The Death of Violence

The scriptures referred to are Philippians 2:5-11 and Matthew 26:14-27:66.

It should surprise no one that the deadliest war ever fought was the Second World War. The death toll is estimated to be 66 million people, 20 million of whom were soldiers and 46 million of whom were civilians. According to Matthew White's book Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History, the largest number of casualties in any war are usually non-combatants. On average, he writes, 85% of the people killed in wars have been civilians. At the end of his book he analyzes what he discovered but found there were no easy answers to what caused most of them, aside from vague things like hatred, stupidity and power. As for the 20^th century as a whole, White reckons that 150 million people died in the events that stretch from the First World War—“the war to end all wars”—up to the deaths of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. This combination of all the interconnected events includes the rise of communism and subsequent civil wars in Russia and China, the rise of fascism in Europe and Nazism in Germany, both world wars, the Holocaust, the various purges and famines caused by Stalin and Mao. White calls it the Hemoclysm, from the Greek for “blood flood.” He counts 3 causes of these related mass murders or multicides: technology, ideology and the escalating cycle of violence. Or “Because they could, because they wanted to and because everybody else was doing it.”

Oh and by the way, he writes, “A friend once wondered aloud how much suffering in history has been caused by religious fanaticism, and I was able to confidently tell her 10 percent...” In other words, 90% of mass human killings were committed for reasons other than religion. For instance, economics has accounted for 3 times as many deaths as religion. The economic problems in Germany led to the rise of the Nazis.

White attributes 9 multicides to the Roman Empire, 6 of which were due to Roman conquest and resistance. The Romans conquered all the lands that surrounded the Mediterranean Sea, ruling 50 to 60 million people. The Romans were brutal and efficient. Small wonder that would-be dictators often look to the Roman emperors as models to be emulated. They ignore the fact that 60 to 75% of them died violently. Because the empire was built on violence.

For instance, Pilate was a heavy-handed prefect of Judea. He broke precedent by bringing the military standards, bearing the image of Caesar, into Jerusalem. Jews found this idolatrous and protested at Pilate's palatial estate in Caesarea Maritima. He invited them to the local stadium to discuss the matter and then had them surrounded by soldiers. He threatened to have them killed. The Jews bared their necks and dared him to do so. Declining to start his term with a massacre, he backed down and removed the standards. But he didn't learn much. We are told in Luke about an incident involving some “Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifice.” (Luke 13:1) He did something similar to some Samaritans gathered on Mt. Gerizim, their sacred site. They complained to the emperor and he was removed from office. So I don't think Pilate's treatment of Jesus was due to compassion on his part.

Joseph ben Caiaphas was the longest serving high priest during the time of the New Testament. He was appointed 8 years before Pilate was made prefect. It was a turbulent time and so Caiaphas, son-in-law of Annas, a very powerful former high priest, must have been good at working with the Romans. Notably, nothing is said about his reaction to Pilate's offensive behavior with the Roman standards. It doesn't look like he supported the protests but neither does it look like he supported Pilate. I can see therefore why Pilate would not in turn want to do Caiaphas a favor by executing a man who did not seem to be a threat to the peace but did appear to be a thorn in Caiaphas' side.

In other words, what we see in the gospels' accounts leading up to Jesus' death is a power play between a politician and a religious leader. Both were trying to win out over the other. Neither wanted a riot. Caiaphas was trying to eliminate what he saw as the problem. (John 11:47-50) The fact that the problem was a man who appeared to be sent by God to heal and to preach love and forgiveness was irrelevant to both men.

As we've seen, the last resort for humans when dealing with problems is violence. If we can't get what we want by talking, negotiating, or working together to solve a problem, we lash out. (James 4:1-2) We seek to control others by violence or threats of violence. It works—in the short term. But the problems never really go away. They come back to haunt us. Hitler tried to eliminate the Jews by killing 6 million of them. Today there are 15 to 20 million Jews worldwide. In 1953 the British and American governments engineered a coup to oust a democratically elected Prime Minister in Iran who wanted to nationalize their oil industry. They installed a brutal Shah instead. He was overthrown in 1979 by religious fundamentalists, leading to our current situation. Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, we still have Nazis and fascists, trying for a do over. To paraphrase George Santayana, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

But what is the alternative to violence? Or perhaps it is more accurate to say, who is the alternative? Of all the people in our passion reading, it is pretty obvious, though it wasn't at the time. Pilate and Caiaphas seemed to have won. Caiaphas got rid of Jesus and Pilate dodged a formal complaint to the emperor. But just 3 years later both would be removed from their positions. We don't know what happened to either of them after that. In fact, if it weren't for a few mentions in Josephus and an inscription, Caiaphas and Pilate would only be known for their parts in Jesus' death. Pilate is better known than the high priest simply because his name is repeated weekly in the creeds in the phrases “suffered” or “crucified under Pontius Pilate.” I wonder if that was the nightmare Pilate's wife had: that this would be the one thing he would forever be remembered for.

Jesus taught us not to repay evil with evil and he lived that out. (Matthew 5:38-41) He did not strike back when he was hit. (Matthew 26:67; 27:30) He told his followers to put away the sword rather than fight to defend him. (Matthew 26:52) And when Pilate asked him if he was a king, Jesus said that his kingdom did not come from this world and he offered as proof the fact that his disciples were not fighting to free him. (John 18:36) The Roman Empire not only had him crucified but no less than 3 emperors tried to stamp out faith in Jesus through persecution. Yet 3 centuries after the events on Golgotha, a Roman emperor legalized Christianity. 2 millennia later, over 2.4 billion people in the world call themselves Christians, almost a third of the global population.

I wish I could say that all of those who call themselves Christian did in fact follow in his ways. But as we've seen, there are those who think that the kingdom of God is best served through violence. They do not deny themselves, take up their own cross daily and follow him. (Luke 9:23) They do not have the same mind “that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be clung to, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness, and being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8)

As historian Tom Holland points out, the idea that God would die on a cross to save sinful humanity was radical. The Roman Empire was all about strength and glory through winning and defeating your enemies. There was no place for compassion for the underdogs. And Jesus definitely looked as a loser from their standpoint, as well as that of many today. A workman, whose only weapons were his words of good news to the poor and powerless, was executed in the most brutal way by the biggest superpower of its day. Yet today that empire is gone. Their glory is only what we can dig up and reconstruct from the remains, rubbish and ruins they left behind. That man however rose again to life. Jesus took the worst thing we could do to him and turned it into the greatest gift of all, eternal life for all who respond to him in love and faith. His kingdom outlasted the empire. Because you can't kill the Spirit of the God who is Love Incarnate. (1 John 4:8)

The Spirit of the God we see in the crucified and risen Christ lives in the hearts of his followers. Jesus is still active in the words of encouragement and forgiveness and healing, and the works of love and reconciliation that he accomplishes through his followers. They are the ones who know that, as Jesus said, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:27) They know that whatever they do to those the world considers losers, they do to Jesus. (Matthew 25:31-46) They know that while we are saved by God's grace through trust in Jesus, we are saved in order to do the good works he has prepared for us. (Ephesians 2:8-10) They know that not everyone who calls Jesus “Lord” will enter God's kingdom but only those who show they really do trust him by doing God's will, despite the difficulties, despite the temptations, despite the risks. (Matthew 7:21-23)

During the bloodiest war ever, there were people who acted nonviolently and saved people at the risk of their own lives. You may have heard of them: Corrie ten Boom and her family, who were sent to a concentration camp for hiding Jews; Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese vice-consul, Carl Lutz, a Swiss consul, and Aristes de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese diplomat, all of whom issued passports, transit visas, or protective letters to tens of thousands of Jews; the Lados group, who issued fake Latin American passports to 3000 people; Gilberto Bosques, a Mexican consul who helped 40,000 refugees escape Nazi-occupied France; Oscar Schindler, the German industrialist, who hired and protected Jewish workers and made defective products he sold to the Nazis; the network of priests and nuns in Assisi, the hometown of St. Francis, who hid Jews in their monasteries and cloistered nunneries; Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker, who smuggled 2500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto; Miep Giese and the people who hid Anne Frank and her family and friends; the government officials who deliberately delayed the Germans instituting the Holocaust in Italy through bureaucracy; and the entire nation of Denmark, who refused to let those laws be carried out despite being conquered and even got the Nazis in charge of their country to warn them of upcoming raids. It's sad that our history books make these people less well-known than the mass murderers whom some still revere and imitate.

