Love my What?!

Sam Harris has a PhD in neuroscience but he is best known as a member of they would probably proudly call the Unholy Trinity of "New Atheists" that include Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. This week I watched a Youtube video of Harris. And again it became apparent that Harris, as with his fellow anti-theists, really doesn't know his facts when it comes to theology, the history of religion or, apparently, the history of science. I mean, he actually said that if the Bible was a divine book, why didn't it say something about electricity? Really? And exactly how would one communicate that to a culture that didn't have the language, the foundation or the ability to utilize such advanced scientific knowledge? The ancient Egyptians knew about electric eels. The Greeks knew of static electricity. It was just a curiosity. It wasn't until the 18th century that research made progress. It took Ben Franklin to show that lightning was electricity and longer before people could use electricity for anything other than parlor tricks.

Part of Harris' problem is that, as he says in another video, he feels that religion is a failed science. He thinks that religion's basic function is to explain how the natural world works. He sees religion as in the same category as Rudyard Kipling's "Just So" stories, where we learn in charming bedtime story-fashion how the camel got his hump and the elephant his long trunk.

In fact, philosophy was mankind's attempt to explain the way the world worked. What was known as natural philosophy eventually evolved into science. Harris, like a lot of these so-called scientific critics, mistakenly thinks the whole Bible is like the first few chapters of Genesis, which is rather like thinking all Superman stories are about his origin. What Harris doesn't seem to notice is that, aside from saying that God created the world, the Bible really doesn't talk of the details of how. What religion is more interested in is the why, the purpose and meaning of creation and our proper relationship with it and its creator. If Harris had studied this subject more, he might know that.

And he'd know that the conflict between the religion and science is really quite recent. Throughout most of history they worked well together. Religion was the reason why people built cathedrals but engineering science is how they built them. Nobody saw that as a contradiction. The universe was created by the mind of God, we are created in his image so we should be able to understand and work out the principles behind creation. Many of the pioneers of science were clergy and religious lay people. It's still true. The United States is both one of the most religious and one of the most scientifically advanced countries on the earth. How does Harris account for that?

Sam Harris, raised in a secular Jewish home, said his criticism of religion arises out of the events of 9/11 and its aftermath. He sees religion as the cause of a lot of the grief in the world. Oddly enough, he has studied eastern religious practices and meditates. He says he shares the moral concerns of many religious people, he praises the Golden Rule, and says that he would be interested in learning how better to love one's neighbor. But he has also said that torturing a terrorism suspect should be viewed as collateral damage in fighting terrorists. More disturbing is his assertion that "some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them." Madeleine Bunting, columnist for the Guardian newspaper, wrote that this "sounds like exactly the kind of argument put forward by those who ran the Inquisition." And yet if he saw the contradiction in suggesting that rationalists were justified in using tactics that he condemned religious fanatics for employing, he didn't back down. In reply to the controversy, Harris wrote "the fact that belief determines behavior is what makes certain beliefs so dangerous."

You know, I really wish that belief did determine behavior. Because if it did, Muslims who claim to believe the Quran would only fight wars in self defense. They wouldn't kill non-combatants. Mohammed specifically told his soldiers not to kill women, children and the aged. And as for Christians, we would obey Jesus' command to love our enemies.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, "you have heard that it was said, 'you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." Despite popular belief, nowhere in the Bible does it say "and hate your enemy." Jesus is adding popular sentiment to the command from Deuteronomy. Remember that he lived in an occupied country, under the none-too-gentle boot of the Roman Empire. One of his own disciples was a former Zealot, a group who dreamed of violently driving the Romans out of Judea. Like all who want justification of their own desire to take vengeance on others, they cherry-picked the Bible for verses that seemed to back them up, like Psalm 139 where the writer acknowledges feeling that God's enemies are his. And they ignored passages such as Exodus 23:4-5 and Proverbs 25:21-22, where we are told to return an enemy's escaped animals and to give food and drink to an enemy who is hungry or thirsty. They didn't think about the moral of the Book of Jonah: that God cares even for those who are enemies of him and his people. They turned a blind eye to the fact that Isaiah foresaw a time when all peoples will come together and live in peace on God's holy mountain. Still, no Old Testament passage concerning benevolence towards one's enemies goes as far as this one command from Jesus.

But can he mean it? Is this hyperbole, like his saying one should cut off one's hand if it causes one to sin? The problem with that interpretation is, as we've seen, Jesus never uses rhetoric or metaphor to water down ethical imperatives. So Jesus doesn't mean merely to treat your enemies nicely or civilly or fairly. He means "love your enemy."

To clarify, the Greek word used here is not the one for family affection or the one for friendship or the one for romantic love. It is agape, the same unconditional love that God has for us. We are not told to feel warm and fuzzy about our enemies. We're not told to moon over them or adore them. We aren't told to write our initials together and draw hearts around them. Those things are not the essence of love. They are the icing on the cake. They come when love is easy. But sometimes love is seen most clearly when we act on it while not really feeling like it. Ask any parent who has to say "no" to a teenager while she screams that she hates you. Ask anyone taking a family member to rehab after a yet another nasty relapse. Ask anyone caring for a spouse with Alzheimer's long after she's forgotten who he is. That's love.

Jesus is not asking us to feel a certain way about our enemies. Nor is he asking us to look away or do nothing when they do evil. That's enabling. What we are supposed to do is pray and work for their highest good.

It's tough but it's really the only way to bring real peace and reconciliation. We've tried everything else. Hating enemies doesn't bring peace, either to society or personally. Treating them badly just brings retaliation. Fighting them rarely brings real or lasting peace. And killing? Unless you kill all of them, and all their friends and relatives, you just make more enemies and deepen the hate. But we never seem to learn that. And we can't figure out why people hate and fight so much.

One reason is that we hate even more the idea of not hating and fighting. We hate giving up our right to hold a grudge or to get some of our own back. Anger, hating, self-pity can all feel paradoxically rather good. When you don't get justice, they're all you have. Even if they will end up poisoning you.

But Jesus says we have to rise above all that. If we are to be children of God, we must do as he does. He gives us this world, the sun and the rain, our lives, our gifts and the opportunity to use them to make this world a better place. And he does this despite the way we have repaid him, the awful things we've done to this world and the terrible ways we've used those gifts to scare and to scar each other.

Nor was this abstract to Jesus. He not only told us to love our enemies, he showed us. When he was arrested, Peter cut off the ear of one of his captors and Jesus healed the man. He asked God to forgive those who had just nailed him to the cross. He assured a criminal dying beside him that he would accept him into paradise. When he arose, he forgave those disciples who denied him, who ran away and who doubted his resurrection.

What Jesus did for us was an extraordinary act of love. And if we are truly followers of his, we should be willing to do the same. It is the spiritually mature thing to do. That's one way to translate the word rendered "perfect" in the Matthew 5:48. Another is "complete": "you will be complete, therefore, as your heavenly father is complete." The tense of the Greek is not so much a command as a promise. Put your trust in the God of love revealed in Jesus, follow him faithfully and you will become the kind of person who can love your enemy.

