False Prophets

 The main scripture referred to is Deuteronomy 18:15-20.

When you hire a spokesperson you want them to stay on script and not have their own agenda. In today's reading from Deuteronomy, the Hebrew word translated prophet literally means “spokesperson.” A prophet is called by God to speak for God. “I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to them all that I command him.”

Of course, this serves as a temptation for people to proclaim themselves to be prophets and say whatever they like. So God says, “But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die.” The passage continues beyond our lectionary selection to tell us, “Now if you say to yourselves, 'How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?'—whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it; the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you shall not fear him.” (Deuteronomy 18:21-22, NET Bible)

God foresaw the rise of false prophets, people who would pretend to be speaking for God but were just saying things that were self-serving or which served the people who employed them. When Micah condemns the corrupt political and spiritual leaders of Judah he says, “Her leaders take bribes when they declare legal cases, her priests proclaim rulings for profit, and her prophets read omens for pay.” (Micah 3:11) Just this week on Facebook I posted something funny and in the comments was this message. “Actually I was directed to you by my spiritual insight and the universe because it was revealed to me that you need spiritual guidance concerning your life.” The Facebook profile of the person describes them as a “psychic, trauma healer, spiritual coach” and “motivational speaker.” To be fair, they don't say they are a prophet from God. But I am not taking advice from this person or anyone like them.

Jesus also warned us of false prophets. “Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'There he is!' do not believe him. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” (Matthew 24:23-24) He's saying that they can be that persuasive. And a major mark of a destructive cult is that the leader claims to be the Messiah, or Jesus Christ, or God. Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson, Father Divine, Sun Myung Moon, Yahweh ben Yahweh and many others have declared themselves to be the Messiah. Wikipedia has a whole page listing messiah claimants. Jesus said they can be dismissed as false prophets. If you keep that in mind, you are unlikely to get drawn into a cult.

So how else can we discern which of the many people who claim to be speaking for God are actually false prophets?

As Deuteronomy says, one easy way is when they predict something and it doesn't come true. By this test alone we can eliminate all the people who have predicted the end of the world with a date that is now past. That includes a lot of modern day evangelists, who have been doing this for decades. Charles Taze Russell, Herbert W. Armstrong, Pat Robertson, Louis Farrakhan, Harold Camping, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Edgar Cayce, Yisrayl Hawkins, John Hagee and many others have set dates for the end of the world or for Jesus' return which obviously were wrong. Jesus warned us about that. “But as for that day or hour no one knows it—neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son—except the Father.” (Mark 13:32) At least while he was living on earth, even Jesus did not know the date or time! So you can dismiss as a false prophet anyone who thinks they know better than Jesus.

Another way to see if someone is a false prophet is to see if what they say is inconsistent with the canon of scripture. A canon is simply a standard by which things are measured. So 2 Peter says, “Above all, you do well if you recognize this: No prophecy of scripture ever comes from the prophet's personal understanding of things, for no prophecy was ever brought about by the will of a human being; rather, people who were carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” (2 Peter 2:20-21) How does this help us?

In fandom there is a thing called “head canon.” This is distinguished from canon, which in fandom is what the original show or book says. For instance, in the very first Sherlock Holmes story, Watson is wounded in the shoulder in the first Afghan war. But in other stories his wound is in his leg. Sherlock Holmes fans have come up with a lot of explanations for this discrepancy. Some are clever, some are funny, but none of them are official. The solutions the fans have come up with to explain the problem to their own satisfaction are “head canon,” their own personal way of making sense of things.

Don't misunderstand me but in a way, theological explanations are like head canon. For instance a lot of people think that the reason Jesus died is this: God had to punish someone for our sins but didn't want to punish us, so he punished Jesus instead. Now we are told in the canon of the Bible that Jesus died for our sins (Mark 10:45; Matthew 26:28; John 1:29; Romans 5:8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4; Galatians 2:20; 1 Peter 2:21-25 and 3:18; 1 John 2:2) But nowhere does it spell out exactly how this worked and nowhere does it say God had to do it because he was required by the Law. So, as a nurse, I like to think of Jesus' death in terms of a transplant from a heart donor. Just as a heart donor must die for you to receive their heart and get a new life, so Jesus' death enables us to receive his eternal life. There are scriptures that suggested that idea to me. (Ezekiel 36:26; Jeremiah 31:33; 2 Corinthians 3:3) That works for me better than the idea that God had to pull some legal trick to get us off from our rightful punishment. But that's my head canon. That Jesus died for us is canon. How you or I explain it is not.

This is not to say theology is worthless. If it helps you understand what the Bible tells us without contradicting what else scripture says, that's good. C.S. Lewis has helped me understand Christianity better. But I don't agree with him on everything. None of us is right about everything. We are all heretics in some area or another. We will only know for sure when we meet God. What's vital is to know the essential truths of the Bible.

And we should be wary of those who add a lot of novelties to the essentials, especially ones that twist the obvious teachings of the Bible. Paul warns his protege Titus, “But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, quarrels, and fights about the law, because they are useless and empty.” (Titus 3:9) Likewise, he tells Timothy, “For there will be a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching. Instead, following their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves, because they will have an insatiable curiosity to hear new things. And they will turn away from hearing the truth, but on the other hand they will turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

So we can tell if someone is a false prophet when they don't merely share their private interpretation to see if it helps you understand the Bible but instead they substitute it for scripture and that interpretation contradicts the essential teachings of the Bible. John points out such red flags as saying that Jesus is not the Messiah or did not become a flesh and blood human being. (1 John 2:22; 4:3) That's why summaries like the Apostles Creed were compiled by the early church. They tell us in a nutshell what are the basics that we are to believe.

There are also basics of Christian behavior. The Ten Commandments are a good start. And all mainstream religions have some form of the Golden Rule. Jesus put it this way: “Treat others in the same way you would want them to treat you.” (Luke 6:31) Jesus also summarized all the ethical laws in the Bible when he told us to love God with all we are and all we have and to love our neighbor as ourselves. (Matthew 22:37-40)

But Jesus' unique contribution to morality is his extension of the command to love others. He told us we must even love our enemies. (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27) No false prophet says that. False prophets are so narcissistic that they cannot tolerate people who question them nor will they usually let people leave their church or cult. Instead they will harass them or even send out followers to harm the defectors. Ervin LeBaron called himself the prophet of his polygamous Mormon fundamentalist group. He sent his followers, including some of his 50 children by his 13 wives, to kill people who left his group or were part of rival groups. It is estimated that he was responsible for between 25 and 50 murders, including those of his own 2 brothers. Jesus never did that. When the disciples reported to him that they tried to stop someone casting out demons in his name, Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you.” (Luke 9:50) Having different denominations is not a sin. Christians demonizing other Christians is.

