Compassion

The scriptures referred to are Psalm 25:1-10.

You'd think that everyone who goes into nursing would do so out of compassion. And for the most part you'd be right, just as most people enter the military out of love for country and not, say, because it offers them a legal way to kill people. But there are disturbing exceptions. There are so-called Angel of Death nurses, who are in fact serial killers who figure, correctly, that they can kill seriously ill patients and not get caught...at least not until someone notices an uptick in suspicious patient deaths on their shift. The same goes for other people in the helping professions. There was a British doctor who killed approximately 250 of his patients!

That said, the vast majority of people who go into healthcare do so out of the desire to help people. I remember a couple of newly graduated RNs who, once they realized they would be primarily dispensing meds, doing documentation, supervising LPNs and CNAs but not doing actual patient care very much, said, “This is not why I went into nursing!” Welcome to the 21^st century. Yet even those things are vital and if done right, they will help people.

My point is most of us assume, rightly, that the average healthcare professional is a compassionate person. Can we say the same for what people think of the average Christian?

The answer used to be a resounding “Yes!” One of the things that turned the tide of popular opinion about Christians in the Roman Empire was the fact that when plagues hit the cities, and the rich and powerful fled to their country estates, Christians stayed and nursed the sick and dying at the risk of their own lives. After all they were following Jesus. He healed people. He fed hungry people. He defended outcasts and sinners against the self-righteous. Several times we are explicitly told that Jesus had compassion for people. The Greek word indicates a gut reaction, a deep inner sympathy for people. In Mark we read, “A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, 'If you are willing, you can make me clean.' Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched the man. 'I am willing,' he said. 'Be clean!' Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.” (Mark 1:40-42)

Jesus' first impulse was to do the compassionate thing. Thus when his disciples were arguing about whose sin might have caused a man to be born blind, Jesus said, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:3) And then he healed him. Jesus didn't waste time debating the theological or moral cause of a person's suffering; he alleviated it. That, as he said, is the work of God.

So how did being a Christian, in the minds of some, devolve from helping the suffering to blaming the sufferers, as happened in the 1980s during the AIDS crisis? Pat Robertson blamed Haiti's earthquake on the story of a Voudou ceremony that kicked off their slave revolution in 1791. John Hagee blamed hurricane Katrina on the level of sin in New Orleans. And Jerry Falwell even blamed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians. In contrast Jesus, whom these preachers should be familiar with, said, “...those eighteen who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them, do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem? No, I tell you!” (Luke 13:4-5) As Paul pointed out, we are none of us righteous and innocent. (Romans 3:10) So mere disasters are no proof that those affected by it are worse than the rest of us.

If you want to be Biblical about it, any such divine judgments would be clearly announced by prophets beforehand, not afterwards, and always with God's offer to relent if people repent. That's what we see in the book of Jonah. God is more willing to forgive than his prophet. Jonah is enraged when God doesn't punish Nineveh, saying, “Oh, Lord, this is just what I thought would happen when I was in my own country. This is what I tried to prevent by attempting to escape to Tarshish!—because I knew that you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in mercy, and one who relents concerning threatened judgment.” (Jonah 4:2, NET) As God says in Ezekiel, “Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but prefer that wicked change his behavior and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11, NET) Humans cheer at the death of the wicked, not God.

We Christians are not to be callous but compassionate. As a matter of fact it is right after Jesus tell us to love our enemies, because God sends sun and rain on both the good and the evil, that he tells us, “So then, be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) The Greek word translated “perfect” means “complete, mature, reaching its end-goal.” Our goal is to be like God. Being compassionate is a large part of that.

I got the idea for this sermon series from Caroline Kingdon, an RN who is a researcher and works with patients who have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. In her portion of a webinar on M.E. she listed 6 elements of patient care, all of which started with a C. Her definition of compassion is one I particularly love. She said, “Compassion describes the way care is given through relationships based on empathy, respect and dignity. It can also be described as intelligent kindness and is central to how people perceive their care.” Let's look at this definition in greater detail.

Compassion is how one should give care. While the average Christian is not a nurse we do take care of others by helping them. We may bring meals to the elderly and shut-ins. We may take people shopping or drive them to medical appointments. We may just visit and give people time and attention and a sympathetic ear.

And just as nobody wants to be given care by an indifferent doctor or a grumpy nurse or a bored CNA, a Christian shouldn't be seen to be doing something simply because they feel they are required to. Paul, even while appealing to church members to give to the poor in Jerusalem, says, “Each one of you should give just as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9:7) God's compassion and grace towards us should stir our compassion for others. We do want to be like our heavenly Father, don't we?

Kingdon goes on to say that the “care is given through relationships.” That's the best way. There are times when we do one-time works of charity, like when we give Thanksgiving dinners to people or Christmas presents to needy families or when someone comes to the church and I help them out with groceries. Jesus healed so many people, he may never have seen most of them again. But I bet he had a good relationship with Peter's mother-in-law, whom he healed and who must have wanted to see him and cook for him every time he got back to Capernaum. She may have been why Peter's wife let him travel with Jesus rather than stay home and tend to his fishing business. Lazarus, whom Jesus raised, and his sisters Mary and Martha were friends and he stayed with them in Bethany much of the week before his death. And there were the women who traveled with Jesus. Luke says, “Some time afterward he went through towns and villages, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and disabilities: Mary (called Magdalene), from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna the wife of Cuza (Herod's household manager), Susana, and many others who provided for them out of their own resources.” (Luke 8:1-3) Jesus healed them and they followed him and heard him preach and supported him. And I imagine they often saw to it that the people Jesus healed were cleaned up afterwards and given clothes if they needed it and had other practical needs seen to. Whatever happened to the woman taken in adultery after Jesus had shamed her accusers into leaving? She couldn't just go back to her old life. Her husband wouldn't have taken her back. Her community wouldn't have accepted her. I'll bet Jesus' female followers took her in. And, remember, it was many of these women who were the first witnesses to the resurrection. They have been rightly called the apostles to the apostles.

And we are not talking about just any kind of relationships. These should be “relationships based on empathy, respect and dignity.”

First let's look at empathy. We have cells in our brains called mirror neurons. They allow us to feel what others feel. Thus when someone describes hitting their funny bone, or catching their little toe on a table leg, we wince in empathy. It even works if you have never personally had the experience. I remember in nursing class watching an instructional video on labor. It showed an actual episiotomy and not only did everyone react by squeezing their legs together, including us male nurses, but one girl said, “I am never having kids!” You didn't have to have the experience to understand the pain involved. Empathy is not pity nor even having sympathy for another person; it is sharing their feelings at least in some small way. It is connecting with them in their vulnerability. And it is comforting to know you are not the only person who has experienced certain feelings.

It is also important to respect people and try to preserve their dignity. Sickness and misfortune can strip us of our idea that we are strong, independent people capable of great courage and heroic response to any and every situation. When something beyond our control—illness, injury or disaster—comes upon us and destroys our sense of agency, we feel naked and vulnerable. We feel out of control and fearful. We feel we are not victors in life, but victims. And we need someone to remind us that we are more than that. We are people created in God's image and redeemed by God's son. We are not to be denigrated for our misfortune but afforded dignity and treated with respect.

And this brings us to Kingdon's description of compassion as “intelligent kindness.” Some people are well-meaning but come off as clueless. They are condescending or they may be entirely too keen on cheering up someone who needs to grieve. Paul says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15) In other words, use those mirror neurons and respond to the person in the appropriate way. Treat others as we would like to be treated if we were in the same situation.

Sometimes people need advice, yes, but sometimes they just need to vent. As someone said, the question to ask is “in this instance are we problem solving or just listening? Does the person want advice or just someone to hear them without judging them or trying to fix them?” We need to be sensitive to what the person we are trying to help needs.

