Beyond Justice

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 18:20-32, Psalm 138, and Colossians 2:6-19.

Recently I listened to a podcast from the Templeton Foundation in which the hosts interviewed anthropology professor Robin Dunbar on the origins of religion. Defining religion as a belief in a transcendental world inhabited by spiritual beings, he says we can trace religion back at least 20-30,000 years. If we include the Neanderthals, religion might go back 500,000 years, 200,000 years before evidence of our species, homo sapiens. Science says religion has been around longer than modern humans.

What I found relevant to today's message is that he agrees with many other researchers that religion is what makes large civilizations possible. Dunbar is famous for working out that humans have the capacity for managing relationships with only about 150 people, which is now called the Dunbar Number. As it turns out the average number of friends people have on Facebook is 149. So, using the estimate for the original population of Jericho, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, “how do you get 10,000 people living together in very, very cramped conditions, without falling out with each other constantly, and indeed, presumably, also without robbing each other all the time. And the answer is, religion provided the one mechanism which is extremely powerful as a tool for managing large social groups like that.” In other words, religion is the glue of civilization.

The word “religion” comes from an obscure Latin word which some think meant “to bind.” Religion binds people together. Dunbar notes that religion binds us through things like singing, dancing, eating together, and telling emotional stories. Religions also give us moral codes. And usually the founder of a religion is a very charismatic person who comes from a poor family background during a time of turmoil. And so these leaders teach us to behave fairly towards one another and to take care of the less fortunate. This bottom-up personal commitment works better at getting people to behave than the alternative which is to have order imposed from above through force.

The commitment to fairness or justice is the subject of today's Old Testament reading. In our passage from Genesis Abraham acts as a mediator with God regarding his judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. God tells Abraham that the outcry about the sins of these cities has come to him. And while Abraham does not dispute the fact that these two cities are very sinful, he is worried about what will happen to the few righteous people who live there. And you should know that the Hebrew word for “righteous” also means “just.” So his concern is for people who do live according to the moral code and act justly. Abraham says, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”

And God listens to Abraham and agrees to spare Sodom if only 50, and then 45, and then 40, and 30 and 20 and finally just 10 righteous people live there. Since Abraham knows that his nephew Lot and his family live there, he is really counting on there being just 5 more righteous folk in the city. However we know how the story turns out.

But I want to point out a couple of things. First, God is reasonable. He does not tell Abraham that he is out of line to question God's justice. Instead he listens and agrees to lower the bar on how many righteous people it will take to save the city from punishment.

Second, because God is willing to show mercy on the unjust for the sake of the just, this shows that he values mercy more than he does absolutely strict justice. Let's face it: even the righteous there, which seems to consist entirely of Lot and his family, must be complicit in such overwhelming injustice, if not corrupt. (Genesis 19:6-8, 26, 30-36) And by the way, we are not merely talking about the rape that the men of the city intend to perpetrate upon the angels God sends. In Ezekiel we are told, “See here—this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters had majesty, abundance of food and enjoyed carefree ease, but they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and practiced abominable deeds before me. Therefore when I saw it I removed them.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50) So whatever those abominable deeds were, God nevertheless puts special emphasis on how they did not help the poor and needy.

Nor is this a rare instance of God's concern for social justice. Altogether the Bible mentions the poor, the needy, the widow, the fatherless child, the resident foreigner, the blind, the deaf, the lame and the sick 834 times, an average of 1 mention for every 37 verses in scripture. That's more than the Bible talks about worshipping other gods (which is more than 200 times). Just as Jesus pointed out that the two great commandments are to love God and love our neighbor, so too the prophets come down fiercely against both not worshipping God properly and not treating the powerless justly.

Isaiah says that God will not listen to his people's prayers because of the blood on their hands. He tells them to “Wash! Cleanse yourselves! Remove your sinful deeds from my sight. Stop sinning! Learn to do what is right! Promote justice! Give the oppressed reason to celebrate! Take up the cause of the orphan! Defend the rights of the widow!” (Isaiah 1:16-17) Worshipping God is not a substitute for taking care of the needy.

Jeremiah tells God's people that among them are those whose “'houses are filled with the gains of their fraud and deceit. That is how they have gotten so rich and powerful. That is how they have grown fat and sleek. There is no limit to the evil things they do. They do not plead the cause of the fatherless in such a way to win it. They do not defend the rights of the poor. I will certainly punish them for doing such things!' says the Lord. 'I will certainly bring retribution on such a nation as this!'” (Jeremiah 5:27-29)

Later in Jeremiah, God dresses down the current king, Jehoiakim. “Sure to be judged is the king who builds his palace using injustice and treats people unfairly while adding to its upper rooms. He makes his countrymen work for him for nothing. He does not pay them for their labor.” (Jeremiah 22:13-14) He contrasts this king obsessed with buildings who cheats his laborers with his father, Josiah. “'He did what was just and right, so all went well with him. He upheld the cause of the poor and needy, so all went well with Judah. Is that not what it means to know me?' declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 22:15-16)

Things go well for God's people when they take care of the less fortunate and they do not go well when they are mistreating the poor, the sick, the disabled, the widow, the fatherless, and the resident alien. God is concerned about justice for all, not just for some. Remember how in Ezekiel he condemns the haughty. That word in Hebrew is related to the word in our psalm where it says, “The Lord is high, yet cares for the lowly, perceiving the haughty from afar.” In both cases “haughty” means “ high, powerful and arrogant.” Why does God see them “from afar?” It isn't that God has moved away from them; they have moved away from him. They feel that they have no real need for God. They certainly don't feel they need to humble themselves before him. That is why Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a sewing needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. (Matthew 19:24) As Jesus concludes in his parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14) As the Bible says, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

Too often the powerful see themselves as blessed by God because of what they have. And even today some churches teach that if you don't have money and power it is your own fault for not having enough faith. But Jesus taught that in his kingdom “many who are first will be last and the last first.” (Matthew 19:30; cf. Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30) God's kingdom turns the values of this world upside down. There is no preferential treatment of the rich, the powerful, the pretty and the popular. Indeed there is no preferential treatment for anyone.

If justice is getting what you deserve and mercy is not getting all that you deserve, then grace is getting what you could never deserve. God is gracious. Sodom did not deserve for God to even entertain the notion of saving them from their much deserved judgment. We do not deserve to be saved from the hell on earth that we have turned this planet he gave us into. We do not deserve to be saved from the evil we have done to ourselves by misusing his gifts to make things better for ourselves and those we care about while making things worse for those we don't like or don't care about. We don't deserve to have God come down to live among us as someone from a poor family in a world under the thumb of a powerful and ruthless government. We don't deserve to hear any good news about God's love and forgiveness. We don't deserve to have Jesus die for our sins. We don't deserve to receive the hope of a resurrection like his and the gift of eternal life with him.

But as Paul said, “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) We cannot earn God's favor. We would have to be perfect, completely in harmony with his goodness. (Matthew 7:1) Instead God gives his grace freely to those who trust and love him.

And if we trust him, he gives us his Spirit who in turn gives us the power to be reborn and to grow into God's image, that is, to become more like Jesus. Paul wrote, “...practicing the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ, who is the head. From him the whole body grows, fitted and held together through every supporting ligament. As each one does its part, the body grows in love.” (Ephesians 4:15-16) This echoes our passage in Colossians which says, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

As you can see, becoming like Jesus is not instantaneous. It is a process, just as we see in so many of Jesus' parables about seeds growing into wheat and vines and trees producing good fruit. (Matthew 13:3-8, 18-23, 31-33, Mark 4:26-29; Luke 13:6-9; John 15:1-8) And what is the fruit we are to bear? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) As Dunbar noted, you need such things to have a good and stable civilization. As we're seeing, the absence of these qualities are leading to instability in our world and in our country.