Only a false prophet will tell you tell you that murder, adultery, theft, or lying are OK because he says so or that you are to worship something or someone other than God. Again 2 Peter says, “These false teachers will infiltrate your midst with destructive heresies, even to the point of denying the Master who brought them. As a result, they will bring swift destruction on themselves. And many will follow their debauched lifestyles. Because of these false teachers, the way of truth will be slandered. And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words.” (2 Peter 2:1-3) A false prophet will use his revelations and teachings to gain wealth or sex or power for himself. Paul said about such people, “If someone spreads false teachings and does not agree with sound words (that is, those of our Lord Jesus Christ) and with the teaching that accords with godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing, but has an unhealthy interest in controversies and verbal disputes. This gives rise to envy, dissension, slanders, evil suspicions, and constant bickering by people corrupted in their minds and deprived of the truth, who suppose godliness is a way of making profit.” (1 Timothy 6:3-5)

Finally, false prophets tend to be more popular than real prophets because they tell people what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. As the fall of Judah to the Babylonians got closer, Jeremiah said, “The Lord God who rules over all says to the people of Jerusalem: 'Do not listen to what those prophets are saying to you. They are filling you with false hopes. They are reporting visions of their own imaginations, not something the Lord has given them to say. They continually say to those who reject what the Lord has said, “Things will go well for you!” They say to those who follow the stubborn inclinations of their own hearts, “Nothing bad will happen to you!”...But if they had stood in my inner circle, they would have proclaimed my message to my people. They would have caused my people to turn from their wicked ways and stop doing the evil things they are doing.” (Jeremiah 23:16-17, 22)

We are seeing this happening today. False prophets are preaching things that not Christian: they are preaching hate; they are preaching that it is OK to be greedy and that God wants us to pursue wealth; they are preaching that we need not do anything to help the poor, the hungry, the sick, the prisoner and the immigrant; they are blessing people's worst attitudes and actions; they are preaching belligerence rather than mercy, retribution rather than forgiveness, the tolerance of injustice and the intolerance of those who disagree with them. And, yes, some who we might otherwise think are Christian are going along with this. They are idolizing those who embody arrogance, lust, laziness, greed, rage, envy and self-indulgence. They are making fun of those who turn the other cheek and calling those who give up their lives for others losers. They exalt the love of power rather than the power of love.

Jesus warned us to “Watch out for false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are voracious wolves! You will recognize them by their fruit.” (Matthew 7:15-16) He recognizes them as well. “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter into the kingdom of heaven—only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. Go away from me, you lawbreakers!'” (Matthew 7:22-23)

What then is the mark of the true prophet and the true Christian? Hint: you will find it repeated more than 17 times throughout the New Testament. Here it is: on the night before he died for us Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment—to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Everyone will know that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

How to Fight Evil (Without Fighting)

This sermon was originally preached on January 22, 2006. It has been updated.

You could argue that the first movies were what are now called “genre films.” That is, the first movies with plots weren't about everyday life but were fantasies, like 1900's Cinderella, or science fiction, like 1902's A Trip to the Moon, both by George Melies. Even the first non-fantasy film story, 1903's The Great Train Robbery by Edwin Porter, could be classified as both a Western and a thriller. As movies changed from novelties to a staple of 20^th century life, genre films, though popular, have been looked down upon by critics and even those in the industry. Since their inception in 1928, the Academy Awards have rarely honored films other than dramas. Fantasy and science fiction movies might pick up technical awards for sound or special effects but they aren't considered serious films. That's why it was such a shock when the third Lord of the Rings film, The Return of the King, won the Oscar for Best Picture of 2003. It was the first fantasy film ever to do so. And it showed that even a story that included hobbits, elves and sorcerers could have important things to say about life.

Why are such stories popular even though they are far removed from our everyday experiences? The usual answer is that they are escapist entertainments, designed to help us escape mentally and emotionally from our mundane lives. If so, why do they resonate so much with so many people? Because, despite the trappings of magic, or technology so advanced it might as well be magic, speculative fiction tends to deal with ultimate values. In fact many writers, such as Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, and Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, have discovered that they can use fantasy and science fiction to explore controversial subjects, such as race, war, patriotism, religion and others, without instantly polarizing their audiences. Set the Vietnam War on a distant planet and, stripped of its identifying and incidental details, you can talk about its morality. Explore the differences within an alien species and you can get to the heart of racism. Take a current topic and extrapolate how it might shape our future and you can deal with the ethics of cloning, or of manipulating DNA, or the consequences of artificial intelligence. Fantasy and science fiction are ideal settings to explore questions of good and evil in ways that people of different cultures, politics or even religions can consider them rationally.

So it's sad that these days Hollywood tends to use the trappings of scifi and fantasy primarily to produce action films, which are all about thrills rather than thoughts. They even managed to make the life of Christ into one of the biggest action films ever: The Matrix. (Where the One dies and is raised back to life by the love of Trinity and ascends at the end. Sound familiar?) Of course the advantage of using science fiction or fantasy as the setting for an action film is that the hero can kill loads of bad guys and as long as they are machines, monsters, or aliens, he won't appear to be a mass murderer. That's why there are so few films like the thoughtful Gattaca and so many like the brainless Alien Vs. Predator. And that's why the solution to the problem of evil in these movies is usually to just kill all the bad guys. You only have to look at the Middle East to see that in real life this really doesn't work.

Are there times when the right response to evil is to fight? Unfortunately, yes. Europe would still be an Nazi empire had we not opposed Hitler by force. Again Star Trek: Deep Space Nine explored the moral problems that arise when the basically decent Federation of Planets finds itself fighting a war it can't afford to lose against a people obsessed with securing the supremacy of its race. It showed the moral ambiguities involved in fighting even when your goal is good. In the end certain enemies become allies and the supposed good guys use biological warfare to win. And yet after the war one good guy gives up the woman he loves to devote himself to curing the defeated aggressors. Though not himself religious, Roddenberry had a very religious upbringing and so every version of Star Trek has always upheld the idea that different peoples, even former enemies like the Klingons, can find reconciliation.

Evil doesn't always approach us in columns with jackboots and swastikas, though. And the way to fight evil doesn't always have to involve fists and weapons. So let's contemplate some other ways to deal with evil other than killing those under its sway.

Evil starts, as the third chapter of Genesis tells us, as an idea. It is a seductive idea and it is that we know better than God. (Genesis 3:1-6) The Greeks called this attitude hubris; most Bible translations render it pride, but a better translation would be arrogance. Unlike pride, arrogance is not simply taking pleasure in your accomplishments; it is a sense of inherent and all-encompassing superiority to others. If I win a tennis match, I really can't conclude much more than I won that match on that day against that person. If however I win lots of matches against lots of people, I can conclude that I am a very good tennis player. But I cannot conclude that I am the world's greatest tennis player unless I play and defeat everyone in professional tennis,and even then I am not the greatest for all time. Most successful people are eventually toppled or surpassed by someone new. And I certainly cannot conclude that I am in any way superior in other sports or other areas of life. We shouldn't be all that shocked when we find out that someone who is a good athlete or singer or actor or preacher or leader can also be a bad spouse or businessman or parent or thinker. Nobody is the best in everything. Only an arrogant person assumes he or she possesses unilateral superiority in all spheres of life.