Jesus does this well. He knows the checkered sexual history of the woman at the well but he doesn't focus on that but on her desire for what he has to offer her spiritually. She probably got enough of people's sneering at her in her daily life. Jesus doesn't inquire as to what incident or behavior the woman who washes his feet with her tears and hair is so sorry about; he just forgives her. He doesn't lecture the woman taken in adultery; he tells her he doesn't condemn her and simply says to do better in the future. He shows Zacchaeus kindness and acceptance and lets that shape the man's response to his realization of his past history of taking advantage of others.

Kindness is one of the fruit of the Spirit. It is an expression of compassion. And it is something that we can see is in short supply in today's world. Terrible things happen to people and some laugh and some criticize and some show contempt. But Jesus said we are to love even our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Hurt people hurt people. They respond to receiving and feeling pain by dealing out pain to others. As Christians, we are to interrupt that cycle and offer compassion instead.

Psalm 145 says, “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness. The Lord is loving to everyone and his compassion is over all his works.” (Psalm 145:8-9) As Paul said, “Therefore, be imitators of God as dearly loved children and live in love as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2) We are to be like our heavenly Father. We are to be compassionate. For compassion is a key component of being a follower of Jesus.

Change and Healing

What is the purpose of repenting? Is it to simply suffer? Is it to be embarrassed, like when your mom caught you fighting with your friend and made you stand there and say, “I'm sorry?” In the word "repent," whether in Hebrew or Greek, is the idea of change--in your thinking and in the direction of your life. But it's not just any change. It's change for the better. And sadly, during Lent, we often focus on how the change makes us feel, rather than its purpose and how best to achieve that.

What prompts change? For most of us, we change when we realize something is wrong. You change direction when you realize you are going away from your destination rather than towards it. Or you realize you missed a turn. Or, in some cases, you see your destination and realize that's not what you want. When I was a kid, my family took a camping trip to Canada. Mom had all our stops researched and chosen from the AAA TripTik. But the weather turned miserable. One late afternoon, we found ourselves putting up the tent in the rain. Well, it was mostly my father putting the tent up. The following day as we entered the next town on our itinerary, we were greeted by a giant neon thermometer and a sign proclaiming the place as the “Coldest Spot in Canada.” “Oh, hell no!” said my dad and drove on. That night we stayed in a motel.

Sometimes you get to a point and say, “Is this right? Is this where I should be?” And you can either resign yourself to it or change. I have observed, both as a nurse and as a Christian, that what usually makes people change their lives is pain. When the pain becomes too great, people finally decide they need to make a change.

Sometimes they need to make a change in their environment. A job, or a relationship, or a lifestyle has become toxic and they need to leave. But often people don't realize that unless they change themselves they won't find peace in a new job or a new relationship or a new lifestyle. For instance, in cases where men just up and disappear, leaving behind a wife, a family and a career, when they are tracked down, they typically have simply moved to another part of the country, married a similar wife, fathered a similar family and are often in the same kind of job that they left. They haven't so much started a new life as recreated the one they supposedly hated so much that they abandoned it. And what is it they say about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

Not all our problems are internal but even external circumstances can worm their way into our thinking and our behavior. People who come out of situations where they suffer abuse or neglect will pick up habits and coping mechanisms that may or may not have worked for them at the time but then continue to use them in new situations that call for a new approach. It can be especially problematic when those habits and coping mechanisms were created by the person as a child. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) affect the developing brain and even shape one's adolescent and adult life, often leading to chronic physical and mental health problems, as well as problems with substance abuse, physical abuse, and trouble with the law. Recognizing and dealing with such things is crucial to making healthy changes.

Principles of healing apply whether that healing is physical, psychological or spiritual. So this Lent I want to look at some principles that were originally articulated in a recent webinar by an RN, Caroline Kingdon, a Research Fellow and Biobank Coordinator for CureME. I recognized them as central to our walk as Christians. Jesus is a healer and we are like his healthcare team, bringing people to him so he can save their lives and helping them follow the doctor's orders of the Great Physician so that they get better.

Kingdon based her nursing visits to patients' homes on 6 elements, which she says are all basically compassion in practice. We are going to look at them as we think of how we can be good disciples of Jesus by putting his love into practice. The 6 Cs are, first of all, compassion, then care, competence, communication, courage and commitment. We will be looking at these during the 6 Sundays leading us from Lent to Easter.

Of course, before you can be healed, you have to recognize that something is wrong. You need to notice and be able to list your symptoms before you receive a diagnosis. You need to receive a diagnosis before you can be treated effectively. And that's what we are doing in this Ash Wednesday service. So let's not delay that part any longer. Let's rip off the bandaid and see what it's covering. 

Seeing Through the Illusions

The scriptures referenced to are 2 Corinthians 4:3-6.

You know that Halloween party trick where you reach into a covered box and are told you are touching someone's guts or eyeballs, when they are really just cold wet pasta or peeled grapes. Because you can't see what you are touching, you are drawing conclusions based on incomplete data.

Even when you see something you can jump to conclusions. Magicians know that they can make you think that you are seeing the impossible. But they don't let you see inside the box where a woman appears to be sawn in half or made to disappear. Again, illusions depend on you receiving incomplete or misleading data. Old radio dramas used a lot of audio illusions to make sound effects. In the famous War of the Worlds broadcast of 1939, the scraping, echoing sound of the large hatches of the Martian rockets opening was created by a technician with a mic in the men's bathroom, screwing open a jar held just below the lip of a toilet. Were the radio audience to see how it was done they would have laughed rather than have been scared.

Seeing something gives us information that our other senses just can't provide. A blind person may hear someone approach but unless their gait makes a distinctive sound they won't know who it is from a distance. And they may, by feeling your face, be able to tell who you are and even if your features are symmetrical and pleasing, but not that you have red hair or gray eyes. And yet, as in a magic trick, even people who see do not see everything.

In today's passage from 2 Corinthians, Paul says “the god of this world has blinded the mind of the nonbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” This sentence alone will take some unpacking.

Who is “the god of this world?” It seems pretty obvious that Paul is talking about Satan, which, in Hebrew, literally means “the adversary.” Yet isn't there only one God? Yes in the sense that there is one real God, who created everything. But people can and do make gods of anything they put first in their life. They needn't worship Satan. They may instead be ultimately committed to communism or capitalism or patriotism or self-sufficiency or art or science or power or sex or any kind of pleasure. It doesn't matter if it is an ideology or an economic system or a political system or an experience or a person. It doesn't matter if it is basically a good thing. If people put it before everything else, including God, it becomes their god, and therefore an adversary of the true God.

And the more false gods that are out there, the more they obscure the real God. Go onto the internet and you can choose from thousands of things to believe and follow. And like the idols of old, these false gods have their priests and promoters. They have websites and YouTube channels and Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. And they blind people to the gospel precisely by getting in the way of their seeing it. Like a magician, they distract people from looking where they should be looking. And they are sophisticated about it. When a magician calls up volunteers to look at all the sides of the magic cabinet or try the strength of the chains with which you will bind them, that is part of the illusion. They are having you look at precisely what is not relevant to how the trick is done. They will distract you from how the thing actually works. In the same way, the promoter of a pyramid scheme lets you think you are your own boss. He doesn't tell you how you are really earning money for him and that the whole plan is ultimately unworkable. It's appropriate that a recent miniseries on multi-level marketing was called On Becoming a God in Central Florida.

