True Kingship

The scriptures referred to are Romans 5:1-8 and Matthew 9:35-10:23.

You couldn't get a more succinct summary of Jesus' ministry than the first line of our reading from Matthew: “Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.” In other words, he was a teacher, a preacher and a healer.

You may ask “What is the difference between teaching and preaching?” Teaching is primarily about imparting information, showing someone how to find more information and helping them understand and use that information. Preaching is about advocating for specific beliefs, certain moral behaviors, and/or a way of living based on those beliefs and behaviors. Jesus preached on all three. What connected his preaching, teaching and healing was the kingdom of God.

The English word “kingdom” doesn't really encompass all the meanings of the Greek word basileia. It can mean the territory a sovereign governs. The United Kingdom includes England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. But basileia can also mean a king's reign or rule. Charles the Third of Great Britain began his reign on September 8, 2022. He also is Head of the Commonwealth which comprises 56 nations. Though today that is largely symbolic, at one time the English monarch did rule an empire that encircled the globe. During their reign, and wherever they reigned, and over whomever they reigned, the monarch's will was carried out.

The kingdom of God that Jesus preached was not a physical piece of territory, though many who heard him thought of it that way. They thought that, as a descendant of David, he would reconquer Judea, Samaria and Galilee, kick the Romans out and rule as David did, a holy warrior-king. But Jesus did not teach that. He said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) Or it could be better translated, “The kingdom of God is in the midst of you,” since the “you” in Greek is plural. The kingdom of God exists in the hearts, minds and lives of the community of those who trust and obey the God revealed in Jesus. It's what Paul called the body of Christ. That is where God reigns or rules and his will is done on earth as in heaven.

When Jesus teaches what the kingdom of God is like, he uses parables to illustrate how it affects people and how they respond to it. He says it is like the soil where a sower spreads his seeds. The kingdom can be snatched away or wither or get choked in the wrong soil. In the right soil it grows and multiplies. (Matthew 13:3-8, 18-23) As a community on earth, the fact is that the kingdom is like a field where weeds were sown by an enemy amid wheat, so both will grow together until the harvest when they will be separated. (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) Or a net which catches all kinds of fish, which are later sorted. (Matthew 13:47-50) The kingdom of God is like a small seed or a pinch of yeast, which then causes growth and abundance. (Matthew 13:31-33) It is a kingdom where God is gracious and generous to all who respond to him. (Matthew 20:1-16)

The kingdom of God is also evident in how those ruled by God act. It is a kingdom where mercy is shown to the merciful. (Matthew 18:23-34; cf. 5:7) It is a kingdom in which what you do is more important than what you say you'll do. (Matthew 21:28-32) It is a kingdom where everyone uses the gifts and talents God gave them, however large or small, to serve him. (Matthew 21:33-44) It is like a wedding banquet open to all who actually respond to God's invitation. (Matthew 22:2-14; cf. Luke 14:16-24) The kingdom is given to those who served Jesus by serving the hungry, the thirsty, the foreigner, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned. (Matthew 25:31-46)

So the kingdom of God is not located in a place but in a people. And it is not characterized by folks who lord their authority over others but by those who serve others, as Jesus came not to be served but to serve and even to give his life self-sacrificially. (Matthew 20:25-28) Because a king's reign reveals his character. Does he reign to benefit himself or his subjects?

And, sure enough, Jesus did not demonstrate his kingship by oppressing others but by freeing them from disease, death and the demons that bedeviled them. He didn't bring people into God's kingdom by threatening to harm them but by offering to heal them. He didn't persuade them by merely making them promises but by actually making them healthy and whole.

And he sent out his followers to do the same. They weren't to conquer people in his name but to cure people through the power of his name. He did not send them out as predators but as sheep into the midst of wolves. He wanted them to be thoughtful but not harmful. Because harm is what evil brings. Evil is deliberately destructive; good concentrates on being constructive. Evil intentionally makes things worse for some to benefit a few; good seeks to make things better for everyone. As his disciples, we are to be agents of healing and help. The world has quite enough people doing the opposite.

And his disciples were to do this relying only on God. They were supposed to travel light: no money, no luggage, no extra clothes or sandals, no staff that could be used as a weapon. They were to trust God for whatever they needed. They were to trust him to put trustworthy people in their path, who would put them up and feed them. If people rejected them, they were to simply move on and let God deal with them.

People who follow Jesus will meet opposition. Because proclaiming that God is the ultimate authority means the local or national rulers are not. Some of that opposition will even come from people who supposedly share the same religion as Jesus' followers because they do not actually recognize the God of love, justice and mercy revealed in Jesus. Even today we have people who identify as Christians who, upon hearing Christ's own words, consider them weak and woke. Others see him as too rigid and harsh about things that have become acceptable to modern society. All applaud him where he says something they like and ignore him where he says something they don't like. It's not called the good news because it's what we want to hear but because it's what we need to hear if we wish to become spiritually healthy.

Today we live in a world that is in many ways safer than it was in Jesus' day. Poverty rates around the world have gone down significantly over the last several decades. Death rates for major chronic and infectious diseases have plummeted, as well as deaths from disasters. Overdose deaths have also declined recently. And a lot of that progress is due to the fact that the values that Jesus preached have become accepted as the basic values of modern civilizations, as historian Tom Holland points out. We have charities and non-profits which, even if not Christian, help the hungry, the thirsty, the resident alien, the sick, the imprisoned and the oppressed. In many of the world's governments there are departments that help the poor and work to make society more just and fair.

And yet in every state of the U.S preventable deaths are rising, according to a study by the Brown University School of Public Health. We are talking about things like illnesses preventable by vaccines, treatable conditions like sepsis and appendicitis, and conditions that can be prevented by early detection and treatment like certain cancers, heart disease and tuberculosis. These are increasing and it's not because of lack of money spent. The U.S. spends more per capita on healthcare than any other high income nation. We are not getting the biggest bang for our buck because our healthcare system is largely for profit. What your doctor prescribes for you in terms of medication, surgery or treatments can be vetoed by your insurance company so that they can keep the money you pay them in premiums. That is, if you have insurance. Around 27 million Americans do not have health insurance. The vast majority of these are adults in working, low-income families.

All the other nations in the study use one of 5 different systems to cover their whole populations. Not all are provided by their governments, but in all of them, insurance companies are non-profit. And as we see in our gospel reading, when Jesus sent his disciples out to heal others, he did not want them to be in it for the money. (Matthew 10:8) Yet our healthcare system has gone as far as possible in the opposite direction. The majority of bankruptcies in this country—66.5%—are for medical debt. Does that make sense in a nation that considers itself Christian?

I think one of the problems is that people in this country have forgotten why these diseases and causes of death once went down: because once we shared the belief that we should help one another, including the poor, the sick and the stranger, something Jesus taught. Now we are much more concerned with trying to weed out everyone we feel does not deserve to be helped, in contradiction to what Jesus said. (Matthew 5:42) We have forgotten the fact that we are saved, not because we deserve it, but because of God's grace, his undeserved, unreserved goodness towards us. And we have forgotten that we are to extend that grace to others.

Jesus taught people the characteristics of God's kingdom, preached the good news that in him the kingdom had come near, and healed all who came to him as evidence of the reign of the God who is love. He commissioned his disciples, his students, to go and do the same. Are we spreading the reign of his kingdom in those ways or are we trying to seize the reins of power for ourselves? Are we motivated by selfish ambitions so that we do not care if others get harmed by what we do? Do we only care about ourselves and to hell with those we don't know or love? (Matthew 5:46-48) Or are we like Jesus, who, “when he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”?