People like to say that we live in a Christian nation. But we do not see a bumper crop of the fruit of the Spirit. And we do not see a lot of justice. We do not see mercy. We do not see grace. Instead we see a lot of injustice, especially to those who are disadvantaged, disabled, diseased, destitute and despised. We see a lot of people who have gotten rich and powerful, sleek and fat, through deceit and fraud, who build monuments to their name while neglecting to uphold the cause of the poor and needy, the widow, the fatherless and the foreigner in our land. And we have seen what God let happen to his own people when they did such things. We must be like Abraham, pleading with God for mercy. We must be like the prophets, warning people that God expects us to help those who are not doing well in this life. Because only if we do, will things go well for us.

Right after Paul says that we are saved by grace through faith and that we are not saved by our works, he goes on to say, “For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared beforehand so we may do them.” (Ephesians 2:10) We are not saved by good works; we are saved for them.

What should we do? Look around you. You see people in need? You see injustice? You see hopelessness? You see people suffering? There is a lot to be put right. Join up with others who love Jesus, pray and get to work.

The Logic of God

The scriptures referred to are Colossians 1:15-28.

Logic is not, as many people think, a way to determine the truth of something but rather a method of staying self-consistent. If the assumptions you begin with are faulty, like you think the world is flat, you can logically build an argument that is very consistent with that premise but also very much at odds with reality. One huge crisis for the flat earthers was when our astronauts landed on the moon and sent back pictures of the earth that showed it was indeed a globe. That is why they usually say that we never landed on the moon, that it was faked and that NASA and the government are part of a vast conspiracy to keep the truth from us. They have concocted very clever and elaborate explanations for this. And those explanations might work if you discard Occam's razor, the principle that the simplest explanation, the one that requires the least number of elements, is the one that is most likely true.

If a magician makes an elephant seem to disappear before you eyes, you might posit a whole new set of quantum physics to account for it. But the simplest explanation is that it is an illusion. The elephant hasn't gone anywhere. The magician has used the way the stage is set up and possibly a very large mirror to make it look like the elephant has vanished. We don't have to unnecessarily multiply the number of elements involved.

Still logic is useful, provided the basic premises you start with are true. We use logic all the time, such as in math. 2 plus 2 equals 4. In fact, one of the big questions in philosophy is whether we have invented mathematics or whether we have simply discovered it to be part of the universe. Reality testing shows that math does reveal how the world works. Some of Einstein's descriptions of the universe were not testable in his lifetime. But ever so often the technology and conditions come together to make one of his propositions testable, such as the existence of gravitational waves, proven in 2015, or that gravity can distort the flow of time, proven in 2022. Einstein predicted these things accurately because he did the math correctly. From that we can argue that we didn't invent math; it was built into reality. The question is by what or by whom?

However, one of the problems for very logical persons is that reality seems to make sense but not quite. Reality contains paradoxes, instances where two seemingly opposite things are true. Like the fact that light behaves both like a wave and like a particle, depending on how you approach it. But in everyday life the paradoxes we run into most often are people. Hitler, responsible for the deaths of millions of people, nevertheless liked dogs and children. Charles Dickens wrote movingly about the plight of the poor and even wrote a book about Jesus for his children and yet at age 45 he fell in love with an 18 year old actress and not only tried to have his wife put in an institution but took all but one of their 10 children to live with him and his mistress.

And we see this writ large in the story of humanity as a whole. It's obvious that we did not rise to the top of the food chain because we were stronger or faster than other predators. People often say it was because humans were more intelligent. But scientists are saying that was not the most important feature of our species that allowed us to survive. Instead it was our ability to cooperate on a scale not seen in other primates. A clever human is still not a match for a wooly mammoth or a buffalo. But a group of humans working together can bring down a bigger, stronger animal. Our worldwide civilization is an amazing achievement brought about by literally millions of humans working together.

But at the same time the story of humanity is one of almost continuous wars. Human intelligence has invented ingenious devices to make life better as well as gruesome instruments of torture. We have developed medicines that cure and biological weapons that kill. Numerous contributions to civilization have been made by women and people of color and immigrants yet they still suffer from inequality and discrimination and xenophobia. How do we reconcile these things?

2 millennia ago a small group of people called Christians offered a way of understanding the paradox of humanity. And we see an overview of this viewpoint in today's passage from Colossians.

It begins with the assertion that Christ Jesus “is the image of the invisible God.” This immediately points us to Genesis 1:27, where it says that humans were created in the image of God. That's where our gifts and potential for goodness comes from. So where does evil come from? Genesis chapters 3 through 6 shows how we have decided that we know better than our Creator and how we have used our God-given gifts of intelligence, skill and cooperation to harm one another. We are told, “But the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time...The earth was ruined in the sight of God; the earth was filled with violence.” (Genesis 6:5,11) Because we tried to replace God's will with our own contradictory wills, his image in us has become distorted into a diabolical parody of what God is like.

In Jesus we see what God is really like: loving, just, forgiving, healing, life-giving. And this is how loving God we see in Christ is: “in him all things hold together,” as our passage says. God did not turn his back on us. He is still keeping things from falling apart. For instance, there is a broad consensus among physicists and cosmologists that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of life. If gravity, electromagnetism, and several universal constants were only slightly different, it would make life impossible. Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga has said, “It's as if there are a large number of dials that have to be tuned to within extremely narrow limits for life to be possible in our universe. It is extremely unlikely that this should happen by chance, but much more likely that this should happen if there is such a person as God.” The alternative is to believe that we are the beneficiaries of a wildly improbable series of happy accidents, akin to winning the lottery trillions of times in a row.

We know what we do about the mind-bogglingly large universe by means of imaging. We use extremely sophisticated telescopes to see things we can't with our unaided eyes. We use lenses to focus what is out there into images we can examine. And as J.B. Phillips put it, Jesus is the unimaginably vast God behind everything focused in terms we can grasp: time and space and human personality.

And how does the incarnate God see himself? As a healer. Jesus said, “Those who are healthy don't need a physician, but those who are sick do. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)

He sees himself as a beacon in this dark world. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. The one who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

He sees himself as a servant and as the means of freedom for others. Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45; cf. Matthew 20:28) The Greek word for “ransom” means the redemption price required to free a slave. Jesus gave his life to free those enslaved to sin.

How do you stop the harm we humans do to each other, ourselves and to our relationship with God? We humans are convinced that the only way to stop harm is with violence. The result is that violence begets violence and the wheel of suffering never stops. God in Christ decided instead to absorb the harm. He essentially took on a suicide mission, entering enemy-occupied territory, spreading the good news that he could free those who followed him and taking on the brunt of the evil we have unleashed upon the world. He let himself be betrayed by a follower, abandoned by his friends, whipped and beaten by his enemies, stripped naked on a public road, and nailed to a cross while people mocked him. The people who did not want to hear his good news thought they could silence him through death. But the incarnate Word of God could not be shut up for long. He triumphed over death and offers eternal life to all who disown themselves, take up their crosses and follow him. (Mark 8;34-35: cf. Matthew 10:38; Luke 9:23)

Our passage tells us “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” The Greek word for “reconcile” used here means to reconcile completely, to bring things back to a former state of harmony. God wants to restore that image of God we have lost. He does that through Jesus.

