoms of something wrong which goes a lot deeper into humanity, then you might see why God himself had to come down and deal with it. And while the creed doesn't tell us exactly how he did it, we can begin to understand why Jesus, the embodiment of God's love, could only defeat evil in the way that he did. He didn't do it through the destruction of sinful people; that's evil's method of dealing with things. He did it instead by absorbing the evil people did to him and transforming it into something good. So he took the torture and execution of God triggered by a friend's personal betrayal, a kangeroo court of religious leaders, a politician's cowardice and the ruthless display of power by an occupying military force and transformed all that into the salvation of us harmful humans.

“On the third day, he rose again...” Christianity is not about another dead martyr to the truth; it is about the paradoxical triumph over death by the one who is the source of life. If death is the absolute end for us, then Jesus, who was poor and died bare, beaten and bleeding was a loser. And Hitler, who was powerful and died by his own choice and his own hand before he could be held responsible for the deaths of millions, was a winner. But if death is not the end of our existence, then, and only then, does justice exist. And if Jesus rose, then we need not fear death, and we need not let it deter us from following his example of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. And if he rose, we know that living for the sake of others, regardless of the cost, is never done in vain.

“He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” Having represented God to us, Jesus now represents us before God in heaven. We have an advocate in the presence of the Most High, a high priest who understands our weakness, a God who understands our pain. (Luke 22:69; 1 John 2:1-2; Hebrew 4:15-16)

“He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” The current period on earth is not a sign that nothing has changed since Jesus came. Rather it is an opportunity to put into practice what Jesus has taught us. Do we simply carry on with our lives doing business as usual? Or do we live by a radically different standard, where people take priority over things and where the end never justifies the means? How we do things must be as noble as the goals we are trying to accomplish. Jesus didn't die so that we can continue to harm one another with impunity. He will judge us, not as someone removed from human life but as one who was immersed in it, who knows well our strengths and weaknesses, and who understands our capacity for evil and for good firsthand. Every second we breathe is a second chance to change. But the offer has an expiration date.

“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life...” There's that messy Trinity again. But here we are saying that the Spirit within us is not a pale imitation of the Spirit of God, like the spirit of adventure that briefly inspires us after seeing an exciting movie. The Holy Spirit is the real thing, the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:17) If we are to be like Jesus, we need to be filled with his Spirit. (Luke 4:1; Ephesians 5:18) By being united to Jesus in his death and resurrection we are given new life, his divine life. (1 John 5:11) He is the light of the world and we are lit with his light. (John 8:12; Matthew 5:14)

And how do we know that we are being led by the Spirit rather than by our own passions? “He has spoken through the prophets.” There is no end of people claiming to speak for God and yet contradicting what God has said in the Bible. These false prophets tend to tell people what they want to hear. They also make exceptions to the commandments for themselves and their followers, especially regarding the commandments not to kill, not to commit adultery and not to worship anything or anyone other than God. A real knowledge of the Spirit-breathed scriptures refutes those like Jim Jones and David Koresh and the other self-appointed prophets who prey on people. It brings us back to the original Spirit of holiness and love that is embodied in and speaks to us through the written word of God and the living Word of God, Jesus.

“We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.” “Catholic” here simply means “universal.” This is not an endorsement of any denomination but rather stating the belief that those who truly follow the faith proclaimed by the apostles are found all over the world. It is also a statement that if we proclaim love as the highest goal, we must practice it in community. (1 Corinthians 13) Getting along with people of different personalities, races, talents and flaws is one of the hardest things our faith demands of us, right after trusting God with our lives. It's so hard we often fail. And it's why we must always be ready to ask for forgiveness and to forgive others. As G.K. Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

“We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” In Jesus' day only a Gentile convert to Judaism would be baptized. He was then considered a new person, making a new start in life as one of God's people. That's why it was so radical for Jews to offer themselves to be baptized by John or later by Jesus' disciples. Paul also saw in baptism, with its immersion into a physical element and resurfacing, a connection with Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. In baptism we proclaim ourselves to be joined to Christ and so he makes us citizens of the kingdom of God. (Romans 6:3-4)

