Mark 2:18-3:6

08/24/11 Mark 2:18-3:6 GUMC Youth

We took a break from Mark last week to consider the Problem of Evil, but we are back into it tonight, with something of a long passage, but a passage that, for our purposes, can be seen as making a point and then bringing forward two stories that confirm and illustrate that point. Two weeks ago, we read about Jesus getting in trouble with the religious authorities for eating with tax collectors and sinners. He reminded us that it is sick people who need a doctor, not those who are well or, at least, those who think they are well. Tonight, our passage is about Jesus catching fire for not fasting, which means going without food for a religious reason. It is interesting that, even though we've had a week in between them, we have two passages in a row; one of them is about feasting and the other one is about fasting. It is as if, when Jesus' opponents realized that they couldn't get Jesus one way, they turned around and tried to get him the other way.

Look at what the people ask Jesus, "Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" I imagine that most of you do not have a whole lot of experience fasting, and probably don't know all that many people who have taken fasting seriously in their lives, so this question probably doesn't sound as pointed to you as it would have to people at the time. You need to understand that fasting was one of the single most common and important ways to practice your faith. If something terrible happened to you, whether by accident or your own fault, you would fast, that is, you would stop eating so you could devote yourself more completely to prayer. If disaster came upon the nation, the prophets would call the people to fast and pray. Fasting has a long tradition of helping people to be close to God.

Why should fasting make such a difference? It is really amazing to think about the things we do, not because we have a good reason to do them, but because our bodies compel us to do them. How many of us eat, not because we are hungry, but because we just want to eat? How often will we go back for seconds when we don't really need them, but are driven to it by the fact that it tastes good? By fasting, which isn't just not eating, but not eating so that we can devote ourselves to God, we are saying to our bodies, "No, you will not tell me what to do. God is in charge, not you." If you can control your body's desires, you can make better choices, and you will be more able to hear God, because you have already taught your body to keep quiet about its demands.

The point is that, if you were a religious person in those days, you fasted. The Pharisees, for example, had a practice of fasting twice a week. So here we have the disciples of John the Baptist fasting and the disciples of the Pharisees fasting, but Jesus and his disciples are not fasting. They kind of stick out.

Jesus' response is interesting. He says, "The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day." So, Jesus is saying that they aren't avoiding fasting because they don't think it is important. After all, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness fasting before he was tempted by the devil. He is saying that they are in such a time of radical celebration that they couldn't fast if they wanted to. Because he is present, it is like being at a wedding. The Pharisees did not understand how pointless it was to fast when Jesus was there. If the point of fasting is to get close to God, why do you need to fast when God himself is in your midst? Jesus says that there will be a time when he is taken away and, when that happens, his disciples will fast, but it doesn't make sense at that particular time and place.

Jesus uses this conflict as a chance to say something incredibly powerful. He says, "No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins." What I think Jesus is getting at is that, in Christ, all the rules are changed. You can't jam him into an old way of thinking and expect him to fit. Instead, the old way of thinking will be torn apart. This isn't because Jesus is mean, but just because he is who he is, he cannot fit into our little boxes that we make for him. And, by the way, when I say that Jesus explodes out of old ways of thinking, I don't just mean that he breaks out of ancient ways of thinking, but that he even breaks out of our ways of thinking, even though they are "new" in a sense, and we are still young people.

This is really important and I think we need to take some time and take this seriously. It is absolutely imperative that you understand just what this means. In Jesus Christ, everything changes. Our whole way of thinking and our way of living is changed, even the definitions of our words are changed. This is something that I don't think most people, even most Christians, take seriously enough. Jesus steps into our world of space and time, where we use words to communicate, and shatters them. We can no longer mean the same thing that we used to mean when we said that things are "good" or "evil." We can no longer think of good and evil in static, impersonal terms, where something is good or bad based on how we feel about it. Instead, things are good or evil based on how well they do or do not conform to Christ, who is who he is. This means that even the Ten Commandments, as helpful as they are, are not a final authority, independent of Christ, but serve to point us to Christ where we see what they really mean. We have to understand all the commands to not do things as ways to describe what it means to be like Christ, instead of free-floating rules. It means that, when we read that we are to have no other gods before God, it means that we are to understand the God, before whom there can be no other gods, as the God who reveals himself to us in Christ.

Everything about the way we think, the way we live and the way we speak is transformed in Christ and every attempt to make Jesus fit into our old ways of thinking, living and speaking is doomed to fail, for Jesus cannot be contained in them. Old ways of understanding God and interpreting the Bible, and of looking at life, are ripped (like the old fabric with a new patch on it) and burst (like the old wineskins carrying new wine) by Christ.

This is made even more clear by a statement we get in Luke, though not in Mark. In Luke, Jesus adds, "And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, 'The old is good.'" The fact of the matter is that we get used to things. Our whole framework of thought, what some people call our "worldview," is moulded and shaped by countless influences over our lives. By the time we even come to consciousness as toddlers, we have been shaped by our families and our environment. In our elementary school days, we are shaped by our friendships and our classes. We are in our framework of thought and life like a fish is in water. We are so deeply immersed in it, we can't even see it anymore.

That is the reason why it is so important for you to give your lives to Jesus when you are young. You have less baggage to deal with than you will when you are older. Some people will talk about becoming Christians later in life, so they can have their fun now and then be faithful later. First of all, not being a Christian isn't any more fun than being a Christian, and being a Christian is not anti-fun. But on top of that, you need to take seriously the fact that there are decisions you can make as a young person that you simply can't make, or at least become much more difficult, when you are older. It's like learning an instrument. If you go and talk to a bunch of world-class musicians, I imagine there are hardly any who took up music as adults. Whether they were making music as five year olds or not, most of them will have picked up music before they were in college. There is a certain age, which is different for everyone, after which it is impossible to master things like music to that kind of level. The longer you put off giving yourself to Christ, the harder it will be.

Let me put it this way. I have a dear friend who has, during his whole life, been deeply formed by a particular view of the universe, that it is rigidly deterministic. He is scientifically minded, so he has been taught by certain branches of natural science that this is so. However, he is also a committed Christian, but has been formed by a particular branch of the church that emphasizes God's sovereignty to the point that everything happens because God causes it to happen. This man loves Jesus, but the whole way he looks at his faith and life is formed by this deterministic framework which, in my judgment, is not helpful and even distracts us from seeing what really is the case. This way of thinking is so bound up with his understanding of Christian faith that, when I challenge him on that framework of thought, he has no other way to interpret it than to say that I am attacking the gospel, when my goal is to help liberate his faith from a destructive view that is hostile to the gospel. The sooner we get it through our heads that Jesus doesn't just change what we think, but how we think, the easier it will be to let ourselves be formed by him.

