The Kingdom and Choices

The scriptures referred to are 1 Kings 3:5-12, Romans 8:26-39 and Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52.

One of my favorite movies is Mr. Holland's Opus. Richard Dreyfuss plays a musician who goes into teaching to support his family while he composes, his real passion. But the demands of his profession and the education of his deaf son keep getting in the way. Throughout his life he is faced with tough decisions, such as whether to send his son to a special school that would cost more money and thus force him to take on more jobs. At one point, frustrated at the limitations of his home situation and his job, he meets a beautiful and talented student. As they rehearse the school musical, the two are attracted to one another. He names a composition after her. Finally, she tells him that after the final performance she is leaving on a bus to pursue a musical career. She asks him to join her. He goes to the bus stop...and tells her he cannot go with her. She puckers for a kiss. He kisses her on the cheek instead. Then he goes back to his cramped, frustrating life and tells his wife that he loves her.

All of today's readings are about choice. Solomon has ascended to the throne of his father David. Israel is at peace. God appears to Solomon and asks him what does he want God to give him. Solomon could have asked for fame, for the most beautiful queen in the world, for a long life, to see his enemies groveling at his feet, or for a booming economy that will bolster his popularity. (Many a politician has been willing to sell his soul to the devil for that one.) But Solomon doesn't ask for any of those things. Conscious of the great responsibility that God has given him—he would not normally have been first in line for the throne—he asks for the wisdom to rule God's people wisely. He chooses what his people need over what he would desire.

All too often leaders confuse themselves with their office. They feel that if they want something, then their office demands it. In response to a petition that was being passed around in Cuba that requested a referendum on basic freedoms, Fidel Castor circulated his own petition stating that Communist socialism in Cuba is “eternal.” Despite the failure of that system, Castor could not admit he had devoted his life to a lost cause. He chose to put his emotional needs and self-esteem over the continuing welfare of his people. Nixon did much the same thing, confusing his political enemies with the enemies of this country. Jesus said, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.” (Matthew 20:26) A leader should be the servant of his people. Once he forgets that, he becomes a tyrant. Solomon chose servanthood.

In today's gospel we encounter a series of short parables about the kingdom of God. Before we look at them, let's remember what the kingdom of God is. It is not a place; it is not the church. It is not simply heaven, though that is where you would find its most perfect expression. Part of the problem is that where the other gospels use the phrase “kingdom of God,” Matthew uses “kingdom of heaven.” Matthew appears to be writing to a largely Jewish audience and so he substitutes “heaven” for the word “God' in deference to the Jewish reluctance to use God's name. Even today in Orthodox Jewish writings you will see it written “G-d.” So Matthew is not talking about the afterlife; he is adapting the gospel to communicate with his audience.

The real problem is with the word “kingdom.” The word not only makes us think of royalty and majesty but also geography. After all, the nation we think of as Britain or England calls itself the United Kingdom. When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, however, he wasn't thinking of a political or physical location. The Greek word basileia means means “reign” or “rule.” The kingdom of God is wherever God reigns.

In the prayer Jesus taught us we say, “They kingdom come; they will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is a typical example of Hebrew parallelism. In their poetry, such as in the Psalms, Jewish writers would say something one way and then express the same thought using different words. The kingdom is wherever God's will is done. It is wherever people are living in harmony with God. So the kingdom of God is the state of living in accordance with his loving will for us.

So we could paraphrase what Jesus is saying in verse 31 of our gospel passage as “Living in harmony with God's will is like a mustard seed. It starts out as such a small thing and then it blossoms into something huge, a home for restless souls, tired of being blown about on the winds of fortune.” The mustard seed isn't literally the smallest of seeds but rabbis used it to mean the tiniest bit you could think of. And while it wasn't literally the tallest shrub it could reach 10 feet in height and provide nesting places for birds. Also “birds of the air' was sometimes used as a metaphor for Gentiles, so Jesus is picturing the expansion of the kingdom of God to include those outside the nation of Israel.

Then we can see Jesus' next parable as saying “Living in accordance with God's will is like yeast. It's practically invisible but if you put a tiny bit of it into a lot of dough, it will begin to bubble and expand until there's enough to nourish a large number of people.” However, rabbis often used yeast as an illustration of the corruption of evil. Before the Passover, observant Jews are supposed to scour their homes to remove all traces of yeast. Mothers often make it a game, hiding the last bit of yeast and letting the kids search for it so they can throw it out. Jesus is being subversive by suggesting that evil is not the only thing that can infiltrate and influence society. Though persecuted, the early Christians did not flee cities in time of plague but took care of the sick at the risk of their own lives. This made the Romans rethink Christianity. Let a few people start obeying the God who is love and society will not be safe from all the good they will get up to.

Next Jesus essentially says, “Living in sync with God's will is like a treasure buried in a field. Someone discovers it, reburies it, and then joyfully sells everything he owns in order to buy the field.” This may sound odd but in ancient Palestine the average person didn't have a local bank and an ATM in the grocery store. The safest thing to do if you had something valuable that you wanted to hide from robbers, or an invading army or to protect if you were going on a trip, was to bury it. And according to rabbinic law, if you bought a piece of land and a forgotten treasure was buried there, it was yours by right. Finders keepers. But the point Jesus was making did not have to do with whether we think that's fair but with the fact that the man gladly sold all that he had in order to buy the field. He doesn't regard it as a sacrifice because he knows he will get far more back than he ever had.

Obeying God's will is often made to sound like a narrow way to live, like that of a fanatic or a puritan. But Jesus is saying that, just like the field in the parable, there's more to it than meets the eye. Below that rocky soil, there's treasure, if you are willing to commit your whole life to it and get your hands dirty looking for it. When you look back, you'll realize that what you gave up wasn't really that much of a sacrifice after all.

Next we learn “Obeying God's will is like a merchant searching for fine pearls; when he finds one truly perfect pearl, he's willing to sell all he has to possess it.” Here the discovery in not accidental. Pearls were prized more than gold in Jesus' time. Here is a jewel you didn't have to cut or shape. It's a perfect sphere, crafted by God himself, so to speak. When you are doing God's will, you will discover it's more beautiful than you imagined. You will let go of all the other inferior things in this world just to enjoy it.

Finally, we see that “Following the good and loving will of God is like a net that draws in all kinds of fish, good and bad.” Some may be disturbed by the part about the angels separating the good and the wicked at the last judgment. But that misses the point. We don't do the judging; we're the net. Our job is to draw in everyone, not pronounce judgment on them. This shows that Jesus knew there would be scoundrels in the church. “Don't worry,” he is saying, “I'll sort them out later. You concentrate on inviting all and sundry into God's kingdom.”

Each of these parables is about choosing. Because you have to choose to live in harmony with God's will. The farmer chooses to sow the mustard seed. The cook chooses to use the yeast. The buyer chooses to sell all in order to buy the field or pursue the best pearl. The fisherman chooses to throw the net. We can choose to live within God's will or outside it.

Gavin De Becker is the nation's premier security expert. His company has been a consultant to stars harassed by stalkers, companies worried about vengeful ex-employees, and even the Secret Service evaluating possible assassins. His firm quantifies the risk factors involved in potentially dangerous situations. Their research allows them to weigh whether the crank who wrote the threatening letter is just blowing off steam or is really capable of violence. This research, for De Becker, began when he was just a child.

