Greater Than All Else

The scriptures referred to are John 10:22-30.

I have to admit that I was a bit dismayed when I realized it was Good Shepherd Sunday again. Not because I dislike shepherds or the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd but because I have preached on it for the last 20 years and I have nothing new to say about shepherds.

But that is not the same as the Bible having nothing new to say to me. So I read our passage from John and got down to verses 28 and 29, where Jesus says this about his sheep, “No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of my Father's hand.” Did you catch the startling part of that? Jesus is saying that what his Father has given him is greater than all else. And what did he give him? His sheep—that is, us. Jesus is saying that nothing is greater than us!

I immediately went to other translations and commentaries to see what they said about this. And I was surprised to see that some other translations say instead, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all.” If the phrase “is greater than all” refers to God, that changes the import of the passage. I did however notice a footnote in some of the translations which said, “Many early manuscripts [have] What my Father has given me is greater than all.” So I wanted to know which manuscripts supported this translation and I reached for A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament by Bruce Metzger. Metzger, a great Greek scholar, was the editor of the United Bible Societies standard Greek New Testament. He also chaired the Committee of Translators for the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which we use in our lectionary.

It's important to know that we do not have any of the books in the Bible fresh from the hands of the original authors. We have copies. The same, however, is true of any ancient document: the works of Homer, Aristotle, Tacitus, Caesar's Gaelic Wars, etc. When it comes to the Bible what is unique is that we have many more copies and much older ones than any of the other classical works. While the earliest copies of the other authors' books only go back to the Middle Ages, we have literally thousands of copies of the New Testament, some partial copies going back to the 100s AD. Plus we have ancient translations and quotations of the text in the writings of the early Church Fathers. In fact, you could reconstruct the text of the New Testament, with the exception of just 11 verses, from those quotations alone. As for the Old Testament, the significance of the Dead Sea scrolls is that they give us a text of the Hebrew Bible that is 1000 years older than the early medieval Masoretic text. So by studying literally thousands of copies as well as papyrus fragments, and having access to the older manuscripts which archeology has unearthed in the last 200 years, scholars are more certain of the texts underlying the Bible than those of any of the other ancient works on which we base history.

But, of course, with so many copies there are variations in the texts. Most are easily recognized as common errors we all make in copying: misspellings, a word skipped, a word repeated, etc. They do not change the message of the Bible. And they are easily discovered when we compare copies. In addition scholars have come up with logical rules for figuring out what the original reading of a sentence probably is. Older manuscripts are more likely to be closer to the original texts, of course. Because humans like to “clean up” hard sayings, more difficult readings are more likely to be original than ones where the difficulty is smoothed out. Again because explanatory phrases are longer, shorter versions of sayings are more likely to be original. Textual criticism is a recognized science.

Anyway, without getting too technical, there are a lot of older manuscripts supporting the translation in our lectionary, though Metzger says it is “impossible Greek.” He sounds like my old Greek teacher who could not bring himself to say that Greek was highly irregular but just that it was “eccentric.” This of a language where word order means nothing and endings tell you whether a word is the subject or the direct object or how it relates to the other words in a sentence. Unfortunately there are lots of endings and they combine and elide so that they are not readily decoded. Which is why, though we were told not to by our Greek exegesis teacher, we all bought analytical Greek lexicons to help us untangle the non-obvious forms of the words we encountered. To me at least, labeling a sentence in Greek as impossible makes as much sense as saying that a portrait can't possibly be by Picasso because he could draw people better than that.

While I am not a Greek scholar and therefore unable to challenge Metzger's expertise, I will point out that our reading is supported by the older manuscripts. As well as by the principle that the more difficult a reading is, the more likely it is the original, rather than one in which the grammar was fixed. Speaking of which, John's Greek is rudimentary at best. (Luke, the only Gentile writer in the Bible, has the best Greek.) And finally, though Metzger oversaw the NRSV translation, this variant appears in it. Perhaps the other translators outvoted him in this case.

This means we can at least consider the implications of the idea that “What the Father has given me is greater than all else.” Whereas the other reading emphasizes the fact that no one can snatch us from God's hand because he is greater than anything else, this reading emphasizes the reason he holds onto us so strongly. We are more precious to him than anything else. But does that actually fit in with what the Bible says elsewhere?

Well, it says, “Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.” (Psalm 36:5) The psalmist is talking about his love and faithfulness to us, his people. Which makes sense since the Bible also tells us that God is love. (1 John 4:8) But the size of God's love is not the issue. Love always has an object. Of course, the natural object of the Father's love is the Son. And indeed John's gospel says, “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hands.” (John 3:35) So what makes us think God loves us as much as this verse seems to say?

Real love is revealed in how one acts. God created us in his image and blessed us. (Genesis 1:27-28) Even after we messed up, God doesn't stop trying to win us back. That's what the whole story of the Bible is about. He chooses the children of Abraham as his people, through whom the rest of the world is to be blessed. (Genesis 12:1-3) Even when his people turn from him, indulging in idolatry and injustice, God does not give up on them. In Lamentations, which is about the judgment and fall of Jerusalem, it says, “Though he brings grief, he will show compassion. So great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.” (Lamentations 3:32-33) Zephaniah, whose theme is the Day of the Lord, in other words, the day of judgment, nevertheless says, “The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17) We hear all the time about singing to the Lord but here God is so delighted in us that he will sing and rejoice over us!

How great is God's love for us? As the famous verse says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his unique son so that whoever trusts in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) But God did not send Jesus merely to teach us. He had previously sent lots of prophets to do that. We still didn't obey his commandments not to lie, steal, kill or harm one another. (Exodus 20:1-17) It's not that we lacked the knowledge to obey him; we lacked the love to do it. If you love someone and they ask you to do something, you do it. If they ask you to stop doing something, you stop. (John 14:21) People are motivated by what they love more than anything else. Unfortunately, we love other things, and especially ourselves, more than we love God.

God should have written us off. He doesn't because he loves us. So he sends his son into hostile territory on what amounts to a suicide mission in order to save us. And not because we deserve it. As Paul says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) It wasn't because we were particularly lovable either. As 1 John says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

It does no good, however, if this love is one-sided. We are meant to love God back. But we need help with that—which God provides. As it says in Romans, “...the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5) But this love is not just some warm fuzzy feelings for God or for other people. Jesus prayed to his Father that “the love with which You loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:26) And what kind of love is that? Jesus says, “This is why the Father loves me—because I lay down my life... (John 10:17) And for whom does he do this? “...I lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:15)

Jesus loves us with a self-sacrificial love. Which means that is the kind of love God has for us. A parent will lay down her life to save her child. Even if the child is ungrateful. Because the child is more dear to the parent than anything else.

And so the rest of scripture does support this translation of the verse in question. But if it is translated the other way, the verses read, “No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all and no one can snatch them out of the Father's hand. The Father and I are one.” In this translation, the emphasis is on the strength with which Jesus hold onto us. It is the very same strength as that of the Father, who is greater than anything or anybody, because Jesus and the Father are one.

That means that when we are dealing with Jesus, we are not dealing with some lesser created being to whom God has delegated things like our redemption; we are dealing with God himself. John puts this fact at the very start of his gospel when he says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) How do you come to know a person? Through their word and deeds. God expresses who he is through Jesus, by what he says and what he does. Which means God himself—not some secondary creature—is willing to die for us. That's how much he loves us.