Jesus saw people suffering from disease and he did not stop to argue about if they were to blame or not. (John 9:1-7) Instead he was moved to heal them. Jesus saw a world of people suffering from sin and he did not condemn us to suffer the consequences of our destructive and self-destructive thoughts, words and actions. (John 3:17) Instead he gave his life to save us from spiritual sickness and eternal death. Looking at the world today, what would Jesus do? And if we are Christ's body on earth, and if he reigns in our hearts, minds and lives, what should we do?

A Faith Observed

The scriptures referred to are Hosea 5:15-6:6, Psalm 50:7-15, Romans 4:13-25 and Matthew 9:9-13. 18-26.

“You see but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.” It's one of the most famous quotations of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes pays close attention to things like the state of a person's hat or shoes to deduce less obvious things about people, like the state of their marriage or the clumsiness of their servant. One time Holmes watches Watson for a few minutes and tells him accurately what his friend's train of thought was. But Holmes cannot really read minds. Like all of us, he looks at external things and tries to work out what is going on inside the heads of others. He may be better at interpreting those clues than even a doctor like Watson but not always. He even tells Watson that if he ever gets over confident in his powers, to keep him humble Watson should whisper the word “Norbury” in his ear to remind him of a case where Holmes was completely wrong.

One of the problems with social media is that it is largely visual and people can mislead you on the real state of their lives by posting pictures of them having fun when they are actually depressed, or looking affectionate with their spouse when their relationship is in trouble, or seemingly living in luxury when they really aren't. Instagram influencers have been known to rent a fancy house for a weekend so they can take lots of pictures of them lounging at a pool, cooking in a dream kitchen or showing off an enormous and beautifully decorated living room or bedroom, to appear as if they are wealthy or are at an expensive resort. As any magician knows, it is very easy to fool the eyes.

But God is not fooled. He does not judge by appearance but looks at the heart of the person. (1 Samuel 16:7) As we see in our Old Testament readings, God is not impressed by empty acts of piety. In Hosea he says, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” In Psalm 50, he says, “Do you think I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and make good your vows to the Most High.” And yet even today people think that all they have to do is speak certain words and do certain rituals, and they can get God on their side. This allows them to justify doing terrible things in God's name and feel that they are doing his will. Or that they can willfully sin one day and go through some act of penance or mumble some prayer the next day and God will forgive them...until the next time they deliberately do something they know they shouldn't.

In the book of Hosea the prophet uses the example of his own marriage to a prostitute to illustrate how the people of Israel have been unfaithful to God. They go through the motions but they are careless as to whether they are sacrificing to God or to Baal, the Canaanite god. (Hosea 2:13; 8:11) They ignore God's law. (Hosea 8:12) The prophet says, “Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites! For the Lord has a covenant lawsuit against the people of Israel. For there is neither faithfulness nor loyalty in the land, nor do they acknowledge God. There is only cursing, lying, murder, stealing and adultery. They resort to violence and bloodshed.” (Hosea 4:1-2) As usual, ignoring the greatest commandment, to love God, leads to ignoring the second greatest, to love one's neighbor, who, after all, was created in God's image. (Matthew 22:36-40)

Rather than trusting in God and relying on him, the people were trusting in and relying on their godless rulers who made golden idols (Hosea 8:5-6; cf. 1 Kings 12:28-30), the advisers to the rulers who became drunk with wine and with power (Hosea 7:3-5), their military (Hosea 1:4-5) and alliances made through trade (Hosea 7:11). Spiritually, they trusted in false prophets and priests to guide them. (Hosea 4:4-10)

But as Hosea takes back his adulterous wife, God will take back his people if they truly repent and turn back to him and his ways. Hosea's final chapter says, “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for your sin has been your downfall! Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him: 'Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips. Assyria cannot save us; we will not ride warhorses. We will never again say, “our gods” to what our own hands have made. For in you the fatherless find compassion.'” And God replies, 'I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them.'” (Hosea 14:1-4)

God is always willing to forgive us if we truly repent. Unlike what some think, God's desire is not for sinners to burn in hell but for sinners to turn to him. (Ezekiel 33:11) A doctor doesn't want the sick to die but to get better. But they can't do that if their patients don't change the unhealthy way they live and follow doctor's orders. And God can't save those who won't let him. God is love and love requires the consent of the beloved.

A word that pops up 6 times in Hosea and 248 times in the entire Old Testament is the Hebrew word khesed. It is variously translated as kindness, mercy, steadfast love, loyalty, faithfulness and goodness. It is what God pledges to show to his people and what he expects from them in return. (Hosea 2:19; 12:6) It is the word used in the last verse of our reading from Hosea: “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6) This steadfast love and knowledge of God are intimately connected. As it says in Jeremiah, “For my people are foolish. They do not know me. They are like children who have no sense. They have no understanding. They are skilled at doing evil. They do not know how to do good.” (Jeremiah 4:22) To know God is to know his goodness, his kindness, his mercy, his steadfast love and faithfulness and to reciprocate and mirror his nature, the way children imitate their parents.

Of course, children have to learn to trust their parents. Some human parents prove themselves to be untrustworthy and that can damage their kids' ability to trust others. If they have learned not to trust their parents or other authority figures, they will often have trouble trusting God. However, most people, if they have a bad experience with a doctor, will not give up on all doctors but seek out a good one. But all too often those who have a bad experience in a church or with church leaders will lose their faith in God. As Jesus said, “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a huge millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6) That's why those who teach the gospel, and are seen as representatives of God, are held to a higher standard. (James 3:1) When they stumble, they can destroy the faith of others.

The foundation of any healthy relationship is trust. And I think “trust” is a better rendering of the Greek word pistis, which is translated “faith” in our passages from Romans and Matthew. The same is true of the Hebrew word aman in Genesis 15:6. When you use the word “trust” the question naturally arises “Trust in what or in whom?” And it is trust in God that is the channel through which we receive salvation. That is why God took Abraham's trust in him as righteousness. Because pistis means not only “faith” but “faithfulness.” It means not only trusting God to do his part but him being able to trust you to do yours. If you truly trust God, you will do as he says, in the same way that you do if you trust your doctor. As a nurse I have seen patients who put themselves in their doctor's care and then did things that went against their doctor's orders, like smoke when they were being treated for emphysema or drink when their doctor was treating them for cirrhosis of the liver. It looks like they didn't really believe their doctor. And you can't save someone who is working against you. Neither can God.

A healthy relationship with God begins with trust. Abraham trusted God and believed his promises. He believed God's promise to give him a son and heir, even though he and his wife were so old it seemed impossible. He believed God's promise to give him a multitude of descendants, though that did not happen in his lifetime. Abraham believed God's promise that through him all the families of earth would be blessed, though he didn't live to see that happen through his descendant Jesus Christ. (Genesis 12:3; John 8:56) Because he trusted God, God was able to work through him.

And it doesn't take an extraordinary amount of faith for God to work in and through you. A man who brought his son to Jesus to be healed says, “If you are able to do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Then Jesus said to him, “If you are able? All things are possible for the one who trusts.” Immediately the father of the boy cried out, “I do trust; help my lack of trust.” But that small amount of trust in Christ was enough for Jesus to work with and heal his son. (Mark 9:14-27) And in today's gospel, we see that once again, Jesus was able to revive a dead girl because of her father's trust in Jesus' ability to do so. (Matthew 9:18) Similarly, while disappointed that Jesus didn't come sooner, Martha trusts him to raise her brother Lazarus from the dead. (John 11:21-27)

Paul tells us that 500 people saw Jesus after his resurrection. (1 Corinthians 15:3-6) I imagine that, in addition to his family, the disciples, and the seventy he sent out to announce the good news to the towns he was about to visit, the crowd was also made up of those who were healed by him and who responded by trusting and following him. And we are here today because the witness of their faith and their faithfulness convinced others to trust in Jesus and follow him.