The names of all the people who fought for their own glory will one day fade from memory. At the end of the history of this world, the name everyone will know will be that of the Prince of Peace, “the name that is above every other name, so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Lord of Life and Hope

The scriptures referred to are Ezekiel 37:1-14, Psalm 130, and John 11:1-45.

The gospels record 35 specific instances of Jesus doing what we would call miracles, and what the gospels call signs. The largest number of these (23) are healings. Among the people he healed were those with leprosy or some skin disease, pain, paralysis, fever, hemorrhage, blindness, deafness, inability to speak, seizures, mental illness, self-harm, kyphosis or a crooked spine, edema, a deformed hand, an inability to walk, and a severed ear. And he healed many others whose specific cases are not discussed in detail. In addition, there are 9 instances in which Jesus showed power over nature, the most famous of which is his feeding of the 5000 with just a handful of fish and loaves, the only miracle mentioned in all 4 gospels. And each gospel reports at least 1 person Jesus raised from the dead, a total of 4 in all.

Today's gospel is about the most famous instance of Jesus doing this. We are told that Jesus loved Lazarus and his sisters. In fact when they send for Jesus, Mary and Martha simply say, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” In fact, for this reason a few Bible scholars, like Ben Witherington, think that Lazarus, not John, was the beloved disciple mentioned in this gospel. For instance, John's gospel is largely concerned with Jesus' actions in Jerusalem, just 2 miles from Bethany, rather than Galilee, where he spent most of his time. Influential Jews attend Lazarus' funeral and later report Jesus resurrecting him to Caiaphas the high priest. (John 11:45-47) Later a disciple who knows the high priest is able to get into his courtyard during Jesus' trial. (John 18:15) This disciple is unlikely to be a fisherman from Galilee. After all, only Peter is recognized as such by his accent. (Matthew 26:73) The male disciples run away when Jesus is arrested. The beloved disciple is the only male friend of Jesus at his crucifixion. Which would make sense if it was Lazarus, who had been dead and then raised by Jesus. He would probably not be afraid of death anymore and would want to be with Jesus while he was dying. And Jesus commits his mother to his care. (John 19:25-27) This would make sense because Lazarus' sister Mary was able to afford an expensive perfume worth a year's wages. (John 12:1-5) They could take care of Jesus' mother with ease. And finally, while both Peter and the beloved disciple rush to Jesus' tomb after being told it is empty by Mary of Magdala, it is only that disciple who believes when he sees the discarded grave wrappings left behind. (John 20:1-8) He probably thought, “He did it again!”

We've just read the story so there's no need to go over it in detail. There are a few things I want to point out, though. First, while raising the dead to life is always astonishing, the other people Jesus revived had just died. Jairus' daughter passed away while her father was fetching Jesus. The son of the widow of Nain was being taken to his grave. Jews feel it is important to bury their dead the same day, before sunset. So a skeptic could quibble about whether these people were in fact dead or just seemed to be in the eyes of people who were not medically trained. And even today, ever so often we hear of people pronounced dead only to wake up in the morgue or funeral parlor. That happened to a 74 year old Nebraska woman in 2024. And just last year a 12 year old girl was dug out of the rubble of her home in Gaza and pronounced dead, only to be discovered to be alive and in a coma by a Palestinian man searching for his son's body in the same morgue. Unlike the 74 year old, the girl recovered. It happens but it is rare.

Lazarus, however, had been entombed for 4 days. That's 4 days without medical care, food and, crucially, water. He was not only dead, but would have started to stink, as his sister puts it. In other words, decay had set in. Judean leaders might have dismissed Jesus' other revivals of the dead as rumors but this would be undeniable.

Secondly, this chapter contains the shortest verse in the Bible—just 2 words—but one of the most profound. After being told for the second time by one of Lazarus' sisters that he wouldn't have died had Jesus been there, and seeing her and her friends crying, the gospel says, “Jesus wept.” And we have to ask ourselves “Why?” Jesus knew what he was going to do. So what triggered this reaction?

Of course, Jesus was distressed by his friends' mourning. But could he relate to what they were going through? I think so. I think Jesus knew firsthand what the loss of a loved one was like.

Joseph is never mentioned during Jesus' adult life. He was there when Jesus was born. He was there when the family visited the temple when Jesus was around 12. (Luke 2:41-52) But by the time Jesus is an adult, Joseph has disappeared. In fact, when the townspeople of Nazareth are trying to understand how the kid they knew growing up now had such wisdom, they ask themselves, “Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3) No mention of Mary's husband, even in a very patriarchal culture! I think we can conclude that Joseph died. He was after all a tekton, a worker in wood, stone and metal. Even today the rate of fatalities for those in construction is high, especially from falls. It is quite probable that Jesus lost to death the man who raised him, who taught him his craft, who taught him his prayers.

So when he sees his friends crying over their brother, it all comes back to him and he cries as well. And I find that comforting. Jesus knows firsthand what it is to mourn the loss of someone you love. So when we go to him in grief, we know he understands fully how we feel. We can mourn, just not like those without hope. (1Thessalonians 4:13)

Which brings us to my third point: this is where Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” In the Bible, a key characteristic of God is that he is the giver of life. In the very first chapter of the Bible, God creates the world and fills it with plant, animal and human life. He tells all life to be fruitful and multiply. In the first chapter of John, it says of the Word who was with God and who was God, “In him was life and that life was the light of humanity.” (John 1:4) Later in John, we read “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” (John 5:26) And we are told that “The Spirit gives life...” (John 6:63) God is the God who is life and who gives life.

However, in popular imagination, God is a cosmic killjoy, looking for excuses to condemn and smite people. Yet Ezekiel 33 says, “As surely as I live, declares the Lord God, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11) And again in Ezekiel 18 it says, “For I take no delight in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God. Repent and live!” (Ezekiel 18:32) God is opposed to sin because he is opposed to that which diminishes, deforms or destroys life.

It's obvious that sins like injuring or murdering someone are harmful to life. But so is exploiting other people, which is caused by greed, or oppressing them, which is caused by hatred and fear. The stress of living under such conditions raises risks of chronic disease and early death. Spreading falsehoods about people is also harmful. They can destroy reputations, careers and even lives. The cruelty and bullying we see on social media have driven some, especially young people, to suicide. Propaganda can destroy communities and lead to persecution and warring factions. Sins of omission lead to the neglect of those who need help in life, like the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the sick and the disabled. These things diminish life, deform it and ultimately destroy it.

Jesus worked to enlarge life, restore it, and to give life in abundance. (John 10:10) He healed the sick and disabled. He fed the hungry. He brought good news to the poor and spoke the truth to those in power. And he raised the dead to new life. These are signs. Signs of what? Hope. Jesus brings hope. He can make us and our lives better.

As a chaplain in our jail, I don't see too many crises of faith. I don't see too many people giving up on God. I do see crises of hope. I see people giving up on life, on themselves, on the future. Young people jailed for the first time sometimes worry that they have now screwed up their lives irreparably. Those who have been jailed frequently may feel that they have wasted much of their life being incarcerated. Some older inmates worry that they will die in a jail or prison. For some their hope of a better life dies.

But Jesus is the resurrection and the life. He can revive the hope we thought had died. With Jesus it is never too late. Every second of your life is a second chance. Your past or even your present need not determine your future.

However, it may not be the future you envisioned. Mary of Magdala and the other people Jesus healed had only seen ahead of them a life of pain and suffering, impoverished by not being able to work and excluded from a community who saw the disabled as unclean. They never envisioned being healthy and free of their illnesses and injuries. James probably thought he would have to live with the shame of being the brother of a madman who got himself crucified. He never envisioned being the leader in Jerusalem of the very movement his brother started. Peter and the other disciples thought they would fight and reign with Jesus on literal thrones in a political kingdom of God on earth. They never envisioned a life traveling the world, telling the good news to people of every nation, culture and language. Paul expected to be a respected rabbi who crushed the Christian heresy before it spread too far. He never envisioned being the one who was actually spreading the message of Jesus and being imprisoned for doing so and yet able to say, “For me, living is Christ and dying is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)

Lazarus, lying on his deathbed, saw his life slipping away, his last sight being his sisters, weeping in grief. He never envisioned waking up in a tomb, wrapped up like a mummy, struggling to walk, hearing his sisters scream his name as they tore the linen strips from his body and removed the cloth from his eyes, making the first sight of his new life that of his friend Jesus, now weeping tears of joy.

