Monday, October 31, 2011

Difficult Passages in the Bible

Difficult Passages in the Bible

From time to time, I have given myself what have turned out to be difficult preaching assignments. What makes them difficult depends on the task at hand. For example, once I set out to preach at least once from every book of the Bible. This was difficult because it is next to impossible to attain any level of continuity from week to week if you do this (one could, I suppose, break it down into series where themes are developed throughout the Bible, but I did not do this; perhaps I was not even equipped to do this at the time). Usually, though, the difficulty takes the form of looking at a large chunk of scripture or an overarching theme, that forces me to preach on a text that is particularly difficult.

Now, what makes a text difficult? Sometimes, it is difficult because it tends to be interpreted in a particular way over and over again so that there is one particular interpretation that overshadows the text so strongly that it seems like it is the only way to read the text, when it is, in fact, distorting it. When preaching on such texts, one cannot simply say, "If you interpret this text this old way, you are an idiot." Not only is it not tactful or loving, it simply isn't true. Many brilliant and faithful interpreters have contributed to the misunderstanding of some texts, not because of any fault in themselves but because the influence of that particular interpretation is so very strong. When addressing some texts, the difficulty often comes in, not only because it requires a great shift of thinking of the preacher themselves, but also because one needs to take the central insights of the dominant interpretation seriously, even if a correction needs to be made.

When I think about preaching on difficult texts, however, it is a different kind of text that I am thinking about. I am thinking about texts that tell me things I don't know if I want to know about God, texts that, at least at first glance, make me want to skip over them (if I am preaching through a book, passage-by-passage) or interpret them in a way that basically says, "It doesn't really mean that." The problem with the first way out is that it shows that certain passages are helpful and worth studying while others are not. It means that there is something that is revealed about God (or humanity) in those passages that I do not want to take seriously for one reason or another. The problem with this is that, even if Christian preachers are afraid of taking those passages seriously, those who read the Bible in order to make Christians look foolish are not afraid of doing so. If we as Christian leaders are not willing to take those difficult passages seriously, we are terribly ill-prepared to dialogue with those who are and such a weakness will not have good results for us.

The problem with the second way out is that it presupposes that there is something wrong with the Bible that we need to correct. Now, as many of you know, I think that the position that has classically been known as "Biblical inerrancy," has some serious problems and that I do not hold it (though I am very interested in discussing the issues at stake with anyone who wants to), so my concern is not "If there is even the tiniest problem with any part of the text in any way, the authority of the Bible collapses to the ground." Rather, it is because my sustained encounter with difficult texts has shown me that they are often precisely the points where our nice, neat ways of understanding God are challenged by the reality of God itself and shown to be wanting.

What I have learned after forcing myself to take difficult texts as seriously as possible is that the sermons are, in my opinion, better, my understanding of God is drastically deepened, and I find more joy, knowing that God's revelation continually demonstrates to me that God is far greater, far richer, far more faithful and good than I could ever imagine. Those passages that once seemed so difficult, so troubling, so frightening to have to explain to a congregation or youth group have, more often than not, become some of my very favorite passages. At the very least, they quickly become crucial texts for the interpretation of the whole tapestry of Biblical passages, as their significance proves to be more comprehensive than we would be led to believe, considering how seldom people actually talk about them.

What I am saying is that, regardless of whether you are a Christian preacher, or even a Christian leader, take those hard texts seriously. Do not brush past them, do not interpret them in a way that makes their offensiveness vanish into thin air (though you may find they are not as offensive as you first thought, when you learn what they have to teach). Read them, ask the tough questions, work with others in trying to understand them. Your hard work will be richly rewarded.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Justification by Grace

10/23/11 Justification by Grace Grace UMC

One of the words that has played a dominant role in Christian faith, especially since the time of the Reformation is justification. Though people have used it many times, it is one of those words that some people may not have heard or, if they have, they may have written it off as one of those "church words," those words that pastors and other church leaders get all excited about but don't have any real connection with our daily lives. But justification is an absolutely central part of our Christian faith. Without it, the Reformers said, the whole of Christian faith would come crashing down. It is the article by which the church stands or falls.

But what exactly is it? What does it mean to be justified by grace? Ultimately, the Christian doctrine of justification is the answer to the question that shows up several times in the New Testament, "What must I do to be saved." The Greek word from which we get justification is δικαιοσυνη, which can be translated either "justice" or "righteousness." To be justified is to be made righteous, to be made just. Specifically, the issue is how we, who are unjust and unrighteous, can be delivered from the consequences of that injustice and unrighteousness.

Now, before we can go any farther, we need to deal with a situation that is growing much more common in our world today, though it isn't really anything new. What I am saying, and what the church has said since the very beginning, is two things: First, we find ourselves in a situation where we need saving and that we need to be saved by someone outside of ourselves, since we are not capable of fixing our own problems. The second thing is that this salvation is indeed possible. In fact, it is so possible that it has been offered to us in Jesus Christ without price.

The fact of the matter is that there are people out there who will challenge both of those points. The first group of people tend to be, but are not always, militant atheists. Their position is to deny that human beings, in general, are in need of being saved at all. There is actually a long tradition, that stems from the Enlightenment, that human beings are basically good and not tragically flawed and fallen that, while it is true that human beings seem to be the cause of our problems, it is equally true that human beings are able to solve those problems in one way or another themselves. The problem might be that people are just not educated well enough, that they have simply not been taught the difference between right and wrong, or, given that they have, they might not know how to go about living appropriately in light of it. The basic conviction is that human beings are good enough, or at least, they'd better be, since we are all we have. A recent rallying cry for many people today is, "I don't need God to make me happy," or "I don't need God to make me a good person." According to such a view, which is increasingly common and outspoken, human beings simply do not need to be saved, or that their salvation must come from themselves.

Actually, it would be unfair to imply that such people do not think that people need to be saved. In point of fact, they do, often, think that people need to be saved, they need to be saved from religion and faith itself. In light of the fact that many Christians' lives are not marked by hope, joy and peace in the midst of turmoil, but rather with guilt and shame over not being good enough, it does not take much for someone to conclude that our faith is precisely the problem. So far is this from the Christian point of view that we need God to save us, that it says we need to be saved from God.

Another group of people that would disagree with the Christian message of salvation are those who believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth, justice, goodness, meaning, or anything like that, or if there were, we would have no way of knowing it. We might have a deep longing and desire for truth and meaning, but we cannot obtain it. We might desperately need saving, but there is no such salvation possible. Clearly, this deviates from the Christian position that salvation is not only possible, but near at hand if we will only receive it.

When we say that we are justified by grace, or that we are saved by grace, what exactly do we mean? I think that we might misunderstand what this means unless we spend some time and reflect a bit about how we are not justified. First of all, we are not justified by what we do. This is a theme that has been emphasized by countless writers, especially since Martin Luther. It is something that, if we take a moment and read the New Testament, especially certain letters of Paul, like Romans and Galatians, we will find all over the place. We are told over and over again that, when we are accepted in the eyes of God, it is not because of anything we have done. We are not saved because we have been really good people, nor because we have done more things right than wrong, nor because we are better than certain people we know. You are not loved by God because you come to church every Sunday, or at all. You are not saved because you give a lot of money to charitable causes. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Another thing that does not save us is our intentions. It does not matter if you have intended to do all kinds of good things, but just never managed to get it done. They used to say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," but while that phrase emphasizes that our intentions are no good if they do not ultimately turn into actions, my point is that intending to good and doing everything you can toward that good end is not what saves us. It isn't by having pure intentions that makes us loved by God and we are not saved by them.

Thirdly, and this is something that cuts especially hard on people like me, we are not saved by our opinions or our convictions. This cuts against me because I am very interested in what people believe and why they believe it. Sometimes, I can get so caught up in it that it is almost as if I am more concerned with people thinking the right way and having the right opinions than I am about them being transformed by the power of the Gospel. A well-known Christian pastor wrote a book earlier this year and caught tremendous fire for doing so. There were many other Christian leaders who attacked this man, claiming that he had abandoned proper theology. The implication was that people simply could not be saved unless they had the right understanding of salvation. If someone was misled in the nature of salvation, it would make it impossible for them to be saved. The retort made by other leaders, with which I agree, was, "If we cannot be saved unless our theology is just right, who can be saved?" If God cannot save us in spite of our bad theology, we are all in a lot of trouble.