So one way to fight evil is to practice and teach humility. Humility simply means having a sense of proportion about yourself and your strengths and weaknesses. A humble person can acknowledge that he or she is good at some things but not good at others. A humble person knows that thinking you are the GOAT at anything is both untrue and dangerous, to yourself and to others. Will Rogers pointed out that we are all ignorant, just on different topics. And you can say we all have weaknesses, just in different things. An arrogant person will not admit to weaknesses in any area and will see others who have notable strengths as threats to his ego. A wise person sees the strengths of others not as threats but as resources and sees other people not as rivals but as potential allies.

Another thing only a humble person does is repent when they are wrong. The Greek word for “repent” means “to change your mind” and the Hebrew word for it means “to turn around.” Since arrogant people feel they are never wrong but that they are infallible, they rarely change their mind nor do they change their direction in life.

Because evil starts as an idea, one way of combating it is using God's gift of your mind. Since evil is a distortion or a diminishing of what is good, we need to be able to recognize its telltale lies. We need to spot lines of thought that seek to justify evil ways of doing things simply because they have noble goals. We have seen the disastrous fallout when our country has undermined the democracy of other countries, like in Iran and in Latin America. Cult leaders routinely convince people that it's OK to break the commandments against adultery, theft, lying and even murder because they are speaking for God or are themselves God. But those are God's commandments, so why would he break them or tell others to break them? As James tells us, God is not tempted by evil nor does he tempt others. (James 1:13) Anytime someone says some noble end justifies whatever means it takes to achieve it, they are tempting us to do evil.

We also need to refute any system of thought that reduces people to mere animals, or alternately exalts humans into gods. We need as well to refute any system of thought that narrowly defines what is good as whatever benefits me and mine and does this by neglecting or exploiting or harming others. And in general, we should question anything that promises to be a panacea and solve all our problems by its simple application. We must also realize that all ideas need to be analyzed this way, even if they come from a supposedly Christian source.

So one way of fighting evil in thoughts is to learn the gospel, the good news of what God has revealed in Christ. It is important to learn it well enough to think Christianly, that is, by using scripture first but also looking at what Christians in the past have said and done for inspiration and by using our God-given reason. The Bible is not an encyclopedia and you are going to encounter things you can't dismiss with prooftexts. Today we are facing completely new things, like the ability to alter human DNA and to create artificial intelligence. They have the potential to do great good and to do great harm—and there is nothing in the Bible about them! So we must use its timeless moral principles and figure out how to apply them to new situations. We should also look at how God responded to evil. He didn't take up arms against evil people; he became one of us and showed us how to live. After we killed him, he rose again and now he lives in us through his Spirit. Our creator is creative in dealing with evil and so must we be.

Evil thoughts become evil words and so spread to others. So we can fight evil with words as Jesus did. I don't just mean by debating the ideas. I mean by using positive speech as well. We need to learn to articulate our faith and learn how to communicate it. There are a great many good books out there that put the gospel into non-technical, non-churchy language. There are books by C.S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers and Paul Little and William Barclay and N.T. Wright. The “Outline of the Faith” in the Book of Common Prayer can help.

It is also essential that we read the Bible, regularly, intelligently, curiously, and prayerfully. Don't stick to one translation. None of them can fully express all the riches and wisdom to be found there. There are also a number of good study Bibles out there. There are loads of translations and Bible helps and commentaries online for free, like William Barclay's Daily Study Bible. I highly recommend the Bible Hub app. The Logos app offers an entire library of books that will help you with almost any question and both apps are free to download and use.

But if we are to communicate our faith we need to translate it into terms that we ourselves use everyday. Very few people speak or understand Elizabethan English or theological terms. So we shouldn't use them to talk to people outside the faith. We need to find ways of talking about sin, repentance, redemption, atonement and holiness that people can understand. We need to take the concepts behind such words and relate them to ordinary life. After all, as J.B. Phillips said, Jesus is God's Word in terms we can understand, like time and space and human personality. Sharing the good news of God's love, forgiveness and new life in Christ is a way of counteracting evil.

Another way to fight evil that often gets forgotten is encouragement. Sure, we should expose evil and warn people about it, but we shouldn't neglect encouraging people to do what's right. If doing the right thing all the time were easy, we wouldn't be discussing evil. So it's vital to support and encourage good actions on the part of others and to stand by them when doing right is hard.

Among the physical ways of fighting evil that don't involve Kung Fu is comforting those who are hurt, supporting those who are unsteady, restraining those who are angry, hugging those who need love, playing with children, helping with a task, etc. These are all little things that are also powerful ways to communicate God's love and faithfulness to those around us when words are not enough.

These are just a few of the ways you can combat evil with your mind, your words and your actions. But the best strategy is to combine all three. Think up a way to fight evil, communicate it to others and then implement it. There was a boy who made sandwiches and gave them to the homeless. Other people joined in and a simple and effective way to fight hunger was born. There was a wealthy man and his wife who wanted to live more Christian lives and decided to partner with the poor in building homes. Today Habitat for Humanity is a worldwide Christian answer to the lack of affordable housing. A Christian rockstar met with world leaders about a pressing social concern. Bono has used his celebrity to convince wealthy countries to forgive Third World debt, freeing up some of the poorest countries to use their natural resources to help their own people.

There are many ways of fighting evil: through healing, through education, through invention, through example, through law, through art, through organization, through fundraising, through parenting, and through peacemaking. God has given us hundreds of gifts in billions of combinations. We can choose to waste them or use them selfishly or destructively--that's basically what evil is--or we can use them to make the world better.

Why is it that the good guy in the genre stories we love is almost always a warrior? As we've seen there are countless other ways to fight evil. And we haven't even talked about the most radical way God has provided for us: forgiveness. The way that evil perpetuates itself is through a neverending cycle of injury and retaliation. It's rather like how a gang war increases and spreads. Damaged people pass the evil done to them along to others. Forgiveness stops evil cold. If you forgive someone the cycle of pain comes to a halt. But it's hard. It is perhaps the hardest thing God asks us to do. Still that's how God himself did it. From the cross Jesus asks his Father to forgive those who were in the process of killing him. In the Lord's prayer we ask God to forgive us to the extent that we forgive others. We can only accomplish this by calling on the power of his Holy Spirit working in and through us to change us and our relationships.

Wouldn't it be great if in a big movie when the hero arrives, the bad guys put down their arms, defect and join the side of good? That's how God wants the story to end. He wants his enemies to become his allies. He wants us to stop harming each other and his creation and start restoring it. The Christian hope, as N.T. Wright points out, is not the fiery end of everything but a new beginning. (Revelation 21:1-5) We look for a new heaven and a new earth, a new city of God, and a new kind of life, where neither pain, nor regret, nor anger, nor arrogance reign but the God who is love rules in our hearts and in our minds and in our lives.