Unlike God, we cannot see into the hearts of others and see what they are really like. However Sherlock Holmes, and Dr. Joseph Bell, the medical instructor upon whom Arthur Conan Doyle based his detective, could figure out what a person did for a living by observing their hands, coat sleeves, shirt cuffs, the knees of their pants and their shoes. And we can get clues to what people are like by how they live. Jesus said, “For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murders, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness.” (Mark 7:21-22) These actions are the symptoms of a spiritually sick human heart.

Fortunately, God wants to heal us, as it says in Hosea 6:1. As Jesus says in today's gospel, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Then he quotes Hosea “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Finally, he identifies himself as the Great Physician, stating, “For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” That includes all of us, a fact that, ironically, the Pharisees did not see in themselves. As Paul said, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:23-24)

There is hope for us because of what God has done for us through Jesus. Because of his great self-sacrificial love for us demonstrated by his death on the cross, we can trust him. And if we trust him, we will let him work on us and through us by his Spirit, who heals us. It can take time, like someone recovering from surgery and taking physical therapy in order to learn to walk again. Our goal is to learn to walk with God. It won't be easy. Jesus said, “If anyone wants to be my follower, they must deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) Remember, Jesus' cross wasn't the weight of his own everyday problems. He carried that cross for us. And our cross is the burden of helping others by doing good and spreading the good news. As Paul said, “Carry one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2)

Appearances can be deceiving but what a person is will eventually and inevitably come out in how they think, speak and act. If we trust in the God who is revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and give control of our life to his Holy Spirit, it will be reflected in our lives. But because we do not know the seriousness of the spiritual sickness each person is battling with, we cannot pass judgment on their salvation. (Matthew 7:1-5) But we can judge whether certain actions and words build up or tear down those who are trying to follow Jesus. (Romans 14:19; Ephesians 4:29; 1 Thessalonians 5:11) And we need to see that our words and actions are consistent with our professed trust in Jesus as our Savior and Lord. Because it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to spot hypocrisy. And you can be sure that the world will judge us on what they observe in our lives. And what they see can attract them to trust and follow Jesus or repel them from him. So when you look at your life, ask yourself this: if being a Christian was made illegal, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Necessarily Complicated

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 1:1-2:4a.

Every year we clergy are called on to preach on one of the hardest to explain doctrines in Christianity: the Trinity. Not only is it difficult to understand, a lot of people, including some Christians, don't see it as necessary. Worse, they see it as a needlessly complicated idea. God is one being but three persons. Why? What good is the Trinity?

Let's tackle the first question. Why do we have the doctrine of the Trinity? You don't find it in the Old Testament, do you? Well, in our reading from Genesis, it says that in addition to God, the Spirit of God is involved in creation. I must disagree with the NRSV's translation that says “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Yes, the Hebrew word for “spirit” can also mean “wind” or “breath,” depending on context. But I don't know where they got the verb “swept.” The Hebrew word usually means “hover” or “brood,” as in Deuteronomy 32:11 where it is used of an eagle hovering over its young in the nest. The most it means in terms of movement is “flutter” or “tremble,” as Jeremiah describes his bones doing under the weight of the Lord's words. (Jeremiah 23:9) We tend to associate brooding or fluttering with a bird. So the image we get is that of the Spirit of God hovering over creation like a mother bird brooding over her young who are about to hatch. And later at Jesus' baptism the Holy Spirit appears as a dove.

The phrases Spirit of God, Spirit of the Lord and Holy Spirit appear about 40 times in the Old Testament. These names usually designate the power or presence of God in folks' lives. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon prophets, enabling them to speak God's word. The Spirit of the Lord came upon the judges who led the Israelites before the time of the monarchy. The Spirit of God comes upon Saul, Israel's first king, and upon David, its second king. And as we saw last week, the apostles were empowered to preach the gospel to a diverse audience at Pentecost by the Spirit. We also saw that every Christian receives the Spirit, who gives us gifts to serve Christ and build up his body on earth.

But couldn't this just be two ways of simply referring to God? Well, if you apply it to a human being, you'll see there is a difference. George Lucas literally created Star Wars. He wrote and directed the first film. And you could say the spirit of George Lucas imbued the next two Star Wars films, even though others wrote the scripts, based on his overarching story, and still others directed the second and third films in the original trilogy. So in the second instance you aren't actually talking about Lucas. You are talking about some essence of his creative vision that was still active in what he started. You are talking about Lucas in two different senses. And the Bible speaks as if God and an aspect of God called his Spirit were somehow both distinct and yet intimately connected.

So people saw God in his creation and its order. And they experienced God's Spirit through the abilities and gifts he gave them. And there is another instance where an aspect of God can be seen as a person. In Proverbs 8, God's wisdom speaks as if it were a distinct person. “From eternity I was appointed, from the beginning, from before the world existed. When there were no deep oceans I was born, when there were no springs overflowing with water; before the mountains were set in place—before the hills—I was born, before he made the earth and its fields, or the beginning of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there; when he marked out the horizon over the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above, when the fountains of the deep grew strong, when he gave the sea his decree that the waters should not pass over his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him as a master craftsman, and I was his delight day by day...” (Proverbs 8:23-30) So the Wisdom of God is also treated as both an aspect of God and yet as a distinct divine person.

This helped the disciples when they encountered in Jesus someone who was more than a mere prophet. Elijah and Elisha performed 24 miracles between the two of them. The gospels tell us of 37 miracles that Jesus performed. Elijah and Elisha healed a handful of people. Jesus healed multitudes. Elijah resurrected one person, and Elisha two. Jesus resurrected three people that we know of. Plus he walked on water. And fed groups of 5000 and 4000. Still, as the Messiah, Jesus could be seen as a super-prophet. Until he rose to life again after being crucified and buried. So when Jesus said that he and God the Father were one and that anyone who had seen him had seen the Father, his resurrection validated that. Would God resurrect a liar who falsely claimed to be divine?

The idea of the Wisdom of God being spoken of as a person in scripture helped the disciples understand how Jesus could be God. And in fact Paul calls Jesus Christ “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:24) Jesus is the power and wisdom of God personified.

So the disciples experienced God as the creator of everything. They experienced God as an intelligent power within them who spoke through them and directed them and gave them power to minister to others. And in Jesus they experienced in human form the God who has mastery over nature, demons, diseases and death. So they knew that the Father was God. They knew that the Son was God. They knew that the Spirit was God. And yet they knew there was one God. The Trinity was not an effort to explain how this could be. It was a way of preserving the paradox of who God is.

But what good does it do us? It helps us think about the different ways that we relate to God. Most people see God as transcendent, as far above us in power and wisdom. A lot of people see God as immanent, working in the world and in humanity. But we can also see God in Jesus, who while divine, has lived and died as one of us but who has been raised to life again and who shares that life, his eternal life, with us. So we can think of the Father as God Above us, the Son as God Beside us, and the Spirit as God Within Us.

Or we can express it this way: the Father is our creator, the one who made us in his image. Jesus is our redeemer, the one who is the very image of God and who saves us from the damage we have done to ourselves, each other, and our relationship with God. The Spirit is our sanctifier, the one who restores the image of God in us.

Or we can use the metaphor Dorothy L. Sayers came up with in her book The Mind of the Maker. She compared the persons of the Trinity to the different aspects of the process of creation. All creative work starts with an idea. Then that idea has to be given a form, as, say, a poem, a book, a work of art or a movie. Finally that idea has to be properly communicated in a way that reaches others. Ideally, you have a good idea, that is perfectly realized in some tangible form and which communicates with people and resonates with them. We can think of the Father as the original idea of God as just and merciful, loving and forgiving, the Son as the incarnation of that idea into the medium of a human being, and the Spirit as the communication of that idea to others.

