Defining Your Neighbor

The scriptures referred to are Luke 10:25-37.

The 12 tribes of Israel voluntarily united into one kingdom under David. (2 Samuel 5:1-3) It remained a single kingdom under his son Solomon. But Solomon's splendor came at a heavy price. When the northern tribes went to his son Rehoboam and asked that he lighten their burden, he ignored his advisers and said he would make things harder for them. In response to his harsh answer, the 10 northern tribes broke away and formed their own kingdom, which they called Israel. (1 Kings 12:1-16) Samaria was chosen as the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. The southern kingdom, which was ruled by the kings of David's line, was called Judah. This split took place around 930 BC. In 722 BC, the kingdom of Israel fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This was seen as a punishment from God for the idolatry they practiced. The elite of Israel and the people the Assyrians saw as useful were taken into exile and then exiles from other conquered lands were settled in what used to be Israel. (2 Kings 17:21-24) These foreign people intermarried with the poor Israelites who were not taken into exile and left behind.

Eventually their descendants, the Samaritans, developed their own worship of the God of Israel. Alexander the Great allowed them to build their temple on Mount Gerizim. They adopted as their sacred scriptures their version of the Torah, the 5 books of Moses, and excluded the other books of the Hebrew Bible. During the Maccabbean revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the successors of Alexander, the Jews destroyed the Samaritan temple in 128 BC. In Jesus' day there was still animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans, which the Jews considered half-breed heretics.

The reason I am telling you this is because today's readings include the parable of the good Samaritan. Jesus' audience were Jews. The person asking Jesus about eternal life is a scribe, an expert in the Jewish law. His question is how does one inherit eternal life?

Jesus, as he frequently does, answers a question with a question. “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” And the law expert goes to a fairly obvious verse: Deuteronomy 6:5. It is part of the Shema, the central prayer of Judaism. It starts with the verse before the one the scribe quotes: “Listen, Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4) It goes on to say we are to love God with everything we are and have. Most rabbis of Jesus' time would agree that this is the greatest of the commandments.

The scribe then offers a second commandment, this one coming from Leviticus 19:18, where God says “You must not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the children of your people, but you must love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” In other words, God is saying, I am serious about this; remember who commanded you to do it.

When Jesus was asked which commandment is the greatest, he answered with the same two passages. (Mark 12:29-31; Matthew 22:37-40) We don't know if the scribe had come to the same conclusion or whether he had heard Jesus say this and was trying to sound like he agreed. Because after Jesus commends his answer, the man asks a further question: “And who is my neighbor?”

Now why would he ask this? Luke says that he is trying to justify himself. But about what? He probably had a rather narrow definition of who his neighbor was. At the time the Jewish people were divided into several factions.

The Pharisees believed that the written law, the Torah, and the Oral law, the traditions that came from various rabbis' interpretations of the law and how they applied to everyday life, were of equal authority. That's why they were nitpicky about the way Jesus' disciples washed their hands and why they thought his healing people on the Sabbath violated the commandment against working on that day. But they did believe in eternal life and that people faced either punishment or reward after death.

The Sadducees were the priestly party. They held that only the written law, the Torah, was authoritative. They did not believe in an afterlife.

The Essenes were an almost monastic group who held all their property in common and usually did not marry. They spent their time worshipping and studying the Torah. They were so obsessed with purity that they took frequent ritual baths. If the Dead Sea scrolls are any indication, they thought all other Jews were corrupt and they were waiting for Jerusalem's fall and a final battle between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. Most scholars think they lived in Qumran in the desert, away from other Jews.

Then there were the Zealots. They opposed Herod and the Roman occupation of Judea. They believed only God was their king. They were militant and during the Jewish war against the Romans, they took over the temple in Jerusalem and turned it into a fortress.

The scribe, probably a Pharisee, is trying to justify being neighborly to those who are like him and agree with him and looking for an excuse to not do the same to Jews who differ from him. Human beings have always divided the world into “Us” and “Them.” That was a common attitude then and it is common now. We have politicians who say they hate other Americans who do not support them. They accuse them of wanting to destroy the country. There is a move to take away citizenship from those born in this country because their parents were not.

Perhaps in telling the parable that defines who God considers to be our neighbor, Jesus was thinking of a verse in the same chapter of the book of Leviticus that the scribe cites. Only 15 verses after telling us to love our neighbor God says, “When a foreigner resides with you in your land, you must not oppress him. The foreigner who resides with you must be to you like a native citizen among you; so you must love him as yourself, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)

So Jesus tells his Jewish audience a story. He starts with a common occurrence. A man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked by robbers. Jerusalem is almost 2500 feet above sea level and Jericho is about 800 feet below sea level. So in a distance of about 17 miles you do go down over 3000 feet. It's a very twisty road through narrow rocky passages and gorges, the perfect place for robbers to hide. William Barclay adds that the man must have been very foolish to go alone rather than as part of a caravan. Five centuries later, it was still called the “Red or Bloody Way.” So the idea that a man would be attacked on the way was something Jesus' audience would accept.

They would also accept that a priest and a Levite would head along that road. Jericho was, among other things, a residential community for priests and for the Levites who served them. And they would have believed that the priest and the Levite would walk around the man they saw rather than help him. Jesus said the man was half dead. Touching a corpse would leave a man ritually unclean for 7 days, so that he could not serve at the temple. (Number 19:11) The Levite may have been thinking the same thing. But Jesus says that they were going down the road, in other words, going home and away from Jerusalem and the temple. Their service was over. Being unclean would be an inconvenience but their rotation at the temple was over. To paraphrase Barclay, their rituals meant more to them than the suffering of another person.

Barclay does point out that they may have been worried about their own safety. Sometimes robbers would stage a scene in which one of them would pretend to have been a victim of attack. If someone stopped to help, his confederates would jump that person and rob him.

Now Jesus' audience, knowing the rule of three in storytelling, may have expected the next person to be a common Jewish man. But Jesus pulls a plot twist. The next person is a Samaritan. Now Jesus' audience would be thinking, “Oh, no! Things have gotten worse! This villain is going to finish off the victim!” But, no. When the Samaritan sees the man he is “moved with pity.” The Greek word means to have a gut feeling of compassion. And surprise! This heretic half-breed is the hero of the tale!

Jesus says that first the Samaritan approaches the man. Neither the priest or the Levite checked to see if the victim was dead or not and thus would not necessarily have rendered them unclean. The Samaritan doesn't just feel bad for the guy and offer thoughts and prayers. He jumps into action. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, the priest and the Levite asked themselves what would happen to them if they went to the man. The Samaritan asked himself what would happen to the man if he didn't go to him.

Next he gives the victim first aid. Our ancestors weren't stupid. They didn't know about germs or the antiseptic qualities of alcohol and oil but they did know from practical experience that putting oil and wine on wounds and bandaging them helped a person heal. The Samaritan used the knowledge he had to help.

Next he gets the man to safety. They are in the wilderness. They can't call 911. There are no ambulances. So the Samaritan puts the man on his donkey and takes him to an inn.

And he doesn't just dump him and let him become Someone Else's Problem. He continues to care for the man. This victim probably costs his rescuer a night's sleep.

But he costs him money, too. The Samaritan can't stay but he gives the innkeeper the equivalent of 2 days' wages and instructions to take care of the man until he returns. If it costs the innkeeper more, the Samaritan will reimburse him.

