Rock Solid

The scriptures referred to are Matthew 16:13-20.

In Flannery O'Connor's book Wise Blood, among the eccentric characters is a conman who is promoting what he calls “The Church of Christ Without Christ.” There have been a number of con artists who have stepped into the pulpit, preaching bizarre versions of the gospel, but few are brave enough to say outright that they are trying to establish a Christianity without Christ. Yet that is what happens when Jesus Christ is moved out of the center of the faith and someone or something else is substituted. We have seen versions where the main focus is a political agenda, or the worshiper's personal prosperity, or an idea of personal empowerment taken from new age or new thought, or the con artists themselves. The problem is, when you remove Jesus, you get either a watered down or distorted version of God's good news or you get a cult.

That's the issue in today's gospel reading. Jesus has taken his disciples to Caesarea Philippi, well north of Galilee. It is the source of the Jordan river, at the foot of Mount Hermon, the probable site of the Transfiguration. Rebuilt by Herod's son Philip and named after the emperor and himself, it was a very pagan region. It had been named Paneas after the Greek god Pan, who had a shrine in a cave there. There were niches that held statues of the Nymphs, minor nature deities. Jews avoided the place. The only reason I can think that Jesus took the disciples there was to get them away from other Jews while he asked them a crucial but controversial question.

He eases into it by asking them “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” “Son of Man” is Jesus' preferred designation for himself. He uses it more than 80 times in the Gospels, far more often than he uses the term “Son of God.” It's interesting that today we have gotten the meaning of the two titles reversed. “Son of God” was a royal title used of David and his line of kings. (Psalm 89:20, 26-27; 2 Samuel 7:8-18) “Son of Man,” while it could just mean a human, recalled the figure in Daniel 7, where it says, “I was watching in the night visions, and with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man was approaching. He went up to the Ancient of Days and was escorted before him. To him was given ruling authority, honor, and sovereignty. All peoples, nations, and language groups were serving him. His authority is eternal and will not pass away. His kingdom will not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14) “Son of man” was a Messianic title and yet, because of the ambiguity, Jesus was able to use it without getting immediately arrested.

So when asking who people thought the Son of Man was, Jesus could have just been asking who people in general thought was going to be the Messiah. Some thought it would be John the Baptist brought back to life, or Elijah, who had gone to heaven in a chariot of fire, or any one of the prophets of old. So Jesus gets to the essential question: “But who do you say that I am?” Peter immediately replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Which is to say that Jesus is the promised prophet, priest and king anointed by God to restore and rule the people of God.

And Jesus congratulates Peter for getting this right, though it was not the realization of his own unaided brain but a revelation from God. Then, playing on the nickname he gave Simon, he says you are a rock and on this rock I will build my church. Some think Jesus meant the church was built on Peter, making him the first pope. This is unlikely. Peter would deny Jesus 3 times. (Matthew 26:69-75) He would waffle on whether Gentile Christians had to obey the Jewish dietary laws. (Galatians 2:11-14) As good as Peter was, does it make sense to make one fallible mortal the foundation of the church?

So what is the rock on which Jesus will build his church? Earlier in Matthew's Gospel, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24) Here it is Jesus' words which are the rock. In 1 Corinthians 10:4, it says “the rock is Christ.” And in the Old Testament, God is called “the rock of Israel.” (Genesis 49:24) and “my rock, in whom I will take refuge.” (Psalms 18:2) It is more likely that Jesus is saying that what Peter stated--that Jesus is the Messiah and God's Son--is the rock on which the church is built.

People keep trying to replace Jesus with other things as the foundation on which the church should stand. They try to substitute positions on certain political or economic or social or moral issues as the real basis for Christianity. They forget that without Jesus these issues have no divine basis. Issues come and issues go. In the Middle Ages, the important issues were iconoclasm, the “filioque” clause and the authority of the pope over princes. In asserting that last issue, popes placed whole countries under an interdict or mass excommunication. In the 1300s, there were 3 men claiming to be pope who were excommunicating each other and the followers of each. Yet scripture says “...there is one God, and one mediator between God and humans, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:5) Ultimately Christ is the person through whom we are reconciled to God.

Some people make the Bible the foundation of Christianity rather than Jesus. How is that bad? Because they fail to realize that the Bible is not God or Jesus but a witness to God and Jesus. Besides, the Bible has 66 books and 31,000 verses. People can and do pull verses out of context to justify thoughts, words and actions that go against what Jesus taught. For example, like the history of mankind, the Old Testament is full of wars. If a leader wants to justify his war, he can find some verse that seems to work. He just has to overlook the verses about God wanting to end war or David being unable to build the temple because he is a man of war. (Psalm 46:9; 1 Chronicles 22:8) Some people quote verses that apparently justify killing those who offend or oppose God. But they have to turn a blind eye to Jesus telling Peter to put away his sword when he was trying to keep Jesus from being arrested by his enemies or Paul praying for followers who had left him and the faith. (Matthew 26:52; 2 Timothy 4:16) People have also used the fact that many of the patriarchs had multiple wives to justify polygamous arrangements while conveniently ignoring the disharmony and jealousy we see in all of those plural marriages. (Genesis 29; 2 Samuel 13 and 16) There is no idea so awful or so weird that someone has not found a way to back it up with a verse they have manipulated.