The kingdom of God and new life is not merely future but begins here and now, growing within us and changing us. (Luke 17:21) C.S. Lewis pointed out that if you only live 70 or 80 years, then from an eternal perspective it doesn't much matter what kind of person you are. But if you are going to live forever, then the person you are and who you are becoming are crucial. Eternal life would be hell if you are all wrapped up in yourself. You see this sometimes in older people who do nothing but relive old wrongs and let themselves be eaten up by them. They are shriveled souls, full of bitterness, resentment and regrets. But eternal life is a blessing if it is centered on God's love. You can also see this in some older people, who do not live in the past but in the present with an eye to a better future. They are becoming larger souls: open, generous and peaceful.

“We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” The Greek philosophers thought we are spirits imprisoned in bodies. So they despised the body and the physical world, not seeing the blessings of creation. We Christians believe that ultimately we will once more live as whole persons, both body and spirit united. And just as we affirm that God created the world and pronounced it good, we look in hope to its redemption as well as ours. God will resurrect the earth as the paradise it was always intended to be and fill it with his people. We look for a new heaven and a new earth, in which pain and mourning and death is no more, and where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. (Revelation 21:1-4)

We say that we believe these things with our lips every Sunday. Do we show that we believe them with our lives? The world thinks we are merely murmuring words of hypocritical comfort to ourselves. The only way we can prove otherwise is if we show every day that we stake our lives on the belief that God made everyone we meet, that Jesus died to redeem each one, and that he has bestowed his Spirit on us that we might, each in our own way, reveal what the world is afraid to hope for but desperately wants to believe: that there is a God, that he loves us and is willing to forgive us and that he has the power to make us more than we are and help us become all that we can be. 

HOBBIT

The scriptures referred to are in the text.

It was in Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. (Acts 11:26) And for a long time no modifier of that title was needed. But as the church grew and spread and became more diverse, and as Christians differed in their emphases on various aspects of the faith, people began to add adjectives to specify what kind of Christians they or their opponents were. Sometimes the modifier merely indicated their nationality or language, such as the Coptic Christians of Egypt. But often along with the nationality came a cultural tradition or even a denomination, such as the Greek Orthodox Christians. As theologies diverged, we got Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians. And even within denominations you will often find conservative and liberal Christians. No wonder outsiders get confused. And no wonder C.S. Lewis entitled his collection of radio talks on the basics of the faith Mere Christianity.

It would be nice if we could simply go around calling ourselves mere Christians. Unfortunately people won't let us. If they have any knowledge of the differences among Christians, they want to know if you are Fundamentalist or Evangelical or Mainline Protestant. They want to know if you are a “Cafeteria Catholic” who picks and chooses the church teachings you will support. Or they might have heard of “Red-Letter Christians,” who are primarily focused on believing and obeying Jesus' words, which are printed in red in some Bibles. And indeed, we need to think clearly about what we believe and why we believe it. Both Pat Robertson and John Spong considered themselves Christians. Who was closer to the truth? Or did they represent opposite errors, with the truth somewhere between their extremes?

I was thinking of how I would characterize my faith. There is no one modifier that encompasses all that I believe but there are several words that at least describe the broad outlines of it and give it a shape that distinguishes it from many of the other versions out there.