Finally Jesus asks the expert in the law which of the 3 men seemed to be a neighbor to the victim. The scribe can't even bring himself to say the word, “Samaritan.” Instead he says, “The one who showed him compassion.”

What do we learn from this?

First, your neighbor is not necessarily someone like you. He doesn't have to be of the same race or the same religion or the same country as you. He doesn't have to be anyone you know. He is anyone you encounter who is in need. And today, you may encounter him or her in the news or on the internet because distance is not the factor it was in Jesus' day. You can help people across the world through charities and aid organizations. That they aren't nearby is not an excuse.

Second, the reason your neighbor is suffering is irrelevant. The man was foolish to travel that road alone. The Samaritan didn't determine why the man was in that situation; he took care of him nonetheless. When Jesus' disciples asked him if the reason that a man was born blind was his sin or his parents', Jesus didn't assign blame. He saw it as an opportunity to serve God by healing him. (John 9:1-3) Neither does Jesus bring up the reason why the people in the parable of the sheep and goats ended up hungry or naked or sick or in jail or a foreigner. We are to take care of them regardless and serve Jesus. (Matthew 25:31-46)

Third, we are to offer practical help to our neighbor. As James says, “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacks food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, keep warm and eat well,' but you do not give them what the body needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15-16) As it says in 1 John, “Little children, we should not love in word or with our tongue but in action and in truth.” (1 John 3:18) In the parable the Samaritan does not say “I want you to know that I love you, my neighbor, as I do myself.” He simply demonstrates it by loving actions. To paraphrase James, creeds without deeds are dead.

Today when so-called Christians are talking about “the sin of empathy” or “toxic empathy,” I wonder how they square this with Jesus' command, “In everything, treat others as you would want them to treat you, for this fulfills the law and the prophets”? (Matthew 7:12) That requires empathy: understanding and sharing the feelings of others.

Lack of empathy is the real problem that Jesus is addressing in this parable. It is typical not to have empathy for those different from us. Right now I imagine most of us are more concerned with the more than 120 people who died in Texas last week than the 56,000 people who have died in Gaza over the last two years. But to Jesus they are all our neighbors. We are to love all of them. We are to serve all of them, not just with our lips but with our lives.

What would we do if they were people we already love and care for? We would go to their rescue. We would take care of their needs.We would help them in any way we could, even if it costs us in time, effort and money. So, as Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.”

A Fuller Image

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 66:10-14.

“Is God a man or a woman?” the Sunday School teacher asked. The kids in her class, sensing that this was a trick question, said nothing.

Except for one little boy. He said, “God's not a woman; he's three guys.”

The teacher hadn't been thinking of the Trinity but, seeing a teaching moment, replied, “I wouldn't call them guys, but do you know the names of the 3 persons in the Godhead?”

“Yeah,” said the boy. “Harold, Howard and Dad.”

“Uh, where did you get those names?” asked the teacher.

“In the prayer we say,” the boy replied. The teacher looked confused because this didn't sound like any prayer she'd heard or taught them. The kid goes, “You know—the one that starts, 'Our Father, Howard in heaven, Harold be thy name.'”

The question I put in the joke was actually the one I drew from our sermon suggestion box one Sunday. It looked like it was written by a child. And it's a natural question because most living beings they know—people, animals, birds—are either male or female. Children perceive this to be a major category and so it would seem to apply to God as well. And throughout history, most pagan gods were conceived of as having genders. Zeus is male; Venus is female. But just as the God of the Bible transcends the idea that one being is always one person, so too he doesn't fit into our neat (or once neat) categories on gender. So why does the Bible always use the masculine pronoun when talking about God?

The assumption of a lot of people is that this is because Christianity and Judaism are inherently and thoroughly sexist. But to say that you have to ignore a lot of the Biblical data. Like the fact that women figure prominently in both the Old and New Testaments: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Zipporah, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Bathsheba, Esther, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, Pricilla, Dorcas, Lydia, Junia and more. In fact, one scholar, noticing all of the significant women in the Torah, and all the emphasis on marrying for love, proposed that it was written by a woman. Another scholar has suggested that Paul's colleague Priscilla, who worked with her husband Aquilla as a ministry team, was the author of the book of Hebrews.

Oddly enough, some people hold up fertility religions as an egalitarian contrast to the Judeo-Christian tradition. But to do that you have to ignore the facts about them as well. Fertility cults were the original “Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant” religions. Yes, women were allowed to be priestesses in those religions—so long as they functioned as temple prostitutes. Yes, the female form was venerated—in much the same way that Playboy magazine did. In such societies women were sacred, all right—sacred sex objects. They didn't value women as anything other than baby machines. Contrast that with the Bible's description in Proverbs 31:10-31 of a wife whose “value is far more than rubies.” She sells what she makes and buys land. Unlike an ancient Greek wife, she doesn't have to stay in the women's part of the house. Ironically if you want to see more egalitarian cultures, you should look at the warrior societies. The Mongols, the Celts, and the Vikings let their women do more than just care for the hearth and home. Some even became leaders, like the Celtic queen Boudica who led the Celts against the Romans, and Freydis Eiriksdottir, a fierce warrior who successfully fought Native Americans.

The prophets denounced the fertility goddess Asherah, which some Israelites worshipped. (Deuteronomy 7:5; Jeremiah 17:1-2; 2 Kings 23:4) And it was probably to avoid all connection with such fertility cults that the Jews, who unlike the Greeks lacked a neutral pronoun, referred to God in the masculine. This does not mean that our God is like Mars, the Roman god of war, who is the personification of all that is male. God does have characteristics traditionally seen as feminine. The Hebrew word for God's compassion (racham) is the root of their word for “womb.” (Psalm 86:15) In Proverbs chapter 8, God's wisdom is personified in a poem and referred to as “her.” In today's reading from Isaiah, God says to Jerusalem, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, stoning the prophets and killing the ones sent to you! How often I wanted to gather together your children the way a hen gathers her young under her wings but you were not willing” (Luke 13:34)

There is another way in which we know that God has both masculine and feminine characteristics. In the very first chapter in the Bible, it says, “And God made humanity in his image; in the image of God, he made him; male and female, he made them.” (Genesis 1:27) Notice the fact that both male and female are created in God's image. This is important because in the ancient Near East, the monarch was said to be the image of God and so to have his authority. In Genesis 1, both man and woman were created to act as co-regents of the earth under God. In fact, the subordination of the woman to the man is depicted as a consequence of the fall of humanity and was not part of God's original design. (Genesis 3:16) As we will see, all inequality comes from sin.

Since our sins have been dealt with by Christ, we can echo Paul, who says in his letter to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) It is odd, therefore, that Christians are as susceptible to the twin mistakes about gender as non-Christians are. Those two mistakes are either exaggerating the differences between the sexes or else ignoring them.

The most common mistake is to approach the genders in a dualistic fashion. By this I mean seeing the 2 sexes as if they were almost 2 different species. It is true that there are other differences besides our reproductive organs. The 2 hemispheres in women's brains are more strongly connected, enhancing intuitive thinking and multitasking; men's brains are more strongly connected from front to back, enhancing focus and motor skills. Women tend to do better in verbal abilities and languages whereas men tend to do better in math and spatial relations. Women's relationships tend to be about the people in the relationships; men's relationships tend to be about things they like to do or enjoy together. Men tend to like sports; women tend to like hobbies. But these are generalizations, true only when looking at large groups of people. Any individual woman may be more logical or more of a sports fan than any particular man. Any specific man may be more sensitive in his relationships than any specific woman. There is an amount of variation in the sexes. Mr. Rogers displayed the gentler and more nurturing side of being a man. By all accounts, Florence Nightingale was more intelligent, better organized and much more formidable than most men.