So you might be wondering, "If we aren't saved by what we do, or by what we intend to do, or by our opinions and convictions, how in the world can we be saved?" The answer is that we are saved by grace alone. In our text, we heard Paul declare that, independent of Christ, we are all, we must hear that all, people who lived according to the passions of our flesh and were, by nature, children of wrath like everyone else. After that serious declaration, what do we read? "But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ." The question we want to know the answer to is, "What is it about us, either as humanity as a whole, or as us as individuals, that makes God take us from being those who are dead in our sins to being alive in and with Christ?" And the answer is grace.

You may recall a few months ago, back in July, when I had the chance to preach a sermon where we asked the question, "What is Grace?" I suggested that grace is not, in fact, a what at all, but is a who. Grace is, in its fullest and most complete sense, Jesus Christ, and if Jesus Christ, then God. Grace is certainly unmerited favor, and it is true that we can do nothing to earn grace in any way, shape or form, but what it is, what it really is, is Jesus Christ.

We can see this at work on a smaller scale when we look at the advances of science. Once, most people believed that the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun went around the earth. Copernicus suggested that the earth actually rotates and travels around the sun. The reason why the Copernican view of the universe was ultimately accepted was not because people just liked it better, because they didn't, as it forced us to realize that we are not the center of the universe, nor because the old way of thinking couldn't deal with what they saw, but because, after long scrutiny, it was felt that it was simply closer to what really is the case. The ultimate judge was not just one person or another, but the nature of the universe.

Likewise, Einstein's theories of Relativity overturned Newtonian mechanics, not because people liked it better, in fact, when Einstein first published his ideas, only about a half dozen people in the world knew what he was talking about. It was because, as helpful as Newton's way of thinking had been, it was felt that Einstein had gotten down to a deeper understanding of reality. At the end of the day, it was not a debate that solved the issue, but the nature of reality. There were debates about the merits of various theories, but at the end of the day, the answer to the question, "Why Einstein and not Newton," is "Reality itself."
But if we aren't used to this way of thinking, this kind of answer isn't very satisfying, is it? We aren't, in our day and age, used to appealing to ultimate things. We want to talk about reasons, we want to know why things are the way they are and not something else. To simply say, "That's the way it is," seems like it is avoiding the issue, but sometimes, it is the only answer there is and there is no probing behind it.

I think that sometimes we want to know the reasons why is not so we can have conceptual clarity, that we can connect the dots, but so that we can have some control over things. We want to be able to say, "Our scientific findings are what they are for this reason, and they can't be anything else because of this reason," but we can't do it. We can imagine the world being different than it is, but things are the way they are and not some other way.

The same kind of thing is true with our understanding of salvation by grace. We want to say, "Alright, God takes us who were dead in our sins and makes us alive in Christ. Why exactly does he do this?" At the end of the day, the only answer we have is the ultimate fact that God is who he is. Whether we like it or not, this is the only answer we have. When Moses was speaking with God when he saw the burning bush, he says to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?'" God's response is, "I am who I am." I think part of the point is that God does not put himself in a box by saying that he is like certain things or unlike certain things, but simply that he is, that he exists, and that he is who he is and not anything else. God was not able to give an argument, that he could be understood in terms of something else. God does not say, "I am the good one, or the merciful one," though he is both good and merciful. God is who God is and there is no reason beyond the fact that he is.

This is the point. We are saved by grace, we are saved by God. Why are we saved? Because God loves us. Why does God love us? There is no reason beyond the fact that God is who God is. And God demonstrates who he is by coming among us in Jesus Christ. The only God who is is the God who meets us as Jesus Christ, who enters into our world of space and time, who shoulders our burdens, who heals us of our brokenness, who endures our scorn and hatred without vindictively retaliating, and offers us forgiveness long before we ever ask for it.

But the message of grace does not always seem like good news to us, does it? Do we not like to earn what we have? Do we not like to think that we have done something, anything to deserve what we receive? Are we prepared to receive the treasures of the gospel and of all the riches of God, what Paul calls "the immeasurable riches of" God's "grace in kindness" at absolutely no cost? We need to understand that when God offers salvation to us by grace alone, it does not mean that we could have earned it some other way, but he is offering us an easier way. Indeed, God is actually offering us a harder way, one that costs everything. You see, to say that we are saved by grace is to say that absolutely nothing short of God's almighty grace is sufficient to save us. We are people who are in need, unable to be who we ought to be, and in need of a savior. It is not as though God simply makes it so we do not have to give anything in return, it is that we have nothing to give. Our hands are empty and we simply cling to Christ, knowing that, if Christ does not save us, we are surely lost.

Just a few days before Jesus is crucified, he says this to the chief priests and the pharisees. "Have you never read in the scriptures: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes...' The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls." If we have erected a hope that is independent of Christ, no matter how sound and sturdy it seems, it is and will be crushed by Christ and shown to be insufficient. Nothing that we create with our hands, or with our minds, or even with our lives, is capable of doing what grace can do. When we give ourselves to Jesus and trust entirely in him, our plans for self-righteousness are shattered. And if there comes a time after we have given ourselves to Christ and we somehow get it into our heads that we need grace plus something else, the moment it comes in contact with the cornerstone that is Christ, it too is shattered.

Make no mistake. Salvation by grace alone is not a "get out of hell free" card, it is not taking the easy way out. To be saved by grace is the single most costly, humbling, thing you can do. It is to say, "I have nothing to offer, my hands are empty; Lord, save, or I perish." It is to come before God, not with a list of good things you've done, not with a list of evil things you have avoided, not even with a list of the things you need to be forgiven for, but simply with the empty hands of faith. The life of one who is saved by grace is not necessarily any better than that of one who is not, though it should improve as you grow in grace; nor is it necessarily any worse than one who is not. This is a good rule of thumb to see if you are living a life that is fully consistent with one that has been marked by grace. If, at the end of the day, it were to turn out that there is no God, that Jesus Christ was simply a man and nothing more, your life should make absolutely no sense. Our lives should be so devoted to God, and because of that, to one another, that the things we do should be completely incomprehensible to those who do not believe in God. With that in mind, let us go live in ways that are so devoted to God in every way, that to the unbelieving world, it is simply unbelievable. Let us pray.

AMEN

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Why Christians Believe

The following is a response to a friend who has strong ties with pagan thought. He is particularly critical of the tendency of Christians to say, "We need to believe that Jesus is God because the Bible says so. We need to believe the Bible because it is inspired. You need to believe the Bible is inspired because we say so." He specifically asked for Christians to respond. Here was my response.


For right or for wrong, whether you find this convincing or not, here is my response.

I have thought about this issue and ones closely related to it for quite a while and I often find myself in self-conscious disagreement with how many American Christians approach this issue. But first, some history is necessary.

The predominant movement that we know today as "Biblical Innerancy" (with which I disagree, for the record) arose in the second half of the nineteenth century (it existed, in a different form, before that time, but we only get the radically militant form of it that we know today at about that time). It was developed as a response to what was seen as the attack of the "higher criticisms" of the Bible, which argued that we must not treat the Bible as somehow fundamentally different than other books, that is to say, we must be willing to examine the books of the Bible in their historical and cultural contexts, just like we do to other books, and try to understand them at that level as well. For people like me, such a move has only helped me to understand the texts better and to fully take into account the fact that God has moved through human beings, not by bypassing their humanity, history, or culture, but working in and through it (though it does yield some degree of transformation as well).

However, others felt that to do so was to "desacralize" the text and undermine faith as a whole. In order to combat this, conservatives/fundamentalists (they were effectively the same in those days. Fundamentalism was a much less militant movement in its early days) ratcheted up their doctrine of inspiration so that history and context no longer played a role in interpretation. The Bible became nothing more than free-floating oracles, independent of context, that all bear equal weight in interpretation.

