When Peter Parker was bitten by a spider, he was infused with special powers-things that he was able to do that no one else could do.
Enhanced moral judgment was not part of Peter's special powers. Peter still had to decide if we wanted to be a super-hero, or if he just wanted to be Mary Jane's boyfriend. Uncle Ben provided him with the best advice he was going to get,
“With great powers comes great responsibility.”
I know, you are all wondering why I am talking about Spiderman on Sunday morning. First, this is for Simon, who turned 6 yesterday, and got a bug vacuum for his birthday, and for his best friend Tristan, who told the pediatrician he was bitten by a spider, and now has special powers.
Second, this is because all great stories have something at their core which is the same. Our great story as Christians leaves us with the same problem of moral judgments that Peter Parker had.
You see, we are all faced with the question, do we want to use our special powers or do we want to offer Mary Jane a nice home in the suburbs? Are we safely saved or are we required to do something with our salvation?
1 John tells us what our responsibility is.
“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments.”
If we love God, we obey his commandments. And his commandments are this:
Love God.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Tell other people about the good news of Christ.
How hard is that? Well, it's actually very hard. Because when Jesus said, Come, follow me, he didn't go to the art museum or the country club. He went to the slums and the places where foreigners congregated. When he said take up my cross, he wasn't talking about bow hunting or polo matches, he was talking about forgiveness.
The cross is the symbol of forgiveness. The cross is the key to our special powers. As the gospel of John puts it:
Jesus came after the resurrection and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” and then he breathed the Holy Spirit onto them and said, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
We are being sent out into the world to continue the action of forgiveness. That forgiveness is the peace Jesus gives to us, the peace he brings from the father.
The peace of forgiveness is the most difficult of all to give and to receive. We are not naturally inclined to forgive the slights of others, let alone the really stupendous errors in judgment. As hard as it is to forgive someone for cutting us off in traffic, how much harder to give that grace to someone who has killed a loved one in a suicide bombing? As hard as it is to receive someone's forgiveness for our unintentional mistakes, like offering peanuts to someone allergic to them, how much harder to receive forgiveness from the family of someone we intentionally set out to harm?
It is much easier to believe that only in God, and only mediated through someone perfect like Jesus, can there be forgiveness. It is a lot more difficult to think that our actions and our ability to forgive is part of the great plan of salvation for all.
But we are not only promised this fantastic ability to forgive, we are told that it isn't too hard, and when we do it, we will conquer the world:
“And his commandments are not burdensome,” says 1 John, “for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.”
The world is full of fear. The world is full of hate. The world is full of people who are in pain, from what they have done, and from what has been done to them. But here we are promised that we can conquer these very real components of the human life,
---with our faith.
It's never been easy to believe in God and Jesus. And often it seems easier in Portland to just avoid any mention of our faith in mixed company; there are plenty of people who are going to be offended if we say “Christian,” and a lot of people will just stop listening to us because of the delivery of other Christians. We often think that our actions will speak louder than our words. But forgiveness is an action that requires words, lest it be confused with ignorance, with passive aggressiveness, and with uncaring.
We should no see that belief as burdensome.
Because the more people who are bitten by the spider,
the more people who are infused with the special powers of the cross,
the more people who take on the super-human power of forgiveness,
the closer we get to victory.
The closer we get to each other and most especially,
The closer we get to the kingdom of God.
And when that happens, we no longer have an either-or moral dilemma. We don't have to chose to do “whatever a spider can” or Mary Jane. We find ourselves in a win-win situation. The more we share our faith, the more we create the forgiveness of God, the sooner we conquer the world.
We have great powers. We have great responsibility. Thanks be to God.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Easter Sunday: Why I am a Christian
So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Well, someone must have said something, because here we are....
How were they feeling before they ran away and said nothing? Their beloved leader has been murdered. Jesus told them that he would not die, and they believed him. They don't really want to see the dead body, because it is proof of their own mortality, and their own gullibility. It is in the moments when we feel most helpless that the need for little rituals takes over. They decide that they must anoint the body. This is something for which they can take personal responsibility, something they have control over.
As they are walking to the tomb, they are thinking about facing their own mortality. Are they talking through their fear? No, of course not. They are arguing about how to get the door open. These women are going to anoint the body, and no stone is going to stop them, if they can just figure out how to move it.