The Trinity helps us understand the fact that we see in God's creation both diversity and unity. All living things have DNA yet that code can manifest itself in different forms of life. We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, 94% of our DNA with dogs, 90% with cats, 80% with cows, 60% with fruit flies and, weirdly, 60% with bananas. We are made of a lot of the same stuff and yet are different. While human beings come in different shapes and shades, all can receive O negative blood, regardless of whether they are O positive, A positive or negative, B positive or negative, or AB positive or negative. We are not alien to each other. There is a shared humanity that underlies our surface differences. This reflects God, in whom there are both distinctions and a shared nature.

And to me, the Trinity makes sense of what we learn in 1 John 4:8, namely, that God is love. It doesn't merely say that God is loving; it says God is love. But true love is not a narcissistic love of oneself but love for another person. For God to be love, there must be more than one person in the Godhead. Therefore, God is the Father loving the Son, who is in turn loving the Father, in the unity of the Spirit of that love. It's a bit like how an intentional group of humans manifests a group personality. Unlike human love, however, the persons of the Triune God are so totally united in love that they act as one.

Which means the image of God in which we are made is love. And we see a hint of that in the 2^nd chapter of Genesis when God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18) In other words, we are social creatures. And later it says, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife and they become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24) We are most like God when we act together in love, as a couple, as a family, as a community, or in the coming new creation, as the whole of humanity.

Though the word Trinity is not found in the Bible, it is the church's word for the love relationship that lives at the heart of the universe, that gave birth to creation, that shapes who we are, that fulfills all our desires and that invites us into that eternal love. It makes no sense to reject it because we don't understand it. We don't understand how the 3 pounds of meat in our skull gives us consciousness. And yet we use that consciousness to create poems, stories, art and inventions and interact with other consciousnesses. And we can interact with God even if we do not understand how, on the divine level of existence, three persons can be one being. But rest assured that if we do respond to God, we have an eternity to dive deeper in the paradox of the love who made the stars, the worlds and us.

The Right Spirit

The scriptures referred to are Acts 2:1-21 and 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13.

I am old enough to remember Beatlemania. It wasn't just that people were saying, “Hey! These British guys write and sing well.” Nor was it simply that some young people got obsessed with their music. No, teenagers, especially girls, screamed and grabbed at them and sometimes fainted. The film A Hard Day's Night, which starred the Beatles, captures it perfectly. We see this today in how people regard Taylor Swift or other celebrities. Folks approach people with extraordinary talents with awe and a fervent devotion.

Author Jason Pargen says we treat celebrities as if they were magical or holy. He points to a study which showed that if people were told that a celebrity had worn a particular garment, they were willing to pay enormous amounts of money to own it. But if they were told that it had been laundered after the celebrity had worn it, people were not interested in the item. It was as if the magic had been washed away. This reminds me of how people wanted to touch Jesus or a part of his garment as he walked through a town. Later, during the Middle Ages, among churches and monasteries there arose a passion for collecting relics, things touched by a saint or even a piece of the saint's body. And in 1987, one celebrity tried to buy the remains of another earlier celebrity. Michael Jackson made formal bids to buy the skeleton of Joseph Merrick, the “Elephant Man.” Even celebrities treat celebrities as if they were magical or saints.

One problem is that saints don't get biographies so much as hagiographies, stories of their miracles and holy living. But that's impossible if you try to do that with a celebrity. The movie Michael does not touch on the later accusations made about the singer and children. Similarly the recent movie Elvis does not really touch on his penchant for underage girls (Priscilla was 14 when they started dating) or the depths of his drug addiction. The sole villain in that movie is his manager, Col. Tom Parker, who, to be fair, was a real huckster. But we all know deep down that celebrities are human beings who have flaws, often moral ones, which are exacerbated by their wealth and power. That explains the common arc of a celebrity's story, in which first fans and the media build them up and then, upon discovering they have feet of clay, tear them down.

The problem is that talent and moral integrity are two different things. As we see in the news almost daily, just because you are a good actor or singer or writer or politician, it does not follow that you are also a good person. And if you are not a good person, eventually that will damage your talent and your life and the lives of those around you.

What does this have to do with Pentecost? Pentecost is about the pouring out of the Spirit of God upon his people. And in the early church a lot of folks became more obsessed with the gifts of the Spirit than with his making them better people. That's the reason Paul was addressing the gifts of the Spirit in his first letter to the Corinthians. It seems that everyone in that church wanted the flashier, more impressive gifts. It's like they were chasing the admiration and celebrity of having these gifts, but missing the reason the Spirit gave them and the way they were intended to be used.

So first Paul points out that “No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Spirit.” This is essential because these gifts are not about exalting the person exercising them but about using them to serve Jesus our Lord. As Jesus said of the Spirit, “He will bring glory to me by taking what is mine and making it known to you.” (John 16:14) These gifts ultimately come from Jesus and we are to use them for his purposes. That is what the word “holy” means: something set apart for God's purposes. I don't drink my tea or Powerade from the communion chalice. It is set apart for God's purposes, not my own. The gifts of the Spirit are not for our personal uses or glory. Our attitude should not be, “Hey, look what I can do!” But “Hey! Look what God is doing!”

So Paul emphasizes that while there are varieties of gifts, services and activities, they all come from the same Spirit who is both Lord and God. And then he says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” In other words, the Spirit's gifts are for building up the body of Christ and for helping the individual members be a part of what God is doing in the world. It's like a team. Individual members have different skills but they are to bring them together to accomplish their common purpose.

Notice how many names there are in the credits of modern films? That's because you need more than just actors and a camera to make a good movie. You need writers and lighting people and makeup artists and people who make the costumes and people who make the props and people who find the locations and people who wrangle the animals and people who provide the food for everyone and people who record the sound and people who add the sound effects and the gazillion people who do all the visual effects and the people who edit it all together into a coherent movie and the people who raise the money to make the film and a director who oversees it all. They all bring their special talents to the project of making a good film.

But sometimes you will hear about backstage drama. The stars are late or drunk or high or just difficult to work with. Or the director is a tyrant. Or there are artistic or creative differences between the cinematographer and the director or the director and the studio. Some films never get made for these reasons. Some get made but they are not as good as they should be. We have 2 versions of the Justice League film, one by the original director and one by the guy brought in to fix it. If you ask me, neither version is great.

That happens when the people making the film don't have the same vision of what they are making or are not doing it in the proper spirit. The same is true of the church. If people have a different vision of what the church is or who the Spirit is that the church should manifest and reflect, you get a bad version of the church.

Paul uses the metaphor of a body. It is made up of different parts which look different and have different functions but they all belong to the same body and serve the health and vital activities of the body. We are all individual parts of the body of Christ, each with our own gifts. And just like in a human body, you don't want all the parts to be the same but you do want them to work together. Unity does not require uniformity.

There are disorders in which the parts of a human body do not act together. A gene that shouldn't be turned on or off can cause disease. A mutant cell can develop into cancer. An autoimmune disease can turn the immune system against parts of the body. But when the parts of the body work together for the good of the whole, the result is health.

How do we keep the body of Christ healthy? Paul's discussion of spiritual gifts in chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians leads right into his glorious peon to love in chapter 13. He prefaces it by saying that, while not everyone has the same gifts, “I will show you a still more excellent way.”