Let's see how the rest of the passage illustrates what I'm talking about. Jesus and his disciples begin to travel through a field and pick off pieces of the grain and eat them, a practice which, by the way, is totally legal according to ancient Israelite law. The Pharisees point out that it is the Sabbath and that gathering food is not legal on the Sabbath, however legal it might be on other days. Now, if you think this is somewhat nit-picking, you need to understand that there is a story in the Old Testament about a man who is executed by stoning for gathering wood on the Sabbath. The command to keep the Sabbath holy doesn't get taken very seriously these days, but it was a really big deal at the time.

What is interesting is that, even though there was some debate at the time at exactly what people were supposed to do or not do on the Sabbath, Jesus does not make use of this difference of opinion to justify himself. Instead, he tells a story of a time when king David broke the law by eating of the priest's bread. What David did was not, strictly speaking, legal, but it is not condemned in the Bible, not because there was some secret reason why it wasn't actually breaking the law, but because David was who he was. What David did was legal because it was David who did it. What Jesus is doing is legal because it is Jesus who is doing it; he is the Lord of the Sabbath, in his own words. He is one who is able to overturn hundreds of years of tradition and radically reinterpret the law because of who he is. The old wineskin of the Pharisees' interpretation is absolutely exploded by the reality of Christ. Even though Jesus makes the argument that the Sabbath was made for the benefit of humanity and not the other way around, the real reason he can do what he is doing is because He is the one who is doing it.

The last part of our passage is a story of Jesus entering into a synagogue and healing a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees were watching, hoping he would heal the man, but not because they wanted to see the brokenness and hurt of the world lessened, but because they wanted to accuse Jesus of breaking the law. Because of this antagonism, we read that Jesus is angry when he asks, "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?" This question might seem obvious to us, since we live in a more pragmatic age, where it doesn't matter whether something is said to be right or wrong, but whether it helps or hurts, but it was a radical overturning of tradition that would have been shocking to the people at the time.

The point is that Jesus reinterprets the law because of who he is. He does not make an independent argument, as if we could simply go by how something feels and decide whether it is right or wrong; instead, he makes a change based on who he is. Apart from Jesus, the law could easily become nothing more than a crippling, cold and impersonal rule that steals life instead of giving life as Jesus intends for it to do. When we see Jesus reinterpreting the law, we must not conclude that we can reinterpret it based on how we feel at the moment, but that the law must be interpreted in light of who Jesus is. There is no substitute for the reality of Christ. He completely changes the rules of the game, not because he just wants to mess things up but because the way the world looks at things is so completely problematic that he cannot enter into our world without overturning everything.

I want to draw attention, by way of conclusion, to the last verse in our passage. "The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him." You need to know that the Pharisees were the major religious authority over the people and the Herodians were the supporters of King Herod, the secular authority over the people. Both groups of people were deeply offended at what Jesus was doing, at who Jesus was. They both wanted to get rid of him. They wanted to do this because they were no fools. They knew exactly what Jesus was doing. He was overturning the way the people lived their lives. If the people actually changed to be like Jesus was calling them to be, they would lose their power.

The power of the world is broken in Christ. If you give your life to Christ, do not be surprised if, all of a sudden, the whole way you used to look at the world starts to shift. When Jesus becomes the center of your life, all the old ways of living start to be torn like old clothing and burst like old wineskins with new wine in them. As your priorities change because of Christ, you might find people not being very happy with you. No longer do your peers who used to have power over you at school have that power, for your ultimate authority is Christ, and they might even get mad at you for it. But Christ is already the center of the universe, and he has already come and died for you, and he has also already come and lived for you, that you might have life. Know and trust that, if you are deeply in Christ, and everything you do is in line with who Christ is, no one else can have ultimate control over you. Jesus Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath, and he can save you from the false powers of this world. Take courage, for God felt you were worth dying for. Let us pray.

AMEN

Luke 10:25-37

08/21/11 Luke 10:25-37 Grace UMC

It seems that we are in something of a season where we are looking some of the parables of Jesus. The parables are interesting because we often speak of them as if they are more or less straightforward stories that speak to the common people in such a way that the mysteries of the kingdom are laid bare for all to see. We tend to look at the parables as if anyone who took a moment to look at them would understand exactly what they say. And yet, it is amazing because we actually find, more often than not, that some of the parables get interpreted in one particular way so often that it blinds us to what is actually there.

One of the classic examples of this is the parable of the Good Samaritan. I know that I have heard my fair share of sermons on this parable and you probably have, too. How does a classic sermon on the Good Samaritan go? We look at what it means to be a neighbor. There is a man, beaten and bloodied on the side of the road, attacked by bandits, who is hurting and may not even be able to survive without help. First, a priest, a holy man, one whose very job it is to take the concerns of the people before God, walks by. However, he does not help the man in need. In fact, he purposely crosses the road to the other side so that he doesn't even need to walk near the man. Perhaps he planned to help in his own way; perhaps he was going to go before God and pray for that man, perhaps he was going to speak to the authorities responsible for this dangerous road and try to stop this kind of thing from happening in the future. Perhaps the priest can sooth his conscience by telling himself that the problem is too big for him and he will do what he can by petitioning the secular leaders.

The next person who comes by is a Levite. Now the Levites were a whole tribe of Israel who were set aside to serve in the Temple. Every priest came from the tribe of Levi, so this is a guy who is not as high and lofty as the priest who walked by a moment ago, but he was still one of the people associated more fully with the work of God. So, if the first one who walked by was like a modern pastor walking by, the second one was like a church employee or a major church volunteer. These are people that culture teaches us to expect to help, even when nobody else does. When they come and pass by, what hope can we have?

The final person we read about is a Samaritan. We emphasize that Jewish people hated the Samaritans, that they were half-breeds, according to the "pure" Israelites. They did not worship in temple, but on a mountain in the North. They had different opinions on a number of issues. The Israelites did not just think that the Samaritans had problems, but that they hated God and were hated by God. If there was anyone who we would expect would leave this hurt man on the side of the road, it is the Samaritan. After all, the Israelites had systematically excluded the Samaritans from the people of God, had treated them poorly, and had given them every reason to ignore them, if not be hostile to them.