His mother was a heroin addict. He remembers the night she shot his stepfather and then fussed and cooed over her victim while awaiting the ambulance...and the cops. He says when he tells his story to inmates, they say that their childhoods were the same as his. Then they wonder how he ended up so successful while they are incarcerated.

The answer, he says, is choice. De Becker learned to read his mother's moods to better protect himself and his little sister. They hid that night before their mother's actions escalated. Then he chose to use the skills he picked up in his nightmarish childhood to spare others from facing violence. Instead of punishing the world for the traumas he received, he chose to turn what was bad in his life into something that benefited others.

David Kaczynski was in his youth almost as eccentric as his brother. David lived in a hole he had dug rather than in an isolated one room cabin as his older sibling had. But David abandoned that life, married and became a social worker. When newspapers published the Unibomber's manifesto, David read it with growing dread. The rantings sounded very much like those of his brother, Ted. In what must have been one of the most wrenching moral choices ever thrust on anyone, David contacted the FBI and drew their attention to his soon-to-be-infamous brother. Not only did David not turn out to be like his brother, he instead became a man capable of the rarest form of moral courage.

There is one last type of choice in today's readings. In our passage from Romans the apostle Paul says that God has chosen us. I'm not going to get into the whole question of predestination here except to say that when one looks back on one's life, things look predestined. If I hadn't accepted an offer from a radio station in the Keys and moved here, and the church I attended wasn't sharing their priest with a church on another island, and if that priest hadn't let those leading Morning Prayer on the Sundays she wasn't there preach their own sermons, and if that priest hadn't encouraged me to become a lay preacher, and if, after announcing she was leaving, a founding member of our parish hadn't asked about me replacing her, and if that priest hadn't remembered the unusual path to priesthood provided for in Canon 9 of the church...well, I wouldn't be where I am today. Think of the chain of seeming happenstances that led you into your profession, or to meeting your spouse, or a best friend, or to discover a great talent. It almost seems as if someone caused these things to work out just so, doesn't it?

“All things work together for the good of those who love God,” says Paul. Even the bad things? Yes. Many people are safe thanks indirectly to Gavin De Becker's unstable mother. So does God engineer the bad things in our lives? No. But even our bad choices and those of people around us cannot derail his loving will. He will use whatever materials we provide to save us, just as he used our execution of his son to redeem us.

God's will is not to damn us but to vindicate us. His will is to restore us to the loving image we see in his son, Jesus. To that end he gives us his Spirit to pray for us, the divine in us connecting to the divine above us. And he sent his son, who by rights should condemn us for the way we have misused God's gifts and especially how we treated him, but who instead intercedes with his Father on our behalf.

Our choice is whether to conform to God's loving will for us or to reject it, to cooperate in reconciling the world to him or to destroy it, to buy the pearl of great price or let that opportunity for joy slip through our fingers. The choice is ours. Choose wisely.

Originally preached on July 28, 2002. It has been revised and updated.

Causes and Choices

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 44:6-8, Psalm 86:11-17; Romans 8:12-25 and Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.

I have been listening to Murderland, a disturbing book by a Pulitzer-prize winning author about the fact that the Pacific Northwest of the US has produced a disproportionate number of serial killers. Contrary to the popular idea that they are criminal masterminds, rarely are these men, who are rapists and necrophiliacs, brilliant. Ted Bundy never finished law school, finding the classes completely incomprehensible. What the author proposes as a key factor in these men's violent behavior is the fact that a great many of them grew up in close proximity to smelting plants. In the process of refining metals, they spew out lead, arsenic, cadmium, and other toxic substances which pollute the air, water and ground. We now know the damage that elevated levels of lead and other heavy metals do to humans. It does not make you a genius.

But obviously there are other factors, like poverty, abuse, neglect and brain injury, that contribute to this problem, or otherwise everyone growing up in those areas would be a serial killer, including the author. Still the crime rate in that area, and in the period when the Baby Boomers were reaching early adulthood, was remarkably high. And the number of serial killers and crime rates in general have dropped since the creation of the EPA, OSHA and the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts. The fact is we don't know exactly why certain people do so much more damage to others than the average person. As far back as human history has been recorded, the question of evil has plagued us.

For monotheists the very existence of evil is a thorny theological problem. If there is only one God, who is all powerful and all good, as it says in our readings from Isaiah and Psalm 86, where does evil come from? I agree with forensic psychologist Dr. Gwen Adshead that evil should not be thought of as a noun so much as an adjective. Evil is not a special thing which exists apart from other things in creation, but a term for describing destructive ways of thinking, speaking and acting. After all, God made everything and pronounced it good. (Genesis 1:31) But the harmful ways we use the good things God made can be described as evil. If I give a child a baseball bat and he uses it as intended—to play baseball, softball or T-ball—that use is good. If the child instead uses it to hit another kid on the head, he has misused my good gift for evil. I think the knowledge of good and evil, which God felt our newborn species was not yet ready for, was the knowledge that we could pervert his good gifts through misusing, abusing or in some cases neglecting them. (Genesis 2:16-17) God's gifts are powerful. We can use that power to do great good or great evil. For example, we can use our muscles to help someone up or knock them down. We can use our intelligence to discover new ways to make things better or to make them worse. We can choose to help others or to harm them. We can also choose to be a bystander while others do evil acts.

Jesus lived in a world that was agricultural rather than industrial. In his profession as tekton, a worker in stone and wood, he probably had clients who contracted with him to build grain storehouses and watchtowers, or repair plows or make yokes for oxen. And so he was familiar with the problems of farmers. Perhaps he knew of a petty feud between two men who had competing farms, where one man surreptitiously sowed weeds in the other man's field. If so, Jesus used that incident to create his parable of the wheat and the weeds to explain why God's world has both good and bad things in it.

Weeds are natural but if you are trying to grow grain for food, you don't want weeds competing for the soil and nutrition. And, yes, the answer is usually to continually weed the field set aside for growing wheat. But in his parables Jesus often includes a plot twist. In this parable the landowner decides not to pull up the weeds because some of the wheat would be uprooted as well. Possibly this is because in the early stages it might be hard to tell the two types of plants apart. When the time comes, both will be harvested and separated. The wheat will be saved in barns while the weeds will be burned.

Why is the landowner so protective of mere plants? Because, as Jesus explains, the plants stand for people. And we do live in a world where some people are doing good and some people are doing evil. And our lives are entwined. Ted Bundy had 4 half-siblings who did not become serial killers. He fathered a child while in prison. They should not be tarred with his crimes. He dated many women who only later learned what a monster he was. Which, by the way, confirms that his murders were deliberate choices. It was not as if he couldn't find women who would have sex with him. It was not as if he could not help but kill the women to whom he was attracted. He was very much a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He knew that what he was doing was evil and must be hidden. He kept that side separate from the good guy image he tried to present to the world.

