In Praise of Persistent Women

There is no power on earth equal to that of a persistent woman. That’s the message for today. If you want to write down the point of this sermon, well, I’ve given it away already. No holding out for a big suspenseful ending to today’s sermon. The message is clear—there is no power on earth equal to that of a persistent woman.

Now you might think that statement’s a little dramatic. After all there are quite a few powerful things on earth and heaven we might talk about. There’s the power of the persistent mosquito. There are hurricanes and earthquakes and all manner of forces of power and destruction. There is the power of God, which we might want to say is more powerful than that of a persistent woman. But stick with me on this one for a minute. In the gospel parable of the day it is very clear that the power of a persistent woman is a thing to be reckoned with above all else.

You might also think my statement is a little exclusive. After all, can’t men be persistent as well? Can’t men be at least as powerful in their persistence? And how about children? They can be persistent. If you’ve ever taken a child through the check-out line in the grocery store past all that candy, you know they have a persuasive power all their own. But there’s no getting around the point of this parable. It’s a woman who holds the power here. And the fact that she is a woman is important.

Are you curious yet? Let’s take a little closer look at this gospel parable for today because it’s good comedy. Luke chapter 18 begins with Jesus telling his disciples a parable. A parable is a favorite way for Jesus to teach. It’s a story, and as with most stories, the point of the story is not always easy to express in only one way. Each time you hear a story, you hear it slightly differently and get a slightly different meaning from it. Jesus is usually content to let you do that with his parables.

But here the author of Luke does something that he doesn’t do very often. None of the gospel writers do this very much. Luke tells the point of the parable right up front! Kind of like I did with this sermon. No guessing what this is about. Jesus tells the disciples a story about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. Which is probably a very good thing for him to do since he just spent the last part of chapter 17 telling them how difficult their lives would be in the days and years to come.

So there it is. This is supposed to be a story about the need to pray always and not to lose heart. And the main character in this story is…well, you know whom the story is about. I told you at the very beginning. It’s about a… Well, actually it’s about a judge, but the persistent woman will show up in a minute.

Jesus says, “There was this city, you see. And in this city was a judge, but he was not a good, just, and fair judge like Judge Judy.” (Jesus didn’t actually talk about Judge Judy, I’m paraphrasing.) “Anyway, this judge neither feared God nor did he have any respect for people.” You’ve known judges like that. We’ve all heard of judges like that, who become corrupted by the power of their position and generally disregard fairness and justice in order to protect those who ought not to be protected. Believe it or not, even in Jesus’ day a corrupt judge was a believable character. Some things don’t change.

What doesn’t change is the fact that this is not the way things were supposed to be. One of the things judges were supposed to do is to give a fair hearing to everybody. In the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy the judges are told, “You must not be partial in judging: hear out the small and the great alike; you shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s.” [Deut. 1:17] Judges are supposed to fear God and they are supposed to respect people, but this judge in Jesus’ story does neither.

But I said there was a persistent woman in this story and there is. She lived in this same city. She was a widow, which in Jesus’ day meant that she was one of the most vulnerable members of the society. In Biblical times, there was no Social Security, no supplemental benefits, no aid to survivors. In a patriarchal world, men were the key to some sort of safety net. And judges in particular were given the task of ensuring that some measure of justice was done for the widows and the orphans. In the book of Sirach, part of our Apocrypha, judges are given the model of God, the righteous judge, and we are told that God “will not ignore the supplication of the orphan, or the widow when she pours out her complaint.” [Sir. 35:17] Judges are supposed to do the same.

Now we don’t know what the particular case of this particular widow was, but she had a case. She had an opponent and she had a legal dispute with this opponent and the only way that she could ensure justice in her case was to keep appealing to the judge, who just happened to be the corrupt judge from verse 2. Of course, being a corrupt judge, he refuses to help her.

But this is a persistent woman, and the point of this sermon is—there is no power on earth equal to that of a persistent woman. So the story doesn’t end here. The judge has a little soliloquy that we are allowed to overhear. He is talking to himself and he’s very honest. Very self-aware. He says to himself, “Self, I know that have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, but this widow keeps bothering me.”

Now that’s how the New Revised Standard Version puts it. The King James Version says, “She troubleth me.” But that’s not how the Greek puts it. The Greek literally says, “This widow is threatening to give me a beating.” When I said this woman is persistent, I mean she is persistent and this judge, who doesn’t even fear God, is physically afraid of the most vulnerable member of society.

It gets even better. The New Revised Standard Version continues, “Because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” Well, this makes it sound like the widow will get her way just because she’s a very good nag who will eventually wear the judge down. But that’s not what’s going on here and it’s a terrible translation of the Greek. What it literally says is that the judge is going to grant her justice because the widow might come up and give him a black eye! It’s a boxing term being used here—hupopiaze—and it means, to strike somebody just below the eye or to beat them black and blue. What the judge says is, “I’m going to give this woman what she wants, because she’s liable to haul off and hupopiaze me.” And no self-respecting person, even one who has no fear of God, wants to be hupopiaz-ied. Behold the power of persistent women!

Now that’s the end of the story. And remember this is being billed as a story about the need to pray always and not to lose heart. So Jesus makes the connection for them. “Listen to what that crooked judge says. He’s willing to grant justice even though he doesn’t give a lick about real justice, just because of this woman. How much more will God grant justice to God’s children who cry to him day and night? Will he be slow in helping them? Of course not. God will quickly grant justice to them.”

Now there’s a lot of distance between the judge in the story and God. God does care about real justice and it is in the nature of God to grant justice. It is also the case that God is presumably not in the position of feeling bullied or physically threatened by petitioners who might do God some harm. But what does this tell us about prayer?

Do we really believe that the best form of prayer is constant nagging? Is it really a matter of saying the right thing the right number of times with the right attitude? If an enemy is oppressing me, whether it’s my neighbor or a bottle of alcohol, is it really my persistent begging in just the right tone that will cause God to release me? Will the petitions of 300 million Americans offered to God in regular intervals with sufficient fervor bring about an end to terrorist bombings and justice for the wronged? And what then do we say to the mountains of seemingly unanswered prayers offered in sincerity, blood, sweat and tears by persistent women and men of every generation?

If we are to pray always and not to lose heart…If we are to cry out night and day…If God, who has been our guide for centuries and who promises a kingdom that is not yet come, if this God promised to quickly grant justice to those who call upon God…If all these things be true, then prayer cannot be what I have just described. Because there are just are not enough minutes in the day when a creature like me could offer up prayers appropriate to the justice I desire. There is not enough fervor or strength in my body or soul that could earn the merit of God’s attention. There is no way I could make my case with any confidence that it was worthy of this high standard of prayer Jesus seems to set.