First he says that none of these spiritual gifts means anything if a person does not have love. This love is patient and kind. It is not envious, nor does it brag, nor is the person who has it full of himself. It is not rude or self-serving or easily angered or resentful. It is not happy with injustice but rejoices in the truth. According to the Phillips translation, “Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8)

Of course, Paul is not talking about ordinary human love. He is talking about divine love. But where can we find such love? As he says in Romans 5:5, “...the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” As Christians, baptized into the body of Christ, we have access to the Spirit who pours out God's love. But we must be careful not to quench the Spirit, refusing to let him work in us. (1 Thessalonians 5:19) One major problem that we see in the church is that people are quenching the Spirit and consequently the love that he pours into our hearts.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul contrasts the qualities that the Spirit produces with the things that unredeemed human nature, which he calls the flesh, produces. “Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, envying, murder, drunkenness, carousing, and similar things. I am warning you, as I had warned you before: Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:19-21) I'm sure you can think of a number of famous people who make a regular practice of such things but nevertheless call themselves Christians.

Paul continues, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) Because there is no punctuation in the Greek you could translate this as “...the fruit of the Spirit is love: joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” In other words, these are all qualities of the love the Spirit gives us. Certainly they are qualities a loving person should regularly exhibit. They are, as we say today, prosocial. If members of the body of Christ speak and act in these ways, it promotes the health of the church and shows the world what a spiritually healthy community is like.

In Acts 2 we observe the fruit of the Spirit in action. It says, “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” (Acts 2:44-45) Consequently, we are told later, “There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.” (Acts 4:34-35) This was the Spirit of God at work, activating those who had the gift of giving to do so generously, taking care of those in need. (Romans 12:8)

There's a lot of talk of the antichrist these days. The term is only used in 1 and 2 John, and it is not confined to one person. We read, “...you have heard that the antichrist is coming; even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us but they did not really belong to us.” (1 John 2:18-19) Notice not only are there many antichrists but they come out of the church. They are former church members displaying “the spirit of antichrist.” Belief-wise, they deny that Jesus is the incarnate Christ, sent from the Father. (1 John 2:22, 4:3; 2 John 7) Behavior-wise, they do not show the love that the Spirit pours into the hearts of Christians. 1 John says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:16-18) 

But how is this evidence that the person is not a Christian? We read, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8) If the Holy Spirit pours the love of God into the hearts of those who are in Christ, those lacking such love do not know the God who is love and who is revealed in Jesus. After all, what is radical about Christianity is Jesus' command to love everyone, even our enemies, and to demonstrate that love by what we do. Over and over, we are told to love one another, not only by Jesus but throughout the New Testament. (John 13:34-35. John 15:12, 17; Romans 13:8, 1 Thessalonians 3:12, 4:9; 1 John 3:11, 4:7,11; 2 John 1:5; 1 Peter 1:22) If someone is not at least growing in love for others, how can they say that they are a Christian? Or as it says in 1 John, “If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:19-20)

Paul and Peter called the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9; 1 Peter 1:11), because the Spirit filled Jesus (Luke 4:1, 14) and he enables us to follow Jesus. And the evidence of this is love of God and love of all those created in his image. As Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment—to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35) People are not stupid. They know that talk is cheap. We must love not only with our lips but with our lives, using our gifts, not to aggrandize ourselves, but for the good of all. That's how everyone will know that we really have the Spirit of Christ within us, and not the spirit of antichrist. 

Is This the End?

The scriptures referred to are Acts 1:6-14 and 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11.

One of the questions that has come up a lot recently is “Are we living in the last days?” In other words, is it the end of the world? Have we seen the rise of the Antichrist? Is Jesus about to return? And I get it. While I am not convinced of the relatively recent idea of the rapture, nor the stuff that Tim La Haye has put into the fictional Left Behind series of books, and while I am fascinated but not persuaded by those wonderfully detailed End Times charts where dispensationalists have cleverly slotted in the various prophecies from all over the Bible into one graphic timeline, I have to admit that there are times where things are so bad I think, “Maybe they are right about this.”

But then I reflect on what it must have felt like during other periods of history. Obviously when the book of Revelation was written it felt like the end of the world for Christians being persecuted. During each of the persecutions we listed in last Sunday's sermon, it would seem like “this is the end and surely Jesus is coming very soon.” And how about the period that started with 536 AD, considered by some historians the worst year ever to be alive because a massive volcanic eruption plunged Europe, the Middle East and even parts of Asia into darkness, causing a temperature drop, crop failures, starvation and paving the way for the plague of Justinian when 10,000 people were dying daily in Constantinople and 1/3 to ½ of the population of the Byzantine Empire were wiped out? Or the Black Death which killed an estimated 25 to 50 million people in just 7 years? More recently, what if you were living in Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War? I could see feeling that Hitler was the Antichrist and that this, the deadliest war ever, killing between 70 and 85 million people, was Armageddon.

And in a sense people experiencing those disasters were right. It was the end of the world—for them. And even for the survivors it was the end of the world as they knew it. But it strikes me that if what the Bible says about such catastrophes only applies to the actual end of the world, it would be of no use to anyone in history except the last generation of humans. Yet the advice that Jesus gives is relevant to any time when things seem to be going very wrong, even if it is not the final chapter of this earth's story. In Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21, Jesus gives us some very useful principles to keep in mind during times of disaster and despair.

First of all he says, “But as for that day or hour no one knows it—neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son—only the Father.” (Mark 13:32) So even Jesus, during his earthly life, did not know the date or time of the end. This makes me wonder about all those so-called prophets who keep predicting specific days for the end of the world. Do they seriously think they know more than Jesus? Yet Jesus said, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. Make sure that you are not alarmed, for this must happen, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise up in arms against nation and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All of these things are the beginning of birth pains.” (Matthew 24:6-8) Anyone who's had kids knows how long the whole process of birth can take. So we need not get anxious any time one of these preachers predicts the end of the world. Plus all of them have been wrong. Just think of all the ends of the world you have personally lived through.

So Jesus also warns us that “...false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” (Matthew 24:24) Wikipedia has an entire page listing people who claimed to be the messiah and another of people who said they were Jesus. I have met a few of the less well-known ones in my work as a psychiatric nurse and as a jail chaplain. Jesus says that when he returns it will be obvious to everyone. (Matthew 24:30) In the meantime, accept no substitute saviors.

So what should we do in what look like terminally bad times? Jesus said, “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household, to give the other servants their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom the master finds at work when he comes.” (Matthew 24:45-46) In other words, we must care of each other's needs, knowing that what we do even for those the world considers the least important, we do to Jesus. (Matthew 25:31-46) And what else did Jesus command us to do? Love God with all we are and all we have and love our neighbor as we do ourselves. (Mark 12:28-31) That includes loving even our enemies. (Matthew 5:44-45) He also told us to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20) In other words, we are to do the things that we should already be doing as Christians every day.