But they don't have to. When they get there, the stone is rolled away and the door is wide open.
This is really scary. Because who would have done such a thing? The only people that loved Jesus enough to care for his body are standing outside. Everyone else interested in him was calling out, 'crucify him!” a couple of days ago. They thought they knew what they would find at the tomb. They didn't want to see such a sight, but there is comfort even in the knowing of the unthinkable.
Now the women are standing outside wondering what to do? What is the right thing to do? Do they give into fear and run away, or do they go inside and face the fear?
These women are now standing on the fence of indecision. When we run out of minor details, we are left with only our fears of the unknown. When we are laid off from a job, there are so many things to fill our time, unemployment forms, COBRA invoices, updated resumes. But eventually, we must face the fact that we have lost our job. Our identity is very wrapped up in what we do, so who are we when we are not working, when we are doing nothing at all?
For the women, the fear of not completing their ritual, is greater than their fear of knowing what is inside the tomb. Come what may, they step around the stone and into the tomb.
And find a guy in a white robe, like some sort of supernatural information clerk. 'Don't be alarmed,”' he says. When has that ever calmed anyone down?
We all encounter things that we cannot rationalize away. We are all afraid of them. And we don't talk about them. The biggest difference between these women and ourselves-we have modern science to help us rationalize a lot more of the world than they did. But science answers questions about who, what and where. Science can never answer the question, why. Science can tell us all about the feeding habits of household spiders, but it can never turn that fact into something that alleviate our fear of spiders. Why are we afraid of spiders? We cannot answer that anymore than the women could explain the scene at the tomb.
Because the body was just not there. These women do not think that Jesus is anything other than dead. They saw him on the cross; they were probably the last to leave and they are probably the first to return. Something larger than their ability to rationalize is at work. Something larger than their ability to explain away is at work. The guy in the white suit is simply beyond their ability to explain. If they do try to explain, they are going to get laughed at, or ridiculed, or told they are distraught with grief, or crazy. No one is going to believe them, and if this guy is passing on the message, it means he isn't going to stick around. So of course they flee in terror. Of course they don't tell anyone. What else can you do with a direct connection to God and a prophecy come true?
That's it. The gospel of Mark is the first story of the life of Jesus that was written down. This story about the women is the end. We don't find out if the disciples met up with Jesus in Galilee, we don't find out about doubting Thomas. There is no Paul, yet. There isn't anyone saying, you have to see Jesus, or have a personal relationship with the resurrected Christ, in order to do what he said. This ending is up to us. Do we take up doing what is right as Jesus was doing, or do we say, tough break, having the leader of such a cool movement die like that. Mark is the perfect altar call, for those of you who know what that is. We finish the story. The action is all ours.
Gospel means Good News. And, strange though it may seem, this story is Good News. If this were just a story, it would never get published with an ending like that. But, Mark is part of a whole series of gospels and letters that make up what we know and believe to be the Good News of Christ crucified and risen. And what Mark leaves up to the reader, Paul enumerates in great detail.
In our lesson from Acts today, Paul gives us the good news. “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
I need to offer an aside about translations here, and I am sorry, because I know it is boring, but fear is like love when we translate between languages-overused. So I want to clarify fear of God as opposed to the sort of fear we mean in our everyday conversations, the sort of fear I have been talking about. Fear is a bad thing that we don't want to have. We are afraid of things that are irrational, that hurt us, that don't make sense to us. But translators use the word fear to translate a Greek word that actually means something more like healthy respect.
For instance, I hope everyone here has a healthy respect for bears. Nothing a bear does is provoked by the desire to find a particular human and maul him to death. In fact, we don't really know why bears do the things they do. We rationalize bear behavior, and we try to predict bear behavior based on our own motivations, but we don't really know how bears think. God is so much bigger than a bear. When Paul tells us that God wants us to fear him, he is saying “Don't put God in a box, or think you can make God into a person that you can predict and manipulate.”
So, Paul is telling us some genuine good news- God is not something petty and prejudiced, and we don't have to be afraid because we cannot box God in, all we have to worry about is doing what is right- not following the rules, not doing what your mother taught you, but what is right.