But then I remember the persistent woman. If her pursuit of her case is a model for prayer, then it certainly is not a passive-aggressive model that alternates nagging with waiting on something to happen on her behalf. The widow in Jesus’ story doesn’t wait around for something to happen. She is there every day, tapped into what she already knows is just and good, and proclaiming it loudly. And as the Greek text shows, she is not an example of someone who wears down the judge with words, she is physically powerful. The most powerless person in the story has power that causes the judge to cower because she is living her life already out of an understanding of that justice she desires. Before the judge does anything, the widow has received power, and it doesn’t come from him.

This is why Jesus adds one more line to this story that I haven’t yet mentioned. After the story of the woman and the judge, after the promise that God will quickly grant justice to those who call out for it, Jesus asks one more question. “And yet, when all is said and done, when the Son of Humanity comes, will he find faith on earth?” Will he find that people are not waiting around for what will come in the future, but rather, will they be actively living their faith out in the here and now?

I have a friend, Molly Gee, who wrote an article in the latest newsletter from the Wesley Foundation at UVA, our campus ministry there. In it she talks about going to a John Mayer concert and listening to him sing one of his most popular songs, “Waiting on the World to Change.” Molly says that at first she liked the song because it expresses a hope that things will change. Now she says, it drives her nuts. In the song, John Mayer “talks about he and his friends don’t like the way things are and so they wait. What are they waiting for?” At the concert she says she found herself standing beside a young woman who was screaming throughout the concert, “I love you, John Mayer!” Molly says she worried about this young woman, “singing along with this song and thinking she’s an activist because of it. Knowing the world needs to change is a good first step, but waiting doesn’t do a thing.”

Molly says that the other singer at that concert was Sheryl Crow and she found herself envying Sheryl’s muscular arms through the concert. So after the concert she started lifting weights. “I don’t have Sheryl Crow’s arms,” she says, “but I’m a little closer than I was. Change takes time.”[i]

So what are we doing when we pray? Are we just waiting? Paul’s letter to the Romans contains a great truth. He says, very realistically, I believe, that we do not know how to pray. Even with all of the best methods, even with all of the best intentions, even when we’ve been doing it for years, we do not know how to pray. And yet we are commanded to do so. Is it so that we can offer up a laundry list of needs, desires, and Christmas wishes? Or is it so that we can stand before God in all of our inarticulate insecurity, to say the simple, hopelessly inappropriate words that we can say, and to feel all of our mumbling and bumbling swept up nevertheless into the heart of God? That’s what the Holy Spirit does, you see. As Paul says, the Spirit intercedes with sighs to deep for words. What that tells me is that we don’t pray. The Spirit does.

We don’t pray. We simply tap into that awesome power at the center of the universe and the center of our lives and we hold on for dear life. We open ourselves to prayer because it is in prayer that we discover that justice is not something we wait for in the Second Coming, it’s something being worked out in our lives every day. Justice won’t come because we beg some heavenly sugar daddy for it. Justice comes because persistent women and persistent men refuse to accept the world as it is. The transformation God intends for all creation is not just a highlight for the end of the world news wrap-up; it’s happening now in the lives of praying people.

So I can resonate with a widow packing a powerful right jab for justice. I can celebrate that the kingdom is not just yet to come, but already is. And I can see that the company of persistent women is large and growing. From Catherine of Siena in the 14th century who was the counsel of popes to Dorothy Day in the 20th century who fought for fair working conditions in urban America. From a Canaanite woman who argued with Jesus to ensure the healing of her child, to the women of Afghanistan who are treated like ghosts in their own land, but who will yet tell a story of redemption and hope. I believe in the power of persistent women, and I pray that I may pray with their knowledge, which sees beyond the way things are, to the way things are in God’s eyes.

As a church, we should pray this way, too. Because God hears and knows. And God will transform the world. When God does, I hope we won’t be waiting around, but fighting for justice. Thanks be to God.

Luke 18:1-8
He also told them a parable regarding the necessity of praying always and not to lose heart. He said, “There was a certain judge in a certain city that did not fear God, nor did he have regard for people. Now there was a widow in that city and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Vindicate me against my adversary.’ For a time he did not want to do this, but eventually he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God nor respect people, still I will vindicate this widow because she is causing me vexation and so that in the end she doesn’t come beat me black and blue.’”

Then the Lord said, “Hear what the unjust judge has to say. Will God not make vindication for his chosen people who are crying out to him day and night? And will he delay long over them? I tell you he will make vindication for them speedily. Even so, when the Son of Humanity has come, will he find faith upon the earth?”

[i] Molly Gee, “Waiting on the World to Change,” Wesley Word, Fall 2007

The People of God in the Land of America

I’ve really got just one thing to say this morning. It’s an important thing. I mean, I would even be so bold as to say that it is a message from God. But it’s really just one thing. And the one thing is: Be restless but stay put. That’s it. Be restless but stay put. So if you nod off this morning or forget where I’m headed over the next three hours, just remember this, because it’s what the sermon is all about. Be restless but stay put.

I know that sounds strange coming from a United Methodist minister. After all, John Wesley, the first Methodist, put restlessness into our DNA back in the 18th century and we Methodists have been on the move ever since. Our most celebrated figures are the circuit riding preachers who started churches like…well…this one. They took seriously Wesley’s admonition never to stay in any one place any longer than was strictly necessary. And so these preachers on horseback were constantly on the move, preaching the gospel, establishing new small groups and never settling down.

So you may think it’s strange to get a message like this from me: Be restless but stay put. You might think I’m not a very credible witness. I mean, we don’t move as much as we used to, but United Methodist preachers are still itinerant. We still move. So you might think, “O.K., you’re telling me to stay put, but when are you going to stay put?”

You also might think this is not a very biblical message. I mean didn’t Abraham and Sarah pack up everything they had and leave their home and their family and head off to follow God’s promise in the land of Canaan? Didn’t the people of Israel wander through the wilderness for forty years after they escaped slavery? Didn’t God take Ruth from her home and David from his sheep and Amos from his sycamore trees and Peter from his fishing nets and Matthew from his tax business and turn their lives around and turn the world upside down through their restlessness and refusal to stay put? Didn’t Jesus say that foxes have holes and birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head? [Mat. 8:20] Didn’t Paul make his first missionary journey and his second missionary journey and his third missionary journey and his fourth missionary journey so that when you look at the map in the back of your study bible that shows Paul’s travels it looks like some child has taken a Crayola pack to it? Aren’t we marching to Zion and walking on the heaven road? Haven’t we decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back? Don’t we want to walk in Jerusalem just like John? Don’t we sing that some glad morning I’ll fly away? Doesn’t 1 John say, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world”? [1 Jo. 2:15] Aren’t we in the world but not of it? How can you say, Alex, that God says, “Be restless but stay put.” We’re on a journey here. We’re heaven-bound. This train is bound for glory. This train.

All of which reminds me of monks. Monks are like the opposite of Wesley’s circuit-riding preachers. One of the things that makes them so different is that they take some pretty significant vows. Poverty, celibacy, obedience – these are typical vows in a monastic community. But they also take a vow of stabilitas. It is a vow of stability, which means that they enter a monastery with the intention of living their entire lives in that community. In some cases they vow never to leave the walls of the monastery again.

