Burdens

The scriptures referred to are Galatians 6:1-16.

When things go wrong, it's good to have a way to fix them. Which is one reason I like multi-tools, the great granddaddy of which is the Swiss Army knife. There are also some other clever pocket and key-chain tools out there which are handy for little emergencies. But for a big job, you need the proper tool. You wouldn't want to put together a piece of furniture with the screwdriver or wrench you get on a tool shaped like a card, nor cut fabric with the tiny scissors on a Leatherman micra. I once had to put together something that had 3 different kinds of screws: Phillips, hex screws and the type that requires a set of Allen wrenches. Thank God I had all three in my tool box. To do a task, you need the right tool.

At this point in time, the biggest problems we are facing all require one thing we have in short supply. We have all kinds of technology to tackle the world's problems. We have machines and medicines and software and scientific knowledge we did not have a century ago. What we lack is not the know-how but the morality. On every level what is impairing us from handling problems that affect us all is short-sighted self-centeredness. People are concerned only with “what is good for me and mine right now.” Our elected officials are motivated only by those issues that benefit them and the contributors to their re-election campaigns and their party. Our corporations only care about things that increase their profits and the dividends for their stockholders. Governmental and corporate employees who realize that their organization is doing wrong, either by intention, incompetence or indifference, are only concerned with keeping their jobs and thus have become complicit. Meanwhile racists only care about themselves and their race. The wealthy only care about themselves and their class. Nationalists only care about themselves and their nation. And the implied corollary to this is “And to hell with everyone else.”

Contrast this with what Paul says in our passage from Galatians: “Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” This is a novel restatement of Jesus' command to “love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12) Paul is emphasizing what that really means. We often say we love something when we really mean we merely appreciate it. But that doesn't necessarily entail giving it support. I appreciate certain TV series but I don't join movements to save them from cancellation, even if I will miss them. What Paul is saying is that if you really love someone, you will help them with their burdens. You will take some of the load off of them or in extreme cases, all the load. We see this when a loved one is gravely ill and needs help with everything they otherwise would be able to handle, including bodily needs we don't like to think about. Some parents devote their whole lives to a disabled child.

To love someone else is to take on their concerns and needs and prioritize them, when necessary, even above your own. I saw a meme on the internet that quoted  a news report which suggested that parents leave something important in the back seat to avoid forgetting and leaving their kids in a hot car. The lower half of the picture is a little girl in a car seat with a quizzical expression and the words “Something important?” We've all forgotten to bring in the eggs or the ice cream or the yogurt we just bought only to remember them when it is too late. But you would think people would not forget their own flesh and blood. Sadly, some do.

We rightly regard that as an aberration because your kids fall squarely within the “me and mine” area that all human beings recognize as important. The problem is trying to widen that area of concern to include those not related to you by blood, race, religion, nationality, or shared orientation, interest or ideology. That is the challenge Jesus laid down for us. Can we grow to become people who love all human beings who are created in the image of the God we claim to worship?

And on the basis of the behavior and rhetoric of some of the more vocal and visible leaders in Christianity, I would have to say that we are failing that challenge. Every day in the news some preacher or priest or pastor goes on the record saying things Jesus never said nor would he ever say. They justify behavior Jesus explicitly condemns and condemn things Jesus never spoke about. Right now there are people who think the litmus test for being a Christian is one's position on abortion and homosexuality. But abortion, though practiced in the ancient world, is never mentioned in the Bible. And homosexuality is only mentioned in 6 passages out of 31,000 verses. Whereas hatred is condemned nearly 4 times as often, in 23 passages; anger in 26 passages; self-righteousness and conceit in 36 passages; oppression, neglect and injustice in 44 passages; sins of the tongue, like lying, gossip, slander and deception are mentioned at least 78 passages; pride and boasting in 80 passages. Hypocrisy is mentioned 3 times as often, in at least 18 passages, one of which is the entire chapter of Matthew 23, a long excoriating speech by Jesus. In contrast, Jesus never mentions homosexuality and neither do the Ten Commandments. It sounds like people who harp on these issues are unbalanced, at least Biblically.