Once this move takes place, the Bible becomes the ultimate authority and Jesus becomes a doctrine taught about by the Bible, on the same level as any other thing taught in it. This is precisely where I disagree with such an interpretation. I do not think that a text as a text (that is, as words on a page) can be the ultimate authority, nor do I think it was ever meant to be such. I think that ultimately, the text needs to be a witness to God (to use an idea of Karl Barth) or spectacles through which we look to discern what lies behind them (to use an idea of John Calvin). What matters is not the text as such, but at what the text directs us to.

I don't know how much confidence you have in natural science, but that is precisely the same kind of attitude that has been developing in natural science over the last hundred years or so. There is a tremendous conservative bias in science, when ultimate paradigms are concerned. There was so much support for Newtonian mechanics, both among scientists and laypeople, that Einstein's theories of Relativity had almost no chance of being heard or taken seriously. It was only the fact that, after long and careful scrutiny, it seemed to be a closer and more adequate representation of what really is the case (given concrete expression by its prediction of the change in the perihelion of Mercury) that made it win the day. It was not merely political power (for it certainly did not have that), but fidelity to the truth. If you doubt the hesitancy of scientists to adjust to new ideas, you should read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn, and "Against Method" by Paul Feyerabend.

My point is that, at the end of the day, Christian convictions do not, ultimately, rest on what a particular text says. The ultimate conviction is that God stepped into our world of space and time (which is only incomprehensible if we begin by presupposing a dualistic outlook) as an actual human being. Not that God took human "form" and only "seemed" to be human, nor that it was something less than God who came to earth as Jesus of Nazareth, not that Jesus was just one more prophet, but that the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, was very God of very God. This is a conviction that is proclaimed as truth. I would argue that authentic conversion takes place only when a person becomes convinced of this truth, which I do not think happens by intellectual argument (or the authority of a text), but by a personal encounter with this Jesus who has been raised from the dead and lives even now. Because of this, authentic Christian experience is inherently Trinitarian.

Now, one might argue, "How do you know that someone had a genuine encounter with the risen Christ? How can we be certain that it was not simply an illusion, or wishful thinking, or anything of the kind?" If one means "certainty" as, "absolutely impossible to be doubted," like the kind of truth Descartes was searching for, then we cannot be. But, by that same token, the same can be said of anything, as Foundationalism is widely believed to have completely failed. Absolute certainty of that kind is an unattainable, and thus false, goal. There is always room for doubt.

However, if a person claims to have such an encounter and becomes liberated from destructive habits and lifestyles and their life is utterly transformed by it (which does happen), there is reason to believe that something has happened, call it what you will.

My ultimate answer is that real Christian conviction is reached by personal experience, not by argument from a text. The text of the Bible becomes the source and norm of Christian theology, as there is no other text that can not only present Jesus Christ in his time and place, but also present the whole historico-cultural context that led up to it, as well as the impact that he had on his first followers. That experience is always open to doubt, as every other claim to truth and knowledge is, but the Christian believes that their experience is not merely subjective, that it connects, in some way, to a deeper reality that is true, regardless of whether they believe it and acknowledge it or not. This reality might be only imperfectly understood and need to be revised in some way or another (as Newtonian physics had to be refined by Einsteinian thought), but the reality with which they have made contact is fundamentally reliable.

When done well, it is my conviction that Christian theology bears a much stronger resemblance to science than it does to many forms of philosophy.

To return, in closing, to your example of "Why Jesus and not Thor?" I must say that, on one level, there is no reason. After all, from the point of view of historical evidence, we can only learn about them from sources written by human beings, which might very well be wrong. However, my conviction is that Jesus is indeed alive and meets people, myself included (though that does not mean that I equate my theology with the truth, though I hope it bears some resemblance to the truth), whereas I do not believe the same is true for Thor. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. Is it possible that Thor has encountered me and I have just not noticed it? Certainly. I just do not believe it to be so. It can be doubted, but so can any other position, so dubitability as such is not condemning.

Those are just some thoughts. I do not imagine that you will be convinced, but you specifically asked for Christians to respond, so here is my response.

In Christ,
Travis Stevick

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Mark 4:1-9,13-20

10/19/11 Mark 4:1-9, 13-20 GUMC Youth

As we start our way through chapter four of Mark's gospel, we are confronted with something that actually shows up quite a few times in Mark and certainly more in Mark than any other book of the New Testament. He will take a story, split it in two, then stick something else in between the two parts. Sometimes, this is called Mark's "Sandwich" technique, because he sandwiches a point between two parts of a story. What we need to know about this is that, when Mark does this, it isn't just for good story-telling purposes, but he is making a very important point. Both the "bread" and the "meat" of the sandwich, to use those terms, are tied together and must be interpreted together.

The reason why I bring this up is because, if you noticed, we simply jumped over three verses out of the middle of our text for tonight. This is not because they are not important, nor is it because we are going to just pass by them, but because this is an example of this sandwich technique. We are going to deal with the story that Mark splits apart this week and with the stuff he stuck between the two parts the next time we get together in two weeks. Now, this might not sound fair, because we've got seventeen verses to look at this week and only three for next time, but it really isn't that odd. Those three verses are so interesting and raise so many problems for so many people, it might even take longer to unpack what they mean than it does for the rest of this passage.
We start out by seeing that Jesus is surrounded by a big crowd, there's that crowd again, so he has to get into a boat in order to teach them. Here we have the first of Jesus' famous parables in the Gospel of Mark, but what exactly are parables? You will hear most people talk about the parables as if they were told to make everything as clear as can be, that anyone can understand the parables if they just take a moment and think about them. The only problem is that it doesn't seem to line up with the facts. You see, the first part of our passage is spoken to the crowd of people who had come to listen, but the second part is spoken just to the disciples, just to those who were close to Jesus.

People will often talk about the parable of the sower as if it were as plain as day to understand, but we forget that, to my knowledge, nobody talks about the parable without talking about the interpretation that Jesus gives. We need to remember that the crowd of people who heard the parable didn't hear the interpretation. All they heard, after traveling a long way, was a story about a man who went out to plant, some of his work bore a lot of fruit, but some of it didn't. You know, if we are honest, we could say the most natural interpretation (if we ignore Jesus' interpretation) is that farming is not an exact science (especially at the time); you win some and you lose some. The important thing is that you keep trying. If you get so worried about wasting some seed, you'll never get the benefits of that seed that lands on good soil. That's an interesting interpretation, but that isn't what Jesus is getting at.

Let's take the different soils one at a time and see what is going on. The seeds fall on a path, "and the birds came and ate it up." When we look at this from the point of view of agriculture, the problem is that the seed is exposed before it has had a chance to grow. Once it grows, it can withstand great forces (as we can see here in Northwest Iowa. All kinds of crazy things can happen before the crops are wasted), but it is in the greatest danger at the beginning. But when Jesus interprets this in terms of human beings, he says, "When they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them." If you are a new Christian and you are exposed directly to all kinds of attacks, it is easy to cut and run, or to be so discouraged that you give up. Once you've grown in your faith, you can withstand a lot of those kinds of attacks, but it is dangerous at the beginning.

The next seeds fall onto rocky ground, "where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away." The problem here, looking at it from an agricultural point of view is that, at first glance, the plant is strong, just like a plant ought to be. However, the roots are weak, or nonexistent, which means that it does not take much to destroy the plant. Jesus makes it seem that the plant grew quickly because there was not much soil, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. When we understand his statement in light of his interpretation, it seems to be clear that his point is mainly the difference between the appearance, at first, of real growth, contrasted with the destruction of the plant, because it had no roots.

When Jesus talks about what this means for Christians, he says, "When they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away." There are many people who are intrigued by the gospel, who seem to respond really well, who make all kinds of great professions, but, when the going gets tough, it turns out they aren't really all that different than those around them. I can't tell you how many people I went to high school and college with who were like this. In fact, you could say that this was me at the beginning of high school, and even partly into college. As a bit of a side not, it is interesting that these are the only ones that Jesus says, "they immediately receive it with joy." Appearances can be very deceiving.