In medieval days there were elaborate ceremonies held for monks entering the monastery. In effect, they were funerals. You could go to your own funeral, because in a real way you were committing your life to this monastic order unto death.

This seems very extreme to us who live in a very different culture and time where stability is how we talk about our psychological state rather than how we live. We wonder how someone could do that. How could someone give their entire lives to one place or one order?

Dwight Longenecker, the chaplain at St. Joseph’s Catholic School in Greenville, South Carolina, says that “the vow of stability means the monk promises to remain in one community for life. He commits himself to one family of monks, one place, one set of buildings, one way of life. The whole point is to stop him doing 'a geographical'. He's not allowed to run away. Stability teaches us that God is not elsewhere. We'll find him here. We'll find him now, or we won't find him anyhow. Stability is a rock.”[i]

Stability is a rock. That’s how an oyster grows. It finds a place to root and that’s where it stays. An oyster rock is the place where it flourishes. Could the same be true for us?

Richmond Hill is an ecumenical retreat center on Church Hill in the city of Richmond. The community that runs the center is a residential city made up primarily of lay people who have committed themselves to living together under an order using a monastic model. It is different from traditional monastic communities, though. People come and go. They work in other jobs outside the community in Richmond.

But Richmond Hill has kept a vow of stabilitas. This is how they interpret that: We will live in this community as if it will be the place where we die. We will live here as if it will be the place where we will die. It is their way of saying, “I am not giving this community only a part of myself. I am giving everything I have to it. When I see something that needs to be fixed I will fix it. If I have a personality conflict with someone I won’t just wait them out. I will treat this community as if it is the last one I will be in, because it may be. Who knows if I will move again or if Christ will come again? But I will work to pass it along to the next generation and to preserve what is good about it.” Now that’s a good message for Methodist ministers and for all of us who find ourselves moving. Live in a place as if it’s the last place we’ll ever live.

There’s a similar message in Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a prophet, not a bullfrog. Even though we haven’t been following it in recent weeks, Jeremiah has been running through the lectionary. The story it tells is about how his ministry unfolded. The early part of the book tells of Jeremiah’s realization that he was born with a purpose, which was to proclaim God’s word to a people who were not always ready to hear it. Jeremiah spoke to the people of his nation, the nation of Judah, God’s chosen people, and told them that their land would be devastated by the Babylonians and their people carried off into exile. Not exactly a popular thing to say. As you might expect it didn’t win friends and influence people. Jeremiah was thrown into a pit, held under house arrest—but even then, he was looking to the future. Jeremiah bought a piece of land at ground zero as a symbol of hope in the midst of trial.

Well, today, I find Jeremiah speaking to us once again, because Jeremiah knew what it was like to be restless and yet to stay put. I think he also has something to tell us about what it means to be one of the people of God living in a foreign land, and we could say that America, much as we love it and much as it is our home, is in some ways like a foreign land for Christians. He might help us understand what it means to be the people of God in the land of America.

Today’s passage from Jeremiah comes much later in the story. About 597 BC, (which is a good, long time ago), what Jeremiah the prophet had been warning about happens. Jerusalem is overrun by the Babylonians. The city is plundered. The king and rulers and all of the skilled people in the nation are carted off to Babylon as exiles. The people who are left are defenseless and weak. The economy is in ruins. Unemployment has skyrocketed. CNN has begun special news reports titled “Jerusalem Under Attack.” The stock market has crashed and pork belly futures are looking mighty dim. But I guess in a Jewish land pork belly futures are always looking mighty dim, aren’t they? It’s not a pretty scene.

But even in the midst of all of this tragedy, some of the people, including the religious leaders, are starting to crow about the fact that they hadn’t been carried off to Babylon, so that must mean that they weren’t as bad as the ones who had been. Maybe God had some sort of special protection for them!

Other folks were talking about getting up an army to go and take on the Babylonians and bring their people back, which is a little like Luxembourg deciding to declare war on the United States. It’s not very realistic. So Jeremiah must be shaking his head and thinking, “What have I got to do to get through to these people? Wake up and smell the falafel, Jerusalem! You have not been faithful to God and you are still not able to understand what is happening. There is no special protection. There is no divine favor for Jerusalem. The Babylonians have come.” And Jeremiah knows that they will come again and this time there will be nothing left of the great city.

Then Jeremiah does an interesting thing. He writes a letter to the exiles, to the people who have been carried off to Babylon. And what do you think he tells them? Does he tell them to start forming a Resistance Underground movement to overthrow the Babylonians? Does he tell them to grin and bear the punishment they are receiving but to separate themselves from the Babylonians so that the Jews are always seen in opposition to the government? Does he send them a cake with a file in it and say, “Good luck!”? No, what Jeremiah tells them is to pray for the Babylonians.

Actually what he tells them is this: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. (This is because you are going to be in Babylon for quite awhile. This is not a short-term stint. In fact, the exiles stayed in Babylon for seventy years.) Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. (That language should be familiar. That’s just what God told Adam and Eve to do at the beginning of creation—be fruitful and multiply. It’s just what the Hebrew slaves did in Egypt – they were fruitful and multiplied. Even though they were no longer connected to the land that was also a part of that original promise, they were still to multiply.)

Here’s the most interesting part: Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. The God of Israel, who had chosen this people out of all the nations of the earth, who had guided them as they carved out a place for themselves in the land of Canaan, who had warned them about the influence of foreign gods and foreign leaders, who had set them apart—this God is now commanding the people to pray for their enemy, to pray for their persecutors, to pray for the very people who had taken away everything they had ever loved. And why? “Because in its welfare you will find your welfare.” They were still to be separate peoples. They were still to maintain their identity and to do the things that were appropriate to the people of God. But they were to recognize that they were now connected to the nation in which they found themselves. They were to pray for the good things about Babylon that could help them be faithful to God.

You know, there have always been groups within the Christian tradition that have felt that the most faithful way to follow Jesus is to separate themselves from the world. These groups develop their own societies that strive for a kind of purity. The Anabaptists of the Reformation period rejected all civil authority and refused to participate in public service of any kind. Part of that was a refusal to take up arms on behalf of the state. Menonnites and the Amish are direct descendents of this branch of the Reformation.

There is something very attractive about this. With all the biblical warnings about being tempted by the world and of the dangers of loving the world too much, it is easy to see why Christians have tried to keep their distance. Knowing how easily we can be seduced and deluded…knowing how many times Christians have compromised their allegiance to Christ by falling under the spell of the latest political theory or an intricate philosophical construct or materialism or something else…knowing all this, it seems right, doesn’t it?, that we should be separate from the world.