All analogies, similes and metaphors break down at some point. Unlike weeds, people can change who they are. As we said in last week's sermon, in Ezekiel and Jeremiah God promises to change hearts. (Ezekiel 11:19-20; Jeremiah 31:33-34) Also in Ezekiel God says that those who are wicked are not beyond saving. “But if the wicked person turns from all the sins he has committed and observes all my statutes and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he shall not die.” (Ezekiel 18:21) Jesus said he came to save sinners and the lost. (Matthew 9:13; 18:11) And that's another reason why God doesn't simply strike down sinners. God is being patient and giving everyone the chance to turn from their sins and turn to him. (2 Peter 3:9)

Of course, we cannot do this all by ourselves. It requires God's Holy Spirit, as Paul says in our passage from Romans. We receive the Spirit when we turn to God and are accepted and adopted as his children. Paul says in our passage,“we are children of God and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”

And what is it we are heirs to? His kingdom. As it says in Daniel, “Then the kingdom, authority, and greatness of the kingdoms under all of heaven will be delivered to the people of the holy ones of the Most High. His kingdom is an eternal kingdom; all authorities will serve him and obey him.” (Daniel 7:27) So God's people will rule under him. And who is this “him”? As it says earlier in the same chapter, “And with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man was approaching. He went up to the Ancient of Days and was escorted before him. To him was given ruling authority, honor and sovereignty. All peoples, nations and language groups were serving him. His authority is eternal and will not pass away.” (Daniel 7:13-14) We will rule under the Son of Man, Jesus' favorite way to refer to himself.

God wants to restore the world to what he intended it to be. He created human beings to rule over the earth. (Genesis 1:26-28) We have instead turned the paradise he gave us into hell on earth. But if we are redeemed by Christ, our former position will be restored.

In Revelation, John tells us of his vision of those who stand firmly for Jesus despite persecution. “Then I saw thrones, and those seated on them were given authority to judge. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its brand on their foreheads and hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.” (Revelation 20:4) As Paul said, “If we died with him, we will also rule with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him.” (2 Timothy 2:11-12)

These persecutions, up to and including martyrdom, are “the sufferings of the present time” that Paul is talking about, and which he says, “are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” He is speaking about the suffering and trials we endure by following Jesus. Jesus himself said, “If anyone wants to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) There are a lot of Christians who think they can claim the crown, and do it in this life, without taking up the cross. They want to reign in a temporal kingdom now rather than an eternal kingdom after this world is no more. And this world will pass away one day.

But in the meantime we are groaning together with the whole of creation. And the pain we are experiencing is “the pains of labor.” The labor is the birth of the new heavens and the new earth. It is a world in which God will be tangibly present with his people. “He will live among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more—or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist.” (Revelation 21:3-4) This glorious new creation is what we are groaning and waiting and hoping for.

What do we do in the meantime, besides being patient? We follow Jesus' commandments to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are to love our enemies. We are to treat the poor, hungry, sick, imprisoned and resident aliens as we would Jesus. And we are to spread the gospel, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey Jesus' commands. And we must not forget that our acts of love speak louder than our words.

After his first arrest, Ted Bundy got baptized as a Mormon. But that didn't mean he stopped killing. And though he talked with the prison chaplain and with James Dobson while on death row, he never took responsibility for his acts. He blamed his abusive grandfather, alcohol, the media, society, violence on TV, and pornography, all things which others have been exposed to without becoming serial killers. He even blamed his victims for radiating vulnerability. He said, “Their facial expressions say, 'I am afraid of you.' These people invite abuse...By expecting to be hurt, do they subtly encourage it?” No! The problem was not anything outside Bundy but his inner decision to please his own desires even when it meant harming another human being.

David Berkowitz, the infamous Son of Sam killer, became a Christian in prison. He has written a book entitled Son of Hope. He counsels troubled inmates. And he skips his parole hearings. He has written, “In all honesty, I believe that I deserve to be in prison for the rest of my life. I have, with God's help, long ago come to terms with my situation and I have accepted my punishment.” We cannot judge the true spiritual state of others but that sounds like repentance.

We do not know why some people choose to do evil things but we do know that people who have made that choice can subsequently choose to ask God to help them change. Becoming a child of God is, as Paul says, a matter of adoption. You do not have to become or stay a child of the evil one. You can, like the criminal on the cross next to Jesus, choose to acknowledge Jesus as your King and Savior. At that point that man could do nothing to undo the harm he had done. But Jesus saw his repentance and his admission of his crimes and told him, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) He's the only person to whom Jesus gave that assurance.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can deliberately hold off repentance till the end of your life as a “get out of jail free” card. God cannot be fooled. He judges us by our hearts. (1 Samuel 16:7) But it does mean that every second of your life is a second chance. We cannot pass final judgment on other people. (Matthew 7:1) That is for Jesus to do on the day of resurrection. (John 5:22) But we can know if we ourselves have put our whole trust in Jesus, given our life over to him and are following him daily. We may stumble but we know that, as it says in 1^st John, “if we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) Which is why, in that same letter, the author says, “I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13) And how can we have that reassurance? Because our salvation doesn't depend upon us. It depends upon the God who is love and who in Christ showed how much he was willing to undergo to save us. We can trust him.

At one point, Ted Bundy called a long-time girlfriend in tears saying there was something wrong with him. But when he visited her hours later, he was smiling. Whatever drove him to do what he did, he made the choice not to get help. And so others died and finally, in the electric chair, he died. Jesus came to save us from our slavery to sin. We can choose to keep doing what leads to death. Or we can choose Jesus and live.

Word and Spirit

The scriptures referred to are Romans 8:1-11 and Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23.

One of the things that makes humans unique is our invention of writing. Other animals communicate with each other by cries, growls, howls, purrs, barks, chirps and other vocalizations. Yet not only can humans use more complex language to communicate exactly what is on our mind, and on topics I'm sure animals never contemplate—does any other animal deliver sermons?—but we figured out that if we use symbols for our words, we can write our down thoughts and they can be read by others, including those who never met or heard us, and even those who weren't born at the time we wrote. The passages we just read from the Old Testament, Psalms, New Testament and Gospels were written thousands of years ago in two different languages by at least 4 different people. Yet here we are discussing them and finding truths and wisdom that apply to our lives today. That is amazing when you think of it.

But, as we touched on in last week's sermon, words don't automatically accomplish what they tell us to do. As Jesus says in the parable of the sower and the seeds, it all depends on who receives the word. In fact some have said that we should call this the parable of the soils because that seems to determine if the word of the kingdom bears fruit. As Jesus says, some people hear the gospel but do not understand it. It immediately fails to take hold. Some people hear God's word and receive it with joy but they are shallow and when adversity strikes, they fall away because the word did not really take root in them. Some people hear the word but worldly concerns and the pursuit of wealth and success choke off their spiritual life. Finally there are those who not only hear the word but understand it. It goes deep, takes root in them and they keep the concerns of this age and the lure of earthly pursuits from choking the life out of it. So they bear fruit. In other words, what is essential is not merely the gospel but also our response to it. The majority of people in this country—62 to 68%—say they are Christians. But are we seeing a bumper crop of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control? (Galatians 5:22-23) Why not?

Here's another interesting statistic. 85 to 88% of US households own a Bible. Actually, the average American household has 3 or 4 Bibles. Yet less than a quarter of folks with access to a Bible say they read it daily. And more than half read it very little or not at all. A lot of people seem to think that having a Bible is like having a magical item, which just automatically grants them God's favor. But as Jesus' parable points out, God's word doesn't do you any good unless it gets deep within you. As N.T. Wright says, people want the fruit without the root.