The prophet of a false god will have all the testimonials and quotes from great thinkers and lines of argument you could wish. But they don't want you to look at them too closely or think too deeply. They use jargon to derail clear thinking. As W.C. Fields said, “If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS.” So they will use words like “freedom” but they don't let you ask “freedom from what?” and “freedom to do what?” Because no one is free from everything in the world nor are we free to do anything we wish. We are certainly not free from the consequences of what we do. We have seen that in the fallout from the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s: STDs and unwanted and neglected children. The only people who enjoyed this sexual freedom were womanizers, or as we now call them, abusers.

And these false gods don't actually offer you real freedom of choice. Magicians make it look as if you are choosing the card rather than that they are subtly forcing it on you. False gods make up the categories from which you choose to make it look like you are making a free choice. So they are selective and filter what you see and how you see it. They set up false dichotomies to make you reject one patently false idea while accepting its equally false opposite. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis points out that people today tend think of ideas in terms of whether (to update his language) they are either “nice in theory” or “practical,” “outdated” or “the latest thing,” “traditional” or “unconventional.” What they don't ask is if they are “true” or “false,” “good” or “bad,” “moral” or “immoral.” Thus Keith Ranier of the NEXIVM cult went from convincing his followers that negative thinking was not useful to arguing that there was no such thing as sexual abuse, not even of children. Of course such muddled thinking is useful if you want to justify terrible things. Contrary to popular belief, cult members are usually bright people, who are attracted to “advanced” thinking and conveniently ignore checking it against basic things like reality or morality.

One of the false dichotomies that is popular today is based on the idea that belief in God is evil or that it makes people do evil things. So the only real choice is not to believe in God. Practically every time you see an evangelist or preacher in a TV show or movie he is up to no good. Very religious people are usually depicted as hateful and harmful. It's a trope so embedded in our fictions and even serious discussions that nobody seems to realize that 85% of the people in the world claim a religion. That would make the vast majority of people evil. Yet, according to a study from the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice from Old Dominion University, “...more than 40 years of empirical scholarship suggests that religion suppresses criminal behavior.” As a jail chaplain I've found that 64% of inmates, or nearly 2/3s, claim no religion. And according to sociologist Rodney Stark, the higher a city's church membership rate, the lower its rates of burglary, larceny, robbery, assault and homicide. Religion restrains evil.

Again by directing the public's attention to the small percentage of religious people that do bad things, the false gods distract them from the overwhelming majority of believers who don't. It distracts from the food pantries and homeless shelters and literacy programs and refugee programs, not to mention the hospitals and schools, that churches run throughout the world. Religious people are more likely to be volunteers even in secular organizations. They are more likely to give blood. Religious people are more likely to be pro-social in their behavior.

But we are not merely concerned with religion in general. We are looking at the gospel, or as Paul calls it here, “the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” And the chief way that the things put forward as rival gods block that light is by not focusing on Jesus at all. Because it is really hard to say God is evil if you acknowledge that Jesus is the image of God and reveals what God is really like.

When he was a chaplain at Oxford, scholar N.T. Wright would speak to students during orientation. And after his talk students would tell him that they were unlikely to come to chapel because they didn't believe in God. And Wright would say, “And what god is it that you don't believe in?” And they would stammer out something about a cruel god who didn't want anyone to have fun. And Wright would reply, “Well, I don't believe in that god either. I believe in the God of love revealed in Jesus Christ.”

Once you put a face on God and that face is that of Jesus, it's hard to believe all the bad things the world says about God. Jesus was selfless, healing people, going without rest and sometimes without meals, traveling without a place to lay his head. His message was that God is incredibly loving and unbelievably forgiving. The whole of the law he summarized as love: love for God and love for other people, including one's enemies. And yet he was condemned and executed by the religious and political leaders.

And rather than giving up on Jesus or finding another wannabe Messiah, his followers came out of hiding and faced the very people who had Jesus killed, saying he was alive again. They didn't take it back even when condemned to death themselves. In fact, their chief persecutor saw the risen Jesus and became his foremost missionary. He himself became the object of persecution and yet held to Jesus' ethic of repaying evil with good. He too died for his faith, saying. “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)

This is the glory of the gospel. It is Jesus. It is what he said and did and how it has inspired others to follow in his footsteps. If he is what God is like, why would anyone seek another god?

And if people just look beyond the false gods and their prophets, they will see the light of this gospel, this good news. And its piercing light will expose the deceptions that come from putting other things before the God who is in Christ. As I said, even good things make inadequate gods when elevated above the real God. Instead they are out of their proper order in the hierarchy of values and thus cause many of the disorders we see in this world. Rather than pursuing them, our ultimate goal must be to get closer to Jesus, both in our relationship to him and in our emulation of him.

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” (John 8:12) But he knew he would return to his Father and so he also said to his followers, “You are the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:14-16) We are to reflect his light in all we think and say and do and thereby show up the illusions and tricks by which false gods keep folks in the dark. We are to be beacons, leading people out of this benighted realm to the true light that enlightens the world, Jesus, the very image of the God who is love.

He Heals the Broken-hearted

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 40:21-31 and Psalm 147:1-12, 21c.

One of the problems with superheroes is that their powers are used as weapons. So their stories usually boil down to they and their enemies hitting each other or blasting each other with beams of energy. It's just World Federation Wrestling with magic. And the good guys fight better and win, so we cheer. Which made Joss Whedon's second Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, different. While the most powerful heroes were doing the bulk of the fighting, the others saved the people of the city from the destruction. It was a nice contrast to Man of Steel where Superman and his Kryptonian adversary destroyed a good deal of Metropolis as they fought. Subsequently in the Justice League movie, originally directed by Whedon, Superman and the Flash spent much of their time moving noncombatants out of harm's way. They not only killed bad guys but saved lives.

But then I watched a documentary called After Hitler. Unlike most of these World War 2 documentaries, it did not focus on the Nazis or even the fighting but the aftermath of the war in Europe. It emphasized the huge problems that the war had created. Germany was largely populated by women, children and the elderly. 5 ½ million German men had died in the war. 9 million Axis soldiers were held by the allies as prisoners of war. So it was the women who were clearing up the rubble that covered what once were thriving cities. The children, more than a million of whom were orphans, scrambled over and through the ruins looking for food or anything that could be traded for food. Women sold their bodies to survive. Jewish inmates liberated from the concentration camps were too weak to leave. Thousands of them continued to die, some because they could not digest the better food the relief agencies were serving. 40 million displaced people became refugees, traveling the length and width of the continent to get back to their homes and countries, often to find their towns destroyed and their relatives dead. Rape and abuse and divorce and suicide rates soared. The pain and suffering doesn't stop once the bad guys are defeated. Bodies, minds and whole communities are broken. They don't show that in the movies. Instead the heroes fly off into the sunset or go out and eat shawarma.

The book of Lamentations gives us a similar horrifying picture of the fall of Jerusalem. “Because of thirst the infant's tongue sticks to the roof of its mouth; the children beg for bread, but no one gives it to them....Those killed by the sword are better off than those who die of famine; racked with hunger, they waste away for lack of food from the field.” (Lamentations 4:4, 9) It describes cannibalism and roaming bands of violent men. (verses 10, 18) And then, after the siege ends and the walls fall, the people are taken into exile to live in a foreign land with a new language and customs. They will not return home for 70 years. A society broken like that does not heal spontaneously.

Today's psalm depicts God not as the Lord of hosts or as a warrior but as someone who rebuilds Jerusalem and heals its inhabitants. “He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.” He not only heals their physical wounds but their psychological ones as well. God is concerned with the health of the whole person: body, mind and spirit.