Unfortunately, there are those who act as if gender differences are a vast “No-Man's Land” running through all societies and all activities. Some approve of the division between the two while some see it as regrettable but inevitable. Often those that approve of it see the divide as divinely ordained, but that can only be maintained through a selective emphasis on certain passages and the exclusion of others. Point out 1 Corinthians 14:34 but skip 11:5; emphasize 1 Timothy 2:12 but ignore Romans 16:1; make a big deal of Ephesians 5:22 but divorce it from verse 21 from which the verb “submit” must be borrowed. It is not a matter of being Biblical or not but of being Biblically balanced or not. If you don't look at scripture as a whole but cherry-pick select verses or ignore contexts you will miss the nuances to be found in God's wisdom.

In fact, most of the differences in the treatment of men and women owe more to the pre-existing cultures than to the scriptures. And usually it is men who insist that there are huge differences between the sexes. They also tend to see them not in terms of mere function or approach but in moral terms. They see bodily differences the way racists see skin color: as indicative of underlying moral and intellectual inferiority and biologically determined behavior. Sadly, some feminists mirror them, seeing men as the troublesome sex. But demeaning or demonizing either sex is certainly not the solution to the problem.

Women do suffer disportionately from poverty, domestic violence and lack of education. And one study says the wellbeing of a nation is directly related to the economic freedom of its women. But I doubt that the people of Iran would say that sexual inequality is their biggest problem. Nor would the Israelis or the Palestinians. The real evil is humankind's general tendency to treat inhumanely those who are different in any way and to try to establish dominance over them. We see this when it comes to matters of race, religion, counties of origin, languages, customs, and politics. Inequality in the treatment of the sexes is just one more manifestation of the sin of not loving your neighbor as yourself.

On the other hand, there are those who feel that we should pretend that there are no differences between the sexes. I read a critique which said that while American feminists tried to erase legal differences between men and women, European feminists won maternity leave and special legislation that dealt with problems specific to women. In other words, European feminists focused more on accommodating the differences. And currently 10 European countries have women Heads of State or Heads of Government.

I think the solution is to reject “one size fits all” answers to the twin problems. We need to recognize when the differences in the sexes should come into play and when they shouldn't. It makes no sense to exclude women from jobs or positions that they can do. (The 2 longest reigning British monarchs were women: Elizabeth II and Victoria. Elizabeth I is also in the top ten.) And it makes no sense to pay them less for doing the same work. On the other hand, we need to recognize the different needs of women and men. Doctors have noted that women may manifest different symptoms than men when they have heart attacks. They may react to certain medications differently. It doesn't help that traditionally women have been excluded from drug trials because researchers don't want to deal with the complexity of factoring in things like menstruation and pregnancy. Women's nutritional needs are different. And in many public places, they should have more bathrooms than men. Men rarely have to stand in long lines to use restrooms.

When the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal, it is speaking of their worth in the eyes of God. Obviously we are not equal in all aspects or abilities. Both sexes and all individuals have various strengths. So we must strike a balance when we approach each other. Because, as we have seen, the image of God does not reside exclusively in either sex alone but in both working together. We see in others reflections of the God who both nurtures us and demands that we become mature, who both disciplines us and forgives us, who both encourages us to take bold actions and reminds us to think of others when we act, especially those who are less fortunate or powerful, who tells us both to work for justice and to be peacemakers. The sexes were not meant to compete but to complete the picture of the God who is love, to bring out and bring together all the facets of the image of God which we can find in every person if only we look for them.

First preached on July 2, 2006. It has been revised and updated.

Witnesses, Not Warriors

The scriptures referred to are 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18 and John 21:15-19.

If you put “armor of God” in the search function of Amazon, you get a plethora of not only books on the subject but also challenge coins, wall art, plaques, bookmarks, travel mugs (Father's Day gifts!), medallions, figurines, dog tags, wrist bands, pens, sew-on patches, children's crafts and playsets of plastic armor labelled as a “Christian Character-Building Costume.” People love those verses from Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which cast following Jesus in a military light. The core of the passage is this: “For this reason, take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand your ground on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand. Stand firm therefore, by fastening the belt of truth around your waist, by putting on the breastplate of righteousness, by fitting your feet with the preparation that comes from the good news of peace, and in all of this, by taking up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:13-17) It makes you want to sing “Onward, Christian soldiers.”

But did you notice something? All of the pieces of armor that Paul mentions—belt, breastplate, footwear, shield and helmet—are protective, except one: the sword of the Spirit; that is, the word of God. So our only “weapon” is the scriptures. And he follows that with this verse: “With every prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, with all perseverance and requests for all the saints.” (Ephesians 6:18) He says we are not to call down curses on our enemies but pray for the needs of all Christians. There is no justification here for being aggressive towards others. Instead, we are to live by the golden rule.

You can find the golden rule in practically every religion and ethical system. Many of them state it negatively: “Do not do to others what you wouldn't want done to yourself.” Which merely prohibits doing harm to others. Jesus, however, stated this moral principle positively: “Treat others in the same way that you would want to be treated.” (Luke 6:31) In the parable of the good Samaritan the priest and the Levite who pass by the man beaten and left for dead could say that they didn't do further harm to him. But the Samaritan does what the victim really wants and needs: he helps the man. He cleans and dresses his wounds, gets him to an inn, takes care of him all night and in the morning, gives money for his continuing care. Jesus says that is how you love your neighbor. (Luke 10:25-37)

And the irony is that Jews and Samaritans considered each other enemies. They were different ethnically and religiously. Yet Jesus used them to expand the definition of who our neighbor is. And in the Sermon on the Mount he makes this explicit. He says, “You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor' and 'hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be like your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45) In an agricultural society, both sun and rain are good things. Because God is good to all, so must we be. (Matthew 5:48) And since we are to love both our neighbor and our enemy there is no one we can hate and so no one we can either harm or neglect.

The reason I bring this up is because this Sunday we are commemorating the apostles Peter and Paul. And our readings are about the sufferings they endured for the faith. Both were martyred for proclaiming the good news about Jesus Christ, who died to save the world. And none of those 3 people died in a physical battle. In fact when Peter tried to defend Jesus by wielding a sword and wounding one of those who came to arrest him, Jesus rebuked him and said, “Put your sword back in its place! For all who take hold of the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52) And then Jesus healed the man whose ear was cut off. (Luke 22:51) Jesus' last healing was that of a person who came to have him crucified. He meant what he said about loving our enemies.

Paul had been a persecutor of the church, arresting Christians and dragging them off to prison. (Acts 8:3) Describing his earlier life to King Herod Agrippa, he said, “And that is what I did in Jerusalem: Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons by the authority I received from the chief priests, but I also cast my vote against them when they were sentenced to death.” (Acts 26:10) Then on his way to do the same in Damascus, the risen Jesus appeared to him, saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:5) After seeing Jesus, he changes his life and mission, from violently trying to stamp out those who follow Jesus to peacefully bringing the good news of the crucified and risen Christ to non-Christians. Perhaps Paul was thinking of those Christians he had harmed when he said, “This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners'—and I am the worst of them!” (1 Timothy 1:15) And he changes his name from Saul, the name of the king who persecuted David, Jesus' ancestor, to Paul, which means “small.”