Our ultimate allegiance does not belong to America but to Jesus Christ. It is our worship of the God of Jesus Christ that tells us who we are and how we are to live. But it is because of this…because we love God and because we follow Jesus that we do care about this land. It’s because of our journey to the land that is yet to come that we care enough to stay put. As Jeremiah reminds us—we are to pray for this land of America and that is what we do each week. We pray for its leaders and its military, because they are our leaders and our military. We pray for the welfare of this land and we pray that our witness to the love of Christ may build it up and not tear it down. We pray for America, not only because we’re Americans, not even primarily because we’re Americans. We pray for America because we are the people of God, and as wanderers in this weary land, we are always seeking the good and pointing the way to the source of that good. We are always pointing the way to God.

I got to spend some time this week with Pete over at Terry Brothers in Willis Wharf. Pete and Tom have donated a lot of seed clams for the beds that the youth are planting as their new fund-raising project. But what you discover if you talk to Pete for any length of time is that he really cares about what he does and about this place. He talks very passionately about water quality and aquaculture and economic development and oysters. I learned more about oysters in an hour with him than I have in my whole life. Did you know that they can change genders in their life cycle? Fascinating.

But Pete also cares about passing along the knowledge and heritage of the Shore. He talked about how important it is that young people learn the ways of the water and how to be stewards of it. It’s obvious he loves this place, but not for its own sake. He also wants to pass it along.

That is what it means to be restless and to stay put. To know that we are all transient, even if we live our whole lives between Kiptopeke and Kegotank, and yet to love this world for God’s sake. To be responsible for its care, to be fruitful and to multiply, and to spread the knowledge of God’s holiness throughout. We may be passing through but God has given us work to do as we pass through. It may all come to an end tomorrow. The kingdom may come. Christ may return. But what shall we offer him as people who have been entrusted with the care of others and of the land?

Sometimes the most radical thing we can do as Christians is not to go around the world, but to simply stay put, giving our lives to the place where we are because God is here. We say that. But do we believe that in this place we will find the one who is closer to us than we are to ourselves? And will we help this world around us, that we so wrongly call God-forsaken…will we help the world understand that the word became flesh and dwelt among us? And the promise is that he is still with us to the end of the age. Thanks be to God.

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 (NRSV)
These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon…Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

[i] Fr Dwight Longenecker, “The Benedictine Way -1”, Standing on My Head, June 2007, http://gkupsidedown.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

Soundings: Money

Here’s a word of warning. Today’s sermon is likely to make you nervous. It makes me nervous. We’re going back to the Bible for one more sounding, an exploration on a topic that has made people nervous for centuries. We’re going to look at something that has occupied our dreams and possessed our souls. It’s something we never seem to have enough of and yet something that can be dangerous even when we only have a little. It is money and we still don’t know what to think about it after all these years, even here in America.

Ben Franklin said, "Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instrad of filling a vacuum, it makes one.” That’s one great American philosopher said. Another one, actress Bo Derek, said, "Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping."[i] So who are you gonna believe?

Well, let’s go to the Bible and see what it says. Like I say, it’s going to make you nervous, because it has a consistent message and it is this: money has some pretty dangerous side effects and should not be taken lightly. The principle danger is that it can make us forgetful – forgetful of who we are, of what our responsibilities to other are, and forgetful of God. Those are some pretty bad side effects.

Now it’s not that the Bible condemns money and wealth. If it were so easily dealt with it wouldn’t be mentioned so much, and it is mentioned a lot. In some places wealth is seen as a sign of blessing. In Genesis we read in chapter 13, verse 2 that “Abram [the inheritor of God’s promise] became very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold.” Isaac, his son, in chapter 26 verse 13 becomes rich. “He prospered more and more until he became very wealthy.” Jacob and Joseph, the next two in the line, were also very prosperous eventually.

But God knows how easily we confuse material wealth with divine blessing. I begin to think, “Well, if I am rich, that must mean that God is pleased. So what’s wrong with showing it off?” And that’s how bling was born. So the Bible also tells us some other things about money.

Psalm 49 verses 16 and 17 tell us “Don’t be afraid when some become rich, when the wealth of their houses increases. For when they die that will carry nothing away; their wealth will not go down after them.” You’ve probably heard this verse in its shortened form – “You can’t take it with you.” Ecclesiastes warns us that money will not make you sleep better at night. Chapter 5 verse 12 says, “Sweet is the sleep of laborers, whether they eat little or much, but the excess of the rich will not them sleep.” Isaiah the prophet says that money will also tempt us to go after things that are not good for us. Chapter 55 verse 2: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” There’s many a gambler in Vegas who needs to hear that voice in their head.

And then there’s Jesus. Jesus talked a LOT about money. He seemed to know about these dangerous side effects and he offered some pretty radical remedies for them. He did spend a lot of time among the poor, but Jesus also seemed to spend time among the wealthy. He ate at Zaccheus’ home, and even though little Zack was short of stature, he wasn’t short of cash. The Bible says he “was a chief tax collector and he was rich.” [Luke 19:2] Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man, was a follower who provided the tomb that Jesus borrowed for a weekend. [Matt. 27:57-60] Rich people often came to him for advice and Jesus loved them.

A rich young man came to Jesus asking him what he must do to inherit eternal life. The gospel writer, Mark, tells us that when Jesus saw how sincere this young man was – he really wanted to know the answer – chapter 10 verse 21 says, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” But then Jesus goes on to tell him a very hard thing. He knew that the young man’s possessions were standing between him and the life he needed to live. So he tells him, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

It was this kind of talk that even made the disciples, who had left everything, nervous. After this episode, Jesus took them aside and said, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven.” [Luke 10:23] This was too much for the disciples. They say, “Wait a minute. Then who can be saved?” That’s when Jesus reminds them what this whole salvation thing was based on. It’s ultimately not about what we have and what we can do that determines our relationship with God. It is what God has done and is doing through grace that gives us entry. In Jesus’ words: “For human beings this is impossible, but not for God. For God all things are possible.” [Luke 10:27]

There were other disturbing things that Jesus said. He pronounced woes on the rich “because you have received your consolation,” he said. [Luke 6:24] He warned that “no slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” [Luke 16:13] As Bob Dylan might put it, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody” and it can’t be money.

Jesus also told disturbing stories, like the one we read this morning. Luke 16 verses 19 through 31 tells the story of a rich man and Lazarus. There couldn’t be a bigger contrast between these two figures. The rich man sits around in the best clothes and eats the best food -- it’s like take-out from the Exmore Diner every day. But outside the gate of his house there sits a poor man, Lazarus, who is covered with sores and who longs just to eat the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table. But Lazarus doesn’t do things. Things are done to him. So he lies there as the dogs come and lick his wounds.

Then both of them die and the contrast continues, only this time Lazarus is carried off by angels to be with Father Abraham in the Jewish conception of heaven. The rich man, by contrast, goes to hell. We don’t know why they end up where they do. Jesus seems to suggest that it’s because of how the rich man ignored the poor, but all we really know is that the rich man hasn’t followed the law of Moses.