I would call myself a fundamentalist if it still meant a person who sticks to the fundamentals, or basic beliefs and behaviors of following Jesus. But the fundamentalists are more interested in peripheral matters and have drifted away from things like love and grace and imitating Jesus. I would call myself an Evangelical if it still meant a person who emphasizes the good news of what God has revealed and done in Christ. But again that word has come to mean something else. They have prioritized the 5 passages in the Bible on our responsibilities to the civil authorities over the 29 passages about our responsibilities to children, the 29 about our responsibility to the fatherless, the 28 passages on our responsibility to love our enemies, the 32 passages on our responsibility to the oppressed, the 51 passages on our responsibility to aliens, and the 88 passages about our responsibility to the poor. To those who call themselves Fundamentalists and Evangelical Christians, my response is that of Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

At the heart of the gospel is God taking on our burdens in the person of Jesus Christ. He took on our flesh, with all its vulnerabilities to pain and death. (Matthew 4:2; Luke 24:64; John 19:30) He took on the burden of parents and siblings who did not always understand or support him. (Luke 2:48-50; John 7:3-5) He took on the burden of being a refugee, fleeing with his family from violence to live in another land. (Matthew 2:13-15) He took on the burden of being opposed for doing the right thing. (Mark 3:1-6) He took on the burden of speaking the truth to those in power and paying the price. (John 18:37) He took on the burden of experiencing the estrangement of God in our place. (Mark 15:34) He took on the burden of dying for our sins. (Mark 10:45; 1 John 2:1-2)

In 1 John it says, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for each other. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” (1 John 3:16-18) If Jesus made such sacrifices for us, we, his followers, should also be willing to make sacrifices for others. And we cannot look at whether such people are worthy of our help. As Paul points out, it was while we were still sinners that Jesus died for us. (Romans 5:8) Oh, and we his creatures were also his killers. So how can we refuse to help others, when, as it says in Romans, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”? (Romans 3:23) If, as James points out, you are a lawbreaker regardless of how many laws or which laws you break (James 2:10) how can we act as if some sins puts anyone beyond God's love, mercy and grace? Or as Jesus said, who of us is sinless and therefore worthy of casting the first stone at another? (John 8:7)

When Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive a brother who sinned against him, the disciple suggested the number be set at 7. Jesus said, make that 70 times 7. (Matthew 18:22) If we are to be that forgiving to a fellow human being, how much more forgiving is God towards us! And think of what a burden it is for a just God not to deal with people who do unjust things in the manner they deserve. Do you not burn with indignation when you hear of some outrageous action on the part of a person who harms or molests or kills a child or an animal and yet escapes punishment? Imagine how that hurts God who created and loves both the perpetrator and victim! And yet, if the person truly repents, if he or she really changes their mind and behavior, if they actually turn to God to turn their life around, he will forgive them. Imagine what that costs him.

I got a hint when I read the story of a family dealing with the tragedy of one child killing another. In what is sadly too common an occurrence these days, a toddler found his father's gun and shot and killed his sister. He was too young to understand what he'd done but the family still had to deal with the loss. They loved both children and they do not blame the toddler but they cannot forget what he has done. That is a burden they must carry for the rest of their lives. The situation is not a perfect parallel but I am reminded of what Jesus said as he was being crucified: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) That is how forgiving God is.

And if he can take on that burden, the brunt of all our sins and the burden of forgiving what we have done to harm his son and all the others made in his image, we can shoulder the burdens presented to us. The question was actually asked by Cain, the first murderer, in the 4^th chapter of Genesis: “Am I my brother's keeper?” A better translation is “guardian or protector.” And the obvious answer is “Yes!” Yes, we are to guard, to protect, to keep from harm our brothers and sisters. While I do not generally like to lump people into two categories, this is a fundamental difference: there are those who protect, who rescue, who help other people and those who do not. And those who do not help or protect others out of indifference are no better than who actively harm others; in fact, they are complicit in those sins. The Nazis could not have gotten away with sending people to death camps had not the general populace decided it was just not their problem.