So Jesus not only shows us what God is like but he also shows us the image of God in humanity as it was meant to be. He shows us what we can become. As our passage says, “And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him...”

The word “holy” has become disparaged today because people mistake it for being sanctimonious. But “holy” means “different” as in “sacred” or “set apart.” I don't use my communion chalice to drink soda or beer or even water out of. I don't keep snacks in the pix or container I used for the communion bread. They are different from other cups and containers because I have set them apart for God's purposes. To be “holy” is to be set apart for God's purposes.

Similarly the Greek word translated as “blameless” literally means “unblemished.” The Passover lamb was to be unblemished as was any sacrifice to God. (Exodus 12:5; Deuteronomy 17:1) In Romans, Paul tells us, “Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—alive, holy, and pleasing to God—which is your reasonable service.” (Romans 12:1) By giving our lives to God they become sacred. We use them for his purposes. And by the way, the Greek word translated “reasonable” is logikos, from which we get the word “logical.” Since Jesus gave his life for us, it is logical and self-consistent that we give our lives to him.

I think it is in this sense of living a self-sacrificial life that Paul talks of “completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” What Paul gave up and underwent in his mission to spread the gospel throughout the Roman empire was his sacrifice to God. His Christ-like suffering that was necessary to plant and grow churches was his contribution to the body of Christ.

And then Paul gets to the ultimate answer to the paradox of humanity, which he calls “the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations.” He calls this mystery “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The “you” in Greek is plural, so it is not Christ in the individual but Christ in “y'all,” the whole body of believers, both gentile and Jewish. And because of the Spirit of Christ, living and working through the community of believers, we can look forward to the glory of being completely in the image of God in Christ.

Because in Jesus we not only see what God is like but we see what we can become. The original temptation in Genesis 3 is to be like God by disobeying God and taking a shortcut to gain his wisdom. (Genesis 3:4-5) It's not that God didn't want us finite creatures to grow into the image of his infinite love but what we were tempted to do was to achieve it in our own way. And that has led to misery. People want to be like God in his power. God wants us to be like him in his moral character. As it says in 1 John, “Dear friends, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever it is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is.” (1 John 3:2) We will reflect his love and fairness and mercy.

In Jesus we can become like God—if we join our lives to him and let him live in us. God says he will recreate the heavens and the earth and make them a paradise once more. But the only way it can be paradise is if we are people who love and help one another rather than hate and harm one another.

Look at it this way: you can't put a Hitler in heaven. He wouldn't like it: there would be too many Jews and people would be worshipping God and not him. It wouldn't be heaven for him. And that would cause him to act up all over again and it would cease to be heaven for others

Only if a Hitler totally changed his nature would it be possible for him and everyone else to be happy there. But he can't change his nature. None of us can—not by our efforts alone. Only God can change us. But he will not force us. God is love and love requires consent. If we consent to let him into our lives, if we consent to let him reign in our hearts and minds, then we will be able to change. Then we will be able to shed this horrible parody of the person God created and become the person he intended us to be.

The final paradox is that only when we become like him will we truly be ourselves. As finite beings we cannot reflect all that God is. But we can reflect the various aspects of God through the different gifts he has given us. Biologists, astronomers, physicists, neurologists, chemists, and other scientists can reflect his knowledge of the workings of creation. Poets, painters, singers, dancers, musicians, and other artists can reflect the beauty of his creativity. Runners, mountain climbers, gymnasts, swimmers and other athletes can reflect the glory of the body in motion. Storytellers, philosophers, comedians, writers and other thinkers can reflect his nuanced and deep wisdom. While none of us can reflect the entire image of God, by coming together, like pieces of a mosaic, we can reflect our large and complex and marvelous God. But to make this work we must all reflect his love. God loves us. We must love him back. God loves all people. We must love them too. That is the logic of God's love.

Defining Your Neighbor

The scriptures referred to are Luke 10:25-37.

The 12 tribes of Israel voluntarily united into one kingdom under David. (2 Samuel 5:1-3) It remained a single kingdom under his son Solomon. But Solomon's splendor came at a heavy price. When the northern tribes went to his son Rehoboam and asked that he lighten their burden, he ignored his advisers and said he would make things harder for them. In response to his harsh answer, the 10 northern tribes broke away and formed their own kingdom, which they called Israel. (1 Kings 12:1-16) Samaria was chosen as the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. The southern kingdom, which was ruled by the kings of David's line, was called Judah. This split took place around 930 BC. In 722 BC, the kingdom of Israel fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This was seen as a punishment from God for the idolatry they practiced. The elite of Israel and the people the Assyrians saw as useful were taken into exile and then exiles from other conquered lands were settled in what used to be Israel. (2 Kings 17:21-24) These foreign people intermarried with the poor Israelites who were not taken into exile and left behind.

Eventually their descendants, the Samaritans, developed their own worship of the God of Israel. Alexander the Great allowed them to build their temple on Mount Gerizim. They adopted as their sacred scriptures their version of the Torah, the 5 books of Moses, and excluded the other books of the Hebrew Bible. During the Maccabbean revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the successors of Alexander, the Jews destroyed the Samaritan temple in 128 BC. In Jesus' day there was still animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans, which the Jews considered half-breed heretics.

The reason I am telling you this is because today's readings include the parable of the good Samaritan. Jesus' audience were Jews. The person asking Jesus about eternal life is a scribe, an expert in the Jewish law. His question is how does one inherit eternal life?

Jesus, as he frequently does, answers a question with a question. “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” And the law expert goes to a fairly obvious verse: Deuteronomy 6:5. It is part of the Shema, the central prayer of Judaism. It starts with the verse before the one the scribe quotes: “Listen, Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4) It goes on to say we are to love God with everything we are and have. Most rabbis of Jesus' time would agree that this is the greatest of the commandments.

The scribe then offers a second commandment, this one coming from Leviticus 19:18, where God says “You must not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the children of your people, but you must love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” In other words, God is saying, I am serious about this; remember who commanded you to do it.

When Jesus was asked which commandment is the greatest, he answered with the same two passages. (Mark 12:29-31; Matthew 22:37-40) We don't know if the scribe had come to the same conclusion or whether he had heard Jesus say this and was trying to sound like he agreed. Because after Jesus commends his answer, the man asks a further question: “And who is my neighbor?”

Now why would he ask this? Luke says that he is trying to justify himself. But about what? He probably had a rather narrow definition of who his neighbor was. At the time the Jewish people were divided into several factions.

The Pharisees believed that the written law, the Torah, and the Oral law, the traditions that came from various rabbis' interpretations of the law and how they applied to everyday life, were of equal authority. That's why they were nitpicky about the way Jesus' disciples washed their hands and why they thought his healing people on the Sabbath violated the commandment against working on that day. But they did believe in eternal life and that people faced either punishment or reward after death.

The Sadducees were the priestly party. They held that only the written law, the Torah, was authoritative. They did not believe in an afterlife.

The Essenes were an almost monastic group who held all their property in common and usually did not marry. They spent their time worshipping and studying the Torah. They were so obsessed with purity that they took frequent ritual baths. If the Dead Sea scrolls are any indication, they thought all other Jews were corrupt and they were waiting for Jerusalem's fall and a final battle between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. Most scholars think they lived in Qumran in the desert, away from other Jews.

Then there were the Zealots. They opposed Herod and the Roman occupation of Judea. They believed only God was their king. They were militant and during the Jewish war against the Romans, they took over the temple in Jerusalem and turned it into a fortress.