And again, we are to love him back. And because he loves others, we are to love them too. Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment—to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35) He loved us enough to die for us, and so we are to love each other enough to die for one another. Such a love is so unusual, so remarkable that the world will sit up and take notice.

We have gotten very good at spreading the words of the gospel. We have put them in books and on billboards and on radio and on TV and in movies and on the internet. But only a few Christians have evangelized in the way Jesus commanded us—through self-sacrificial love. But we see it in the early Christians who did not flee the cities during the plague but nursed the sick at the risk of their own lives and so caught the attention of pagans. We see it in the English town of Eyam, which, at the urging of its clergy, quarantined itself from its neighbors to stop from spreading the Black Death in 1600s. 267 of the 334 people in the town—80%—died We see it in Father Damian who was a missionary to the Kingdom of Hawaii in the 1800s and ministered to the people in a leper colony, eventually contracting the disease himself. We see it in Corrie ten Boom and her family who hid Jews from the Nazis and who were sent to a concentration camp. The Jews they hid stayed safe but only Corrie survived the camp. These Christians did not merely communicate the gospel with their lips but with their lives.

They did this to express the true heart of the gospel, the good news, which is the love of God demonstrated in Jesus' sacrifice for us. And they did it assured of the fact that no one could snatch them from the hand of God. As Paul wrote, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39) Nothing, not even death, can take us away from the God we see in Jesus, who loves us more than we can ever know or imagine.

Facing the Facts

The scriptures referred to are Acts 9:1-20 and John 21:1-19.

The leader of the A-Team repeatedly said, “I love it when a plan comes together.” As a preacher I love it when ideas and observations from what I have just been reading, watching and listening to during the week come together with the lectionary. It's like God has been dropping bread crumbs along the path leading me to some useful insight.

This week I have been reading a book by historian and religious studies scholar Jeffrey Burton Russell called Exposing Myths about Christianity: A Guide to Answering 145 Viral Lies and Legends. In his introduction he says, “Myths often arise from bias, which is different from point of view. A point of view is open to discussion on the basis of evidence. Bias, on the other hand, is a prejudice that filters out everything that doesn't fit a preformed conception.” Or as he summarizes the distinction later in the book: “point of view develops according to evidence; bias refuses to adjust to evidence.”

The other idea I got this week was from Phillip Cary's series of lectures on Luther from the Great Courses. In discussing the controversies between Luther and his enemies, Dr. Cary distinguishes between the desire for truth and the desire for certainty in being right. He points out that it is not destructive to think one's beliefs are true. That is the nature of believing something. The problem enters in when the desire to be right with absolute certainty is stronger than the desire for the truth. If you sincerely desire to know the truth, he says, you are glad when you discover that you are wrong about something so you can correct it. If you cannot tolerate uncertainty that you're right, you will reject anything that might force you to reconsider your position.

For instance, for millennia the biggest problem with surgery was keeping patients from getting infections afterwards. Imagine then, in the late 1800s, a doctor learns of the new germ theory and the importance of a surgeon washing his hands. He tries it and his patients' infection rates plummet. He is happy to learn he was wrong but that now he knows the truth. But another doctor, who is certain that he is right in what he learned as a medical student 4 decades ago, is more likely to become defensive and refuse to listen to these weird new ideas about invisible entities that cause infection. Both doctors want to be right. One is willing to change when he sees he isn't. His point of view has developed. The other is absolutely certain he is already right and will not change even when there is evidence that he is wrong. His bias prevents him from taking in or making good use of newly discovered facts. And that's bad for him and for his patients.

As the title character in Doctor Who once said, “The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.”

So how does all of this come together with our lectionary? In our passage from the book of Acts we read of Saul who not only thinks that the disciples of Jesus are wrong but that their ideas are so dangerous that they must be wiped out— not just the ideas but the disciples as well. Saul was one of those zealous Pharisees who thought that if every Jew obeyed the Torah perfectly for just one day, the Messiah would come, end the current evil age and usher in the Messianic age and the kingdom of God. So the followers of Jesus, by preaching that their dead rabbi was the Messiah and that he was alive again and that all one had to do was repent and put one's trust in him, were spreading a terrible and destructive heresy. Saul was certain he was right. The fact that hundreds said they had seen the risen Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:6) and that thousands believed them, even as far away as the Jewish community in Damascus, was not enough evidence for him that there may be something to this. Saul didn't want to investigate their claims. He wanted to eradicate them.

We all know what happens next: on the way to Damascus, Saul experiences a bright light, falls to the ground and is confronted by the risen Jesus. He is blind for 3 days, during which he fasts and prays. A disciple named Ananias is told in a vision to go to Saul, lay hands on him and heal him. When he does so, Saul regains his physical sight and more importantly, he sees Jesus in a new way. At the end of our passage we are told that Saul “began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, 'He is the Son of God.'”

His conversion to this new point of view sounds instantaneous. And, let's face it, if you thought a guy was dead but then met and talked to him, you'd change your mind. But Saul had 3 days where he was blind and occupied his time fasting and praying. The fasting could have been a sign of his repenting his former position. But I bet the praying was not one-sided. In his account of his conversion in his letter to the Galatians he says, “Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. For I did not receive it or learn it from any human source; instead I received it by a revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1:11-12) It seems that during those 3 days of fasting and praying, he was undergoing a change of not only his heart but also of his mind. Everything he thought he knew about the Messiah and what he should be like and what he should do was being challenged by his encounter with Jesus. Saul knew the Hebrew Bible backwards and forwards. We are told that when the risen Jesus was with 2 disciples on the way to Emmaus, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things written about himself in all the scriptures.” (Luke 24:27) And it looks like he did the same thing with Saul over those 3 days.

So Saul, who sent by the high priest to arrest followers of Jesus, had now become a follower of Jesus. How was this news received by others? We are told “All who heard him were amazed.” (Acts 9:21) This certainly applied to the disciples in Damascus. Like Ananias, they were probably initially afraid of Saul. Was this some kind of trick? But we are told that Saul became “all the more empowered.” Which must mean he was making a greater and greater impact, ie, he was making more and more converts. The Jewish residents of Damascus were...well, the Greek word can mean “stirred up, confounded, bewildered, thrown into confusion.” They did not know how to react at first. Wasn't this guy supposed to be on our side? What's happening here?

As we said, Saul's change took everyone by surprise. Some looked at what happened to him and what he was now proclaiming and they switched their point of view. The Christians said, “He is truly one of us!” And some of the Jews in the synagogues said, “He must be right about Jesus being the Messiah and the Son of God!”

But remember how we said if people are biased, they get defensive rather than change their point of view in the light of new evidence? Some of his fellow Jews were not saying to themselves, “Is there something to what he says? Does it make sense? Does it fit with what the scriptures say?” No, rather than reconsider their stance, they decided on the age-old strategy of killing the messenger. And so Saul has to escape by having his fellow Christians lower him in a basket through a hole in the city walls at night.

When he came to Jerusalem the disciples there were also afraid of Saul, unsure that he really was a follower of Jesus. A disciple named Barnabas stepped up and vouched for Saul, telling what happened in Damascus. Thereafter we are told that Saul “moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord.” (Acts 9:28)

Changing your mind is a key part of being a Christian. It is literally what the Greek word for “repent” means. Yes, we are to hold fast to the faith but to think that you know everything about God is arrogant. The essentials of the faith are straightforward: it is Jesus—who he is, what he has done for us and what he is doing in us, and what our response should be. Of him and his promises we can be certain. There are other important but not absolutely essential things that we believe and do that are not likely to change. But over 2000 years some beliefs and practices arose in the churches in response to historical events. And they may have been seen as necessary at the time. Some may still be helpful; others are not. But we must not let them stand in the way of bringing people to Jesus, because he is essential.