We also know that rich man hasn’t changed much in hell. Even though he’s in torment, he’s still trying to command people. “Father Abraham, send Lazarus over here to quench my thirst with a finger dipped in water. Send him to my brothers to warn them.” Do this. Do that. But it doesn’t work. Abraham tells him that “Between you and us a great ditch has been fixed.”

A ditch? A canyon? A chasm? Who put that there? If it was Abraham or God, surely God could find a loophole or an escape clause to extend mercy when the situation (or those being tortured) cried out for it. But then the story doesn’t say that God put that ditch there. Maybe it’s the same huge divide that existed in life between the rich man’s table and his outer gate where Lazarus lay…a divide that only the dogs could seem to cross. And who put that divide in place?

I think we’ve found one of those scary side effects of money. When we use our money, or our obsession with money, to insulate us from the world and from the poor and from others, then we start constructing barriers that persist in our souls and on into eternity. We can use our money to connect us to the world. Through our giving and offering up of all that we have to God’s use then we can overcome some of those divides. But we can also turn inward and forget that God is calling us out from our cocoons to the fields and villages where God can show us how to love.

This is why there are so many warnings in the letters of the early church about loving money too dearly. Hebrews 13 verse 5 says, “Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for [God[ has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’” 2 Timothy 3 verse 2 says that in the last days one of the prevailing evils will be that “people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money.” The book of James is shot through with warnings about the preferential treatment that the rich are receiving over the poor in the church.

Then there is the famous verse from 1 Timothy 6 that we also read in our readings this morning. 6 verses 9 and 10 warn about pursuing riches instead of God. “Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by much senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.” Our riches can establish a huge divide that affects our vision, our humility, our relationship with the world, our relationship with God, and ultimately even our salvation.

On a shelf in my office I have a picture of a Mexican teenager standing in the middle of her family’s small grocery in the front room of their house. The picture is just as I want to remember her. Her face is serious -- I think only Americans feel the need to smile in every picture -- but there is a hint of bemusement there. She is wearing a track suit because she is an athlete at her school, but at the same time there is a sense of calm about her. And the fruits and vegetables that surround her in the store are alive with the strong flavors and exotic textures that I have come to associate with Mexico.

I keep Berenice on my shelf partly because she gave me the small picture frame in which I have placed her picture, but also because she once paid me the extreme honor of not making me feel like a guest in her house. Her family is one of modest means. Her father is often away for months at a time, working in Dallas or Chicago or northern Mexico or wherever he knows there is work. Her mother runs the small grocery with the help of Berenice and her older brother. They don’t have much. But they are willing to share what they have.

In the fall of 2001 and again in the spring of 2002 I got to stay with them as part of mission trips I took to work with the Mexican Methodist church in Cortazar. But Berenice did not let me be a guest on either occasion. She asked me to help her with her English homework. She called me out of my room to watch the Arizona Diamondbacks and the New York Yankees in Game 6 and 7 of their World Series. We watched on the fuzzy screen of a small television set in the front room, nestled among the chayote squash and the avocados. There was a lot that made me stick out like a sore thumb in that family, but in the bottom of the ninth of game 7, I sure couldn’t have told you what those things were.

It seems to me that the best place to learn the lesson of money is in the classroom of the poor. That’s where the rich man in Jesus’ story needed to learn it: where all pretensions to greatness are shown up as high comedy and all the anxieties of the wealthy and revealed as internal tragedy. I’ve sat in the classroom once or twice in my life. It smells of avocados and cilantro and the chairs are not always comfortable. The picture on the screen is a little fuzzy. But as much as I’m sure the people passing in the street must have done a double take to see me sitting with Berenice and the rest of my Mexican family, for that night it was my Mexican family and I had no way to make that so. I had been accepted for reasons beyond my control.

There are some dangerous side effects to money. It can make us forgetful. It can make us start to believe we’re in control. But here’s the good news: God is in control. And with God all things are possible - including the salvation of the world, rich and poor alike. Thanks be to God.

Luke 16:19-31
There was a man who was rich and he would dress himself in expensive clothes and fine linen and feast sumptuously every day. A poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate and he was covered with sores. He desired to feed from the table droppings of the rich man, but even the dogs came and licked his wounds.
In time, the poor man died and was carried off by angels to the bosom of Abraham. Then the rich man died and was buried. In Hades he raised up his head, being in torment, and he saw Abraham at a great distance and Lazarus enfolded in his care. He called out to him and said, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering in this flaming fire.”
But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus, in like manner, evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.”
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.”

[i] http://thinkexist.com/quotations/money/

Soundings: War

I thought about doing a very short sermon today. I mean, I want to do a sermon on biblical perspectives on war. And I thought, well, one way to sum it all up would be to come out here with a little bit of funky brass and say, “War. Huh. Good God, y’all. What is it good for?” Then you would respond, “Absolutely nothing.” And we’d all go home.

But that’s a little too easy. And it really doesn’t require us wrestling with the Bible, which is what we should be doing in here. It also isn’t nearly all that we want to say or want to know about war. Edwin Starr gave us a great song to sing when we are fed up with the evil that is war, but there’s a lot that we struggle with as Christians when our nation goes to war. We want to hear more. It’s great to know what Edwin thinks, but we also want to know what God thinks. So once again, let’s go to the Bible, this great, frustrating, complex, wonderful record of God’s dealings with the people of God through the centuries, and see what we can get out of a sounding on war.

I have a story before we head into this exploration. It’s a story of how history weighs so heavily on us when we come to this. I was a history major in college and one of the reasons that I was…the main reason that I was, was because of a professor of Southern History. Eddie Ayres was from the deep South and he knew the mythology of the Old South, which is what I grew up with. He knew the truth of William Faulkner’s saying, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”[i] The Civil War and the weight of southern history had endless fascination for Faulkner, a Mississippi writer, for Eddie Ayres, a Louisiana history teacher, and for me.

In his book, Intruder in the Dust, Faulkner wrote a passage that captured perfectly how I felt about this mythology of my history. He says, “For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is stll time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armstead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago....”[ii] I was that fourteen-year-old boy.

But as I grew older I came to the struggle that Faulkner and Ayres had with that history. Why did a white society with such hideous scars fascinate us so much? Underneath the magnolias and Spanish moss, there was a legacy of hatred, racism, slavery and subjugation. That war about which we knew so much, down to the fact that I know Stonewall Jackson liked to suck on lemons when he went off into battle, that war was one of the most horrific experiences we ever went through as a nation. It’s a story of unspeakable violence and death. But that’s why it stayed with us. The wounds weren’t just done to our ancestors, they remained in our flesh. So when Eddie Ayres told the stories of the old South and made us struggle with them in all their wonder and horror, it was like he was telling my story. I was hooked. And I, who at that time was a pacifist and very aware of how troubling the Vietnam War had been and very opposed to it and anything that looked like it…I spent my undergrad years studying a war that was still alive in me. The Civil War.