The scribe, probably a Pharisee, is trying to justify being neighborly to those who are like him and agree with him and looking for an excuse to not do the same to Jews who differ from him. Human beings have always divided the world into “Us” and “Them.” That was a common attitude then and it is common now. We have politicians who say they hate other Americans who do not support them. They accuse them of wanting to destroy the country. There is a move to take away citizenship from those born in this country because their parents were not.

Perhaps in telling the parable that defines who God considers to be our neighbor, Jesus was thinking of a verse in the same chapter of the book of Leviticus that the scribe cites. Only 15 verses after telling us to love our neighbor God says, “When a foreigner resides with you in your land, you must not oppress him. The foreigner who resides with you must be to you like a native citizen among you; so you must love him as yourself, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)

So Jesus tells his Jewish audience a story. He starts with a common occurrence. A man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked by robbers. Jerusalem is almost 2500 feet above sea level and Jericho is about 800 feet below sea level. So in a distance of about 17 miles you do go down over 3000 feet. It's a very twisty road through narrow rocky passages and gorges, the perfect place for robbers to hide. William Barclay adds that the man must have been very foolish to go alone rather than as part of a caravan. Five centuries later, it was still called the “Red or Bloody Way.” So the idea that a man would be attacked on the way was something Jesus' audience would accept.

They would also accept that a priest and a Levite would head along that road. Jericho was, among other things, a residential community for priests and for the Levites who served them. And they would have believed that the priest and the Levite would walk around the man they saw rather than help him. Jesus said the man was half dead. Touching a corpse would leave a man ritually unclean for 7 days, so that he could not serve at the temple. (Number 19:11) The Levite may have been thinking the same thing. But Jesus says that they were going down the road, in other words, going home and away from Jerusalem and the temple. Their service was over. Being unclean would be an inconvenience but their rotation at the temple was over. To paraphrase Barclay, their rituals meant more to them than the suffering of another person.

Barclay does point out that they may have been worried about their own safety. Sometimes robbers would stage a scene in which one of them would pretend to have been a victim of attack. If someone stopped to help, his confederates would jump that person and rob him.

Now Jesus' audience, knowing the rule of three in storytelling, may have expected the next person to be a common Jewish man. But Jesus pulls a plot twist. The next person is a Samaritan. Now Jesus' audience would be thinking, “Oh, no! Things have gotten worse! This villain is going to finish off the victim!” But, no. When the Samaritan sees the man he is “moved with pity.” The Greek word means to have a gut feeling of compassion. And surprise! This heretic half-breed is the hero of the tale!

Jesus says that first the Samaritan approaches the man. Neither the priest or the Levite checked to see if the victim was dead or not and thus would not necessarily have rendered them unclean. The Samaritan doesn't just feel bad for the guy and offer thoughts and prayers. He jumps into action. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, the priest and the Levite asked themselves what would happen to them if they went to the man. The Samaritan asked himself what would happen to the man if he didn't go to him.

Next he gives the victim first aid. Our ancestors weren't stupid. They didn't know about germs or the antiseptic qualities of alcohol and oil but they did know from practical experience that putting oil and wine on wounds and bandaging them helped a person heal. The Samaritan used the knowledge he had to help.

Next he gets the man to safety. They are in the wilderness. They can't call 911. There are no ambulances. So the Samaritan puts the man on his donkey and takes him to an inn.

And he doesn't just dump him and let him become Someone Else's Problem. He continues to care for the man. This victim probably costs his rescuer a night's sleep.

But he costs him money, too. The Samaritan can't stay but he gives the innkeeper the equivalent of 2 days' wages and instructions to take care of the man until he returns. If it costs the innkeeper more, the Samaritan will reimburse him.

Finally Jesus asks the expert in the law which of the 3 men seemed to be a neighbor to the victim. The scribe can't even bring himself to say the word, “Samaritan.” Instead he says, “The one who showed him compassion.”

What do we learn from this?

First, your neighbor is not necessarily someone like you. He doesn't have to be of the same race or the same religion or the same country as you. He doesn't have to be anyone you know. He is anyone you encounter who is in need. And today, you may encounter him or her in the news or on the internet because distance is not the factor it was in Jesus' day. You can help people across the world through charities and aid organizations. That they aren't nearby is not an excuse.

Second, the reason your neighbor is suffering is irrelevant. The man was foolish to travel that road alone. The Samaritan didn't determine why the man was in that situation; he took care of him nonetheless. When Jesus' disciples asked him if the reason that a man was born blind was his sin or his parents', Jesus didn't assign blame. He saw it as an opportunity to serve God by healing him. (John 9:1-3) Neither does Jesus bring up the reason why the people in the parable of the sheep and goats ended up hungry or naked or sick or in jail or a foreigner. We are to take care of them regardless and serve Jesus. (Matthew 25:31-46)

Third, we are to offer practical help to our neighbor. As James says, “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacks food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, keep warm and eat well,' but you do not give them what the body needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15-16) As it says in 1 John, “Little children, we should not love in word or with our tongue but in action and in truth.” (1 John 3:18) In the parable the Samaritan does not say “I want you to know that I love you, my neighbor, as I do myself.” He simply demonstrates it by loving actions. To paraphrase James, creeds without deeds are dead.

Today when so-called Christians are talking about “the sin of empathy” or “toxic empathy,” I wonder how they square this with Jesus' command, “In everything, treat others as you would want them to treat you, for this fulfills the law and the prophets”? (Matthew 7:12) That requires empathy: understanding and sharing the feelings of others.

Lack of empathy is the real problem that Jesus is addressing in this parable. It is typical not to have empathy for those different from us. Right now I imagine most of us are more concerned with the more than 120 people who died in Texas last week than the 56,000 people who have died in Gaza over the last two years. But to Jesus they are all our neighbors. We are to love all of them. We are to serve all of them, not just with our lips but with our lives.

What would we do if they were people we already love and care for? We would go to their rescue. We would take care of their needs.We would help them in any way we could, even if it costs us in time, effort and money. So, as Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.”

A Fuller Image

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 66:10-14.

“Is God a man or a woman?” the Sunday School teacher asked. The kids in her class, sensing that this was a trick question, said nothing.

Except for one little boy. He said, “God's not a woman; he's three guys.”

The teacher hadn't been thinking of the Trinity but, seeing a teaching moment, replied, “I wouldn't call them guys, but do you know the names of the 3 persons in the Godhead?”

“Yeah,” said the boy. “Harold, Howard and Dad.”

“Uh, where did you get those names?” asked the teacher.

“In the prayer we say,” the boy replied. The teacher looked confused because this didn't sound like any prayer she'd heard or taught them. The kid goes, “You know—the one that starts, 'Our Father, Howard in heaven, Harold be thy name.'”

The question I put in the joke was actually the one I drew from our sermon suggestion box one Sunday. It looked like it was written by a child. And it's a natural question because most living beings they know—people, animals, birds—are either male or female. Children perceive this to be a major category and so it would seem to apply to God as well. And throughout history, most pagan gods were conceived of as having genders. Zeus is male; Venus is female. But just as the God of the Bible transcends the idea that one being is always one person, so too he doesn't fit into our neat (or once neat) categories on gender. So why does the Bible always use the masculine pronoun when talking about God?

The assumption of a lot of people is that this is because Christianity and Judaism are inherently and thoroughly sexist. But to say that you have to ignore a lot of the Biblical data. Like the fact that women figure prominently in both the Old and New Testaments: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Zipporah, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Bathsheba, Esther, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, Pricilla, Dorcas, Lydia, Junia and more. In fact, one scholar, noticing all of the significant women in the Torah, and all the emphasis on marrying for love, proposed that it was written by a woman. Another scholar has suggested that Paul's colleague Priscilla, who worked with her husband Aquilla as a ministry team, was the author of the book of Hebrews.