That's the kind of behavior that should follow from belief. And if it did, if Christians took this command as seriously as the ones we focus on more often and more publicly, think of the change it would make in the world. There are 2 billion people in this world who call themselves Christian. Imagine if we all, a third of the earth's population, made a real effort to love and forgive our enemies. Imagine the feuds and bad blood that could be put to rest. Imagine the energy and ingenuity freed up to concentrate on helping and healing people and communities. Imagine the atheists having to stick to the intellectual points of their arguments, rather than scoring cheap shots by bringing up all the times some Christian's behavior contradicted his professed beliefs. You don't hear many atheists go after the Amish or the Mennonites. It's not that they are perfect but they do go to extraordinary lengths to live according to their beliefs.

Christians are known these days for their positions on abortion and stem cells and gays, none of which Jesus mentioned. He did say that his disciples would be known for their love. It's easy to love those who love you, who agree with you, who treat you well. But we are commanded to love those who hate us, who disagree with us, who treat us badly. We are commanded to do as Jesus has done. That's an awfully high standard to be held to. But we live in a world where people do incredibly bad and hateful things, so much so that yesterday's horrible outrage is pushed out of the mind by today's. The only way to get the world's attention and make a point is to do incredibly good and loving things, especially to those who hate us. If we don't obey God in this, if we don't manifest the holy, forgiving, unconditionally loving Spirit of God in Christ, we are no better than those who deny his existence.

Literally?

Don Martin was billed as Mad Magazine's maddest artist. His characters usually had long, roughly rectangular faces, spindly limbs, delicately crooked fingers with upturned pinkies and flappy feet that folded over as they walked. His drawing style was unique. And so was his sense of humor. Ordinary things took bizarre turns. When a woman clipping her nails has one toenail land in the beer can her husband is holding, he upbraids her--for only getting one out of five in there. As she turns in shame, we see from the back of her embroidered shirt that she is on the international nail-clipping team. One of my favorite strips showed this large dumb goon in a restroom. He washes his hands and then goes to the paper towel dispenser. The sign on it says, "pull down, tear up." In the next panel, we see him leaving the restroom, the towel dispenser lying on the floor in pieces.

Interpreting things literally can cause problems. Especially when the thing you're interpreting is the Bible. Oddly enough, the Jews have always been quite open to the idea that certain passages were to be interpreted metaphorically. In fact, even fundamentalists don't treat the entire Bible literally. I've never heard one advocate cutting off one's hand or plucking out one's eye if either is the occasion of sinning, nor seen one propose that, based on the Book of Revelation, the Antichrist is literally a 7-headed, 10-horned beast that would rise from the sea. I think part of the problem is that people confuse the word "literal" with "true" and the word "metaphor" with "false." It's gotten so bad that people now insert the word "literally" where it has no business being. "If I come home late again, my mom will literally bite my head off." That's one mean mother! But I sincerely doubt she will devour her son's head however angry she gets at his tardiness. On the other hand, if I say that someone's heart is broken, the fact that it's not literally in pieces doesn't mean it is not true. And most people know that when we say "the sun sank into the sea", the sun did no such thing. But saying "our part of the earth rotated away from the sun" is wordy and lacks poetry. In addition, metaphors can state things in a way that is more psychologically true that a flat recitation of mere facts. When one says that something was "mind blowing" or "gut wrenching" or "breathtaking" or "hair raising" it is both more relatable and memorable.

Parts of the Bible are meant to be literally true, others are metaphorically true. Jesus literally told people to repent and prepare for the kingdom of God but he didn't mean we should lop off body parts that make us sin. (For one thing, he said sin comes from the heart but we don't think he was suggesting doing cardiac surgery on oneself). He was saying that we should be ruthless in ridding ourselves of temptations, even if they are so close to us that they feel like they are a part of us. Jesus said it more memorably and perhaps more graphically than was absolutely necessary but that doesn't make it less true.

For the most part, it is easy to discern what is meant to be taken literally and what is meant to be metaphorical. When it says that it is easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven, do not expect to see this as a bizarre contest on judgment day. In fact, the obvious conclusion was easily grasped by the disciples, who had been taught that riches were rewards from God. "Who then can be saved?" they ask. The true meaning is underlined by Jesus himself when he says, "What is impossible for mortals is possible for God." In other words, just like Paul, Jesus is saying we are saved by God's grace, not good works, despite the fact that a rich person can do more of them and affect more lives with them than a poor person can. But in the afterlife, the rich do not have the advantages they have in this life. We are all sinners dependent on God's loving and forgiving nature.

Similarly, when Jesus says that following him means hating your family, he is using hyperbole, just as he was with his talk about amputating bad body bits. A good rule of thumb is that if something in the Bible sounds outrageous on a literal level, especially if it seems to contradict other Bible passages, see if it makes more sense as a metaphor. For instance, in Genesis, God tells the first man not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because on the day he does he will die. But the man and the woman don't die immediately. One has to conclude that either the writer of Genesis is a terrible storyteller or that God means something deeper than mere physical death. Separation from God is spiritual death and that begins the day we disobey him. There are countless examples of difficult Bible passages that can be resolved by taking into account context, cultural conventions, idiomatic expressions, rhetorical language, or metaphorical interpretations.

That doesn't mean one should take such passages less seriously that literal ones. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is going beyond the literal meaning of several Bible passages but not in a way that waters them down. If anything, he makes them more formidable.

He first looks at the commandment not to murder. Jesus says it is just as bad to be angry with or insult another person. Citing the commandment against adultery, Jesus says it is just as bad to regard someone you're not married to with lust. But how can words or thoughts be regarded by Jesus as being as bad as actions?

Actions are born as thoughts and fed by words. Adultery and other unhealthy sexual actions are usually incubated in the mind over time. Violence comes from emotional wounds brooded over, even if the eventual target of the lashing out is not the author of the perceived injuries. And the combination of sex and violence is often the product of carefully cultivated fantasies nursed over months and years. Jesus sees an action as a symptom of the disease working within the person, the way a high fever signals a serious infection. Treating the symptom alone but not the disease leads to the destruction of the lives of everyone affected.

Jesus was opposed to the legalism practiced by the Pharisees, not because he was unconcerned about sin but because he took it more seriously. Today we focus on how legalism punishes people for minor and technical infractions of God's law. But Jesus points out how it also offers limits on what is considered sin. Kids are experts at exploiting the limits of language when it comes to prohibitions. Tell your daughter she can't call her boyfriend till her homework is done and she will text him, IM him, email him, or chat with him on Facebook and feel she has observed the letter of the law you laid down. Jesus was more concerned about the spirit of the law. The sabbath prohibition was all about taking time off from your work to do God's work, so it meant you could eat when hungry or heal those who needed it. The prohibition on murder meant you couldn't think murderous thoughts or use fighting words. The prohibition against adultery meant no dancing up to the line by flirting with the person or with the thought of being unfaithful. Speaking to those who game the system, Jesus is saying, God knows what you're doing and he isn't going to let you off on technicalities.

When it comes to divorce, Jesus is opposing the fact that it had become so easy for a man to divorce a woman that it was being done for almost any reason, from disobeying her husband to burning the bread. Men had all the power. Only they could initiate divorce and all a man had to do was give his wife a certificate. A divorced woman was stigmatized and in the Roman world, might lose her children to her husband.