The third set of seeds fell onto ground that had a bunch of thorns in it, "and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain." With the plant, the thorns and other plants around suck up all the resources so that there is nothing left to nourish the plant. With only so much food and water to go around, some plants get it and the weak die out.

Interpreting this for his disciples, Jesus says, "These are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing." As far as Christians are concerned, we need to realize that we only have so much time and energy. We have to decide what to spend it on. If we spend all our time, energy, and money on things that do not help us grow in our faith, we won't have much left for that growth. Also, if we spend all our time trying to get more money, we won't grow. We have to prioritize our lives and take the limitations we have seriously, so we can make good choices. For example, we don't have cable and I don't miss it. I have so much to do, so many books I want to read, so much time I want to spend with my family, so much time at the Y trying to be more healthy that, if I sat down and got sucked into a few hours to TV a day, I wouldn't be able to do the things that really mattered.

The last seeds we hear about land in good soil, "and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." When the sower gets the seed where it can be received and nurtured, it grows and brings forth incredible abundance. The difference between the growth that comes from being in good soil and from being in the other kinds of soil is amazing. Biblical Scholar R. T. France makes this comparison. "The first never started, the second started but died, the third survived but could not produce grain. But in the end none is of any value to the farmer, since he is looking for grain, not mere survival."

Interpreting this for his disciples, Jesus says, "They hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundred-fold." It is interesting that, when Jesus describes what it means for someone to receive the word as good soil, he does so in terms of "bearing fruit." This is a term that has a few shades of meaning in the New Testament. Sometimes it means that your Christian faith does not just sit in your heart but makes a difference in your life. However, it often means, and does in this case, the spreading of the gospel and the making of disciples. Jesus talks about a person receiving the good news in faith then going out and making disciples, thirty, sixty or a hundred. To be a Christian is to bear fruit like this. You need to understand that I am not concerned with numbers. I'm not so excited about myself that I feel we need to have a huge number of people here in order to feel good about myself. The reason that we are called to reach out is twofold. First, it is because we have something to share. We have a God who loves us, who is our hope, even in the midst of trials, tribulations, and even death, and there are all too many people who have no hope in the world. Secondly, it is because it is the natural response to hearing in faith. Faith drives us to grow; not out of obligation, not because you're going to disappoint me or anyone else if you don't, but simply because it is what faithful people do, like a plant grows, not because it has to, but because it is simply what it does. This takes many forms (for example, I talk about science with atheists, but that is not isolated from the gospel), but it happens.

So the question that we each need to ask ourselves, and ask ourselves seriously, is, "What kind of soil am I?" Are you someone who has never really received the seed of the Word, that is, are you someone who has never given yourself to Jesus at all? Are you, instead, someone who gave yourself to Jesus once upon a time, but you quickly, whether it was days, weeks, months, or even years down the road, let your faith die, or at least slip into inactivity? Perhaps you are doing your best to grow but are so surrounded by things that drain your time and energy, or are so influenced by destructive relationships that you can't seem to grow, in spite of your best efforts. It is also possible that you have received the seed and are growing, bearing fruit in the way God has called you. I'll tell you what; only you and God know the answer to that question. In fact, it might even be the case that you are not prepared to admit to yourself what kind of soil you have been, so you may not even realize where you fit into this parable. But its something that you should think through, both tonight and in the days to come. Do your best to think back through your life and recent history and see if it looks more like one of these patterns than the others.

A while back, we talked about the fact that the communities in which we find ourselves play a role in who we are and how we even think. I emphasized the fact that we are not imprisoned in the way things are, or the way things have always been, but that, in order to break out of old ways of thinking, sometimes we need to leave behind old ways of living. This is one way in which the parable is an incomplete picture of our situation. You see, the path cannot somehow magically move to become good soil, nor can the rocks and thorns just magically disappear, but you and I do not need to stay the same as we used to be.
Jesus tells this parable and he isn't, first and foremost, talking about us, inasmuch as we are living rather a long time after him, though it still applies to us as we have seen. The fact of the matter is that, God has entered our world of space and time and has met all kinds of people, but not everyone likes him. There were some, like the disciples who, at a word from Jesus' mouth, dropped everything and followed him. There are others, like the scribes from Jerusalem, who seemed to have no place in their hearts and lives for him, and there were people all the way in between. The people who loved Jesus could make no sense of why some people hated him and the people who hated Jesus couldn't understand why anyone would love him.

According to Jesus' parable, the difference between the people is like the difference between different kinds of soils that have seed thrown onto them. The same seed is given to every kind of soil, but only some soils are prepared to do anything with them. The same message of salvation and a transformed life is offered to all, but only some people are prepared to do anything with that. When we look at things through this lens, we see that to expect everyone to jump for joy at the mention of the name of Jesus would be as unrealistic as to have all soil be of the same kind.

So, there is a sense in which there is not much we can do about what kind of soil we are, but we need to be careful not to push this to the extreme. You see, even though there were exceptions to this, there were whole groups who either hated Jesus or loved him. Jesus was consistently loved by the poor, the marginalized, the outcast, the unpopular, the dirty, the smelly, those who had no hope. He was consistently hated by the people who saw themselves as self-sufficient, as those who understood themselves as people who already understood God, by the powerful and the popular. In general, the Pharisees hated Jesus with a fiery passion, but in the Gospel of John, we read about a Pharisee named Nicodemus who accepted Jesus for who he was and was made fun of by the other Pharisees because of it. There was something about being a Pharisee that seemed to keep people from accepting Jesus and if one of them did so, there was tremendous peer pressure to keep them from acting on it.

The fact of the matter is that changing from one type of soil to another is hard work, but it is not impossible. And the reason that it is not impossible is because Jesus has done the impossible, on our behalf and in our place, has responded to God in perfect obedience, long before we ever thought to do so. Remember this. Nobody, not even Jesus' closest disciples, really really got it until after Jesus was not only raised from the dead, but until he poured out the Holy Spirit onto the disciples at Pentecost. Until that happened, nobody really understood what Jesus was doing and teaching. Before all the dust settled, we read that some of Jesus' greatest enemies became great heroes of faith and some of his closest friends turned out to be his enemies. Never give up on your friends or your family. And never give up on yourself. Even if you have never really given yourself to Jesus, or even if you have done it once, or many times, but it never seems to stick, never give up. Jesus died for you. He deeply wants you to know him, which means he also wants you to become the kind of person who can know him, and what is amazing is that there isn't a set, narrow pattern for what that looks like. Keep striving after Jesus, because he has striven after you. The seeds keep getting planted and are just waiting for a chance to be received and grow. Let us pray.

AMEN

Saturday, October 15, 2011

"Thou shalt not kill" and war

I was asked to try to help, as a pastor, someone understand how the command "Thou shalt not kill" can be reconciled with the fact that the Old Testament is full of bloody conflict. I have not included the original question. Out of respect for the asker, but I wanted to post my answer in case some find it helpful.



The question that springs from the tension between the command not to kill and the obvious evidence in the Old Testament that people did indeed kill is not a new one, but it can still be troubling. It is a question that ought to be taken seriously and understood in its proper context. With that in mind, here is my attempt at a response and explanation.

The first thing we must do is remember that the tension between a command not to kill and the manifest practice of killing going uncondemned is not an issue that only impacts the Judeo-Christian tradition. It cuts just as deeply against contemporary American policy. On the most basic level, our community declares that killing is not allowed, that it is incompatible with a healthy society and must be punished. In several states, killing can be punished by death. That instance alone can raise the question, "If the government condemns killing, why does it then turn around and kill its members?"

On another level, we must consider how America (and other Western nations) approach the issue of war. In spite of a condemnation of killing, America continues to wage wars in which thousands of people die. There is little question that America applies one standard to violence committed within the community and another standard to violence committed from one community upon another. One is deemed inappropriate and unacceptable while the other is permitted, and seems to never end. Indeed, war causes our government to take people, who are otherwise forbidden to kill, and puts them in a position where they are not only allowed to kill, but are commanded to do so under threat of punishment.