Our passage from 1 Peter has some other things we should do especially when facing a “fiery ordeal.” First he says, “Humble yourselves...” Humility is not, as popularly conceived, thinking less of yourself. It is having a realistic appraisal of your strengths and your weaknesses. What are the gifts and talents you have been given? What are the skills you have acquired and developed? It is not arrogant to know you are good at certain things. It is arrogant to think you are good at everything, or that you know more than the experts, or that you don't need anyone else's help or advice. It is arrogant to act as if you don't have flaws or weaknesses. So being humble is knowing what you are good at and what you suck at and asking others for help when you need it. When you are facing a hard time, you need to be realistic about your ability to deal with such things, or else that experience can break you. One of the functions that we have as members of the body of Christ is to help one another. (1 Corinthians 12:12-27)

Next we are told, “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” Anxiety is largely about dealing with uncertainty. Not knowing what will happen next is hard on us. It's what makes people follow someone who is arrogant and says he knows it all and is the only one who can fix everything. But we are not to do that. As the psalmist says, “Do not trust in princes, or in human beings, who cannot deliver! Their life's breath departs, they return to the ground; on that day their plans die.” (Psalm 146:3-4)

There are good human leaders and bad ones, but even the best are flawed. Which is why we put our trust in the God who is love revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus knows what it's like to be human. He dealt with a family who did not believe him, a friend who betrayed him, and others who abandoned him. When he faced a painful ordeal that he knew would end in death, we are told that he “became anguished and distressed. Then he said to them, 'My soul is deeply grieved, even to the point of death...'” (Matthew 26:37-38) We can go to Jesus because he understands what we are going through. As it says in Hebrews, “For we do not have a high priest incapable of sympathizing with our weaknesses, but one who has been tested in every way just as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)

So when things get so bad you can't think straight, go to Jesus and say, “Lord, I cannot function this way. Take these anxieties off of me, so I can do what I need to. Give me that peace which passes all understanding, which can only come from you. Give me what I need this day to deal with this problem. And give me a sense of your presence. I know you are with me and in me and will never leave or forsake me. I know this in my head; let me feel it in my heart.” Again, you can cast all your cares on him because he cares for you.

Next we are told, “Discipline yourself.” Actually the Greek word here literally means “be sober.” In this context it means to be sober-minded, to be sensible, free from illusions or intoxicating passions. It means keeping your wits about you, having self-control and making clear judgments. Don't be irrational or let yourself get carried away. Casting our anxieties on Jesus helps us clear our minds so we can be calm and alert.

Because when you are not thinking clearly, when your emotions overwhelm your ability to make good decisions, that's when your adversary can trick you and trip you up. That's when evil in the form of giving in to temptation can devour you or cause you to let yourself be eaten up by worries and despair.

So we are told to resist or withstand the evil one. We are to stand firm rooted in our faith in God. We are to remember that we are not alone. We have brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world who are also suffering. We need to support each other in prayer and in any actions we can take.

What I particularly love about today's passage is how it ends. “And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen and establish you.”

God will restore you. The Greek word means to perfectly mend, to prepare, to equip and to make complete. At present we feel that we are lacking, that we are not quite who we should be, that we are not complete. God will fix that. God will restore us to the people we were meant to be, the people he created us to be. He will support you. He will strengthen you. He will establish you. In other words, he will ground you. He will give you a firm foundation on which to stand.

I have on my desk at the jail a coaster that is patterned after the slogan “Keep calm and carry on,” which was developed in Britain during the time that Nazis were bombing their cities. My coaster says, “Keep calm and trust God.” And that's a good summary of how we should face the ordeals and uncertainties of this time or any time when everything seems to be falling apart. Don't panic. Don't fall for fake messiahs and false prophets. Don't put your trust in princes. Don't give in to temptation or to despair. Let Jesus take your anxieties so you can think clearly and do what Jesus told us to do: love others, not just with our words but with our actions. Proclaim the good news. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Stand in solidarity with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Remember this is very likely not the end of the world.

But even if it is the end of the world as you know it, it is not the end of your story. Know that, as our passage says, “the Spirit of God is resting on you.” He is with you and will never leave or forsake you. So whatever is awaiting you, he will accompany you. And when at last this chapter of your life in this world is over, it will just be the beginning of the real story of your life in Christ, in which all things will be made new, including you, and you will find completeness in his kingdom and in his everlasting arms.

Persecution Complex

The scriptures referred to are 1 Peter 3:13-22.

There is something certain Christians in America do that really bothers me. They act as if they are persecuted by society at large. And that's an insult to our fellow Christians who live in countries where they really are persecuted, like North Korea, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iran. In Eritrea, Christians have been arrested and detained for lengthy periods, sometimes in shipping containers. In Pakistan, strict blasphemy laws are used to imprison and execute Christians. In China, Christians can be arrested and detained for meeting in unauthorized gatherings or for not hewing to the state-sanctioned ideology. In Saudi Arabia, it is illegal to convert from Islam to another faith, resulting in detention and deportation. From 2014 to 2017, ISIS militants were literally crucifying Christians. While in this country we cry persecution if someone asks us to make a gay wedding cake or says, “Happy holidays.”

The first Christians really were persecuted. Last week we read about Stephen, the first Christian martyr. The book of Acts also reports the execution of James, the brother of John, as well as the many imprisonments of Peter and Paul. In his second letter to the Corinthian church, Paul gives us a brutal list of how he has suffered for the faith, which includes being given 39 lashes on 5 occasions, being beaten with a rod 3 times and being stoned once. (2 Corinthians 11:24-25) That stoning ended with him being left for dead. (Acts 14:19-20) Now none of these were empire-wide persecutions. There were local persecutions, sometimes by government officials and sometimes by mobs.

Though the emperor Claudius expelled all Christians and Jews from the city of Rome around 49 AD, the first official persecution of Christians alone took place under Nero. In 64 AD a great fire burned 10 of Rome's 14 districts, about 2/3s of the city. Citizens were suspicious because the fire spared Nero's property, as well as that of a friend. And while half the population of Rome were left homeless, the emperor went and built on the ruins a huge personal residence called the Domus Aurea or Golden House. Because of the rumors that Nero started the fire, he chose to make scapegoats of the Christians. Some were torn apart by dogs for the entertainment of spectators, some were crucified and some were set on fire to illuminate Nero's gardens. According to tradition, Paul, a Roman citizen, was beheaded. Peter was crucified upside down.

Our next documented persecution happened about 110 AD. Pliny the Younger, the governor of Bithynia and Pontus, wrote to the emperor Trajan for advice on what to do with Christians. He said he had been trying suspected Christians on the basis of anonymous accusations. He gave the accused 3 opportunities to renounce the Christian faith, pray to the Roman gods instead, offer wine and incense to the images of Trajan and the gods and finally curse Christ. If they didn't recant, they were executed. He also had 2 female slaves who were deacons tortured for information.

Pliny saw the Christians as just another fraternity or club which Trajan had banned as centers of discontent. Yet Pliny does give us some insight into Christian practice. He says they meet on a certain day before dawn and sing hymns to Christ as to a god. They bind themselves with an oath not to commit crimes like fraud, theft or adultery. Then they share a meal of “ordinary and innocent food.” Nevertheless, he sees Christianity as a “depraved, excessive superstition” which is spreading not only in the cities but in rural villages. Trajan basically approved of Pliny's measures but said that Pliny should not seek out Christians to try and that he should not consider anonymous accusations.

Still this was a local matter. It wasn't until around 250 AD that the emperor Decius began an empire-wide persecution of Christians. He issued an edict that all inhabitants of the empire were required to make sacrifices to the Roman gods and get a certificate saying that they complied. Anyone who refused to do so by a specified date risked being tortured and executed. Bishops and church members were targeted. The bishop of Rome at the time, Pope Fabian, was one of those who refused to comply and was killed. The persecution lasted 18 months, until Decius died in battle.

The last great persecution of Christians by a Roman emperor took place under Diocletian in 303 AD. Originally Diocetian simply wanted to forbid Christians from entering the government bureaucracy and the military. His co-emperor Galerius argued for extermination. Diocletian gave in and then ordered that all copies of Christian scriptures be burned, their places of worship be destroyed and their assemblies be forbidden. He had the tongue removed from a deacon in his court and another Christian in his palace was scourged, had salt and vinegar poured into his wounds and then was boiled alive. This persecution lasted 10 years until his successor Constantine became emperor and Christianity was declared legal.