Both Peter and Paul went on to be imprisoned for proclaiming Jesus as Lord. In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul catalogues all the times he had suffered on his missionary trips. “Five times I received from the Jews forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with a rod. Once I received a stoning. Three times I suffered shipwreck. A night and a day I spent adrift in the open sea. I have been on journeys many times, in dangers from rivers, in dangers from robbers, in dangers from my own countrymen, in dangers from Gentiles, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers at sea, in dangers from false brothers, in hard work and toil, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, many times without food, in cold and without enough clothing.” (2 Corinthians 11:24-27) He went from causing suffering for those who followed Jesus to suffering for following Jesus himself.

Their deaths are foreshadowed in our passages from John's gospel and from Paul's second letter to Timothy. After giving Peter the opportunity to reaffirm his love for Jesus three times, mirroring his three denials of Christ during his trial, Jesus predicts Peter's eventual arrest and death. And Paul is obviously thinking that his death is near. Second Timothy is thought to be Paul's last letter, written from prison in Rome while awaiting his probable execution. He wants Timothy to come to see him before it is too late. (2 Timothy 4:21) As he says in today's passage, “...the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” That sounds final.

We don't have a lot of information about how Peter and Paul died. In the 1^st letter of Clement, written around 96 AD, Peter's successor mentions the martyrdoms of both of these apostles but gives us no specifics. Tradition says they died during the reign of the emperor Nero around 64 AD. Roman historian Tacitus says that Nero blamed the Christians for the Great Fire of Rome that same year and so, as the two most prominent leaders of the church, the apostles were probably executed as scapegoats. Tradition also says that Paul was beheaded, which is plausible since he was a Roman citizen. (Acts 16:37-38; 22:27-28) Tradition says that Peter, not a Roman citizen, was crucified upside down, supposedly because he was too humble to die as Jesus did.

Neither of these men were warriors but witnesses to the good news. And indeed that is all Jesus intended his followers to be. (Matthew 10:18; Luke 21:12-13) Jesus says, “I am sending you out as sheep surrounded by wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) So this is not a call to fight but to proclaim the gospel.

People who are trying to justify Christians fighting often go the the Old Testament. But Biblical Israel was a small country sandwiched between great empires: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon. It was fighting for its existence. In Jesus' time it was occupied by the Roman empire. Many Jews were looking for a Messiah who would lead an army to throw out the Romans and establish a physical, political kingdom of God. They wanted a David 2.0. Jesus wasn't going to be that kind of Messiah. He wasn't going to shed the blood of others to make another kingdom with borders. Instead he let his blood be shed to establish a kingdom that has no borders. He had rejected Satan's offer to give him all the kingdoms of this world. (Luke 4:5-8) And he didn't authorize his followers to operate like every other group seeking power in the way the world does. He tells Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom was from this world, my servants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities.” (John 18:36) When he told Peter to sheath his sword, he was saying that to all who would follow him.

You may object, “But that leaves us defenseless.” Yes and no. From an earthly standpoint, it may seem to. But consider this: The Israelites were slaves in Egypt. God led them out of Egypt and into the promised land. Later the kingdom of Judah fought against the Babylonian empire. They were defeated and taken into exile in 586 BC. And yet after 70 years in exile, they returned home after the Persian empire defeated the Babylonian empire. Eventually the Roman empire broke apart and was destroyed. Earthly kingdoms and empires rise and fall. But the Jews are still with us—not because of their military might but because of God. God is our only sure defense. As Psalm 18:2 says, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” God is our defender, though it does not always look like that at the time.

I love the musical Godspell. It is based on the gospel of Matthew. Until you get to the very end. The disciples take down the body of Jesus and carry him out of the theater, singing a mournful tune. Then for the curtain call they come back singing an upbeat tune. But by not showing the resurrection, it is not clear why they have changed their tune, why they are so happy. In the gospels we see the impact Jesus' death had on the disciples. They only turned from discouraged cowards fearing the authorities to courageously declaring the good news because Jesus rose from the dead. That vindicated that he was who he said he was and it destroyed their fear of death.

If you follow Jesus' commandments—turn the other cheek, do not resist the evildoer, pray for those who mistreat you, give to everyone who asks of you—it could get you killed! (Luke 6:27-30) But Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do.” (Luke 12:4) How we are to act is based upon the God of life who raised Jesus from the dead. Death does not have the last word. But if we turn aside from the way of Jesus because of the threat of what violence can do to us, or the terrible promise of what we can achieve by violence, then we must fear the loss of our relationship with God and the loss of who we are called to be: the body of Christ. The times when Christians used violence against their enemies—the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, the heresy and witch trials—have greatly harmed our witness to the world. Jesus said that it is by our love that the world will know we are his disciples. (John 13:35) Love does no harm to others. (Romans 13:10)

Forswearing the use of violence is scary. But that's how the early Christians impressed the pagan Romans. They saw how fearlessly Christians faced persecution and martyrdom. The Roman historian Tacitus says that Nero “inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Chrestians (sic) by the populace.” Some he had crucified, some he had thrown to wild animals and others he burned alive as living torches to light his garden. Tacitus, no fan of Christianity which he called a “most mischievous superstition,” nevertheless says, “...there arose a feeling of compassion: for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed.” And later, when plagues hit Rome, pagans noticed that Christians did not flee to the relative safety of the countryside but stayed in the city, nursing the sick and dying at the risk of their own lives. In a culture that had no sense of social consciousness or one's duty to the unfortunate, the compassionate and selfless actions of Christians attracted people to investigate following Jesus Christ.

Do you know the origin of the word martyr? It comes from martys, the Greek word for “witness.” Because of Christians standing up for their faith even when it cost them their lives, it came to mean what it does today: suffering and even dying for your beliefs. The earliest saints honored by the church were martyrs. The second century church father Tertullian maintained that “the blood of the martyrs is seed.” St. Augustine picked up on this and expanded it saying, “The earth has been filled with the blood of the martyrs as with seed, and from that seed have sprung the crops of the church. They have asserted Christ's cause more effectively when dead than they were alive. They assert it today, they preach him today; their tongues are silent, their deeds echo around the world.”

And even today we remember people like missionary Jim Elliot, who died trying to contact an Amazonian tribe. His wife Elizabeth Elliot completed his mission, converting the people who murdered her husband. We remember Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, who was assassinated while celebrating the Mass for criticizing the human rights abuses of the Salvadoran government. We remember Polish friar Maximillian Kolbe who volunteered to take the place of a stranger in a starvation bunker in Auschwitz. We remember Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated for working peacefully for racial equality. We remember pastor Wang Zhiming, killed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. We remember Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda, killed for speaking out against the human rights abuses of Ida Amin. There are people killed for their Christian faith around the world these days, like Esther John, a Pakistani woman, Manche Masemola, a South African woman, Lucian Tapiedi of Papua New Guinea, the 21 Coptic Christians beheaded by ISIS in 2015, the members of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity killed in Yemen in 2016 and many more.