Again, Jesus goes to the heart of the matter. Two people are supposed to become one organism, so to speak, when they marry. Unless one person breaks the very nature of marriage by committing adultery, the marriage should be preserved. In this, Jesus represented a minority position among rabbis. In addition, even conservative rabbis recognized divorces that were granted on grounds with which they disagreed. Jesus didn't and said subsequent remarriages amounted to adultery.

Finally, Jesus takes on the practice of making oaths. To the Jews, any oath taken in the name of God was absolutely binding. Swearing by heaven or Jerusalem or by your head or any other thing was not considered binding. Jesus says this is nonsense. Whatever you say should be truthful, even without an oath. And it is this part of the passage that really draws this whole discussion together. Jesus is indicating that the type of person you are matters more than some external form of words. Let your "yes" be "yes" and your "no" be "no." Be the kind of person who doesn't need to reassure people by taking an oath.

God is not looking for people who are just good at following rules; he wants people who are good without having to consult the rules. Of course, no one is that good all the time. But neither are people static. Moses killed a man. David divorced his disagreeable first wife, committed adultery and got rid the man he cuckolded, Bathsheba's husband. Paul was an accomplice to the murder of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. They violated both the letter and the spirit of the law. But then they changed, which is the first step of repentance. They turned to God and he forgave them, despite their past sins. And just as a plant turns towards the sun, they changed the direction of their lives and began to grow into the people God intended them to be.

Christianity is not about simply moving from God's naughty list to his nice one. It is about becoming, day by day, more loving, more just, more forgiving, more selfless, more Christ-like. The Christian life, C. S. Lewis said, is less like following rules and more like painting a portrait. We were, after all, made in his image and that is what he is working in us and with us to restore. Which is why most language about God is metaphorical. God is truly, though not literally, our Father, our Shepherd, our fortress. Jesus is truly, though not literally, our Divine Physician, our food and drink, our King. The Holy Spirit is truly, though not literally, our Advocate, our Comforter, the life-giving breath of God. Our God is so far beyond our ordinary experience that we need these picture words, these everyday comparisons to give us helpful insights into how to see him and respond to him. They are true, though by no means exhaustive, illustrations of who he is and how he works. Contemplating these vivid glimpses of God's unfathomable grace demand that we truly, but not literally, give him our hearts, truly, but not literally, be Christ's body on earth, truly, but not literally, pick up our crosses and follow Jesus, knowing that what he has in store for us is far beyond what we can express or imagine.

Water, Wine and Wafer

My mother-in-law's first husband was one of those men who went out to get a pack of cigarettes and never returned. She finally had to divorce him in absentia. Luckily that did not bother a young soldier who met her on a double date. They got along quite well and corresponded when he went to Alaska to monitor radar during the Second World War. He missed actually talking to her, though, and so wrote that when he was back in St. Louis, he would give her a ring. Unintentionally misinterpreting his promise--or not--she sent him her ring size. He got the hint and they were married.

But while he, a devout Roman Catholic, had no trouble with his wife's previous marriage, his church did. They would baptize their children and let them go to the parish school but having married a divorced woman, my father-in-law could not take Communion, even though he went to Mass regularly. In fact, until he took the wafer from me at my ordination, he had not had Communion for more than 50 years.

In the Episcopal Church, we have what's called "open communion." Our only requirement for partaking of the Eucharist is that one be a baptized Christian. Still some feel that is one requirement too many. Our sermon suggestion for this month asks, "what does being baptized have to do with coming to the communion table? Certainly, Christ wouldn't have had restrictions like that ritual?"

Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the earliest rituals of the church. They're called sacraments, outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace. Churches may recognize other channels of God's grace but these 2 were actually practiced by Jesus and commended to his disciples. That makes these two special. Is that simply because they both came from the same man? Queen Victoria told Lewis Carroll she loved "Alice in Wonderland." She asked him to send her a copy of his next book. It is said, she received a copy of "An Elementary Treatise on Determinants, with their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraic Equations" by Charles Dodgson, the author-mathematician's real name. Despite the fact they came from the same man, I bet Her Majesty was not amused.

To discover if the two sacraments are connected in any vital way, let's look at how they originated and what they mean.

Baptism goes way back before the New Testament. Ritual baths were prescribed for those who were considered unclean. It offered a way that such a person could rejoin the community. Also, Aaron and his sons were ceremonially washed by Moses prior to their ordination. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest was to wash himself both before entering the Holy of Holies and after leaving. The physical cleansing was symbolic of spiritual cleansing.

Eventually, Gentile converts to Judaism were baptized as well as being circumcised and asked to make a sacrifice. At Qumran, the community of separatist Jews responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, they maintained ritual purity through daily baths accompanied by repentance. Against this backdrop, John the Baptist emerges offering baptism as a one-time sign of repentance and the cleansing of sin for all people, not just converts or the unclean.

Jesus comes to John to be baptized. John protests because his baptism is about repentance. But Jesus is adamant that he identify with the people he will be ministering to. So John baptizes Jesus, just as Jesus' first disciples were baptized by John. Later Jesus and his disciples baptize people. After his resurrection, when Jesus commissions his apostles to take his message to the world, he tells them to make disciples and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Baptism becomes the rite of entrance into the church, the community of those who are saved by Christ. To illustrate baptism, Peter uses the image of the great flood and how God saved Noah and his family through the ark. Paul compares it to the Red Sea, through which God led the Israelites, liberating them from slavery. He also compares it to circumcision, the rite of entrance into Israel, the people of God.

The most intriguing theological idea is that just as Jesus identified with sinful humanity by submitting to baptism, so by being baptized in his name we identify with Christ. Bearing in mind that in the first century baptism generally meant total immersion, it is easy to see how Paul makes draws the parallel between baptism and Jesus' burial and resurrection. In baptism we are buried with Christ and rise with him to new life.

Whether or not Jesus' last supper was held on the first day of Passover, it is obvious that he modeled it on that feast. The centerpiece of this celebration of Israel's liberation was the paschal lamb. At the original meal, the lamb's body was eaten and its blood was smeared on the door frame of each Israelite's home so that the Angel of Death would pass over them. Also featured in the meal was bread made without leaven because the children of Israel would be leaving Egypt so fast there was no time to let it rise. Finally there were 4 cups of wine drunk at the Passover feast, the third of which was called the cup of blessing. The father or head of the family explained the significance of the elements of the meal. Jesus takes the bread and identifies it with his body, folding in together the idea of the lamb of God with the unleavened bread. The wine is combined with the shed blood of the lamb that saved those celebrating the meal. The covenant with Israel is superseded by a new covenant with the community of the Messiah.

But not only are those who eat the bread nourishing themselves on the Body of Christ, they are nourishing themselves as the Body of Christ. We are to embody the Spirit of Christ on this earth. So we are not just receiving his body; we are becoming it. And in doing so we are focusing on the most characteristic thing about our Incarnate God--his loving, self-sacrificial death for us. As Paul says in 1st Corinthians 11, the earliest written account of the meal, "for every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."