We have come a long way in healing what's physically broken. For 61 years, I never broke a bone in my body. And then, in a few seconds, I broke a record number of them and tore up a bunch of internal organs. And the doctors fixed most of them. All except my right heel and ankle, which they figured would pain me regardless of what they did. And they were right. I now have more metal in my skeleton than Wolverine. But I can walk again. Most everything works as it should. Though when the weather changes, the once broken parts give me a role call, each one announcing itself with a twinge or a jab or an ache.

Oddly enough, mentally I think I have suffered more in this past year than I did during my recovery. True, I had a bad time when, discharged from the rehab center and back at home, my new physical therapist evaluated me and said I was still 70% disabled. 100 days learning to walk and take care of myself again and I had only made 30% progress! But I had an end in sight, a positive goal: to get better. And I realized that, with his help, I could make it.

This period we are going through now, having to stay isolated and even when together not being able to touch or even get close, is psychologically harder. We can only visit distant family and friends in little windows on screens, a sterile kind of interaction for physical beings. Worse, our dying breathe their last sealed off from loved ones and even from skin contact, attended only by masked strangers, who can only touch them with gloved hands. All deaths are lonely these days.

Rather than a clear end date and milestones of progress we can tick off, we look at the numbers of new infections and the daily death toll. Our plan for achieving normality is the same as when this began: just keep wearing masks and keep our distance. Oh, and try to find some place where we can get vaccinated. There is light at the end of the tunnel, provided you can get on a list and get a date and a location. But even then, until 70% or more of the people around us get vaccinated, the old rules remain in place. And unfortunately not everyone has the same goal: the healing of all by everyone doing their part and getting vaccinated.

So how can God help us during periods of extended suffering, when nothing seems to change or at least not by much and not very quickly?

First of all by our shifting our perception and looking at him and to him. Our psalm says, “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; there is no limit to his wisdom.” We do tend to look first and foremost at God's power. He is the creator of heaven and earth. Nothing is too hard for him. That's encouraging.

But power without wisdom is scary. Look at the people who have wild predators as pets. During the first part of this pandemic, many of us were enthralled by the lunacy of the people documented in the series Tiger King. We saw numerous video clips of people hugging and playing with apex predators. We also saw people who lost limbs and possibly at least one life to them. The beasts do not think like we do and their powerful instincts can take over. And the people who forget this display a distinct lack of wisdom.

God is wiser than us and sometimes we forget this. There is a great illustration of this that I have been studying. This week I am wrapping up the book of Genesis on Facebook Live. I have been reading the story of Joseph. Because of his dreams of his brothers bowing down to him, they wanted to kill him but they settle for selling him into slavery. He does well at this though, eventually running his Egyptian master's household. But then he is falsely accused of rape and thrown into prison. He is made chief trusty and while he is there he meets two Egyptian officials who have bizarre dreams. He interprets their dreams and tells the one who will be reinstated with Pharaoh to put in a good word for him. Unfortunately, the man forgets until 2 years later when Pharaoh has weird dreams. The man then remembers and recommends Joseph as interpreter. Joseph not only tells Pharaoh what his dreams mean—7 years of bumper crops followed by 7 years of bupkis—but perhaps from his years of being a good steward, he has a smart plan for how to get through the years of famine. So Pharaoh puts him in charge of collecting, storing and distributing the surplus grain. Later when his brothers go to Egypt to buy food during the famine, Joseph, after testing to see if they've changed, reveals himself to them. They are frightened of what he, the second in command of Egypt, will do to them. But he says, “Now, do not be upset and do not be angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me ahead of you to preserve life!” (Genesis 45:5) I'm sure Joseph didn't feel that way during his years as a slave or as a prisoner. But 9 years as the person in charge of food reserves for the known world has made him reassess his life and shift his perspective on what God was doing with him.

Sometimes you can only see God's hand at work in your life by looking back at how you got where you are. Paul said, “And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose...” (Romans 8:28) We need to trust in God's love and put our hope in him and in the purpose he has for us. Years of suffering took on a different look when Joseph saw how God got him to Egypt, into the service of a high official, and therefore able to be imprisoned with other high officials, and at the proper time being of service to Pharaoh and averting widespread starvation by using the gifts God gave him and the skills he acquired over more than decade of hardship. God giving us hope and a sense of meaning and purpose goes a long way toward healing a broken heart and trauma.

“The Lord lifts up the lowly but casts the wicked to the ground.” The Jewish Publication Society's Tanakh translation renders this “The Lord gives courage to the lowly...” Other translations use the words “sustains,” “supports,” “helps,” and “relieves.” The Hebrew can also mean “restores.” Young's Literal Translation says that God “is causing the meek to stand.” The basic meaning is that God gives the humble what they need to get on their feet and do what they need to do to live the life he offers. Hope, meaning, purpose, courage and the fact that God is there to help sustains and supports us.

One of the odd things about the story of Joseph is that nowhere does God speak directly to him as he did to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob his father. Yet Joseph is guided by a sense that God is working through his circumstances. Joseph first mentions God when his master Potiphar's wife comes on to him. “My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9) Mind you, his belief in God has not stopped him from being sold into slavery by his brothers. But rather than give up faith in God his circumstances have strengthened it. And rather than say to himself, “I am stuck here as a slave. Why not enjoy sex with this woman?” his faith in God gives Joseph the moral courage to stay true to the behavior he knows God desires of him.

His refusal of her gets him accused of attempted rape anyway and he gets thrown in prison. Yet he does not despair. He becomes chief trusty and when confronted by 2 men with dreams, he doesn't take credit for his ability to interpret them but says, “Do not interpretations come from God?” And after 2 years of waiting for Pharaoh's cupbearer to remember him and put in a word for him, Joseph still has not given up on God. When Pharaoh gets him out of prison and says he heard that Joseph can interpret dreams, Joseph says, “I cannot do it, but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.”(Genesis 41:16) Eventually he is able to say to his brothers, “So then, it was not you who sent me here but God.” (Genesis 45:8) And “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20)

You cannot tell me that during the 13 years that Joseph was a slave and then a prisoner, he did not have times when he was tempted to give up, when he felt that maybe God had given up on him. But he kept the flame of his faith burning. He knew that God would come through. He believed that the dreams he had when he was 17 would be fulfilled.

It is interesting that at age 17 Florence Nightingale also felt called by God to dedicate her life to the service of others. That helped her get through the years of opposition by her family to taking up such a then low-class profession, and the obstruction by military officials of her efforts to save the lives of wounded soldiers, and the illness that had her bed-bound and in pain for much of the rest of her life. She never gave up on promoting and improving nursing. And she never lost her faith in God and Christ. Once Florence was tending to a young prostitute who was dying and afraid she would go to hell. She said to Nightingale, “Pray God, that you may never be in the despair I am in at this time.” Florence replied, “Oh, my girl, are you not now more merciful than the God you think you are going to? Yet the real God is far more merciful than any human creature ever was or can ever imagine.”

And that is another way that God heals the broken-hearted and binds their wounds and restores the humble—through us. Through people like Florence Nightingale, who used her compassion and her math and organizational skills. Through people like Joseph who rescued Egypt in much the same way that the Marshall Plan rescued war-devastated Europe. And through ordinary Christians like you and me. Neither Florence nor Joseph had superpowers. Joseph realized the power wasn't in him but in God, who worked through him. He and Florence just used what God gave them to do what God called them to do. What gifts and skills has God given you?

One thing we all have is the Spirit, God in us. God is love and he pours that love into our hearts through his Spirit, enabling us to be conduits of his love and grace and mercy. (Romans 5:5) He calls us to do the same works he does, saving and healing lives. (John 14:12) He calls us to help the poor and the hungry and the sick and the imprisoned and the excluded. (Matthew 25:34-40) And in fact often in healing others' hearts, we find healing for our own.