Oddly enough, some people hold up fertility religions as an egalitarian contrast to the Judeo-Christian tradition. But to do that you have to ignore the facts about them as well. Fertility cults were the original “Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant” religions. Yes, women were allowed to be priestesses in those religions—so long as they functioned as temple prostitutes. Yes, the female form was venerated—in much the same way that Playboy magazine did. In such societies women were sacred, all right—sacred sex objects. They didn't value women as anything other than baby machines. Contrast that with the Bible's description in Proverbs 31:10-31 of a wife whose “value is far more than rubies.” She sells what she makes and buys land. Unlike an ancient Greek wife, she doesn't have to stay in the women's part of the house. Ironically if you want to see more egalitarian cultures, you should look at the warrior societies. The Mongols, the Celts, and the Vikings let their women do more than just care for the hearth and home. Some even became leaders, like the Celtic queen Boudica who led the Celts against the Romans, and Freydis Eiriksdottir, a fierce warrior who successfully fought Native Americans.

The prophets denounced the fertility goddess Asherah, which some Israelites worshipped. (Deuteronomy 7:5; Jeremiah 17:1-2; 2 Kings 23:4) And it was probably to avoid all connection with such fertility cults that the Jews, who unlike the Greeks lacked a neutral pronoun, referred to God in the masculine. This does not mean that our God is like Mars, the Roman god of war, who is the personification of all that is male. God does have characteristics traditionally seen as feminine. The Hebrew word for God's compassion (racham) is the root of their word for “womb.” (Psalm 86:15) In Proverbs chapter 8, God's wisdom is personified in a poem and referred to as “her.” In today's reading from Isaiah, God says to Jerusalem, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, stoning the prophets and killing the ones sent to you! How often I wanted to gather together your children the way a hen gathers her young under her wings but you were not willing” (Luke 13:34)

There is another way in which we know that God has both masculine and feminine characteristics. In the very first chapter in the Bible, it says, “And God made humanity in his image; in the image of God, he made him; male and female, he made them.” (Genesis 1:27) Notice the fact that both male and female are created in God's image. This is important because in the ancient Near East, the monarch was said to be the image of God and so to have his authority. In Genesis 1, both man and woman were created to act as co-regents of the earth under God. In fact, the subordination of the woman to the man is depicted as a consequence of the fall of humanity and was not part of God's original design. (Genesis 3:16) As we will see, all inequality comes from sin.

Since our sins have been dealt with by Christ, we can echo Paul, who says in his letter to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) It is odd, therefore, that Christians are as susceptible to the twin mistakes about gender as non-Christians are. Those two mistakes are either exaggerating the differences between the sexes or else ignoring them.

The most common mistake is to approach the genders in a dualistic fashion. By this I mean seeing the 2 sexes as if they were almost 2 different species. It is true that there are other differences besides our reproductive organs. The 2 hemispheres in women's brains are more strongly connected, enhancing intuitive thinking and multitasking; men's brains are more strongly connected from front to back, enhancing focus and motor skills. Women tend to do better in verbal abilities and languages whereas men tend to do better in math and spatial relations. Women's relationships tend to be about the people in the relationships; men's relationships tend to be about things they like to do or enjoy together. Men tend to like sports; women tend to like hobbies. But these are generalizations, true only when looking at large groups of people. Any individual woman may be more logical or more of a sports fan than any particular man. Any specific man may be more sensitive in his relationships than any specific woman. There is an amount of variation in the sexes. Mr. Rogers displayed the gentler and more nurturing side of being a man. By all accounts, Florence Nightingale was more intelligent, better organized and much more formidable than most men.

Unfortunately, there are those who act as if gender differences are a vast “No-Man's Land” running through all societies and all activities. Some approve of the division between the two while some see it as regrettable but inevitable. Often those that approve of it see the divide as divinely ordained, but that can only be maintained through a selective emphasis on certain passages and the exclusion of others. Point out 1 Corinthians 14:34 but skip 11:5; emphasize 1 Timothy 2:12 but ignore Romans 16:1; make a big deal of Ephesians 5:22 but divorce it from verse 21 from which the verb “submit” must be borrowed. It is not a matter of being Biblical or not but of being Biblically balanced or not. If you don't look at scripture as a whole but cherry-pick select verses or ignore contexts you will miss the nuances to be found in God's wisdom.

In fact, most of the differences in the treatment of men and women owe more to the pre-existing cultures than to the scriptures. And usually it is men who insist that there are huge differences between the sexes. They also tend to see them not in terms of mere function or approach but in moral terms. They see bodily differences the way racists see skin color: as indicative of underlying moral and intellectual inferiority and biologically determined behavior. Sadly, some feminists mirror them, seeing men as the troublesome sex. But demeaning or demonizing either sex is certainly not the solution to the problem.

Women do suffer disportionately from poverty, domestic violence and lack of education. And one study says the wellbeing of a nation is directly related to the economic freedom of its women. But I doubt that the people of Iran would say that sexual inequality is their biggest problem. Nor would the Israelis or the Palestinians. The real evil is humankind's general tendency to treat inhumanely those who are different in any way and to try to establish dominance over them. We see this when it comes to matters of race, religion, counties of origin, languages, customs, and politics. Inequality in the treatment of the sexes is just one more manifestation of the sin of not loving your neighbor as yourself.

On the other hand, there are those who feel that we should pretend that there are no differences between the sexes. I read a critique which said that while American feminists tried to erase legal differences between men and women, European feminists won maternity leave and special legislation that dealt with problems specific to women. In other words, European feminists focused more on accommodating the differences. And currently 10 European countries have women Heads of State or Heads of Government.

I think the solution is to reject “one size fits all” answers to the twin problems. We need to recognize when the differences in the sexes should come into play and when they shouldn't. It makes no sense to exclude women from jobs or positions that they can do. (The 2 longest reigning British monarchs were women: Elizabeth II and Victoria. Elizabeth I is also in the top ten.) And it makes no sense to pay them less for doing the same work. On the other hand, we need to recognize the different needs of women and men. Doctors have noted that women may manifest different symptoms than men when they have heart attacks. They may react to certain medications differently. It doesn't help that traditionally women have been excluded from drug trials because researchers don't want to deal with the complexity of factoring in things like menstruation and pregnancy. Women's nutritional needs are different. And in many public places, they should have more bathrooms than men. Men rarely have to stand in long lines to use restrooms.

When the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal, it is speaking of their worth in the eyes of God. Obviously we are not equal in all aspects or abilities. Both sexes and all individuals have various strengths. So we must strike a balance when we approach each other. Because, as we have seen, the image of God does not reside exclusively in either sex alone but in both working together. We see in others reflections of the God who both nurtures us and demands that we become mature, who both disciplines us and forgives us, who both encourages us to take bold actions and reminds us to think of others when we act, especially those who are less fortunate or powerful, who tells us both to work for justice and to be peacemakers. The sexes were not meant to compete but to complete the picture of the God who is love, to bring out and bring together all the facets of the image of God which we can find in every person if only we look for them.

First preached on July 2, 2006. It has been revised and updated.

Witnesses, Not Warriors

The scriptures referred to are 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18 and John 21:15-19.