One such traditional barrier we will hear about in a few weeks, which was the question of whether Jesus was the savior of the Jews alone or of the Gentiles as well. As it turns out, Jesus makes Saul, this tradition-bound zealous Jewish rabbi, an apostle to the Gentiles. And eventually he writes, “You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26-28) But to accept this, the apostles and the earliest Christians, all Jews, had to change their point of view on something considered essential to Judaism: circumcision. They also had to decide that it was not essential that Gentile Christians keep kosher.

Among Gentile Christians, there were other controversies, like whether they had to become vegetarians because the only butcher shops in town were attached to pagan temples and sold meat that was previously offered to idols. Some Christians had no problem eating such meat because there is only one God and the idols weren't real gods. Others could not in good conscience go along with this. Saul said to follow your conscience but be willing to forgo what bothers your sibling in Christ if it threatens to destroy their faith in Jesus. (1 Corinthians 8) The self-sacrificial love we see in Jesus is our model for behaving toward others.

And in Jesus we see a way that we should be willing to change our point of view. Peter denied Jesus right when Christ was on trial for his life. Luke even tells us that Jesus turned and looked at Peter after his third denial. (Luke 22:61) Judas betrayed Jesus but Peter was there at his trial and didn't stand up for Jesus. He actually disowned him—3 times. How would most leaders have regarded someone who did that to them?

In our passage from John, we read that after eating breakfast together on the shores of Galilee, the risen Jesus asks Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Notice Jesus doesn't use the nickname he gave him: Petros in Greek, Cephas in Aramaic, both of which means Rock. Because the fisherman had shifted like sand when he should have stood firm. That says to me that Jesus' question is not rhetorical. He is saying, “Do you really love me above everyone and everything else?”

Peter says, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And Jesus doesn't come back with, “Well, it sure didn't look like that when you denied even knowing who I was when my life was in the balance!” Instead he just says, “Feed my lambs.”

Again Jesus asked him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” And again Peter says, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” What's interesting is that the first two times he asks, Jesus is using the Greek verb agapao, meaning the kind of love with which God loves us. Peter replies using the verb phileo, meaning the love of a good friend. It may be that, having rashly promised he would be willing to go to prison and death rather than deny Jesus, Peter is being more humble about himself. (Luke 22:33) He's saying, “I love you, Lord, but I now know my weakness.” Jesus simply says, “Tend my sheep.”

The third time Jesus switches to Peter's preferred verb. “Simon, son of John, do you love me like a friend?” And Peter feels hurt by being asked a third time. I don't think he realized just then that Jesus was in essence allowing him to take back those 3 denials. Peter says, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” And Jesus says, “Feed my sheep.” Peter is reinstated as a friend and disciple and apostle of Jesus.

So here we see Jesus showing us how to change our point of view on someone we would likely be biased against: a person who had let us down. Had we been Jesus, we would have written Peter off. We would most likely say,“You let me down when I could have really used your support. You are outta here!” We would not have let the evidence of Peter's remorse and renewed loyalty sway us. But the real Jesus forgives and restores Peter, the penitent sinner. The real Jesus gives him, and us, another chance.

Jesus also tells Peter that he would one day have to make good on his promise to go to prison and to death for Jesus. But this time Peter would not chicken out. As we saw in last week's passage from Acts, when the very same high priest who condemned Jesus at his trial rebukes Peter for not shutting up about it, Peter says, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” (Acts 5:29) He proclaims the risen Jesus as savior and pretty much dares the high priest to do something about it. Jesus was right about Peter.

We all believe we are right. But if we want to actually be right, we have to be willing to admit we may be wrong about certain things and about certain people. We cannot let our biases get in the way of considering new data and maybe updating our point of view. We are not to be gullible, nor should we abandon the essentials, but neither are we to double down on our preformed opinions because we don't like what the facts are revealing to us. After all, that same high priest knew that Jesus was no longer in the tomb, and that the same men who had been cowering behind doors were now proclaiming Jesus' resurrection to his face. Later on he'd know that Saul, whom he had sent to arrest Christians in Damascus, was now saying he too had seen the risen Jesus and that he was in fact the Messiah and Son of God. But the high priest wasn't going to change his mind. He was certain he was right, regardless of what the facts said.

On the other hand, the once equally certain Saul, who shared his name with the first king of Israel, eventually changed it to Paul, which means “little.” I think it was his personal reminder not to be too puffed up or too big to face the facts or to change his mind about what our gracious and loving God is willing to do to save sinners like him. 

That's the Spirit

The scriptures referred to are Acts 5:27-32 and John 20:19-31.

Fairy tales usually end with “And they lived happily ever after.” And you can argue that's why they end at that point: the resolution of the original conflict or the granting of the fondest wish. No need to go further. The second act of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods imagines what could happen after the stories of several fairy tale characters. They are not all that happy. And several movies based on “real life” stories end on a high note, whereas the lives of the real people depicted continued on and sometimes did not go well. When you tell a story you generally end it at a point you select for an effect. Real life rarely gives such a neat ending.

The gospels end the story of Jesus with the resurrection. And yet, because the writers are recounting what really happened, none of them depict the story as completely over. The original ending of Mark's gospel has the angel tell the women Jesus is risen and says: “Then they went out and ran from the tomb, for terror and bewilderment had seized them. And they said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” (Mark 16:8) It's rather unsatisfying. We know the women told others at some point because how else would we know what happened? Which is why later manuscripts added a longer ending that conflates events from the other 3 gospels. Many scholars think Mark's original ending may have been lost.

Matthew ends with the Great Commission, which is a good way to finish. However it implies that the story continues with the apostles which Jesus sends out. (Matthew 28: 18-20) Luke ends with Jesus' ascension but not before he tells the disciples to stay in Jerusalem and await power from on high. (Luke 24:49-53) That happens at Pentecost, told in the book of Acts, where Luke continues the story of the Jesus movement.

John ends with a note that his gospel does not contain everything Jesus did. (John 21:25) John's gospel seems to be deliberately not recounting the events already available in the other gospels and instead supplementing the story of Jesus with things only he has knowledge of.

And while he doesn't include Pentecost he alone has this moment when the risen Christ breathes on the disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Jesus knows the love story of God reaching out to humanity is not over and is preparing the disciples to take over spreading the gospel. And knowing that they will encounter situations he hadn't, he is giving them authority to act in his stead.

But Jesus isn't simply setting up a hierarchy, much less a bureaucracy, to do these things. First he is filling them with the Holy Spirit. Because there's nothing worse than people in power doing things in the wrong spirit.

Some people, when they receive power, become so focused on the rules that they are to enforce, they act as if the rules are more important than people are. Decades ago, in the early days of my nursing, I had a patient dying of brain cancer. Her pain meds weren't working anymore. I asked her doctor if he couldn't prescribe anything stronger. He said no, because she might get addicted! I pointed out she was going to die within the next 2 weeks but to no avail. The rule was applied as if one size fits all. Yet 8 years ago when my dad was on hospice he had a standing order for morphine so that he wouldn't die in pain. In the interim medical authorities had realized that a blanket refusal to give certain drugs because they can be addictive shouldn't apply to dying people who are suffering.