I say all that to say that when we look at the Bible and what it says about war we will recognize that it is not enough to say that war is evil and good for absolutely nothing. We also have to say that war is inescapable. We all carry within us the wounds it has inflicted on people in our families, even it was a generation ago. War is a constant in human history from Genesis to Revelation to the Crusades to Gettysburg to Fallujah. And the questions we bring to God about war are also consistent: Under what circumstances, if any, should God’s people be engaged in war? How do we know what God’s will is in the midst of fighting? Is there such a thing as a just war? How do we love our enemies in a time of war?

So let’s get at it. The first thing we need to say about the biblical witness on this question is that it seems very mixed, which is a kind way of saying that it doesn’t seem to fit together all that well. Think of some of the things that the Old Testament tells us about war and violence. On the one hand we have a commandment about this. Commandment number 6 on the list of the Top 10 is “Thou shalt not…kill.” Exodus 20, verse 13. The translation of that verb has always been in dispute. You may see a note in your bible that says this verse could also be translated “You shall not murder.” And that does put a different spin on it, but I think the intent is very clear. God’s presumption is always that life is to be valued, honored and preserved. It’s one of our core values as human beings. Most of us have an innate sense that killing is a violation of what God intends and even when it is done in justifiable circumstances, as in defending someone from an attacker, we recognize that something has been violated. Hunters even know this in killing animals. Most hunters I have known have a deep sense of respect for the life that they are taking. The presumption built into the commandments and into us is that life is good and it is not to be taken by murder.

So what are we to make then of all the killing that takes place in the chapters that follow this commandment? The people of Israel start to move through the wilderness and they run into other nations who do not worship the same gods and who are hostile to them. And the people, at God’s direction, start to prepare for war. The book of Numbers gets its name from a census that God commands. God tells Moses to take a census of “every male individually from twenty years old and upward, everyone in Israel able to go to war.” [Num. 1:2-3]

Before that book finishes the Israelites have gone to war with the Midianites and it is a bloodthirsty campaign. Now remember that Midian is where Moses had gone when he fled from Egypt. His wife was a Midianite. His father-in-law was a Midianite. But Chapter 31 of Numbers records how the peoples had come into conflict. God tells the Israelites to go to war and they get a thousand men from each tribe, 12,000 soldiers, and they go out and kill all the men of Midian. But even this wasn’t enough and Moses tells the people to kill the adult women, too.

Now this is hard stuff. When we talk about the violent stories of the Qur’an, the scriptures of Islam, we need to recognize that we have some of those same stories, too, and Christians have sometimes been guilty of trying to recreate them without regard to what the rest of the Bible says. Hearing these stories now, we wonder, as someone asked me this week, “Why does God give us these?” What purpose do they still serve?

We read them as lessons on how God demanded exclusivity from the people God had liberated from Egypt. They were learning how to be faithful to the one, true God and as part of that they had to learn to put away everything that would keep them from serving God and they understand that to mean putting away even the peoples who would lead them astray. Was this part of their journey? Were they not yet enlightened enough to hear God’s call to be a light to the nations? The Midianites had led the people into sexual immorality. Were their passions causing them to misunderstand what God wanted? Then why did they preserve this story even after they had come to a new understanding of God?

I’ll be honest. I have a hard time understanding the stories of God’s command to wipe out the Midianites and the Amelekites and all the other peoples on the way to the Promised Land. I’m glad that our ancestors didn’t try to sugarcoat the story they passed along. They knew they had a disturbing history with some disturbing characters in it but they also knew that God was working even through all of that. So we shouldn’t be surprised that treachery, torture, idolatry, and even genocide are in these pages. They are definitely the stuff of human history, and, as we know from our headlines, they still are.

But here’s what I believe. Stories like Numbers 31 are a minority report. Even in the Hebrew Scriptures there are passages that tell us something different about how God views war. In fact, even in Numbers 31 there are hints of this. In verse 2 there, as God tells Moses that the Israelites will avenge themselves on the Midianites, God says, “afterward you shall be gathered to your people.” It seems like there is a connection. “Moses, do this terrible thing and then you will die.” There is a price that must be paid for all the horror. Later in verse 19, Moses tells the warriors, “Camp outside the camp seven days; whoever of you has killed any person or touched a corpse, purify yourselves and your captives on the third and on the seventh day. You shall purify every garment, every article of skin, everything made of goats' hair, and every article of wood." The act of killing has made them unclean and there is a price that must be paid for all the death.

Later in the Old Testament, in the midst of all the wars that led to the united kingdom of Israel, David stops to lament the price that was paid when the king, King Saul, was killed along with his son. Even though David had been fighting against Saul and Jonathan he says, “How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!” [2 Samuel 1:27] There is a price that must be paid.

In the Psalms there are certainly songs to the God who strengthens the warrior for war. Psalm 18 says, in verse 34, “God trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.” Psalm 144 begins with similar words: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle, my rock and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues the peoples under me.”

So there are songs that are sung by people headed off for battle, but there are also psalms like Psalm 33, which says, in verses 16 and 17, “A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save.” The people had started to trust in war itself as a sign of blessing and strength, but their trust was misplaced. God was the source of their strength. And then you get Psalm 120 where it says, in verses 6 and 7: “Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace; but when I speak they are for war.” Again, it seems like the people were forgetting a more fundamental desire of God. God does not desire war; what God wants is peace and if war is the only means to that peace it is a sign of the tragic fallenness of the human race. People had begun to glory in war.

Later on in the Old Testament, the prophets offer a new vision of a day of peace that will come. Isaiah and Micah both describe it with the same image. In Micah chapter 4, verse 3 it says, “God shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” At the end of all things, war will come to an end.

But it’s in Jesus that we see the really new message of how God views war. Jesus seems to recognize that war is a continuing reality for us and will be for some time. He talks to soldiers and centurions and does not tell them to leave their professions. They end up following him and remaining in those roles. He told parables about kings planning for war. And he says, in Matthew 24, verses 6 and 7, “You will hear of wars and rumors of war; see that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.”

Jesus was also not averse to using violent imagery either. He says in Matthew 10, verse 34, “Don’t think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not yet come to bring peace, but a sword.” And just before his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, in the story we read this morning, he says to his disciples, “Now the one who has a purse must take it and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one.” Then the disciples pulled out some swords and said, “Lord, look, here are two swords,” and Jesus says, “It is enough.” [Luke 22:36-38].

But it’s pretty obvious that Jesus was about a very different ethic of violence than the rest of the world had. He was not about inflicting violence but about suffering violence. He told Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, that his kingdom worked differently than the kingdoms of the earth. In John 18 verse 36 he says, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

Jesus’ kingdom demanded something different from his followers. That’s why the things he had to say were so hard for his disciples. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, verses 43 and 44, Jesus says, “You have heard it said ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say unto you, ‘Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.’” Love your enemies. Can we do that? Luke 6, verse 29: “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” Can we accept violence and respond to it in a different way?