Good Sex

This sermon was originally preached on January 15, 2006. It has been updated.

A while ago my wife and I were channel surfing and stopped on a news show. A reporter was apparently ambushing these guys in the kitchen of an average looking home. At first we weren't sure what these normal-looking middle-aged men were doing. Then it became clear. They had all been invited over by someone they met on the internet, someone they thought was a 14 year old kid. Some were there to see a girl, some to see a boy. But the person who invited them was really an undercover cop. The show was To Catch a Predator.

They had excuses. They were merely checking on a lonely teen. They were offering love but not, they insisted, “that kind.” But they had said what they wanted to do to the kid online. And they weren't what we think of as lowlifes. One was an emergency room doctor. Another, who had sent nude photos of himself, was a rabbi. One even fell for another internet assignation the very next day, only to be caught by the same reporter.

A few years ago the police used a similar set up to catch a man who had written a book. What caught the media's attention was the same thing that had made me buy his unique volume on world history years earlier. It was the now ironic title: The Story of Stupidity. We often hear about seemingly smart people—writers, scientists, politicians, businessmen—doing really stupid things. And we wonder “What were they thinking?” The answer is usually “They weren't!” Not everything we do is logical; a lot of it is psychological. We are not only motivated by our needs, like food, shelter and love, but also by our fears and our desires. And one of the strongest desires, so strong that it is often mistaken for a need, is sex.

Isn't sex a need? Not really. You need to eat and drink or you will die. But despite what teenage boys tell girls, nobody dies if deprived of sex. In fact in many species, nobody gets to mate but the alpha couple. Or the alpha male and his harem. In praying mantises the female kills and eats the male after mating with him. So for them sex kills.

Sex is essential for the continuation of the species. It is not essential for every individual, however. Some people have no sexual desire. They are asexual and today call themselves “Aces.”

But for most of us, the urge is strong. It has to be in order that enough individuals mate, ensuring that the species doesn't die out. But it is so powerful that people commonly mistake it for something else, something that really is a need: love. For instance, infants not given love usually die, even if all their physical needs are met. If they do survive, they will suffer from crippling psychological problems. Love is a need. But there are different kinds of love: familial, divine, friendship. Sex is only appropriate in connection with romantic love.

Contrary to what many people think, sex is not a sin. Sex was created by God and is good. The very first commandment he gives us is “Be fruitful and multiply.” (Genesis 1:28) He could have made us reproduce non-sexually as one-celled animals do, or as the New Mexico whiptail lizards, who are all female, do. He could have made sex for humans as impersonal as it is for deer, who rut and then part. But God made it so that humans must attract one another, come together and then want to stay together. You may have heard of the chemical oxytocin that is released during sex and binds the couple together emotionally. In Genesis we are told that the man and the woman become one. (Genesis 2:24) This makes sense because God is love and we are made in his image. (1 John 4:8; Genesis 1:27) God is more than one person; God is Father and Son, united in the Spirit of love. We most resemble God when we are united in love, as a couple or as a family or as a community. Sex is just one biological expression of that love.

So how did we get the idea that sex is bad? Part of the fault lies with the church. Tainted by Gnostic spirit-matter dualism and Eastern philosophies that denigrate the body, the church eventually came to see celibacy as the only pure way to live as a Christian. But if you read Paul, you see that neither the body nor sex is evil. But like all good things, they can be used for evil.

God created all things and pronounced them good. (Genesis 1:31) So where does evil come from? If good is the original state of things, then evil is parasitic. Evil is a parody of good, a pale imitation of what God originally intended. Evil is a distortion or diminishing of good. Practically speaking, evil is the misuse, abuse or neglect of what is good. For example, if I give my kid a baseball bat, I wish him to enjoy the bat. But I want him to use it as intended by its makers, to play baseball or softball or T-ball. If instead he is hitting other kids with the bat, he is using the bat improperly. The bat isn't evil; its misuse is. Similarly, if I buy my kid a video game, I intend for him to enjoy it. But if he spends all day doing literally nothing but playing games, that's not how I intended him to use it. Gamers have actually died after they went days without eating because they couldn't stop gaming. Their obsession with the game and their abuse of it ruined and in some cases ended their lives.

In the same way, God gives us the gift of sex. He intends for us to enjoy it in the way he designed it to be used. But we can take his good gift and misuse it. We can use it to hurt. We can use it to dominate. We can let it take over our lives. We can try to divorce the pleasure of it from its intended purpose: to facilitate and enhance a loving relationship that may, if God wills it, provide a nurturing environment for children.

And because sex is so powerful, it can do a great deal of good or a great deal of damage. And so we see marriages destroyed by the misuse of sex. Like selfish sex. Read Paul: the body of the wife is not exclusively hers but belongs to the husband, he says. “Ah ha!” say his critics. “He's a male chauvinist!” But in the same verse he goes on to say that the husband's body is not just his but belongs to his wife. (1 Corinthians 7:4) That was radical in the first century! Too bad people only read part of what he wrote. The point is that spouses are to be attentive to each other's bodies and to each other's pleasure. Neither selfish nor painful nor abusive sex are what God intends.

Another way that sex can be abused is through promiscuity. Remember how sex releases a chemical that binds the couple? That's telling us that when relationships get to that level of intimacy, we were meant to settle down together. But some people seem to be immune to the effects of oxytocin. How else are they able to bounce from partner to partner to partner without regret? If someone at a restaurant ordered meal after meal after meal, chewed up all the food and then spat it all out, you'd know that something was wrong with them. Yet folks who extract the pleasure from sex without committing to the people involved have become so common, that we just shrug. Unless you're one of the people who got chewed up and spat out. Some promiscuous men are considered heroes, like Hugh Hefner was. A recent documentary series with interviews from many of the women and the men who worked for Hefner revealed that he was just as much of a sexual predator as those middle-aged guys on To Catch a Predator. Except he reveled in being in the spotlight. And he used drugs and his power and influence to get his way.

Sadly for some folks sexual promiscuity continues despite broken homes, damaged children, ruined reputations, and its financial, psychological and even physical costs. A doctor once defined an addiction as any behavior a person persists in despite mounting negative consequences. Someone else said that addiction is giving up everything else for one thing. Recovery is giving up one thing for everything else. It seems like there really are people addicted to sex. Liked that guy who risked everything twice in a row to meet a 14 year old potential sex partner.