In our readings from Romans over the last few weeks, Paul has also been pointing out that God's law by itself cannot make us good people. In fact, it can be used sinfully. And daily we see people who will pick out quotes, taking them out of context and divorcing them from the main purpose of the Bible, in order to justify evil. As we pointed out recently, slave owners used a version of the Bible from which they had removed 90% of the Old Testament and 50% of the New Testament to keep their slaves from learning how much of the Bible talked about freedom and liberation from slavery.

Today we have so-called Christians who are ignoring the more than 800 verses that spell out our duty to the poor, the sick, the disabled, children without fathers, mothers without husbands, resident aliens, and those in prison. (Leviticus 19:9-18, 33-34; Proverbs 19:17; Isaiah 1:17; Matthew 25:31-46; Luke 4:18-19; James 1:27-2:11, etc) They even condemn empathy as a sin, though Jesus acted out of compassion, which any dictionary will tell you is a synonym for empathy. (Matthew 9:36; 14:14; 15:32; 20:34; Mark 1:41; Luke 7:13) Furthermore, they think that God can't wait to cast sinners into hell although we read, “As I live, says the Lord God, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but prefer that they turn from their ways and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11; cf. Lamentations 3:31-36; 2 Chronicles 30:9; Jeremiah 3:12; 1 Timothy 1:15) Jesus did not come on a “search and destroy” mission but on a rescue mission. (Matthew 18:11; Mark 2:17; Luke 15:4-6)

For example, I was once in a murder mystery at the Marathon Community Theater where I played the detective. The chief suspect was the governess. Yet somehow at the end of the play we were in love. And neither I nor my leading lady could figure out how that happened. During most of the play it seemed that I was fiercely interrogating her to put her away for murder while she was deflecting my questions. Just a week or so from opening night, I was trying to answer the actress's question: “Do you know why we end up together?” And then it hit me. It made no sense if we fell in love at the end of the play but it totally made sense if we fell in love at the beginning. Once we started rehearsing as if our attraction was immediate, the tone of the play changed. Instead of me trying to get a confession out of her, I was trying to get her to give me evidence to exonerate her because I loved her. Instead of trying to hide her guilt, she was hiding the odd circumstances of the death because she was afraid I wouldn't believe her and reject her. So when we finally confessed our love, it was the natural ending for what was actually a love story. We didn't have to change a word of the play, just the spirit in which we spoke and acted.

In today's reading from Romans, Paul is saying that the law of God will not work on those who do not have the right Spirit: the Spirit of Christ. (Romans 8:9) Otherwise God's law is just a death sentence. But received in the right Spirit, it is life and freedom. (Romans 8:2) This doesn't mean that we can totally disregard God's word. As Paul writes, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:3-4)

That might be hard to follow so let me read it to you in the translation by J.B. Phillips: “The Law never succeeded in producing righteousness—the failure was always the weakness of human nature. But God has met this by sending his own Son to live in sinful human nature like ours. And, while Christ was dealing with sin, God condemned that sinful nature. Therefore we are able to meet the Law's requirements, for we are living no longer by the dictates of our sinful nature, but in obedience to the promptings of the Spirit.”

Look at it this way. We all know the rules for having a physically healthy life: Don't smoke. Don't drink alcohol. Eat healthy food and not too much. Exercise. Get a good night's sleep. So why are 93% of US adults metabolically unhealthy? Because, despite knowing how we should live, we don't follow those rules. And if, like my father-in-law, you have a severe heart attack, you cannot save yourself. You need a doctor to save you. My father-in-law had to have a surgeon do a quintuple bypass on him. In other words, 5 coronary arteries were blocked and had to be bypassed. Only after that, and his recovery from the surgery, was he able to do the things required to stay healthy.

God knows that we need a deep internal change in order to be spiritually healthy. In Ezekiel he says, “I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within them; I will remove the hearts of stone from their bodies and I will give them tender hearts, so that they may follow my statutes and observe my regulations and carry them out. Then they will be my people, and I will be their God.” (Ezekiel 11:19-20) And in Jeremiah God says, “'I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. I will be their God and they will be my people. People will no longer need to teach their neighbors and relatives to know me. For all of them, from the least important to the most important, will know me,' says the Lord. 'For I will forgive their sin and will no longer call to mind the wrong they have done.'” (Jeremiah 31:33b-34)

It's a matter of both heart and spirit. For instance, being diagnosed with congestive heart failure means your heart is slowly losing the ability to do its job. You can't just say, “Doc, I'll take it from here. I'll eat healthy and exercise.” That won't save you. It's too late for that. The only solution today is a heart transplant. Someone has to die and donate their heart. Think of Jesus as our heart donor. He died so that we might live. He gave his life that we might have life—his life, eternal life. Think of God as the surgeon who has to cut us open, remove our old failing heart and put in its place the heart of Jesus.

You know the weird thing about people who receive someone else's heart? Many of them report also receiving some traits of their donor. One woman said she started having dreams of being an 18-year-old, like her donor, and began craving the foods he liked. A dying man who was 47 used to hate classical music. After receiving the heart of a 17-year-old he suddenly loved it. He later found out that his donor was a violinist who loved classical music and who was shot on his way to music class, hugging his violin.

Some researchers think this is cellular memory. They took one slug who had been touched and then shocked and they transferred its RNA from to another slug. And then the second slug reacted negatively to the touch although it had never been shocked. With the transfer of the RNA came the transfer of the first slug's memory of its experience.

When we open ourselves to God's word and accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we receive his Holy Spirit. We are also receiving the traits of Jesus. And so the Spirit enables us to do what God's law by itself could not do. The Spirit enables us to live by God's law. And what is the essence of that law? As Jesus said, it is to love God with all we are and all we have, and to love our neighbor as we do ourselves. He said all the other laws in the Bible are based on these two. (Matthew 22:36-40) And he said that no other commandment was greater than loving God and other people. (Mark 12:28-31)

It is hard to love God that fully. And it's hard to love our neighbors as we do ourselves, putting their wellbeing on the same level as ours. We cannot do it naturally because of our fallen human nature. But Jesus, who lived and died as one of us, can. And when we receive his Spirit so can we.

However, getting to the point where we can do it perfectly is neither fast nor easy. After my accident, and my 6 surgeries to put me back together and replace some broken parts with pins and screws and metal, I had to go to a nursing home with a good rehab program to learn to walk again. It took 100 days. For most of that time I couldn't even put weight on my repaired legs. So the physical therapists worked on restoring flexibility and strengthening them. And even when the surgeons cleared me to start weight-bearing, at first I just had to learn to stand for a few minutes. After a week, I took my first steps, with a physical therapist holding me by a gait belt, in case I fell, and another pushing the wheelchair behind me, in case I suddenly had to sit down. I had good days and bad days. I had days I made progress and days I seemed to have hit a plateau. I had days where the pain was so bad I cried. And after they discharged me, I still had to do more therapy to increase what I could do.