The more we rely on God, the more we feel his support, his power to restore us and sustain us. His wisdom sustains us. His hope sustains us. His love sustains us. As our passage from Isaiah says, “He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

False Prophets vs the Good News

The scriptures referred to are Deuteronomy 18:15-20.

A Baptist preacher named William Miller said that, based on his calculations of the numbers in Daniel, chapters 7 and 8, Jesus was going to return to earth between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. When that didn't happen, he used a different Jewish calendar and put the date at April 18, 1844. Wrong again. Then a follower of his recalculated and said Jesus would come back on October 22, 1844. Many Millerites sold their homes and possessions and quit their jobs before that date. Some went up on mountains to be the first who would caught up in the air to meet Jesus. What followed is what historians call the Great Disappointment. Some Millerite churches were burned, some congregations were attacked with clubs and knives, and some groups were tarred and feathered. Some people lost their faith. Some returned to their old denominations. Some reinterpreted the date as a heavenly event and eventually became the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

William Miller wasn't the first person to incorrectly predict the date of Jesus' return and he wouldn't be the last. Radio preacher Harold Camping famously predicted that the Rapture would take place on May 21, 2011 and the world would end on October 21 that year. It wasn't even the end of the world for Camping, though he did have a stroke in June of 2011 and died 2 years later. The Jehovah's Witnesses, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, John Hagee, Tim LaHaye (co-author of the Left Behind series of books), and even Archbishop James Ussher, the 17^th century scholar who said the world was created in October 4004 BC, have put forth dates that so far have been false. And that's just the Christian contingent of world's end predictors.

One thing you can't blame this on is Biblical literalism. Because in Mark 13:32, Jesus literally says, “But as for that day or hour no one knows it—neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son—except the Father.” At least during his time on earth, not even Jesus knew the date. And furthermore, Jesus specifically warns us not to believe people who say the end is here. (Mark 13:5-8) The wars and disasters people think are the end of the world are like the beginning of labor pains. So what should we do when a person prophesies falsely? According to our passage in Deuteronomy, a false prophet should be killed! I find it odd that these fundamentalists aren't literal about that either. But the truth is that fundamentalists do what they accuse others of: picking and choosing what they take literally.

Sadly, these things say more about the persons saying them and the people following those persons than they do about the Bible. The apocalyptic passages in particular seem to act as a Rorschach test for some people, where they read into them their own obsessions. And while I don't think we should kill false prophets—we don't live in Bronze Age Israel, after all—perhaps we should treat them as if they were dead to us. As the verses that immediately follow the cut off point of our lectionary selection say, “Now if you say to yourselves, 'How can we tell that a message is not of the Lord?'—whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it, the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him.” (Deuteronomy 18:21-22) And if we need not fear him or her, we need not heed them anymore.

So why is our passage from Deuteronomy relevant today? This church does not have “Prophet” as an official position, nor do we seem to have anyone with the gift of seeing the future. But the word “prophet” in Hebrew does not mean “foreteller” but “spokesman.” A prophet's role is to speak God's word. It is a serious responsibility. And as we've seen there are even today a lot of false prophets whom people follow.

Recently, a lot of folks were paying attention to QAnon, a massive conspiracy theory that had people thinking there was a huge network of politicians and celebrities who, not to put too fine a point on it, were Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles. They believe that, among others, Tom Hanks, the rare celebrity who actively attends church and talks about it, eats babies. The supporters of this conspiracy theory were among those who stormed the Capitol earlier this month. They expected martial law to be imposed on Inauguration Day and the mass execution of high-placed people they believed were in on the baby-eating. And when that didn't happen, they went through their own Great Disappointment. And like the Millerites, they are proposing new dates for their day of reckoning.

The surprising thing is how many of the people supporting this theory called themselves Christians. Yet they violated the very principles Jesus laid down in his talk about the end times. At the very beginning of answering the disciples' questions Jesus says, “Watch out that no one misleads you. For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Anointed,' and they will mislead many.” (Matthew 24:4-5) First red flag: anyone who is called the Anointed, the Messiah or the Christ (they all mean the same) is not the real thing. By his own account, there will be nothing subtle about Jesus' return. (Mark 13:26) And he is definitely not coming back as someone else.

What Jesus emphasized was how his followers should behave during bad times, even if they are not the end of the world. First, we are not to be warriors but witnesses. In the whole of the book of Revelation, Christians are never depicted as fighters. “Lord of hosts” really means “Lord of the armies of angels.” God fights his own battles. We are to be witnesses to the good news about Jesus and if necessary, martyrs. (Mark 13:10-11) In fact the Greek word for witness, martus, is where we get the word martyr. Which is another clue about the end times. Despite what some people say, Christians are not being persecuted in this country. They are not being imprisoned for simply being Christians, nor are churches being closed down by the government, nor are Christians being executed by the government. And, remember, Jesus said that while things will get worse, “these are but the beginning of birth pangs.” (Mark 10:13)

And what is the gospel or good news to which we are to be witnesses? It is basically Jesus. Paul calls it the “gospel of Christ” (Romans 1:16; 1 Corinthians 9:12; Galatians 1:7, et al.) The gospel is all about Jesus: who he is, what he has done for us and how we should respond.

So who is Jesus? He is God, who created us and who became a human being like us. (John 1:1-3, 14; Philippians 2:5-7) He is the Messiah, the Christ, God's Anointed Prophet, Priest and King. (Matthew 16:15-17; John 1:49; Luke 4:18, 24; Hebrews 5:5) And because God is love, Jesus is the Divine Love Incarnate. (1 John 4:7-8)

What has he done for us? He reveals to us God's grace, love and forgiveness. (Matthew 5:43-48; 6:14-15) He died on the cross for us. (Matthew 26:28; Mark 10:45; Romans 5:8; 1 Corinthians 15:3) He rose again (John 20; 1 Corinthians 15) And he sent the Holy Spirit to live in us. (John 14:16-17)

What should our response be? To believe in and trust him. (John 3:16; Romans 10:9) To obey his commandments, especially to love God with all we are and have and to love each other, whether friends or enemies. (Mark 12: 28-31; John 15:12-14) To take care of and treat the destitute, the diseased, the disadvantaged, and the despised of the world as we would Jesus. (Matthew 25:34-40) To follow him no matter how hard it is. (Luke 9:23) And to spread the good news about Jesus. (Matthew 28:18-20)

That's the gospel in a nutshell. Notice there's nothing there about building bunkers or overthrowing the government. That's not the way of love that Jesus lived and commanded us to live. When Pilate asked Jesus if he was a king, he said that the sign that his kingdom was not from this world is precisely that his followers weren't fighting to free him. (John 18:36) When Peter did try to defend Jesus from arrest, by violently cutting off the ear of a servant of the high priest, Jesus rebuked him—and then healed the man whose ear had been cut. (John 18:10-11; Matthew 26:51-52; Luke 22:50-51) Jesus came to heal, not to harm. And his followers are to be like him. (1 Peter 2:21)

We are to be witnesses to the gospel by not only saying it with our lips but also by showing it in our lives. You wouldn't believe a person who told you how great his doctor is at curing his lung cancer if the man was smoking and coughing. How can we expect people to believe that Jesus saved us from our sins if we keep doing the very things he called sins?

It also doesn't help if our message could hardly be called good news, which conspiracy theories never are. They are always about a terrible situation being the result of a secret plot by powerful people or organizations. It sucks people in because it gives them a way to tie in a number of awful events with an explanation that places blame not on them but on certain evil people. But it is a terrible frame of mind in which to live. On a recent broadcast of The A-1, a man said that during the time he believed in conspiracy theories, starting with 9/11, he was always angry and afraid and full of hate. That is the opposite effect of the good news that God in Christ saves us. As James says, “human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.” (James 1:20) Paul says, “For God did not give us a Spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:7) And Jesus told us to love, not hate, other people, even those we consider our enemies. (Matthew 5:43-44) What a conspiracy theory produces is the antithesis of what the gospel or good news produces.