It’s not that we are not to fight. We are definitely at war. But Jesus comes to tell us not to get distracted by the hatred that so easily pops up in us. Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 12, that we need armor, but “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” We love our enemies because they are just as much in the grip of the evil powers of this world as we are. They are just as much in need of God’s redemption as we are. The structures of our nation, our governments, our international bodies, all of these are fallen and can be corrupted by the present darkness. So we are called to love our enemies because in the end we share much more than we think.

As I come to the close of this sermon, I realize that there are a lot of unanswered questions here and we will need to come back and talk more about this subject. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of a biblical view on this. But two final places to touch down, because I know we have more than just an academic interest in this question.

First, Iraq. It has been hovering in our minds this whole hour and for the last five years. We are a nation at war and we are in the midst of a deep national struggle to understand why we went there, why we are still there, and how we can do any good. I believe this is a tragic war that was begun under the flag of some high-sounding values that represent the best of what we hope for for the world. Apart from the security concerns and the weapons of mass destruction that never materialized, there was a group of leaders who really believed that this war could transform the whole region with new democracies upholding the same ideals our government holds up. They still believe this. But so many things have gone wrong and so much blood and money has been wasted. And we have lost the ability to speak honestly about what it is happening. We are having to learn again the lessons of what military power, even the greatest military power in the world, can and can’t do. And what it can’t do is bring peace by itself. We need to pray for our nation and its leaders, for our soldiers who so often seem confused and caught in the rhetoric and the policy. To pray for the people of Iraq and that they and we may be true to the ideals of justice and humanity expressed in our faith.

Finally, I want to lift up a flyer I saw the other day. I was across the bay for a church meeting and I was walking outside a shop and I saw a flyer for a cagematch. These have become popular, these fighting matches in a ring surrounded by a cage. Two guys, or girls, I suppose, will go at it so that there can be blood and spectacle.

What it tells me is that, in men especially, there is an implanted need to defend something worth defending. All of us need something worth living for and if it is worth living for, then it is worth dying for. If we do not fight for the things that really matter then we will end up doing something stupid like getting into a cage and fighting for no reason at all. We will end up turning our anger in on ourselves in depression. Or we will fight someone in the grocery store because they took 13 items in the 12 item lane.

Jesus knew that there was something worth dying for. It’s why he invited us to take up our cross and follow him. It’s why he warned us against the false gods that we would be tempted to serve. It’s why Paul tells us to put our armor on. It’s the kingdom of God’s love that is worth dying for and living for. And anything that does not advance that kingdom is not worthy of our lives. And so we test the spirits of this age. Thanks be to God.

Luke 22:47-51 [NRSV]
While he was still speaking, suddenly a crowd came, and the one called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him; but Jesus said to him, "Judas, is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?"

When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, "Lord, should we strike with the sword?" Then one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear.

But Jesus said, "No more of this!" And he touched his ear and healed him.

[i] Act I, Scene III of Requiem for a Nun
[ii] Intruder in the Dust

Soundings: Salvation Through Christ Alone

It’s probably the theological question I get asked the most. It certainly was the one I was asked most often when I was a campus minister working with college students. It was a question that, I’m sure, had its roots in many late night talks with people from other nations and other cultures. Maybe it came from living with a roommate or falling in love with a boyfriend who was of another faith or who professed no faith. But then they would come to worship or to a Thursday night dinner and we would talk about Jesus and we would sing about how “Jesus is savior to all, Lord of heaven and earth” and we would pray to God in the name of Jesus. And they would start to think about their friends and their roommates and their professors and all the other people who did not do this strange thing that we did. They weren’t worshipping Jesus and yet, weren’t some of these other folks good people? Don’t some of them express faith and hope and live ethical lives? The question arose and eventually it would make its way to me in its theological form, “What about those folks who aren’t Christian? Do we really believe that salvation comes through Christ alone?”

That’s the question I want to offer up today as we do a second week of soundings – exploring the Bible with an issue in mind and seeing what God might have to say to us. What do we believe about Jesus and salvation? What does the Bible say about this? And then how do we relate to a world that is going to find whatever answer we come up with at best unusual and at worst offensive?

I have to start by saying that I am tempted to say that this is a misplaced question. There’s something a little strange about it. That we should be worried about being a Christian having everything to do with Christ – that’s a little strange. It’s right there in the name. And if Jesus is the one who has shown us the way to God, would we really want to give up on the new life we’ve gained because we think it could have happened differently? It’s a little bit like someone giving up on Shakespeare’s plays – and all of their beauty and insight in what it’s like to be human – because they were written in English rather than Urdu. If Jesus has given us entry into the kingdom and told us that we can be children of God, are we really going to shy away from talking of him as The Way, The Truth and The Life?

This is the verse that is at the heart of this question. John chapter 14, verse 6: “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” We get hung up on the last part of that. No one? Really? Except through Jesus? No one?

But this is a consistent message through the Bible. God is an exclusive lover and God wants exclusivity in those who come to love God. What is the first commandment? “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other gods but me.” [Ex. 20:2] The Shema, the great focus verse for Judaism, in Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 and 5, says, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

When the people of Israel enter the land that they are promised after the long journey through the wilderness God tells them to tear down the altars to other gods because “you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” [Ex.. 34:14] What Israel has to learn is that when they stay close to the God who has claimed them and liberated them and brought them to a new land they will thrive. But when they forget God they will fall. God talks about their faithlessness in Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse 21: “They made me jealous with what is no god, provoked me with their idols.” There is an emptiness and nothingness is the other things that we make our gods.

So it is not surprising that Christians would talk about Jesus in the same sort of ways. Jesus is the full expression of God’s intentions for humanity. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus is the one who goes to the cross to prove that God’s love bears all things. Jesus is the one who goes forth from the tomb to prove that God’s love conquers death. Jesus is the one who opens the door for lost people to be found, for wounded people to be made whole, for sick people to be healed, for dead people to be made alive, and for oppressed people to be set free. Jesus is the one we call Immanuel – God with us. Jesus is the one on whom God’s Spirit descended and of whom God’s voice said, “This is my beloved Son – listen to Him.”

So it’s not a surprise to hear Jesus saying, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” It’s not a surprise to hear in Acts, chapter 4 verses 11 and 12,, Peter saying that Jesus is the cornerstone. “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” It’s not a surprise to read in 1 Timothy 2, verse 5: “There is one God and there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all.” It’s not a surprise to read Paul in Romans chapter 10, verse 9 saying, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” It’s not surprising to hear these things because they were written by people whose lives had been turned upside down and absolutely transformed by their experience with Jesus Christ. They knew, because it had happened to them, that Jesus was the way to God, the way to new life, the way to salvation. They didn’t stop to consider whether there were other ways or other paths, because they had found the Way. There was no other way.