The Christian life is like that. The Spirit is like our physical therapist, helping us learn how to walk with God. The Spirit encourages us, comforts us, advocates for us, and intercedes for us. Without the help of the Spirit, we cannot live the Christian life and we cannot produce the fruit of the Spirit. And without the Spirit we cannot properly understand God's word, the gospel, Jesus' good news of salvation for sinners and the lost. It is the Spirit who testifies to Jesus and leads us to the truth. (John 15:26)

Jesus said he would not leave us like orphans but would send his Spirit. (John 14:16-18) Jesus said, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23) And God does this through his Spirit. God is love (1 John 4:8) and the Spirit pours God's love, the essence and fullness of God, into our hearts. (Romans 5:5)

A lot of people read God's word without understanding that it is a love story. They think God is all about wrath and judgment and can't wait to condemn us. But the Bible says, “The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) Jesus said he did not come to condemn the world but to save it. (John 3:17) God has confessed his love for us from the beginning of our story. He is simply giving us plenty of opportunity to return that love and to do it in the right Spirit.

In the Eyes of God

The scriptures referred to are Romans 6:12-23.

In a tense scene of the movie musical 1776, the representatives from the South will not sign the Declaration of Independence unless the clause denouncing slavery is removed. In the chilling song “Molasses to Rum to Slaves,” Edward Rutledge of South Carolina points out the hypocrisy of the northern states which build and sail the ships that bring slaves from Africa to America. Finally, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration, crosses out the antislavery clause so that the states will be united in separating themselves from Great Britain. Sherman Edwards, the former history teacher turned songwriter who conceived the musical, decided against including a line of dialogue where John Adams tells Benjamin Franklin that if they give in on the issue of slavery, there will be trouble in 100 years. He felt that the audience would think the line was made up. But in fact Adams did write that line in a letter to Franklin. He foresaw the Civil War and was just a few years off in predicting when it would happen.

Their problem was that the Declaration of Independence says that the whole reason for its existence was that, as it says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men...” In other words, we are separating from the United Kingdom of Great Britain because we don't believe that certain men are inherently superior to other men and therefore should rule over them without the consent of the people they are governing. So the United States was going to be a democracy. It was a radical idea: to found a nation, not on shared blood or ethnicity or culture like all other countries, but on a principle—rule by the people themselves who have equality before the law with respect to certain basic rights. And these rights were given by God.

But at the time when the founders of our nation wrote this, they really didn't mean that all human beings are created equal. Although those in the North might oppose slavery, that didn't mean they thought blacks were equal to whites. Nor did most of them think women were equal to men. They didn't even think all white men should have the vote, but only white men who owned property or paid taxes. Yet once the idea of equality was established as the basis for our democracy, those restrictions increasingly came into question.

Since the Constitution gave the states the power to set voting requirements, a few states gave free black men the right to vote. In New Jersey unmarried and widowed women who owned property could vote. Georgia removed the requirement that men had to own property. In 1790, a year after the Constitution came into effect, free white men born outside the US but who settled here were allowed to become citizens. In 1791, the new state of Vermont gave the vote to all men regardless of color or whether they owned property or not. The next year Kentucky did the same, though in short order that right was taken away from blacks.

Year by year, we see the restrictions on who could vote removed. In the 1828 presidential election, non-property-owning white men could legally vote in the vast majority of states. And in that same year, Maryland became the last state to drop its religious restrictions and let Jews vote.

There was pushback. In 1807 New Jersey took the right to vote away from free black men and women. In 1837 Pennsylvania took voting rights away from free black men. But in 1848 Mexicans living in US territories were declared citizens.

Things changed after the Civil War, of course. In 1868 all male persons born or naturalized in the US were guaranteed citizenship in the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution. And in the 15^th Amendment in 1870 states were prevented from denying the right to vote on the basis of “race, color or previous condition of servitude.”

For women, getting the right to vote took longer. In 1869, Wyoming gave equal rights to women. In 1883, women in the Washington Territory got the right to vote, only to lose it in 1887, as did women in Utah. It wasn't until 1920 that the 19^th Amendment gave women the right to vote. But not all women. Most black women were effectively blocked from exercising their right until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Native Americans were finally granted citizenship in 1924. In 1943 Chinese immigrants were finally allowed to gain citizenship and the right to vote. In 1952, all Asian Americans were given the vote.

Why did I just throw all these dates at you? To show that just because something is on paper and everyone agrees to it, it doesn't mean it automatically becomes a reality. And to show that ideas can grow. From the beginning there were Americans who took the declaration that “all men are created equal” seriously but not literally. They understood the word “men” to mean human beings in general and not just rich white males. In the same way, when Jesus told the disciples he would make them “fishers of men” he didn't mean that the gospel wasn't meant for women and children as well. (Matthew 4:19) When in the gospel of John we read about Christ that “In him was life, and the life was the light of men,” (John 1:4) or when Jesus said “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to me,” (John 12:32) he was not excluding anyone. On the other hand, if equality was restricted only to white male property-owners, the Declaration should have been specific. I think the drafters of the Declaration didn't word it that way because deep-down they realized that did not sound noble nor was it a good reason to start a new country. Inequality was already the ruling principle everywhere else in the world.

But why am I talking about this in a sermon? Because, while people are debating today whether Christian principles underlie the founding of this country or not, this is one idea that I think did come from the Bible. People may object and say, no, this idea came from the Enlightenment, when people put reason above religion as the basis of all things. Yet it is the Enlightenment that gave us so-called “scientific racism,” the rationalization that the differences in humans made it okay to enslave non-white persons because they were so evidently inferior to whites. Taxonomists, naturalists and philosophers in the 1700s and 1800s treated different human races as if they were different species. The Enlightenment was anything but enlightened when it came to this subject.

However, the Bible starts out by saying that God created human beings, both male and female, in his image. (Genesis 1:27) Inequality is the result of the fall of human beings into sin. (Genesis 3:16-17) But in Christ all things are to be restored. (Acts 3:19-21) Which is why Paul says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

I cannot think of any other basis you can use to assert that all human beings should be treated as equals. Not only did the Enlightenment thinkers not come to that conclusion, you cannot justify it with science. Lots of non-human species have dominance hierarchies that establish who has priority when it comes to food, mates and resting spots. Chickens have a literal pecking order, as do wolves. In mandrills, there is one single undisputed individual monkey who rules the group as a despot. In elephants and hyenas, females have leadership and dominance. You may remember the chilling episode of the documentary series Meerkat Manor, in which the matriarch, the only one allowed to breed, discovered a daughter of hers had mated with a male from another group and so she killed all the babies, her grandchildren. Our closest biological relatives, the chimpanzees, have a highly-structured dominance hierarchy. So on what scientific basis could you argue that all human beings have a right to be treated as equals?

Ah, you may say, but doesn't the Bible justify slavery? As we saw in last week's sermon, the Bible may acknowledge slavery exists but it does not endorse it. There are a number of verses that do things like tell slaves to take advantage of opportunities to gain their freedom (1 Corinthians 7:21) and that warn masters to treat their slaves fairly because we all have a master in heaven who does not show favoritism. (Ephesians 6:9) Plus there is a whole book in which Paul is trying to get a church leader to free a runaway slave. (Philemon) And you can hardly ignore the central story of the Hebrew Bible, namely, God freeing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Indeed, so pervasive is the theme of freedom in the Bible that slave-owners would only allow their slaves to hear a specially edited version of it. They removed more than 90% of the Old Testament and more than 50% of the New Testament. That's a strange thing to do if the book were truly pro-slavery, but it makes total sense if you don't want people to think of God as a liberator.