When we give up hope, we start to die. When we let disease dominate our vision, our lives diminish. When we let our demons dictate our thoughts and actions, our life becomes distorted and deformed. When we let despair destroy our motivation to change things for the better, our lives begin to decay.

Do not let these things have the last word. Do not let them defeat you. Jesus defeated demons, disease, death and decay. He turned death from a dead end into the gate to eternal life. And not an ethereal life on a cloud. He brought Lazarus back fully, body, mind and spirit. Jesus came back both spiritually and physically. He will resurrect us as our best selves, restored to the people God created us to be.

In fact, God will not let the world he created and pronounced good come to an ignominious end. The climax of the last book in the Bible is the resurrection of all of creation. John writes, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'See, the home of God is with humans. He will live with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.' And the one who was seated on the throne said, 'See, I am making all things new.'” (Revelation 21:1-5)

A storyteller knows that all endings are false. Stories may end but life goes on. But God tells us that our stories need not end. Life, his life, goes on forever. And if we are joined to him through his Son and have his life within us, our lives go on. Right now, we cannot envision exactly what our new lives will be like. The best attempt to capture it is the last part of the last book of C.S. Lewis' Narnia chronicles. He writes of his characters, “And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All of their life in this world and all of their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” 

3 Dimensional Vision

The scriptures referred to are 1 Samuel 16:1-13, Ephesians 5:8-14, and John 9:1-41.

Most of us noticed this, right? You were in class, looking at a map of the world and you noticed how the part of South America that jutted out from its east coast looked like it should fit neatly into the part of Africa's west coast that retreated inward under its northern bulge. They looked like two puzzle pieces that should fit together. Yet it just seemed a coincidence to the vast majority of geologists for centuries because they knew that continents don't move. And even after mapping the oceans with sonar after World War II and discovering undersea mountain ranges ringing the continents, mountains being continually pushed up by magma beneath earth's crust, geologists still resisted the idea. Because the heads of geology departments and presidents of geological societies were established and held to the orthodoxy of a stable earth. It took decades for the idea of plate tectonics and continental drift to become widely accepted as newer geologists saw the evidence and overturned the older model. I didn't realize that when I took geology in college in the 1970s that what I was taught—that all the continents were once a single supercontinent and that South America and Africa had in fact snuggled together hundreds of millions of years ago—had only recently become the scientific consensus. Humans are simply that reluctant to change their minds, even when confronted with clear and visible evidence.

Today's lectionary texts are concerned with different ways of looking at things. In our passage from 1 Samuel God sends the prophet to the family of Jesse in Bethlehem to anoint one of his sons as the new king. Samuel is impressed by the oldest son who looks tall and regal. But God says, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look upon the outside appearance, but the Lord looks upon the heart.” And in the end, the person the Lord had chosen was the youngest brother, David, “a man after his own heart.” (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22) David becomes one of the greatest kings Israel ever had and Isaiah says that the Messiah will come from his line. (Isaiah 11:1-5)

Now we know that David wasn't perfect. And you may have heard that some people, trying to justify their support for a flawed leader, often point this out. And, yes, David committed adultery with Bathsheba and even sent orders that her husband, Uriah, a soldier, be put in the front lines where he was sure to be killed. But when the prophet Nathan bravely confronted the king with his sins, David repented. He was forgiven but there were consequences for what he had done. (2 Samuel 12:1-14) Contrast this with someone who has said he has never confessed his sins to God or asked his forgiveness and doesn't accept the consequences of what he has done. We are all sinners, including the guy up here with the funny collar. The difference is we know it, acknowledge it, ask God for forgiveness and seek to become better people with the help of his Spirit.

But the main thing we should notice is that God does not judge by outward appearance, while humans often do. Studies have shown that very attractive people are more likely to be hired over ordinary looking people. Experiments have shown that men will stop more quickly to help an extremely good looking woman on the side of the road with car trouble than women who are just normal looking. The taller candidate for president usually wins. Children are more likely to attribute good moral qualities to handsome and beautiful people just from seeing their photos. And the person who was voted class president or most popular in your high school was one of the really attractive kids, right?

And yet we know that it is what's inside a person that is more important. Shakespeare said, “There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.” (Macbeth Act 1, Scene 4) There is no real connection between how a person looks and how they act. Con men and cult leaders use this and charisma to get people to go along with their schemes. Ted Bundy used his very handsome features to lure women into his car. Yet Harriet Tubman saved a lot of people from slavery, even though she was no beauty queen. Abraham Lincoln grew a beard to give some dignity to his face with its gaunt cheeks, large nose and ears, and deep-set eyes. It's the intangibles—a person's character, trustworthiness, and empathy, the contents of their heart—that count. Everything else is just packaging.

In our gospel the disciples see a man born blind and ask “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (I am assuming the man, a beggar, had a sign his parents made that explained his condition.) When something really bad happens to someone, we all wonder why. Is there something they did to bring it on? Is there something they could have done to prevent it? We do this because (A) we want the world to make perfect sense and (B) we like to think that we are in control of our lives. Maybe we can learn how to avoid a similar fate. And some people, disturbed by the idea that such things may be random, cling to the idea that “everything happens for a reason.” Prosperity gospel preachers say that if you believe hard enough and do the right things (including giving to their ministries) you will be healthy and wealthy. If you don't become those things, it's your fault. Many a person who thought they had some contract with God that granted them immunity to suffering tragedies has had their faith shattered when they discover that bad things can happen to good people. C.S. Lewis went through such a crisis of faith when his wife died. His book A Grief Observed is one of the most honest explorations of wrestling with loss that anyone has ever written. He originally published it under a pseudonym and found to his chagrin that friends often purchased it and gave it to him to help him with his grief.

Jesus resists getting into questions of what someone did to cause this and instead turns to what he can do to help. He doesn't look at the man's condition as a theological problem to be discussed but a practical problem to be solved. He sees this as an opportunity to show God's works of love and mercy and healing. Jesus says, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” And as the body of Christ in the world today, we must take up his torch and be the light of the world. (Matthew 5:14-16)

Sadly, there are people in this world and even in the church who are more interested in fixing the blame than in fixing the problem. But as Paul says in today's reading from Ephesians, “Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.” He goes on to say, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather expose them.” Light can reveal the beauty of the world; it can also expose what's wrong and deceitful and harmful. We may not like to look at such things but they are important to make note of and to warn others about. As Jesus said, “For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed. But the one who practices the truth comes to the light, so that it may be plainly evident that his deeds have been done in God.” (John 3:20-21) One way you can tell if a person knows that what they have done is evil is by how much they fight to keep it from coming to light.

Finally, Jesus highlights another way of looking at things. The man born blind is astonished that rather than the religious leaders rejoicing with him about his healing they attack him for pointing out that what Jesus did was good. They are so frozen in their beliefs that they cannot see what is obvious: that this is a sign that God is working through Jesus. Even the man's parents won't speak up for him. The Pharisees drive the man out and when Jesus hears this, he seeks the man out. On seeing the one who healed him, he puts his trust in Jesus. And Jesus says, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” Some Pharisees overhear this and say, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus replies, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.”

Isaiah wrote, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who replace darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isaiah 5:20, my translation) Again, we see this everyday. We see people commend what is obviously bad as something good and who condemn what is obviously good as something bad. We see people who look at those whose outward appearance is different and think that means they must be bad inside, without any evidence that they have actually done anything wrong. We see folks who watch others do bad things in the name of security and patriotism, like destroying, harming and killing innocents, but somehow think those are good things they can justify and even celebrate. They see evil as good and good as evil. They are morally and spiritually blind.

If this blindness is willful and persistent. it becomes the “unforgivable sin.” The context for this is that Jesus was again healing people and his critics said that he was doing it by the power of the prince of demons. In other words, they saw Jesus doing the works of the Holy Spirit and said he was doing it through the power of a supremely evil spirit. (Matthew 12:24) That's why Jesus says, “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Luke 12:10) Blaspheming against the Holy Spirit is essentially seeing God at work doing something good and seeing it as something demonic and bad.