If you put “armor of God” in the search function of Amazon, you get a plethora of not only books on the subject but also challenge coins, wall art, plaques, bookmarks, travel mugs (Father's Day gifts!), medallions, figurines, dog tags, wrist bands, pens, sew-on patches, children's crafts and playsets of plastic armor labelled as a “Christian Character-Building Costume.” People love those verses from Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which cast following Jesus in a military light. The core of the passage is this: “For this reason, take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand your ground on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand. Stand firm therefore, by fastening the belt of truth around your waist, by putting on the breastplate of righteousness, by fitting your feet with the preparation that comes from the good news of peace, and in all of this, by taking up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:13-17) It makes you want to sing “Onward, Christian soldiers.”

But did you notice something? All of the pieces of armor that Paul mentions—belt, breastplate, footwear, shield and helmet—are protective, except one: the sword of the Spirit; that is, the word of God. So our only “weapon” is the scriptures. And he follows that with this verse: “With every prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, with all perseverance and requests for all the saints.” (Ephesians 6:18) He says we are not to call down curses on our enemies but pray for the needs of all Christians. There is no justification here for being aggressive towards others. Instead, we are to live by the golden rule.

You can find the golden rule in practically every religion and ethical system. Many of them state it negatively: “Do not do to others what you wouldn't want done to yourself.” Which merely prohibits doing harm to others. Jesus, however, stated this moral principle positively: “Treat others in the same way that you would want to be treated.” (Luke 6:31) In the parable of the good Samaritan the priest and the Levite who pass by the man beaten and left for dead could say that they didn't do further harm to him. But the Samaritan does what the victim really wants and needs: he helps the man. He cleans and dresses his wounds, gets him to an inn, takes care of him all night and in the morning, gives money for his continuing care. Jesus says that is how you love your neighbor. (Luke 10:25-37)

And the irony is that Jews and Samaritans considered each other enemies. They were different ethnically and religiously. Yet Jesus used them to expand the definition of who our neighbor is. And in the Sermon on the Mount he makes this explicit. He says, “You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor' and 'hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be like your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45) In an agricultural society, both sun and rain are good things. Because God is good to all, so must we be. (Matthew 5:48) And since we are to love both our neighbor and our enemy there is no one we can hate and so no one we can either harm or neglect.

The reason I bring this up is because this Sunday we are commemorating the apostles Peter and Paul. And our readings are about the sufferings they endured for the faith. Both were martyred for proclaiming the good news about Jesus Christ, who died to save the world. And none of those 3 people died in a physical battle. In fact when Peter tried to defend Jesus by wielding a sword and wounding one of those who came to arrest him, Jesus rebuked him and said, “Put your sword back in its place! For all who take hold of the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52) And then Jesus healed the man whose ear was cut off. (Luke 22:51) Jesus' last healing was that of a person who came to have him crucified. He meant what he said about loving our enemies.

Paul had been a persecutor of the church, arresting Christians and dragging them off to prison. (Acts 8:3) Describing his earlier life to King Herod Agrippa, he said, “And that is what I did in Jerusalem: Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons by the authority I received from the chief priests, but I also cast my vote against them when they were sentenced to death.” (Acts 26:10) Then on his way to do the same in Damascus, the risen Jesus appeared to him, saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:5) After seeing Jesus, he changes his life and mission, from violently trying to stamp out those who follow Jesus to peacefully bringing the good news of the crucified and risen Christ to non-Christians. Perhaps Paul was thinking of those Christians he had harmed when he said, “This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners'—and I am the worst of them!” (1 Timothy 1:15) And he changes his name from Saul, the name of the king who persecuted David, Jesus' ancestor, to Paul, which means “small.”

Both Peter and Paul went on to be imprisoned for proclaiming Jesus as Lord. In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul catalogues all the times he had suffered on his missionary trips. “Five times I received from the Jews forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with a rod. Once I received a stoning. Three times I suffered shipwreck. A night and a day I spent adrift in the open sea. I have been on journeys many times, in dangers from rivers, in dangers from robbers, in dangers from my own countrymen, in dangers from Gentiles, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers at sea, in dangers from false brothers, in hard work and toil, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, many times without food, in cold and without enough clothing.” (2 Corinthians 11:24-27) He went from causing suffering for those who followed Jesus to suffering for following Jesus himself.

Their deaths are foreshadowed in our passages from John's gospel and from Paul's second letter to Timothy. After giving Peter the opportunity to reaffirm his love for Jesus three times, mirroring his three denials of Christ during his trial, Jesus predicts Peter's eventual arrest and death. And Paul is obviously thinking that his death is near. Second Timothy is thought to be Paul's last letter, written from prison in Rome while awaiting his probable execution. He wants Timothy to come to see him before it is too late. (2 Timothy 4:21) As he says in today's passage, “...the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” That sounds final.

We don't have a lot of information about how Peter and Paul died. In the 1^st letter of Clement, written around 96 AD, Peter's successor mentions the martyrdoms of both of these apostles but gives us no specifics. Tradition says they died during the reign of the emperor Nero around 64 AD. Roman historian Tacitus says that Nero blamed the Christians for the Great Fire of Rome that same year and so, as the two most prominent leaders of the church, the apostles were probably executed as scapegoats. Tradition also says that Paul was beheaded, which is plausible since he was a Roman citizen. (Acts 16:37-38; 22:27-28) Tradition says that Peter, not a Roman citizen, was crucified upside down, supposedly because he was too humble to die as Jesus did.

Neither of these men were warriors but witnesses to the good news. And indeed that is all Jesus intended his followers to be. (Matthew 10:18; Luke 21:12-13) Jesus says, “I am sending you out as sheep surrounded by wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) So this is not a call to fight but to proclaim the gospel.

People who are trying to justify Christians fighting often go the the Old Testament. But Biblical Israel was a small country sandwiched between great empires: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon. It was fighting for its existence. In Jesus' time it was occupied by the Roman empire. Many Jews were looking for a Messiah who would lead an army to throw out the Romans and establish a physical, political kingdom of God. They wanted a David 2.0. Jesus wasn't going to be that kind of Messiah. He wasn't going to shed the blood of others to make another kingdom with borders. Instead he let his blood be shed to establish a kingdom that has no borders. He had rejected Satan's offer to give him all the kingdoms of this world. (Luke 4:5-8) And he didn't authorize his followers to operate like every other group seeking power in the way the world does. He tells Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom was from this world, my servants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities.” (John 18:36) When he told Peter to sheath his sword, he was saying that to all who would follow him.

You may object, “But that leaves us defenseless.” Yes and no. From an earthly standpoint, it may seem to. But consider this: The Israelites were slaves in Egypt. God led them out of Egypt and into the promised land. Later the kingdom of Judah fought against the Babylonian empire. They were defeated and taken into exile in 586 BC. And yet after 70 years in exile, they returned home after the Persian empire defeated the Babylonian empire. Eventually the Roman empire broke apart and was destroyed. Earthly kingdoms and empires rise and fall. But the Jews are still with us—not because of their military might but because of God. God is our only sure defense. As Psalm 18:2 says, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” God is our defender, though it does not always look like that at the time.

I love the musical Godspell. It is based on the gospel of Matthew. Until you get to the very end. The disciples take down the body of Jesus and carry him out of the theater, singing a mournful tune. Then for the curtain call they come back singing an upbeat tune. But by not showing the resurrection, it is not clear why they have changed their tune, why they are so happy. In the gospels we see the impact Jesus' death had on the disciples. They only turned from discouraged cowards fearing the authorities to courageously declaring the good news because Jesus rose from the dead. That vindicated that he was who he said he was and it destroyed their fear of death.