And yet, he stops and helps. But he does not just come by and offer a prayer, which in itself would have been better than what the priest and Levite did. He comes and takes him and applies first aid to his wounds. Then, he chooses to walk and intentionally inconvenience himself, so he can put the hurt man on his animal. This means that he will likely be late to wherever he was going. Then, he takes him to an inn and tells the innkeeper to take care of the man at any cost and he will be responsible for it. This Samaritan, in the blink of an eye, went from being on his own way, minding his own business, to being late, inconvenienced, and financially obligated for the recovery of another person, and had absolutely no idea how much his bill would run. This is a man who made tremendous sacrifices for someone who probably hated him.

We nearly always conclude by looking at the last exchange between Jesus and the lawyer. "Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" The lawyer responds, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." I want to share with you the words of Karl Barth, without a doubt one of the most important theologians in the last several hundred years. He says, "We might expect...that Jesus would have said to the teacher of the Law: This Samaritan did not ask questions like you. He found his neighbor in the man that had fallen among thieves. He treated him accordingly. Go and do thou likewise."

That is precisely what we would expect, and it is precisely what we have heard over and over again. We heard it in Sunday School when we talked about this story, we have been told that this is the main point of the story whenever we hear sermons about it. But when Barth says that we might expect this would be the lesson, he means that, in his judgment, as true as it might be, it isn't actually what the parable is about. When I first read that, I was taken aback. What else could it mean? What else could Jesus possibly be telling us than to go and be like the Good Samaritan. Isn't that the point, to help one another, to be a blessing to those who need it?

Amazingly, this is not what Jesus has set out to tell, and I must admit that I never realized this until I was basically clubbed over the head with this one day. When we read the story of the Good Samaritan this way, we are almost always putting ourselves into the story in one way or another. We are asked who we are, are we the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan? Of course, we find ourselves being all too much like the priest and Levite and not enough like the Samaritan. But that isn't where Jesus puts us in the story. Somehow, we lose our way between the beginning of the story and its end.

Immediately before Jesus starts telling the story, we read, "But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor.'" At the very end, Jesus asks the question, "Which of these three men, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" Do you see what Jesus has done? The question still needs to be asked, who are we in the story, but the answer is not what we expected. We are the man who fell into the hands of the robbers, the one who is broken and bleeding on the side of the road. We are not the ones who are helping those who are in need, but the ones who are in need themselves.

When we look at this story from this point of view, the whole thing changes on us. The question is no longer "who is in need that you can you help," but, "from whom are you willing to receive help?" And, as it turns out, this is a much harder question to answer. The fact of the matter is that we see ourselves as very self-sufficient people. We don't want to ask the question that Jesus asks, because it presupposes a picture of ourselves that we simply don't want to entertain. We want to focus on who it is that we can help because we look at ourselves and we see that we, by and large, have the resources, financial and otherwise, to take care of ourselves. We are so self-sufficient that it is hard for us to even really understand what it is like to be in need. We have had skills and a strong work ethic drilled into us from an early age and we have worked hard all our lives.

To look at ourselves and ask, "From whom are you willing to receive help," is to offend deeply. We want to respond and say, "What makes you think that I need to receive help at all? Have I not worked hard to be where I am, do I not deserve what I have?" We are much more comfortable with the call to help others, because that call allows us to continue to see ourselves as those with power, those in control, those of means who can stoop down and bless those who are in need.

In light of this, let us look again more closely at the context. We read that the reason the lawyer asked his question at all was because he wanted to justify himself. He wanted to be reassured that he was already being faithful. He expected to show Jesus up, to be better than Jesus actually expected him to be, to be the one who truly loved God and loved his neighbor. However, he had too much pride for this. He was starting from a position of self-assurance. He already presupposed that he loved God and loved his neighbor, and we have no reason to believe that he was an obvious hypocrite. He was probably loved and respected by all, as one who really did love God and love his neighbors. However, Jesus wants him to rethink his whole conception of what it means to be a neighbor.

He asks, "And who is my neighbor." To ask this means already that we want the category of "neighbor" to be restricted to one degree or another. Surely, it cannot mean everyone. If everyone is our neighbor, it means not only that we are called to show love and kindness to them, even if we do not like them, but it means also that we must submit ourselves to receive love and kindness from them as well, even if we do not like them. The real question, according to Jesus in the telling of this story, is not "Who you can help, who you can bless with your abundance," but "From whom you are willing to be blessed, whether you are even willing to admit that you need blessing from beyond yourself?"

This is a much harder question. For a wealthy and secure Israelite to come alongside of the Samaritan he dislikes is still possible, it is still something that he can make himself do. However, it is a completely different situation to be the one in need and have the Samaritan be the one doing the assisting. After all, this Israelite would have no problem believing that the Samaritan needed his help, perhaps even help that only he could provide, but how humiliating would it be for this Israelite to have to admit that he is so far from being able to help someone else, that he himself is in need and, in particular, in need of the help of a Samaritan, one he hates, one he believes hates God and is hated by God. How far has he fallen, that he needs to be helped by a Samaritan?

Are we willing to be blessed by those we think don't have the money to do it? Are we willing to receive help from those we don't think are able to help us, who are, perhaps, not as equipped to help us as we think we are to help ourselves? Are we willing to be blessed by those we consider to be beneath us. Do we even dare to admit that there are those we actually consider to be beneath us, in our hearts if never in our words? Why do we, as human beings, feel that help can come from some people, but it can't from others? I am more and more convinced that it reveals that we have something of a stunted understanding of grace.

If someone with whom you got along pretty well were to come up to you and say, "I just wanted you to know that I forgive you," how might you react? Well, we might want to say that we are grateful, because it is always good to be reconciled. But, judging by my own tendencies and those I have seen in others over the years, I imagine the response might be somewhat different. If someone with whom I did not think I had a problem came up and declared their forgiveness, I am quite likely to get somewhat upset. After all, that word of forgiveness carries with it, at the very same time, a word of condemnation. They are saying, "You have done something that needs forgiveness, and I am forgiving you." The word of grace is simultaneously a word of judgment. I will probably question the person for assuming that I even needed to be forgiven; after all, in my own mind, I'd done nothing wrong.

When the man who was attacked by robbers was helped by the Samaritan, he had to come face-to-face with the fact that he needed help, because he was not, in fact, self-sufficient. He did not get to choose who helped him; those he would have preferred just crossed the road and ignored him. To push this image as far as I think we need to, we need to remember that, if the man was stubborn and said, "No! Absolutely not! I will not submit to be helped by a Samaritan!" what would have happened? He would have died.