I believe in a Christianity that is historically informed. That is, it is not a novel twist or radical revision of the truth handed down over the centuries. Nor, however, is it stuck in the past. But I believe in a Christianity that is aware of its own history, of the challenges it faced, of the responses it came up with to deal with them and of the reasoning behind them. No church practices Christianity as they did in the New Testament. Times have changed. Some of the things that shaped the early church have fallen by the wayside. Nobody worries about buying meat from pagan shrines. Nobody today argues that Gentiles should be circumcised before becoming Christians. But understanding the social and theological reasons why it nearly split the apostolic church can help us as we face some of our own divisive issues. Christians that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I believe in a Christianity that is orthodox. This Greek word simply means “right teaching.” Despite what some sensationalist writers have published, Christianity was never so diverse that there was no widespread consensus on its most basic beliefs. The universal summary of its foundational truths can be found in what we call the Apostles Creed. Most of the controversies were not about those basic articles of belief but about how we are to understand them. The majority of churches granted that Jesus was both human and divine; the question was: How did that work? What was the relationship of his divine nature to his human nature? All but the Gnostics believed that Jesus died for our sins; but Christians wondered about it and put forward different thoughts on the exact nature of the atonement. Anything that calls itself Christianity but throws out those most basic of truths—the nature of God as loving but just creator, the incarnation, atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ his son, and the purifying, transforming and illuminating work of the indwelling Holy Spirit—is not orthodox. And it is missing out on the full measure of riches available in Christianity.

This is not to say that everything in the Christian tradition is nailed down. But some things must be. In any building a solid foundation and load-bearing walls are essential. The style and placement of the furniture are not. Or to change the metaphor, the essential part of a bicycle wheel is the hub. The spokes are important but can be changed if need be. The tire, where the wheel makes contact with the world, needs to be changed periodically. But the hub is essential. The hub of our faith is Jesus—who he is, what he has done for us and is doing in us, and how we respond. If that is not in the center of our faith, our Christianity, like a badly made wheel, is unbalanced.

I believe in a Christianity that is Biblically balanced. If you say you're a Biblical Christian, people will probably assume you're a Fundamentalist. And, sadly, that no longer means sticking only to the fundamentals. A lot of decidedly non-essential issues have become attached to that label as well as to the term Evangelical. The biggest problem with self-described “Biblical Christians” is that they usually concentrate almost exclusively on certain parts of the Bible and ignore or minimize the importance of other parts. We all do that to an extent but it is especially hypocritical when it is done by those who declare their commitment is to the whole Bible. For instance, there are 7 passages in the Bible about homosexual behavior but there are 668 references to the poor, the sick, the disabled, the fatherless, widows and foreigners and our duty to take care of them. So why do the number of sermons, books and social media comments on gay issues by Bible-believing Christians vastly outnumber those they make on alleviating poverty, expanding healthcare and welcoming immigrants? A Biblically balanced Christianity should strive to more accurately reflect scripture's priorities.

The Bible is a library of 66 books from more than 40 writers. It is amazingly coherent in its picture of God but it does offer more than one perspective on certain things, just like a 3-D picture gives you a more rounded and complete view of its subject. There are passages in the book of Proverbs that speak of how the righteous prosper and the evil suffer. (Proverbs 10:24) And then there is the book of Job, a godly man who suffers terribly. The Bible says that our salvation is a matter of God's grace received through faith and not works. But then in the very next verse it says we we created to do good works. (Ephesians 2:8-10) And Jesus tells us that the last judgment will center on what we have done for the disadvantaged, whom he calls the least of his siblings. (Matthew 25:31-46) In Romans 13:1-7 we are told to obey human authorities and in Acts 5:27-29 we are told we must obey God rather than men. These are not contradictions but recognitions of the subtlety and complexity of reality. Generally speaking the righteous do have better lives and being evil is a liability, but sometimes bad things happen to good people. We are not saved by our works, but genuine faith manifests itself in good works. Usually it is right to obey human authorities but when they conflict with God's clear commandments (don't murder, don't steal, don't lie, don't preach about Jesus, etc) we must follow Christ rather than Caesar. That's what Christians had to do under Hitler, hiding Jews and sticking to the real Bible and not the edited and rewritten one the Nazis put out. A Biblically balanced Christianity takes into account all passages on a subject, using their varied insights to craft nuanced theological and ethical positions.

I believe in a Christianity that is intelligent. For 15 centuries the overwhelming majority of great thinkers, from the apostle Paul to Saint Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to Erasmus to Blaise Pascal, were Christians. Many of the greatest scientists, like Nicholas Copernicus, Gregor Mendel, Roger Bacon, Hildegard of Bingen, Isaac Newton, Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur, Kurt Godel, Francis Collins and more, were or are Christians. There is no contradiction between being a thinking person and being a person of faith.