If you follow Jesus' commandments—turn the other cheek, do not resist the evildoer, pray for those who mistreat you, give to everyone who asks of you—it could get you killed! (Luke 6:27-30) But Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do.” (Luke 12:4) How we are to act is based upon the God of life who raised Jesus from the dead. Death does not have the last word. But if we turn aside from the way of Jesus because of the threat of what violence can do to us, or the terrible promise of what we can achieve by violence, then we must fear the loss of our relationship with God and the loss of who we are called to be: the body of Christ. The times when Christians used violence against their enemies—the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, the heresy and witch trials—have greatly harmed our witness to the world. Jesus said that it is by our love that the world will know we are his disciples. (John 13:35) Love does no harm to others. (Romans 13:10)

Forswearing the use of violence is scary. But that's how the early Christians impressed the pagan Romans. They saw how fearlessly Christians faced persecution and martyrdom. The Roman historian Tacitus says that Nero “inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Chrestians (sic) by the populace.” Some he had crucified, some he had thrown to wild animals and others he burned alive as living torches to light his garden. Tacitus, no fan of Christianity which he called a “most mischievous superstition,” nevertheless says, “...there arose a feeling of compassion: for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed.” And later, when plagues hit Rome, pagans noticed that Christians did not flee to the relative safety of the countryside but stayed in the city, nursing the sick and dying at the risk of their own lives. In a culture that had no sense of social consciousness or one's duty to the unfortunate, the compassionate and selfless actions of Christians attracted people to investigate following Jesus Christ.

Do you know the origin of the word martyr? It comes from martys, the Greek word for “witness.” Because of Christians standing up for their faith even when it cost them their lives, it came to mean what it does today: suffering and even dying for your beliefs. The earliest saints honored by the church were martyrs. The second century church father Tertullian maintained that “the blood of the martyrs is seed.” St. Augustine picked up on this and expanded it saying, “The earth has been filled with the blood of the martyrs as with seed, and from that seed have sprung the crops of the church. They have asserted Christ's cause more effectively when dead than they were alive. They assert it today, they preach him today; their tongues are silent, their deeds echo around the world.”

And even today we remember people like missionary Jim Elliot, who died trying to contact an Amazonian tribe. His wife Elizabeth Elliot completed his mission, converting the people who murdered her husband. We remember Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, who was assassinated while celebrating the Mass for criticizing the human rights abuses of the Salvadoran government. We remember Polish friar Maximillian Kolbe who volunteered to take the place of a stranger in a starvation bunker in Auschwitz. We remember Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated for working peacefully for racial equality. We remember pastor Wang Zhiming, killed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. We remember Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda, killed for speaking out against the human rights abuses of Ida Amin. There are people killed for their Christian faith around the world these days, like Esther John, a Pakistani woman, Manche Masemola, a South African woman, Lucian Tapiedi of Papua New Guinea, the 21 Coptic Christians beheaded by ISIS in 2015, the members of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity killed in Yemen in 2016 and many more.

Recently we have had a self-styled “Christian” evangelist kill an elected official and her husband and shoot another couple. Did he bring glory to Christ or did he blaspheme Christ's name by this action? Jesus knew about religious fanatics who take it on themselves to be judge, jury and executioner. He said, “...a time is coming when the one who kills you will think he is offering service to God.” (John 16:2) James, Jesus' brother, writes, “For human anger does not accomplish God's righteousness.” (James 1:20) Preachers, quoting the Sermon on the Mount, have been confronted by church members asking where they got such woke nonsense. And when they were told that the preacher was quoting Jesus, they said that what the Lord said was weak and didn't work.

Paul knew about weakness. He suffered from some ailment he called “a thorn in my flesh” that tormented him. (I think it was an eye problem. See Galatians 4:13-15) He said, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:8-10) Perhaps he was thinking of Psalm 28:7 which says, “The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart has trusted in him and I am helped.”

Jesus did not lead an army like Mohammed did. Jesus did not triumph like worldly kings, by slaying his enemies and dying in bed, old and powerful. By worldly standards, he was not a hero who fought his enemies but a loser who did not offer resistance but let himself be killed by them. But that's not how God sees it. As it says in Isaiah, “Having suffered, he will reflect on his work, he will be satisfied when he understands what he has done. 'My servant will acquit many, for he carried their sins. So I will assign him a portion with the multitudes, he will divide the spoils of victory with the powerful, because he willingly submitted to death and was numbered with the rebels, when he lifted up the sins of many and intervened on behalf of the rebels.'” (Isaiah 53:11-12)

Anyone can kill for their cause. With today's weapons, it's easy and the killer is so removed from his victims that he is safe. But few willingly die for their faith, not paying back evil with evil but with goodness, not using weapons but the word of God. Why were the apostles willing to die if necessary for their faith in Christ? Because they knew that earthly death was not the end. Jesus showed that. He didn't just talk about eternal life, he demonstrated it. And because he had undergone and defeated death, they did not fear death, nor any of the things that lead up to it, like disease or persecution. It's not that they sought death; they just didn't alter what they did because of it.

And when you don't fear death, you can do extraordinary things. You can give of yourself to help others. You can defy those more powerful than you: kings and their kingdoms, emperors and their empires, rulers of nations, leaders of corporations and cults. Because they will not last. They are temporal and temporary. The Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Roman and British empires are no more. In comparison with eternity, they were mere blips. The things of this world don't last. God's word does. God's people do.

It's hard to remember that when things get scary. It takes faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died for us and rose again and who will come again. On that day we will see, as it says in Revelation, “The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 11:15) In the meantime, we trust in the one who said, “I have told you these things so that you may have peace. In the world you have trouble and suffering but take courage—I have conquered the world” (John 16:33) And he did it without making a fist or drawing a sword or firing a shot. He did it with words and acts of self-sacrificial love. Go and do likewise. 

One of Many

In the movie Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, a Klingon High Counsellor tells the crew of the Enterprise that they really should read Shakespeare in the original Klingon. Writer and director Nicholas Meyer was thinking of how the Nazis claimed that Shakespeare was really German. It came off as a throwaway joke, especially since it was delivered by Shakespearean actor Christopher Plummer. But this being Star Trek, some fan has actually gone and translated Hamlet into the fictional language! You can buy it on Amazon along with a Klingon dictionary. However, one big translation problem was already tackled in the film. Plummer's character was to quote Hamlet's famous soliloquy that begins with “To be or not to be.” But in Klingon there are only action verbs. Working with Plummer, the language's creator came up with the Klingon equivalent: “To continue or not to continue (to exist.)”

Our sermon suggestion question is “Why is the King James version of the Bible used and no other?” Obviously, this is not quite true. Our church uses a different translation as do other churches. But there are some Christians and preachers who feel that the “Authorized” version is the only one to use and they look at all others as heretical. How and why did this happen?

First let's do a quick overview of Bible translations. The scriptures have been rendered into half of all the world's languages. It began during the Babylonian exile. Many Jews no longer understood Biblical Hebrew and so rabbis translated their Torah lectionary readings into Aramaic, the common language of the Middle East. Hundreds of years later, when Greek was the common language because of the conquests of Alexander the Great, a translation of the entire Old Testament, the Septuagint, was produced for Jews living throughout the known world. This was the Bible the authors of the New Testament knew and used.

As Christianity spread, it was translated into the the tongue of each new country or tribe that missionaries encountered. St. Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, the official language of the Roman empire. This eventually became the Bible used by the Roman Catholic church, which, in response to various heresies, forbade unauthorized translations into common tongues. This greatly slowed down the production of vernacular versions of the Bible in the Middle Ages.