Further, our legal system differentiates between various degrees of killing, not only between "murder" and "manslaughter," but also between various degrees within those categories. Even within the blanket condemnation of killing, there is allowance made for differences between cases. After all, one who is implicated in the accidental death of a friend should not be treated the same as one who has carefully premeditated murder and does so in cold blood. Those are different situations and must be dealt with accordingly.

If the fact that God condemns killing but allows war (note that, to my knowledge, nowhere does the Old Testament simply turn a blind eye to murder) is irreconcilable, then it it is equally irreconcilable that America does so. We must either admit that there is a crucial difference between murder and the killing that takes place in war, or else we must conclude that all soldiers who take lives are murderers and it would be better to allow our nation to be attacked with no defense. Few people, in my experience, are willing to take that latter option, though some do.

We must also be careful to take the Israelites in their context in the Ancient Near East. It is true that the Israelites fought many wars, it is also true that they invaded the territory of other people and were ordered to kill them and take their land. However, it must be noted that, when compared to the practices of other tribes and nations in the Ancient Near East, the Israelites were downright humane. It is true that there was much bloodshed, but there was also a tremendous respect for human life that was not shared by other nations (The surrounding nations practiced child sacrifice, for example). It is very easy to judge ancient Israel by standards that we subscribe to in contemporary America, but we should be careful in doing so, not only because we only comparatively recently came to hold such standards, but because, as already noted, we do not always behave consistently with them.

The Ten Commandments were originally preserved in the Hebrew language. Unfortunately, I do not know Hebrew, so I cannot provide a detailed study of the word used in the Ten Commandments for "kill." However, for what it is worth, I do know Greek and, when the Israelites translated the Old Testament into Greek in the centuries before Christ, the word used in the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," is a word that means "murder" as distinct from killing more generally speaking. Many modern translations take this linguistic difference into account, translating the commandment, "Thou shalt not murder," which has a much different connotation than "Thou shalt not kill," as the former would allow for killing in battle and in self-defense, while the latter would seem to rule both of those out.

Ultimately, it seems to me that this issue is still contemporary. The only difference that I can see between the God of Israel condemning killing and yet allowing warfare and the American government doing so is that, when America wages war, it is merely a secular issue, merely political, whereas when ancient Israel (and, one could argue, modern Israel) wages war, it has a religious connotation to it. Actually, I do not think this separates the two examples all that much, not only because Israel's wars are only religious in the sense that Israel's self-understanding was that everything they did had religious implications, but also because America does not only sanction killing in self-defense, but engages in fighting around the world on the grounds that we perceive "evil" to be done and that we must fight for "good" (or "order" and "peace" if we wish to use non-moral terms).

I hope this sheds some light and is helpful for thinking through the Old Testament in particular, but faith in general. It is a difficult situation that does not seem to have a clear answer that everyone can agree on. It is my judgment that the real problem, that is more basic than the tension between a command not to kill and the waging of war, is the fact that we human beings continually put each other in positions that violence appears to be the best (if not the only) response. It is precisely this issue, that we are prone to violence, that Jesus came to address. When God became a human being, we killed him, but Christ was able to overcome even our violence. In spite of the brokenness of the world in which we live, God promises that this brokenness is not ultimate, that it will be done away with.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Mark 3:31-35

10/12/11 Mark 3:31-35 GUMC Youth

Tonight, we are going to look at Jesus in relation to his family and we are going to pay attention to how he reinterprets what it means to be family. What Jesus does here might be a bit surprising, it might even be shocking, depending on your own relationship to your own family, but like everything else that Jesus says, it certainly provokes some thought.

But before we get on to our text as it stands, we need to remember back to last week when Jesus got into a discussion with the scribes from Jerusalem. At the beginning of the passage, we read that Jesus was surrounded by a crowd, such a big crowd that he and his disciples were not able to sit down and eat a meal. There were so many people that there were people who couldn't get in to see Jesus. Some of the people who were kept out at that time were Jesus' family. We read, "When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, 'He has gone out of his mind.'"

Now, I suppose we have to ask the question, did Jesus' family also think that he had gone out of his mind or were they just concerned about his public image, and thus, their public image? Either way, we have to think that they might just be misunderstanding exactly who Jesus is and why he had come. We need to remember that we are dealing with the Son of God, who has always existed with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but had come among us human beings. This is the same God who told his people through the prophet Isaiah, "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

You see, we are talking about a God whose ways and thoughts are so much higher than our own, that we have a hard time really understanding it. To give an example from natural science, when Einstein developed his theory of relativity and he and other scientists were making breakthroughs in subatomic physics, the rest of the world looked on and said, "That's ridiculous. All of your findings are irrational." Now that we have taken more time to really understand it, we realize that the problem wasn't that physics was becoming irrational, but because we just didn't have the tools to understand it. Relativity and Quantum physics isn't irrational, it is so completely and fully rational that our weak rationality needs to be transformed and improved before we can make sense out of it. It is not something altogether different with Jesus here. We are talking about God in our midst. Let me give you another example.

I have here a topographical map. Do you know what all the lines on this map mean? They are lines that represent how high something is above sea level. Every line represents a certain distance. The closer together they are, the more the land slopes, and the further apart they are, the flatter the land is. That is easy enough to understand, but do you see what we have done? We have taken a hilly landscape and squashed it down from three dimensions to two. It is entirely possible to represent three dimensions in two in as much detail as you would like, and it is entirely possible to become so good at reading maps like this at a glance that you could know almost exactly what the hills or mountains would look like without actually going there. But the point is that if you've never seen a map like this, you need to learn how to interpret it. There is much more there than meets the eye, but we can't see it at first. We need to be guided out of our ordinary habits and learn to see what is really there.

Again, this is not altogether different than what we have in Jesus Christ. Here we have God meeting us in our world of space and time. Jesus is a completely faithful representation of God among us, but that doesn't mean that we can understand him at first glance. He is the fullness of God in human flesh just like we have. To imagine that we human beings, even Jesus' own family, can understand him without some serious restructuring of our thoughts and lives is to misunderstand that Jesus is really God. The point is that, even though it takes some hard work and even though we have to be transformed in our knowing of God in Christ, we really can do it. God has actually revealed himself to us and has done so in a way that we actually can know God. Even though God declares that his ways and thoughts are above our ways and thoughts, the whole point was that we should turn to God and be forgiven, even if we can't fit everything into our preconceived notions.

Our passage, though, makes us ask the question, "Who is Jesus' family?" which is another way of asking the question, "Who is on the inside and who is on the outside?" At first, we want to respond, "It should be clear who Jesus' family is. After all, they are the ones he grew up with." And yet, Jesus turns this whole idea upside down. We read, "And he replied, 'Who are my mother and my brothers?' And looking at those who sat around him, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.'"

We need to make sure we understand this, because it is a big deal. In this moment, Jesus is saying that these people that raised him, that he grew up with, are not his real family, but that these other people, who he basically just met, are his real family. How many of you would do what Jesus did? How many of you would basically turn your back on your family in order to be with other people like this? Now, if you've got a pretty close relationship with your parents and siblings, the idea of cutting ties with them for any reason sounds ridiculous. Family is more important to you than anything else. Even if the whole world were to turn against you, you would still have your family who would love you and help you out. At one point, the whole world does indeed turn against Jesus, so the rubber really does meet the road for him.

In Jesus' day, we need to understand the incredible expectation that people had to respect and take care of their families. You probably remember that one of the Ten Commandments is, "Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother." If you wanted to, you could make an argument that Jesus is not upholding that commandment here, and it is likely that someone probably made it at the time, even though we don't read about it here. Jesus' response to his family would not only have been personally offensive, but socially unacceptable. I had a class in seminary where we were looking at this passage and there was a student from Brazil, which has family values that are more similar to those of Jesus' culture than ours are here today. He was asked how his family and friends would have responded if he behaved like Jesus did here. He was clear that it would not have gone over well.

But we need to understand what Jesus is really getting at here. The main point is not, repeat not, to simply talk back to your parents and use Jesus as your reason. What Jesus is pointing out to us is that there are certain relationships that are closer even than family. There was a time when I was the only Christian in my family. Now my parents are back involved with the church but my brother still isn't. There have been many times in my life that, when I need to talk to someone about an issue in my life, I don't turn first to my family, but to my close Christian friends.