Jesus is saying that, in order for us to really love our neighbors, we have to be willing to be saved by them. We have to be willing to let them serve us, we have to admit that we have needs that we are unable to fill and that we welcome anyone who can help us to do so. If we say in our hearts that we can do it ourselves, that we have all we need and that we would rather do without than to rely on another, we do not yet love our neighbor as we have been called to love.

Let us think about this in the light of the good news of Jesus Christ. Jesus, while on the cross, actively dying because one of his own disciples betrayed him, said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." The fact of the matter is that the people who nailed him up thought of themselves as knowing exactly what they were doing. They didn't need his pity, his forgiveness. As far as they were concerned, he was a criminal, a disturber of the peace. It never crossed their minds that they were the broken and bleeding man and that Jesus, this despised person, was their help. They were doing quite well enough on their own, thank you very much; they didn't need a Good Samaritan.

Jesus once said to Pharisees who wanted to put him in a bad light, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." Jesus came to save sinners. If you are a sinner, take heart, for God came to earth for you, he suffered for you, he died for you, he was raised for you, he ascended back to heaven for you, and he prays for you. All that God, in his mercy, has done, has been for you. If you are not a sinner, then Jesus did not come to save you. If you are not a sinner, or, at least, if you do not consider yourself a sinner, you won't even listen to Jesus, for Jesus speaks only to sinners, to those who know all too well that they need help.

Brothers and sisters, we find ourselves broken by the side of the road in our sin. Even though our life depends on it, we can do nothing to free ourselves. Will we allow ourselves to be helped by this man, this man who was crucified as a criminal, who challenges the powers of this world, who completely changes the way we think and the way we live? Will we receive help by those he sends, even if they are poor, even if they are weak, even if they are, in our opinion, of no account? By God's grace, let us do so. Let us be willing to hear that word of judgment, for it is lodged deep in the word of grace. Let us pray.

AMEN

The Problem of Evil

08/17/11 The Problem of Evil GUMC Youth

There has been a question that has bothered people for literally hundreds of years. It is this, "If God is all-good and if God is all-powerful, why is there evil in the world?" The basic issue is that, if God is really all-good and all-powerful, there would not be any evil in the world, because such a god would not allow evil to exist. Basically, God would prevent it. This question is so famous that it has a name. It is called "The Problem of Evil." This is a question that comes into the spotlight every so often in the wake of some significant tragedy. For example, when the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11th, 2001, while many people found refuge in the midst of disaster in God, many others raised doubts. They said things along the lines, "Why run to God in the midst of tragedy? After all, where was God when this happened? If God is really all-good and all-powerful, could he have not stopped it from happening? Clearly, if God couldn't have protected those people from this, why should we follow him?"

The question was raised again recently in an interview with Rob Bell, a prominent pastor from Michigan, which took place right after Japan was hit by the earthquake and tsunami earlier this year. The question was asked, "Is God not powerful enough to help the Japanese or is he powerful enough to do so, but just doesn't care?" Though it is a bit of a weaker way of putting it, we could say that the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people" is basically the same as the problem of evil.

I imagine that most of you have either asked this question, or something like it, yourselves, or you have heard other people ask it. Even if this is a totally new idea to you, the fact of the matter is that it is such a favorite topic of atheists, you will hear it at some point in your life. Nearly every time anything bad happens on the national or international level, someone posts something online about how this disaster, and those like it, destroy faith in God and should demonstrate to everyone with half a brain that believing in God is a waste of time at best, and dangerous at worst. I want to spend tonight thinking about this problem, some of the main ways it gets dealt with, and how I think that we should approach it from a completely different angle.

You see, when someone asks the question, "If God is all-good and if God is all-powerful, why is there evil in the world?" there are really only three ways to answer it. We either have to say that God is not all-good, that God is not all-powerful, or that evil does not exist, or that it is not really that big a deal. Let's take those one by one to see where they lead us.

First, what if we respond and say that the reason that evil exists in the world is because God is not all-good. To be honest, for many religions throughout history, this would be the way they deal with the problem of evil. Why is there evil? Because god, or more likely, the gods, are simply not all that good. If you ever read any Greek mythology, for example, you will find that the gods aren't all that good. They are jealous, they are angry, they are vindictive, and they are unbelievably selfish. A common criticism of Greek culture made by the early Christians looked something like this. "You say that children should look to the gods to see how they should behave, but then, when they go and do what the gods do, you punish them for it. How can you worship such terrible gods?" We need to remember that the Judeo-Christian tradition is just about the only one that insists that God is absolutely good, so good that he is the definition of all that is good.

The early Christians made a very important point. If the gods are so far from being all-good that they are not even any better than human beings are, why should we follow them? If God is not all-good, it seems that we would be better off finding a great human teacher that we could follow instead of listening to God. Clearly, as Christians, we must not, we cannot give up the fact that God is indeed all-good.

So, we turn to the next possible solution of the problem of evil. What if we were to say that the reason there is evil in the world is not because God is not all-good, but because he is not all-powerful? If we are dealing with a God who is not all-powerful, does not the existence of evil makes perfect sense? After all, God is just doing the best that God can; he is merely suffering along, just like you and I are. Perhaps the best example of thinking along these lines is the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, who developed something called Process Philosophy, which has had a tremendous influence over certain portions of the church. In this philosophy, God gives everything that exists new possibilities that they either fulfill or don't fulfill and, if we don't fulfill them then we are not what we are meant to be, but that is not all. If we do not fulfill them, according to this view, God cannot be what God is meant to be. It is interesting to notice that Whitehead developed this view after he lost his son in World War I.

But, as Christians, does this really solve the problem of evil? Is the claim that God is simply not able to deal with evil comforting, or even remotely commensurate with what we read in the Bible? It really isn't. After all, one of the main points in the Bible is that God is radically against evil, that, in Jesus Christ, God has waged and even already won the war against evil. It is precisely because the Bible and the whole Christian tradition state so clearly that God is indeed powerful enough to overcome evil that the problem of evil got started in the first place. If God cannot defeat evil, then what good is it to follow him? If God cannot save us from our sins and deliver us from the clutches of evil, we are just wasting our time. Clearly we cannot, as Christians, take this route.

But what about the third option to deal with the problem of evil? What if we ask the question as to whether evil really exists, or whether it isn't as bad as we might think it is? To me, to deny the existence of evil is kind of silly. After all, we can look around us, even in our own little corner in Iowa, and see that things are not as they ought to be, that evil has permeated every aspect of life. I think it is very hard to say that there is no evil, or that evil is not a big deal, if we take any time at all and look around the world and see all the pain and suffering at the hands of human cruelty that exists.