Recently we have had a self-styled “Christian” evangelist kill an elected official and her husband and shoot another couple. Did he bring glory to Christ or did he blaspheme Christ's name by this action? Jesus knew about religious fanatics who take it on themselves to be judge, jury and executioner. He said, “...a time is coming when the one who kills you will think he is offering service to God.” (John 16:2) James, Jesus' brother, writes, “For human anger does not accomplish God's righteousness.” (James 1:20) Preachers, quoting the Sermon on the Mount, have been confronted by church members asking where they got such woke nonsense. And when they were told that the preacher was quoting Jesus, they said that what the Lord said was weak and didn't work.

Paul knew about weakness. He suffered from some ailment he called “a thorn in my flesh” that tormented him. (I think it was an eye problem. See Galatians 4:13-15) He said, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:8-10) Perhaps he was thinking of Psalm 28:7 which says, “The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart has trusted in him and I am helped.”

Jesus did not lead an army like Mohammed did. Jesus did not triumph like worldly kings, by slaying his enemies and dying in bed, old and powerful. By worldly standards, he was not a hero who fought his enemies but a loser who did not offer resistance but let himself be killed by them. But that's not how God sees it. As it says in Isaiah, “Having suffered, he will reflect on his work, he will be satisfied when he understands what he has done. 'My servant will acquit many, for he carried their sins. So I will assign him a portion with the multitudes, he will divide the spoils of victory with the powerful, because he willingly submitted to death and was numbered with the rebels, when he lifted up the sins of many and intervened on behalf of the rebels.'” (Isaiah 53:11-12)

Anyone can kill for their cause. With today's weapons, it's easy and the killer is so removed from his victims that he is safe. But few willingly die for their faith, not paying back evil with evil but with goodness, not using weapons but the word of God. Why were the apostles willing to die if necessary for their faith in Christ? Because they knew that earthly death was not the end. Jesus showed that. He didn't just talk about eternal life, he demonstrated it. And because he had undergone and defeated death, they did not fear death, nor any of the things that lead up to it, like disease or persecution. It's not that they sought death; they just didn't alter what they did because of it.

And when you don't fear death, you can do extraordinary things. You can give of yourself to help others. You can defy those more powerful than you: kings and their kingdoms, emperors and their empires, rulers of nations, leaders of corporations and cults. Because they will not last. They are temporal and temporary. The Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Roman and British empires are no more. In comparison with eternity, they were mere blips. The things of this world don't last. God's word does. God's people do.

It's hard to remember that when things get scary. It takes faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died for us and rose again and who will come again. On that day we will see, as it says in Revelation, “The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 11:15) In the meantime, we trust in the one who said, “I have told you these things so that you may have peace. In the world you have trouble and suffering but take courage—I have conquered the world” (John 16:33) And he did it without making a fist or drawing a sword or firing a shot. He did it with words and acts of self-sacrificial love. Go and do likewise. 

One of Many

In the movie Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, a Klingon High Counsellor tells the crew of the Enterprise that they really should read Shakespeare in the original Klingon. Writer and director Nicholas Meyer was thinking of how the Nazis claimed that Shakespeare was really German. It came off as a throwaway joke, especially since it was delivered by Shakespearean actor Christopher Plummer. But this being Star Trek, some fan has actually gone and translated Hamlet into the fictional language! You can buy it on Amazon along with a Klingon dictionary. However, one big translation problem was already tackled in the film. Plummer's character was to quote Hamlet's famous soliloquy that begins with “To be or not to be.” But in Klingon there are only action verbs. Working with Plummer, the language's creator came up with the Klingon equivalent: “To continue or not to continue (to exist.)”

Our sermon suggestion question is “Why is the King James version of the Bible used and no other?” Obviously, this is not quite true. Our church uses a different translation as do other churches. But there are some Christians and preachers who feel that the “Authorized” version is the only one to use and they look at all others as heretical. How and why did this happen?

First let's do a quick overview of Bible translations. The scriptures have been rendered into half of all the world's languages. It began during the Babylonian exile. Many Jews no longer understood Biblical Hebrew and so rabbis translated their Torah lectionary readings into Aramaic, the common language of the Middle East. Hundreds of years later, when Greek was the common language because of the conquests of Alexander the Great, a translation of the entire Old Testament, the Septuagint, was produced for Jews living throughout the known world. This was the Bible the authors of the New Testament knew and used.

As Christianity spread, it was translated into the the tongue of each new country or tribe that missionaries encountered. St. Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, the official language of the Roman empire. This eventually became the Bible used by the Roman Catholic church, which, in response to various heresies, forbade unauthorized translations into common tongues. This greatly slowed down the production of vernacular versions of the Bible in the Middle Ages.

The first complete translation of the Bible into English was produced by John Wycliffe in the late 1300s. It was both widely popular and officially banned. After Wycliffe's death, not only were his works condemned and burned, but his body was exhumed and burned as well. Still, Wyclif fared better than William Tyndale, who was tried for heresy, strangled and burned at the stake. His crime? Inspired by Martin Luther, Tyndale went back to the original Greek and Hebrew in order to translate the Bible into English. Tyndale is important because his translation influenced all subsequent English translations. He introduced new words into English like Jehovah, Passover, atonement and scapegoat. He coined the phrases “Let there be light,” “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,” “filthy lucre,” “the powers that be,” “the signs of the times,” and many others.

Tyndale was arrested in Antwerp at the behest of Henry VIII. Ironically, within 4 years of his arrest and execution, 4 translations of the Bible were published in England at the behest of the same king, now head of the Protestant Church of England. All of them were based on Tyndale's translation.

Despite the fact that authorized translations were issued under both Henry and his daughter, Elizabeth the 1^st, the Puritans were not satisfied with them. They petitioned King James the 1^st to commission a new translation. James agreed in part because he wanted to supplant the popular Geneva Bible, published half a century earlier, which translated the word “king” as “tyrant” nearly 400 times. This Bible was the product of Calvinist scholars who had fled England under Mary Tudor, known as Bloody Mary for her policy of executing Protestants. It was not only the text of the Geneva Bible that irked James and others in the Church of England, but also the marginal notes. Among other things they undercut Biblical support for the traditional ecclesiastical arrangement of bishops and priests.

47 scholars, both Puritan and those who called themselves “high churchmen,” were arranged into 6 committees covering different sections of the Bible. Besides going back to the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts they had at the time, they also consulted previous translations, like Tyndale's. They began work in 1604 and finished in 1608. Their work was reviewed in 1609 by a general committee and published in 1611. Oddly enough, though often called the “Authorized Version,” it never was technically authorized. The king's printer stopped making copies of the Bishop's Bible, which was authorized by Elizabeth, and started printing the King James version, which became the official translation of the Church of England by default.

The King James version did not take the world by storm. The Geneva Bible remained popular and many Bible scholars were unhappy with the new translation. Basically, the King James version simply outlasted the others and became the Bible most English-speaking people grew up with. And it still sounds beautiful and dignified when read aloud in church.

Unfortunately the same thing that enabled the King James to become the most widely used English translation for 4 centuries is now making it less useful today. In the 400 years since it was first published, a lot has changed. For one thing the English language has changed. But not so much that people can't understand the King James Bible, right?

Well, try this” Proverbs 11:20 tells us that “They that are of a froward heart are an abomination to the Lord.” What does “froward” mean? For all you know, you may be unwittingly offending God right now! Admittedly that is an extreme instance but if you want to use the Bible to understand the mind of God, you shouldn't have to possess a thorough knowledge of Jacobean English as well. There are at least 170 words in the King James version that have changed meaning over time or dropped out of usage entirely. (By the way, “froward” means “willfully contrary.” The Hebrew word means “crooked, twisted, perverse, even deceptive.” Ask yourself: was “froward” an adequate translation?)