How do we know what is right? Well, the many followers of God have fought many a war trying to tell people that they know what is right; but what is right is usually pretty obvious, and if it isn't -remember that the last shall and should be first. The poor family that cannot buy food. The widow who is homebound and has no company. The prisoner who is being incarcerated for any reason. The children who have no home to learn right in.
What is right is to reduce the everyday terror of the unknown in the world.
What is right is to reduce the pain in the world.
What is right is to share every good thing in the world, with everyone in the world.
Does that make Christians crazy communistic utopia driven hippies. Well of course it does.
Are we any good at it? No. The point is to do what is right. To do something. Do not worry if it is good or bad. Don't worry if it is correct. Don't worry what the neighbors will think. Do what is right, for the people who are being done wrong. And if you screw something up. If your consequences are not all they could be. Don't let the fear of that stop you from trying for the right thing.
Don't misunderstand me. The right thing is hard. Doing the right thing doesn't pay well, it doesn't come with a benefits package, and the hours are lousy. And the burnout is real. And the fear creeps into the exhaustion until we either start to triage this person as more deserving than that one, or we stop altogether, because we have only seen bad outcomes from all our effort.
So you may wonder why start? It doesn't sound like very good new at all. But Paul goes on. There is more good news to sustain us. That good news is the heart of Christianity. It is the thing that makes Christianity different from all other religions that follow the one God. It is the thing that makes Christianity worth telling all over the world.
Paul says, “He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Christianity says that we don't have to decide who is good and who is bad. That is Jesus' job. But even more important, it is Jesus' job to forgive. We are celebrating the Resurrection today. We celebrate the truth that Jesus isn't dead, and he isn't where we left him. Theologically, this is the reason that we can do good things and be forgiven. The death and resurrection are the last sacrifice, the last time we have to feel guilty for having done something and not getting the outcome we wanted. The last time we have to lash out in hurt, the last time we have to burn a cow or grovel in fear of a God that we have created in our own minds.
This means that you are free. You can do what is right. You do not need to be afraid of any of these things. You do not even need to be afraid that your actions will produce bad consequences. You will be forgiven.
The question I leave with you is, what are you doing with this Good News. Are you merely benefiting from it in silence? Are you not doing what is right, because you fear the consequences of your actions? Are you out doing what is right , because you know that you are forgiven the mistakes and circumstances that arise from doing what is right? Because you know that you are not required to triage the deserving from the takers? Because you know that what happens to you, or to anyone, is not some natural or crazy-God given consequence of actions?
(point)Are you telling anyone that the reason you can feed the homeless is that you are not afraid that you might become homeless? Are you telling people that you are not concerned that you might be interfering with someone's natural consequences, someone's opportunity to learn from their mistakes? Are you telling people that you don't care what they think of you for spending time with people who are not from your own social class?
(calm)What you need to do is share this idea-this truth-that we should not box God into something that looks like us, that we should do what is right, that we don't have to decide who is good and who is bad, and that we are forgiven our mistakes. Who doesn't need to hear this? Who wouldn't benefit from it? Those women were wrong not to spread the Good News of Jesus Crucified and Christ Resurrected. Yes, they were wrong for good reasons. They were wrong for fear of personal failure. They were wrong for fear of humiliation and punishment by the law. They were wrong for fear of ridicule for experiencing something supernatural, something that answered why, not just who what or where. They were wrong because they, like us, did not want to face their own mortality, their own humanness. But they were wrong. Don't you be wrong, too.
Amen.
How were they feeling before they ran away and said nothing? Their beloved leader has been murdered. Jesus told them that he would not die, and they believed him. They don't really want to see the dead body, because it is proof of their own mortality, and their own gullibility. It is in the moments when we feel most helpless that the need for little rituals takes over. They decide that they must anoint the body. This is something for which they can take personal responsibility, something they have control over.
As they are walking to the tomb, they are thinking about facing their own mortality. Are they talking through their fear? No, of course not. They are arguing about how to get the door open. These women are going to anoint the body, and no stone is going to stop them, if they can just figure out how to move it.
But they don't have to. When they get there, the stone is rolled away and the door is wide open.
This is really scary. Because who would have done such a thing? The only people that loved Jesus enough to care for his body are standing outside. Everyone else interested in him was calling out, 'crucify him!” a couple of days ago. They thought they knew what they would find at the tomb. They didn't want to see such a sight, but there is comfort even in the knowing of the unthinkable.