However, since lots of people have taken this approach, let's look at it. One response might be, "Since God is all-good and he loves us, God had to give us free will (since it is not good and loving to make people into nothing more than machines or puppets). If God gives us free will, though, evil becomes a distinct possibility. If God were to prevent evil at the expense of removing our free will, there might be less suffering, but we would cease to be real human beings." If we take this view, evil is no longer God's fault, but ours. At first, that might not seem so bad, and maybe there is a nugget of truth in it, since human beings are often very much to blame for the evil in the world. However, if our free will is made so central that God can no longer be seen as interacting with our world of space and time, can we still be Christians? If we really take this view seriously, how can we avoid the conclusion that, since God cannot prevent our evil without destroying our free will, God cannot bring about the triumph of good over evil without destroying our free will, so we are on our own? Again, in light of the fact that the Bible teaches us clearly that God does indeed engage with our world, we can't really affirm this view, either.

Another variation, with a long and glorious tradition is to say that, because God is all-powerful, nothing ever happens by accident, but happens directly because God expressly willed it to happen. That means that if I were to throw something at you and break your nose, you could say that I broke your nose, but in reality, you would have to say that God broke your nose, using me to do it. Because God is all-good, we would have to say that, if we interpret something to be evil, it is only because we do not understand that what has happened has happened only because God has willed it. If God wills it, it must be good. Even John Wesley, at a moment that is far from his best, wrote to his sister, who had just lost her infant child, that God had brought it about to save her the troubles of motherhood. A particularly famous pastor from Minnesota was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years ago and said that his cancer came directly from the hand of God and that it was ultimately the pure and good gift of God and that everyone who has cancer should realize that it is simply the gift of God, regardless of what might seem bad about it. According to this view, there really is no such thing as evil, since God is good and God causes everything that happens. If you think there is evil, the problem isn't with God, but with you.

Another way to downplay the seriousness of evil is to claim that we live in the Best of All Possible Worlds. This view, which is closely associated with the philosopher Leibniz, is that bad things happen, but they do not happen for no reason. They only happen in order that better things might happen. Everything that happens is for the greater good. This means either that, when tragedy strikes you, it is only so that something even better can happen to you, or so that something better can happen to other people. Nothing is really totally bad because everything is, as the philosophy says, "for the best."

But do you see what this means? It means that evil has to happen, that it is built into the perfect plan of God. There is something about evil that makes it absolutely necessary for good to take place. It means that whatever we might want to say about God being all-powerful, we don't really mean that he is all-powerful, since he is not powerful enough to bring good about without having to inflict evil on people. A French writer named Voltaire wrote a work called Candide, which shows how this view is not helpful and, actually, quite absurd. Later, the Russian author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, wrote a long book, The Brothers Karamazov, part of which includes a discussion of the evil that happens to children and poses the question, "Is it worth all this evil to call God good?" The answer given in the work, which I agree with, is that it is not. Not only because I find it deeply offensive, but because I do not think it bears even the slightest relation to what we learn in the Bible.

The closest that the Bible ever gets to dealing directly with the Problem of Evil is the book of Job, where Job, the righteous and wealthy man, is attacked by Satan, who wants to show that hardships will drive anyone to curse God. Throughout the book, Job loses everything and his friends come and say, "You must have sinned. Nobody suffers like this unless there is a good reason for it." However, in the conclusion, the question is never really answered. God never gives a reason for human suffering. If this sounds somewhat weak, let us consider a passage from the Gospel of Luke.

"Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And Jesus said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Jesus does not give a reason for why some people suffer and others do not. According to the Bible, evil is real, incredibly deadly real, but it is also absolutely irrational. There is no reason for it, and if we try to find a good reason that evil exists, we will always lose our way and distort the whole issue.

I mentioned at the beginning that there were basically only three ways to answer the question, "If God is all-good and God is all-powerful, why is there evil in the world;" to say that God is not all-good, to say that God is not all-powerful, or to say that there is no evil, or that evil is not that big a deal. But every time we looked at one of those ways of answering, we found that we couldn't really agree with any of them as Christians. What are we do about this? If none of the possible solutions to a problem work, what options do we have?

The fact of the matter is that, in this as in other cases, we are dealing with a question that is a false question, that is, the problem of evil, as it is usually stated, is a question that does not have an answer. The reason it does not have an answer is not because it is not an important question, nor because we haven't thought hard enough about it, but because it is an absolutely wrong question. When we ask it, it certainly seems like we know what we are talking about, but it turns out that this is not the case. When we ask the question, we presuppose that we know what the goodness of God is, what the power of God is, and how serious evil is. In point of fact, if we can ask that question, it shows that we don't know any one of the three! In the end, it is only when we look to Jesus that we realize that our usual way of thinking is distorting and unhelpful and that we get a clue to a real solution.

How do we often think about the goodness of God? We tend to think of God's goodness as goodness at a distance. We want God's goodness to be like the love of a distant relative, who cares for us and sends us money and does favors for us from a distance, but doesn't actually come into our lives and make a difference. We want God's goodness to be a kind of impersonal benevolence. We want to define God's love in terms of the things that we don't like, that God isn't certain ways and that he prevents certain unpleasant things.

But when we look at what God's goodness actually looks like, when we see God actually come among us and show his goodness to us in a remarkably personal and concrete way, what do we see? We don't see a God who was content to simply send a messenger to tell us what to do, to give us a list of things to do and a list of things to avoid, but a God who comes among us himself. We see a God who encounters the brokenness of the world himself, who puts his own life on the line to join with us in our trouble. We realize that God's goodness is not a goodness from far away, but a goodness that comes close, that meets us where we are.

How do we often think about the power of God? History teaches us that, when we think about the almightiness of God, we tend to think about human power and multiply it by a million, or something like that. When we think about the power of God in relation to the problem of evil, we tend to think of a God who just has to snap his fingers and the problem of evil vanishes. We want the power of God to be a power of sheer, brute force, that asserts dominance and forces everything else to fall into obedience. But when we see God enter into our world, we see God's power is the power of suffering love, a power that allows evil to have its way with it and overcomes it anyway. The power of God is a power that does not prevent the crucifixion, but allows it to take place and triumphs in the resurrection.

This is closely related to our mistake in understanding evil. Even when we want to say that evil is serious, once we raise the question of the problem of evil, we have trivialized it. When we ask that question, we show that we don't think that evil is that big a problem, since God could just speak a word and do away with it. However, when we look at Jesus, we see that evil is quite a bit more serious than we ever imagined. Think about this, if evil is such a serious problem that nothing short of the second Person of the Triune God becoming a human, being hated, mocked and mistreated, and finally crucified can wrench humanity out of the clutches of evil, than evil is a huge problem, a problem that costs God everything to deal with. God does indeed triumph over evil, but we must not think that it is a small thing that God has done. It is, in fact, something so great that we can only dimly understand it.