Why is it unforgivable? For the same reason that a doctor cannot cure someone who thinks the medical profession is a scam and medicine is a hoax perpetrated by Big Pharma. If a patient does not trust doctors, doctors can't help him. We saw this during the pandemic. And if people look at Jesus, who told us to love one another and help to the disadvantaged, deprived, diseased, and despised as if they were him, and they see instead something demonic and evil afoot, if they see empathy as a sin and mercy as a weakness, they will not trust in the God who is love incarnate and thus he cannot save them. They are unforgivable because they will not seek forgiveness. As C.S. Lewis said, the gates of hell are locked from the inside. They are locked against God. Otherwise he might get in and start changing things and even changing people. As Lewis said elsewhere, there are people who say to God, “Not my will but yours be done” and people to whom God will at last say, “Very well; not my will but yours be done. You don't want any part of me. So be it.” Because God is love and love does not do anything to the object of his love without their consent. In the end everyone will get what they desire, Lewis said, but some may not like it when they see what they have chosen.

God gave us two eyes in the front of our face and they allow us to see the world in 3 dimensions. In our readings today we see 3 ways of looking at things. First, we saw that God doesn't judge people by external appearances and neither should we. It doesn't matter what we look like. What matters is whether our hearts are tuned to God and whether we are willing, when we sin, to admit to it and ask God to make us better.

Second, we saw that God does not judge people by conditions that are beyond their control and neither should we. Instead of trying to fix the blame we should seek to fix the problem. God expects us to do what we can to help and heal those who suffer, not make things worse. We are to do what is good and right and true.

Third, we must be clear eyed on what is good and what is evil, and never confuse them. When we find things that harm others or our relationships with them, or our relationship with God, we must not ignore or act willfully blind to them. And when we find dark deeds we must expose them, not cover them up. We must be sensitive to the Spirit, looking for his hallmarks in people and their works. If we see hatred or indifference, despair, discord, unreasonable impatience, cruelty, stinginess in giving others what they need, untrustworthy behavior, harshness or someone out of control, that is not the Spirit of God in action. If we see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control growing and bearing fruit in someone's life, that is clear and visible evidence that the Spirit is active in them. (Galatians 5:22-23) The pieces fit. And when we see God acting in someone's life, we need to support them.

We live in dark times. But "God is light and in him is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5) As children of the light, we are to reflect his life and love and truth and healing to the world. We are to act as beacons to bring others out of the darkness. And no matter how long and dark the shadows get, remember: Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:5) 

In Spirit and Truth

The scriptures referred to are Exodus 17:1-7, Romans 5:1-11, and John 4:5-42.

Wheaton College required its students to take at least one summer semester. You could do it on campus, 30 miles from Chicago, sharing its heat and humidity, or you could do it abroad. As a major in biblical studies, I chose the program that took us to Rome, Greece and Israel. While in Israel our guides cautioned us to drink water frequently, even when we didn't feel thirsty. Because there is practically no humidity and your perspiration evaporates quickly and efficiently, keeping you cool but also dehydrating you rapidly. Not being covered in sweat, you didn't realize how fast you were losing water.

You've probably heard the Rule of 3s: you can survive for 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food. These are averages but after air, you need water the most. And they didn't have running tap water in their homes in the days of the Bible. So a source of good, clean water was vital. Towns and cities were built on rivers or lakes, or else had wells or springs nearby. So going to the local well was a good place to meet people. Moses met the woman he married at a well. (Exodus 2:15-16) Usually the water for the day was either drawn early in the morning or early in the evening to avoid the heat of the day. Around noon people would cease their labor, eat lunch and have a nap. And sure enough, when we were in Israel we found that a lot of businesses would close for the afternoon and reopen in the evening.

So it would be unusual for a woman to come and draw her water at noon. Could it be that she was avoiding the other women and people of her town? Whom she does encounter is a stranger. She probably could identify him as a Jew by the blue tassels on the edges of his garment. She ignores him until he does something unheard of: he asks her for a drink. It is scandalous because she is a woman and a Samaritan.

The Samaritans began this way: After Solomon's death, the ten northern tribes broke away from the Davidic kings whose capital was Jerusalem. They chose their own king, declared Samaria their capital and took to themselves the name of the kingdom of Israel, the southern kingdom now being known as Judah. In 722 BC, Israel was conquered by the Assyrian Empire and 20,000 Israelites, mostly the upper classes, were taken into exile. They were replaced by Babylonians, Syrians and others deported from their territories by the Assyrians. They intermarried with the poor Israelites left behind. Eventually they developed their own version of the Mosaic religion and built their own temple on Mount Gerizim. They even had their own version of the 5 books of Moses. For instance, in the Samaritan version of the Ten Commandments, it is required that the faithful worship on Mount Gerizim! The Jews considered the Samaritans to be half-breed heretics. And in 128 BC, the leader of the Maccabees had the temple on Mount Gerizim destroyed. Later some Samaritans scattered bones in the Jewish temple, desecrating it. So the two peoples had no love for one another.

That's why the woman was taken aback. Jews and Samaritans would not share the same drinking vessel. If Jesus drank from something she used, he would be rendered unclean in Jewish eyes. She points this out and then Jesus says that if she asked him, he would give her living water. This was an idiom for flowing water, such as from a spring. It would be superior to well water. But of course Jesus is using a metaphor for the Spirit.

We see this later in John's gospel, when Jesus went to the Feast of the Tabernacles in Jerusalem. A highlight of that festival was the water-drawing ceremony. Priests would draw water from the Pool of Siloam and lead a procession to the temple, where they would pour the water on the altar. This symbolized the prophecy in Ezekiel 47 that waters would flow from the temple. (See also Zechariah 14:8). And John's gospel says, “On the last day of the feast, the greatest day, Jesus stood up and shouted out, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. Just as the scripture says, “From within him will flow rivers of living water.”' (Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.)” (John 7:37-39) Jesus is essentially saying that he is now the temple of the Lord, where God dwells on earth.

So Jesus is not talking about water, without which our bodies die, but the Spirit of God, without which our spirits die. This woman desperately wants this living water. And we find out why when Jesus tells her to fetch her husband. She says she doesn't have one. And Jesus agrees with her. She's been married 5 times and the man she was living with was not married to her. This would have been a big scandal in that day and culture. If a woman were widowed 3 times, people would think there was something wrong with her. A woman who had been divorced 5 times would have been shunned. And that's why she was going to the well at noon when everyone else was home staying out of the heat.

And remember, Jesus was not a fan of divorce and remarriage. He considered it adultery. (Matthew 19:9) Some rabbis permitted divorce. Of course only the man could initiate it and he could do it for the most trivial of reasons, like his wife burnt his dinner, or simply because he found someone else he wanted to marry. Jesus had biblical reasons to oppose this (Matthew 19:6) but he may have some personal feelings about it as well. After all, Joseph was considering divorcing Mary when he found out she was pregnant during their betrothal period, which was considered as binding as marriage. (Matthew 1:18-19) Jesus' mother would have been disgraced and may have even been stoned to death as an adulterer had Joseph gone through with the divorce. So what does Jesus do when he encounters this much divorced woman so despised that she avoided the others in her town? He commends her for telling the truth and then drops the subject.

Well, actually the woman changes the subject. The fact that Jesus, a stranger, knows so much about her private life makes her think he might be a prophet. So she switches to talking about the issue of whether God should be worshiped on Mount Gerizim in Samaria or Mount Zion in Jerusalem. But Jesus doesn't go back to her marital history. Instead he says, “But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Jesus is bringing their talk back to matters of the Spirit.

Let's face it. This is a weird conversation that Jesus is having. Both he and the woman are trying to steer it in different directions. But the most important issue is not running water or repeated adultery or rival worship sites. What is essential is the Spirit. Without it, none of those things have any significance. They are just earthly things and human activities that concern this short physical life. And some people do think such things are meaningless. But the human spirit rebels against meaninglessness. In fact, when someone sees no purpose or meaning in life, they start to die inside. Ask someone in the depths of depression.

