Mike Johnson’s Biblical Worldview: It’s complicated for me.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s response when he was asked how he would make public policy?  He replied:

“Well go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.  That is my worldview.”

Pick up the Bible and get a worldview, as Mike Johnson suggests?

Many of us know the question is fraught from the start.  Christians have hermeneutical methods for both receiving the Old Testament with appreciation as well as relegating it to a supporting role, citing progressive revelation.  Jesus started it, with his famous mantra from the sermon on the mount, “you have heard that it was said by men of old (i.e. Moses)… but I say to you…”. That’s why “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” gets replaced with “love your enemies.”  

But it is complicated; the dance of support and relegation leaves an opportunity for lots of interpretive improvisation; hang on tightly to the creation of humans “in the image and likeness” of the Divine as having enduring significance for ethics and politics so that “all men [sic.] are created equal” with “inalienable rights.”  That part stays relevant.  But never mind the bit about a genocidal worldwide flood as a solution to the problem of the “Sons of god” who saw that earthly daughters “were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose” (Gen. 6:2).  That seems a bit too mythical to pay much attention to anymore.  

And then there is all that blood.  Hermeneutics finds ways to ignore the human slaughter that the Divine approves of, the slaughter that the Divine commands, and the slaughter that the Divine Himself (almost, but not always portrayed as male) accomplishes himself.  After Making the idolatrous Golden Calf while Moses was up on the Mount Sinai receiving the Torah, the people made a golden calf to worship.  That was considered treason, so Moses, upon discovering it commanded them saying, “ “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.’”  The Israelites, en route to the Promised Land, were told by God, through Moses, to slaughter the Amalekites who resisted them.  The people, men, women, and children were all put to the sword after the Lord knocked down the walls of Jericho.  One could go on, but the point is made.  Mike Johnson knows that these particular parts, but not the others, need to be relegated.  However, since God does not change, maybe violence has a role to play in the Divine plan in the future too?  The dance is open to improvisation.

The complications multiply.  Preachers of Civil Rights like to quote the prophets who believed in the continuing relevance of the call to “let justice roll down like water” because God’s will was clear. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to  do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”  But does doing justice mean that other people have a claim on your stuff?  Shouldn’t they remember “you shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”  Besides private property rights, that brings up the topic of slavery.  Most of us think that the slavery part should be relegated, but it is there, right in the Ten Commandments, which people seem to want to keep as relevant for ethics and politics.  Some even put them up in public courthouses.  Oddly, they don’t seem to want to put up the Beatitudes, but they have their reasons.   Mike Johnson has not specified which is more relevant to the worldview he finds obvious in the Bible.

But the Old Testament is taking too much attention here.  The New Testament is the fuller revelation, according to classical Christian theology, and therefore the most important place to go to find a biblical worldview.  Jesus gets primacy of place, but again, it is complicated and calls for hermeneutical deftness.  “Turn the other cheek” and “love your enemies” is best understood metaphorically, and not as literal ethical or political mandates.  “Do not judge” clearly does not refer to the judicial system; it is also a metaphor.  “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth” likewise.  Maybe these lofty ethics only belong to the coming millennial age after Christ returns, according to some branches of American Christianity.  

After Jesus, Christians turn to Paul and the other epistle writers for worldview perspectives.  But here again, it’s complicated.  Paul congratulates Junia for being “prominent among the apostles” and writes that in Christ there is no “male and female.”  But there is a pesky paragraph in 1 Corinthians that seems to not only uphold that distinction but also make those prominent apostolic women keep their mouths shut.  “women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak but should be subordinate, as the law also says.  If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”  There is a rationale for the subordination of women that extends beyond the church.  It goes all the way back to the beginning, as Timothy explains, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.”  Women’s vulnerability to deception leads him, logically, to say, “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man.”  Mike Johnson must have a hermeneutical ploy in mind when this is applied to women today who serve in the Congress he presides over and the Supreme Court that interprets the laws they write.  Worldviews are tricky.  