So no matter how bad someone thinks Christians have it in this country, things are not that terrible. We still have the First Amendment, which prohibits Congress not only from establishing any religion as the official one but also forbids preventing people from practicing their own religions. In fact, what we really seem to be seeing is Christians getting ostracized by other so-called Christians, usually over their political views. David French, a constitutional lawyer, professor, columnist, and veteran, who is by no means a liberal, has nevertheless left his Presbyterian church due to intense personal attacks and hostility by his congregation for his stand against Christian Nationalism. He is not the only Evangelical Christian to find himself effectively excommunicated by other Evangelicals, not for theological heresy, but for insufficient loyalty to certain political policies and politicians. Fortunately, there are churches that do not act this way. Yet, even on the left, there are issues which must not be questioned. Both sides have sacred cows that cannot be sacrificed for any reason.

So how should we deal with this state of affairs, where being a Christian is not yet a capital offense but not being a specific type of Christian can cause you problems?

Today's passage from 1 Peter is very instructive. While addressed to the Christians in Bithynia and Pontus, this letter was written before they were governed by Pliny the Younger. Yet the social cost of being a Christian was high enough that the letter is addressed to “God's elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout” the region. (1 Peter 1:1) This letter may have been modeled on similar ones sent to the Diaspora of Jews in the empire. Like Paul's letter to the Romans, it calls for Christians to submit to the authorities. (1 Peter 2:13-14; cf. Romans 13:1-7) So obviously these letters were written before Peter and Paul were martyred by Nero. At this point in time Christians were considered just another branch of Judaism, much like the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. To see how things looked after Christianity was recognized as a separate religion and it became dangerous to be a Christian, read the book of Revelation.

So 1 Peter tells us that we need not be worried about being harmed if we do what is good. Yet it acknowledges that it is possible to suffer for doing what is right. After all, that is what happened to Jesus. And Jesus is our model for how to behave.

So first we are told “Do not fear what they fear.” What does that mean? What do people who harm others for doing what is right fear? They fear exposure of the wrongs they have done. They fear other people taking the side of those who do right. And they might fear being seen as bullies for picking on those who do no harm. The ancient historian Tacitus, who saw Christianity as a source of abominations, nevertheless thought that what Nero did to Christians engendered a feeling of compassion for them, because it was done, as he said, not for the public good, but to satisfy one man's cruelty.

Next we are told “do not be intimidated, but sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.” If we believe that Jesus is the Lord of all and trust in him, we need not back down in fear. As it says in 1 John, “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4) And as it says in Psalm 118, “The Lord is on my side, I am not afraid! What can people do to me?” (Psalm 118:6) Well, they can kill you. Yet the apostles, most of whom were martyred, did not let that risk stop them. They knew Jesus had conquered death. As Paul wrote from prison, “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.” (Philippians 1:21) In other words, living meant serving Jesus and dying meant Paul would be with him. If you do not fear death, you can do anything.

Then we read, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.” The Greek word for “defense” is apologia from which we get the term “apologetics.” This is the discipline of defending the faith. Unfortunately some Christians have taken it to mean things like trying to argue that Genesis 1 is a scientific account of the origin of the universe. But besides the fact that Genesis precedes anything resembling science by centuries, that isn't the purpose of the Bible. It isn't offering answers about how the universe works; it's about why we are here, why we have inherent worth and why we should trust God. The purpose of the scriptures is to help us get closer to God.

I prefer the kind of apologetics practiced by C.S. Lewis. During the Second World War, when Nazism showed what happens when folks completely disregard Jesus' teachings or twist them into a grotesque parody of Christian values, he wrote Mere Christianity. Sticking to the basics, he showed that Christianity makes sense. In fact it makes more sense than other ways of viewing the world.

I agree with Lewis that in defending the faith it behooves us to stick to the essentials, most of which are laid out in today's passage. The essentials are all about Jesus: who he is, what he has done for us, what he is doing in us and what our response should be.

Who is he? Our passage says clearly that Jesus Christ is the Lord, who is at God's right hand and that all angels, authorities and powers are subject to him.

What has he done for us? Though he is the Lord, he “suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.” He died to save us from the mess we have made of ourselves and the world. But he is not merely another martyr for a cause. He didn't stay dead. The “resurrection of Jesus Christ” shows his triumph over death and validates that what he taught is true.

What is he doing in us? 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 2 says that Christians “have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ...” In other words, the Spirit is making us holy and setting us apart for God's purposes. The Spirit is making us more Christlike, more like Jesus, who is the perfect image of God, the image into which we were created. We have marred that image to the extent that it can be hard to see God in us. The Spirit, who dwells in the believer, is in the process of remedying that. God is remaking us to who he created us to be, just as he will one day create a new heaven and a new earth for his new creations in Christ, where he will dwell with us and wipe away our tears. Right now we are in the midst of that process of becoming like Jesus. It's rather like rehab or the physical therapy I had to do to learn to walk again. We are learning to walk with Jesus.

How should we respond? As it says in our passage, “Maintain a good conscience so that, when you are maligned, those who oppose you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.” This reminds me of how people leading non-violent protests, like Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, showed how unreasonable and cruel their opponents were and how they essentially shamed the government into changing its policies. In the second chapter of this letter, it says, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:12, NIV) Doing the right thing and showing mercy will do a better job of bringing people to Jesus than being loud and obnoxious. Remember we are told to defend our hope “with gentleness and respect.” As this letter says just before our reading, “Finally, all of you, be harmonious, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate, and be humble. Do not return evil for evil or insult for insult but instead bless others because you were called to inherit a blessing.” (1 Peter 2:8-9) In other words, if you do face opposition or even persecution, be like Jesus. In fact in everything, be like Jesus. That's the whole point of being a Christian.

Who is God?

The scriptures referred to are Acts 7:55-60 and John 14:1-14.

There are more than 31,000 verses in the Bible. And in the liturgical churches we read from a lectionary, a selection of 4 passages to be read on each Sunday of the year. It takes 3 years to go through them all. And while the Sunday readings do not include every passage in the Bible, they do include all of the essential and important ones. And yet some weeks I look at the readings, and I find nothing in them that I haven't already preached on many times in the quarter of a century that I have been doing this.

Then there are Sundays like this one. I have several juicy passages I can preach on but there are too many themes in them to make into one coherent sermon. This is especially true of our passage from John's gospel. This is Jesus' last chance to talk to his disciples before he is arrested. If you include his final prayer, his speech covers 5 chapters! It's like he is trying to remind them of everything he can think of that they will need to get through the next few horrible days of his conviction, crucifixion, burial and an awful Sabbath in which they must think of what they did and didn't do to him, and their hopes will seem as dead as their leader.

But while there are several verses on which I could preach an entire sermon, there is a theme that runs through this section of what could be thought of as Jesus' farewell address. It is this: that, as Jesus says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Later, in chapter 17, Jesus, in praying for his followers, asks “that they may be one as we are one, I in them and you in me.” (John 17:22-23) That is why at the beginning of today's gospel reading Jesus says, “Believe in God; believe also in me.” Because, as he says later, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus is not merely a prophet. He is not merely a godly person. He is God in human form. He is God living a human life and dying a human death. You want to know what God is really like? Look at Jesus.

You may have, like I did as a child, thought of God as Someone who is remote from human life and who is usually unhappy with us. Especially in the Old Testament, God seems to be angry a lot. Human beings are always doing the wrong things and God is always upset over this state of affairs. Then there are things like the flood, the fire and brimstone that destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, the exiles of both Israel and Judah. Bad things happen to people as a consequence of their choices and actions. But sometimes good people like Job also suffer. The Bible does not shy away from the fact that life is not always pleasant. And a lot of people come away from these disturbing stories with the idea that God is not a pleasant person. In fact, surveys find that how people feel about God is a more important factor in whether they believe in God or not than any rational or scientific arguments for or against God's existence. As C.S. Lewis said of his time as an atheist, he did not believe that God existed and he was very angry with God about that. It is rare to find an atheist who has anything good to say about God.