Some folks get clever and try instead to change Jesus to fit their pet interpretation. So Jesus becomes a political rebel or an Eastern mystic or a capitalist or a socialist or a motivational speaker for human potential. Thomas Jefferson believed Jesus was merely a moral teacher and so he took two Bibles and a pair of scissors to create his own Bible by cutting out the parts he liked and pasting them in a notebook. He left out the miracles and anything saying Jesus is divine. And he's just one of the many people who have been editing Jesus for the last 2000 years.

Like the search for the historical Jesus. Bible scholar Luke Timothy Johnson pointed out that none of the results of these searches have come up with a unanimously accepted version of the man. Besides, he says, it is the Jesus of the Gospels who has impacted history and people's lives, not the ones people construct out of pieces of him and pieces of whatever is novel or currently popular. The Jesus we read in the Bible may not be the Jesus everyone thinks they want but he is the one we need.

Jesus then said that his church, built on the bedrock of him and his mission, will be able to endure against the gates of Hades. And that cavern in Caesarea Philippi which was dedicated to Pan, the god from whom we get the word “panic,” was thought to be a gate to Hades, the abode of the dead. Jesus is saying that his church will stand against the powers of death and decay.

But Jesus knows he will not always be with the disciples physically. He would die, rise again and ascend to his Father in heaven. He would pass the torch to these disciples and their successors. So he says, “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” What does that mean?

Let's look at some parallels in Jesus' teachings. In Matthew 18, Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.” Jesus goes on to say if he won't listen, bring one or two other people as witnesses, so it's not just your say-so. If he refuses to listen to them, take the matter to the church. If he still refuses to listen, “treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.” After that Jesus repeats that “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 18:15-18)

A few things to note here. First, Jesus is not saying this is what you do if your brother annoys you or offends you. This is about sinning against you. Using the list of sins Jesus gave us last week, this would mean things like “murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” (Matthew 15:19) Jesus is saying this is what to do if your brother does something wrong that harms you. Or, I think it's safe to say, if he harms someone else, especially someone who cannot stand up for themselves like a child. (Matthew 18:5-6)

Secondly, you should try to resolve the matter privately if you can. Only if that doesn't work, should you bring in others and then as few as possible. If that doesn't work, only then does it rise to the level of bringing in the church as a whole. And if the person still doesn't repent, they are to be not punished but simply shunned. As you see, such a serious decision doesn't rest on one person's feelings.

Thirdly, the purpose, Jesus says, is to win back your brother. You are trying to bring him back into a good relationship with you, not trying to get him cast out. You are not looking for revenge but reconciliation.

Finally, when the risen Jesus first appears to the disciples he breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (John 20:22-23) So this binding and loosing is not about changing rules but about forgiving people.

Which makes sense. Jesus is not telling his disciples that they can change the commandments he gave them on earth and expect that those commandments will subsequently be changed in heaven. He is not granting them the authority to change the moral laws of the universe. He is saying that what they forgive on earth will stand up in heaven and what they do not forgive will hold up in heaven. Remember in the Lord's prayer, we ask God that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We are not praying that our will on earth should override God's will in heaven.

Jesus knows that the disciples and those who come to him through them will screw up. He is saying that they have his permission and authority to resolve these matters themselves. They are to use their discernment and listen to his Holy Spirit in deciding how to act in matters where someone sins against someone else. Repentance leads to forgiveness; refusing to acknowledge that you harmed someone will not.

That reflects the Jesus who is the rock-solid foundation on which the church is built. He is just but merciful; he is loving and forgiving. He seeks to reconcile us to each other and to God. He is the one whom God anointed to be our prophet, priest and king. We are to listen to his word, go to him as our mediator with God, and obey his commands. The greatest of those commands are to love God with all we are and all we have and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Which means loving anyone we encounter, including our enemy. (Matthew 22:34-40; Luke 10:29-37; Matthew 5:44) Jesus not only taught that, he lived it. He did not fight his enemies. (Luke 22:49-51, 63-65) He even forgave them from the cross. (Luke 23:33-34)

People tend to confuse Jesus with a political partisan or a philosopher or an economist or, God help us, with John Wayne. Then they try to build movements on that shifting and unstable sand. In times of trouble we need someone who is timeless, a polestar to guide us through the raging storms. We need the Jesus found in God's word, the Jesus who is the living Word of God, who shows us what God is really like and what we, through him, can become.

No Exceptions

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 56:1, 6-8 and Matthew 15:10-28.