Contrary to what Mr. Spock says, logic is not a position on anything. It is merely a method for teasing out the implications of a premise or series of premises while staying self-consistent. It was the premise that the cosmos was created by a God who made humanity in his image that gave early scientists the confidence that their minds could therefore study and understand the product of God's mind, the universe. The problem comes when scientists think they can make pronouncements on theology or when theologians think they can do science better than scientists. This is akin to psychologists trying to take over the field of mathematics or mathematicians thinking they make better psychologists. This is not to say that the insights of one specialty cannot shed light on another. There are people who have been trained as both scientists and theologians, such as John Polkinghorne and Alister McGrath. But outside of such exceptions, scientists and theologians are not interchangeable. They are asking different questions. Broadly speaking, scientists are dealing with questions of how: how do things work and how are they structured. Theologians deal with questions of why: why did God make us and why should we act in certain ways towards each other and not in other ways. A scientist can tell you which species eat their young; they cannot tell you why humans should not.

Being intelligent means admitting that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally. No one actually does that anyway, or we would see fundamentalists who have cut off their hands or plucked out their eyes for offending them. (Matthew 5:29-30) Like any writing, some of it is meant in a literal sense and some is meant to be metaphorical. In most cases, the intended way to read a passage is obvious to all but the most naive or the very foolish. In Revelation, the beast with 7 heads and ten crowns, with the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion who will rule the world is obviously not meant to be taken literally but to have a symbolic meaning. The physical resurrection of Jesus who can eat and be touched is meant to be taken as an actual event. The book of Jonah works just as well as a parable about God mercy for all. King David was an historical person, who is referred to in recent archaeological discoveries. Intelligent Christianity sifts modern scholarship on history, culture and literary forms for help in understanding the Bible. It uses reasoning based on Christian premises to explore theological and ethical issues.

I believe in a Christianity that is Trinitarian. This important doctrine ties together two universal conceptions of God: as a Creator separate from his creation and as a Spirit who is in and works through all things. And it bridges these two concepts with Jesus Christ, the infinite and invisible God focused into a form we can relate to and understand: a human personality. The Trinity also demonstrates that when we say God is love, we are not being sentimental. We are being literal. God is a love relationship between the eternal Father and Son, united in the Spirit of holy love. And it says that the image of God in humanity is most fully seen when people live and act together in love.

So I believe in an Historically-informed, Orthodox, Biblically Balanced, Intelligent, Trinitarian Christianity. That's a mouthful, so let's make it into an acronym: H.O.B.B.I.T. I am a “Hobbit” Christian.

Which illustrates another aspect of the faith that often gets forgotten: humor. The Old Testament is riddled with wordplay in the original Hebrew. Because Sarah laughed when God said she would have a son in her old age, that child is named Isaac, which means “he laughs.” God got the last laugh on doubting Sarah. (Genesis 18:10-15; 21:2-3) Jesus' audience had to smile when he spoke of people walking around with beams of wood in their eyes trying to get a splinter out of someone else's eye or of a camel trying to squeeze through the eye of a sewing needle! One of the problems of trying to uphold an orthodox faith is that you can become so focused on defending the truth that you lose your sense of humor. Yet the book that brought me to Christianity was C.S. Lewis' satirical The Screwtape Letters. Humor recognizes the paradoxes of life through sudden shifts in our perspective. Only the humble can laugh at themselves. (Matthew 11:19) Humor leads to humility. That's why Jesus uses it so much. That and it's fun.

I am, however, loathe to announce yet another movement within Christianity. I am reluctant to throw out another adjective for Christians to divide themselves by. And I doubt anyone else will adopt this modifier. But whatever they are called, the world needs H.O.B.B.I.T.s: humble providers of big truths, ordinary people on an extraordinary quest, little guys filled with outsized virtues. Because the smallest person can change the world.