Now the women are standing outside wondering what to do? What is the right thing to do? Do they give into fear and run away, or do they go inside and face the fear?
These women are now standing on the fence of indecision. When we run out of minor details, we are left with only our fears of the unknown. When we are laid off from a job, there are so many things to fill our time, unemployment forms, COBRA invoices, updated resumes. But eventually, we must face the fact that we have lost our job. Our identity is very wrapped up in what we do, so who are we when we are not working, when we are doing nothing at all?
For the women, the fear of not completing their ritual, is greater than their fear of knowing what is inside the tomb. Come what may, they step around the stone and into the tomb.
And find a guy in a white robe, like some sort of supernatural information clerk. 'Don't be alarmed,”' he says. When has that ever calmed anyone down?
We all encounter things that we cannot rationalize away. We are all afraid of them. And we don't talk about them. The biggest difference between these women and ourselves-we have modern science to help us rationalize a lot more of the world than they did. But science answers questions about who, what and where. Science can never answer the question, why. Science can tell us all about the feeding habits of household spiders, but it can never turn that fact into something that alleviate our fear of spiders. Why are we afraid of spiders? We cannot answer that anymore than the women could explain the scene at the tomb.
Because the body was just not there. These women do not think that Jesus is anything other than dead. They saw him on the cross; they were probably the last to leave and they are probably the first to return. Something larger than their ability to rationalize is at work. Something larger than their ability to explain away is at work. The guy in the white suit is simply beyond their ability to explain. If they do try to explain, they are going to get laughed at, or ridiculed, or told they are distraught with grief, or crazy. No one is going to believe them, and if this guy is passing on the message, it means he isn't going to stick around. So of course they flee in terror. Of course they don't tell anyone. What else can you do with a direct connection to God and a prophecy come true?
That's it. The gospel of Mark is the first story of the life of Jesus that was written down. This story about the women is the end. We don't find out if the disciples met up with Jesus in Galilee, we don't find out about doubting Thomas. There is no Paul, yet. There isn't anyone saying, you have to see Jesus, or have a personal relationship with the resurrected Christ, in order to do what he said. This ending is up to us. Do we take up doing what is right as Jesus was doing, or do we say, tough break, having the leader of such a cool movement die like that. Mark is the perfect altar call, for those of you who know what that is. We finish the story. The action is all ours.
Gospel means Good News. And, strange though it may seem, this story is Good News. If this were just a story, it would never get published with an ending like that. But, Mark is part of a whole series of gospels and letters that make up what we know and believe to be the Good News of Christ crucified and risen. And what Mark leaves up to the reader, Paul enumerates in great detail.
In our lesson from Acts today, Paul gives us the good news. “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
I need to offer an aside about translations here, and I am sorry, because I know it is boring, but fear is like love when we translate between languages-overused. So I want to clarify fear of God as opposed to the sort of fear we mean in our everyday conversations, the sort of fear I have been talking about. Fear is a bad thing that we don't want to have. We are afraid of things that are irrational, that hurt us, that don't make sense to us. But translators use the word fear to translate a Greek word that actually means something more like healthy respect.
For instance, I hope everyone here has a healthy respect for bears. Nothing a bear does is provoked by the desire to find a particular human and maul him to death. In fact, we don't really know why bears do the things they do. We rationalize bear behavior, and we try to predict bear behavior based on our own motivations, but we don't really know how bears think. God is so much bigger than a bear. When Paul tells us that God wants us to fear him, he is saying “Don't put God in a box, or think you can make God into a person that you can predict and manipulate.”
So, Paul is telling us some genuine good news- God is not something petty and prejudiced, and we don't have to be afraid because we cannot box God in, all we have to worry about is doing what is right- not following the rules, not doing what your mother taught you, but what is right.
How do we know what is right? Well, the many followers of God have fought many a war trying to tell people that they know what is right; but what is right is usually pretty obvious, and if it isn't -remember that the last shall and should be first. The poor family that cannot buy food. The widow who is homebound and has no company. The prisoner who is being incarcerated for any reason. The children who have no home to learn right in.
What is right is to reduce the everyday terror of the unknown in the world.
What is right is to reduce the pain in the world.