Part of that is because so many Christians have emphasized passages about judgment more than other aspects of what God does. Yet by my personal count, the word “good” appears 720 times in the Bible while “evil” appears 613 times. The word “love” in all its forms appears 518 times, whereas “hate” only appears 184 times. “Mercy” appears 360 times, “forgive” 223 times and “healing” 139 times. The Bible is more about goodness than evil, but just like rubberneckers at a traffic accident, we are more interested in the bad stuff. For instance, if you watch the news or listen to politicians you would think that crime is on the rise. In fact it has been dropping steadily for decades. But stories of people doing horrible things are the subject of more movies, TV shows, books and podcasts than stories of people helping others. And that same morbid fascination with what frightens and angers us applies to how a lot of people look at God and the Bible.

Yes, God does not like it when we do bad things. No loving parent does. If your son hits your daughter, you do not remain neutral. If he does not show remorse, he gets punished. In fact, I found myself more sympathetic to God in parts of the Old Testament after I had kids. You love your kids but there are times when you do not like what they are doing. God is trying to raise a people who will reflect his goodness to the world but, as it says in Isaiah, “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourself clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah 1:15-17) Later in Isaiah God explains why he does not respond to their religious fasts: “On the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You can not fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.” (Isaiah 58:3-4) God is not being unreasonable. You can't do bad things to others and expect the God who made them to ignore that and do good things for you.

Still a lot of people think God is more interested in folks attending church, saying prayers, doing religious rituals and wearing or displaying symbols of their faith than in what they do in everyday life. But that's not true. There's a reason why Jesus, when asked for the greatest commandment, which is loving God, threw in a second, which is loving others. If you truly love God, you will love those he created in his image.

The Old Testament is about God trying to get his people to understand that they need to clearly reflect what kind of God he is to the other nations. They keep failing. But he doesn't give up. He will still bless the whole world through his people. In the New Testament we see God enter the world through his Anointed, which is the meaning of Christ or Messiah. Jesus shows God's people how to live according to the laws of love. He prioritizes people's needs over pious scruples. So he heals the sick on the Sabbath. He touches lepers and bleeding women and dead bodies without worrying about the fact that it renders him ritually unclean. He lets his hungry disciples pick and eat grain on the Sabbath, though that is a technical violation of the prohibition against work. He teaches women, though that was a scandalous thing to do in his day. In the Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus wrote, “The words of the Torah should be burned rather than entrusted to women.” And a lot of rabbis agreed with him that a woman's wisdom was confined to her domestic chores. But not Jesus. As Paul says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave or free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) In Jesus we are all equal.

And if Jesus is God the Son, the perfect image of who God is, then, as he tells Philip, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Again if you want to know what God is really like, then look at Jesus. Furthermore he says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” What does he mean by that?

First of all, Jesus is not only God, he is the way to God. You don't need a magical object or rituals or words to reach God. You don't need to pray to a particular saint or go on a pilgrimage to a specific shrine or holy place. You can go directly to Jesus. As Paul writes, “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and humans, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, revealing God's purpose at his appointed time.” (1 Timothy 2:5-6) When you go to Jesus, you are not dealing with God's representative or a lesser being; you are dealing with God himself.

Secondly, Jesus is the truth about God. People have a lot of ideas about God. He's a cosmic killjoy, or a hanging judge, or a sadist who enjoys throwing people into hell, or a passive watcher of our antics, or the indifferent creator who made the world rather like a watchmaker might make a watch, wind it up and leave to let it run by itself until it runs down. But in Jesus we see the truth about God. Yes, he is just and does not condone sin. But he is also loving, merciful and forgiving. As he says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17) Jesus is on a rescue mission. He did not come to wipe out the bad guys like the good guys do in our pop culture. He is here to turn the bad guys into good guys.

And that includes all of us. As Paul wrote, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—and I am the worst of them.” (1 Timothy 1:15) Why did he say that? Because he is that same Saul at whose feet people laid their cloaks before stoning the deacon Stephen. And in the sentence that follows our reading in Acts, we are told, “And Saul agreed completely with killing him.” (Acts 8:1) Two verses after that it says, “But Saul was trying to destroy the church. Entering one house after another, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.” (Acts 8:3) In the next chapter, we read, “Meanwhile, Saul, still breathing out threats to murder the Lord's disciples, went to the high priest and requested letters from him to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, he could bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.” (Acts 9:1-2) It was on that trip to kill more Christians that the risen Jesus appears to Saul and commissions him to spread the gospel and not stamp it out. Saul changes his name to Paul, which means “small,” and he does what Jesus says, often ending up in prison himself and finally dying for his faith. It is because of his murderous rampage before his conversion that Paul says that he is the worst of sinners. And because Jesus transformed him from a warrior to a witness of the good news, Paul realizes that it is God's grace, his undeserved and unreserved goodness to us, that saves us. Paul saw that the truth about God is found in Jesus, namely, that “He is the image of the invisible God...” and that “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son.” (Colossians 1:15, 19)

Thirdly, Jesus is the life God gives. As the living Word of God, he was in the beginning when God created life. (John 1:1-2) In the 1^st chapter of John's gospel we are told, “All things were created by him and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind.” (John 1:3-4) Yet when he came to earth as one of us, what did we do? As Peter says, “You killed the Originator of life...” (Acts 3:15) We are the ones who are bloodthirsty, who want to eliminate those who upset the status quo, not God. But Peter reminds us that God raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus is still the source of life. But now it is his life, eternal life, that he gives to all who come to him, trusting in his goodness and in his word. And when we come to God through Jesus, it is forever. He will never leave or forsake us. (Hebrews 13:5) Even death cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:38-39)

Jesus is the way to God, the truth about God and the life of God. Which means that when we are in him and he is in us, we are the body of Christ on earth. And so Jesus says, “the one who trusts in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these...” How is that possible? Because there are many of us. Christians live all over the earth, in every nation, even those where it is dangerous to be a follower of Jesus. Christians have built schools and hospitals. They have brought knowledge and healing to every corner of the world. They have made peace between peoples. They run food pantries and homeless shelters. They have stood up for the oppressed. They hid Jews during the Holocaust. They helped people escape slavery through the Underground Railroad. They advocated for the end of slavery. As the body of Christ on earth, they have taken up Jesus' mission which he stated in the words of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim 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)

And to help us do that Jesus says, “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father will be glorified in the Son.” He will give us whatever we need to fulfill his mission to spread the good news of the God who is love, not only with our lips but with our lives. Notice that Jesus does not say he will give us whatever we desire but what we ask in his name so that God will be glorified. The chief thing that Jesus did to glorify God was to lay down his life for us. (John 17:1) We glorify him by bearing much fruit. (John 15:8) And that fruit is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) We glorify God by being like Jesus. And we can only be like him by having his Spirit in us and doing the things Jesus would do: help, not harm; teach truth, not lies; feed the hungry, not cut them off; visit the prisoners, not write them off; heal the sick, not neglect them; welcome the stranger, not imprison him; save lives, not take them; make peace, not war.

If people have gotten the wrong ideas about God, it's because we have been displaying a distorted image of him. We need to look at Jesus and adjust the image of God in our minds so that it reflects him. And then we need to use our lives to reflect that image to others, so that they will turn to Jesus and find him to be the way, the truth and the life.