Speaking of special versions of the Bible, one of the reasons for the creation of the King James Bible was to counter the Geneva Bible which had footnotes that often referred to monarchs as tyrants. Ben Franklin was inspired by the frontispiece of the Geneva Bible to create a proposed design for the Great Seal of the United States. His seal said, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

And when the people of Israel ask Samuel for a king, which was a rejection of God as their king, God permits this but tells Samuel to spell out what giving one human being such power will lead to. (1 Samuel 8:10-18) He says a king will take your best fields and vineyards; he will enrich his friends; he will demand a portion of what you produce. In Deuteronomy, God anticipates Israel having a king and says that the king may not accumulate horses for himself, which represent military power, nor marry many wives, nor accumulate a lot of silver and gold. He must make himself a copy of God's law and read it continuously and obey it. “Then he will not exalt himself above his fellow citizens or turn from the commandments to the right or left...” (Deuteronomy 17:14-20) So even the king is not above the law nor is he superior to his fellow citizens.

I agree with historians that the founders of our nation did not explicitly make this nation Christian. They saw the corruption that happened when the church was an arm of the government and simply blessed whatever those in power did and said. James Madison put the separation of church and state in the very first Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...” In other words, the government is not to force religion on anyone or prevent people from practicing their religions. Freedom of conscience is vital to a democracy.

But I do think the founders just assumed that basic Christian morality would help keep the Constitution operating. As we have seen, a lot of the Constitution is based on certain unenforceable norms being observed. Like the Bible, the Constitution lays out how people should act but it can't make people actually obey it. In our passage from Romans Paul is showing how the mere existence of God's law can't stop sin. “For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” And we see Christians who say they honor the Bible while violating its principles, the way we see Americans who say they honor the Constitution while ignoring what it says.

What did the founders mean when they said all men are created equal? They couldn't have meant we are all equal in our talents and abilities. We aren't. What they meant is that we should all be equal in the eyes of the law, based on certain inherent rights. And they said those rights are given by our Creator. Which assumes that we are all of equal value in God's eyes, despite any differences. However, they didn't follow those “self-evident” truths to their logical conclusion. But subsequent generations did. They expanded on the narrow definition of equality the founding fathers had. They saw that, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The minute someone says, “The rules don't apply to you,” that exception can be used to exclude anyone. And tyrants will always expand that exception.

The truths that our faith is built on are that God created everyone in his image and that Jesus died for everyone, whether they know it or not. So everyone you meet is either a brother or sister in Christ, or a potential brother or sister in Christ. Which is why we are to love everyone, without exception, and to treat everyone fairly. Because as Peter said, God does not show favoritism with people. (Acts 10:34) And neither should we.

Gotta Serve Somebody

The scriptures referred to are Romans 6:12-23.

Dr. Gregory Aldrete, a professor of history, is skeptical of people who believe in reincarnation and claim to remember past lives. Because most of them remember being kings or queens or other powerful and famous people. But statistically, they should remember being an endless succession of farmers because throughout most of history that is what 90% of people were. And if you lived during the time of the New Testament, there was a 10 to 20% chance you would be a slave. You could have been captured in a war, born to a mother who was a slave (regardless of whether your father was), or you could have been abandoned on the side of the road by parents who couldn't afford to keep you and then picked up by someone who raised you as a slave. No one race was specifically held as slaves, though people usually preferred to enslave ethnic groups other than their own. Wealthy Romans especially liked to have a Greek slave as tutor for their sons or as their personal physician. It showed you had exceptional taste.

My point is that slavery was so common that Paul seized upon it as a metaphor in our passage from Romans. He would agree with Bob Dylan's song Gotta Serve Somebody. Nobody is truly free from having to work for someone else. CEOs of big companies have got to meet or beat the expectations of the stock market and investors in their quarterly earnings or they can be voted out by the company's board of directors, as Steve Jobs once was by Apple. For the last several centuries kings have not been free to do whatever they want, because to fight wars they need the support of nobles for the soldiers and of parliament for the money. King John did not sign the Magna Carta willingly. Not wanting a king, the drafters of our Constitution explicitly state in Article 2, Section 3 that the president is to see that the laws passed by Congress are “faithfully executed.” That is why it is called the executive branch. The Office of the President doesn't legislate or make laws; it executes them, carrying them out just as Congress says.

Paul is saying that on a personal level we all start out as slaves of our bodies and our basic human nature. We act to fulfill our needs, of course, but also to satisfy our desires, not all of which are good for us. Businesses know this and cater to our desires to buy things that have no practical value but offer novelty, or to experience things that thrill us or give us various kinds of pleasure. Today's companies, using what we've learned about addiction, design products and services that trigger dopamine, the craving chemical, in our brains. They sell us foods not found in nature but which have been formulated to have the right balance of sugar, salt and fats so that we cannot stop munching on them. I dare you to eat just one Oreo or Dorito chip. They engineer video games that keep us playing level after level. They create videos that keep us watching one after another. They even present the news in a way to frighten or enrage us and thus keep us engaged.

In Paul's day, people who ran businesses, cults or nations may not have had the science or technology we do but they knew that if you really wanted to entice people, you played to their desires and stirred up their emotions. So going to the city of Corinth was like going to Vegas. Corinth even had a temple to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, with a daily procession of temple prostitutes whose sandals were embossed with Greek letters so their footprints said “Follow me.” Emperors knew that they could distract people from the problems the government wasn't solving by offering them bread and circuses. They sponsored gladiatorial games so you could watch men fight animals or other men to the death. They flooded the Colosseum with water and staged mock naval battles.

The houses of the wealthy had man caves called androns where the men drank with their friends and brought in entertainers to provide music, jokes and acrobatics. The women in the family were prohibited from entering the andron but prostitutes were invited. For that matter, the men of the household were free to have sex with any of their slaves, whether female or male.

Paul knew, therefore, that the idea of being a slave was repugnant, which is probably why he apologizes for “speaking in human terms.” (v. 19) But his point is that human beings are always ruled by something or someone. Rather than letting ourselves act at the whim of sinful desires, he says it is better to be ruled by the God revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. After all, we were created by God in his image to rule the earth as his vice-regents. (Genesis 1:27-28) But we decided that we knew how to do it better than God and disregarded his rules. We wanted to be like God, not in terms of his morality, love and fairness but in terms of his power. Figuring that knowledge is power, we learned prematurely how his good gifts could be turned to evil purposes (Genesis 3:1-7) and we ruined the world with evil schemes and violence. (Genesis 6:5, 11-12) In seeking to be masters of the world, we found ourselves instead to be trapped under the rule of thousands of petty tyrants and enslaved to our worst desires.

The word “redeem” means literally “to buy back or ransom.” In the Old Testament, when a person sold himself into slavery to repay a debt, a kinsman could redeem or buy him out of slavery. (Leviticus 25:47-49) Paul uses the imagery of Jesus redeeming us. (Galatians 3:13; Titus 2:14) So we are no longer enslaved to self-destructive sins that will lead to death but we belong to God in Christ which leads to eternal life.

Still we bristle at the idea of being anyone's slave, even God's. We want to be our own masters. And what do we do when left to our own devices? Today we literally turn to our devices and let our phones take over our free time, as they try to sell us other people's merchandise, other people's ideas and propaganda, or sell our personal information to those who will use it against us. Or we go to places where we pay to ingest addictive substances like alcohol or drugs, or indulge in addictive activities like gambling or thrill seeking. We pay others to cook for us, or show us multi-million dollar movies, or let us watch millionaire athletes play games. We even let AI think for us. And we wonder why we increasingly feel our lives are empty, meaningless and without purpose.