Jesus encountered this “rules over people” mentality when he healed on the Sabbath. The scribes and Pharisees acted as if what he was working on the Sabbath, which was prohibited. But Jesus wasn't asking for money or doing any of the 39 categories of work forbidden by the rabbis. And more importantly, as he asked, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or evil, to save a life or destroy it?” (Mark 3:4) Jesus was not doing work but giving help to people in distress, which is a good thing. His critics had gotten the purpose of the Sabbath laws wrong. “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath,” said Jesus. (Mark 2:27) Its purpose is to give people rest, which again is good. It was not intended to create a barrier to prevent us from acting with compassion. A person filled with the Holy Spirit of the God who is love would know this. Among the qualities Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit is kindness. (Galatians 5:22-23)

On the other hand, some people think that rules or laws or regulations are inherently bad. Thus so-called “sovereign citizens” think they are not subject to the US government and its laws. So they won't get driver's licenses or social security cards or pay taxes. I wonder if they feel that food manufacturers needn't follow the regulations against selling food that is spoiled or contains toxic chemicals? Or that drug makers need not test the medicines they produce to see they are safe and effective and have reliable dosages in each pill? Some rules, laws and regulations are good. Some need to be revised and made better. Some are bad and need to be repealed. But even good rules need to be applied with common sense. And no law is immune from being abused or misused.

Jesus indicated that some laws of the Torah needed to be dropped or changed, like the dietary laws (Mark 7:18-19) or the rules against touching lepers (Mark 1:40-41; cf. Leviticus 13:45-46) or touching menstruating women or touching the dead. (Luke 8:43-56; cf. Leviticus 15:19-27; Numbers 19: 14, 16) He broke these laws, as he did the Sabbath laws, whenever he healed such people.

But he felt some laws needed to be obeyed in a more serious and deeper way. He included in the commandment against murder the anger and contempt that lead to murder. (Matthew 5:21-22) He said that the commandment against adultery also applied to the lustful thoughts that lead to it. (Matthew 5:27-28) He said that the commandment to love your neighbor included your enemy. (Matthew 5:43-48) In fact Jesus said your neighbor is anyone you encounter, regardless of race or religion. (Luke 10:25-27)

No one can state every instance in which a law should apply nor every circumstance in which it doesn't. Even the Bible can't cover every possible application of and exception to God's laws. Which is why God sends the Spirit of his Son to live in us (Romans 8:9) and help us discern the truth. (John 14:17; 16:13)

Sadly, the church doesn't always trust the Spirit to do this. Just as the Pharisees expanded the Torah with the Oral Law, specific rules and extensions not recorded in scripture, so too the church has tried to cover every conceivable permutation of God's moral principles and not leave anything to discretion. But as Jesus objected to the rabbinic overreach of the traditional rules, so too he would probably have trouble with some of the things Christians have elevated to equal value with his commandments.

When I attended Wheaton College, Billy Graham's alma mater, I had to sign a pledge not to drink or smoke or join secret oath-bound societies or use traditional playing cards or dance! It didn't cause me problems because my mom was a nurse and my dad had a drinking problem and I can't dance. I knew from my mother's dinner table discussions of cancer patients that smoking is inherently unhealthy. And while scripture condemns drunkenness but not alcohol, it is toxic to the brain and some people shouldn't touch it because of their susceptibility to alcoholism. Weirdly in the 1970s, they hadn't explicitly forbidden recreational drugs. But secret oath-bound societies? It turns out they meant the Freemasons. And apparently playing cards were verboten because they could be used for gambling and fortunetelling. So the students bought Rook decks. Dancing? This code was drawn up in 1867. These days they've dropped some of the more outdated rules.

The real temptation in multiplying such rules is that it can divert folks from thinking about the more fundamental commandments to love God and to love others. You can see this in certain very strict religious groups and cults. They may have stringent rules about certain behaviors but not about, say, lying, at least to outsiders. They may expect chastity from the laity but let their leaders get away with sexual harassment and assault. They may require financial information from all members to ensure they are tithing but not hold the leadership to accountability in how they spend the funds.

Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth and one sign a Christian group is trying to quench the Spirit is when some folks act or speak dishonestly or try to spin the truth. Proverbs says, “The Lord abhors a person who lies, but those who deal truthfully are his delight.” (Proverbs 12:22)

Another sign that people are not following the Spirit is when they are ruled by fear or use fear to lead others. Paul says, “For God did not give us a Spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:7) If you trust God you need not fear. And you can trust him because God loves you. As it says in 1 John, “There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear...” (1 John 4:18) Fear is antithetical to faith and love.

A big giveaway that people are not being led by the Spirit is when they don't show compassion or love for others. As Paul says, “...the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:5) And 1 John says, “But whoever has the world's possessions and sees his brother or sister in need and shuts off his compassion against him or her, how does the love of God reside in such a person? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue but in deed and truth.” (1 John 3:17-18) Ultimately, though, “The person who does not love does not know God for God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

The reason we need the Spirit of God in us is that laws tend to be external and our problems are internal. As Jesus said, “For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All of these evils come from within and defile a person.” (Mark 7:21-23) That's why God says in Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you; I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27) What we need more than an ever expanding list of external laws is a change of heart.

We need to internalize God's laws. In Jeremiah God speaks of making a new covenant with his people. “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. I will be their God and they will be my people. People will no longer need to teach their neighbors and relatives to know me. For all of them, from the least important to the most important, will know me...” (Jeremiah 31:33-34) We will no longer need to be taught about God and what he expects of us because his law will be a part of us. We will follow “the law of the life-giving Spirit in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:2) and be free from the rigid written law which cannot take into account intentions or make compassionate exceptions.

Laws are not all bad. They can be like training wheels, helping us stay upright while following Jesus. One day we will internalize the necessary sense of balance and we won't need the training wheels any longer. The Spirit provides us with that sense of balance that keeps us from veering off into justice without mercy or into mercy without justice, from falling into legalism on one side or lawlessness on the other.

Christianity is essentially about becoming like Jesus. But as C.S. Lewis points out, becoming like Jesus is more like painting a portrait than following rules. Christians are to be living portraits of Jesus. And he is the image of God, which is what we were originally supposed to be. (Genesis 1:27) So let the Spirit select your palette, move your brush, help you bring out what makes Jesus Jesus. And as you become more like him, you will find that you are becoming more yourself, the person whom God created you to be: the image of the God who is love. (1 John 3:2) 

Unprecedented

The scriptures referred to are 1 Corinthians 15:19-26 and Luke 24:1-12.

We are currently in the middle of Passover, in which our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate God saving them in a meal with a spiritual significance. We just celebrated Maundy Thursday where we remembered the meal at which Jesus took bread and said, “This is my body,” and wine, saying, “This is my blood.” We are also in the middle of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast during daylight hours for a whole month. We just finished Lent, which commemorates Jesus fasting for 40 days in the wilderness while resisting temptations. Fasting and sacred meals are not unknown in religions other than Christianity.

Nor is the idea of a central religious figure who gives moral instructions from God unique. Moses brings us the Torah, God's covenant which includes the Ten Commandments. Muhammad recited the Quran which Muslims believe is God's final revelation. Jesus summarizes the moral law as loving God and loving other people. Almost all religions have some form of the Golden Rule, treating others as we want to be treated.

So are all religions the same, as some say?

Certainly there is a large overlap when it comes to moral laws. No religion approves of treachery or theft or murder or adultery or lying. All approve of justice and helping the poor and the sick and the hungry. Although only Jesus said we must also love our enemies.