And notice that Jesus is implying that even proper worship in Jerusalem is not valid if it is not done “in spirit and truth.” It was in his hometown of Nazareth that he defined what having the Spirit meant. Reading from Isaiah, Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” (Luke 4:18-19) He stops just before the next phrase in Isaiah, “...and the day of vengeance of our God.” (Isaiah 61:2) Because his mission is not to condemn the world but save it. (John 3:17) Instead Jesus brings the Spirit who produces “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) That is what the Spirit of God does in your life.

Yet we have all seen people who go to church and go through the motions but do not have the Spirit of Jesus. We daily hear of people who loudly proclaim they are Christians who nevertheless do things that go against what Jesus said about loving your neighbor even if he is a foreigner. (Luke 10:30-37) We see people who don't acknowledge that whatever they do to the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the imprisoned and the resident alien they are doing to Jesus. (Matthew 25:31-46) Remember it was the religious leaders of his day who wanted Jesus crucified. (John 19:15) And if Jesus walked into some churches today and preached about turning the other cheek and putting away the sword and how a camel could squeeze through the eye of a sewing needle easier than a rich person could enter God's kingdom, he'd be accused of being woke and marched out of the city and tossed off the nearest cliff as they tried to do in his hometown. (Luke 4:29) And if he offended today's political leaders by saying that God wants us to love our enemies and treat them decently (Matthew 5:43-45), they have him imprisoned, beaten and executed as they did then. Merely saying you are a Christian means nothing if you don't have the Spirit of Jesus in you.

Jesus says we must also worship the Father in truth. What truth is he speaking about? John's gospel tells us in the very first chapter that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17) And Jesus says, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:31) So the truth is his message.

But in another sense Jesus is the message. He is the Word who was with God in the beginning and who is God. (John 1:1) He is the Word made flesh. And indeed Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” (John 14:6) Jesus is the truth about God, the perfect expression of who God is. People looking for God have only to look at Jesus and in him they will see the God who is both just and merciful, gracious and forgiving, the God who is love, the God who “proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

The Samaritans, like the Jews, were looking for the Messiah. They called him the Restorer. They saw him as the prophet who would come after Moses, as it says in Deuteronomy, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you—from your fellow Israelites; you must listen to him.” (Deuteronomy 18:15) That's why the woman, overwhelmed by what Jesus is telling her, says, “I know the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ) “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” And then Jesus says, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

What was it in Jesus' manner that allowed her to even consider that he was who he said he was? What was it in Jesus that convinced her that she could be looking at the Restorer? Was it that he, a man, a Jew, and a righteous one at that, would take the time to talk to her, a woman, a Samaritan with an unsavory past, not about how wrong her nationality was or how wrong her religion was or how wrong her lifestyle was, but about her desire for a God who isn't constricted by such things but who cares about her and wants to fulfill her spiritual needs? And so she runs into town and says, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” Like the women at the tomb, this woman, whose name we don't even know, becomes a messenger of the good news of Jesus.

Everyday we are hit by a flood of bad news. We see people doing things that Jesus explicitly forbids and saying they are doing it in his name. But what did the real Jesus do? He had the longest conversation the gospels record him having with anyone, with a woman he didn't know, who had a different ethnicity and a different religion and a very different lifestyle, and he didn't call her names, he didn't shame her, he didn't act like she was too stupid to understand spiritual matters. He treated her better than her 5 ex-husbands, better than the townspeople she was avoiding, better than any Jew would ever treat a Samaritan and better than most men would treat a woman in that day and than many even today. She probably occupied one of the lowest rungs in her society, and yet Jesus gave her the good news that the Restorer of all things and the Savior of the world has time to sit with her and is interested in what she thinks and says and invites her to worship God in spirit and in truth and quench her thirst for the Spirit of the God she sees in Jesus, the Spirit who will become in her a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. 

A Matter of Faith

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 12:1-4, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, and John 3:1-17.

Stephen King is known for his horror stories but he has written other types of stories. In one short story, the narrator recalls an incident in his childhood. He and his sister would spend their summers on their grandparents' farm. There was a huge barn with a wooden beam that ran the length of the barn high above the concrete floor. The kids were told never to climb up there and so, of course, they did, walking the beam as if it were a tightrope. One day the boy hears his sister screaming his name. He finds her in the barn, hanging by her hands from that high beam. She had slipped and was in danger of falling. The boy realized he could not climb the beam and pull her up. So he tells his sister to hang on while he does something to save her. He begins grabbing armloads of loose hay and piling it under her. Finally, after numerous trips with as much hay as he can carry, he tells her to let go. And without looking down, she does. The enormous pile of hay breaks her fall. She gets off with a broken leg but not a broken or dead body. But what the narrator remembers is that his sister could not see or know what he had done to save her but when he told her to let go, she did. She trusted him with her life.

Trust underlies all relationships, even if it is minimal. When you bring your car in to be repaired, you trust the mechanic to do the job properly and he trusts you to pay him. At work you should be able to trust your coworkers and boss to do their jobs and let you do yours. Business partners should be as good as their word. In the relationship between spouses or between parent and child that trust should be as close to 100% as humanly possible. Lack of trust makes it hard to work with or live with someone. Children who grow up in homes where they can't trust their parents or caretakers can end up with deep-seated insecurity, chronic anxiety and profound trust issues throughout life. They often struggle with low self-esteem, have difficulty forming secure attachments to others, and have a fear of abandonment. They may become people-pleasers or become overly self-sufficient so that they don't need others. They may crave closeness and yet push people away because they think others will inevitably hurt or leave them.

Faith is another word for trust. Faith in God is trusting him. In today's lectionary we look at Abraham, a man who trusted God to a greater extent than most people do. In our passage from Genesis, Abram (his original name) actually becomes an immigrant because of God's call. He grew up in Ur of the Chaldees, a prominent port city on the Euphrates in lower Sumeria, what today is southern Iraq. His father moves the family to Haran, another prominent city in northern Mesopotamia, what is now south-central Turkey. Haran was a trading partner with Tyre on the Mediterranean coast, and it was a major worship site for the moon god Sin.

So God calls Abram away from his family and the big city to live as a shepherd in the land of Canaan, a journey of about a month into an area in which we are soon told there is a famine. (Genesis 12:10) For him to give up family, civilization, and familiar and popular gods to follow a different God into the wilderness takes a great deal of trust.

Abram is trusting God to fulfill his promises to him: that Abram's descendants will become a great nation and a blessing to “all the families of the earth.” And while that may sound tempting, we learn that Abram is 75 and childless. And his wife Sarai is just 10 years younger. (Genesis 17:17) She is post-menopause. (Genesis 18:11) Abram is trusting that God will do what is essentially impossible.

As we know Abram and Sarai (now renamed by God as Abraham and Sarah) do have a child—25 years later! After a long period of Abraham trusting God to deliver, God fulfilled his promise. That is a tremendous display of faith on Abraham's part.

But Abraham has one more test of faith to come. A few chapters later, we are told, “Some time later, God tested Abraham...God said, 'Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.'” (Genesis 22:1-2) Abraham has pinned all of his hopes on Isaac. He, not Ishmael, his son by Sarah's maid, Hagar, is the one through whom the covenant will be fulfilled. (Genesis 17:19-21) Why would Abraham even consider sacrificing him?

A 2009 study of skulls from the royal cemetery at Ur, Abraham's hometown, showed evidence of human sacrifice. They were probably palace attendants sacrificed to serve the king in the next life. Ancient Roman and Greek writers mention infant sacrifices performed by the Phoenicians, who occupied the coast of the land of Canaan. And archaeologists have found thousands of infant skeletons there. Worldwide many cultures sacrificed infants in fertility rituals or to put in the foundation of new buildings to protect them. So, while not common, human sacrifices were known and Abraham would have heard of them and thought this was something a god could command.

Yet this is not infant sacrifice. Isaac was by this time an adolescent at least. He carries the wood for the sacrifice. (Genesis 22:6) Abraham and Isaac have a relationship. Why would God tell Abraham to sacrifice his son, whom he loved?

Lots of people follow God to get what they want. This is the attraction of the so-called “prosperity gospel.” Preachers of this “gospel” say, “Believe in God, give to him (through my ministry) and he will make you healthy and wealthy.” In other words, the reason to follow God is to get things out of him. God is reduced to a vending machine: insert faith (and money) and you will get what your heart desires. The downside of the “prosperity gospel” is that if you don't get what you want you didn't believe hard enough. It's your fault. And some people lose their faith because they were taught that God was like a genie but he didn't grant them their wishes.