And as Christians we are committed to the truth. It isn't hard to check facts these days. And while real conspiracies have existed they don't involve lots of otherwise unrelated groups. They exist within an industry, like the tobacco industry which denied links between smoking and cancer, or the sugar industry, which denied links between sugar and obesity. Or, sadly, they might exist within a department of the government, like MK-Ultra, the CIA's unsuccessful mind control experiments involving giving LSD to unsuspecting johns in brothels. And unfortunately these things have made some people see conspiracies everywhere. But global conspiracies involving world domination by the Jews or the Vatican or the Freemasons or Satan-worshiping baby-eaters aren't real. And we know about the actual conspiracies because someone talked or leaked information. Official investigations were done and the facts were made public. As Ben Franklin said, “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” Conspiracies do not last forever.

The gospel does. And rather than spreading fanciful tales that can only exist in spy thrillers and movies, we need to be telling people the truth about Jesus: who he is, what he has done for us and how we should respond to him. Rather than worrying about shadowy supposedly all-powerful evil cabals, we should be following Jesus' advice and not worry about everything. (Matthew 6:25-34) Because we have a God who really is all powerful and who is good and loves us and will never leave us or abandon us. And if that isn't good news I don't know what is. 

Reconsider

The scriptures referred to are 1 Corinthians 7:29-31.

An old Peanuts comic strip is making the rounds on Facebook. Snoopy is on top of his doghouse with a typewriter. Charlie Brown says to him, “I hear you're writing a book on theology. I hope you have a good title.” Snoopy thinks, “I have the perfect title...” And then he types, “Has It Ever Occurred to You That You Might Be Wrong?”

I love this because that could be the subtitle to a lot of theology books that are written in response to other theology books. It could even be the underlying attitude of some theologians, preachers and even ordinary Christians towards others with different interpretations of certain doctrines. But actually Snoopy's title could be seen as the first step in becoming a Christian. Usually it is put in the form of one word: repent.

The Greek word for “repent” literally means “to think differently or reconsider.” And the usual reason to do so is that you realize you are wrong, or at least that there is a different perspective to consider. As we see in our passage from Mark, Jesus' message began with a call to repent or think differently about things. Let's look at a few of them.

First he says, “The time is fulfilled.” What was he talking about? People were waiting for God to do something about the evil in the world. And it seemed like it was never going to happen. As Shakespeare put it, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time.” The daily status quo never seems to change much. We see this at least as far back as when the people complained in Psalm 74, “We are given no miraculous signs; no prophets are left, and we none of us knows how long this will be.” (Psalm 74:9) People became complacent. They said, “The Lord neither rewards nor punishes.” (Zephaniah 1:12) It looked like God wasn't going to do anything after all. We see that idea abroad in the world today: God is either indifferent to the world or against it. Or he doesn't exist.

Jesus is saying, “You need to reconsider the idea that God is no longer at work in the world.” The time of waiting for the Messiah, God's Anointed, is over. God is doing something new in Jesus. He is getting involved in the history of humankind in a way he never had before. God becomes one of us. Jesus is not merely going to speak God's word like any prophet would; he is God's Word. He is the very expression of the God of justice and mercy and love, who was active in the creation of the world and is now active in the recreation of the world.

Next Jesus says, “The kingdom of God has come near.” The people of his time were thinking of a literal kingdom. They wanted a new David, a warrior-king who would throw out the Gentiles oppressing them and set up a theocracy that would enforce all the laws of the Torah plus the Oral Law deduced from it. The only way that righteousness could be established in the land was for it to be externally imposed by a political authority, backed by God. We see that idea abroad in the world today. Of course, the disagreement is which interpretation of God and his laws will the government mandate.

Jesus is saying, “You need to reconsider that idea of God's kingdom.” The Greek word translated “kingdom” is more properly translated “royal reign or rule.” God doesn't intend to rule through a human or humans but in them. External rules don't change internal dispositions, or else laws would render everyone law-abiding. In fact authoritarian regimes always have a thriving criminal underground. Often some of the criminals are in the regime itself or friends of it. God doesn't want a kingdom that superficially looks like his people are following his will. He wants to reign in their hearts and minds and lives.

And that means reconsidering what kind of king God has put in charge. Like I said, the people wanted a strong military leader who ruled with an iron fist. That's why some people had trouble seeing Jesus as God's anointed king. Jesus didn't come as a warrior to kill God's enemies; he came as a peacemaker to invite them to become God's friends. (Ephesians 2:14-15) He didn't blame the poor or condemn the prisoner or marginalize the immigrant; he said that what we do or neglect to do to them, we do or neglect to do to him. (Matthew 25:31-46) He didn't avoid the diseased and disabled; he healed them. (Mark 1:32-34) He didn't condemn the person who sinned; he offered forgiveness and a new life. (John 8:2-11)

Consequently when he talked about the kingdom of God, he didn't use military metaphors but spoke of a tiny seed that grows over time to become enormous. (Mark 4:30-32) He compared it to a field where both wheat and weeds, like good and bad people, were found together and not separated until the end. (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) He said it was a realm where forgiveness is not optional or a one-way transaction. (Matthew 6:14-15) In God's kingdom his grace is not earned but given to all as equals. (Matthew 20:1-16)

Because of this, Jesus says, “Repent and believe the good news.” Or in other words, “You need to reconsider your life and put your trust in the good news.” The good news is that God is compassionate and forgiving and healing and gracious. He is more concerned with saving people from their sins than punishing them for their sins. In fact, he was willing to take the consequences of our sins upon himself and did so, letting his enemies, acting on their sinful intentions, execute him. But that wasn't the end. Jesus wasn't just a martyr. He rose again, showing his mastery over not only nature and disease but also his mastery over death. Furthermore, he gives his eternal life and the Holy Spirit of God that empowered him to those who put their trust in him. And of course, if you really trust this good news about him, you will reconsider and change how you live your life.

We are saved by God's grace and not by earning his favor through our feeble attempts to do good enough works. Yet, as James pointed out, anyone can say they believe in God. Real belief results in a changed life. We have seen in the last year who really believes the science of epidemics and disease by whether they follow the protocols laid down by doctors and scientists. And we have seen how people who didn't believe and didn't wear masks or didn't keep their distance got sick and some died. Jesus tells us what thoughts and words and acts are spiritually, morally and socially healthy and which are unhealthy. If we believe him, we will follow his words and the example of his life.

So what do we need to reconsider in our lives if we truly trust Jesus?

We need to reconsider out relationship with God. The two major errors people make about God is that he is too just to be forgiving or that he is too forgiving to be just. And perhaps the best parable to illustrate both sides of God's nature is the parable about the merciless servant. (Matthew 18:21-35) A slave owes a king an outrageous amount of money: millions of dollars in today's currency. He can't pay it back and so the king orders that the man, his wife and his children be sold to repay it. “The slave fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.'” The king, his master, takes pity on him and cancels the debt. Then he lets the man go.

That is how forgiving God is. No matter how morally bankrupt we are, no matter how much we owe him for our bad behavior, he is willing to forgive us if we ask. For instance, John Newton was the captain of a slave ship. He repented and became a Christian. Consequently, he renounced the slave trade and became an abolitionist. He became an Anglican priest and served in parishes for the last 20 years of his life. He became an ally of William Wilberforce, who worked in Parliament to abolish the slave trade in Britain. He actually lived to see the Slave Trade Act passed just a few months before he died. He also wrote hymns, like “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken.” But he is most famous for being the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace.” It was his spiritual autobiography, his mea culpa for his years in the slave trade and his amazement and gratitude for God saving a wretched and wicked person such as himself. God is amazingly forgiving.