The first complete translation of the Bible into English was produced by John Wycliffe in the late 1300s. It was both widely popular and officially banned. After Wycliffe's death, not only were his works condemned and burned, but his body was exhumed and burned as well. Still, Wyclif fared better than William Tyndale, who was tried for heresy, strangled and burned at the stake. His crime? Inspired by Martin Luther, Tyndale went back to the original Greek and Hebrew in order to translate the Bible into English. Tyndale is important because his translation influenced all subsequent English translations. He introduced new words into English like Jehovah, Passover, atonement and scapegoat. He coined the phrases “Let there be light,” “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,” “filthy lucre,” “the powers that be,” “the signs of the times,” and many others.

Tyndale was arrested in Antwerp at the behest of Henry VIII. Ironically, within 4 years of his arrest and execution, 4 translations of the Bible were published in England at the behest of the same king, now head of the Protestant Church of England. All of them were based on Tyndale's translation.

Despite the fact that authorized translations were issued under both Henry and his daughter, Elizabeth the 1^st, the Puritans were not satisfied with them. They petitioned King James the 1^st to commission a new translation. James agreed in part because he wanted to supplant the popular Geneva Bible, published half a century earlier, which translated the word “king” as “tyrant” nearly 400 times. This Bible was the product of Calvinist scholars who had fled England under Mary Tudor, known as Bloody Mary for her policy of executing Protestants. It was not only the text of the Geneva Bible that irked James and others in the Church of England, but also the marginal notes. Among other things they undercut Biblical support for the traditional ecclesiastical arrangement of bishops and priests.

47 scholars, both Puritan and those who called themselves “high churchmen,” were arranged into 6 committees covering different sections of the Bible. Besides going back to the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts they had at the time, they also consulted previous translations, like Tyndale's. They began work in 1604 and finished in 1608. Their work was reviewed in 1609 by a general committee and published in 1611. Oddly enough, though often called the “Authorized Version,” it never was technically authorized. The king's printer stopped making copies of the Bishop's Bible, which was authorized by Elizabeth, and started printing the King James version, which became the official translation of the Church of England by default.

The King James version did not take the world by storm. The Geneva Bible remained popular and many Bible scholars were unhappy with the new translation. Basically, the King James version simply outlasted the others and became the Bible most English-speaking people grew up with. And it still sounds beautiful and dignified when read aloud in church.

Unfortunately the same thing that enabled the King James to become the most widely used English translation for 4 centuries is now making it less useful today. In the 400 years since it was first published, a lot has changed. For one thing the English language has changed. But not so much that people can't understand the King James Bible, right?

Well, try this” Proverbs 11:20 tells us that “They that are of a froward heart are an abomination to the Lord.” What does “froward” mean? For all you know, you may be unwittingly offending God right now! Admittedly that is an extreme instance but if you want to use the Bible to understand the mind of God, you shouldn't have to possess a thorough knowledge of Jacobean English as well. There are at least 170 words in the King James version that have changed meaning over time or dropped out of usage entirely. (By the way, “froward” means “willfully contrary.” The Hebrew word means “crooked, twisted, perverse, even deceptive.” Ask yourself: was “froward” an adequate translation?)

But the biggest problem with the King James version is that we now have more and older Greek and Hebrew manuscripts than its translators did. For the Old Testament, they used the Masoretic text. The Masoretes were Jewish scholars who obsessively copied, edited and distributed the official texts of the Hebrew Bible from the 7^th through the 10^th centuries. This meant the translators of the King James version used a Hebrew manuscript that was put together 1000 years after the composition of the last book of the Old Testament. How much had the text changed in that millennium? They didn't know. Today we have the Dead Sea scrolls and they have eliminated most of that 1000 year gap. It shows us that the Masoretes did an amazing job of preserving the text. But it also shows us that some changes did take place. Most are minor, like changes in spelling. But today we have a much more accurate text for the Hebrew Bible.

For the New Testament, the translators of the King James version mainly used the Textus Receptus. This was an edition based on 8 Greek manuscripts and it did not cover the whole New Testament. The missing portions were translated into Greek from St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate. It was compiled by the scholar Erasmus and had been the basis for Martin Luther's German translation. It may have been the best edition of the Greek New Testament they had 400 years ago but today we have better. Most modern translations of the Bible are based on more than 5800 Greek manuscripts, plus nearly 20,000 ancient translations. Not only are they more numerous than those used by the KJV translators but they are older as well. What we have discovered is that the manuscripts they used in the early 1600s belong to a family of very corrupt texts. Copyists in this tradition felt free to fix what they saw as troublesome texts, adding comments and paraphrasing at times. And the Byzantine-type texts underlying the Textus Receptus are one and a half times as long as the more ancient Greek manuscripts. Want to see one huge addition? Look at the last chapter of the gospel of Mark. The oldest Greek manuscripts end at verse 8. Verses 9 through 16 are more recent. Modern editions of the Bible usually have these verses separated from the rest of the gospel or at least bracket and footnote this passage.

Bible scholars also understand the ancient Hebrew and Greek languages better these days. For instance, the King James version translates 1 Timothy 6:10 thus: “For the love of money is the root of all evil.” But in Greek there is no definite article before the word “root” and the word it renders “evil” is plural. So most modern translations, including the literal ones like the American Standard version, translate the verse as “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.” Which makes more sense. Love of money is not the root of adultery, nor arrogance, nor foolishness, nor every instance of rage or murder.

Still some people think the King James version is not just a good translation for its time but the translation for all time. Some even believe that God divinely inspired the King James version, despite the fact that this means God doesn't care enough about non-English speakers to give them inspired translations. This is akin to the Klingons thinking that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in their tongue. Plus, in view of the differences between the earliest Hebrew and Greek manuscripts and the later ones the KJV is based on, it would mean that God decided to do some revisions on his word of truth a few centuries after it was originally written down by the apostles. Now, none of the changes are major; no doctrines were changed. Even the added ending to Mark contains mostly stuff found in the other gospels. But why would God do that?

The real reason that some people say that the King James version is the only valid English translation is that (A) they have based some elaborate but non-essential pet teachings on the specific wording of certain verses or (B) because it is familiar. They love it. And that's okay as long as they realize that. There's a difference between saying you love a particular model of classic car and saying that it is the only true car and that all other cars are defective deathtraps, secretly designed by engineers who hate cars and wish to harm drivers and their passengers.

The King James version is a beautiful translation. But if you really want to understand God's word and don't know the original languages, you need to read other translations as well. Some, like the New Revised Standard and the English Standard versions, are revisions of the King James, using the latest research and discoveries, while seeking to retain some of the majestic language of the original. There are looser translations that try to make understanding the Bible easier, like the New Living Translation. There are some that try to get very close to being literal without being totally unreadable, like the New American Standard version. Then there are those that aim to balance readability and accuracy like the New International version and the New English Translation, the latter of which has the most insightful notes on verses by the translators. You can buy any and all of these in book form or even find them online at Bible.org, Biblehub.com and Biblegateway.com.

Look at it this way. God could have given us 1 account of the Ten Commandments. Instead he gave us two, one in Exodus 20 and another in Deuteronomy 5. He could have given us one official history of the kings of Israel and Judah. But besides the one that runs from the two books of Samuel through the two books of Kings, we get another in 1^st and 2^nd Chronicles. He could have given us one gospel of the life of Jesus. He gives us 4. God has blessed us with many translations of his word, each giving us slightly different insights into the same truths. He is generous that way. So let us enjoy his bounty! How can anyone believe that a single translation could capture every nuance of the original and be the last word on our vast and multifaceted God?

This was first preached on June 6, 2010, It has been revised and updated.