The first Lord's Supper took place among Jesus' closest followers and friends. They were all baptized and the supper was meant to be a distinctive ritual binding his disciples to him and to each other. As in baptism, it was meant to identify the disciples with Jesus. It was a community-building activity.

When I was in the Society of Creative Anachronism, the medieval reenactment group, my persona was Brother Gillecriosd, a Cluniac monk at the time of William the Conqueror. No one else represented the religious side of the Middle Ages, which is rather like doing the American Revolution and neglecting to mention the role of democracy. I must have been convincing because one of the members of the group asked me if I would baptize her niece. I told her I just couldn't. Not only was I not clergy, baptism is not play-acting.

Nor is a rite of magical protection. It is the real incorporation of a person into the Body of Christ. If the person is old enough to understand, they are instructed so they can give assent to the questions asked of them. If the person is an infant, the parents and godparents vow to raise the child in the faith. Baptism is a sign of commitment to follow Jesus in the company of other faithful people.

And since Communion or the Eucharist is a rite of binding us to Christ and to each other as members of his body, baptism is a necessary prerequisite. To put it differently, you can't participate in a nation's civic life without becoming a citizen first. Baptism is a necessary part of becoming a citizen of the Kingdom of God. Communion, like voting, is reserved for citizens.

There are those who feel that this is being unnecessarily exclusive. In this time of declining church membership and attendance, there are parishes experimenting with giving baptism and communion to anyone who asks, without restriction. The problem with this is that, taken out of the context of a person being baptized into Christ or bound into the Body of Christ, the 2 rites lose a great deal of meaning. If I'm not particularly religious but want my child or myself baptized to cover all bases, that reduces the sacrament to a superstition. If I am doing it to please others, like parents or grandparents, but not acting out of faith, then I am engaging in hypocrisy. The same can be said of taking communion without faith or a basic understanding of why one does so.

And it's not going to mean much to those who respond to this "no-strings-attached" form of Christianity. I once had a card saying I was a member of the Pepsi Generation. It was a promotional giveaway handed out at some event. It didn't make me a Pepsi drinker and I never used it to get Pepsi merchandise. Because it cost me nothing, to me it meant nothing.

If there's one thing Jesus challenged people to do, it was to commit themselves to him. He wasn't interested in getting people's approval but their allegiance. He wanted people who would drop their nets, and anything else that would hinder them, deny themselves, take up their crosses and follow him. And if they couldn't be bothered to get their feet wet first…well, casual inquirers need not apply. Because he didn't want people to make the world nicer; he wanted them to make it new. And that takes commitment.

The Don't Be-Attitudes

Jesus is underappreciated as a social satirist. We've heard what he said so many times and in the reverent context of the church that his sayings don't strike us as humorous. But Jesus talked about the Pharisees being so focused on unimportant details that they strained gnats out of their drinks and then swallowed camels. He talked about hypocrites trying to take a splinter out of someone else's eye while walking around with logs in their eyes. He compared a rich man trying to get into heaven to a camel trying to squeeze through the eye of a sewing needle. (I guess camels were the biggest animals you'd see around first century Judea.) If you think about it, the things he said must have provoked smiles the first time people heard them--a widow who gets justice from a corrupt judge by simply nagging him long enough, a guest who sits in the seat of honor only to get taken down a peg in public, a woman frantically turning her house upside down to find a lost coin. And what he said in the first part of Matthew 5 might have struck people as a joke. Or at least odd. I'm talking about the Beatitudes.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus is praising qualities that run counter to the values of human society--meekness, sadness, suffering persecution. The Beatitudes are so much a part of the church, it's difficult to view them as subversive. But they were. And they still are. We may learn about them way back in Sunday School but we really don't live by them. Is there any way to show how this part of our culture is actually counter-cultural? Can we somehow reverse the reverence?

I have a modest propose. Since Jesus was glorifying qualities that society doesn't really value, let's turn things inside out. Let's see what Jesus was saying humanity really treasures. We can call them the "Don't Be-Attitudes."

Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the Kingdom of Heaven." The world says: "Blessed are those who feel they have it all, for they make the kingdoms of the earth run."

You might have expected the mirror version of the first beatitude to be "the rich in spirit." But in Greek, the word translated "poor" really means "destitute," so bankrupt as to have no illusions. It could be translated "Blessed are those who are aware of their spiritual poverty."

Worldly people don't like being told that they are lacking in some vital aspect of life or missing out on what's important. That's why the most popular forms of spirituality are those that tell their adherents that they are perfect just the way they are. It would be nice to hear every Sunday that there's nothing wrong with you--except perhaps that you don't believe in yourself enough! It might make you happier; it might make you bolder. And that's great--provided there really is nothing wrong with you. Everyone wants a clean bill of health from the doctor--if it's true. You don't want your doctor saying you're fine when you've got an aneurysm about to blow, or when your heart's clogged with fatty deposits, or the mole on your back is cancerous. What you don't know can definitely hurt you! And others! We all know people who can't see their own flaws and we have observed how much damage they can do because of that ignorance. Jesus says it's far better to know precisely where you stand with God, that is, totally dependent upon the richness of his grace. Only when you realize that will you be at the point where you can enter and be a part of God's kingdom.

Jesus says, "Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted." The world says: "Blessed are those who have no cares or regrets, for they need no comforting."

Bible scholar William Barclay, on whom I'm dependent for much of this, points out that the word translated "mourn" here is that of the bitterest sort of grief. The question is grief for what?

Jesus could have meant those who literally lost someone they love. They will be comforted when they are reunited with their loved one in heaven. But I agree with Barclay that Jesus is again talking about the listener's spiritual condition. He was probably referring to the person who is grieved by his own sins. We don't see a lot of that. Having some grievous sin today ensures you a big fat book deal, all the news coverage you could want, and a profitable career collecting speaking fees in return for telling every sordid detail. Sometimes a person's life turns around and they sincerely want to share their tale to inspire and warn others. But it's hard to gauge sincerity when it's so profitable to sin and tell.

Another possibility, that goes hand in hand with the last, is that Jesus is talking about those who grieve for the sins of the world. We're not talking about going "tsk, tsk" and shaking our head at the most outrageous news story of the day. We're talking about being so upset that you must do something. It's interesting that many of the world's reformers come from the upper classes. They are rarely people who have suffered injustice, oppression or discrimination themselves. But unlike others in their socio-economic class, they can't ignore it. Gandhi, St. Francis, Florence Nightingale, even Dr. Martin Luther King could have lived with much less grief if they had not felt called to do something about the evil in the world.

The world loves those with unclouded consciences, who follow their dreams and become successful. It's OK if they give to charity as long as they still enjoy the lifestyles of the rich and famous. That's why we hear so much about Donald Trump, a flashy dealmaker with a string of beautiful wives, and so little about Tom White, a devout Roman Catholic builder who, during his lifetime, has given away the bulk of his fortune to fund a clinic for the poor in Haiti, long before the earthquake. The only place I heard about White was on "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly," a TV program that is shown on our local PBS station in the wee hours of most but not all Saturday mornings. The world would rather cover self-indulgent people. Jesus says true comfort only comes to those who are deeply disturbed by the evil in us and around us.

Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth." The world says: "Blessed are the arrogant for they will seize the earth as their own."

Again Jesus is talking of people with good self-knowledge. By 'meek," he doesn't mean the spineless but those who know both their strengths and their weaknesses. Humility doesn't mean denigrating yourself but rather knowing that you are neither worthless nor the center of the universe.

The world has no patience for those who know their limitations. It glorifies those who are masters of self-promotion. What is the story arc of the typical American success story? A man has a dream. He follows it obsessively despite everyone telling him that he'll never achieve it. He does succeed at last and we fade out on our hero at the peak of his triumph. What we don't see are the family he loses while working day and night, the children alternately indulged and neglected, the colleagues whose contributions he claims as his own, the sharp business practices he uses to beat his rivals. And we rarely see what happens after his triumph: the divorces, the lawsuits, the decline of creativity. Henry Ford refused to let his company retire the Model T until his competitors had cornered the market on automotive innovation. Nobody is great at everything or all their life. Sure, arrogant people make a big impact on the world, but the effect can be as negative as it is positive. Jesus says that those who know what they are and are not good at are what keeps the world running and ultimately God will entrust the earth to their care.

Jesus says, "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." The world says: "Blessed are those who don't get carried away trying to obey God, for they will be reasonably satisfied."

Again the words Jesus uses for "hunger and thirst" are more intense than the traditional translation. He's saying, "Blessed are they who are starving and parched for righteousness." In other words, he's talking about those for whom being right with God is not optional.

The world feels a little bit of righteousness goes a long way. Some bosses want you to be scrupulously honest in dealing with them, less so when dealing with clients or regulators. Society likes to appear to be just but appreciates those who can tolerate a certain amount of injustice so that the status quo is maintained. Government demands from others things it doesn't demand from itself: lower tariffs from other countries, fiscal responsibility from businesses, fair treatment for its captive soldiers from its enemies. A recent study of whistleblowers reveals them to be people of high integrity who cannot stand aside while unethical behavior is going on. But they learn that if you push for justice too hard or too fast, you will find yourself the victim of injustice. As far as the world is concerned justice delayed isn't so much justice denied as business as usual. Jesus says that only those who really desire righteousness will find their satisfaction in God.

Jesus says, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy." The world says: "Blessed are those who don't fall for a sob story for they won't get suckered."

In one sense, the world is right. If you say "No" to all appeals for mercy, you will probably never get taken advantage of. The problem is if you never cut people any slack, you can't expect it from them. And there will be times when you need it. None of us is good all of the time. We all fail. Should we shut people out whenever they fall short morally? Such a world would be merciless indeed. And if we don't give people more than one chance, we will find ourselves dealing with fewer and fewer people. Nobody is saying we must be a patsy. But being unforgiving is not healthy. Physically, forgiveness reduces stress, lowers blood pressure and heart rate, and reduces pain. Socially, it increases empathy and strengthens relationships. Psychologically, it increases happiness. And spiritually, it is a condition for God forgiving us. Jesus says if you want to know mercy, show it to others.

Jesus says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." The world says: "Blessed are those who can figure out a way of benefiting personally from anything they do, for they see the world clearly."

In the news a while back, a man who organized a number of star-studded charity fundraisers was investigated. It turned out that after the celebrities were paid for their appearances and all of the expenses were taken care of, virtually none of the monies raised went to the causes themselves. I don't know who is more reprehensible: a person who would conceive of such a scam or the multi-millionaire personalities who would consider getting paid to help out a charity. It is a matter of purity of motive.

You don't hear much about purity these days. Everybody considers it passe, even naive. None of us is ever pure in our motives, so why bother trying? As long as the greater good is served, who cares if we make a little on the side? So let's pad the rolls of the local Boy Scouts and get more money from the United Way. Let's have people from unscathed parts of the state get hurricane disaster funds from FEMA. Let's allow a business to advertise some event as a benefit, even though the charity will only receive a tiny percentage of the proceeds. It's better than nothing, right?

At the end of the movie "Schindler's List," the title character experiences an epiphany on the subject. The war is over and the Jews Schindler has saved by bribing and tricking the Nazis give him a gold ring they have made in his factory. Schindler knows how much went into this gift and then realizes that it could have been used instead to save more lives. Though his efforts boiled down to purchasing lives, for the first time he realizes that his jewelry, his clothes, his fancy car could have been turned into cash and used to free more Jews from the death camps. He thought he had come up with a novel way to do good: save people and live well in the process. Now he realizes that had he purer motives, more people could have been spared. It devastates him.

Jesus says that only those who strip their actions of all ulterior motives will be able to see God as he is.

Jesus says, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God." The world says: "Blessed are the war makers for they will be able to play God."

In the Wild West, the Colt .45 got an interesting nickname. It was called the Peacemaker. And while it was meant ironically, it points out a revealing distinction in the way we use the word "peace." It can mean the absence of conflict. Shoot a man dead or just intimidate him with a show of arms and outward conflict will apparently end. By that definition the Cold War was a time of peace. But living under a nuclear sword of Damocles hardly made for peace of mind. Yet the world still feels that peace can only be achieved by beating people into submission. By that definition, Saddam Hussein was a great peacemaker because he kept a nation of fractious sects and ethnic divisions relatively quiet by being ruthless. But lasting peace will never come until people are motivated by things other than fear, anger and the desire to dominate.

By contrast, the Biblical meaning of peace is "total well-being." That kind of peace can only come about when the parties concerned act towards one another with fairness and good faith. We can have peace with God because he is just and trustworthy. Jesus says if we emulate God's true concern for the total well-being of others, we will be his children.

Finally, Jesus says, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." The world says: "It is more blessed to victimize than to be a victim."

Actually, there are people who proudly proclaim their victimhood: the people who claimed McDonald's made them fat; the people who claim that letting school choirs sing Christmas carols is a form of government endorsement of religion; the Christian groups who claim that teaching evolution in biology classes is a form of religious persecution. This is not what Jesus is talking about. Going through a drive-thru lane and paying people to give you a meal with enough calories to feed an entire third world family is not persecution. Listening to beautiful centuries-old music is not torture. Listening to another point of view is not mistreatment. Go watch "Hotel Rwanda" or "Schindler's List" or "The Killing Fields" or "The Passion of the Christ" and then we'll talk about the meaning of persecution.

The world doesn't endorse martyrs--while they're alive. Although he probably diffused an all-out race war, nobody proposed a Martin Luther King Day while he was still around. Only after they're safely dead and can make no more trouble, does the world honor those who pour their lives into exposing the standard operating B.S. and changing the status quo.

The world likes winners and it defines winners as survivors. Thus a while back, on the 50th anniversary of "Playboy" magazine, Hugh Hefner was hailed as a man who changed society. Few dared to say he changed it for the better. We tend to celebrate conquerors, entrepreneurs and alpha males who put their stamp on the world regardless of how many lives they destroyed. That's irrelevant. Coming out on top personally makes you a winner to the world.

Jesus says putting your life on the line to make the world a better place for others makes you a winner in the eyes of eternity and God's kingdom is made up of such as these.