We are called by God to love others and that means we are called to bear their burdens. Ideally we will all bear one another's burdens, me helping you with yours and you helping me with mine and everyone else helping everyone else. There is a wonderful illustration of this verse in the original edition of the Good News translation of the Bible. It shows a line of people, old and young, male and female, and each is holding with one hand a bag slung over their shoulder and they are each with the other hand cupping and helping lift the weight of the bag slung over the shoulder of the person ahead of them. They are fulfilling what Paul says in our passage: that “all must carry their own loads” and that we simultaneously “bear one another's burdens.”

Sometimes what stops us from bearing the burdens of another is the fear that we cannot do it. And yet there are videos of groups of people lifting cars off of a pinned child or a trapped driver with their bare hands. Together we are stronger than we think, especially when motivated by the power of love. Which is to say the power of God. We are all made in his image, however deeply we have buried that image, however obscured or distorted it appears under all the sin we have heaped upon it. I remember seeing a video at the Mel Fisher museum of how they restore the treasures they have brought from the bottom of the sea. A worker washes and gently brushes away centuries of accumulated muck from a shape that really doesn't look like much until she patiently reveals that underneath was a ruby cross or gold chalice. We are like that. And if we let the Spirit work on us the beauty inside us will see the light of day once more and shine.

A scientific study concluded that the key ingredient in building a civilization is religion. It is the glue that holds together people of different families and races and cultures. And in a society where the belief in a God who is loving and just is declining, it is not surprising that our civilization is showing cracks and coming undone. We no longer recognize the image of God in each person or the command to love others, be they neighbors or enemies, be they native or foreign, be they sinners like us or sinners unlike us. We will never get rid of evil by getting rid of certain classes of people. We will only get rid of evil by getting rid of it in ourselves. And we obviously cannot do it by ourselves. It would be like a doctor trying to do a heart transplant on himself. We need to trust God to open us up, fix what's inside and give us the heart of Jesus, Love Incarnate.

When I was in recovery for my broken wrists and legs my therapy was to increase my strength and flexibility through exercise with resistance. At times I had weights put on my healing limbs. And our therapy is to put that heart of love we get from Jesus to work, bearing the burdens of one another. We need to show that our love is not all talk. As Paul said in the previous chapter of Galatians, “the only thing that matters is faith working through love.”

That means loving the unlovable, as God does when he loves each sinner. It means initiating contact with those not like us, as Jesus did with the Samaritan woman. (John 4) It means reaching out to those society sees as pariahs, the way Jesus touched the leper and healed him. (Matthew 8:1-4) It means seeing in those who suffer not reasons for blame but opportunities to show God's love in action, as Jesus did with the man born blind (John 9:1-7) It means being willing to live a life of love even if you have to suffer and make sacrifices to do so, as Jesus and his disciples made the ultimate sacrifice.

The saying goes, “A ship is safest in the harbor but that's not what ships were made for.” We were made to love and that means pushing out of our cozy bays and sheltering coves into the vast rough seas of this world. It means braving storms and great waves that threaten to capsize us. But if we open our sails and let the wind of the Spirit move us and use the proper tools God gave us and follow Jesus, the captain of our salvation, (Hebrews 2:10) we will save many who are lost and sinking. And when we pull into home port at last, we will not report how we cowered within our walls but how we answered God's call and set forth on a life of adventure, went to many an exotic place, met with many a new and different people and made them our brothers and sisters. And we will see them no longer as burdens but precious treasures, who will stand beside us in God's kingdom with a great multitude no one can number, of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues. God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. On that day God will complete the work of healing and reconciliation which we are to be doing right now.

Your Call

The scriptures referred to are 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21, Galatians 5:1, 13-25 and Luke 9:51-62.