So you see, evil really is a problem, but not in the way we tend to talk about it. In reality, it is the greatest problem that humanity has ever had. It is not an abstract question that we can answer in a classroom or by reading a book. It is an incredibly practical problem, because our whole lives are infected with sin, and it needs a practical answer. That practical answer from God is not a theoretical argument but the simple fact that God himself has dealt with evil, at tremendous cost to himself. Christ himself has died for us that we might live, so that we might not be ruled by evil, but that we might stand strong in truth and righteousness. So, as you go to face school, which is undoubtedly a place where you encounter evil on a daily basis, remember that, though evil is a problem, God has not abandoned you to it, but has endured it and overcome it, has taken its greatest attacks and has even allowed himself to be crucified by it, but is truly the victorious one as the one who is resurrected from the dead. Take courage. Let us pray.

AMEN

Mark 2:13-17

08/10/11 Mark 2:13-17 GUMC Youth

In this next passage in the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus does something that most of us would not expect him to do. He calls a tax collector named Levi and then eats dinner with him. In doing this, Jesus caused something of a scandal and opened himself up for attack.

In order to understand how serious it is that Jesus called Levi the tax collector, you need to understand just who tax collectors were at the time and why most people hated them. As you probably have picked up by now, there are a whole bunch of people in America who are not at all excited about paying taxes. You have one side of the argument that emphasizes that we pay taxes so we can get a whole bunch of services; after all, our police and fire departments are paid through our taxes, there are many good things that are paid for by our taxes. There are also services for people who simply don't have any money to speak of that we help to pay for, without which, many people would not be able to survive. On the other hand, there is a question as to whether we need all the services that we have, or, just as often, whether we can't offer the same services to the people more efficiently, with less cost to everyone else. Our situation today is complicated by the fact that our country is in an absolutely enormous amount of debt and something has to be done, both sides can agree, at least, on that. Arguing about taxes is about as American as apple pie. There will always be those who want taxes to go up (usually, though, they are interested in the taxes of other people going up) and there will always be people who want taxes to go down.

Now, in first century Israel, it was a little different. Israel was governed by Rome, so the taxes, in general, weren't going to help the people have better public services, or even to their own people, but were going to Rome to help make it a more beautiful and glorious city. When you are telling the Jewish people that they have to pay taxes in order for this great, pagan, superpower to be rich, it is hard to get them to play along. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that Rome was seriously the most powerful nation ever, Israel would have rebelled in a heartbeat. In fact, that had done that once upon the time, when the Greeks were in charge, but it didn't last very long.

You see, when America was being taxed by England, they made public demonstrations, like the Boston Tea Party. It was fairly easy to do that when the people you were protesting against were over a thousand miles away and there was nothing but water between you. It would take months before they would even know what you'd done and months more before they could respond. This was not the case in Israel. You paid your taxes, or you were in serious trouble.

So you can see why the Israelites would hate to pay their taxes in general, but it is actually much worse than that. In order to collect the taxes, Rome employed a bunch of native Israelites to collect the taxes for them. Already, this is a reason to hate the tax collectors. After all, now you have your neighbors who are working in close company with the Roman government. Not only that, the tax collectors weren't exactly known for being particularly honest. It was common practice for tax collectors to collect more than they were told to and just pocket the extra. So, now you not only have your neighbors working for the people you hate, they are ripping you off on top of it. This is the kind of person that Jesus calls in our passage. Jesus had already called a bunch of fishermen, who were poor and something of outcasts from society; now Jesus has called someone even further outside the people that most folks want to interact with. Jesus accepts the unacceptable.

As a side note, it is interesting to notice that, when we read lists of Jesus' disciples, there is always included a man named Simon "The Cananean" or "The Zealot." People who had this title were staunch nationalists, who hate the Romans more than just about anyone else around. I bring this up because Jesus calls both the tax collector and the zealot to follow him. Both of the radical extremes have to set down the issues that divide them and unite in Christ. The reality they encounter in Christ is far more important than their political differences and forces them to approach their whole lives from a different point of view. Jesus is calling you, and he is calling those who you hate. Jesus calls everyone, whether we like it or not. You will meet many people that you might not be able to imagine why God has called them, but he calls them anyway. If God accepts them, we have to deal with our own prejudices.

Let's turn our attention to the controversy that arises when Jesus goes to eat dinner with Levi and his tax collector friends. But before we can understand that, we have to know something about ancient Jewish practice for eating together. According to custom, Jewish people did not eat with non-Jews. To do so was said to make them unclean. The same was true if they ate with people who were unclean. Now, aside from the fact that tax collectors, in the eyes of their fellow Israelites, had already set themselves up against them and against God, they were also close associates with the Romans, which means they, too, were unclean. To eat with tax collectors was to eat with sinners who hated God and God's people. If you ate with sinners, it meant to the people that you approved of what they did and you made other people think that you were just like them.

So these Pharisees see that Jesus is eating with Levi and other tax collectors and sinners and they are deeply offended. Here was this Rabbi, this teacher, who, in spite of the fact that the Pharisees are some of Jesus' biggest enemies, is actually quite like them in a lot of ways, sitting down and eating with people who have set themselves up against the longstanding tradition of the people. By eating with tax collectors, it is almost as if Jesus was turning his back on his nation, turning his back on the tradition, and setting himself up against the religious leaders of the time. They ask, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

Listen to Jesus' response. He says, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." Jesus' point is really quite clear and correct. If you are a doctor and you decide that you are not going to help people who are sick because you don't like sick people or because you think that only people who are healthy are worth helping, you aren't much of a doctor. If you are a doctor, you have to go where the sick people are, or at least be available for the sick people to come to you. If you only associate with people who are well, you never heal anyone, so, whatever you are, you aren't really a doctor.

The point is clear. Jesus is here, not only to heal those who are physically sick, but to heal those who are sick in their soul, deep in who they are. Just like our bodies get sick, our souls and minds get sick, too, and they have just as serious of an impact on our lives as physical sickness, maybe even more. If we get caught up in destructive patterns of thought and life, it might hurt us even more than being terribly sick would. If Jesus is the one who can heal people like this, then where else should he be? If the tax collectors are the people who have the most disordered minds and lives, shouldn't Jesus go and help them? Doesn't that make sense? If they are sick, they need a doctor; if they are sinners, they need Jesus.