This leads us to what Paul is talking about in today's passage (1 Corinthians 6:12-20). He says “'All things are lawful for me' but not all things are beneficial. 'All things are lawful for me' but I will not be dominated by anything.” Paul preached freedom in Christ. The Christian is not bound by the cumbersome ceremonial and ritual laws of Judaism. But some took this to mean that Christians aren't bound by moral laws either. They were following the Spirit, not rules, they said. But what Paul was saying is that the Law, which was a good thing, could be misused to become an oppressive tangle of rules that could actually come between God and us. Think of how many people raised in overly strict homes with lots of rules that didn't make sense have left their childhood faith because they were told it was the source of those rules. Paul points out that the Law could even be used to tempt people by giving things mystery and the allure of the forbidden. (Romans 7:7-25) And Jesus had no patience for any rules that stopped him from healing on the Sabbath or touching the sick and outcast or teaching women. (Luke 13:15-16; Mark 2:27-28)

In our passage Paul uses some logical judo against his critics. He takes some of the things people are saying, their oversimplifcations of freedom in Christ, and shows that they cannot justify immorality. Just because something is legal doesn't make it good for you. It may be legal to buy and then eat an entire 10 pound bag of Halloween candies by yourself. It would be unhealthy, though, if not lethal for some who are diabetic.

Paul also points out that things that are legal can take over your life. Some people think that if we legalize recreational drugs, all the problems we have with them will be solved. Yet the two recreational drugs that are universally legal, alcohol and tobacco, kill more people than all the illegal drugs combined. So do we need to add more addictive substances which will be manufactured by big companies and marketed and made to look cool to everyone, including kids? Remember Oxycontin? Tell the addict who spends all day looking for his next fix that his biggest problem is the illegality of what hooked him. That's the least of his problems. What started out as a pleasure has now become his master, and it punishes him if he tries to get free. Legalizing slavery doesn't help the slaves.

Similarly we have a culture that thinks it has discovered that all problems regarding sex can be solved if we just get rid of all the rules. This is like trying to make driving better by repealing all the traffic laws. Exploitation, abuse, unfaithfulness, STDs, inequality of the sexes, AIDs, human trafficking, jealous murder-suicides and sadism aren't caused by rules, but by human beings misusing God's gift to hurt themselves and others. Again it is not flesh that is evil—God's Word took flesh in Jesus—but our flesh cannot be left in charge of how we live our lives. (John 1:14; Romans 8:3-5)

The solution, Paul tells us, lies not in more rules but in a change of heart. Rather than let our desires and fears rule us, we need to remember that God lives in us and let his Spirit lead us. We need to be so full of his love and wholeness that we aren't tempted by the caricatures and knock-offs of God's gifts that evil presents to us. We need to do what we were meant to do: reflect God's glory in our spirits and in our bodies through love. We are to mirror his divine love in every other one of our loves, whether for family, friends or our romantic partner. As he is both creator and redeemer, we need to be creative as we redeem all aspects of this world and our lives.

So much of what the church has said about sex is negative. And that hasn't helped a world in which people have just about given up on love as anything more than just a temporary episode with sex as the reward. And people don't need to hear more sentimental claptrap about the kind of love that only exists in fairy tales. What the world needs to see is flawed people transforming their flawed love into the mutually self-giving love we see in the Triune God. The world needs to see people who dare to not only say out loud what they say in their hearts—that they love each other so much that they will stick with one another through thick and thin until the day they die—but who then actually keep those promises and don't just leave them at the altar. We need to see people who find in sex not only the interlocking of two physical organisms but the embodiment of the melding of two lives into one. And we need to keep our minds and hearts open to the Spirit of God, who is the only force that can liberate us from all that is less-than-good and help us find and rightfully and joyfully use the gifts of God, which he so generously offers us in this world, in this flesh, in each other. 

Jesus and Other Religions

This sermon was originally preached on January 4, 2009. It has been updated.

A lot of people would love to lose 60 pounds in a couple of months. But my friend was a nurse and so she knew that something was seriously wrong with her. For one thing, she wasn't dieting; she was losing weight because of involuntary projectile vomiting. She also knew that the problem probably involved her gallbladder, the organ that enables your body to break down fats in your food. It does so by squeezing out bile. If the bile calcifies in the duct leading from the gallbladder, it forms into gallstones. But no gallstones were detected by imaging. Another possibility was cancer. But all the tests came back negative. She was sent to various specialists but they too were perplexed. Her doctor began to run out of ideas and started to fall back on that old medical excuse: “It's all in your head.” But my friend knew that something was physically wrong with her and because she was unable to digest her food she was becoming malnourished. At the rate she was losing weight, she would be dead by the end of the year.

One day her regular doctor was out of town and she was seen by his partner in the practice. As she described her symptoms and the test results for the umpteenth time, something triggered a new diagnostic possibility in this doctor's mind. He ran a test and it turned out that my friend had something called a porcelain gallbladder. The bile hadn't solidified in the duct but inside the gallbladder itself, coating the lining and hardening so that the gallbladder couldn't contract and squeeze out the bile to do its job. Surgery cured my friend. In addition, she was fortunate because having a porcelain gallbladder is often associated with gallbladder cancer and rarely exhibits signs and symptoms until it is too late to save the patient.

The bicyclist was lucky to be alive. First he was struck by a drunken motorist who sent him flying through the air. Unfortunately, he landed right in the middle of US-1. Another car ran over him. He got caught in its undercarriage and dragged for a dozen yards. His injuries were terrible. And the most mangled part of him was his leg. The consensus of the doctors at the hospital was to amputate it. One surgeon dissented. He thought he could save the leg. The patient decided to go with this maverick, reasoning that, in either instance, the worst case scenario was that he'd lose the leg. But if the surgeon were right, he'd keep it. The last I heard, he was learning to walk on that leg and hoped eventually to walk without a cane.

Our sermon suggestion reads, “We Christians believe that Jesus is the road to everlasting life. Does this mean that Jews, Muslims and Buddhists do not have access to an afterlife?” The purpose of my medical prologue is to reframe the question. After all, if we think of heaven or the afterlife as a destination, the idea that there might be different paths to it seems reasonable. My hometown of St. Louis is almost in the geographic center of the country and can be reached via any of a number of roads and highways going east, west, north or south. There is only one road, however, to Key West.

But I want to change the metaphor. Author Karen Armstrong points out that religions tend to be born during times of warfare and turmoil. They are primarily answers to the problems of suffering and evil. So the question “How do I get to heaven?” is not really analogous to the question, “How do I get to St. Louis?” It is more like the question, “How do I get to a state of spiritual health and well-being?”

We know that with a medical problem, it is crucial to get the right diagnosis. And once that's made, you need to choose the correct course of treatment. And you need, as we've seen, to have the right doctor. It's odd then that we do not feel we need to make similarly accurate choices when it comes to our spiritual health. We tend to treat all religions as equal options. That's like saying that my friend would have done just as well if she had gone to a chiropractor. Or that the guy's mangled leg could have been saved and fixed through acupuncture. While these alternate medical systems might work for certain conditions, neither needles nor a realignment of the spine would have worked in these very serious cases.

What is the cause of our spiritual ills? What is the best way to fix them? Let us consider the diagnosis and treatment proposed by each of the religions mentioned in our sermon suggestion and see how they stack up in terms of what we know about the world's ills.