The fact of the matter is that the question, "Do I choose God or my family," will not probably arise for many of you. As far as I know, none of you are coming to youth group in defiance of your parents' wishes. Some of you might be here more because your parents want you to than because you want to be here yourself, but I am not aware if any of you are here even though your parents wished you didn't come. But that doesn't change the fact that, for many people throughout history, and even in the world today, this is a real choice they have had to make. Even in the Bible, look at the apostle Paul. He was a Pharisee, one of the people who set themselves firmly against Jesus during his ministry. During his pre-Christian life, Paul spent his time persecuting Christians, locking them up in prison, and supervising their execution. When he encountered Christ on the road to Damascus, he had to choose between his friends and family and the God who had called him by name.

But it isn't just throughout history. I played music for the wedding of a friend in college who was from India. He came to America as a radical skeptic of the claims of Christian faith. He was culturally Hindu, but was not particularly religious in any meaningful sense of the term. He had a radical conversion, married a Christian, and became a full-time missionary around the world. If I recall, there was not even one member of his family at his wedding. This is partly because his family all lived in India and the wedding was in Cedar Falls, Iowa, but it was just as much due to the fact that, by becoming a Christian, he had chosen to be disowned by his family. This didn't happen in some far-off land in the distant past. This was like six years ago in Iowa!

Listen to the words of Paul in his letter to the Romans. "So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ - if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him."

What I want to lift up for you is the fact that we learn in the Bible that, when we are in Christ, we are made heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ. We are told that we are made children of God, brothers and sisters of Christ, knit together into a new family, a family that is so close, that the New Testament also talks about it as "the Body of Christ."

This is great, as long as we are talking about people that we like, but we don't always like everyone, do we? I want to make a connection that you may not have noticed. Last week, we talked about Jesus having conflict with the scribes who came from Jerusalem and now we have Jesus looking around and saying "Here are my mother and my brothers!" What you need to realize is that the scene hasn't changed. They are still in the same house, at the same time. We had read in the last passage that Jesus' family tried to get in earlier, but couldn't do it. Nobody has left and nobody has come in. It is the same group of people who were around last week and this week. That means that the people who came because they were interested in what Jesus had to say were there to hear Jesus say this, but it also meant that the scribes from Jerusalem were there, too.

Think about that, even though there were scribes from Jerusalem there, who had come for no other reason than to harass Jesus, he still said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother." This doesn't mean that, magically, everyone present was a follower of Christ, but that Jesus didn't say to anyone, "You can't be part of my family." He didn't even say it to the people who were seeking to kill him. Jesus even called a Pharisee, one of the people who hated him the most, to be one of the most important Christian leaders in all of history. I had a professor who had a professor who said, "Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, but he didn't tell us that our neighbors are disgusting." Jesus calls us to love and to welcome, as family, even the people that we hate, that we would rather not be around. If Jesus can welcome and forgive the people who nailed him to the cross, surely we can welcome the people who annoy us.

The fact of the matter is that we are, in Christ, already bound to one another. You see, if I am in Christ, and if you are in Christ, then it doesn't really matter how different we are, we have one, incredibly important thing, in common, we are both in Christ. You and I are already family, you are all already family, not just with me and with each other, but with everyone who is in the other youth group, with everyone else in the church, with everyone in the youth groups around town, and with everyone in all the other churches. We don't always get along, but we are bound together by the blood of Christ, which is bigger than all of us. So, as we go into the world, and as we interact with one another, remember, day by day, that you are surrounded by family, because the people in this room as well as the people who go to other youth groups in town are all around you. But that isn't all. You are also surrounded by everyone else. But those people are not necessarily "not family." Rather, they are like the scribes in the audience; people who are simply not yet family. They are your long-lost cousins. Share with them the love and joy you have.

Let us pray.

AMEN

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Luke 16:19-31, The Rich Man and Lazarus

10/09/11 Luke 16:19-31 Grace UMC

It would be very possible to preach a sermon on any number of topics using the story of the rich man and Lazarus. One could prepare a sermon on the reward for the righteous and the punishment of the wicked, or about what happens to us once we die, or perhaps the give and take between receiving blessings during this life and those that we receive in the life to come. There are many ways we could look at this, but I want to draw attention to the last interchange between the rich man and Abraham.

"He said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house - for I have five brothers - that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

The rich man's reaction is something that has found a prominent place throughout Christian history in the writings of various people. How often have we heard of people who lived their whole lives, pushing God off until tomorrow, until finally there came a time that there were no more tomorrows? Immediately, such people, we read, are overwhelmed by remorse. What they would not give for just one more day, to go and do what they ought to have done before but had, tragically, left undone.

What is more, we see this day by day in our own lives, even if in a somewhat less extreme form. How many of us can remember what we used to do when we were teenagers and wish we could go back and tell the teenage version of ourselves that we should live differently, that we should make better choices? How many of us look at the state of the world today and realize that people today are making the same mistakes we did yesterday and haven't learned from them? How many of us wish we could just sit people down and talk some sense into them, to teach them what we have learned over so many years and with so much pain?

The fact of the matter is that, when I look back on my life, just about every bad decision I ever made was preceded, at some point, by someone who was older and wiser than I was, who warned me about the temptations and trials that I would go through, and they knew what they were talking about because they had gone through them already and had watched their friends and everyone they knew, in addition to total strangers, go through them. They could see with the clear vision of hindsight what seemed far less clear to me at the time. I ought to have trusted them. The fact of the matter, however, is that I not only didn't listen to the voice of experience, I don't know for sure if I could have done so. I am repeatedly amazed at our ability, as human beings, to simply brush aside anything that we don't want to deal with.

This is precisely what Jesus is getting at with this story. The realities of reward and punishment are as clear as can be to the rich man. He is experiencing one for himself and he can see the other one before his very eyes. Surely, if someone who had this kind of first-hand experience could come and bear witness to what was coming, everyone would listen, it would be indisputable proof of what the future held in store, and nobody would have to endure what this rich man had to suffer.

It is an argument that makes a lot of sense to us. If someone who was dead could come back to us and share their experiences, wouldn't that seem to be the ultimate proof? And yet, I think that, when we think this way, we tend to overvalue the role of miracles in the act of convincing human beings of the truth of God. Take, for example, the story of the Exodus from Egypt that you all probably learned in Sunday School or, if you are like me and didn't grow up in the church at all, probably learned it from various movies that are made every so often about it. Imagine the scene in your head. Ten plagues are unleashed on the Egyptian people who had gone from hosting the Israelites, to dominating them and making them their slaves. The land is plagued with the turning of water into blood, overrun with frogs, gnats, and flies. Livestock was struck with disease, boils broke out on all the people and animals, terrible thunder and hail storms ravaged the countryside, locusts came and devoured the produce of the land, unnatural darkness covered the whole country, and finally the firstborn sons were killed. But that is really only the beginning. The Israelites were then led across the sea, which was parted to let them pass. Even after these astonishing miracles took place, that was not the end. Every day, the people were given Manna from heaven to eat and were led, day in and day out, by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

These were people who had seen more miracles in a matter of weeks than most of us have ever seen or will ever see over the course of our whole lives. If miracles could convince people beyond a shadow of a doubt of who God was, surely the Israelites would have been convinced. After all, it had profound consequences. Without God, they were slaves, now they were free. They owed everything, not just in a spiritual sense, but in a very literal sense, to the God who redeemed and saved them. And yet, when Moses goes up Mount Sinai to speak with God, what do we read? We read that the people lost patience, that they pressured Aaron, their priest, to make a golden calf for them to worship because, after all, whatever might have been the case before, they haven't seen God move lately. For goodness' sake, it had been a whole month without a dramatic miracle, never mind the fact that they were still eating bread from heaven and always lived in the sight of the pillar of cloud and of fire.