One thing we are no longer doing as much is helping others. According to the Gallup Poll, charitable giving has dropped from 87% of Americans in 2001 to 76% in 2025. Only 17% of Americans are giving blood today as opposed to 21% who did so in 2001. The percentage of Americans who are volunteering has risen from 56% during the pandemic to 63% today, but that's still 2 points lower than 10 years ago. (One word of caution: these are self-reported figures. People might be exaggerating to the pollsters to make themselves look more generous with their time and money.) Yet science tells us that giving to others makes us happier than getting things for ourselves. Which means it took us 2000 years to confirm what Paul tells the church in Ephesus: “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'” (Acts 20:35) How does it do that? When we serve Jesus through serving others, it blesses us by giving our lives meaning and purpose. (Matthew 25:40)

God gives each of us gifts in the form of talents and an ability to develop certain skills which we can use to serve him. And using those talents and honing those skills usually gives us satisfaction. Sharing them with others makes us feel needed and gives us a feeling of belonging. This is not like being a slave who is simply assigned a task and expected to do it whether they have an aptitude for it or not. Slavery to sin, just like any addiction, diminishes us as a person. You are reduced to that one thing. But serving Jesus lets you be more yourself, the unique and whole person God created you to be.

But what about the people who were actually enslaved to other human beings? Some people fault Paul for not calling for the abolition of slavery. That's possibly because, like the American South, Rome would rather fight wars than end slavery. Slave revolts were not uncommon and Rome put those rebellions down brutally. The most famous was when gladiator Spartacus led a revolt of 70,000 slaves in 73 BC. They were able to defeat Roman armies again and again in the Third Servile War. But when Rome finally defeated Spartacus in 71 BC, they crucified the 6000 surviving fighters along 100 miles of the Appian Way. The cross was primarily a punishment for slaves and rebels.

Paul did say, however, that if a slave could get his freedom, he should do so. (1 Corinthians 7:21) He told slave-owners to treat their slaves fairly and not to threaten them “because you know that both you and they have the same master in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.” (Ephesians 6:9) He wrote to a church leader named Philemon whose runaway slave had become a Christian and was helping Paul. Though legally Paul had to return the slave, Paul asked Philemon to treat the slave, Onesimus, as if he were Paul himself, and said he was receiving him back not as a slave but as a brother. Paul strongly hinted that Philemon should free Onesimus so he could continue to help in Paul's ministry. And he must have because he let the letter be circulated.

Famously Paul said, “For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26-28) We are all equal in God's eyes, regardless of external distinctions.

Then Paul goes on to say, “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:29) He goes on to explain that “the heir, as long as he is a minor, is no different than a slave, though he is the owner of everything.” (Galatians 4:1) When you are a child you are not free to do as you please. You have to wait until you reach maturity. Paul then says, “But when the appropriate time had come, God sent out his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might be adopted as sons with full rights. And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, who calls, 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if you are a son, then you are also an heir through God.” (Galatians 4:4-7) Being a slave of God is a temporary state, like being a minor. You are to grow spiritually so that you become a mature Christian.

And we see this with Jesus and his disciples. They called him Master and did what he told them to do. But on the night before he was crucified, he said to them, “I no longer call you slaves, because the slave does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I heard from my Father.” (John 15:15) They had learned all they needed to act as friends of Jesus, carrying out his wishes out of love and not merely because he was their master. In a sense, though, he was still their master, the way Queen Camilla is both King Charles' wife and also his subject. But if someone loves you greatly, you want to serve them.

As we said, we all gotta serve someone. And you want it to be someone worthy of being served. The best candidate is Jesus. Because he also knows what it is like to serve someone. In Philippians we are told that Jesus “though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be clung to, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and sharing in human nature. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8) Jesus said of himself, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

And Jesus gave his disciples an example of his humility and willingness to serve by washing their feet just before the last supper. He did the task of the lowest of slaves, washing the feet of those who had walked all day in the mud and muck of the roads and streets in sandals. He said, “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” (John 13:14-15) The truly great serve others. (Matthew 20:25-28)

When we say that someone is playing God we mean they're exercising power to decide the fate of others. But if Jesus is the God whom we are imitating, it means serving others by helping them and making them and their lives better. It means being humble and not afraid to get your hands dirty. It means not being a slave to the desires of an unredeemed human nature but growing in the Spirit of Christ, so that one day we will not need laws to tell us how to act because as mature Christians we will just know and do what is right. 

So Good It Hurts

The scriptures referred to are Jeremiah 20:7-13, Psalm 69: 7-18, Romans 6:1b-11 and Matthew 10:24-39.

The nation of Judah was fat and happy. The prophet Jeremiah was not. Called by God when he was quite young, Jeremiah was given the painful job of telling God's people that the judgment for their sins was inevitable. They were going to be conquered by the Babylonian empire and taken into exile, as the Assyrian empire had done to the northern kingdom of Israel nearly 150 years earlier. It was not only an unpopular message that Jeremiah was proclaiming; it was considered unpatriotic. More than that, it was seen as treason to say that God's favorite nation was going to be defeated by people who followed a different god and religion.

Jeremiah's ministry spanned the reigns of 5 kings, beginning in the middle of the reign of Josiah, Judah's last righteous king. But those who followed Josiah, including his sons, did evil. And the people imitated their leaders. They thought they were safe because they had the temple of the Lord in their midst. But they were just going through the motions in their worship. Their faith in God wasn't evident in how they acted towards their fellow human beings. Jeremiah says, “You must change the way you have been living and do what is right. You must treat one another fairly. Stop oppressing foreigners who live in your land, children who have lost their fathers, and women who have lost their husbands. Stop killing innocent people in this land. Stop paying allegiance to other gods. They will only bring you ruin. If you stop doing these things, I will allow you to continue to live in this land which I gave to your ancestors as a lasting possession. But just look at you! You are putting your confidence in a false belief that will not deliver you. You steal. You murder. You commit adultery. You lie when you swear on oath. You sacrifice to Baal. You pay allegiance to other gods whom you have not previously known. Then you come and stand in my presence in this temple I have claimed as my own and say, 'We are safe!' You think you are so safe that you go on doing all those hateful sins.” (Jeremiah 7:5-10, NET) If you disobey the commandment to love God, you will end up violating the commandment to love your neighbor, who was created in God's image. That's why Jesus connected the two. (Matthew 22:36-40; Luke 10:29-37)

The people of Judah, and especially the political and religious leaders, did not want to hear Jeremiah's criticism of them. Immediately preceding today's passage from Jeremiah, he has been beaten and put in the stocks by the priest Pashur. And when released, Jeremiah tells this false prophet of a priest that he and his wealthy friends will all be taken into exile in Babylon where they will die. Then we get to today's reading.

Jeremiah says that God has enticed him into his ministry. The Hebrew word could be translated “deceived.” He feels that way because he did not want to tell the people this message of doom and gloom. Nobody wants to hear that the way they choose to live will end up in violence and destruction. This message has cost him friends. It has made him a laughingstock. And yet he cannot be silent. He must tell the truth.

Jeremiah's only hope is in God. He will protect him. His enemies will not escape judgment and shame. Jeremiah knows who God really is. He may “test the righteous” to reveal what is in their hearts and minds but in the end he delivers “the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.”