But Jesus' parable goes on. Right after leaving his master's presence, the slave whose debt is forgiven runs into a fellow slave who owes him a few dollars. He grabs and chokes this other slave, demanding his money back. This slave drops to his knees and asks for patience so he can pay the money back, using the same words the first slave did before the king. But the first slave refuses to give the man the same consideration his master had given him and has the other slave thrown into prison until he pays off the paltry debt. The other slaves are alarmed and tell their master, the king. He then calls the first slave back into his presence, points out how the slave did not show his fellow the same mercy he had been shown and throws him in prison till he repays his enormous debt. Jesus concludes with “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from the heart.” God means business when he says certain attitudes and behaviors are unjust. James puts it this way: “...judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not be merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 2:13) God expects us to be as forgiving to others as he is to us. After all, following Jesus means being like him.

Which means we also need to reconsider our relationships with other people. The world tends to divide people into categories of sex, race, country and creed and then to treat people as if these external differences were differences in a person's value. But in his parable of the good Samaritan Jesus showed that goodness and compassion do not necessarily reside in the “right” people, like the priest or the Levite, but can be found even in a minority which his original audience despised. (Luke 10:25-37) Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) Sin causes us to value people differently. But to the person who is following Jesus, everyone is a person created in the image of God as well as a person for whom Christ died. To treat anyone as worth less than someone else is to deny God's unconditional love and to try to limit his grace based on our judgment.

We also need to reconsider our relationship with ourselves. The world tends to tell us that we should always believe in ourselves and not listen to those who contradict us. But that kind of sweeping self-belief is often the attitude of people who do a lot of damage to others. You wouldn't tell a serial killer to follow his dream despite what others think. Nor would you say that to someone who is foolish or ignorant of the consequences of his ill-conceived scheme. Self-confidence doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with a good character or with competence. In fact, we call people who never admit they might be wrong arrogant. In Rudyard Kipling's poem “If” he strikes a better balance when he says, “If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too.”

It's always good to remember that, as Snoopy wrote, you might be wrong. We are not perfect, either in our reasoning or in our behavior. If you read enough biographies of great men and women, you will find they had their blind spots and character flaws, often with tragic consequences. The Bible doesn't shy away from depicting the imperfections of people God nevertheless used in a mighty way. Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Peter and Paul all had their weaknesses and sins. The Bible doesn't make excuses for them, nor does it hide the fact that their misdeeds had consequences for them and for their relationships. Following Jesus doesn't make you immune from mistakes or temptations. Which is something to remember when thinking of judging others. (Matthew 7:1-2)

I was once at a clergy retreat where the speaker spoke out against regret. I raised my hand and said it's healthy to have regrets when they are for things a person should regret. After all sociopaths have no regrets and that's not a good thing. I suggested that just as we now distinguish between healthy masculinity and toxic masculinity, we would note that there is a difference between healthy regret and toxic regret. If you have done something stupid, especially something that hurt or harmed someone through a cavalier and careless attitude when you should have known better, you should regret it. And learn from it and change your habits so as to not do it again. And if you actually wanted to hurt them, that is something you should regret and get help fixing from God, and maybe from a professional as well. But you shouldn't torture yourself endlessly when it comes to something you had no control over and therefore shouldn't blame yourself for. That's toxic regret. But there is a place for real regret when we have done wrong. In fact it's vital.

Sincere regret leads to repentance. And true repentance leads to change. In Hebrew one of the words translated “repent” literally means “to turn back.” Reconsidering our thoughts, words and deeds in the light of the truth and love and grace we see in Jesus should make us turn from the direction we are going and go back to God. He is our just and merciful, loving and forgiving Father. As Jesus said, “Everyone whom the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never send away.” (John 6:37) Repenting your ways and coming to Jesus is something you will never regret.

Whose Are You?

The scriptures referred to are 1 Corinthians 6:12-20.

In Les Miserables, Jean Valjean gets out of prison after 19 years. Because of his status as an ex-con, no inn will take him in. After sleeping on the streets, bitter and angry, Jean is given shelter by the Bishop Myriel. But Jean steals the bishop's silver and runs off only to be caught by the police. When Jean is taken before his victim, the bishop says he gave the silverware to him and says he forgot to take the silver candlesticks as well. The police believe the bishop and release Jean. The bishop tells Valjean that God spared his life and he should use the money from the silver to make himself a honest man. And the rest of the story tells how Jean does just that. So what does this have to do with today's passage from 1^st Corinthians? Stay tuned.

Corinth was a wealthy seaport with a reputation for sexual promiscuity that made it notorious even among the Greeks and Romans. The city's name was turned into a verb that meant to be debauched. I was there in the 1970s and you can still see the acropolis that overlooks the ruins of the city Paul visited. On that mountain there was a temple to Aphrodite, staffed by sacred prostitutes. Every day they would come down the mountain looking for “worshipers.” On the soles of their sandals were words, embossed in reverse, so that their foot prints read, “Follow Me.” And men would indeed follow them back up the mountain to show their “devotion” to the goddess of love, better known today as Venus.

This is what Paul was up against in trying to give directions to the new Christians in this original “Sin City.” Fortunately his 2 letters to this very troubled church gives us a wealth of insight into how to deal with an array of issues, from divisions to lawsuits to dietary controversies to the Eucharist and worship to spiritual gifts to the resurrection. And of course, Paul had to deal with the issue of sexual promiscuity. One church member was living in sin with his stepmother, which even the pagans thought was just wrong.

But Paul was never content to just say, “Do this! Don't do that!” There was a reason why a person in Christ lived a different kind of life than his neighbors. And that's what he is discussing in today's passage from 1st Corinthians.

He starts out by quoting things his critics said. “All things are lawful for me.” The problem here is that his opponents are trying to use Paul's idea of freedom against him. He was a zealous Pharisee before Jesus appeared to him. Paul probably used to believe the idea that the Messiah would come if only all Jews obeyed the Torah perfectly for just one day. But having been saved by God's grace despite his violent persecution of Christians, and seeing God's Spirit move even Gentiles to follow Jesus, Paul realized that righteousness did not come by trying to obey the 613 laws of the Torah, not to mention the additions the Pharisees deduced from the Torah, which they called the Oral Law. Most of these had nothing to do with ethics. And like all laws, they could tell you what is right or wrong but not give you the power to obey them. That comes from God's gracious gift of the Holy Spirit, who comes into all who put their trust in Jesus Christ. Thus the Christian is free from having to follow the law.

Unfortunately, some church members took this to mean that freedom from the law meant Christians were free to do whatever they wanted. But that wasn't what Paul meant at all. So he quotes the distorted version of his teaching and points out the flaws in it. 

“'All things are lawful for me,' but not all things are beneficial.” Let's say you had destroyed your liver through drinking copious amounts of alcohol. It is going to fail and you will die. But let's say you are fortunate enough for someone to donate a lobe of their liver to be transplanted into you by a skilled surgeon. Now, there is no law that says you can't go back to drinking. But why would you? That's what got you into trouble in the first place. Rather you should follow doctor's orders and even join AA or another support group to take advantage of the new life granted to you by the donor and the surgeon. Not everything that's legal is beneficial. Corinth was a wide open town and that might have been fun for some of its residents but it wasn't spiritually healthy or beneficial.