So, you see, what Jesus said in these 8 simple pronouncements was really quite radical. Many in his original audience must have thought he was joking. Others must have thought him crazy. But still others saw the world in a new and unflattering light. They saw that, as topsy turvy as it seemed, what Jesus said was actually made sense. They saw that it was what the world said that was out of whack. And they realized that it was the world that had to be changed. As Paul said, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise."

It didn't take a whole lot of people subscribing to this point of view to get things started. Just 12, really, and one was a scoundrel. But that is enough to make things happen if you're as crazy as our God is--crazy like a fox!

Seeing the Light

When we first moved to the Keys, you could tell when hurricane season was near because all of the stores would stock up on big flashlights and C and D batteries. And you needed a lot of batteries because the ones in the flashlights always seemed to be dead when you were groping for them in the dark. And it was dark a lot. The electricity was much less reliable 20 years ago. It was not uncommon for the Keys to have a blackout once or twice a month. And after hurricane Georges some of us were without power for a whole month. We went through a lot of batteries. It’s too bad we didn’t have today’s technology. LED lights burn brighter and require a lot less power. Their light is whiter as well, without the yellowish tinge and wedge of shadow the older flashlights often cast. Today there’s no excuse not to have an affordable bright light on your key chain or in your pocket. I bet our ancestors would literally kill to have one.

For most of history, humans were understandably afraid of the dark. Until we mastered fire, we were at the mercy of predators with exceptional night vision. On a moonless night, you couldn’t see the dangers around you and you couldn’t see well enough to run away from them. Even with campfires, torches and lamps, the light was limited and flickering. It could easily burn out or be extinguished. So much of what happened intentionally at night was the kind of stuff you didn’t tell your parents or your spouse about.

Small wonder the Bible is full of imagery about light. In the days before light pollution, nobody took light for granted. Light meant safety. And so what more appropriate metaphor was there for God and for his Word, by which he enlightens us.

The ancient Hebrews did not confuse God with the sun but they did see it and its light as his gift. As it says in Ecclesiastes, “light is sweet and it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun.“ In Genesis light is the first thing created. Then, on the fourth day, God creates the sun and moon, one to rule the day and one to rule the night. The stars are signs for seasons and days and years. In fact, most of what God creates in Genesis is either a form of light or a form of life.

We now know about photosynthesis and the role of sunlight in helping our bodies create vitamin D. And yet our ancestors intuited the connection between light and life. Perhaps they noticed how poorly plants grew in the shade. Perhaps it was the fact that it was just safer getting around by daylight. But they knew that light was essential for life and that God was the source of both.

The chief thing about light is that it allows us to see. Even in familiar surroundings, light is vital to navigating safely. I've lived in our present home for 15 years and I still occasionally whack my shins or stub my toes trying to get around in my darkened bedroom. And when you are in a new environment, you really need illumination to find your way around. So it’s easy to see how the metaphor of God being light arose, even before he appeared to Moses in a burning bush and to the Israelites as a pillar of fire in the night. In morally murky situations, whether at home or elsewhere, the light of God is essential for assessing where we are.

The other morning at 6 am I was putting fluid into my car engine. I cleaned my hands with wet wipes and was, I thought, rather thorough about it. But when I went into a lighted building I realized I'd missed a few spots and had to re-wash with soap and water. The light of God has the same effect on us. We might think our lives are clean in comparison to the rest of this darkened world. But when viewed in the radiance of God, we can see that we still have some areas that need attention.

Light helps us see dangers around us. One of the tropes one often sees in suspense or horror films is the flash of lightning that reveals the person on screen is in a precarious situation or that the monster or serial killer is right behind her. Or the hero and villain are frantically groping for a weapon that falls to the floor just as the lights begin to flicker or go out. Few films are brave enough to have more than a few seconds of pitch black and so they tease us with glimpses of light between several frightening frames of darkness.

The light of God also reveals spiritual and moral dangers we often don’t see. It warns us of keeping the wrong sort of company to which our friendship or romantic attraction might blind us. It reminds us that the seed of our actions can be found in angry or careless or foolish thoughts and words. It points out that we can get so caught up in the rituals or trivia of religion than we forget the essentials of following Jesus.

Light can also guide us. Before there were telescopes, sailors realized that the stars could tell them where they were and guide them to their destinations. During the day, the sun travels from east to west. And a lamp or a flashlight can show us the path to follow.

The light of God shows us the way to live. It turns its spotlight not only on the pitfalls along the way but also the proper way to respond to situations. It highlights the importance of justice, peace and forgiveness in our lives. It picks out those who, while not perfect, are heading in the right direction. And it points clearly to Jesus.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus is called the Word of God, and the Light and the Life of the world. He is the beacon we should be following, the radiant example of God’s love that we should strive to reflect in every area of our life. In First John, it says, “God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth. But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.”

Darkness hides reality but light reveals the truth. At a Halloween party, children might pass off peeled grapes as eyeballs but they have to let you feel them in the dark. The light would destroy the illusion. And Jesus destroys the illusion that evil is just a matter of things external to us that we can control, or that calling him “Lord” is sufficient even if we don’t obey him, or that we can serve him without taking care of the needs of others.

Light destroys darkness. In the original novel, Dracula does come out during the day. His powers are weakened but sunlight doesn’t destroy him. But when the story was first filmed, in an unauthorized adaptation called “Nosferatu,” Dracula is not staked and beheaded as he is in the novel. Rather the heroine entices the vampire to overstay his nightly visitation so that the rays of dawn can kill him. It’s such a powerful visual that most films still feature vampires who evaporate in sunlight.

And since light does banish darkness, the Book of Revelation pictures a new heaven and a new earth where night is no more. The sun reigns supreme in the sky and the Son of God is the light of the City of God. He not only wipes away all tears but chases away all that would overshadow the joy of his presence.

Lest we get too dualistic, remember that light does not cast everything into black and white. Rather it is light that allows us to see colors. Black is the absence of all color. Only in the light can we see the multi-hued beauty of God’s creation. Rainbows are in fact light itself revealed in its constituent colors and in all its glory.

Light is God’s first gift. It gives us life, warmth, truth and a whole spectrum of colors to appreciate. As C. S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” And just as everyone can carry a small but powerful source of light these days, so we Christians carry in our hearts the light of God and whenever darkness threatens we can call upon his light that we might see our way out of the night that seeks to envelope us and emerge into the radiance of God’s Son.

A House Divided

“Thank God Jared Lee Loughner was crazy.” I’m sure that thought, however politically incorrect, went through the minds of some of the members of our political parties. Because had he been a follower of the right or the left, it would have given the other side an endless supply of “ammunition.” As it was, both sides still thought it might be time to tone down the rhetoric. It’s one thing to put a gunsight over the district of a political opponent; it’s quite another to have someone actually use a gun to try to assassinate that person. Yes, I know a few on the fringe haven’t gotten the memo to stop blaming the other side. And one pundit really needs to study his history. When someone in an incoherent rant on You Tube says his favorite books are “The Communist Manifesto” and “Mein Kamph,” you can’t say he is a tool of one party. “The Communist Manifesto” is way left wing and “Mein Kamph” was fascist, which is an extreme right wing position. To say you embrace both puts you off the bird completely. That alone should tell you that the speaker is at the very least confused.