What's the difference between a job and a calling? You might just fall into a job. You answer an ad or a friend tells you about an opening or you just follow in the footsteps of one of your parents out of familiarity with what they do. A calling is usually a strong attraction to a field or profession. You just feel that this is what you were meant to do. While some people like their jobs, people with a calling feel passionate about what they do. There are a lot of jobs you don't need to be enthusiastic about to carry out, though it helps. But a calling demands a commitment over and above merely punching a time clock and collecting a paycheck. You want your doctor or a special ed teacher or your defense attorney to be more emotionally invested in what they do than the person who bags your groceries.

We have always referred to clergy as having a calling. At least we hope that they entered into the priesthood or pastorate out of a deep sense of mission, rather than as an arbitrary choice of a career. The difference can be seen in the life of John Newton. His father was a shipmaster who took him on 6 voyages. His father had intended for John to work at a sugarcane plantation in Jamaica but John opted to become a sailor on a merchant ship. Eventually he became the captain of a slave ship. But then he became a Christian and slowly came to feel that slavery was not something he could be a part of. In fact later he said he did not consider himself fully converted while a slave captain. After giving up the sea, he felt called to the ordained ministry. He applied to become a priest in the Church of England but it did not happen for more than 7 years and during that time he also applied to the Methodists, Independents and Presbyterians. Not only did he become a popular evangelical priest he became part of the abolition movement. He convinced William Wilberforce to stay in Parliament and worked with him to abolish the slave trade in Britain. He also wrote hymns, the best known of which are “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken” and “Amazing Grace.”

John Newton fell into being a sailor but he felt called to the ordained ministry. He also had problems as a sailor, at one point trying to desert, being flogged for that and seriously considering murdering the captain in revenge and then committing suicide. He got along so badly with the crew of another ship that they stranded him in West Africa. He himself was enslaved until he was rescued by a sea captain who had been asked to find him by Newton's father. John was much more successful as a priest and abolitionist. This was obviously the best use of his gifts.

Our Old and New Testament and Gospel passages today are all about being called. In our passage from 1 Kings Elijah is sent to anoint 2 kings and his successor. In our gospel Jesus calls a number of people who have a variety of responses. And in our passage from Galatians, Paul talks of our being called to freedom in the Spirit.

Though the words in Greek and Hebrew translated “call” have as many different definitions as the English one, today we are primarily speaking of being called in the sense of being invited or summoned by God to serve him. In 1 Kings these people are being called to serve in specific roles, rather the way a person is named to a position today. They are serving God and his people in clearly defined professions.

In Luke Jesus is calling people to follow him, which is both more general but in a way a more difficult task. Following Jesus is not a job but a way of life. It affects every aspect of our lives which is why Jesus indicates that he wishes a wholehearted response. To the guy who says he will follow Jesus anywhere, our Lord spells out that this means not settling anywhere. Jesus is traveling up and down the country and so this man has to put aside any desire of his to having a place to go home to each night. To the other two who say “Yes” to Jesus, he says he wants people who make following him their top priority. He doesn't want people who are so tied to their old life that they might, by taking a pause in answering his call, find themselves enmeshed with old commitments that will tempt them to stay home instead.

What does being called to follow Jesus mean? Paul spells out a number of things, but he starts by saying what we are called to: freedom. Paul uses the concept of slavery to illustrate this.

Before getting into his metaphor, let's look at what slavery meant at that time and in that culture. Slavery was ubiquitous, with 1 out of every 3 people living in Italy and 1 in 5 elsewhere being a slave. And no one at that time opposed the institution, except the Essenes who lived in monk-like isolation near the Dead Sea. During the period of the Old Testament the Law protected slaves in various ways and Israelites who sold themselves into slavery to pay off debts were to be freed every 7 years. In the Roman Empire, however, slaves had no legal rights. Those slaves who were civil servants or were domestics often had it better than those who were free but poor. Many doctors and teachers were slaves and were paid for their work. Slaves could save their money and buy their freedom. Masters could and often did free their slaves in their wills. And a family member could buy a person out of slavery. Such a relative was called a redeemer.