Like a man on his knee proposing to his intended bride, there is no room for considering alternatives. It may be a foolish thing he is doing. It may, from the outside, appear that he is being a little excessive, a little rash, a little over the top. But from the inside, in what is happening between these two, it is the most natural thing in the world. So in addition to the biblical message that God is a jealous God, a God who loves exclusively and desires our total selves, our entire love in return…in addition to this we can also add that the Bible says that Jesus is the full expression of God’s intentions and it is right that we should come to God through him alone.

But there’s more to this story. We’ve been talking about exclusive love but you know that the message of the Bible is not a message of exclusion. The thing that threatened the Pharisees about Jesus is not that he was exclusive but that he was inclusive. He included people that they thought should not have been included. He hung out with sinners. He consulted with tax collectors. He consorted with prostitutes. And Jesus seemed to enjoy these people.

I ran across a great sermon by a preacher named Samir Selmanovic this week. He’s a convert from Islam from Croatia and now is starting a new church in Manhattan called Faith House. Selmanovic says that what really ticked off the Pharisees about Jesus was not that he loved people but that he seemed to really like them. You know how easy it is for us to say, “Well, I love that person as a Christian, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like them.” The Pharisees could have said something like that – loving people in the abstract but despising them in person.

But Jesus doesn’t do that. He goes in the midst of the people and tells his followers to welcome them. Selmanovic says that Jesus allows himself to need others and that this is the sign of true love. “You don’t truly love the other,” he says, “until you can take what the other needs to give you.”[i] And so Jesus tells a woman at a well in Samaria that he needs a drink of water from her. He tells his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane that he needs them. Jesus is unafraid to be inclusive and to accept that others have something to offer. Selmanovic wonders if maybe that doesn’t affect our evangelism as Christians. “We withhold being teachable from the world and the world, in turn, withholds itself from us.”[ii]

The reading from Acts today points us in this direction. Paul is taking the faith to Athens, a place of great learning and great religious ferment. There are all kinds of option for believing in Athens. Paul goes to the Areopagus, where the philosophers and religious thinkers gather, and he does what Jesus does – he looks at how God is already active in the lives of the Athenians. Chapter 17 verse 22 says, “Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you.’” Paul sees that God is already present there.

This too, is biblical. God speaks in other peoples and even in other faiths. Even we who have fallen in love with God through Christ and have given our lives over to him can hear in others a word that illuminates the world. In the Hebrew scriptures we see God using the Persian king Cyrus as an instrument. God says to Cyrus in Isaiah chapter 45 beginning with verse 4: “For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by name; I surname you, though you do not know me. I am the Lord, there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me.”

In the New Testament Jesus talks in John chapter 10 verse 16 about having “other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” Peter, in Acts, the same disciple who declared that there is no other name given for salvation, also recognized that God was throwing the door wide open, not closing it in Jesus. After his revelation in the sail cloth in chapter 10 verses 34 and 35 he says: “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.” It was his mission to help all those who were searching to hear how God had come with a message of salvation for all in Jesus Christ.

This, perhaps is the most important message we can take from this biblical exploration. If we hear Jesus’ claim to be the Way as a threat to those who do not claim salvation in Christ, then we have misunderstood it. If we hear the claim that there is no other name by which people may be saved as a way to sort out the world into who’s in and who’s out so that we can feel justified or superior, then we have misunderstood it. Those are the fears I hear when people ask me the question about their non-Christian friends.

What we want people to hear is not that we think their lives are a mess without Jesus. They know that already. We know how much Jesus still has to work on in us even after we accept Christ. What we want people to hear is that God wants a full chorus. That God’s work in the world is not condemnation and division but reconciliation. John 3 verse 17 says, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that world might be saved through him.” 2 Corinthians 5 verse 19 says, “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” Psalm 22 verse 27 promises that “all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.” God speaks in Isaiah chapter 49 verse 6 to say, “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach the end of the earth.”

I don’t think we should be anxious for the salvation of the world. God is about that work and what God promises, God fulfills. God needs agents for this work and that is why Jesus’ final words in Matthew’s gospel are “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” [Mat. 28:18—20] But he also promises there: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” God is reconciling the world in Jesus Christ. That’s why we say that there is salvation through Christ alone. But that’s not a weapon, it’s an invitation. And we are called to live our lives as Christians in such a way that people will see, not us, but the power of transforming good news.

Samir Selmanovic tells a story in the sermon I quoted about a woman named Sue. One Christmas week, she showed up at his church service, partly because it was so cold and she had nowhere else to go and partly because she was attracted by his sermon title, which was “The Magic of Christianity.” That was attractive to her because she was a witch, a Wiccan who called herself a white witch.

But she got intrigued by what she heard. She became friends with this pastor. They went to watch “Lord of the Rings” together and she joined a Bible Study in the church.

Some time later the church hosted a conference for pastors starting new faith communities and as part of it there were testimonies of failure from six of the pastors. They decided at the conference that they needed a time to talk about how hard the work of telling the good news was, too, and most conferences only focused on the successes. So they had this time scheduled.
Selmanovic wanted to offer a blessing to the pastors as they finished their testimonies and he tried to think who could do this. Suddenly it came to him. I’ll ask the witch. So he asked Sue to bless them and at first she said, “Yes, if I can pray to God as a mother.” Selmanovic was uncomfortable with that and thought it would be distracting to the purpose of the conference, but they eventually agreed that she could offer a prayer to God as the Holy Spirit.

So when these pastors shared the pain of their failures at this conference, Sue got up at the end and prayed this prayer: “Dear Holy Spirit, I am not a Christian, but I and my son are cared for in this church. One day, I might become a believer. These pastors are worn out in their service for you, doing good to people. Please make them see how important their work is. What would the world be like without them? May they walk on so that I and people like me can find a way one day and come to believe.”

One of the pastors leaned forward and whispered in Selmanovic’s ear, “Thank you, Jesus.” Selmanovic said, “Her words lingered in the air like a wonderful heathen scent. We were hoping that if we just stayed quiet that there would be more words coming. We were basking in the love, hope and faith of this woman.” And it was a hope and faith that she was longing to see in Jesus and his followers.

Will Willimon, our United Methodist bishop in North Alabama, says, “On the basis of our daily experience of walking with Jesus, we have difficulty imagining any other way for people like us—inherently selfish, violent, idolatrous, cowards that we are—to get abundant life other than through a crucified and risen Savior like Jesus. But why should we try to imagine other possible ways, truths, and lives? We’ve got our hands full just trying to keep up with Jesus. Cannot we joyfully, lovingly testify to the unique, unsubstitutable way that has led us to such abundant life?”[iii]

And if we do, we might add, might we not invite others to see what life can be like when lived in God’s light? Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. But the bigger question is: Is Jesus your way, your truth, and your life? Thanks be to God.

John 14:1-14 [NRSV]
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going."
Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"
Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."
Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied."
Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

[i] Samir Selmanovic, “Finding Our God in the Other,” http://www.crosswalkministries.com/cw/realmedia/102106avs.ram
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] William Willimon, “Preaching on the Way of John 14:6,” Circuit Rider May/June 2007