And while all hold their central religious figure in the highest esteem—Muslims disapprove of depicting not only God but his prophet Muhammad—only followers of Jesus say he is not just a prophet but God himself. All 3 religions agree that it would be blasphemy to say that of Moses or Muhammad.

All 3 men suffered opposition, often while dealing with unbelievers. But only Jesus was arrested, whipped and killed by his opponents.

Both Moses and Muhammad turned their followers into armies and led them into battle to conquer the Transjordan and Mecca, respectively. But Jesus never led an army. When one of his followers cut off a man's ear while defending him against arrest, Jesus healed the man. And told his followers to put away the sword.

All 3 religious leaders died. Moses was buried somewhere on Mt. Nebo. Muhammad was buried in Medina, over which they built a Green Dome. Jesus was buried in a tomb owned by a wealthy follower, Joseph of Arimathea.

Moses and Muhammed remain where their bodies were laid. Jesus does not.

Judaism got its start from the liberation of the Jews from slavery, and Islam from Muhammad preaching in Mecca. Christianity got its start with the resurrection of Jesus.

You may say, “Wait! Didn't Christianity start with Jesus' preaching and ministry?” Yes, but it would have ended with his crucifixion. As we said last Sunday, when he died on the cross, he was seen by all as a failed Messiah. And he didn't die peacefully of old age, having conquered his enemies. A young man, he died a painful and humiliating death at the hands of his enemies. He didn't even go down fighting. Nobody found his being nailed to a tree, flanked by criminals, as either heroic or inspiring.

And then on the morning of the third day, something happened. Something so unprecedented that all of the gospels stop quoting prophesies from the Old Testament that foreshadowed the other events in his life. This is new.

It's so unprecedented not even his followers believed it at first. When the women, who went to his tomb and found it open and empty, reported that he is risen, the men dismissed it as hysteria. When the men encounter the risen Jesus, they are afraid that he is a ghost. Even when most of them have seen him and believe, one follower who wasn't there at the time refused to believe until he touched him. After all people don't just come back from the dead. Everyone knew that. Except, apparently, Jesus.

It's so unprecedented that no other historical religious figure has been alleged to come back to life after being dead—not Buddha, not Moses, not Muhammad, not Baha'u'llah, not Guru Nanak, not Zarathustra. Only Jesus.

But how do we know he really rose? For one thing, Christianity would have been easy to smother in the cradle, so to speak, if Jesus stayed dead. The officials knew where his body was. All they had to do was produce it. Nobody ever did.

But what if the disciples stole it? To what end? They all died for their faith. None recanted and said, “No! Don't kill me! I'll tell you what we did with the body.” Charles Colson, who served under Nixon, pointed out that the most powerful men in this country couldn't keep secrets about Watergate for 3 weeks and they weren't facing torture and death. He couldn't believe 12 men could keep a secret for 40 years and then die for a lie. Colson became a Christian.

Michael Grant in his book Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, said that as an historian of the Roman empire, he can't state that the resurrection of Jesus happened. But he also said that without the resurrection, he can't explain the persistence and growth of Christianity in the aftermath of Jesus' execution. It's pretty obvious that all the disciples believed that Jesus rose and that he spoke to, touched, ate with and coherently taught them for 40 days. Again there is no precedent for a palpable and not ghostly experience of someone known to have died.

So what difference does it make? Dead men have left us a lot of good moral instruction and wisdom. Why is it essential that Jesus rose from the dead?

There are at least 2 good reasons. One is precisely that there are so many people with so many ideas about God, and yet only one whom God chose to resurrect. Whom out of that number would you believe? Wouldn't it be the one who says, “I am the resurrection and the life,”—and then proves it? (John 11:25)

But secondly, most of the morality that Jesus teaches depends on the reality of resurrection. Just as his mission as a Messiah would be a failure had he stayed dead, so would his instructions likely result in failure if death had the last word. Jesus says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:27-28) That's brave. Some would say that's a good way to get yourself killed. It only makes sense if death is not to be feared. And it is not to be feared if it is not the end of you.

And in fact Jesus says, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34; cf. Matthew 16:24; Luke 9:23) He even says, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:27) We don't see people nailed to trees outside the entrances to cities as his original audience did, so to us it might sound like Jesus is demanding we wear a tasteful cross around the neck. But in his day, under the heel of a ruthless military empire, the cross was a fearsome, horrible instrument of death. Giving your allegiance to Jesus above everything else, including the “divine” emperor, could get you executed. Which again only made sense if death was not the very last thing you would ever experience.

Fear of death often stops us from doing what we know is right. Why do people go along with injustice and oppression if not for the fear of dying? Timid people do not change the world for the better. But from prison, contemplating the possibility of being executed by Nero, Paul writes, “For me living is Christ and dying is gain.” (Philippians 1:21) He had met the risen Jesus and death no longer frightened him. So essential is Jesus' resurrection that Paul said, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless; you are still in your sins. Furthermore, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone.” (1 Corinthians 15:17-19) If you only live once, living a self-sacrificial life makes no sense.

The resurrection also gives us the courage to do the right thing even if it means failing in the eyes of the world. As Jesus appeared to do when he was arrested and executed. Along with fear of death, fear of failure and fear of looking like a failure often hinders us from doing what we should. No one wants to be a loser. So we play it safe. We don't go against the tide of popular opinion; we don't stand up to the powers-that-be which can crush us; we don't say, “There is a better way” if the results will not be of immediate benefit to everyone. Every day people go along with the way things have always been done because they fear that if they don't and insist on much needed changes, they will not carry the day and they will look like failures. Jesus stood up to the religious and political establishment of his day and said, “You're wrong! This is how you should act: with love and mercy and forgiveness.” And they killed him. He would have been just another idealistic loser—if he hadn't risen again.

We would never have heard of him, either. Moses was a former prince of Egypt. Muhammad was a successful merchant. Siddharta Gautama, the Buddha, was a prince. Jesus was a poor working man. Almost all the history we have was written by and about the educated and the rich and the successful. What we know about the lives of women and slaves and the poor has to be pieced together from passing references in the histories of great men. What does it take for us to not only remember a poor working man executed as a criminal but to see him as more than just a man? His unprecedented resurrection from the dead. Which galvanized his followers to face off against one of the most ruthless empires in history and proclaim until their deaths that Jesus Christ is the risen King of kings and Lord of lords.

Jesus is the Lord of Life. His last enemy is death. (1 Corinthians 15:26) The gates of the grave tried to close on him and he blew the doors off. His tomb became the womb of eternal life. The valley of the shadow of death will one day be flooded with the light of his life. And it started in cemetery nearly 2000 years ago. The dark night of death and decay is almost over; God's new creation is dawning. The Son has risen.

The Lord is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Flesh and Blood

The scriptures referred to are Exodus 12:1-14 and 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.

With our 24/7 world, with crazy work schedules and instant dishes and fast food, we may be seeing an end to the big homemade family holiday meal. It's a lot of work. And what's more, such meals don't have the meaning they used to.

A Jewish joke about the description of all their holidays goes like this: “They tried to kill us; we survived; let's eat!” Yet the Passover is not just an excuse for Jewish families to get together and eat. It has a serious meaning. God says, “This day will become a memorial for you, and you will celebrate it as a festival to the Lord...So you will keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because on this very day I brought your regiments out from the land of Egypt, and so you will keep this day perpetually as a lasting ordinance.” (Exodus 12:14, 17) The meal—the unleavened bread and the whole roasted lamb—was a form of thanksgiving for what God did when he took the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.