In the Old Testament God is often called the Redeemer of his people. And in that vein, Paul writes in the prior chapter of Galatians, “So also we, when we were minors, were enslaved under the basic forces of the world. But when the appropriate time had come, God sent out his Son, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might be adopted as sons with full rights.” (Galatians 4:3-5, NET) So in today's passage Paul continues with the metaphor, contrasting slavery and freedom. “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Slaves are constrained in their actions, obeying the commands of those who have mastery over them. But what is it that enslaves those whom Christ came to redeem?

Paul uses the Greek word sarx, which literally refers to the body and is usually translated “flesh.” But a better way to understand it is as human nature, following its own appetites and instincts, without any regard to the things of the Spirit. Our bodies are good gifts from God but they are not meant to act as driverless cars, mindlessly going through life, following the basic programming. Yes, we are animals but animals with a difference. Bears, cats, dogs and even primates have been observed eating their young. Ducks, geese, bottlenose dolphins and chimpanzees will forcibly have sex with other members of their species. We would call that rape. When food is scare, a male otter might kidnap a pup and hold it hostage until the mother pays him off with food. When certain humans do those same things, most people condemn such behavior. Why? After all, animals don't debate the ethics of what they do. If we are merely animals, why do we not endorse behaviors that otherwise would be considered natural? Because nature alone cannot tell us what is moral and what isn't. That's what Paul means when using the word “flesh.”

So he enumerates the things that result from people being slaves to their unredeemed human nature. “Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.” Sounds like topics in our daily news, doesn't it? Paul says this is what you get when people are slaves to their basic human natures, untouched by the Spirit. This is what Jesus came to free us from.

But what did he free us to? Paul says, “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” We are called to be free to love others.

But what is this talk about becoming slaves again? Actually the word in question, though related to the Greek word for slave, is a verb so a better translation is “through love serve one another.” As Bob Dylan sings, “You gotta serve somebody.” You are either serving your basic unredeemed nature or you are serving the Spirit of the God who is love.

But doesn't freedom mean “free to do whatever you want?” Not really. A person who is a free citizen is still not free to violate the law. But he is free to do things a slave cannot. That's why we have been talking of freedom in terms of what you are free from and what you are free to do. Paul is saying we are free from all of those destructive and self-destructive things he listed, the stuff people just naturally fall into. And we are free to “live by the Spirit.” When we let the Spirit of the God work in us, we find a very different outcome. “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Those are undeniably better qualities in a person and in society. A person who is living by and guided by the Spirit is a person who is in the process of becoming a better person, the person God created him or her to be.

That is what Jesus is calling us to. For instance in today's gospel he is calling us to be people who do not act as James and John do. They want the Samaritan town who wouldn't receive them destroyed but Jesus rebukes them because that is not the Spirit in which they should be operating. Besides, he received a snub, not armed opposition. Yet it is human to wish to retaliate against others who are less than welcoming and in a disproportionate way, to boot. The action of the Spirit of Christ is seen in Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman (John 4), healing a Samaritan leper (Luke 17:11-17) and making a Samaritan the hero in one of his parables (Luke 10:30-37). Jesus doesn't exacerbate divisions; he come to reconcile divided people.

We are called to bring that Spirit into our everyday lives. Paul writes, “All these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. In other words, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people's trespasses against them, and he has given us the message of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God was making his plea through us...” (2 Corinthians 5:18-20, NET) In Ephesians Paul also calls this the “gospel of peace.” (Ephesians 6:15)

Nor is this merely peace with God. As love of God should also result in love for all people, who are created in his image, peace with God should lead us to make peace with others. Again in Ephesians, Paul says that Jesus' death on the cross did not only reconcile people with God but people with each other, putting to death hostility and making peace between Jews and Gentiles. (Ephesians 2:14-18) Jesus called us to be peacemakers. (Matthew 5:9) And in order to do that we must be at peace ourselves. Because we are called to proclaim peace and reconciliation not merely with our lips, but with our lives. And we can't do that effectively if our lives are in chaos.