I still remember when I first noticed this as I read the Bible. I remember longing for God to move with power in the community in which I found myself, that he would perform undeniable miracles, signs and wonders, so that true revival would break out. When I saw the Israelites in this light, for the first time, the thought crossed my mind, "If God did everything I asked him to do, and did all kinds of miracles, it might not really convince anyone, at least not for long." It started to make sense to me why God would give such a serious law to his people. They, just like we, are easily distracted, and need not just a miracle, but a whole way of life that is devoted to God. It wasn't that God wasn't able to do miracles, or held back from doing them; after all, he did them all the time, but it seemed that God knew all too well that, at the end of the day, miracles only go so far in transforming hearts and lives.

But that isn't all. Let us look at the New Testament, at the life of Jesus. Everywhere Jesus went, he healed the sick, he restored sight to the blind, he made the lame to walk again, he did amazing things. However, we read, in Mark's gospel, to speak of nowhere else, that, one morning, when a crowd of people had gathered to be healed, Jesus left town, saying, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." Jesus seemed to be more interested in proclaiming his message than healing the sick, although he certainly did that, too.

You know, it is interesting that Luke's gospel records a story where a man begs that a man named Lazarus be sent back from the dead in order to tell people about the life that is to come. The reason it is so interesting is because in John's gospel, we read an account of Jesus raising a man named Lazarus to do precisely that. The fact that Jesus had an advocate who everyone knew had been dead, in fact, had been dead for several days, but had come back, did not convince people who had already made up their minds not to believe. Instead of being convinced, they simply included Lazarus in their plans to kill Jesus.

But one of the most astonishing things that I ever read in the Bible about this is something that I never noticed until someone pointed it out to me one day. It is such a famous passage that I must have read it over and over again, but had just never noticed it. At the very end of the Gospel according to Matthew, when Jesus is about to give what has come to be known as "The Great Commission," we read this. "Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted." Some doubted! Can you imagine that? There they were, face-to-face with the Lord, resurrected in glory, Jesus Christ, who was clearly dead just the day before, and some doubted! Not only was it, apparently, not convincing to people who hated Jesus that he raised Lazarus from the dead, it wasn't even convincing to the disciples that Jesus was resurrected.

It was not until Pentecost that people really began to understand what Jesus had said and done; it was not until the Holy Spirit came upon the church that everything began to make sense. Before Jesus was crucified, Peter denied him and ran away, after he was raised, he decided to go back to fishing; it was only when he received the Spirit that Peter became the mighty leader of the church that we remember.

When we look at the issue in this way, we can really see that Jesus' story of the rich man and Lazarus is not merely a warning not to trust in miracles as the primary convincing force, but is truly a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. What does Abraham say? "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." On the one hand, it tells us, as we have been discussing so far, that we have a tendency, like the rich man, to overvalue miracles as a means of conviction, but it also tells us that we have a tendency, like the rich man, to undervalue the convincing power of the word of God, especially as made manifest in human beings.
You see, lots of people went to see Jesus as a miracle worker, but it was only when the disciples, empowered by the Spirit, began to go out and preach that people began to respond. Once again, they performed miracles, and miracles never dropped out of God's interaction with humanity, but it wasn't the miracles that had the impact on the people, it was the word of God, backed up by the power of the Spirit. Peter and John heal a crippled man on the steps of the Temple and are met with nothing but anger and skepticism from the authorities. But when Peter stands up and preaches, when he shares what God has done, the impact he has made, three thousand people were added to the number of believers.

I have emphasized that, in spite of the fact that miracles do not seem to play the real backbone of the plan of God to minister to humanity and transform lives, that is not to say that God doesn't do the miraculous. Far from it. Though I have been here for only a short time, I know that this congregation has been touched by genuine miracles. Many of you have been touched, either directly or indirectly, by the fact that God has and does still move mightily in ways that bear a striking resemblance to the healing and transformational miracles of the Old and New Testaments. And even though I don't know all of you so I can't say for sure, but if you are anything like the rest of humanity, there are still days where you feel weak, that you have your doubts, that, even if your faith seems strong, you don't always live in the full, unbridled confidence of the truth of the Gospel, in spite of the undeniable miracles you have seen and even experienced. In fact, I have a feeling that many days can go by with not a thought about those miracles, until you are reminded by someone else or you deliberately remind yourself of the power of God in your life.

The point is not to say that miracles don't happen, because they clearly do, and it is not to say that they do not have a profound impact on those they touch, because they clearly do, but it is to remind us that the power of God is most manifest, not in what the world would call clearly miraculous, but in the word of the Lord, spoken by ordinary people like you and me, who are empowered by the very Spirit of God. This is precisely why I will say now and you will hear me say again, that Pentecost is without a doubt the single most frightening day of the Christian year. It is the day that we are forced to come to terms with the fact that the disciples with whom we identify so strongly in the gospels, because they are weak and broken people, just like you and me, are utterly transformed into mighty heroes of faith, who speak the word with boldness, who go into the world and make a difference beyond what they would otherwise be capable of because they are united to the ministry of Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

You see, brothers and sisters, that Spirit of God that made Peter preach with boldness, that gave the force to his words that transformed the hearts and lives of three thousand people in a single morning, is promised to you and me as well. The only difference between the Peter who denied Christ and the Peter who laid his life down to be killed for his faith is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that, the scriptures teach us, takes up residence in our lives as those who belong to Christ.

What I am saying is that we, as human beings, have a tendency to say things like, "If only this miracle would happen, if only we had this kind of program at our church, if only we had these kinds of people to lead and participate in the ministries of our church, if only things were different than they are now, if only they were the way things used to be." And you know what? None of those things we long for are bad things, and, to be honest, they already exist in various ways. The point is that God is not calling us to something that is too hard for us, not because we are capable in ourselves to follow God's call, but because we, too, have been indwelled by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus' story told us to consider the words of Moses and the prophets. So let us consider what Moses tells the people in Deuteronomy, chapter thirty. "Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?' No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe." The command to go and make disciples is not something that is far off, not something that we need to go and find a miracle-worker before we can do it; it is not something that requires a special insight above and beyond what we have in Moses, the prophets, and Jesus Christ, but requires only that faithful people listen to what God has said and is saying, and do it, knowing that the word of faithful people, undergirded by the Spirit, is more powerful than the mightiest miracles. So, let us go and trust that God will take even our words and transform lives. Let us pray.

AMEN

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Mark 3:19b-30

10/05/11 Mark 3:19b-30 GUMC Youth

It seems like forever ago since we last talked about Mark together. All kinds of things have happened since we looked at Mark. We had the Fair, the night at the Wittstruck's, you got to hear from my friend Mollie, and even Life Light. It's been a whole month since we've looked at Mark's account of the life of Jesus. Before we dig in to the passage for tonight, we should spend a little bit of time remembering where we have been.

Jesus has been baptized and set apart for ministry, called some fishermen from their nets, and has done all kinds of miracles, healing people who were sick or broken and casting out unclean spirits. However, we need to remember at every step of the way, that Jesus has made it incredibly clear that his main purpose is not to heal the sick, but to proclaim his message to everyone. After all, back in the first chapter, he left a crowd full of people who were hoping that Jesus would heal them or their loved ones in order to go to other towns and preach there. Jesus is clearly a wonder-worker, but the miracles are not his main point. He cares much more about what we learn and who we become rather than on being fixated on healing, though he is clearly powerful enough to do that.

We need to remember, though, that not everyone was happy with Jesus. In the famous story of Jesus healing a man who was paralyzed and had to be lowered down from the roof, we read that he declared that the man's sins were forgiven. There were scribes present who got upset. After all, who can forgive sins but God alone? However, in order to demonstrate that he was indeed powerful enough to forgive sins (that is, in order to show that he is indeed God), he healed the man of his paralysis. Shortly after that, when Jesus had called a tax collector, the people complained that he ate with people that most Good Jews refused to eat with. When they tried to trick Jesus into breaking the Sabbath laws, he healed people anyway, showing that he understood the law far better than the people who thought they did.

So Jesus has been helping the people, but has also been greatly upsetting the so-called "authorities." You can only irritate the people in charge for so long before people start to notice. For some people, this is great, because not everyone likes the people who are in charge, but to others, if you upset them too much, you are a troublemaker who should be avoided. Jesus went back to the house he was staying at and was so popular, there were so many people in the crowd who had come to see him that he couldn't even sit down and have a meal. But we read that his family came along because people were saying, "He has gone out of his mind," which is a far cry from what some people want to say today, that Jesus was a great human teacher; but we will come back to Jesus' family next week.