Over time the meal became more elaborate and the foods took on specific meanings. Besides the lamb, an egg represents spring and new life, bitter herbs represent the bitterness of slavery, salt water represents the tears of the slaves, a kinda applesauce made with nuts, wine and apples called haroset represents the mortar the Jews used to build for the Egyptians and so on. The cracker-like matzah represents the unleavened flatbread the Israelites had to eat because there would be no time for it to rise before they left Egypt. There are 4 cups of wine, plus an additional one for the prophet Elijah should he return. The meal comes with a liturgy called the Haggadah, which leads the family through the meal and explains the rituals. There are questions for the children to ask and songs to sing.

We don't know how much of this had developed by Jesus' time but we know there was at least the lamb, the bread and the wine. And Jesus takes the last two elements and repurposes them.

John the Baptist called Jesus “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29) This is obviously a reference to the Passover lamb. This perfect male lamb was killed at sunset. God says, “They will take some of the blood and put it on the two sideposts and top of the doorframe of the houses where they will eat it....The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, so that when I see the blood I will pass over you, and this plague will not fall on you to destroy you when I attack the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 12:7, 13) Yet Jesus doesn't do anything with the lamb, possibly because the people had not smeared the blood on their doorframes since the original Passover. (After all, for the first 40 years after leaving Egypt, they lived in tents.)

But bread was considered the staff of life (Leviticus 26:26) and wine was called the “blood of the grape” (Deuteronomy 32:14) and Jesus used them. And just as the descendants of the people at the first Passover have continued to celebrate their covenant with God, Christians have continued to celebrate the meal Jesus used to inaugurate his new covenant. (Acts 2:42, 46; 20:7)

It was so important that Paul was concerned that as long as it was just another part of a communal meal called the Agape or Love Feast, its significance was being lost. Everyone was eating as much as they could and in some cases not leaving enough for others. This is hardly in the spirit of Jesus giving his body and blood for all. So Paul says, people should eat at home before coming together for the Lord's Supper. Paul writes in his first letter to the Christians at Corinth, “For every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. For this reason, whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself first, and in this way let him eat the bread and drink of the cup.” (1 Corinthians 11:26-28) Partaking of the Lord's Supper in a manner inappropriate to its true value is a sin. Which sounds like this meal is much more than merely symbolic.

The church at large got the message. By the time the 1^st century Christian manual called the Didache was written, the Lord's Supper or Eucharist (which is Greek for “thanksgiving”) was a separate sacred meal of just the bread and the wine shared every Lord's day (Sunday). It was accompanied by confession of sins, specific prayers for the cup and for the bread and a prayer of thanksgiving after Holy Communion. That's been the pattern ever since.

Why is this act of eating bread and drinking wine so important to Christians? Well, in addition to being commanded by Jesus, the elements of bread and wine were basic foods of that day. In one sense, the Eucharist reminds us that Jesus is as vital to our spiritual health as food and drink are to our physical health.

But if it is just a metaphor why don't we simply talk about it, like we do the parables, rather than actually consume food and drink?

Again, there was precedent in the Passover, a physical meal with a spiritual meaning. Paul calls Christ “our Passover.” (1 Corinthians 5:7) As the lambs' blood saved the Israelites from death, so the blood of Jesus shed on the cross saves us from eternal death or separation from God. Jesus says of the bread, “This is my body” and of the wine, “This is my blood.” Most of the church for most of its history has taken this to mean that Jesus is really present in the meal, though they differ in their explanations of exactly how.

But I also think this was reinforced by the church's reaction to Gnosticism. This was a philosophy that said that the physical is evil and only the spirit is good. So our physical creation was made by an ignorant or even bad god, which was usually identified with the God of the Old Testament. Jesus represented a different god, a good god. But because the physical is evil, Christ did not really become a flesh and blood man. It was an illusion for our sake. And so, of course, was his death. According to the secret knowledge (gnosis in Greek) which Gnostic teachers claimed to have gotten from Christ, it wasn't faith that saved you; it was secret knowledge, available only to the elite. So it wasn't important what you do in this evil material world but what you know. A lot of people, even in the church, were attracted to this kind of thinking

But if the physical world is evil and only the intangible is good, why would Christ command us to eat bread and drink wine for our spiritual benefit? Why would his body, or anyone's body, matter? Some Gnostics became ascetics, trying to eat and drink as little as possible and minimize their involvement in the physical world. Other Gnostics, figuring the physical world is irrelevant to being a spiritual person, overindulged their physical appetites, to mock the ignorant creator.

But from the beginning Christians believed God created the world and all its inhabitants, including humans, and pronounced them good. God gives us good gifts in creation. We have misused, abused and neglected those good gifts, turning the paradise he gave us into hell on earth. By entering into his own creation in Jesus, God reaffirms the underlying goodness of the physical world and our bodies.

He encountered violent opposition and was killed—for real, not in an illusion. And he rose again—for real, not as in a dream. By rising he validated who he is and the validity of what he said and offers redemption to all who trust him. And rather than let his decisive physical sacrifice live on as mere words, Jesus took bread and wine and imbued them with meaning and spiritual power. In the Eucharist, we are not merely hearing about his supper with his disciples, we are participating in that meal. We are eating the bread which he said was his body and drinking the wine he said was his blood and which sealed the new covenant between God and us. We are in his presence as we partake of the meal in which he is both our host and our sustenance.

In baptism God imbues real physical water with real spiritual power. In Holy Communion he does the same with bread and wine. The God who made us both physical and spiritual beings communicates his grace to us in acts that are both physical and spiritual. We are not simply spiritual beings like angels or simply physical beings like animals. We are, as C.S. Lewis put it, amphibians, at home in both realms.

In the sacraments, God shows that he cares about all of us, both our physical and our spiritual sides. If we were merely spirits imprisoned in bodies, why should God or we care about poverty or violence or abuse? The sooner we die and get free of these bodies, the better. If we are merely beasts, programmed to live according to our instincts and urges, why should God or we care how we treat others or ourselves in pursuit of those physical appetites? Animals mate indiscriminately and kill and each eat other. Why is it wrong for humans to do so?

Because we, though flesh and blood, are made in God's image. We have inherent worth which must be respected. But we are not images carved in stone, forever static. We are living growing creatures. And we are finite. We are not perfectly complete images of the infinite God. We are meant to continually grow to be more like him, day by day. And to grow we need sustenance, which he gives us in our daily bread and in the Living Bread, Jesus.

We like to play God, which is to say, we want to be like God in terms of power. But God is love and so we are meant to be like him in his infinite love for us. And we see the extent of that love in how God in Christ sacrificed himself to save his ungrateful creatures. And every time we eat the bread that Jesus said was his body given for us and drink the wine he said was his blood poured out for us, we are reminded what the God who is love is really like and the real way in which we are to be like him.

And as God in Christ shows his love in a physical act, so we are to show his love to others in physical ways. We are not to tell the hungry and poor and suffering only that our thoughts and prayers go with them but we are to go to them and help them. God feeds us; we are to feed others. God sacrifices for us; we are to make sacrifices for others. God gives us good gifts like minds and bodies to help one another. We are to share them and use them as he intended.

Passover is not a solemn meal; it is joyous. And I imagine the last one Jesus celebrated with his disciples was as well. Until Jesus announced his impending betrayal and took the bread and wine and gave thanks and gave them to his friends, saying they were eating his broken body and drinking his shed blood, something deeply shocking to them as Jews. But he asked them to do this in remembrance of him. And we who are his friends, who are redeemed at immeasurable cost by him, continue to do as he said.