As Paul writes, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to live worthily of the calling with which you were called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:1-5)

Notice that in this passage Paul repeats several aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, such as love, peace, patience, and gentleness. Paul also includes humility, because it reminds us that our calling and its fruit are not our own doing. As he says in 2 Timothy, “He is the one who saved us and called us with a holy calling, based not on our works but on his own purpose and grace, granted to us in Christ Jesus...” (2 Timothy 1:9) God doesn't call us because we are so good but because we so badly need his goodness. Like our hearts, which pump blood to the whole body, yet need their own blood supply, so we are both recipients of grace and channels of grace. We are, as Martin Luther said, beggars telling other beggars where to find bread. We are not ourselves the baker.

All Christians are called by God. Sometimes people think that callings are restricted to those of us wearing collars and bearing titles. But those are further callings to certain specialized roles within the body of Christ, and while they are more visible, they are not more important. And while they require specific talents and skills, they are not granted because of our talents and skills. Rather those things are gifts granted to empower us for our offices. And none of us clergy have the complete skill set we should ideally wield. If you ask me, that is how God keeps us humble and reminds us that we can't do it all and that we need other members of the body of Christ to fulfill our callings.

So too you have a calling in Christ. If you don't know what it is, look for it at the intersection of what you love, what you are good at and what people need. Often in finding what God has called them to do, people have found who they were meant to be. Their talents and experiences now make sense as they see how they come together in fulfilling their calling.

It need not be flashy or anything the world highly values. After all, who would folks miss first: the people who make our TV shows and movies or the people who make sure we have water and electricity? Our world values glamorous and highly visible jobs over the ones that actually keep things running. And it should not be that way in the body of Christ. We should not forget all the people who make it possible for us to have a safe building to meet in, bulletins to follow, music to worship with, bread and wine to distribute, goodies for coffee hour, paper towels in the rest rooms, etc. We have people who volunteer and then are elected to oversee everything, making sure the bills get paid and things get repaired. We have people who take it upon themselves to invite others to the church. We have those who help others out of Christian love. We have people who do several of those things and more. Every member of the body of Christ is important.

Jesus calls us to follow him. The Spirit equips and empowers us to do so. But we must respond. We must put aside whatever hinders us and distracts us and dissuades us from acting. We must leave behind all that enslaves us and accept the freedom of serving Jesus through serving others and thereby finding our purpose in life. It's your call. And it all begins when you answer God's call with the words, “Here I am, Lord. Send me!”

Love Never Gives Up

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 65:1-9.

You never know where a good idea will come from. It's one of the reasons that I often refer to pop culture. Plus I am a big geek. But ever so often you will find a big truth embedded in something that was made to be merely entertaining. There is a great line at the end of the Tina Fey film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot that I can never accurately quote in a sermon but which memorably encapsulates the way to confront a major setback and move on. (“Sometimes you just have to embrace the suck and move the #%$& forward.”) There was a very shrewd insight into one of the key problems of our legal system that I found in a Spiderman comic. And not the comic book but the abysmal daily newspaper strip. Spiderman tells a lawyer that we need to stop treating our justice system like a game where rules and technicalities and one side winning count more than finding the truth and doing justice. Doctor Who diagnosed the abiding problem of computers way back in the 1970s. Namely that computers are just “sophisticated idiots.” I love these throwaway insights dropped inconspicuously into media products that never pretended to be great literature.

It's much the same way that kids and drunks will occasionally utter the truth offhandedly, or a supposedly uneducated man will put his finger on a major problem the experts can't see. Sometimes it is a crucial question that comes from a surprising source. Last week I was standing and gathering my cane and clear plastic bag, containing my Bible and communion kit, when an inmate came up and asked me a question. (Some people always wait until I am obviously getting ready to leave for another unit in the jail before approaching me and asking for something, no matter how long I was sitting and talking to and praying with anyone who came over.) Anyway he wanted to ask me about Noah and the ark. Usually I love getting into these Bible discussions but it was less than 10 minutes till lockdown and I had a rosary to deliver in the adjoining unit before the inmates have to go back to their bunks and I have to leave the secure envelope of the jail proper. But his question made me stop: If God was so upset with all the evil in the world, why did he save Noah and his family? They weren't perfect. Why not just wipe everyone out and start over? I stammered out the best answer I could and then said we'd talk about it next week. But the question has stuck with me. And Lo! And Behold! Today's Old Testament passage touches on something similar.