I’m not here to speak about which political party is right or wrong. That’s not my job. But I do think this is a perfect illustration of something that afflicts all groups when differing opinions become so rigid that no compromise is possible and each side demonizes the other. We’re starting into several week’s lectionary readings from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. That was a church that had a lot of sides and controversies. And Paul was be trying his darnedest to keep them from coming apart at the seams.

Corinth was situated on the narrow isthmus between southern and northern Greece and between 2 gulfs that served as a portage site for boat traffic between the western and eastern Mediterranean. It was a very wealthy city, a Roman colony and the capital for most of Greece. It was also corrupt. The town’s name was turned into a Greek word that meant “living a very debauched life.” On the acropolis above the city was a temple to Aphrodite, known to the Romans as Venus. A thousand temple prostitutes served there, coming down the mountain in procession to procure “worshipers” and lead them up to the temple. On the bottom of their sandals were embossed letters that left footprints which read “follow me.”

Except for Ephesus, Paul spent more time in Corinth than any other city. When he left after 18 months, he left a vibrant church that included Crispus, the ruler of the local synagogue. So when at Ephesus he got word that the Corinthian Christians were divided on a number of issues, he was distressed. He sent a letter telling them not to tolerate immorality in the church. A number of questions were raised which Paul handled in what is now called 1st Corinthians. The situation did not get better so apparently Paul paid them a visit. Things only got worse and so Paul wrote a very stern letter. The church finally straightened up and Paul wrote a conciliatory letter. Some scholars think that 2nd Corinthians, with its awkward shifts in tone, contains the 3 other letters.

The situation at Corinth has given us a peek at an important church in the 1st century. It is not always pretty. But we see a couple of principles for dealing with human divisiveness.

The first problem that Paul deals with is that the Corinthians Christians were divided along the lines of which spiritual leader they followed. They were saying “I belong to Paul,” “I belong to Apollos,” “I belong to Cephas,” and “I belong to Christ.” Paul isn’t even complemented that he has a faction. He is outraged. “Was Paul crucified for you?” he asks.

Paul gets to the heart of the matter. The church wouldn’t exist without Jesus and his sacrifice. While it may be impossible for us not to prefer one particular person’s take on the gospel, it is the gospel itself, the good news about Jesus, that should be our focus, our common ground.

We see this in any group, whatever its mission. Despite overall agreement on the essentials, people gravitate to a certain emphasis or interpretation and suddenly you have blue dog Democrats, or social conservatives, or Tea Partiers, or progressives. These factions often have their biggest disagreements with those they are closest to in ideology. In the church alone there are 33,830 denominations. Some of the differences are minor, some are major. Still, the vast majority could join in affirming the Apostles Creed. Yet we let our non-essential differences divide us, despite the fact that Jesus‘ prayer on the night he was betrayed was for our unity.

Interestingly, after stressing the centrality of Jesus, Paul concludes by saying, “So let no one boast of human leaders. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world or life or death or the present or the future--all belong to you, and you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.” They don’t belong to their teachers. Their teachers belong to them. They are part of the riches in Christ. In other words, all their perspectives are valuable; just don’t become captive to any one of them. They are yours. And don’t forget, you are Christ’s.

Paul deals with several issues in that church: sexual immorality, lawsuits, marriage, food offered to idols, the Eucharist, spiritual gifts, and more. I’m not going to deal with those today. But finally he gets to the other essential element of the church: love. We read 1st Corinthians 13 at weddings but in the original context Paul is talking about the church. He knows he can’t resolve every problem that can or will arise. But one thing that can keep the church from splitting is love.

Paul isn’t talking about mere sentimentality. He is talking about "agape," the Greek word for the kind of love God is. Human love is often impatient; divine love is not. Humans can be cruel to those they love; divine love is kind. Human love can be tinged with envy and arrogance. Humans in love can be boastful and rude. Not so divine love. Humans can be irritable, resentful, and insist on their own way. Not divine love. Human love does not prevent people from rejoicing in injustice, especially if it favors them. Divine love finds its joy when the truth wins out. Human love may fade or fail but divine love continues to bear up, to trust, to hope and to endure no matter what comes. It never quits.

No group will hold together if there is no love for each other and for their mission. Fear of a common enemy can bring people together for a while. Then the threat passes, like our alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, or the parties involved turn on each other, like the alliance between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and it’s over. Love binds people into a team, a family. If the love is unselfish and unconditional, the group can survive and even thrive, whatever it faces.

So the two essential things needed for the church to survive and even grow is a commitment to Christ, over and above individual leaders and emphases, and Christ-like love. Without those two, all the gimmicks, programs, and marketing techniques in the world can’t save a church.

For one thing, love means being willing to make sacrifices for the good of the church. One of the problems facing Christians in the Roman empire was buying meat. Butcher shops were attached to pagan temples and would sell the excess meat offered to the idols. Some Christians became vegetarians rather than eat food offered to idols. Others, reasoning that there is only one God, felt that meat offered to idols was offered to nothing real. So they had no problem eating the meat. Paul obviously agrees with the latter position, seeing as he calls those who hold the former position “weaker brothers.” Nevertheless, he is concerned that their faith not be damaged by the example of those not bothered by the problem. So he suggests that those whose faith is stronger not show up those whose faith might stumble over the matter. Specifically, they should refrain from eating meat. That’s right. Instead of telling those whose faith was affected by this issue to grow up, he told the more mature Christians to make concessions on the matter. It goes against what most people would feel is just. But it was done out of love for those troubled by the issue and to preserve the unity of the church.

It reminds me of something that happened early in the history of this country. The Continental Congress was considering the Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson. All of the previous problems with the text paled next to the paragraph criticizing the British crown for the slave trade. The southern colonies did not like it. They threatened to vote down the Declaration were the paragraph not removed. John Adams was vehemently for its inclusion. He wrote Ben Franklin that if slavery was allowed to remain in the U.S., a war would be fought over it in 100 years time. But finally Jefferson himself took out the paragraph, something he really resented. The Declaration of Independence eventually passed unanimously.

Who was right, Adams or Jefferson? Both. Adams’ prediction of the Civil War was only off by 15 years. It remains the war that cost more American lives than any other. But if Jefferson hadn’t removed the paragraph, there wouldn’t have been a Civil War because there wouldn’t have been a United States of America.

Imagine the political fallout of making such a decision today, when compromise on any position is considered unforgivable. And Paul’s weaker brother doctrine isn’t that popular in the church either. But Jesus never said that the world would know his disciples by how we agree on everything but by how we love each other. And as any couple knows, love means, in the real world, making compromises. The abolitionists, primarily Christians, did not give up on ridding the United States of slavery. And even after the Civil War it took another hundred years to get legislation passed that actually secured the civil rights of African Americans.