What is right is to share every good thing in the world, with everyone in the world.
Does that make Christians crazy communistic utopia driven hippies. Well of course it does.
Are we any good at it? No. The point is to do what is right. To do something. Do not worry if it is good or bad. Don't worry if it is correct. Don't worry what the neighbors will think. Do what is right, for the people who are being done wrong. And if you screw something up. If your consequences are not all they could be. Don't let the fear of that stop you from trying for the right thing.
Don't misunderstand me. The right thing is hard. Doing the right thing doesn't pay well, it doesn't come with a benefits package, and the hours are lousy. And the burnout is real. And the fear creeps into the exhaustion until we either start to triage this person as more deserving than that one, or we stop altogether, because we have only seen bad outcomes from all our effort.
So you may wonder why start? It doesn't sound like very good new at all. But Paul goes on. There is more good news to sustain us. That good news is the heart of Christianity. It is the thing that makes Christianity different from all other religions that follow the one God. It is the thing that makes Christianity worth telling all over the world.
Paul says, “He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Christianity says that we don't have to decide who is good and who is bad. That is Jesus' job. But even more important, it is Jesus' job to forgive. We are celebrating the Resurrection today. We celebrate the truth that Jesus isn't dead, and he isn't where we left him. Theologically, this is the reason that we can do good things and be forgiven. The death and resurrection are the last sacrifice, the last time we have to feel guilty for having done something and not getting the outcome we wanted. The last time we have to lash out in hurt, the last time we have to burn a cow or grovel in fear of a God that we have created in our own minds.
This means that you are free. You can do what is right. You do not need to be afraid of any of these things. You do not even need to be afraid that your actions will produce bad consequences. You will be forgiven.
The question I leave with you is, what are you doing with this Good News. Are you merely benefiting from it in silence? Are you not doing what is right, because you fear the consequences of your actions? Are you out doing what is right , because you know that you are forgiven the mistakes and circumstances that arise from doing what is right? Because you know that you are not required to triage the deserving from the takers? Because you know that what happens to you, or to anyone, is not some natural or crazy-God given consequence of actions?
(point)Are you telling anyone that the reason you can feed the homeless is that you are not afraid that you might become homeless? Are you telling people that you are not concerned that you might be interfering with someone's natural consequences, someone's opportunity to learn from their mistakes? Are you telling people that you don't care what they think of you for spending time with people who are not from your own social class?
(calm)What you need to do is share this idea-this truth-that we should not box God into something that looks like us, that we should do what is right, that we don't have to decide who is good and who is bad, and that we are forgiven our mistakes. Who doesn't need to hear this? Who wouldn't benefit from it? Those women were wrong not to spread the Good News of Jesus Crucified and Christ Resurrected. Yes, they were wrong for good reasons. They were wrong for fear of personal failure. They were wrong for fear of humiliation and punishment by the law. They were wrong for fear of ridicule for experiencing something supernatural, something that answered why, not just who what or where. They were wrong because they, like us, did not want to face their own mortality, their own humanness. But they were wrong. Don't you be wrong, too.
Amen.
Sunday, April 2, 2006
The Day is Surely Come
The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. God already had a covenant with Israel. He gave it to Moses on the stone tablets as the 10 Commandments. God had a lot of work to do in the old covenant. He had to lay down a lot of rules and he did a lot of smiting and smoting and smelting.
Much like a parent-child relationship. In fact, I have a lot of lists in my house that look like the 10 commandments and the book of Leviticus.
Thou shalt not hit thy sibling.
Thou shalt not write upon the wall, or the refrigerator, nor shall you write upon the toilet seat in permanent marker, nor on the couch, nor on your clothing, Thou shalt write only upon the paper approved by the parent in charge. Only on the paper granted by the parent in charge shall you write.
It is a lot of work trying to think of all the things they are going to write on, before they do it. What I really want them to do is see the rightness of paper, but to also intuit the exceptions of whiteboards and chalkboards with the appropriate writing instruments.
This is what God is dreaming of when he says,
I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
God dreams of the day that his children will grow up and see the rightness that binds all the rules together. To see how all the laws in Deuteronomy and Leviticus and all the cheater notes attached to the Torah ever since add up to just a simple bumper sticker of a religion. He wants us to see that they all wind up in Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
In the old covenant, it is all one-sided. God, like a parent, is handing down all these rules, and we, like the child, are not personally invested in them. We didn't get to have a family meeting and come up with the rules and consequences, so we are pretty much committed to breaking them as much and as well as often.