This is incredibly good news for you and me because, whether you realize it or not, we are all sinners. None of us lives like we should, none of us does what is right all the time, none of us lives a life that is totally pleasing to God. Even when we are at our best, we all get distracted by ourselves, by seeking what we want instead of what is best for others. We get caught up in our own problems instead of being more concerned with the needs of others. We are incredibly selfish people, even when we don't look like it. We are people who are sick and in need of a doctor, sinners in need of a savior. And Jesus came to save sinners and only to save sinners. If you are a sinner, rejoice because Christ came for you, Christ died for you, Christ was raised for you, Christ was ascended for you, and Christ prays for you, even now. When we read about Jesus, nothing is more comforting than realizing that we are sinners who need saving, for it is only when we realize that we need saving that we will embrace Jesus with our whole lives.

You see, there are two sides to Jesus' statement here. It is at the same time a word of comfort and grace as well as a word of critique and condemnation. The tax collectors and sinners, who were seen as those on the outside of society, heard that Jesus was there for them, to heal them, to make them whole, to give them a new hope and a new reason for living. The Pharisees, who were very moral people, who lived carefully by God's laws, who were understood by everyone around at the time to be on God's good side, who were on the inside, are revealed to be very arrogant indeed. After all, they look at the tax collectors and realize that they are sinners without even noticing that there is just as much capacity for evil in themselves as they see in others. Know this, if you can look down on another person, whether because of what they do or what they don't do, if you can think yourself better than someone else, it is not because you actually are; it is because you have been blinded, for one reason or another, to the fact that you, too, are not what you ought to be, and cannot be who you were made to be apart from the Spirit dwelling inside of you and making you like Christ. As Christians, we are never confirmed in ourselves, accepted for who we are, but because we have been made Christ's own brothers and sisters, we are accepted because of who Christ is.

The fact of the matter is that nowhere in the Bible will you find any acknowledgement of people being good and holy on their own. It will speak of people being righteous, but never in isolation from God. Jesus speaks of those who need a physician and those who do not, but we must not take that too literally when he speaks of people who don't need a physician, because Jesus does not mean it to be taken literally, which is clear when we look at all of what he says. Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, "If you had any idea how much you needed to be healed, you wouldn't be sitting here criticizing me, but you would be coming to be healed, yourselves."

But the real fact of the matter is that it is not easy to admit that we need help. We are told that we need to be self-sufficient, that we need to figure things out for ourselves. To admit that we need help is to admit that we are not able to solve our own problems, that we need guidance, that we need people who know us better than we know ourselves to sort through our issues. Are we prepared to admit that? Again, Jesus is the savior of none but sinners. Are you a sinner? Are you willing to admit before all that you have sinned and that you are, left to your own devices, completely unable to heal yourself? That is what you say when you become a Christian. You cannot say that you are a Christian, that you follow Christ, but that you don't have a problem with sin like all the other people who follow Christ. Christians ought to be the most humble people in the world, for Christians, by definition, are people who are weak, who are unable to make it on their own, who recognize that without God they are nothing. Christians know that, whatever it might have looked like before they started following Christ, they were lost, they were alienated from the truth.

Is that a claim you are willing to make tonight and forever? Are you willing to join with the rest of the sinners in this room, which is all of us, and follow the Jesus who laid down his life for us, who died that we might live? Cling to the truth of the Gospel, that when humanity had turned away from God, had decided that they were not going to listen to him, God entered into the weakness and brokenness of our world of space and time and became one of us, to live like us, to struggle like us in the difficulties of life, to grow up like us, to be betrayed by friends like we are, and to suffer the depths of the evil of the world. But remember this. Though Jesus was crucified, though he was killed, his death was not the final word; Jesus rose from the dead, not even death, our great enemy, could stop God.

If this is what God has done for us, on our behalf and in our place, know and trust that he cares for you, has done amazing things for you, and wants desperately for you to be transformed from an enemy of God to his friend, from a sinner to a saint, from one who tries to do it on your own to one who trusts in him for everything. We are sick sinners, but we have a great physician who has endured much so that we can be healed. So, let us learn to cling to Christ every day, that we might truly be renewed and restored. Let us pray.

AMEN

Mark 2:1-12

08/03/11 Mark 2:1-12 GUMC Youth

When we read the first chapter of Mark, we found that he told a whole bunch of stories very quickly. We got the sense that he wanted to cover a whole bunch of stuff really fast so he could set the stage and move on. As much as it pains me to make this connection, it is just a bit like the movie we watched at the lock-in, Napoleon Dynamite. That movie has two main stories in it, getting ready for the school dance and Pedro running for class president. The first twenty minutes or so, however, have almost nothing to do with either of those two stories. However, just because they don't fit into them doesn't mean that they do not contribute vitally to the movie. If we didn't have those first twenty minutes, we wouldn't understand the rest of the movie. We could hardly say that they are what the movie is really about, but we need them so we understand who Napoleon, Pedro, Deb, Kip, Uncle Rico, and everyone else are about. Mark's first chapter is hardly the real meat of the book, but, if we didn't have it, we wouldn't even know how to begin to understand the rest of the book.

Now that we move into chapter two, we start to see Jesus actually start to teach and to do miracles and to interact with both the crowds of people and the leaders of the time. We could say that this is the first real story of the book of Mark. And right out of the barrel, Jesus has ruffled feathers. Imagine this. Jesus is amazingly popular as a healer of the sick and a worker of miracles. So, the moment he comes back to Capernaum, he is crowded into the house where he is staying, which is probably Peter's mother-in-law's home. What is interesting is that, though everyone is coming to see him because he heals the sick, that is not what he does when the crowd comes to see him. Instead, we read that he is teaching them. Again, remember back to last week when we saw that Jesus intentionally left the people who needed healing because he needed to preach to others in the other towns. Jesus is able to heal people, and he is willing to do so, but what he cares most about is that we know God and what God is doing among us.

There are many people in our culture today who don't think that knowing and believing things are all that important; what really matters is doing things. How often do we hear that it doesn't matter what you believe, so long as you do this or that? It doesn't matter what religion you are, or if you are an atheist, so long as you love one another, or at least don't hurt one another. The only problem is that this imagines that there is a big separation between what we really believe and what we do. The fact of the matter is that there is no such separation. We do what we do because of what we believe, that is what we really and deeply believe, and not what we might think we believe. We are only good to one another because we believe that we ought to be or that it is best for everyone if we do so. However, once that conviction is shaken, if it is not rooted deep in the gospel, it is only a matter of time before we abandon that value. It is amazing to me that the people who affirm the loudest that you can be a moral person and an atheist at the same time have a basic ethical position that bears a remarkable resemblance to what the Judeo-Christian tradition has tended to affirm. What I am saying is that I will not be surprised if, as the culture becomes less and less shaped by the Christian message, our culture's standard of what it means to be moral will become lower and lower.