Even without any background information you can see that God is not happy with his people. They are arrogant and “holier than thou” (v.5) despite the fact that they are engaged in idolatry and occult practices and violating God's laws. Earlier in the book of Isaiah, God speaks to the elders and rulers of his people. “'It is you who have plundered my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of poor?' declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.” (Isaiah 3:14-15) Elsewhere in Isaiah it says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deny justice to the innocent.” (Isaiah 5:20-23) And later, “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.” (Isaiah 10:1-2) And the problem is not just behavior. It goes deep, right down to their spiritual practices. “The Lord says, 'These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on mere human rules they have been taught.'” (Isaiah 29:13)

This last bit is especially grievous to God. His people seem to think he cares about rituals and symbolic acts above everything else. God's response? “Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” (Isaiah 58:3-10)

God really cares about how we treat one another, especially those without power. Trying to serve him without recognizing that reveals that someone doesn't really know who God is. As Jesus says, “Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'” (Matthew 7:22-23) In his parable about the last judgment it is people who care for the poor and despised and disadvantaged who are commended and rewarded. (Matthew 25:34-40) Nary a word is said about the kind of things folks usually associate with being religious.

Therefore God is right to be angry with his people. So he is letting them be taken into exile by the Babylonians. Yet he promises that a remnant shall return. He will work with them. But why doesn't he just wipe them out and start over? Choose another people. Maybe they will do better.

If humans were a lab experiment, maybe God would. The experiment fails, you flush the cultures, euthanize the lab rats and start over. But we are not germs to God. We are not data points or guinea pigs. He created us in his image. What he is doing, as C.S. Lewis put it, is not an experiment but an enterprise. He is trying to get us to grow into our potential, to become not merely creatures of God but children of God.

There is a theological misconception that we are all born children of God. But in reality we are his creatures. Updating an analogy from Lewis, humans are like action figures made by a toy maker. I remember when you were lucky if the action figures of, say, Captain Kirk or Doctor Who looked even vaguely like the person playing the part. Today they often do 3-D scanning of the actor and the likenesses achieved are remarkable. I have seen pictures made by fans of the Avengers that you have to look at closely to determine that they are not the actors but the action figures posed in a very convincing manner. But they aren't really alive, the Toy Story movies notwithstanding. There is a difference between something made in someone's image and their actual child.

In the movie A.I., Steven Spielberg examines what would happen if you actually could create an android that is self-aware and could act like a real child. Given how close we are getting to making uncannily realistic-looking humanoid robots, the idea strikes us as creepy. On the other hand, the concept of Pinocchio, a wooden puppet come to life, doesn't strike us as creepy, probably because of Disney's beautiful animation. But the premise of that film is that a toy wants to become a real boy. And in the end, he does so by seeking out his father, impelled by love.

The film also shows us what happens even to real boys when they simply follow their selfish desires: they become jackasses. Like the witch in Snow White scared me as a child, the scene in which the boys on Pleasure Island were turning into donkeys filled me with horror. Pinocchio, who wanted to be more than a puppet, realized that the process could go the other way. People could become less than human. Indulging indiscriminately in every craving reduces people to their basest animal nature, driven by fear, desire and need. The spiritual part of such a person withers. As someone once said, a person wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.

I saw this in nursing homes. Among those who retained their mental faculties, there were two types of people: those who continued to grow and those who shriveled up. Some people could not reconcile themselves to the present nor see any kind of future and so they lived in the past, rehashing bygone dreams and old grievances. They shrank into miserable balls of bitterness and regrets. They collapsed in on themselves, like black holes, which suck in everything, including light and give nothing back.