Look at what the scribes say to Jesus. Actually, before we get to that, we should pay attention to the fact that these are not local scribes, like we saw earlier. These are scribes from Jerusalem, who had travelled an awful long way to get to hear Jesus. However, they don't have much nice to say. They didn't come so far because they thought he was wonderful and they wanted to learn from him, but because they thought he was corrupting the people and they wanted to stop him.

But what do they say? They say, "He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons." This is hardly a nice thing to say, but even though it is clear that, according to Mark, the scribes have completely misunderstood Jesus and are very wrong, we ought to spend some time trying to understand what they are trying to say, even if we do not, in the end, agree with it. By the way, if you are really going to disagree with someone, you should make sure you really understand them first. The best way to convince people that you aren't a big jerk is to really take the time and be honest with them and learn where they are coming from. I have many friends with whom I disagree passionately, especially my atheist friends, but we can have real, civilized discussions in spite of that.

The scribes don't like Jesus, but they have to account for the fact that he is casting out demons from people. These were people who everyone knew to be affected by demons who were now no longer troubled by them, but were perfectly in their right mind. There wasn't a particularly strong tradition of exorcisms in the history of Israel that we read about in the Old Testament, so they wouldn't have been forced to admit that only God can cast out demons, but they surely would have believed that God could, indeed, cast them out. The question was whether or not they could find some other explanation, regardless of how plausible it seemed. They found one. They argued that, if Jesus was possessed, not just with an ordinary demon, but with the ruler of demons, he would be able to have authority over ordinary demons, and he would be able to cast them out.

But that is actually a pretty silly explanation, as Jesus points out to them. He says, "How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand." You might have heard that Abraham Lincoln is famous for saying, about the split between North and South, "A house divided cannot stand." He got it from Jesus, not the other way around. He continues on and makes his point. "And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come."

Do you see what Jesus is doing? He is pointing out that, even though the scribes' argument made sense to them, because they did not want to see any other explanation, it was really a ridiculous conclusion. Why in the world would Satan attack his own demons? Why would he wage war on his own troops? The only reason I can think of is to show how powerful he is, that he can actively weaken his own army, but that seems pretty far-fetched, doesn't it? Jesus is pointing out that there is a much more likely interpretation of what he is doing. He says, "But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered."

The symbolism is pretty easy to follow. Satan is the strong man, one who has stolen many things and is, in general, able to defend what he has taken. However, one cannot just walk into his house and take back whatever you want. Before that can be done, someone who is stronger needs to come in and overpower the strong man and tie him up so he can no longer resist. Satan is the strong man of the story, but Jesus is the stronger man, the one who is able, with a word, to bind Satan himself and do whatever he wants with his kingdom, releasing people from his bondage and setting them free. When Jesus casts out demons, it is not proof that he is working side by side with Satan, but rather that he has declared war on Satan and has invaded enemy territory and is plundering his enemy, which only can happen after the enemy is defeated. It is a much more natural interpretation of what was happening, and it is clear that the scribes were just looking for excuses.

I'm sure we can all relate to the scribes. I don't know about you, but there are times when I can create pretty elaborate explanations for things that, at the end of the day, probably aren't true, but I do it because I desperately want them to be true. Have you ever done anything like that? Have you ever been on the opposite side of something like this, where someone else comes up with an incredibly unlikely explanation for something when it is as clear as day what the real reason is? It can be unbelievably frustrating.

The end of our passage for tonight includes one of the scariest statements in the Bible for some people. Jesus says, "Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin." I will bet that there are at least a few of you, if not all of you, who, the moment you heard those words had a thought like this. "Oh my goodness. There is a sin that absolutely cannot be forgiven? Have I committed it? How could I know if I've committed it? Is it already too late for me?" If you had thoughts like that, you are not alone. But I think that part of the reason that those words seem so frightening to us is because we get so distracted when we hear them that we do not continue to listen to the last verse in the passage. We are told that Jesus said this because the scribes had said, "He has an unclean spirit."

We need to understand this a few different levels. The first thing we need to understand is the seriousness of what Jesus is talking about. Here is Jesus, God in flesh, God in their midst, demonstrating his divine power for all to see, doing what nobody else could do, doing things that the only other explanation his enemies can come up with (and enemies are usually really good at finding all the reasons why we should not trust someone) is completely unlikely. In spite of all that, there were some people who so completely misunderstood who Jesus was and why he had come among them that they could only say that he had an unclean spirit, that he was possessed by the devil. You need to understand the degree of confusion that we're dealing with here. We aren't just talking about someone making a small mistake, or making a wrong judgment based on what they heard from someone else, which may or may not have been true. We are talking about people being confronted with the very presence of God, seeing him doing all kinds of mighty things, and then calling him, not the God of the universe, who had walked with their ancestors for hundreds of years, but the very enemy of God.

We need to understand that, when Jesus talks about this idea of an unforgiveable sin, he is not talking about something that you or I can just stumble into, that we can simply lose our head for a moment and do something that will condemn us forever. In order to commit this kind of sin, we have to set ourselves completely against God, so completely against God that, when we see God move, we genuinely believe that it is the activity of evil personified. It would take nothing less than us setting ourselves in the place of God and judging that God is himself evil. So, even though this is indeed a serious issue and not something to be taken lightly, hear this word of encouragement. The fact that you are even willing to enter a church, that you are willing to come and sing songs glorifying God and to hear a message about God shows that the odds against you having committed this unforgivable sin are astronomical. The fact is, if you had done what Jesus is warning about, you would either never have come tonight, or if you did, you would only have come to ridicule God. This is the kind of thing where the people who are worried probably shouldn't be and those who aren't worried just might want to be.

But lets try to understand this in a trinitarian way. The Holy Spirit plays an incredibly important role in our Christian lives. If we really pay attention when we read the gospels, we find that nobody, not the disciples, not the crowd of people who follow Jesus, not even the other folks we see from time to time, really understand who Jesus is and his significance. Some of the greatest examples are Peter and Judas, who deny and betray Christ, respectively. Even after Jesus is raised from the dead, and many people were convinced of his importance, we still read incredible things like this, which shows up right before Jesus gives the Great Commission. "Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped but some doubted." There was Jesus, resurrected in glory, right before their very eyes, but some doubted even then.

The doubt only really went away at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon those first Christians. There is something about the Spirit that makes it so incredibly important, that if we do not have the Spirit, we do not, we can not, really understand who Jesus is and really come to know him. So look at Jesus' warning this way. You can say all kinds of terrible things about God, even about Jesus Christ, and you can be forgiven. After all, at the end of the day, who knows whether the Spirit will move and transform you like it did to the disciples on Pentecost. However, if you utterly reject the Spirit, how can you come to know the truth? If you become completely convinced that even the Holy Spirit of God is a force for evil and not for good and you completely resist it, how can you ever be corrected? If we have committed ourselves to falsehood, how can we ever know the truth?

The point that I want you to take with you is actually the amazing grace and forgiveness of Christ. Even if you have set yourself up against Christ in the past, that does not mean that you cannot be forgiven and restored. When Jesus was on the cross, bleeding and dying, he cried out and said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Even though the people certainly thought they knew what they were doing, they were crucifying a public enemy, Jesus still sought to embrace them in his forgiveness.

There is an awful lot of evil in the world today. I'm sure you see it day by day in school and in the world around you. There are days where it seems hard to be motivated to keep going, but I want to remind you what Jesus said. He is the one who is stronger than Satan, who has bound Satan, and who is about the business of plundering Satan's kingdom. Not everyone notices this; obviously the scribes in our passage missed it, but that doesn't make it any less true. On the days when it seems that the whole world is crashing down around you, when you are having a hard time seeing the hope and joy you know you should see, trust and remember that Jesus is indeed the stronger man, who has a forgiveness that extends much further than you or I will ever know. Let us pray.

AMEN