So did Abraham, a childless man, merely follow God to get a son? Was Isaac an idol in his life, coming before God? Would Abraham trust God even when it meant giving up what was most precious to him?

It turns out that he did trust God. And as C.S. Lewis points out, while God might have known what he would do, Abraham didn't know the extent of his faith or his obedience until he raised that knife. His trust in God was not conditional or transactional. And when God stops him, he also learns that Yahweh is not the kind of God who would have his followers sacrifice others. In fact, in the law he gives Moses, God prohibits such things. (Leviticus 18:21) So here instead God provides a sacrifice in Isaac's place. And later God will provide a sacrifice for the whole world in the person of his son, Jesus, whom he loves.

Abraham's faith in God is an example for all of us who say we believe in God. And he is a key part of Paul's argument that it is faith, not works, that save us. He points to Genesis 15:6, where it says, “Abram believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.” In other words, God saw Abram's firm loyalty and support and trust and God considered it proof that he was a man in the right relationship with him.

As we said, trust underlies all relationships. Remember how last week, we saw that the temptation began with doubts about God's goodness? The first humans doubted that God was reasonable and truthful. They thought he was holding them back from becoming what they wanted to be: knowledgeable and powerful like God. So they decided they didn't need to obey him and tried to find a shortcut to godlike status. As always, this attempt to circumvent God's process, which is growing more fully into his image, failed.

Again, it is hard to work with someone or for someone you don't trust. Learning whom you can trust begins in infancy. This is why children who are abused and neglected have a hard time trusting other people. And if you don't have a father or have an unreliable one, it is hard to trust God, our heavenly Father. You need a new start.

And that leads to our gospel reading. Jesus tells Nicodemus that to enter God's kingdom one must be born again, or “born from above,” another possible translation. In other words, your life needs a new starting point, a spiritual rebirth. Jesus is probably referring to baptism when speaking of being “born of water and the Spirit.” He often uses water as a metaphor for the Spirit. (John 4:14; 7:37-39) He is also possibly referring to Ezekiel, where God says, “I will sprinkle you with pure water and you will be clean from all your impurities. I will purify you from all idols. I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you; I will cause you to obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.” (Ezekiel 36:25-27) In other words, just as being physically born is outside our control, in being reborn spiritually God will take the initiative. All we can do is trust him to do as he promised.

So our salvation is not dependent on how good we are but upon how good and faithful God is to those who accept him and put their trust in his promises. This does not mean we should stop being good. The point Jesus is making about the kingdom of God is that God cannot reign in our hearts and rule our lives and enable us to do the good he wants us to until we trust him and are reborn by his Spirit. Just as you cannot live until you are born, you cannot live as a child of God without being reborn. Trust is the first step.

It is not the only step. God not only wants us to trust him but also to love him. Again it is really hard to love someone if you don't trust them. But if you realize that they love you, then your relationship can grow into a mutual love. Think about this: most of the marriages in the Bible were arranged marriages. And yet we see that Abraham loved Sarah, Isaac loved Rebekah, Jacob loved Rachel. (Genesis 23:1-2; 24:67; 29:18) Arranged marriages start with commitment and can grow into love. Modern freely chosen marriages start with love and then lead to a commitment. A 2012 study found “high levels of satisfaction, commitment, and passionate and companionate love” in both arranged and love-based marriages. There were no significant differences in those areas. But the commitment speaks of trust. To say that this is the person you will spend the rest of your life with takes trust on both sides.

The Bible frequently compares our relationship with God and Jesus to a marriage. (Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 31:32; Matthew 9:15; Ephesians 5:25; Revelation 19:7) It takes trust in the goodness of the partner and commitment to them. The love in the relationship grows and bears fruit in doing good things. (Ephesians 2:8-10) But if it's true love it does not depend on the ability of the person to perform good works. I spent several years acting as a private duty nurse for a couple. The man had a massive stroke and could do almost nothing for himself. His aged wife, with my help, would give him a suppository, get him out of bed and into his wheelchair, wheel him to a place where she would wash him with a shower hose while he sat on a potty chair, towel him off, dress him, and wheel him to breakfast. In the evening, we would change him and put him to bed. He could do nothing for her. But she loved and cared for him. And he loved her. When she died of breast cancer, he died 6 months later despite being taken care of by his family. But before that he became the first person I baptized. And his wife, who was also a believer, was happy because they would be reunited after death.

You may have lived a life where it was difficult to trust people. It may have been your parents, other family members, a spouse or even a church leader whom you realized you could not trust. Don't transfer that distrust to God. God is not like abusive or neglectful humans. He will not leave you or abandon you. (Deuteronomy 31:6; Hebrews 13:5) He will remain faithful to us even if we are sometimes unfaithful to him. (2 Timothy 2:13) In fact, we see his love for us and commitment to us in that it was while we were still sinners that Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, died to save us. (Romans 5:8)

It all starts with trusting God and believing his promises. In Jesus we see what God is like: loving, just, merciful, and forgiving. If you ever find yourself at your wit's end, hanging on by your fingernails, your life all but lost, if you call upon him, if you trust in his goodness, you can be sure that he is there for you. Let go of your past. Let go of your sins. Let go of your bitterness and anger and regrets. Let go and he will catch you. As the Bible says, “The everlasting God is a refuge, and underneath you are his eternal arms.” (Deuteronomy 33:27)

Spoiled Goodness

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 2:15-17; 3-17, Psalm 32, and Matthew 4:1-11.

Some people think that the concept of evil is itself evil. That is, they think that morality is something we made up to control people. They think that everything that humans do is natural. Yeah, but not everything natural is good. Jane Goodall was horrified when she discovered that the chimpanzees she had studied for decades would sometimes practice cannibalism. And archaeologists have dug up human bones that show signs that people have been butchered and eaten. Cannibalism does occur in nature. It's not good.

In fact one of the things that separates humans from other animals is our large frontal lobe. Our judgment and restraint reside in the part of the brain behind our forehead. As a neurosurgical nurse I have seen what happens when people have damage to the frontal lobe. They act like 2 year olds, albeit with human intelligence and strength. One family was at first worried that their son, who received a head injury in an accident, would die. When he didn't, they then worried that he would never wake from his coma. When he did, they were happy. But then they began to realize he was not the same person. He cursed profusely unlike before. He threw tantrums (and as someone well over 6 feet tall, these were frightening and possibly dangerous). And he did things in public that most people do in private. He had lost all his inhibitions. We also see this in frontotemporal dementia, where those lobes of the brain shrink and the person becomes inappropriate, impulsive, loses empathy for others and has language problems or aphasia.

Like any part of the body, the frontal lobe must be exercised and trained to get better at what it does. And so we teach our children rules. Don't hit your friends when you get mad. Don't take things that belong to others. Don't break things when you get frustrated. Basically, we teach children to refrain from harming themselves and others and to refrain from doing things that will harm their relationships with others. Because if they are violent, mean and untrustworthy, it will hurt them throughout their life.

There is a day when a kid learns that not everyone lives by these rules. They see others, and especially adults, break the rules about not doing harm. We call that moment the loss of innocence. They realize the world is not as safe as they thought. They realize they are vulnerable. They lose a bit of the trust they had in others to always do the right thing.

That's what we see at the end of today's reading from Genesis. But first we see a paradigm of how temptation works. And in our gospel passage we see how Jesus handled temptation.

We are told that humans are put on earth to tend it and care for it. We were to be the gardeners of the Garden of Eden. And God gives his one and only rule for the first humans to observe. “You may eat freely of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat it you shall die.” It's like telling a kid they may play with anything in the toy room but do not mess with the electrical sockets. There is only one thing prohibited and it's for their own good.

By the way, the Hebrew word translated “evil” basically means “spoiled” or “ruined by being broken into pieces.” If God created everything good as it says in Genesis chapter 1, where does evil come from? It comes from spoiling or ruining God's gifts by misusing them to harm rather than to help. One of the first tools humans invented was the knife. It helped us hunt and prepare food; it also became the basic weapon to kill other humans. We always seem to take the gifts God gives us, like intelligence and knowledge and skills, and use them to spoil, ruin and break God's gifts, including other people.