Things got serious when Jesus took the bread and wine. They would only get more serious that night and get deadly serious the next day. And they would mourn the day after that. They could not see then that on the third day, everything would be different. And in the light of Easter, this meal, though still serious, would no longer be sad but one of hope and joy and love.

A Failed Messiah

The scriptures referred to are Philippians 2:5-11 and Luke 22:14-23:56.

There aren't a lot of biographies of people who failed. Yes, some of the greatest achievers didn't succeed in everything they tried. Einstein didn't manage to come up with a theory that tied all the forces of the universe together. In fact, gravity is still confounding scientists who want a theory of everything. Actor/director Charles Laughton failed to finish his film version of I, Claudius. And you can find many inspirational lists of people who failed before becoming successful and famous. What's hard to find are stories of people who never succeeded in their main goal. Like Franz Reichelt who jumped off the Eiffel Tower in 1912 using his invention of a parachute suit. That ended as badly as you would expect. And the only reason we know about him today is because it was filmed by a newsreel which, unlike him, now lives on You Tube. He also has an article on Wikipedia but I doubt anyone wrote a book about him.

While listening to one of Luke Timothy Johnson's excellent lectures on the Great Courses, he used a phrase I'd never thought of applying to Jesus: a failed messiah. Johnson says, at least in the eyes of the people standing around the cross and those who heard about his execution afterward, Jesus was a failed messiah. A messiah ought to make things better for his people. Jesus didn't. He did not lead a successful revolt and expel the pagan oppressors from the land God gave the Jews. He did not bring about the end of the current evil age and usher in the Messianic Age. He did not set up a physical kingdom of God on earth. Those are the basic things that the Jews, including the 12 disciples, expected from the Messiah. He checked off none of the boxes on the list of qualifications for a successful messiah.

Nor did he try to do those things. At least Simon bar Kokhba was a military leader. 60 years after the Romans defeated the Jewish revolt in 70 AD, bar Kokhba managed to put up strong opposition to the forces of the Emperor Hadrian. For about 3 years, there was once again an independent Jewish state. Jews did think he was the Messiah, including the revered Jewish sage Rabbi Akiva. Simon bar Kokhba was eventually killed in a siege but at least he did things that were recognizably messianic.

Jesus didn't start a holy war. Because he saw the problems facing his people, and indeed all people, differently.

Then as now folks see the main problem with the world as “those people.” To the Jews “those people” were the Romans...and other Gentiles...and Jews who aren't as observant as the Pharisees...or as pure as the Essenes...or as militant as the Zealots. To the Romans the problem was the Jews...and the Carthaginians...and the Gauls...and their own slaves. Today “those people” are the far right...or the far left...or the rich...or the poor...or atheists...or Christians...or Q-Anon folks...or Muslims...or Russians...or Chinese...or blacks...or whites...or Mexicans...or anyone else. We always feel that our problems are caused by “those people,” however we define them. And that makes the solution simple. Just neutralize “those people” and everything will be fine.

That's the plot of our big blockbusters and thrillers. Just defeat the group of bad guys and it's all good. Better than that: destroy the bad guys. Blow up the villain's volcano base or death star or put on a magic glove and snap your fingers and make all the bad guys go away. Instant happy ending.

Unfortunately that was also the basic idea behind the Nazis' Final Solution. They also thought certain people were the problem. Build death camps and just eliminate all those Jews...and Slavs...and Communists...and Jehovah's Witnesses...and Protestants and Catholics who hid Jews...and gays...and mentally ill people...and disabled people.

“Hell is other people,” Jean-Paul Sartre observed. Or as a clergyman once said about his troublesome parish, “There is nothing wrong that a few strategic funerals wouldn't fix.” I think—I hope—he said it tongue in cheek.

But we all feel that way. We may not say it out loud but we hear or read some depressing news and we wish that the person or persons causing all the problems would just drop dead. Which means the difference between us and the people on those true crime documentaries on TV is that we don't act on that feeling. At least not directly.

In Dickens' A Christmas Carol two men ask Ebenezer Scrooge for a donation to help the poor. He says, “Are there no prisons?” “Plenty of prisons,” says one of the men. “And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation?” “They are,” says one of the men. “I wish I could say they were not.” So Scrooge refuses to give anything to buy the poor food and drink and a way to keep warm. “I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.” “Many can't go there,” the man says, “and many would rather die.” “If they would rather die,” says Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

The workhouses were designed to be horrible places to discourage people from using them. Today we make getting assistance difficult for the same reason. And if you make it hard for people to get the basics in life—food, a place to live, healthcare—then, by simple logic, you are making it more likely they will die. Currently the richest Americans live 10 to 15 years longer than the poorest. And the gap has increased by a couple of years since 2001. Is there that much of a moral difference between making people die sooner than they should and letting them die sooner than they should?

As Paul McCarthy and Wings sang, “When you were young and your heart was an open book/You used to say “Live and let live,/...But if this ever changing world in which we're living/Makes you give in and cry/Say “Live and let die!” People today may not be as blatant in their programs to get rid of “those people” as the Romans or the Nazis were. Neglect isn't as efficient as rounding up people and killing them but it lets us slowly eliminate the people who are the problem without getting our hands dirty.

The late Paul Farmer said, “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world.” There's a lot of truth to that when it comes to how we treat others. But what is at the root of that idea? What causes us to disregard the importance of others? The gut feeling that we are more important than other people. That the world revolves around us and that our feelings, our desires, and our rights come first.

Of course if we come first, before everything and everyone else, you know what that makes us? God. And thinking that Self Is Number 1 is SIN 1, a violation of the first commandment. Putting anything before God is idolatry. But secretly don't we all worship ourselves? We think that we alone see the world as it is. We think we know what's best for everyone. “If they just asked me, I would set them straight.” We even think we know better than God what's good for us and what isn't. The story of the temptation in the Garden of Eden is a template for every temptation. We think: “It won't hurt.” “Just this once.” “How bad can it be?” And the next thing you know you are naked and vulnerable to a lot of things you didn't consider would go wrong. And when the time comes to be accountable we blame someone else. It was the snake! It was the woman! It wasn't me! (Genesis 3:1-19)

The people of the world think the problem is other people, “those people.” But as the comic strip Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Humans are their own worst enemies. Aliens or robots or monsters aren't killing people or making our planet uninhabitable or creating microplastics that are now in our blood. People are. And people are standing by and letting it be done. Because we don't want to give up our desires to have cool stuff and next day delivery and big vehicles and cheap energy and cheap labor and more drugs to make us feel good and more weapons to make us feel safe and the right to live as we want without regard to how it affects anyone else.

Which is why the solution isn't a superhero or even a holy warrior king. Jesus knew that. But if that's what you think the Messiah should be, then he failed miserably.

But if you think that the problem with the world is not other people but all of us, playing God, thinking we are right; if you think we need someone who doesn't try to solve the world's problems by killing people; if you think what the world needs is someone who instead heals and feeds and gives life to people, who reveals the uncomfortable truth about ourselves and the wonderful truth about the God who is love, who demonstrates God's love in his life even when it leads to his sacrifice and death, who is willing to take on the evil in this world unflinchingly and to be the one who absorbs the full brunt of our sin and penchant to blame someone else and take out our anger on someone else and to try to eliminate them as the cause of our unease, then Jesus is that person.