Scrolling through social media today is like drinking from a firehose. You can nearly drown from all of the news, videos, links and ads that you are exposed to. On the one hand, you learn that they cured a person in New York of sickle cell anemia, that they have reintroduced beavers into Scotland, that there is a group of high school kids who volunteer as pallbearers for veterans who die without family, that AI was used to generate a bacteria-killing virus and that a man known for playing Santa in a small town in Virginia donated one of his kidneys to a stranger who needed a transplant. On the other hand, you learn that an Indiana councilman was arrested for child rape after being on the run for 2 years, that 2 middle school students were caught planning a robbery with homemade firearms, explosives and a tactical vest with white-supremacist imagery, that a popular actress was in an abusive relationship with a popular rock star that started when she was a teen, and that it seems that no one in our government can stop our government from doing bad things. C.S. Lewis pointed out that it seems that you can't say anything either bad enough or good enough about life. Why is that?

Jesus gave us the answer 2000 years ago when he was asked about why his disciples did not wash their hands before they ate. (Actually, it was probably not that they didn't wash their hands but that they didn't wash them in the elaborate traditional way that the Pharisees did. They washed from the fingertips to the wrist, then scrubbed with a fist, then rinsed from the wrist to the fingertips. There was no germ theory then; this was to cleanse you from accidental ritual contamination from contact with others you may have touched in the street or marketplace, or worse, from contact with Gentiles.) Anyway, Jesus responded by saying that it isn't what goes into the mouth that defiles a person but what comes out of the mouth. This offended the Pharisees and on the face of it, sounds disgusting. But Jesus explains that what really defiles a person is the evil things that come out of the heart. “For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” In the parallel passage in Mark, Jesus' answer includes greed, malice, deceit, envy, arrogance and folly. (Mark 7:20-23) All of these start in the heart, which was considered the center of a person's thoughts, emotions and will, and then they manifest themselves as evil words and actions.

There is a tendency in human thought to locate evil in something external to us. The Gnostics thought the physical world and even our bodies are evil. Only spirits are pure. For a lot of people the source of all our problems is “those people.” And those people can be anyone you don't like: gays, blacks, foreigners, Jews, the poor. “Those people” can be those who think differently than us: the Communists, the Republicans, the Democrats, Hollywood elites. Or it's a whole industry: Big Pharma, social media, tech bros, AI. If we just get rid of “those people” all of our problems would be solved.

But they wouldn't. Because all of those people and the groups they are in and the companies they run have one thing in common with us: we are all human beings. And if there is one Christian doctrine that can be objectively proved to be true it is that human beings are flawed. It's not just that we are limited in what we can do. It is that no mere human being is morally perfect. We are susceptible to doing the wrong thing. And while sometimes we may do it inadvertently or out of ignorance, other times we do it knowing full well that it is wrong and that it will harm us or others or our relationship with others. As Paul says in Romans, “For I don't understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want—instead, I do what I hate....I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil that I do not want!” (Romans 7:15, 19)

We've all been there. You are tempted to eat not one but a whole sleeve of Oreos, sabotaging your diet. Or, more seriously, you are tempted in the heat of an argument to say something you know will trigger an enraged reaction from your sibling, spouse or coworker. Or you are tempted to sleep with someone you know you shouldn't, though one or both of you are married and it could break up relationships and families. Or you have figured out a way to cheat a system, customer or partner. Or you decide to get a person to do something that's wrong just to see how much power you have over them.

Of course, there will be consequences. Some of these things are crimes, violations of the written laws by which society organizes itself to keep peace and make people safe. Some are sins, moral violations of how we should act. Not all sins are crimes and not all crimes are sins. Crimes have legal consequences. Sins have moral and spiritual consequences. They change you. They affect those around you. Read enough biographies and pretty soon you learn how important, creative and famous people, some of whom you may admire, have ruined their lives and those they purport to love without breaking any human laws. Charles Dickens, who wrote movingly about people dealing with moral issues in books like A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, and even a life of Jesus Christ for his kids, left his wife for a young actress, took his children with him and tried to have his wife put away in an asylum. Eugenics, the idea that society should eliminate negative inheritable qualities through selective breeding and even forced sterilization of “inferior people,” was supported by people such as Teddy Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, W.E.B. Du Bois and even Helen Keller, who succeeded in life despite being both blind and deaf. Eugenics was only discredited when the Nazis showed what taking it to its logical end would lead to. I'm sure you can easily think of any number of celebrities and leaders in business, politics and even religion who have been exposed for doing very bad things. All humans, Paul said, have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23) No exceptions.

Jesus came to save us from our sins, not only through redemption and forgiveness but also through spiritual transformation. Laws and moral rules do not make people good. The only way to do that is to change the person. In 2 Corinthians Paul says, “...if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; look, they have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) Being a Christian is about becoming more Christlike.