The point is that here we have Jesus teaching a bunch of people because knowing the truth, knowing God, is more important than being healed, though he is healing them, too. However, there are so many people, that a paralyzed man cannot get to Jesus, even to listen to him, much less to be healed. The fact that he can't walk to get himself to Jesus before the crowd showed up means that he has to stay on the outside. And the people of the time would certainly have been fine with leaving him on the outside. After all, he was not a contributing member of society, he probably did not come from a powerful family. Most of the people were so interested in seeing Jesus for themselves that they did not even think to help this man get in.

However, this paralyzed man had some friends who were willing to do some hard work to get their friend some help. They took him up to the top of the roof and, we read, they "removed the roof." Perhaps more graphically, the Greek says that they "unroofed the roof," and lowered the man down on a mat. Think about how the owner of the house would react! Do you have friends who would be willing to help you like this, not because they like to destroy other people's property but because they care so deeply for you that they would take the responsibility and financial cost of such a move upon themselves just so you could get help? Are you that kind of friend?

But after this man was dropped down in front of Jesus, what does Jesus say? We read, "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'" Again, because we live in a world that thinks that talk is cheap and it is actions that count, we kind of want to say to Jesus, "So what? He didn't come here to have his sins forgiven, he came to be healed. How can you assume that he has sins that need to be forgiven when you don't even know him?" The fact of the matter is that it would not have been at all uncommon for people at the time to assume that, if you were sick or crippled in some way or another, you must be a sinner and you are being punished for your sin. If Jesus had said, "Son, you never sinned, this paralysis is not your fault," nobody would have bought it. Everyone sins and everyone needs forgiveness. Not only that, saying that the paralysis is not the man's fault might take some guilt off his conscience, but it doesn't give him his body back.

But that isn't the problem that the people had with Jesus saying this. What do we read? "Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 'Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?'" Here is the problem as the scribes saw it. Jesus, though only a man in their eyes, was forgiving sin, which is something that only God can do. They are absolutely right when they say that only God can forgive sin. After all, regardless of whatever we might do, when we sin, even when we sin against other people, the biggest problem is not that we have hurt other people or ourselves, but that we have gone against how we were created, we have rejected God and our relationship with him.

Let me put this as strongly as I can. King David, one of the most important people in the Old Testament, had an adulterous affair with Bathsheba, who was the wife of one of his mightiest warriors. She became pregnant from the affair and so David had her husband killed in battle. Shortly after the child was born, that child died. In his grief, David wrote Psalm 51. Hear what he says in that psalm, "For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment." This is a man who is guilty of adultery and murder, who has endured tremendous personal suffering because of his sin, and he says that he has, at the end of the day, sinned against God and against God alone. Does that mean that he, Bathsheba, and her husband, were not sinned against? Of course not, but that David understood that his sin against God was so much greater than his sin toward other people, that it was as if he had only sinned against God.

The scribes were actually pretty good theologians. They understood what we sometimes forget in our twenty-first century American situation: Only God can forgive sins. For Jesus to say, on his own authority, that this man's sins were forgiven is for Jesus to claim the very authority of God. The question is, does Jesus actually have the very authority of God, or does he not?

I think that C. S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia and a convert to Christianity from atheism, puts it well in his book Mere Christianity. "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

But how did Jesus show that he has the authority to forgive the sins of this paralyzed man? What do we read? "At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, 'Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven," or to say, "Stand up and take your mat and walk?" But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins' - he said to the paralytic - 'I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go home.'"

This is a really interesting thing that Jesus says. After all, which is easier to say? Well, on the one hand, it is easier to say that someone's sins are forgiven because, after all, it is hard to prove it wrong. You can't tell whether someone is forgiven or not just by looking at them, so there is a sense in which it is easier to say that. However, it is actually harder to forgive sins than it is to heal someone. After all, a great doctor might be able to heal someone, but only God can forgive, so, unless we are God, which we aren't, it is actually harder to forgive sins than to heal someone.

But, just like today, people then knew that talk is cheap. Which is harder to prove? Well, it is harder to fool people into believing that a man is healed from his crippling paralysis when he hasn't been than it is to fool people that his sins are forgiven when they haven't been. So, in order to show that Jesus can actually forgive sins with his word, he commands the paralytic to stand up and go home. By doing so, Jesus shows that his words are backed up by reality in the case of the healing of the paralytic, so he is trustworthy also when he forgives sins. It is a classic argument called a forteriori. If someone asked you if you could lift a hundred pounds and you responded by lifting two hundred pounds, there is a sense that you didn't answer the question, but there should be no doubt left in anyone's minds that you can do what they asked. Jesus can heal the body with a word, he can heal the soul with no more effort.

The point that we need to take from all this is that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins, that Jesus is indeed God in human flesh, that God has actually come among us to meet with us, to reveal himself to us, and to transform our lives. Jesus heals so that we can know who he is, that we can trust that God loves us so much that he came to be among us. If we can think about the fact that God became a human being and not be absolutely floored by it, it means that we do not yet understand what it really means that God would do that. This is the God of the universe, who has all power, who can do whatever he wants, and does not have to do anything that he doesn't wan't to do, who came to be born as a weeping and wailing baby, the word of God unable to speak, and submitted himself to grow up just like you and I do, to become an adult, be hated and persecuted, all because he loved us, and finally killed by being nailed to a cross. We hear a lot about bullying and people being picked on today and it is serious business, but we need to always remember that nobody was hated so intensely or as much for no reason as Jesus, and, if he didn't want to, he didn't have to put up with it. But he chose, understand this, he chose to endure it all, just so he could be with us.

The Jesus who loves us is the Jesus who came and was attacked. The Jesus who came is one who was hated by the people who thought they had everything together. The only Jesus there is is one who suffered so that we might be healed. When people accused him of overstepping his bounds, of doing what only God can do, he dealt with their anger, because he was doing the right thing, he was being who he was, is, and evermore will be, God. When you look into the face of Jesus, you are looking into the very face of God. If you want to know what God is like, what God would say to you, look at Jesus. There you will find that God is not at all like what you expected, but is far greater. He has the power to forgive, and he does forgive. He forgave those who put him to death, he will forgive you. Let us pray.

AMEN