Others made friends, took interest in the activities, got out of their rooms and out of themselves. When I was in college, I was part of a nursing home ministry. We went on Sundays to provide a worship service and visit the residents. We saw much human suffering, such as a young woman with severe MS, who lived for visits from her husband and young children and cried when they left, and it affected us young idealistic people greatly. Eventually we began to end our times there by all visiting this one old lady. She was a brittle diabetic who had lost her vision and one leg to complications of the disease. While I was there they had to amputate the other leg. Yet she tooled around in her wheelchair, radiating a contagious joy and faith. She had a lot of loss to live with. But she didn't slink away and brood over what she no longer had. She rejoiced in what she did have and in doing so, bolstered our spirits. If through her faith she could rise above her very real disabilities, how could we let our mundane, much less serious problems stop us from living boldly for God?

As it says in the Good News Translation of 1 Corinthians 13:7, “Love never gives up.” And God is love. God does not give up on us. He doesn't want us to devolve into being less than human but grow into being more. He wants us to go from being mere images of him into being his children, who love and take after him.

That's what we see in Jesus. As the exact image of God (Hebrews 1:3), Jesus reveals what God is like. And as the perfect human being, Jesus reveals what we can become. To paraphrase Lewis, the Son of God became a human to enable humans to become children of God.

God did not give up on humanity and so he saved Noah and his family. He did not give up on his people Israel and so saved a remnant from the Babylonians. Jesus did not give up on Peter, even when he denied Jesus 3 times. After his resurrection, Jesus gives Peter 3 chances to affirm that he loves him and restores their relationship. (John 21:15-17)

It is human beings who tend to give up on others and write off whole races and classes of people and say, “They are no good.” But, as it says of the nation of Judah in our passage from Isaiah, “Don't destroy it, for there is a blessing in it.” Or as the NIV translates it, “There is yet some good in it.” To deny that there is any good in people is to ignore the fact that since we are created in the image of God, there has to be some good in everyone, however hard it is to see, however much it is obscured or distorted by our sinful use of his good gifts. And that means there is hope. As God says to Ezekiel, the prophet he called to speak to his people while they were in exile in Babylon, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather than they turn from their ways and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11)

The same cannot be said for human beings. We do like watching the death of the wicked. And so our entertainments usually end with the deaths of the bad guys, the more awful the better. Our solution to the problem of people we don't want is to get rid of them: lock em up in jails and prisons and camps or else kill them. You know how the God who is love likes to get rid of bad guys? Turn them into good guys. So Jesus calls Matthew, the tax collector. He dines with Zacchaeus, the corrupt tax collector. He saves the life of the woman taken in adultery. He frees the man living in the tombs from the legion of demons who haunt him. He promises the thief on the cross that he will be with him in paradise. Even after his ascension, he appears to Saul, the persecutor of the church. And in each case he changes their life. He heals their spiritual sickness. He makes them better.

God doesn't give up on us. What happens is we give up on God. We give up on ourselves. In the end, we become our own judge, jury and executioner. As C.S. Lewis said, the gates of hell are locked from the inside. There are people who say to God, “Your will be done,” and those to whom God, respecting their choice, will one day say, “Very well, your will be done. You don't want any part of me? So be it.” But if we reject him, we reject the source of all goodness. We choose not to grow but to shrivel up into black holes of rage and bitterness and despair.

The choice is ours. As God says in Isaiah, “I held out my hands all day long.” As the Jewish Study Bible notes, “Normally, humans pray to God by spreading out their hands (Exod. 9.29, 33; 1 Kings 8.22, 38; Isa. 1.15), but here, in an extraordinary gesture, the Lord stretches hands out to human beings.” He expects us to reach out to him in return. As it says elsewhere in Isaiah, “Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!” (Isaiah 30:18) If his arms are open to us, what is this talk about waiting? This is not speaking of God's acceptance, which is there waiting for us and is ours as soon as we come to him. Rather as it says in 2 Peter, “The Lord is not slow, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) God will not ring down the curtain until everyone who will turn to him does. And only he knows when that will be.

We do not need to wait until our world is ending to turn to God. As Paul wrote, “Behold, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2) Every second of our life is a second chance. No one's past needs to determine their future. Our God is a God of life and love and resurrection. He never gives up.