Which does make you wonder what Jesus is up to in the second part of our gospel reading. A Canaanite woman comes to Jesus asking for mercy for her daughter. Well, not so much asking as shouting. And we are told, “But he did not answer her at all.” The disciples are getting annoyed and tell Jesus to send her away. Jesus tells them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Now if Jesus was just any Jewish man of that time, this would not be unusual. But just 7 chapters before we read that Jesus healed the servant of a Roman centurion. Surprised by his faith in Jesus' ability to heal without having to come and lay hands on the sick, Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their place at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 8:10-11) Jesus knows that Gentiles will be at the heavenly banquet. Shortly thereafter he heals two men in the largely Gentile region of Gadara. (Matthew 8:28-34) Jesus also healed Samaritans. (Luke 17:11-19) So why is Jesus being so standoffish with this Gentile woman?

Now Jesus was right in that his mission at that time was to Israel. But he foresaw a time when his message would go out to all the nations. (Acts 1:8) And as we see in Acts 10 even Peter was slow to realize that the good news of Jesus was also meant for non-Jews. Jesus may have been giving the disciples a chance to get a head start on what would be the next phase of their mission. (Matthew 28:19-20)

Yet the disciples' solution is to send the woman away. That was also their solution to the 5000 hungry people: “Send them away.” And Jesus told them, “You give them something to eat.” They had just returned from their mission to preach and heal. I think Jesus really wanted them to use the power he had granted them to feed the people. But in response to what he told them, they balked. I wonder if Jesus' uncharacteristic reluctance to heal this woman's daughter was also a test for them to do it themselves. But again, they don't do anything except complain.

They did not see that there is a pattern in God's plan. People who were originally excluded from being part of God's people are eventually welcomed as recipients of his grace. The Moabites and their descendants were excluded from the assembly of the Lord for what they did to the Israelites. (Deuteronomy 23:3-6) Yet Ruth, a Moabite, becomes the grandmother of King David. (Ruth 4:13-17) There was longstanding enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans. Yet Jesus, rather than avoiding their territory, went through it. He talked of spiritual matters to a Samaritan woman. She had also been married many times, something Jesus condemned. (Matthew 5:32) Yet she, and through her the whole village, came to believe Jesus was the Savior of the world. (John 4:1-42) Jesus even makes a Samaritan the hero of what is arguably his most famous parable. (Luke 19:25-37) Eunuchs also are excluded from the assembly of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 23:1) Yet the first foreigner to become a Christian will be an African eunuch (Acts 8:26-39) The pattern is clear: people once excluded from God's community later get included. As Peter says after being led by God to preach the gospel to a Gentile family, “I now truly understand that God does not show favoritism in dealing with people, but in every nation the person who fears him and does what is right is welcomed before him.” (Acts 10:34-35)

So I can only conclude that, like at the feeding of the 5000, Jesus was trying to get the disciples to do what was right on their own initiative. When they fail, he does it.

The Canaanite woman kneels before Jesus and says, “Lord, help me.” Jesus' reply, while jarring to us, was very much in character with Jewish sentiments at that time. He says, “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.” And indeed Jews did compare the Gentiles to dogs, whom they saw as wild scavengers who ate anything. However Jesus does not use the word for full grown dogs but for little dogs or puppies, which Gentiles kept as pets.

The woman takes Jesus' words and gives them a twist. “Yes, Lord, but even the puppies eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.” Touche! And Jesus, who liked to flip the script on his opponents, appreciates how this woman turned his words back on him. I imagine he smiled at her retort. So he says, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.

This reminds me of another difficult passage: God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham was about to do it when God stopped him, providing a sacrifice in place of Isaac. It was a very dramatic and memorable way to show that Yahweh was not that kind of god who demanded that of us (Leviticus 18:21) and that if a sacrifice was called for he would provide it. Which we see in how Jesus, God Incarnate, makes the greatest sacrifice by taking upon himself the consequences of our sins and the sins of the whole world, in order to open the way to reconciliation with God. Through Jesus we flawed human beings can become the people we were created to be: bearers of the image of the God who is love.

I think this encounter with the Canaanite woman was an enacted parable, like the sacrifice of Isaac. Jesus takes a situation in which the typical outcome, in this case the rejection of an outsider, looks like it is inevitable and then he changes it. Jesus lets us see that this foreigner, like the centurion, has placed great faith in him. She will not give up on getting Jesus to heal her daughter. And he rewards her persistence. And I'll bet he knew his disciples would remember and record this event when they later encountered others who were previously excluded from the people of God but who nevertheless put their trust in Jesus. God does not show favoritism. As he says in our passage from Isaiah, “the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants...” are welcome on his holy mountain. He says, “for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” The Bible's most famous verse says, “For God so loved the world...” Not just a part of it. Not just some of its people. God made us all. Jesus died for us all. He loves us all. So how should we respond? By loving him back. And by loving all the other people God made. No exceptions.

Vital Truth

The scriptures referred to are Romans 10:5-15.