But the biggest problem with the King James version is that we now have more and older Greek and Hebrew manuscripts than its translators did. For the Old Testament, they used the Masoretic text. The Masoretes were Jewish scholars who obsessively copied, edited and distributed the official texts of the Hebrew Bible from the 7^th through the 10^th centuries. This meant the translators of the King James version used a Hebrew manuscript that was put together 1000 years after the composition of the last book of the Old Testament. How much had the text changed in that millennium? They didn't know. Today we have the Dead Sea scrolls and they have eliminated most of that 1000 year gap. It shows us that the Masoretes did an amazing job of preserving the text. But it also shows us that some changes did take place. Most are minor, like changes in spelling. But today we have a much more accurate text for the Hebrew Bible.

For the New Testament, the translators of the King James version mainly used the Textus Receptus. This was an edition based on 8 Greek manuscripts and it did not cover the whole New Testament. The missing portions were translated into Greek from St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate. It was compiled by the scholar Erasmus and had been the basis for Martin Luther's German translation. It may have been the best edition of the Greek New Testament they had 400 years ago but today we have better. Most modern translations of the Bible are based on more than 5800 Greek manuscripts, plus nearly 20,000 ancient translations. Not only are they more numerous than those used by the KJV translators but they are older as well. What we have discovered is that the manuscripts they used in the early 1600s belong to a family of very corrupt texts. Copyists in this tradition felt free to fix what they saw as troublesome texts, adding comments and paraphrasing at times. And the Byzantine-type texts underlying the Textus Receptus are one and a half times as long as the more ancient Greek manuscripts. Want to see one huge addition? Look at the last chapter of the gospel of Mark. The oldest Greek manuscripts end at verse 8. Verses 9 through 16 are more recent. Modern editions of the Bible usually have these verses separated from the rest of the gospel or at least bracket and footnote this passage.

Bible scholars also understand the ancient Hebrew and Greek languages better these days. For instance, the King James version translates 1 Timothy 6:10 thus: “For the love of money is the root of all evil.” But in Greek there is no definite article before the word “root” and the word it renders “evil” is plural. So most modern translations, including the literal ones like the American Standard version, translate the verse as “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.” Which makes more sense. Love of money is not the root of adultery, nor arrogance, nor foolishness, nor every instance of rage or murder.

Still some people think the King James version is not just a good translation for its time but the translation for all time. Some even believe that God divinely inspired the King James version, despite the fact that this means God doesn't care enough about non-English speakers to give them inspired translations. This is akin to the Klingons thinking that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in their tongue. Plus, in view of the differences between the earliest Hebrew and Greek manuscripts and the later ones the KJV is based on, it would mean that God decided to do some revisions on his word of truth a few centuries after it was originally written down by the apostles. Now, none of the changes are major; no doctrines were changed. Even the added ending to Mark contains mostly stuff found in the other gospels. But why would God do that?

The real reason that some people say that the King James version is the only valid English translation is that (A) they have based some elaborate but non-essential pet teachings on the specific wording of certain verses or (B) because it is familiar. They love it. And that's okay as long as they realize that. There's a difference between saying you love a particular model of classic car and saying that it is the only true car and that all other cars are defective deathtraps, secretly designed by engineers who hate cars and wish to harm drivers and their passengers.

The King James version is a beautiful translation. But if you really want to understand God's word and don't know the original languages, you need to read other translations as well. Some, like the New Revised Standard and the English Standard versions, are revisions of the King James, using the latest research and discoveries, while seeking to retain some of the majestic language of the original. There are looser translations that try to make understanding the Bible easier, like the New Living Translation. There are some that try to get very close to being literal without being totally unreadable, like the New American Standard version. Then there are those that aim to balance readability and accuracy like the New International version and the New English Translation, the latter of which has the most insightful notes on verses by the translators. You can buy any and all of these in book form or even find them online at Bible.org, Biblehub.com and Biblegateway.com.

Look at it this way. God could have given us 1 account of the Ten Commandments. Instead he gave us two, one in Exodus 20 and another in Deuteronomy 5. He could have given us one official history of the kings of Israel and Judah. But besides the one that runs from the two books of Samuel through the two books of Kings, we get another in 1^st and 2^nd Chronicles. He could have given us one gospel of the life of Jesus. He gives us 4. God has blessed us with many translations of his word, each giving us slightly different insights into the same truths. He is generous that way. So let us enjoy his bounty! How can anyone believe that a single translation could capture every nuance of the original and be the last word on our vast and multifaceted God?

This was first preached on June 6, 2010, It has been revised and updated.

Go Team!

In America a lot of our heroes are lone wolves. They embody our idolization of self-sufficiency and rugged individualism. We love the hero who can do everything and needs no one else. Perhaps that's the reason that even the success of two British heroes, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, was dependent on their enthusiastic reception over here in America. An American publisher asked Arthur Conan Doyle for what turned out to be the second ever Sherlock Holmes story, The Sign of Four. And it was President Kennedy's recommendation of the James Bond novels that kicked off 007's international success. These heroes personify what someone has called “competence porn”: the fantasy that the hero is super-competent at handing anything that is thrown at him. Holmes is not only super-smart, able to deduce what really happened from the smallest of clues and able to break the toughest of codes, but, when it is called for, he is good at boxing, sword fighting and martial arts. Bond is not only an assassin but, at least in the films, able to pilot any vehicle, from planes to submersible cars to spacecraft. He is also irresistible to women, an expert on wines and gourmet foods, and a competent gambler. But the ultimate American superhero is Superman, who has super-strength, super-speed, super-hearing, heat-vision, and can fly. Quite frankly, I don't know why he needs the Justice League of America. After Superman comes Batman, who, while he lacks superpowers, is an expert at all forms of fighting, and is super-smart, being touted as the “world's greatest detective” in his comics. It helps that he is rich and can afford every possible gadget he will ever need.

In reality no one person can do it all. Truly intelligent people know their limitations. They know their strengths and their weaknesses. And the wise know that they need others to achieve just about anything significant. The most creative person in the world still needs others to edit, publish, produce, play, display, distribute and disseminate what they write, script, paint, sculpt, or record. Scientists need a team to do research; they need grants to fund the research; they need a company or university to house their research; they need scientific journals to publish their findings. Cooks and bakers depend on farmers, food companies, and grocery stores for their ingredients, as well as those who make the stoves, appliances and utensils they use. Builders need a construction crew with skills in working with wood, steel and concrete, as well as plumbers and electricians. You only have to sit through a movie's credits to see the hundreds of people required to create the blockbuster you just enjoyed. My sermons depend on the many Bibles, commentaries, dictionaries, concordances, and other books which I consult that scholars have written, as well as the internet, the people who made my computer, and the people who keep the electricity on.