Then Paul again quotes what his critics say but points out a different problem with it. “'All things are lawful for me' but I will not be dominated by anything.” Going back to our analogy about the person who drinks so much his liver is destroyed, his drinking, once done voluntarily, is probably not voluntary any more. He is most likely addicted. It disrupts and rules his life. When something that once was done for pleasure comes before everything else in your life, you are addicted. It could be a substance, like alcohol or drugs, or it could be an activity, like gambling or sex. It could even be an unhealthy religious activity, like self-mortification or devotion to a charismatic leader or cult. Whatever it is, if it controls your life while also ruining it, you really aren't acting freely.

Paul then talks about something that is not merely a desire but an actual need: eating. If you don't eat or don't eat enough, that's unhealthy. But if you eat too much or eat the wrong things, that is also unhealthy. The interesting thing is that both people who eat to the point of weighing 400 lbs or more and those who are anorexic or continually dieting are both unhealthily obsessed with food. Paul reminds us that from an eternal perspective, obsession with the food or with your body are misplaced priorities. You need eat enough good food to be healthy, no more and no less. Food is a necessity but it still can be toxic if you make too big an issue of it. It too can dominate your life.

Then Paul moves to something that feels like a need but is really just a strong desire. Sex is, strictly speaking, not an individual need. In some species sex is reserved for the queen or the alpha couple and not for the rest of the hive or pack. We seem to have forgotten that the purpose of sex is reproduction. The purpose of the good feelings it gives us is to encourage enough members of the species to reproduce that we don't go extinct. And in the past it was important to have as many children as you could because they wouldn't all survive. Nowadays most will. We have better nutrition and healthcare and vaccines and that has brought infant mortality in the US down from the 135 deaths per 1000 live births it was a hundred years ago to just 5.7 deaths per live births today. With a world population of 7.8 billion, our species doesn't need everyone pumping out babies at the rate we used to. In fact, we need to ease off a little lest we outstrip the carrying capacity of the globe.

That wasn't the problem in Paul's day. His problem was not overpopulation but the persistent one of people trying to enjoy the pleasure of sex separate from its responsibility. Sex is supposed to cause people to pair off and form couples and maybe families. That's why the act causes out brains to release oxytocin which makes us bond with our lover. It is also released at birth to cause mother and child to bond. But people, mostly male, have often sought the good feelings without the bonding part. It's akin to unhealthy eating practices, like overeating and then vomiting to make room for more. Or indulging in junk foods which are formulated to be addictively tasty while giving you very little actual nutrition. Again it's guys primarily who go from lover to lover, thinking themselves superior to their poor married friends. And yet, ironically, every survey on the subject finds that married people have twice as much sex as single people. And by the way, people who are more religious have more sex than those who report having no religion! Contrary to popular belief, the Bible doesn't say sex is bad. It just says that, like anything powerful, it is good in certain contexts and bad in other ones. Like, say, fire is. It gives us light and warmth and cooks our food. So fire on a candle, in the fireplace, or on the stove is good. Fire on the curtains, on the roof or on a person is bad. Power needs to be controlled. Simply because you are free to do something doesn't mean you should.

The power a Christian is given by God is not merely freedom from what is bad and what is controlling us but freedom and power to do good. Power not dedicated to doing good will inevitably be used for evil. The recent horror film Brightburn shows how terrifying a child with the powers of Superboy would actually be. But in real life people do not need superpowers to do a lot of damage. Good old fashioned, totally human powers are sufficient, when used badly.

Paul, however, is making a deeper point. There are many sources of fire, some benign, some harmful. Fire is not sentient nor does it have a moral compass. But we have one source: God. Humans are created in God's image. We are created with a moral purpose: to love God and to love each other. We have misused the ordinary powers God gave us to turn what could have been a paradise into hell on earth. So God sent his son to live as one of us and set right our understanding of who God is and who we are meant to be. Unfortunately, since words alone are often insufficient to change minds and lives, Jesus was executed by his opponents. However he used his death to set right what is keeping us from reconciling with God. Finally he rose again to show us he was who he said he was and to give us new life and new power. The Holy Spirit is given to every Christian to call upon so as to be able to live the life God wants us to live. He wants us to live a life of love and forgiveness and reconciliation and healing and peace.

The price Jesus paid to bring this about is huge: his death on the cross and his experiencing the estrangement from God that is the natural end result of our destructive and self-destructive lives. (Mark 15:34) He took on not only physical pain but the psychological and spiritual pain of our sin in our place. Nor is taking the consequences of our deeds all he did. He gave his life not only for us but to us. So our lives now belong to him. The source of our new power in Christ is the Holy Spirit. And he is both sentient and moral.

And so a passage that people mistakenly think is Paul being puritanical about sex (and part of the mistake is thinking the puritans disapproved of sex) turns out to really be about something much larger. It is about how not only our bodies but our very lives belong to not to ourselves, but to God, who saves us.

After his unsuccessful Beer Hall putsch, Hitler fled to the home of a supporter, Ernst Hanfstaengl. There he tried to commit suicide only to have the gun wrested from his hand by Helene, Ernst's American wife. Later she became disillusioned about Hitler and, divorced from Ernst, returned to America. I wonder if she ever thought “I saved Hitler's life and this is what he did with it?” Did she ever wish that Hitler had felt an obligation to her for saving his life and that he had honored her act of mercy by dedicating himself to using his powers of persuasion to do good rather than great evil?

In contrast, Les Miserables tells of a man who, when shown mercy, becomes a new man, helping and showing mercy to others, including Javert, the police inspector who pursues Jean relentlessly. What many people don't know is that Jean Valjean was based on a real person: Eugene Francois Vidocq. Vidocq was an ex-convict who became a businessman and a philanthropist. He also is the inspiration for one of Valjean's feats of strength. Vidocq saved one of the workers at his paper plant by lifting a heavy cart off of him with his shoulders. Vidocq's re-evaluation of his life began when he witnessed the execution of an old friend who had led him into a life of crime. He saw that, as Paul said, “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) Having once been under a death sentence himself, Vidocq chose to forge a new life for himself by now serving good. Vidocq became the head of an undercover police unit and founded France's first private detective agency. This former criminal is considered the father of modern criminology. He was the model for Edgar Allen Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin and was one of the inspirations for Sherlock Holmes.

God in Christ did more than stop us from destroying ourselves. He died that we might live. We owe God our life. As Paul says, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” We are not independent agents who throw God our support when we feel like it. Rather “He made us and we belong to him; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture,” as the psalmist says. (Psalm 100:3) He not only made us; he redeemed us. Through his Spirit he lives in us. As Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

We do not belong to ourselves. We belong to God. He frees us from all the things that are not beneficial but harmful to us. He frees us from all the things that dominate and enslave us. He frees us from our self-destructive ways of thinking and speaking and acting. But he not only frees us from what is bad; he frees us to do what is good and just and healing. He frees us in order that we may love him and each other. Why would we want to go back to the prison of the mindset that got us to this state? Why should we want to keep repeating the old mistakes? Why shouldn't we want to start anew and go in a different direction, one guided by his love and forgiveness?

We should be grateful that God chooses to live in us and work through us. We should be as grateful as someone who almost died only to get a new lease on life. A week ago Saturday was the 5^th anniversary of my accident, the day I almost died but didn't. It has given me a new sense of mission, a purpose which helps me face each day, despite the pain and the fatigue and the limitations I live with. I hope none of you ever have to go through that. But I do hope that you reflect on what God has done for you and how he has changed your life. And I hope that you too find in Jesus a sense of purpose, a mission for your talents and skills and gifts. After all, Christianity is about becoming Christ-like. And if that sounds, daunting, remember, we have the Spirit of Christ in us helping us all the way.