In the first Sherlock Holmes story, Watson is trying to figure out what it is his new roommate does for a living. Holmes is profoundly knowledgeable about chemistry, knows a lot about poisons and anatomy and has an immense knowledge of sensational literature. He knows almost nothing about contemporary literature, philosophy or astronomy. One thing Watson is surprised to find out is that this genius does not know that the earth revolves around the sun! Holmes explains that it doesn't make a bit of difference to him and his work. There is evidence in later stories that Watson is wrong about Holmes' knowledge on some of these subjects. But this illustrates a difference in the value of certain beliefs. Remember the controversy over the demotion of Pluto? For most of us it does not matter whether it is classified as a planet or a dwarf planet. It is irrelevant to our lives. On the other hand, beliefs about the efficacy of vaccines are extremely relevant. We see this in that even the vaccine skeptic running our health system is now saying parents should get their children vaccinated against measles, a disease which has hit a 35 year high in its spread. Getting vaccinated can reduce the risk of severe complications like pneumonia, brain swelling, permanent loss of sight or hearing and even death by 97%. Not believing in the risk reduction which vaccines give can have dire consequences.

The reason I bring this up is because of verse 9 in today's passage from Romans 10. Paul writes, “...if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” This is a vital verse of Scripture. To prevent misunderstandings, let's examine it in detail.

The Greek word translated “confess” means “to agree with, to acknowledge, to admit.” So this is not merely saying the words “Jesus is Lord,” but admitting this is true. And not just to yourself. He is talking about saying it out loud. In fact this is something a person would say before being baptized. They would confess before the whole congregation that they were acknowledging Jesus as the Lord. When we baptize someone even today, we ask them 6 questions. The first 3 are whether they renounce Satan, the evil powers in this world and the sinful desires that draw them away from God. The second three are “Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?”, “Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?”, and “Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?” The candidate for baptism answers each of these 3 questions with “I do.”

The point is that not merely are you saying these words but you are acknowledging Jesus is both the Lord and your Lord. In Paul's day that was dangerous. Because Lord was a title that Caesar took. As N.T. Wright points out, saying that Jesus is Lord means Caesar is not. As we said last week, that meant the emperors saw Jesus as a rival. And certain emperors required citizens to sacrifice to the Roman gods and denounce Jesus. Failure to comply could mean the loss of legal rights, being deprived of rank, being re-enslaved, being sent to work in the mines or even death. Confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord was considered treason.

And Kurios, the Greek word translated as Lord, meant two things. It meant Jesus was your master, whom you obeyed above all others. It also was the word used by Greek speaking Jews for God. To avoid using God's name in vain, Jews did not say God's actual name even when it appeared in scripture. Instead, they said Adonai, the Hebrew word for Lord. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the Septuagint followed that practice, substituting Kurios for the divine name. You might call your teacher Master but when you used the title for Jesus, it meant something more. It meant that you gave Jesus your ultimate allegiance, something reserved for God.

But Paul knew that people can say things and not mean it. So he adds that you must also “believe in your heart...” The Greek word used here and throughout the New Testament for “believe” is pisteuo. It means more than simply believing that Jupiter has 95 officially recognized moons. Again that is largely irrelevant to the lives of anyone but astronomers. Pisteuo means to trust. If you really trust your doctor and he tells you to stop smoking or you will get cancer, emphysema or heart disease, you will do it. It took a massive heart attack to make my father-in-law change what he ate and take up exercise. As a nurse I saw a lot of patients who obviously did not believe their doctors and continued doing things that worked against their getting better. And we see people who call themselves Christians who obviously do not believe what Jesus said about what we are to do or not do as his followers.

Part of that might be that for them belief in Jesus doesn't seem particularly relevant to their life. They are comfortable. They have everything they want. They don't feel the need for anything more. All of that can change, however, when people find themselves at the end of their rope, when they are trapped in situations entirely outside of their control. Then, with nowhere else to turn, they have to figure out whether to put their trust in God or not. It can be hard. It can be scary. Joy Davidman came to such a point when her husband William Gresham called to tell her he was having a nervous breakdown and was not sure if he was coming home. Stuck at home with 2 small children she later wrote, “for the first time my pride was forced to admit that I was not, after all, 'the master of my fate'...All my defenses—all the walls of arrogance and cocksureness and self-love behind which I hid from God—went down momentarily—and God came in.” Eventually the marriage failed but her faith grew. Davidman discovered the writings of C.S. Lewis. She wrote to him, they became correspondents, and then friends and after a while, they married. Her death from cancer triggered a crisis of faith for Lewis which he chronicled in his most personal book, A Grief Observed.

People sometimes see faith as a crutch. As someone who regularly uses a cane and at times wheelchairs, I don't see a crutch as something to be ashamed of but simply as a matter of accepting the reality of the situation. Would it be better to fall or to crawl? In the disability community, dismissal of the accommodations we need is called ableism. It is also a failure to recognize that at any moment anyone can become disabled, through accident or disease. In fact, all of us will become disabled if we live long enough.