We all are dependent on others. Even the lone survivalist who is building a bunker in the woods to sit out the collapse of civilization is dependent upon others for the building materials, tools, nonperishable foods, fuel, how-to books and weapons he needs. And it seems that this realization has permeated even our pantheon of heroes. The Avengers need the individual skills each hero brings to the fight. Aside from Robin, Batman relies on his butler Alfred, an honest cop named Gordon, and the R and D guy at Wayne Enterprises who makes those wonderful toys for him. Bond needs Q as well as the agents he leads when he invades the villain's well-guarded lair. Buffy the Vampire Slayer realizes that she has lived longer than slayers in the past due to her friends who help her research and fight the demons. The various incarnations of Star Trek have always focused on the crews of the ships. The Incredibles presented a family of superheroes as a team. One of the joys of the current series of Doctor Who is the fact that the Timelord's companions aren't just there to look pretty, ask him to explain what's going on and get captured by the monsters. The Doctor and his companions act as a team. In fact, a theme I enjoy is that the Doctor inspires ordinary people to emulate him in acting heroically and joining him in doing the right thing.

Don't you wish you had a team? Don't you wish you had friends with various powers who could back you up and help you in difficult situations? You do. All Christians do. And our team is called the Trinity.

I was struck by this analogy when reading an online interview where Anglican theologian J.I. Packer talked of the Trinity as a divine team. Like all analogies about God, it breaks down if you stretch it too far. But at its core are 2 key concepts about the Trinity: unity and individuality.

The difficulty of understanding the Trinity is trying to reconcile the idea of the oneness of God with the idea of 3 divine persons within God. Some people think it is a needless theological innovation. But it came about because of the way the church experiences God. The church started as a group of Jews. They were born into a covenant with the Creator of the world. The covenant stipulated, among other things, that there is one God and that they weren't to worship any other. Then they encountered Jesus. It was obvious that he was a prophet and that the Spirit of God was on him. Then they realized that he was the Messiah sent by God to set the world right. But Jesus wasn't what they expected. He wasn't a holy warrior but a healer and teacher. And when he was crucified, as far as they were concerned, it was over for him.

Then God raised him from the dead. They remembered that Jesus said, “Tear down this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” (John 2:19) The temple, at least before the exile when the Holy of Holies contained the ark of the covenant, was the place where God dwelt with his people. The temple was, as N.T. Wright puts it, the place where heaven and earth overlap. The disciples saw how Jesus lived—sinless—and what he did—died to pay for the sins of the whole world—and realized that only God, who is holy and without sin, could do those things. Jesus was the new temple, where God dwells. (John 14:11) Jesus is the new point at which the realm of God and the world of man overlap. (John 1:1, 14) Jesus the man was somehow God. (John 10:30) And yet he said that there was one God. (Mark 12:29)

Then came Pentecost. The church was immersed in the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised God would send as another advocate. The then still Jewish church was familiar with the Holy Spirit from the Hebrew Bible, where the Spirit is described as the power of God. The Spirit is involved in creation, in anointing the leaders of God's people and in inspiring the prophets. So now the church experienced God in another way—inside their minds and hearts and lives.

So they knew God as the Creator who is outside of them and this world. Yet God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. (2 Corinthians 5:19) And God was in them, acting in and through the body of believers, applying the love and power of God to their lives and to their encounters with the world. (John 14:17; Romans 5:5) So the Father is God. Jesus is God. The Spirit is God. But there is only one God. They may not have known exactly how this worked but they knew it to be true.

Many a preacher on this, Trinity Sunday, has tried to explain the triune nature of God by using shamrocks or cubes or the tripartite nature of humanity or the 3 states of water. All of these might help a little but none can really speak comprehensively about the deep nature of God. Even the orthodox formula of the Trinity, which we recite in the Nicene Creed and find in full in the Athanasian Creed, is not really an explanation of how this is possible but is only a way of preserving the paradox of Three in One and One in Three.

All language about God is at least somewhat metaphorical. So here is another way to look at it. And as C. S. Lewis would say, if this picture doesn't help you, then leave it alone.

One advantage to seeing God as a team is that it preserves the unity of God as well as the individuality of the divine persons. Each member of a good team has a distinct role or function and yet a good team acts as one. They have one goal, one will. But unity doesn't mean uniformity. In fact, it is the various strengths of the different members coming together that gives the team its power. A big problem I have with the Mission:Impossible movies is that they are ultimately all about Tom Cruise's character Ethan Hunt. The TV series was about the team, all working on the same plan, coming from different directions and using their different abilities and functions.

In team Trinity we have the Father. He is the source of creation. He is the idea guy, you might say, the Jim Phelps or Professor X or Captain Picard or the coach of the team. He looks at the Big Picture. He conceives the strategy. He sets the tone of the team. He cares for the team; it is his family.

Next in team Trinity there is the Son, Jesus Christ. He's the one who executes the plan, who embodies the idea. In the Mission:Impossible TV series he is Roland Hand, the member of the team who goes undercover and becomes an actor in the drama which the idea guy has conceived. He's the quarterback, the James Bond who is sent out on a mission by M, the Mr. Spock who knowingly sacrifices himself to save the crew.

The toughest member of team Trinity to pin down is the Holy Spirit. He's the resource person. He's like Scotty in the original Star Trek, giving the captain more power or raising the shields when necessary. Or he's like Uhura, passing on vital communications. Or Troy in the Star Trek: The Next Generation, the empathic counselor who understands and articulates our deepest emotions. Or he's like Barney on the original IMF team or Briana on the Leverage team, always toiling behind the scenes to make sure that the technical stuff will work when the team needs them. Or maybe he's like Willy. Willy was the big guy on the TV IMF team, who helped Barney or drove the truck or carried a message to Jim or acted as a repairman or did any other unglamorous job that was necessary to the plan. The spotlight never focused on Willy, this jack-of-all-trades, but he was vital. He made sure that whatever had to be done got done.

This is the team that helps you live the Christian life. God the Father has mapped out the plan and knows all the possible deviations from it and has contingencies for them all. He has given us the principles by which we live and he is waiting for us when we finish our part of the mission and make it home safely.

God the Son has the hardest part of the Father's plan. He can walk us through the plan and we can trust him and confide in him because he is also one of us; he's been where we've been as well as where we are going and he knows what we face. He has been to hell and back and so he can help us face the direst of days.

God the Spirit works with us and in us and for us so that we follow the plan. He relays messages from the Father and the Son. He translates our deepest feelings to them. He gives us power and encouragement and support and counsel and whatever we need to help us follow the plan.

So we don't have to do this on our own. God said he would never leave us or forsake us. Jesus asked his Father to send his Spirit to help us. For God decided out of love to let us join his team on earth to accomplish the final part of his plan. And our part is to be ambassadors of God spreading his good news, agents of God demonstrating his love and forgiveness and power to transform lives. Because the plan is for God to reunite with his erring creatures, to remake his fallen creation and renew it. We are to recruit volunteers for his team and to support each other as we discover and do our part.

This is our task and we have all the resources of heaven at hand. We have access to the mind who dreamt up the universe and even ourselves and who, when we screwed it up with our arrogance, put in place the plan to set it all right. We have access to the one person who understands things from both our standpoint and God's and who also knows pain and joy and life and death firsthand. And we have access to the power that runs the universe and can remake us in the image of the one who created us and redeemed us and loves us. In every situation, through every peril, in sorrow and triumph, we have ahead of us as our goal, above us as our protection, beside us as our companion and within us as our compass, the divine team of the Father, the Son and the Spirit to lead us, equip us, encourage and help us. Glory be to our wonderful, multifaceted and quite singular God!

First preached on June 6, 2005. It has been updated and revised.

Happy Birthday

The scriptures referred to are Acts 2:1-21.