If you think what we need is someone who shows that you can change the world not by eliminating people but by changing people, by changing the way we look at God and at each other, by changing the way we treat others, and by changing “those people” into our people, then Jesus is that person.

We are not God. We have tried to be that and failed horribly. We have forgotten that we are made in God's image, all of us are. Unfortunately we have lost what God's image in us means. But in Jesus we see that image clearly. In Jesus we see what God is really like. And more than that, in Jesus we see what we can be. If we, like he, deny ourselves and take up our crosses and follow him.

The Way of Love: Rest

The scriptures referred to are in the text.

Wild animals never get a day off. Every day they go out and hunt for nuts, berries, plants, fruits, pasture or prey. Occasionally they mate. Then they sleep and do it again the next day. Until they die. And most people throughout most of history have done the same. Humans did set aside special times to stop. But not every week. Except the Jews.

To ancient peoples, one of the unique features of the Jews, besides their believing in only one God, was the practice of the Sabbath, a holy day that occurred every 7 days. They did this because God commanded them to. The fourth of the Ten Commandments says, “Remember the Sabbath day to set it apart as holy. For six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work—you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident foreigner in your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11) It is the longest of the Ten Commandments, 55 words in Hebrew. The next longest is the prohibition against making idols, which is 43 words in length. So the Sabbath is very important. And it is tied to the creation account that begins Genesis. “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he ceased all the work he had been doing in creation.” (Genesis 2:3) God stopped working and so should we.

The other ancient peoples thought this was weird. People measured time by the lunar calendar—28 days between full moons—or the solar calendar—365 days to get back to the days being the same length. They of course divided their years into seasons and months. But they didn't have weeks. And while they dedicated certain days annually or seasonally to their gods or to their harvest, why would anyone stop everything every 7 days? And I mean everything: masters, slaves, resident aliens, even animals! That's nuts!

And yet we all need time to rest. Of course, we all sleep. Still, even with adequate sleep, working from sunup to sundown day after day after day wears people out. The same may be true of animals. After all, with the exception of box turtles and giant tortoises, humans live longer than other land animals. Our hearts beat 2 billion times to their 1 billion. Most animals do not make it to the half-century mark and they often end up as someone else's dinner. Our lifespan today is pretty much what it was in Biblical times. If you made it past childhood and adolescence, then as now you could expect to get to 70 or 80 years old. (Psalm 90:10) Even with today's medical knowledge, we can't really crack the uppermost limit set by God in Genesis: 120 years. (Genesis 6:3)

Without a break, we would spend most of our 25,000 or so days of life, working. As it is, with our gig economy and people working numerous jobs, and with retirement becoming a luxury some can't afford, the proportion of our life spent working is increasing. It can seem like a neverending treadmill. Until it does end and we become food for bacteria.

So God commands us to take a whole day off each week to rest. Many of us can remember when all but the most essential businesses were closed on Sunday and the only thing you could do was go to church and spend time with your family. We'd have picnics and cookouts, or go for drives in the country. Parents would send the kids outside to play and retire to the bedroom for naps or other forms of refreshment.

Sunday morning TV was nothing but Meet the Press and public service programming. So we went to church to fill our hearts and minds with something other than the mundane concerns of life. This too goes back to the Bible. In Ezekiel God says, “Treat my Sabbaths as holy and they will be a reminder of our relationship, and then you will know that I am the Lord your God.” (Ezekiel 20:20) We spend the rest of our week engaged in the business of living, of keeping our bodies and those of our family alive and healthy. Yet we rarely take one day to cease (which is what Sabbath means in Hebrew) and take care of our spiritual health. Tending to our spiritual side actually helps us physically. Studies show that weekly worship attendance, besides being linked to reduced rates of suicide, alcoholism and drug use, is also connected with a stronger immune system, decreased stress, increased resilience and greater longevity. Spiritually, spending time communing with a loving and forgiving God can boost hope, provide purpose and meaning in life, and give us inner peace.

Unfortunately, we seem to have less and less time for God. Our 24/7 world has eaten up the Sabbath for many of us. With longer shifts and greater commutes, our weekends are filled with chores and activities we couldn't fit in during the work week. And for a lot of us the work week is not 9 to 5 Monday through Friday anymore. Many businesses are open on Sundays, and many jobs expect you to work any day of the week they assign you. I once lost a secular job when I told them that I could work any time except Sunday mornings. That was a deal-breaker for them and for me. And it wasn't even a nursing job, which of necessity needs continuous coverage for the patients' sake.

One of the reasons we have lost the Sabbath is the worship of Mammon or greed. If a competitor is open Sundays, we better be too, lest we lose business to them. In addition, while some people are willing to work Sundays because they are workaholics, others do so because they are afraid to tell their bosses “No.” Yet if their customers refused to patronize them, they might close Sundays, the way an increasing number of businesses do for Thanksgiving. Although closing one day a year is different from closing one day a week. To today's businessmen that's just weird.

But even the people who do have Sundays off aren't using it to worship or commune with God. Of course some of them were never taken to church as kids and thus never developed the habit. Kids are more likely to go if their parents do. But while 87% of Americans say they believe in God and 43% say religion is very important in their lives, only 31% of Americans go to church every week or almost every week. Which looks like they don't really mean what they say, regardless of what they tell pollsters. God asks for one day and they won't give him one hour. Look at it this way: If you really wanted to learn an instrument or karate or cooking, you would go where they give lessons. Especially if they do not set a price, but only ask for a donation.

And while some people might say that they don't go because resting means doing nothing, that's not true. You just do other stuff: read, watch TV, garden, barbecue, play games. When my ME/CFS flares up, I literally can do nothing. And, believe me, that is not restful at all.

Rest is simply going into another mode. When you sleep your brain doesn't really shut off. The spaces in the brain dilate and the pressure flushes out waste products. During sleep your brain keeps your heart beating and your lungs breathing and your food digesting and your kidneys filtering and your immune system running. Meanwhile, it entertains you with nonsensical movies. Rest is just doing something different than usual. And it is vital to our health.

In God's rest, you are also flushing out the waste products that you've picked up during the week. And while part of God's rest is taking in what is spiritually healthy, part of it is play. Play is the opposite of work. It can be a sport or a hobby or sharing something you and your loved ones enjoy. As Ezra told the people, “Go and eat delicacies and drink sweet drinks and send portions to those who have nothing prepared. For this day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” And we are told, “So all the people departed to eat and drink and to share their food with others and to enjoy tremendous joy, for they had gained insight in the matters that had been made known to them.” (Nehemiah 8:10, 12) So worship God and then enjoy his gifts. That's why Sundays are not part of the penitential season of Lent. We are to rest but not to grieve. After all, every Sunday is a commemoration of Jesus' resurrection and if that is not a reason to celebrate I don't know what is. The Puritans had it wrong when they banned all fun activities from Sundays and holy days.

A rabbi once said, “The Sabbath is when you regain Eden.” Working by the sweat of our brow was not part of God's Plan A. (Genesis 3:19) We were meant to commune with God everyday. And one day we shall again. We will dwell in God's paradise, where every day will be, as the rabbis said, “a day that is all Sabbath.”

In the meantime we must take advantage of the rest God mandates for us. And avail ourselves of Jesus who said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-29)

So have a restful Sunday. Change modes. Flush out the waste of the world. Turn to God. Learn how good he is. Pray to him. Worship him. Then enjoy his gifts. Tomorrow we go out again to share our blessings. And next week we come back here to rest and recharge. That's how we walk the Way of Love.