But God didn't just keep dreaming wistfully that Israel would get it. Not like me. He did something about it, he sent Jesus to both show us the way, and provide the means to accomplishment a new covenant. And Jesus was no Moses; he didn't have any problems with being a leader-he was totally uninterested in being a good leader, too much politicking and not enough action. And he didn't have Moses' problems with scribes either-he didn't need anything written down.
The covenant Jesus was to deliver is written on our hearts.
Speaking of heart, here is a 1 minute history lesson. For the Israelites, heart wasn't the seat of indigestion that it is today; a symbol of passionate love and squishy feelings. The heart was the measure of one's intelligence and will power. So for God to imprint the new covenant on our hearts doesn't mean he was trying to make us stupider; he was trying to make us smarter.
But smart people can do stupid things. So Jesus didn't complicate the message this time, hoping that we would get it by decyfering the beatitudes and the parables: he said, love god, love your neighbor. And when we wanted to narrow down the definition of neighbor, he said-a Samaritan makes a good neighbor, which would be whoever is lowering property values in your neighborhood. He just flat said, love your enemies and for good measure, pray for your persecutors, too. These are the tenants of the new covenant. In the new covenant, the action belongs to us. Because the new covenant happens in the realm of realization, in the world, in us.
The goal didn't change for God. God has always desired for us a life that is radically different than our inclination. Remember that Jews, in worshiping the one God were already radically different than their neighbors in Palestine and Egypt and the rest of the diaspora. They were radically different than their Roman rules. They had hospitality rules, and forgiveness of debt rules and they had to give their pagan workers the Sabbath day off too. But they got too busy keeping themselves different, that they had little or no room for anyone else to realize the bounty of God.
The realm of action needed to change. Enter Jesus, stage left, walk across, exit stage right. He wasn't here very long, and he didn't do very much. Half of the Old Testament is about Moses, doing this or that or the other thing. Jesus came, showed us what to do, and died, just so we could believe.
What exactly happens, though, when we get the law of God written on our hearts? What makes a Christian out of any old nice person, or even not so nice person? Recall, this isn't a warm fuzzy feeling, it is a new strength of will and intelligent behavior that come from being 'in christ.' as Paul would say. Baptism is being born into Christ. The water allows us to symbolically share in Christ's death and to be resurrected as his “hands and feet.” As the body of Christ in the world, we are the visible signs of God's grace in the world.
Listen to that – We are the visible signs of God's grace in the world.
Do the people who know you, know you are a Christian? And, how do they know it? Did you have to tell them, have you told them? If we are walking around as the hands and feet of Christ, and not doing the work of Christ's hands and feet, and no one know that we are Christians----Then are we really showing the grace of God in the world? Can we really be surprised when people say there is not God, when we don't act like it ourselves?
And if God has forgiven our iniquity, and remembers our sin no more --
but we are finger pointing, and blaming, and turning away and minding our own business, exactly what does that say about us? About God? We never should have to tell people who God is- they should know by looking at us.
Don't get to wrapped up in the idea that this is all just a metaphor. And don't get too lost in literalness. Don't be afraid to show yourself to Christian because Christians have a bit of the bad name right about now. Be afraid because you are acting like Jesus-calling down justice for the poor and the prisoner; calling a self-righteous religious spade the spade he is. Be afraid because you are acting like Jesus-after all, this is the sort of behavior that got Jesus killed.
Not much smoting coming from above these days. Because God has changed our covenant. He has let us into the family meeting and we have a say in the consequences of our actions. God still cares about justice. We are his voice, and the words are written on our hearts.
Amen.
Much like a parent-child relationship. In fact, I have a lot of lists in my house that look like the 10 commandments and the book of Leviticus.
Thou shalt not hit thy sibling.
Thou shalt not write upon the wall, or the refrigerator, nor shall you write upon the toilet seat in permanent marker, nor on the couch, nor on your clothing, Thou shalt write only upon the paper approved by the parent in charge. Only on the paper granted by the parent in charge shall you write.