The church no longer fights over eating meat offered to idols. There have been many conflicts since. And oddly enough, outside of Paul’s letters there is little reference to the controversy. It seems Paul’s method worked, whereas the issues on which Christians could not reach a compromise on have left lasting scars on the church. And the world sees just another bunch of people arguing over non-essentials. Wouldn’t it be better if those Christians arguing over things not covered in the Apostle’s Creed could say to one another: “I totally disagree with you on this matter…but I love you anyway.”

There is no requirement that citizens of our country love one another but the Declaration of Independence ends by saying, “for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” Our constitution lists among its purposes is “to promote the general welfare.” So we are not to act as a random collection of individuals but as a nation with a common mission that is meant to help all. Our freedom of speech was secured by the Bill of Rights not so that we indulge ourselves in achieving new depths of invective but so that by bringing everyone’s perspective to the table we can craft the best solutions to the problems that threaten us.

Facing the might of the greatest empire of their time, Ben Franklin, one of the last to give up on reconciliation with Great Britain, pointed out that “we must hang together, gentlemen,…else we shall most assuredly hang separately.” More straightforwardly, Jesus said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Substitute “country” or “church” and the truth of that statement remains. And we must ask ourselves if we wish to take that as the final verdict on our ourselves or the words of Psalm 133: “Behold how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.”

Lord of All

When I was a kid, I was an avid reader of Mad magazine. I was aware of Cracked magazine but it seemed to me a pale imitation. The art wasn’t as good, the humor wasn’t as funny nor the satire as sharp. So it’s odd that one of my favorite websites is cracked.com. But it’s nothing like the magazine. The website specializes in lists, like “5 Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam,” “6 Absurd Gender Stereotypes (That Science Says Are True),” and “5 Horrible Life Lessons Learned From Teen Movies.” The articles are factual; the humor is in the outrageous truths offered and the often hilarious way they are presented, although the language isn’t always appropriate for church. What I like is that the writers really do their research. So when they write an article entitled “6 Supervillains From History That Make The Joker Look Subtle,” they’ve got the facts to make their case.

One list that caught my attention recently was “5 Real Deleted Bible Scenes In Which Jesus Kicks Some [you know what].” Brian Thompson is actually writing not about the Bible but about the pseudepigrapha, works by people purporting to be apostles or other biblical folks. These were never seriously conidered during the 200 years that Christians debated which books to include in the New Testament. These books read like bad fanfic. The incidents to which Thompson refers include one in the "Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew." The Holy Family encounters a cave full of dragons (!) on their flight to Egypt. They are terrified until the baby Jesus hops down from Mary’s breast and cows the dragons into worshiping him. The "Infancy Gospel of Thomas" is full of more disturbing incidents. Jesus is making birds out of clay and bringing them to life when another boy splashes in the pool he’s using. Jesus causes him to age and wither away. Then there’s the time a kid bumps into Jesus, who pronounces a death curse on him. When the townspeople go to his parents to report Jesus’ reign of terror, he strikes them all blind.

Not to worry! Joseph grabs Jesus by the ear and makes him undo all the harm he’s done and resurrect those he‘s killed. Thereafter, Jesus chills and goes straight.

As you can see the reason the church didn’t include these fake gospels has nothing to do with censorship and everything to do with their quality and fanciful nature. For the same reason that fans of the first “Highlander” movie reject the second one, Christians saw that these pseudo-gospels blatantly contradicted the content and spirit of the original four. In trying to emphasize Jesus' divinity, they went way too far. And since we know these were written a hundred years or more after Christ’s earthly life, there’s no good reason to consider them valid sources for information about the historical Jesus.

In fact the earliest writings about Jesus are Paul’s letters, which date from the 50s A.D. And since most scholars date the gospels later, you’d think they would say our best source for data about Jesus was Paul. Oddly enough, they don’t. Part of that is due to a bias against Paul’s Christology, his theology of Jesus Christ. Even biblical scholars like to be seen as objective, which they interpret as meaning not inclined towards the supernatural. So they really have problems with Paul’s portrait of Jesus as Christ, Lord, Savior, the last Adam, the Son of God, and the Wisdom of God. Ironically, they hope to find a more primitive, less developed picture of Jesus in the gospels despite their later dates.

Of course the problem is that Mark, the first gospel, usually dated in the mid to late 60s A.D., starts out with the words “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” So his Christology seems to be as high as Paul’s. One finds the same situation whichever gospel one turns to. In Matthew’s first chapter, he links Jesus with Isaiah’s prophesy of child named “Emmanuel: God with us.” In Luke’s first chapter the angel Gabriel tells Mary that her child will be called “the Son of the Most High.” In Luke’s sequel to his gospel, the Book of Acts, Peter on the first Pentecost calls Jesus “both Lord and Christ.” And John starts out telling us Jesus was the Word who is God. You will not find Jesus portrayed as mere Jewish sage anywhere in the New Testament. The only way to take the deity out of the earliest writings about Jesus is to deliberately edit it out.

Why is this important? Because when we are dealing with Jesus, we are dealing with God. If Jesus was born a human being, it means God became a human being. If Jesus lived as a poor man, then God lived in poverty and want. If Jesus touched the sick and deformed and outcast, then God touched those considered unclean. If Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, then God wept at the grave of a friend. If Jesus did not resist when arrested, then God did not smite down those who treated him unjustly but endured the beating, the spitting and the lash. If Jesus went to the cross, then God suffered the most horrific and unrelieved pain we can imagine. If Jesus died, then God underwent the transition we most fear. If Jesus rose from the dead, then God has defeated death and is master over all that seeks to destroy and degrade us.

The earliest Christian creed was simply “Jesus is Lord.” In Sunday’s passage from Acts, Peter says, “he is Lord of all.” All is the most inclusive term possible. If we believe it, two conclusions follow from it.

First, if Jesus is Lord of all, then ultimately Jesus is in charge of everything. We can have peace of mind that Jesus has, in the words of the old spiritual, “the whole world in his hands.” At no time, in no place, under no circumstances, are we beyond his love and protection. We can have confidence and courage in any situation because Jesus is Lord of all.

The second conclusion is that, if Jesus is Lord of all, then we must obey him in everything. If Jesus were merely a moral teacher, we could nevertheless pick and choose among which of his teachings to follow. I'm a huge fan of C.S. Lewis but I disagree with his opinions on certain things. But it would be a contradiction to call Jesus master of all, if we do not obey him as our master in every situation. In fact, though some critics think the chief problem with Christianity is that Christians do not reject some of its teachings, it is a bigger problem when we opt out of various commandments. Because we are more likely to skip the things that are hard. Like the commandment to love others as we do ourselves. Or to love our enemies. Or to turn the other cheek. When Christians get into trouble it is usually because they have not followed Jesus commands to forgive, to be compassionate, and to be generous to those who cannot repay us.

It was when heresies arose, when people started writing down distortions of the truths of Jesus, even misguided attempts to make him more awesome, that Christians began to discuss which books were inspired by God and which weren’t. If you read what they rejected, it’s hard not to agree they did a good job. The capricious and violent Jesus depicted in the pseudepigrapha was not even a candidate. It wasn’t consistent with the radically loving and forgiving Jesus found in the oldest and best attested writings about him. If that is the Jesus who is Lord of all, what have we to fear? And if Jesus is truly Lord of all, why should we balk to obey his gracious words?