Faith in God is a recognition of the fact that we humans are not all-powerful or all-wise. We all need help. It is more obviously true when we are very young or very old, but no one is ever truly self-sufficient. Show me a successful person who was not either born well-off or helped at key times of their life and career by parents, grandparents, teachers, mentors, partners, or investors. Only the arrogant think they did it all by themselves. And arrogance, called pride in the Bible, is what C.S. Lewis called the ultimate anti-God state of mind. An arrogant person doesn't admit to needing anyone else, including God.

But faith needs an object. In what or in whom are you putting your trust? Paul writes in the verse we are examining, that you must “...believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead...” The resurrection is the reason that faith in Jesus as the Messiah went from the belief of a very small Jewish sect to a movement that spread all over the world. There have been many religious figures who said spiritually insightful things. There have been many people who claimed to be the Messiah or even God. They all died and stayed dead. And if Jesus was just another moral philosopher, you can take what he said or leave it. In fact, this is what the two disciples heading to Emmaus said about Jesus: “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” (Luke 24:20-21) And that wistful sentiment would have been the last word on Jesus—had he not defeated death.

Death is the last thing we face over which we have no control. A headline in the satirical website the Onion said, “Firefighter postpones 3 deaths.” Because, of course, when you save a life, you only save it temporarily. We all die. Even the rich and powerful. You may have seen the news story about the tech entrepreneur who was spending millions annually on extreme anti-aging and biohacking regimens only to be diagnosed with an incurable and progressive autoimmune disease. Even he wondered if he had “taken this whole longevity thing too far.” We are mortal. The disciples knew that. When Jesus died, they were grief-stricken but not surprised. When he left his tomb and appeared to them, letting them touch him and eating with them, they were stunned and even frightened. And then emboldened. Because now they knew a guy who conquered death. Most of the Twelve were martyred. None of them said that Jesus' resurrection was a hoax, even when doing so could have saved their lives. Charles Colson, Nixon's hatchet man turned Christian, points out that the most powerful men in America who got caught up in the Watergate scandal couldn't even stick to a lie when all they were facing was the loss of power and a few years of freedom, not the loss of their lives.

Michael Grant wrote that while as an historian he could not say that Jesus was raised from the dead, he did say that without the resurrection it was difficult to explain not merely the survival of Christianity but its phenomenal growth and spread. As N.T. Wright says that other followers of dead Messiahs either slink back to their previous quiet lives or latch on to the next Messiah wannabe. Instead, the disciples of Jesus went from cowering in an upper room for fear of the authorities doing to them what they did to Jesus, to boldly proclaiming him as the crucified and risen Messiah and Savior of the world. They defied the Sanhedrin, the very council that condemned Jesus, when told to stop their preaching. They went on to testify to their faith before kings and emperors. They lost their fear and gained salvation.

But salvation from what? If this life is the only one we get, they were fools for losing theirs. But not only did they trust that the man who conquered death would give them eternal life, they knew they needed to be saved from the slow death of whom they were created to be. We are all made in God's image, but we soon realize that this image in us has decayed. In some people it is barely perceptible. And we know that we are not mere animals, content to eat, survive long enough to mate and raise our offspring and then return to dust. We know we were made to do more, to fulfill our potential. But our thoughts, words and actions sabotage our lives and the lives of others. We do things we know we shouldn't and neglect things we know we should do. We know we fall short of who we should be. If we are honest, we admit we need help. Jesus can do that. Among his disciples was a man who worked as a tax collector for the occupation forces from Rome and another who was a member of a zealous Jewish political faction. He was buried in the tomb of a follower who had been a member of the Sanhedrin. His greatest missionary was a man who had been a fanatic Pharisee, devoted to arresting Jesus' followers. His church was made up of people who used to be sexually immoral, idol worshipers, thieves, drunkards, the verbally abusive, the greedy, and swindlers. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) Jesus changed their lives. He saved them not only from eternal death but from their own sinful and spiritually deadly desires. He saved them from themselves.

It may not make much of a difference what you believe about the stars, but who you believe in and trust with your life is vital. Will you put that trust in technology? Or in your flawed unaided self? Or in other fallible people? Or will you put your trust in the person who said “I am the resurrection and the life,” and then proved it by getting up from his grave and appearing to his frightened followers, scarred but healthy and no longer subject to what we assumed were the laws of biology and physics? Encountering the risen Jesus changed the men and women who had lived with him for 3 ½ years and through them he changed the world as no one has before or since.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” He also said, “I and my Father are one.” C.S. Lewis pointed out that he was either right or wrong about that. If he was wrong, he was either a lunatic—someone who could not reliably operate in reality—or a liar, someone who was pulling a scam for money or power or sex. You may have met someone who was psychotic and delusional. You have certainly met someone who tells grandiose lies about himself. Does Jesus strike you as either? If not, then the only alternative is that Jesus is right and that he is the Lord. Then ask yourself this: if the God who created this marvelous world were to become one of us, wouldn't we expect him to be like Jesus: just but loving and healing and forgiving and willing to do anything to save the creatures he made in his image? What or who is the truth you are willing to trust?