It is a lot of work trying to think of all the things they are going to write on, before they do it. What I really want them to do is see the rightness of paper, but to also intuit the exceptions of whiteboards and chalkboards with the appropriate writing instruments.
This is what God is dreaming of when he says,
I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
God dreams of the day that his children will grow up and see the rightness that binds all the rules together. To see how all the laws in Deuteronomy and Leviticus and all the cheater notes attached to the Torah ever since add up to just a simple bumper sticker of a religion. He wants us to see that they all wind up in Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
In the old covenant, it is all one-sided. God, like a parent, is handing down all these rules, and we, like the child, are not personally invested in them. We didn't get to have a family meeting and come up with the rules and consequences, so we are pretty much committed to breaking them as much and as well as often.
But God didn't just keep dreaming wistfully that Israel would get it. Not like me. He did something about it, he sent Jesus to both show us the way, and provide the means to accomplishment a new covenant. And Jesus was no Moses; he didn't have any problems with being a leader-he was totally uninterested in being a good leader, too much politicking and not enough action. And he didn't have Moses' problems with scribes either-he didn't need anything written down.
The covenant Jesus was to deliver is written on our hearts.
Speaking of heart, here is a 1 minute history lesson. For the Israelites, heart wasn't the seat of indigestion that it is today; a symbol of passionate love and squishy feelings. The heart was the measure of one's intelligence and will power. So for God to imprint the new covenant on our hearts doesn't mean he was trying to make us stupider; he was trying to make us smarter.
But smart people can do stupid things. So Jesus didn't complicate the message this time, hoping that we would get it by decyfering the beatitudes and the parables: he said, love god, love your neighbor. And when we wanted to narrow down the definition of neighbor, he said-a Samaritan makes a good neighbor, which would be whoever is lowering property values in your neighborhood. He just flat said, love your enemies and for good measure, pray for your persecutors, too. These are the tenants of the new covenant. In the new covenant, the action belongs to us. Because the new covenant happens in the realm of realization, in the world, in us.
The goal didn't change for God. God has always desired for us a life that is radically different than our inclination. Remember that Jews, in worshiping the one God were already radically different than their neighbors in Palestine and Egypt and the rest of the diaspora. They were radically different than their Roman rules. They had hospitality rules, and forgiveness of debt rules and they had to give their pagan workers the Sabbath day off too. But they got too busy keeping themselves different, that they had little or no room for anyone else to realize the bounty of God.
The realm of action needed to change. Enter Jesus, stage left, walk across, exit stage right. He wasn't here very long, and he didn't do very much. Half of the Old Testament is about Moses, doing this or that or the other thing. Jesus came, showed us what to do, and died, just so we could believe.
What exactly happens, though, when we get the law of God written on our hearts? What makes a Christian out of any old nice person, or even not so nice person? Recall, this isn't a warm fuzzy feeling, it is a new strength of will and intelligent behavior that come from being 'in christ.' as Paul would say. Baptism is being born into Christ. The water allows us to symbolically share in Christ's death and to be resurrected as his “hands and feet.” As the body of Christ in the world, we are the visible signs of God's grace in the world.
Listen to that – We are the visible signs of God's grace in the world.
Do the people who know you, know you are a Christian? And, how do they know it? Did you have to tell them, have you told them? If we are walking around as the hands and feet of Christ, and not doing the work of Christ's hands and feet, and no one know that we are Christians----Then are we really showing the grace of God in the world? Can we really be surprised when people say there is not God, when we don't act like it ourselves?
And if God has forgiven our iniquity, and remembers our sin no more --
but we are finger pointing, and blaming, and turning away and minding our own business, exactly what does that say about us? About God? We never should have to tell people who God is- they should know by looking at us.
Don't get to wrapped up in the idea that this is all just a metaphor. And don't get too lost in literalness. Don't be afraid to show yourself to Christian because Christians have a bit of the bad name right about now. Be afraid because you are acting like Jesus-calling down justice for the poor and the prisoner; calling a self-righteous religious spade the spade he is. Be afraid because you are acting like Jesus-after all, this is the sort of behavior that got Jesus killed.
Not much smoting coming from above these days. Because God has changed our covenant. He has let us into the family meeting and we have a say in the consequences of our actions. God still cares about justice. We are his voice, and the words are written on our hearts.
Amen.
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