Our psalm echoes our passage from Jeremiah. One difference is that while the writer, possibly a king of Judah, is also harassed by enemies, he realizes that he has had a hand in his predicament. Just before our selection begins he says, “O God, you know about my foolishness, and my guilt is not hidden from you.” (Psalm 69:5) He knows he has screwed up. Possibly that is what gave his enemies their opportunity to attack him. He is also conscious of the fact that his foolishness and guilt may impact others who do not deserve it. “Do not let those who hope in you be put to shame because of me, O Lord God of hosts; do not let those who seek you be dishonored because of me, O God of Israel.” (Psalm 69:6-7) Even if we follow God, we must be honest with ourselves and with him. Our misdeeds can cause those who hope in and seek God to doubt and stumble.

So the mire that the psalmist is sinking into might be of his own making, at least in part. It has given an opening to “those who hate me without reason...my enemies without cause...” (Psalm 69:4) But all is not lost. He prays, “In your great mercy, O God, answer me with your unfailing help...Answer me, O Lord, for your love is kind; in your great compassion, turn to me.” The self-righteous think they deserve God's help. The truly righteous know that they don't. They are not perfect and so they put their hope in God's mercy, love and compassion. And, sure enough, God doesn't wait until we have achieved perfection before he responds to us. He is more interested in the direction in which we are moving. Even if we have only just turned from our sin and turned to him, he will respond. We see this when the criminal crucified next to Jesus said that while he and his fellow bandit were guilty, Jesus was innocent. Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43) This man could not do anything to undo the wrongs he had committed. But he repented and recognized Jesus as the Messiah and king, and Jesus responded with grace and mercy.

Of course, most of us will have the opportunity to change our life to match our confession that Jesus is our king. Preceding our passage from Romans, Paul has just said, “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” (Romans 5:20) And Paul anticipates that some troll will say, “Then sin must be a good thing, since it means God will be even more gracious to us in response.” So Paul asks rhetorically, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase?” Now the next phrase in Greek is an interesting one, so much so that our professor in Greek exegesis class let us argue about how to translate it for an entire period. It uses a verb tense we don't have in English. It means something like, “May it turn out in the future to never have happened in the past!” In other words, it is a situation that should never ever have existed. So different translations render it “By no means!” “Of course not!” “Far from it!” “Certainly not!” and in the King James, “God forbid!” Some get closer to the Greek by translating it “May it never be!” I like the version that says, “That's unthinkable!” Today I would be tempted to quote the Princess Bride and say, “Inconceivable!” Back in the 1970's our class decided on the then-current phrase “No way!”

Why did Paul essentially state that it was conceptually impossible for a Christian to continue to sin in order to to experience an increase of God's grace? Because it would be like saying, “Well, now that my doctor is treating me for cancer, I can go back to smoking.” Or “Now that I have received a donor's heart as a transplant I can go back to all the bad habits that fatally damaged my old heart.” Why would you do that? Not only did Jesus die to save us, but when we are baptized, we undergo the death of our old life. And just as Jesus was resurrected, so we receive new life in him. It's like your old sinful identity was declared dead and you have been given a new life and a new identity. Having been pardoned, why would you do something so foolish and self-destructive as repeat the mistakes that got you into the mess in the first place? Why throw away your new life?

Of course, leaving those old habits is hard. And it will especially be hard when you get persecuted for changing your ways and telling others they can too. Following on from last week, our passage from Matthew continues the instructions Jesus is giving to the twelve before sending them out to teach, preach and heal. Like Jeremiah, he knows he has stirred up opposition; in his case, because he doesn't observe all the rituals his critics do and because he prioritizes people over what the Pharisees see as the proper procedures for doing things. They think people who need healing can suffer an extra 24 hours before being cured if it is the Sabbath. (Matthew 12:9-14) And that Jesus' disciples can go hungry rather than pick a few grains of wheat on the Sabbath. (Matthew 12:1-8) For them, it is not enough to wash one's hands before a meal; you must do it in the ritual manner they practice. (Mark 7:1-8) And don't even get started on the fact that Jesus eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners! (Matthew 9:9-13) Finally, his opponents conclude that the only way a person such as Jesus could possibly perform his healings is with the help of the devil. The fact that they can see what is so obviously God's Spirit at work and yet characterize it as demonic shows that they will never open themselves to that same Holy Spirit and seek forgiveness for not seeing God active in Jesus. The result is that they have effectively rendered themselves unforgivable. (Matthew 12:24-32)

So these rigidly legalistic religious leaders are going to be a problem, as they were for Jeremiah. Jesus says not to fear them. Their secrets will come out. Besides, the worst they can do is threaten you physically. They cannot kill you spiritually. Jesus will acknowledge those who follow him before God. He is the one who ultimately has the final word on what happens to our souls and our bodies. And, by the way, we will be resurrected, body and soul, on the last day. Like Jeremiah and the psalmist, when under assault, we must put our trust in God's mercy, love and compassion.

The things Jesus says next trouble us if we take them at face value. He says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.” But wait! Didn't he just tell his disciples to let their peace come to the households who welcomed them? (Matthew 10:13) Didn't he say to his disciples before his arrest, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” (John 14:27) Didn't he also say to Peter, when he was trying to save Jesus from arrest, “Put your sword back in its place! For all who take hold of the sword will die by the sword!”? (Matthew 26:52) How could he say he didn't come to bring peace?

Jesus is not talking about his intentions but about the effect he will have on a world that does not want peace. A lot of people, especially those with power, only want peace on their own terms, that is, the total submission of those who disagree with them. After all, Jesus was executed in order to keep the peace. Jesus' opponents said, “If we allow him to go on in this way, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away our sanctuary and our nation.” (John 11:48) To which the high priest Caiaphas replied, “Don't you realize that it is more to your advantage to have one man die for the people than for the whole nation to perish?” (John 11:50) That same impulse drove men to assassinate proponents of peaceful change like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. Jeremiah condemned those who cried, “'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14) Remember: the firearms maker of the Colt .45 army revolver gave it the nickname “the Peacemaker.” The only peace it offered was the peace of the grave.

Jesus then gives us a rough quote from Micah 7:6 about how his good news will even divide families and says “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Does Jesus want us to stop loving our families? No, he is not saying that we should love them less, only that we should love him more. We must not subordinate his justice, truth or mercy to anything or anyone else. After all, Ma Barker loved her boys more than she did the lives of those they killed. Some parents will send their children out of the country to keep them from facing justice for rape or murder. On the other hand, when men go to war, their wives and families wish they wouldn't. But they feel their love of their country comes first. Jesus is asking for us to give him the highest priority in our life.

Jesus then says, “...and whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” In the military they say, “Thinking you won't die is what gets you killed.” There are those who think they will save their lives by surrendering to the will of those who do evil. Many who devoted themselves to Hitler were slaughtered under his orders when he cleaned house in the “Night of the Long Knives.” Evil leaders willingly sacrifice their followers to save themselves. But only Jesus sacrificed himself to save his followers. And, carrying our cross, we may also find ourselves facing evil and possibly death. Paul says, “But if we died with Christ, we believe we will also live with him.” Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.” (John 11:25) In that loving promise, and in the one who made it and rose again, we put our hope.