When you're a kid, your birthday is, after Christmas, the most anticipated day of the year. The closer it gets the more giddy you are. All you can think of are gifts and cake and a party with all your friends. After a certain age, your birthday is much less of a celebration and more of a nod to the passage of time. Maybe even a shrug. Your birthday only becomes a big deal again if you live to be very, very old. At the nursing home where I used to work, we had at one time 3 people who were 100 or more years old. You can bet they got big parties!

The Pentecost recounted in our passage from Acts took place somewhere between 27 and 33 AD. So Christianity is just a bit shy of 2000 years old. Pentecost is considered the birthday of the church because that's when it took its first breath, so to speak, apart from Jesus' physical presence. And before the invention of the stethoscope, breath was considered the vital sign that separated life from death. On Pentecost, the church came alive.

In both Greek and Hebrew, one word was used for breath, wind and spirit. The movement of air is a powerful but invisible force. Wind can be felt and its effects can be seen but wind itself cannot be seen. Neither can breath, except on very cold days and even then you don't see it for more than a second or two. It's easy to understand how breath came to be used as an analogy for spirit, the unseen but powerful force that gives us life.

Even today, when a baby is born, doctors and nurses are intent on clearing a newborn's airway and hearing that first cry. We rate the baby on a scale in which 3 of the 5 signs—the color of its extremities, its response to stimuli and the quality of its crying—are related to the adequacy of its respirations. A baby who doesn't get enough oxygen during the birth process is at risk for cerebral palsy. You may count your baby's fingers and toes when he or she is born; we nurses are looking to see if they are blue or not.

So it is natural to associate the coming of the Holy Spirit, appearing as a wind that shakes the building the apostles met in, with birth. Birth is a starting point and Pentecost is a good place to say the church first began to function as the body of Christ.

But before the descent of the Spirit on the church Pentecost was a major Jewish holiday. Called Shavuot, it was the 50^th day since Passover. It was the day when the first fruits of the spring crops were offered to God along with prayers for the rest of the harvest. It was also the time when Jews commemorated God giving the 10 commandments to Moses at Mount Sinai. (Exodus 20:1-17) That's why so many Jews from all over the known world were gathered in Jerusalem.

The parallels are easy to make. At Pentecost the first fruits of the church are brought in and offered to God. In that day followers of Jesus went from about 120 to 3000. (Acts 1:14; 2:41) A very promising start on the harvest to come.

God gave his people the law on a Pentecost 1200 to 1400 years before Christ. This Pentecost he sends his Holy Spirit, making a different way of living a godly life possible. So the church being born on this auspicious day is akin to a person being born on his grandfather's birthday.

But there is another Biblical event that relates to this Pentecost. In Genesis chapter 11, we read the story of the tower of Babel. Humanity speaks one language, something we also find in ancient Sumerian writings. But they are using this common language to coordinate efforts to build a tower to the heavens. For this arrogance, God confuses the language. And divided by a variety of languages, people scatter to the ends of the earth.

On Pentecost, Jews from all over the known world come together to go to the temple in Jerusalem. They speak a variety of languages. And then God pours out his Spirit on the apostles and they speak in different tongues. Out of the cacophony, people manage to pick out the language they know. They are drawn together by this spectacle. And then Peter preaches the gospel to them.

He probably spoke in Greek, the common language of the eastern Roman empire ever since Alexander the Great. Luke is obviously giving us a summary of a much longer speech. What is interesting is that Peter goes from Joel's prophecy to Jesus as the center of the phenomena the people are witnessing on that Pentecost. And Peter emphasizes Jesus' resurrection. He mentions his death and says it's part of God's plan but he doesn't explain why. Instead he focuses on Jesus rising again. Why? Partly because it is so fresh. Jesus' resurrection was only a month and a half ago. But mostly because it validated who Jesus is: the Messiah, God's anointed King.

What made this Pentecost so effective wasn't the sound of the wind or the tongues of flame or the speaking in tongues. God wasn't interested in giving everyone a magical experience. He was and is interested in redeeming people. He is interested in bringing them into the body of Christ, of uniting them to his son, who is the divine love incarnate, and making them like him. So the focus of the church has to be Jesus: who he is, what he has done for us and is doing in us and how we should respond. The farther we get from that, the more likely we are to go astray.

When the Jews of the diaspora heard the gospel proclaimed on that Pentecost, thousands claimed Jesus as Savior and Lord. They repented and were baptized. And Luke tells us, “They were devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42) That's what we do today. We devote ourselves to the teachings of the apostles, found in scripture and summarized in the creeds. We devote ourselves to prayers, new, old and ancient. The first part of our worship service is very much like the synagogue service the apostles were familiar with. We pray, we read the scriptures and someone comments on the passages read.

They also broke bread together. That is probably a reference to the earliest form of what became Communion or the Eucharist. The second part of our worship service is all about our sharing the bread and wine which become for us the body and blood of Jesus, incorporating us into one body, his.

And that brings us to fellowship. The word in Greek, koinonia, means something more than friendship. It's more like partnership. We are partners in Christ, working together to become the kingdom of God.

It all began on Pentecost. And that's why we're celebrating it as a birthday. That's why some churches put up decorations. There's even a kind of correlation between the trappings of modern birthdays and Pentecost.

Birthday parties have candles. The candles in churches symbolize the tongues of flame that came to rest on each of the apostles, the purifying and illuminating energy of the Spirit. Plus God descended to Sinai in fire and spoke to Moses out of fire. The liturgical color of Pentecost is red because of the fire.

The breath used to blow up balloons at parties can represent the Spirit filling us.

At birthday parties we sing traditional songs for the birthday boy or girl. Here too we sing about Christ and his church.

Somebody usually gets up and makes a little speech about the significance of the birthday. That's what I am doing now.

And there is food and drink. Soon we will celebrate the Eucharist, a foretaste of the wedding banquet of the Lamb.

But where are the gifts? The initial gift is the Spirit of God himself. Through him, God not only comes to us, he enters into us. God is no longer someone out there but lives in our hearts and minds and lives.

And the Spirit in turn gives us gifts: wisdom, healing, grace, faith, hope, love and various abilities. Unlike some of the gifts we receive for birthdays, these aren't the kind that you get tired of or which are cool to look at but useless. As it says in 1^st Peter, “Just as each one has received a gift, use it to serve another as good stewards of the varied grace of God.” (1 Peter 4:10)

Finally, there is one thing about birthdays that we are especially desirous of when we are young: we want to be older. No child really wants to stay a little kid forever like Peter Pan. We want to grow up and become like our father or mother. We want to be an adult like our older brother. We want to become a man or a woman. Each year is another milestone on the journey of our life. Somewhere along the line we can lose that desire. There's nothing sadder than an adult who refuses to grow up and continues to act like a child. Or an older person trying to hold onto or recapture his or her youth.

We confuse the youth we desire with immaturity and with outward appearances. But what keeps you young inside is not self-indulgence or recklessness or sex or looks but the ability to trust and a sense of wonder. When you lose those, you truly age in the negative sense of that word.

God gives us eternal life. On that scale, we are all still quite young. And so we should still desire to grow, to mature, to see what the next year brings. The church is still young, still making mistakes, still wanting to be popular rather than righteous, wanting to be cool rather than wise. Let our birthday wish, our prayer, be that the church appreciates what it already has and that it wants to grow up to be like its heavenly Father.

First preached on May 23, 2010. It has been updated and revised.