Buddhism says all suffering is caused by desire or craving. That's the diagnosis. The solution is to become detached from the world. Which is made easier because Buddhism says the world is just an illusion. Let go of it and you can have peace. And you don't have to worry about an afterlife. To Buddhists and Hindus, eternal life would be a horrible fate. The goal of those two religions is Nirvana, which literally means the “blowing out” of the flame of life. They wish to simply be absorbed into the World Soul and lose all individual consciousness.

Desire can certainly lead to suffering, especially if that desire is thwarted. We want something—love, wealth, power—and find out that we can't achieve it. That frustration can lead to anger, conflict, murder or suicide. It may lead to theft and fraud. Ironically even fulfilled desires can lead to suffering. Those who win the lottery or who seek celebrity can find them to be as much of a curse as a blessing. The relentless and remorseless scrutiny of your life, the way these things can distort and destroy relationships, and in the case of celebrity, the constant pressure to remain “hot” can make your life a mink-lined prison. So Buddhism's diagnosis of our problems looks pretty good so far.

But desire is not the only thing that makes us suffer. Fear can also cause suffering and not all fears are illusionary or exaggerated. Losing your job and your home are very realistic things to fear. Getting cancer or some other serious disease is a legitimate fear. Buddhists would say that fears are just negative desires, the desire not to have bad things happen to us. They would say that even our needs are attachments that must be jettisoned.

No matter how good the diagnosis is, the Buddhist treatment of the disease is problematic. To tell people simply not to care about the world or their own needs seems inhuman. It's like telling the cyclist with the mangled limb to detach himself emotionally from his leg and his problem will be gone. And the idea that reality is just an illusion is akin to telling my friend that her illness is all in her head. Reality continues to exist and impact us regardless of whether we believe in it or not.

Let's move on to the other two religions mentioned. Both Islam and Judaism would say that the problem with the world is humanity's sins. This is a more precise diagnosis than Buddhism's. Both Judaism and Islam recognize that there are good desires as well as bad ones. But what do they propose as the treatments for the condition of sinful humanity?

Judaism proposes following the laws of God. Sin is doing what's wrong. So just follow the rules and do right. That sounds good but if it were that simple, sin would have been eradicated millennia ago. The problem is not just a matter of knowing what is right and what is wrong. There is an internal resistance to always doing the right thing. And we are not always rational about it. We often deliberately choose short term rewards over long term benefits. People will risk a good marriage, the stability of their family and the mental health of their children for a fling. People will endanger careers, reputations, and even their health for the transitory pleasures of winning a competition, or experiencing some sensation, or taking revenge, or trying to possess something that is not essential. The impulse to sin is deep within us.

The problem with fixing humanity's sinful nature merely by following rules is that it's trying to fix a broken leg by prescribing long walks. Instead you must first set the bone; only then can you do the physical therapy necessary to recovery. My friend knew that her gallbladder was involved. But eating a healthy low-fat diet alone was not going to cure her. However, after her porcelain gallbladder was surgically dealt with, following the rules of a healthy diet was important to her recovery. In the same way, the internal problem that causes sin must be dealt with before one can attempt to follow the rules of living a morally good life.

Islam literally means “surrender.” A Muslim is one who surrenders to the will of God, who in Arabic is called Allah. “Jihad,” by the way, means “to struggle.” In mainstream Islam, it primarily means one's personal struggle to achieve moral perfection by following rules that largely overlap those of Judaism. This is admirable but, again we must ask, “Can we do this through our own will alone?” My friend was a nurse. She knew her illness must involve her gallbladder but she was unable to cure herself. The cyclist knew his leg was more than merely broken. They both needed a doctor, one who could make the right diagnosis and then perform the appropriate surgery. They couldn't operate on themselves. They needed someone outside of themselves to cut into them, reach inside, cut out what was wrong, put their bodies back in order and then sew them back up. They needed someone to save them from physical illness, injury and death.

The Bible says humanity's problems lie in the human heart, the very core of our will. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Jesus says that sin is not an external problem that can be rinsed away like dirt but a pollution that arises from within our hearts. (Mark 7:21-23) God vows to replace our stony hearts with hearts of flesh. (Ezekiel 26:36) To keep the metaphor going, think of Jesus as our heart donor, the one who must die so that we may live. If we let him save us, our old life is over and our new life begins. We are reborn spiritually. And this process starts when we accept Jesus into our life and let his holy Spirit go to work on us. External rules are not the answer. Instead God says he will write his laws in our hearts, that is, change our programming. (Jeremiah 31:33)

This is the treatment Jesus offers. He doesn't just say, “Stop doing wrong. Do right instead.” He says, “Come to me and I will transform you.” After all, how can there be any earthly or heavenly paradise if people stay essentially the same as they are now? We are spiritually sick, morally ill. Enlightenment is not enough. Good intentions are not enough. Coming close to the right diagnosis is not enough. Being in the general vicinity of the proper course of treatment is not enough. We need a savior. We need Jesus.

No matter how well intentioned, the wrong cure is still wrong. And the right cure won't work if we don't trust and cooperate with the doctor and follow his orders. When working as a nurse I gave respiratory meds and breathing treatments to people who continued to smoke. They were undoing what I was doing to save them. Just as the existence of quacks and snake oil doesn't invalidate the truths of genuine doctors and medical treatments, hypocrites don't invalidate the truth of Christianity—because they don't follow its most basic principles. And those who leave the faith don't invalidate what it does for those who continue in the faith, any more than someone who drops out of Alcoholics Anonymous invalidates what it does for those who stick to the program.

This does not mean that Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Jainists, Sikhs and others do not have access to an afterlife. It does mean they, like anyone else, must have the humility and courage to change and to seek the God who is Love Incarnate. Jesus promised that if we seek we will find. (Matthew 7:7-8) Nor does this mean that Western “Christians” are automatically saved by virtue of their geography or culture or church membership. A mouse doesn't become a cookie just because it finds itself in a cookie jar. Living next to a huge metropolitan hospital or world class clinic doesn't make you well unless you take advantage of its facilities. Our complacency is killing the church in the West. Just as the US is far from the physically healthiest country in the world (we rank 47^th in life expectancy) so too the most vibrant centers of Christianity are no longer located in the West. The largest number of Christians and the greatest growth can be found in the churches in Africa and Asia, where being a disciple of Jesus can really cost you.

I think at least part of our wish that any religion can save people is not so much rooted in tolerance as in indifference. It's hard enough to get people to help folks in other lands and cultures with physical needs. And assuming that they are just fine spiritually gets us off the hook when it comes to spreading the good news of Jesus. Some people point to the disastrous things that missionaries have done in the past as an excuse not to try to do it better. How well would medical science do if we closed down certain areas of research because of failures in the past? Lobotomies were a terrible idea, but should we stop all brain surgeries? The earliest treatments for HIV and AIDS were harsh and left some thinking that the cure was worse than the disease. Today with treatment AIDS has become a chronic illness that can be lived with instead of the automatic death sentence it was in the 1980s. I know people alive today because of the right medicines. Today's missionaries, like a neurosurgeon I know, often bring the near miraculous healing of western medicine to people without much in the way of healthcare. And this makes the people they help become interested in what motivates these missionaries to leave their families and their wealthy countries to minister to those who can't repay them.