You Give Them Something

The scriptures referred to are Matthew 14:13-21.

One reason that the writers of the Constitution put the separation of church and state in the first amendment was because they understood the role religion invariably came to play when united to the government: it simply blessed the status quo. Kings were either gods, the offspring of gods or the representatives of the chief god. It's easier to get the people behind you if you portray your actions as the will of the gods, rather than your personal will. Folks aren't as likely to die to expand the nation's territory merely because the leader wants to rule it for egotistical reasons. So they say that the people whose country they are planning on invading are evil or heretics and thus they are going to war because, as they said in the crusades, “God wills it!”

Weirdly, there are Christians who think that their religion should function as an arm of the government, rather than be independent of it. Which means they really don't read the Bible. While there were schools of prophets who were sponsored by the king (1 Kings 22:6), almost all of the prophets included in the Bible were critics of those in power. Jeremiah was a thorn in the side of a number of kings. (e.g. Jeremiah 36:1-26) Hosea railed against the godless kings of Israel. (Hosea 7:3-7) Amos denounced the corruption in both Israel and Judah. (Amos 2:4-8) Again and again they remind God's people that there is a higher authority than any mere human ruler, the best of whom are imperfect and will someday die. God is the ultimate judge and king over all the earth. To forget that is to invite disaster.

There is another problem with seeing the nation's political leader as also being the nation's religious leader. It shifts the responsibility to maintain our relationship with God to that person. Julius Caesar held the office of pontifex maximus, the chief priest of the Roman state. It was a position held for life. And it had tremendous religious and political influence. Beginning with his son Augustus, it became a title automatically given to the emperors. Eventually they were also considered living gods. One of the problems they had with Christianity was that Christians called Jesus the “only Son of God” as well as “King of kings and Lord of lords.” That made Jesus and the emperor rivals.

Basically the pontifex maximus was responsible for seeing that all the religious festivals were observed and all rituals were carried out properly to appease the gods, so that they would favor the Roman empire. And Roman religion was primarily about rituals, not faith or caring about other people. The relationship with the gods was contractual. The basic principle was “I give that you might give.” You made a sacrifice to the gods, said the proper prayers and rituals and you expected a quid pro quo from them.

Unfortunately, a lot of people today also think that if they go to church, say the prayers and do the rituals, that's all that is required for them to be good with God. They think that religion is something that takes place in a special building for about an hour on Sunday. In the film Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character says, “There's only a few things I really care about in life. My pad. My ride. My family. My church. My boys. My girls. And my porn.” He's a single young man who lives however he wants the rest of the week as long as he goes to confession on Saturday, Mass on Sunday and then dinner with his large family. And he sees no contradiction in that. If you transplanted him to ancient Rome, he'd be right at home as a pagan.

In ancient religions, you didn't look to the gods to see how you should behave because the gods did not behave any better than humans do. Ancient mythologies would be a great deal shorter if you eliminated all the times Zeus couldn't keep it in his pants, or Loki wasn't pulling a scam, or the gods weren't warring with one another. A lot of myths say the earth was created from the body parts of a god or goddess killed by a different god. The gods were superior to human beings only in terms of their power, not their morality. They were like superheroes but without ethical qualities like honesty, faithfulness, or selflessness. You worshiped them not because they cared about you but because if you didn't, they could make your life miserable.

The gospel or good news of Jesus Christ caught on because it says that God loves us, so much so that his son became one of us and even died to save us. Then he rose to give us eternal life. Despite what some misinformed YouTubers say, no other god did that. Gods who died stayed dead, like Balder and in fact, all the Norse gods at Ragnarok. Osiris' wife did reassemble his dismembered body to impregnate herself but that was temporary. He went back to being dead and ruling the underworld. There is a passage in the Poetic Edda where Odin speaks of hanging on the world tree for 9 days but he did not die. And he did not do this to pay for anyone's sins but to learn for himself the magical secrets of the runes.

In contrast, in Jesus we see what God is really like: just, loving, and forgiving. He is the very image of God. (Hebrews 1:3) And in Jesus we also see what we can become, because we were created in the image of God but marred it by misusing his gifts to harm ourselves, others and our relationship with God. By trusting and uniting ourselves to Jesus, he will restore the image of God in us.