So why would God not want the first humans to learn about good and evil? I think it is for the same reason we tell kids not to go off with strangers but do not tell them that the reason is that they could be kidnapped, sexually abused and killed. They are not ready for that knowledge. We want them to be careful around strangers, not traumatized by the mere presence of strangers. Later, when they are ready, they will learn, hopefully only by hearing stories, of how bad such things can get. In the meantime, the rule suffices.

It seems that babies are born with just two inbuilt fears: fear of falling and fear of snakes. And Genesis uses this second natural fear to show us how temptation works.

First the tempter suggests that God is unreasonable. He says, “Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?” God never said that but the implication is that God's laws are not always rational. I had an aunt who would not let us kids sit on any of the sofas and chairs in her living room, despite the fact that they were all covered in clear plastic! God is not like that. But the doubt of his trustworthiness has been planted.

And though the woman corrects the serpent, she does expand the commandment a bit. She says that they are not merely to refrain from eating it but from touching it. This might seem like a sensible precaution. If you don't touch it, you can't eat it. But people sometimes expand God's commandments to a point where they can hinder doing good things, such as when the Pharisees expanded the rule against working on the Sabbath to include not healing suffering people on it. Jesus points out that it is OK to heal and help people (and animals) on the Sabbath. (Luke 13:10-17) And indeed a lot of young people leave churches because they were taught that a bunch of unnecessary rules were given by God and not actually by men. Joshua Harris admits that his popular evangelical book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which substituted marriage-minded courtship for dating and was seminal in the development of the so-called “purity culture,” has done more harm to young people than good and he has requested it no longer be printed.

Next the tempter flatly contradicts God. “You will not die...” How often do we tell ourselves that breaking a moral rule is not that serious? “Just this once,” we tell ourselves. But some decisions have life-altering consequences that we didn't foresee. We teach our kids not to play with fire. One girl I grew up with played with matches, caught fire, and while she did not die, she was disfigured for life. As someone once said, before you tear down a fence, find out why it was put up in the first place.

The tempter continues, “...for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened...” Secret or forbidden knowledge is tempting. Knowing what others don't makes you feel superior. That's the lure of many occult practices and almost every cult that ever drew unsuspecting people in. They offer false knowledge containing just enough truth to get past some people's B.S. detector.

Even when the unknown knowledge is true, it can be a two-edged sword. When we unlocked the secret of nuclear power, what was the first thing humans did with that knowledge? We created the most destructive bomb in history, one capable of destroying an entire city and vaporizing people, leaving only their shadows burnt into the remaining stones. And since then we went on to create ever more devastating nuclear weapons. As for using that power to help people, that has not been nearly as successful.

And now the tempter delivers the coup de grace: “...and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” That's the real temptation. We humans can do a lot but there are things outside our control. We wish we had the power to control everything and everyone. We daydream about being superheroes who can fly, have super strength and be invulnerable. We wish to be gods. And there are things beyond our understanding (and some always will be, for our brains are finite). Yet we know that knowledge is power. And we want that knowledge so we can control the powers of the universe. It would be wonderful if we used that knowledge and power only to do good for everyone but you just know someone will figure out a way to use those things for their own advantage and to harm and dominate others. In some labs we create cures and in others biological weapons.

The woman is hooked. She “saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise...” It tasted good, it looked good and it made you smarter. As someone who used to be a copywriter, I can tell you that modern advertising still emphasizes those 3 characteristics. We even market junk food so it will have the right balance of sweetness, saltiness, attractive appearance and “8 essential vitamins” so you can scarf down your Lucky Charms and think you had a healthy meal. And notice how the word “good” is being used in a different way here. The text parallels the words “good,” “delight” and “desired.” This is “good” in the sense of “making you feel good.” Absent is the sense of actually “being good for you.”

And lest you want to blame this all on the woman, notice that she doesn't have to hunt the man down to give him the fruit. No, “she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.” (Emphasis mine) He was standing right there, listening to all this and not trying to intervene or correct what was being said. Evil isn't always active; evil can be complicity, letting others do the wrong thing and not saying or doing anything. How did the fascists take over Italy and Germany prior to World War 2? How did the Nazis deport and kill the Jews in the countries they conquered? Because most people kept quiet and went about their own business, ignoring the evil others perpetrated.

The first humans' eyes are opened, yet they don't see themselves as more powerful but as vulnerable. They now know how every good gift of God can be used to harm them. They know how to harm each other. They are like children who have seen what matches can do. They wish for armor but all they can do is sew leaves together to cover their naked and vulnerable bodies. The bright world they were given is now covered in sinister shadows. It is no longer paradise for them. The pure goodness in them has died.

Jesus' temptations are different. He has the power of God and so in this case the temptation is to misuse it. He could use his divine powers to benefit himself by making stones into bread. But he counters his temptations with his knowledge of scripture. Quoting Deuteronomy, he asserts that without the spiritual nourishment which comes from God's word, life is meaningless. If all we are here for is to eat, sleep and make sure we don't die, our lives are emptier than our stomachs.

Then he is tempted to test just how much God will protect him, even if he does something as stupid as throwing himself from the top of the temple. The tempter even misuses scripture to that purpose, something we do when we want to justify reckless behavior. But God did not send Jesus to be invulnerable. On the contrary, as the book of Hebrews reminds us, “For we do not have a high priest incapable of sympathizing with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) Jesus doesn't avoid sin by being impervious to it but by choosing to do what is right no matter how tempting the alternative is. And he is not going to test God by doing something rash and expecting God to protect him from the consequences.

Finally the tempter offers him all earthly power. He could be emperor of the world. All he has to do is bend the knee to the one Jesus later calls “the ruler of this world.” (John 14:30; 16:11) Jesus just has to switch allegiance from God and his goodness to his adversary, and the world is his. He will not have to try to convince others to choose to be part of the kingdom of God. He will not have to go to the cross. This is the easy way that people gain power. They suck up to those who will give them power in return for their loyalty. But what else are they giving? The question, as Jesus puts it, is “For what does it benefit a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36) Jesus dismisses the tempter, saying that God is the only one we are to worship and serve. Jesus will follow God's will and serve him, even when it leads to the cross.

We are all tempted to do what is easy or desirable, even if it spoils and ruins what God has created for us and in us. And we will at some point succumb. Are we lost? No, not if we do as it says in our psalm and confess to God what we have done wrong. We must acknowledge that we are not God, we are not perfect, and we have done harm or let it be done. We cannot always undo what we have done to others or the world, but we can let God undo the damage we have done to ourselves. And then, as his Holy Spirit repairs us, we can go about as the body of Christ repairing the world we have spoiled and ruined. And we can trust in his goodness, his wisdom and his promise that he will make us and all things new. (Revelation 21:1-5)

True Glory

The scriptures referred to are Exodus 24:12-18, Psalm 2, 2 Peter 1:16-21, and Matthew 17:1-9.

On the YouTube channel Religion For Breakfast, Dr. Andrew Mark Henry does deep dives on various aspects of religion from an academic perspective but in a way that the average person can understand and appreciate the findings and opinions of scholars of religion. Recently he discussed a controversial idea some were debating, namely, do animals have religion? And while we obviously do not know what is going on in their minds, one phenomenon struck me. It seems that chimpanzees go nuts when they encounter waterfalls. They shriek and jump around, sometimes waving sticks. Other times they just sit quietly and watch. Some researchers think that what affects them is that the water is moving and yet is not alive. The safest conclusion to draw, however, is that they are experiencing awe.

We all experience awe at times. Going out on a boat and finding yourself surrounded by the vastness of the ocean. Watching a glorious sunset. Looking up on a moonless night and seeing the incredible number of stars in the sky. My grandson recently experienced awe when we when to Colorado. The area around Denver is rather flat but when you drive west, you see the Rocky Mountains, rising up from the plains, some reddish and craggy, some purple with shadows, some green with trees, some capped with snow, and some with their summits hidden in the clouds. Growing up in Florida he had never seen mountains, much less gone up one. From the top of Pike's Peak he saw and touched snow for the first time and was able to gaze down upon the surrounding area, including lesser mountains, from a height of 14,115 feet. It was, to properly use the word for once, awesome.