Any religion can give you a reasonable moral code, a cozy group of like-minded folks, colorful rituals and comforting ideas. So can joining a Star Trek or Doctor Who fan club. These groups even have designated charities they give to. I have heard fans say they use fandom as a substitute for religion. They fully know that these saviors of other worlds and times are fictional characters. But their fantasies make their viewers feel good.

But if you suspect that there is something radically wrong with a real world that has 40 wars going on at any time, one where global human trafficking, including the sexual exploitation of women and children, is a $150 billion a year industry, one where torture, racism, oppression and every other evil go on everyday; if you think we need something other than just more rules; if you think we need deep personal change that can only come from a loving creator, who dares to become one of us, to live and die and rise again with the healing we need, who asks to come into our very souls and transform us into new creations, spiritually reborn as his sons and daughters, then there is really only one option: Jesus Christ.

Keeping Body and Soul Together

This was originally preached on January 1, 2006. There has been some updating.

I don't usually make my sermons into stories. That's just the way they come out at times. I will be thinking of some story in the Bible and it will resist dissection. And that's natural. Living things resist being cut up. And the stories in the Bible are filled with life, which is why we relate to them so strongly and why, I suspect, God saw to it that the majority of scripture is a story. He could have given us a rule book. He could have given us a tome of systematic theology. And I think a lot of Christians would prefer it that way, especially those who loudly profess their supposed devotion to the Bible but only pick and choose certain portions of it to follow or believe. But God gave us an anthology, a collection of books, with just enough rules, just enough theology and a whole lot of poems, songs and stories.

So sometimes, rather than dissect a perfectly good story, I will retell it and weave the points I wish to make into the fabric of the tale. Quite frankly, it often starts with me waking at 5 in the morning with the story telling itself in my brain. And I know from experience that I must get up and get it down in writing if I am to have any peace. I do research to keep it as accurate as I can, and I consult my own experiences and emotions to keep it real. And I trust God to guide my words.

But sometimes the details in the stories distress people. They would rather not hear about the Virgin Mary breastfeeding, or about how messy Jesus' birth must have been, or about dogs fighting over the remains of crucified criminals, regardless of whether we know these things happened, or had to happen or very probably happened. I confess that some of these things come from my medical background. If you're ever in a hospital cafeteria, don't sit next to a bunch of nurses on break. We can discuss things over lunch that would make you lose yours. But these things are nevertheless real. We are physical beings in a physical world and so were the people in the Bible. That is not to say we are not also spiritual beings. As C.S. Lewis put it, we are amphibians, at home in both realms. And that is the point of today's celebration.

In the liturgical calendar of the church we call the first day of the year “Holy Name Day.” But it used to be called “The Circumcision of Our Lord.” A Jewish boy was circumcised on the 8^th day after his birth. We celebrate Christ's birthday on December 25^th because of an ancient belief that people died on the anniversary of their conception. Jesus died in the spring when Passover was held and so he was thought to have been conceived then and thus born in the winter. So we celebrate his circumcision on January 1^st. This is important because circumcision was the physical sign that a Jewish boy was a party to the covenant between God and Israel. A covenant,or treaty, was cut. Usually this involved the sacrifice of an animal and the shedding of blood. (Genesis 15) But the old covenant (which is what “Old Testament” means) between God and Abraham's descendants required the cutting off of the foreskin. (Genesis 17) It's painful and a little bit bloody and the mark it leaves is unmistakable. It is still a major rite of passage for religious Jews and is called a Bris, which is Hebrew for covenant.

So how did this day come to be called “Holy Name Day?” Because when a child was circumcised he was officially given his name. (Luke 1:59-63) The name meant something. It might be the name of a recently deceased relative or a revered ancestor. In the Bible we see infants named to commemorate God's blessing or some significant event. Abram is renamed by God as “Abraham,” which means “father of many nations.” Sarai is renamed “Sarah,” which means “princess.” Isaac means “laughter,” recalling Sarah's laughing with surprise and a little skepticism when God promises that she will give birth long after menopause. Jesus is Greek for Yeshua, which means “Yahweh is deliverance” or “Yahweh saves.” Because Hebrew was originally written without vowels, “Yahweh” is as close as modern scholars can come to working out the pronunciation of the covenant name of God revealed to Moses. “Yahweh” is a form of the Hebrew verb “to be.” It can mean “I am that I am,” or “I will be who I will be,” or even “I will be there for you.”

So on this day we commemorate 2 things: Jesus' circumcision and his naming. One seems primarily physical, the other primarily social but each has a deeper meaning. The first means that Jesus is fully a member of the covenant people of God. The second hints at his role: to be the one who brings God's deliverance.

That said, I wish we still called this “The Circumcision of Our Lord.” Because we are not in danger of failing to spiritualize things. We are in danger of forgetting that spiritual things have a physical impact.

A friend once proudly displayed her stuffed Santa. I pressed his hand and he said, “The true meaning of Christmas is in your heart.” To which I say, “It depends on what is in your heart.” The BTK killer murdered one of his victims 2 weeks before Christmas. He was president of his church council. Whatever was going on in his heart was not about God's love for all.

By making Christmas a purely internal private thing, we make its meaning hopelessly subjective. If it can mean anything we want it to, it will come to mean nothing. The true meaning of Christmas is steadily getting divorced from the objective physical meaning for its existence: the birth of Jesus, complete with amniotic fluid, blood, pain and a placenta. God did not metaphorically become one of us; he actually and physically became one of us.

That has always disturbed some people. At the time of the early church, there was a movement called Gnosticism, from “gnosis,” the Greek word for “knowledge.” Gnostics believed salvation was an intellectual process. It depended on having a secret knowledge of the world. And that knowledge was that the physical universe is evil, made by an evil demi-god. Only what is spiritual is good. So some gnostics were ascetics, trying to separate themselves from the physical world as much as possible. Others thought that because you can't redeem the physical, it was okay to indulge in every kind of physical pleasure as long as you were intellectually pure. Only when you die and escape the prison of the body can you be wholly spiritual. Gnostics found things they liked in Christianity and made inroads into the church, bringing with them their dualistic view of the physical (evil) and spiritual (good). The church condemned Gnosticism but its taint remains.

We still have Christians who try to separate the physical from the spiritual, forgetting that God created the world and pronounced it good. So we have those who act as if true Christianity occurs in some other dimension. And the consequences of radically separating the two are the same today as they were in the heyday of Gnosticism. Some Christians try to withdraw from the world, which goes against the Great Commission. (Matthew 28:19-20) Others act as if it doesn't matter what you do with your body so long as your heart is in the right place, forgetting that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19-20) Both of these are equally erroneous and they account for a lot of the troubles the church has had in relating to the world.