But it doesn't happen simply by doing rituals or saying certain prayers and then passively waiting for some magical transformation. It involves us serving Christ in our everyday life. We are called by Jesus to be his disciples, which is just another word for students. When I studied to be a nurse, most nursing schools were attached to hospitals. So we spent half the day in the classroom, getting the necessary medical knowledge, and half the day in the hospital, putting what we learned into practice. It bothers me that nursing is becoming more academic, not because there isn't so much more to learn—there is—but because modern nursing students spend most of their time in classrooms, especially if they are getting a Bachelor's degree in nursing, which is becoming the minimum qualification to become an RN in many states. In that case, it is a major they take along with other classes. At the end of each period in which they are studying a certain specialty, like psychiatry, obstetrics, or orthopedics, they spend a week or two shadowing working nurses at a hospital or a nursing home. As an LPN I found myself showing newly graduated nurses, soon to be BSNs, how to do certain basic procedures. They had a lot of textbook learning and managerial theory but very little practical experience doing hands-on nursing.

In contrast, Jesus sent out the Twelve, and later 72 other disciples, to get experience by preaching and healing. (Luke 10:1) He said, “As you go, preach this message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near!' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. Freely have you received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:7) In other words, do what you've seen me doing. That's the way to become more Christlike.

Today's gospel passage comes after the disciples returned from their mission. The feeding of the 5000 is the only miracle recorded in all 4 Gospels. (Matthew 14:15-21; Mark 6:35-44; Luke 9:12-17; John 6:4-13) Obviously it made a big impact. But the part that I want to draw attention to is in verses 15 and 16 of our passage. We read, “When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, 'This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.' Jesus said to them, 'They need not go away; you give them something to eat.'”

The disciples balk at this, citing the fact that they don't have enough food. So Jesus takes over. But I don't think that Jesus just said this so that they would refuse and he could show how powerful he was. He probably foresaw what would happen afterwards—the people he fed would want to make him a king. (John 6:15) And they did not know just what kind of king Jesus was called to be. So he had to dissuade them by emphasizing how he would feed them spiritually through his body and blood. (John 6:25-69)

I think he really meant that the disciples should give the people something to eat. After all, they knew the stories of how Elijah and Elisha multiplied food (1 Kings 17:14-16; 2 Kings 4:42-44) And Jesus had given them the power to heal the sick and raise the dead. What was feeding 5000 people next to that?

But they didn't think of doing that. They left it to Jesus. He was their leader. Let him handle that. And he could and did. But it let them off the hook.

And I'm afraid a lot of Christians feel that because of what Jesus did on the cross, they merely have to say, “I believe,” and then sit back until he returns. But being a Christian is not a static state; it is a learning process. It's more than just sticking your nose in a book, even if it's the Good Book. It's applying what you learn there to the real life situations you find yourself in. Is it scary? Yes. Do you sometimes feel inadequate? Yes. I can remember the first time I did certain procedures on a patient, afraid I would botch it and hurt them. But they survived and I got experience and I got better at caring for and helping others. And a lot of Christianity is caring for and helping others by not only telling them the good news but being the good news to them. As someone said, “Preach the gospel always and when necessary, use words.”

Anthropologists say there are three elements of religion: beliefs, behaviors and belonging. Many Christians tend to focus primarily on beliefs. Some Christians are more concerned with belonging to their particular denomination. But what has hurt us the most in the world is our attitude towards behaviors. For instance, we spend a lot of time thinking and talking about sexual issues, especially when it comes to what others do. That's something Skye Jethani calls “crotch Christianity.” Yet only 9% of all the commandments in the Bible are about sex. Whereas there are more than 800 verses in the Bible about our duties to the poor, the hungry, the fatherless, the widowed, the sick, the disabled, and the resident alien. Not only do a lot of Christians neglect those, some say that giving such things a high priority is wrong. Russell Moore relates how many pastors have told him that after preaching on the Sermon on the Mount, their congregants asked them where they got such woke talking points. And when the pastors tell them this is what Jesus said, the reply is that those things are weak and don't apply anymore. Yet when speaking about the criteria on which he will judge us in the end, Jesus says it is what we do or don't do to those who are destitute, diseased, imprisoned or immigrants. (Matthew 25:31-46) Neglecting them is the same as neglecting Jesus.

Don't misunderstand me. I am not saying that the church alone should or can handle every possible need. Unlike in Jesus' day we don't have an emperor who is pontifex maximus nor a god. We have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. The healthiest and most stable nations today provide a safety net for the needy and seek to help everyone in the country not only survive but thrive. Nor are these communist nations. Finland and the Scandinavian countries consistently come out on top in quality of life and happiness. It's a matter of priorities as to how to use what we have as a nation. Do we simply let a few take as much as they can or do we use what we all have produced to make things better for everyone?

The twelve disciples saw a bunch of hungry people and told Jesus to send them away to take care of it themselves. In reply, he told the disciples, “You give them something to eat.” We see a world full of people who are suffering from lack of food, water, shelter, justice, healthcare, and love. We go to God in prayer and tell him to take care of them. But after we stop talking to him, if we then listen to him, we will find him saying, “You give them something. Freely have you received, freely give.”

The Kingdom and Choices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Causes and Choices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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