In today's lectionary texts, we read of two mountain top experiences. The first is Moses' 40 days on the mountain receiving God's law. The second is Jesus taking Peter, James and John up a mountain to see him transfigured. Both were awe-inspiring. Each had a reason for happening.

Moses was called by God to lead his people out of slavery and into the promised land. But that change of venue and status was not the only reason God had for doing it. Long ago, he had promised their ancestor Abraham that the whole world would be blessed through the great nation his descendants would become. (Genesis 12:2-3) But Israel would not become great in the way the world sees greatness. They would not become an empire. Their greatness would be the law God would give them, one characterized by justice and mercy, as exemplified in its preamble: the Ten Commandments. (Exodus 20:1-17) Later God's Son would summarize them in two great commandments: to love God with all we are and all we have and to love our neighbors as we do ourselves. (Matthew 22:36-40) He said that no commandment was greater than these. (Mark 12:31)

Why didn't God just whisper these laws to Moses in his sleep? I think it's because we humans are both physical and spiritual. What is spiritual can be ethereal and amorphous. The physical gives the spiritual a form while the spiritual gives the physical a meaning. We see this in communion. The Passover meal commemorated God sparing the children of Israel when death struck the firstborn of the Egyptians on the eve of their release from slavery. Jesus took that and transformed it into the meal in which we remember how the Son of God's self-sacrifice frees us from death and our slavery to sin.

So God takes Moses up on top of a mountain where he enters a cloud and sees God in the form of a devouring fire. Moses is awestruck and will always remember what God tells him. And in our passage from Matthew Jesus takes his inner circle of disciples up to the top of a mountain to show them that he is in fact the glorious Son of Man that Daniel prophesied about. (Daniel 7:13-14)

Why was it necessary for Jesus to do this? Because just 6 days earlier, Jesus asked them, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” His disciples rattled off the usual suspects: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or some other prophet. Then Jesus asks, “But what about you? Who do you say I am?” And Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus blesses Peter and says that this was revealed to him not by man but by God. He goes on to say that his church will be built on this rock and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. They are at Caesarea Philippi, a site built by Herod's son Philip as a tribute to Tiberius Caesar. There was a large cave there that was sacred to pagans who thought it was the entrance to Hades, the underworld of the dead. Jesus may have been referring to that in saying his church could withstand spiritual assaults because it was based on the solid rock of Peter's declaration. (Matthew 16:13-20)

But then the mood changes. Having confirmation that his disciples knew him to be the Anointed One, God's Son, he then tells them something shocking: that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer at the hands of the religious authorities and be killed. He also says that he will be raised to life on the third day but they can't get past the shock that he will be killed. What good is a dead Messiah? So Peter takes him aside and tells Jesus that he is wrong. That's right: he tells the guy he just identified as God's Son that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Jesus rebukes Peter, saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are not thinking about things as God does but about them as men do.” Satan is literally the Hebrew word for “adversary.” Peter is trying to tempt Jesus to do what any human being would—avoid suffering and death at all costs. But Jesus knows that God has a greater purpose behind this. Still, imagine how this rebuke stung Peter.

Then Jesus turns to all his disciples and says, “If anyone wants to follow me, let them thoroughly deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.” In other words, they must give up all rights to do as they want and follow Jesus as if they were condemned men carrying their cross to the place of execution. What a bummer! (Matthew 16:12-28)

So the mood for the next week would have been somber. Peter was trying to forget that Jesus compared him to God's adversary for telling Jesus he should not die. The others were dealing with Jesus telling them that those who try to save their lives will lose them and that those who lose their life for Jesus' sake will find it. Nobody is happy.

Jesus knows that they need to see that this is what God wants for the person Peter identified him as. So he takes the main three disciples up a mountain, probably Mount Hermon, which is not far from Caesarea Philippi. At 9,232 feet above sea level it's the highest point in the area. It is snow covered for most of the year and snow melt feeds the springs at its base. These are the source of the river Jordan. Its name might come from the Semitic root word for “consecrated.”

So this is an awe-inspiring place to be by itself. But while they were up there, Jesus becomes the most awesome sight they've ever seen. His face shines like the sun. Think of how hard it it to look directly at the sun. His clothes also become as bright as the light. The disciples must be shading their eyes when looking in Jesus' direction. The effect is unsettling. They are seeing Jesus as he is: God Incarnate.

Suddenly there are two other figures there: Moses, the lawgiver, and Elijah, the premiere prophet. We are not told how the disciples identify them, but they represent two main parts of the Old Testament scriptures, the Law and the Prophets. Both men also have remarkable endings to their earthly lives. Moses is buried by God in some place unknown (Deuteronomy 34:5-6) and Elijah is taken to heaven by a whirlwind. (2 Kings 2:11) Luke says they were talking to Jesus about his own upcoming death. (Luke 9:31)

Peter starts babbling about building some shelters for the three glorious figures when a bright cloud overshadows them. A voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased.” This echoes a line in today's psalm (Psalm 2:7) as well as what God said at Jesus' baptism. (Matthew 3:16-17) But there is an added sentence: “Listen to him.” In other words, Jesus knows what he's talking about. If he says he has to die, he is telling the truth and you need to accept it, no matter how you feel about it.

The reaction of the disciples is just what you'd think: they fall to the ground and are overcome by fear. All of this is uncanny. Then Jesus comes and touches them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they raise their heads, everything looks normal. It's just Jesus, looking as he does on any other day.

All three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, report this event. John, as usual, is different. Just as John's gospel doesn't actually describe Jesus being baptized or saying the words “This is my body” and “This is my blood” at the last supper, he doesn't mention this glimpse of Jesus' glory. But he does record Jesus talking of his being glorified. However, the event that Jesus says will glorify him is his death on the cross. (John 12:23; 13:31; 17:1) Just how is that glorious?

Paul says, “For rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person perhaps someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:7-8) That is extraordinary. God who is holy becomes a human and dies to save unholy humanity. The good guy dies to save the villains. The embodiment of God's law of love dies to save those who break the law. And Paul was also in awe of this because he writes, “This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners'—and I am the worst of them.” (1 Timothy 1:15) Paul started out persecuting the church. He was at the stoning of Stephen and approved of it. He arrested Christians and had them thrown into prison. (Acts 7:58; 8:1-3; 9:1-2) After becoming a follower of Jesus, Paul was acutely aware that it was God's grace that saved him and not anything he had done. (1 Corinthians 15:9; 1 Timothy 1:12-14) He said that ironically when people heard that “...the one who once persecuted us is now proclaiming the good news of the faith he once tried to destroy.' So they glorified God because of me.” (Galatians 1:23-24)

Jesus Christ, God's Son, dying for a world of sinners in order that they might be saved and become sons and daughters of God is truly awesome. It is the greatest act of mercy ever. But of course, what really makes people listen to him is his resurrection. Other people have died for causes and not all of those causes were good. People died for the crusades or for the European conquest of the Americas or to keep slavery or for the Nazi conquest of Europe and Russia. A smaller number have died for good causes. What makes Jesus different from those who died for a good cause, like Socrates or Jan Huss or Martin Luther King Jr., is that God raised him to life again. Jesus' resurrection validates what he said. It changes him from just another martyr to the Redeemer of our lives.

When Jesus revealed his fate to the disciples, it demoralized them. He needed to keep them together till he rose again. So he gave them a glimpse of who he was, unfiltered. Perhaps this is what he meant when he said, “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28) It left a lasting impression, as we see in our passage from 2 Peter. Even so his crucifixion and death caused them to doubt. They would not be able to see how glorious what happened was until they saw him and touched him and ate with him. Often the clearest way to see God's hand at work in our worst experiences is to look back and see things from the other side of the trauma. Things not experienced as good at the time may in retrospect be seen at the vital turning point, the hinge upon which our story turned into something so much better. It's good to remember this when we are going through a time of trial. In Jesus we see God turn a tragedy into a triumph.

What Jesus did on that mountain and what he did on the cross he did not for himself but for others. The disciples needed a vision of hope so he lifted the veil on his heavenly glory. He showed them that what he was going to do was in line with what God revealed in the law and the prophets. He knew there was going to be a time when he would not look like the Christ, the Son of the living God, but a bloody corpse. They needed an awesome glimpse of his glory on a mountain top so that when they saw the awful sight of him on a cross they would later be able to see in it the true glory of his self-sacrificial love.