First let's look at those who look down on the body. After Christianity was legalized, there were few opportunities for becoming a martyr. Those who sought to live an extreme form of Christianity decided that, because they couldn't sacrifice their bodies in defiance of pagan officials, they could mortify the flesh. They took phrases from Paul's letters about learning to control one's body and twisted his sensible if subtle ideas into feats of self-torture. (Romans 13:13-14; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Galatians 5:19-25) These people went out into the desert and fasted, and whipped themselves, or sat on the top of pillars for years. This asceticism has more to do with Eastern body-denying philosophies. These hermits sought to show their devotion to God by literally crucifying their flesh. And people flocked to see them. It makes you wonder if this showy kind of religious practice wasn't some form of exhibitionism—especially when you have seen, as I have, an entire valley, located between Jerusalem and Jericho, that is dotted with the tiny caves of hundreds of so-called “hermits” that used to live there.

In that same valley there is an ancient monastery that goes back more than 1000 years. When I visited it on a study trip in 1975, there were only 3 aged monks rattling around in this vast holy building. And another of the monks did not get along with the other 3 and moved into one of the hermit caves. Not the best way to show that “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

Now monasticism has done a lot of good. At their best monks and nuns ran hospitals, schools and universities. Some created breathtaking art, initiated social reform and served as model communities. During the so-called “dark ages” they preserved classical works and learning, both Christian and pagan, which was despised by the barbarians who overthrew the Roman empire. Many of the early scientific discoveries came from the learned priests and monks who lived and worked in the monasteries where they made their observations about medicinal herbs, animal husbandry, weather, clock-making and more.

Still, the impulse behind the monastic movement, at least in the beginning, was the idea that it was easier to be a Christian if you just withdrew from the world. And since the second greatest commandment, according to Jesus, is to love our neighbor, it seems odd to think he meant to separate yourself from people. This kind of Christian practice concentrated on purifying oneself in a controlled environment. The problem is that even the monasteries and the nunneries were not immune to sin.

Often what happened was that if a monastery or an order of monks were good at what they did, they attracted wealthy patrons. As the monastery grew rich, its disciplines grew lax and its original goals were forgotten or modified. The reason why in the Robin Hood stories he often held up abbots and bishops was that they often controlled a lot of land and therefore a lot of wealth. Sins of the spirit, like arrogance, were evident, followed by sins of the flesh. In his meticulously researched novel, The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco has his detective, Brother Henry of Baskerville, uncover all 7 deadly sins in a large and important monastery. Which brings us back to the problem of finding the meaning of Christmas in your heart. Jesus reminds us that there are some pretty dark things in our hearts and by itself changing our external circumstances is not sufficient to save us from sin. (Mark 7:21-23)

On the other hand, we find those in the church who think that externals are of no importance at all. Many so-called “Christians” are living lifestyles that are no different from nonbelievers. Misunderstanding Paul's discovery that our salvation comes from God's grace through faith and not from our works has led lots of Christians to feel that as long as their heart is right with God, what they do is their own business. This is like an alcoholic thinking that as long as he attends A.A. meetings and says his affirmations, he can continue to drink. So we have Christians who think nothing of sleeping with others without making explicit the implicit promises and commitments the merging of two lives demands, or seeking God's blessing. We also have Christians taking marriage vows without seriously considering what they are saying. There are Christians who don't see the contradiction between being a temple of the Holy Spirit and ingesting chemicals, both legal and illegal, just for fun, despite the fact that they impair their thinking and physical functions. We have people on the one hand saying that Jesus is their Savior while on the other refusing to repent or take responsibility for the acts that harm themselves or others.

In fact there are whole groups of Christians who want the church and society to excuse whatever harm they do because they are at the mercy of familial, societal, political, economic or biological forces that they insist they cannot resist. They know the commandments against murder, stealing, sexual immorality, etc, but they plead they are victims of oppression, injustice, deprivation, neglect, or abuse as if they were mere puppets and incapable of doing any differently. We have a lot of people who want love and acceptance but not salvation from their destructive and self-destructive actions. They don't want to be saved from what they say tyrannically rules their lives.

Christ became a man. He had brothers and sisters. He did a physical job. He ate and drank and went to the bathroom. He had sexual organs and sexual urges. That's part and parcel of the incarnation. And it means we are not to despise God's physical creation nor our own bodies. It also means that, as it says in Hebrews, we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses. His knowledge of our troubles comes firsthand.

Hebrews goes on to say that Jesus was tested in every respect that we are, yet he did not sin. (Hebrews 4:15) Jesus drank but he didn't get drunk. Jesus got hungry but he didn't spend every idle moment stuffing his face. Jesus had sexual urges but he didn't act like a dog in heat. Jesus got tired but he made time for prayer. Jesus observed the rules of his faith but he never let those rules stop him from helping those in need.

And though he was a physical being, Jesus did not run from the painful consequences of preaching unpopular ideas to the hostile powers that be. He was beaten and tortured to death. As gross as it may seem to us, his blood was spilled to cut the new covenant between God and humanity. The physical and spiritual impact one another. If you truly believe in something, you act on it. If something happens to you, you seek its meaning. The physical gives concrete expression to the spiritual and the spiritual gives meaning to the physical.

In the death of Jesus on the cross we see what self-sacrificial love ultimately looks like. We see God in Christ taking upon himself both the spiritual and the physical impacts of our sins, and the society and systems we have created and acquiesced to. He endured the inventive cruelty of our inhumanity to each other, the self-preserving disregard for another's suffering, and the ever-present belief that the end (in this case, civil peace) justifies the means (eliminating the source of troublesome ideas.) We also see, when Jesus cries, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” the Trinity, the eternal divine love relationship at the heart of all being, absorbing the spiritual desolation and estrangement that is the natural consequence of our parting ways with God.

Of course, all of this would be so much speculation if God had not raised Jesus physically from the dead. Had the disciples not seen Jesus, if they hadn't touched him and ate with him and felt his breath upon them, they wouldn't have had the courage to step into the streets again and to go into the temple again and to loudly proclaim, at the risk of their own lives, that Jesus is Lord.

God physically invaded this world. He came to show us in Jesus what he is like and what we can be. He came to show us that we should not look down upon our earthly existence as nothing but dirt nor knuckle under to its forces. What we can do is transform it into what he has always intended it to be: our home and his realm. We are flesh and blood; we are soul and spirit. We need to embrace both elements of our makeup because we will need both to accomplish the mission to which he calls us—to be living embodiments of his love and grace and forgiveness and deliverance. Our world, spiritually blind to God's goodness and physically enthralled by evil, desperately needs to feel the impacts of those spiritual truths in action and hear us announce the good news that God have infiltrated time, that the Spirit is spreading the kingdom of God and that we can be liberated from the tyranny of race, gender, state of health, age, nationality, ethnicity, geography, politics, economics, history, culture, family, and biology because Jesus, and only Jesus, is Lord of all.