Then there is the slavery issue again.  Unfortunately, it is not simply an old Old Testament concern.  Paul says that in Christ, “there is no longer slave or free,” and that an enslaved man named Onesimus should be treated by his owner Philemon “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.”  But other letters penned in Paul’s name advise slaves to “obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling.”  Titus does not even dignify the slaves by direct address but rather advises masters to “Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters.”  But certainly, Mike Johnson would not want slavery to be part of a biblical worldview, would he?

Maybe Mike was thinking more narrowly about specific concerns like the one his party holds up as essential: abortion.  Maybe he is simply alluding to all the places where abortion is discussed and condemned.  Maybe or maybe not, since the Bible doesn’t mention it — yes there is that one ambiguous text about a pregnant woman injured as collateral damage in a fight, but it’s both ambiguous and, again, it’s the Old Testament.  

Anyway, Mike’s advice does not do much to clarify things for me and my worldview.  

What We Celebrate in Advent

Sermon for Dec. 10, 2023, Advent 2B Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR.

Mark 1:1—8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
    make his paths straight,’ ”

so John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

One of my sons recently gave me a book to read. It’s called “Dominion: the Making of the Western Mind,” by Tom Holland. 

The theme of the book is that Christianity has had an enormous impact on the Western world including in the categories we think in. 

For example, Holland writes:

“Whether it be the conviction that the workings of conscience are the surest determinants of good law, or that the church and state exist as distinct entities, or that polygamy is unacceptable, [Christianity’s] trace elements are to be found everywhere in the West.”  

Even more powerful than these big ideas, Christianity transformed the world of ethics.  Holland writes, 

“The heroes of the Iliad, [who were the] favorites of the gods, golden and predatory, had scorned the weak and downtrodden. So too, … had philosophers. The starving deserved no sympathy. Beggars were best rounded up and deported. Pity risked undermining a wise man’s self-control. Only fellow citizens of good character who, through no fault of their own, had fallen on evil days might conceivably merit assistance.”

This book takes a serious look at history. It does not shy away from discussing the dark side of Christianity: Crusades, inquisitions, persecutions of heretics, and anti-semitism. 

But Holland pays close attention to how utterly different the values of Christianity are from Greek, Roman, or pagan values, and even though those Christian values were not universally implemented by leaders of either church or state who proclaimed themselves Christian, nevertheless they keep resurfacing in renewal movements and periods of reform.  

Holland says, 

“That every human being possessed an equal dignity was not remotely self-evident a truth. A Roman would have laughed at it. To campaign against discrimination on the grounds of gender or sexuality, however, was to depend on large numbers of people sharing in a common assumption: that everyone possessed an inherent worth. The origins of this principle—as Nietzsche had so contemptuously pointed out—lay not in the French Revolution, nor in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Enlightenment, but in the Bible.”

There are many things that I think the Christian Church, on the whole, got wrong, over the years. I have spoken about some of them here. But I wanted to take a moment in this Advent season to tell a different story. 

I want to share why Advent and Christmas are such a special season for me personally, and I believe, for all of us. The Christian story is amazing, beautiful, liberating, and transforming. So let us look at it.

Something New Can Happen
The story of Advent in the Gospels begins with John the Baptist, wearing the uniform of a prophet. He is announcing that a time of preparation is needed because God is about to do a new thing. 

The true beginning of the story is not with his voice, crying out in the wilderness. The story begins in Israel.

The prophets of Israel proclaimed repeatedly that God was going to do something new and unprecedented. So new, that the former things, like liberation from Egypt, would pale by comparison.  

John the Baptist was in that prophetic tradition, and, according to the gospels, identified Jesus with that new act of God. 

In Christianity, we receive the idea that God can, and continually does make things new. God is constantly taking the old, worn out, broken, dead parts of our lives, and creating something new from them. 

There is Mary, a poor peasant in a small village that means nothing to anyone important.  Nothing new should ever be expected from there, or from her, and yet, the story is about God’s next move, not just Mary’s.  All Mary does is to commit herself to the next good thing God is going to do.  She famously says to the angel, 

“I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said.”

There is always a next right thing, even after colossal disaster. There is healing after brokenness. There is forgiveness after failure. The essential Christian story includes the experience that new life, resurrection, follows death. 

This is not just something we can say about the final moments of our lives on earth, but of every moment. The old life can be left behind; a new life in the Spirit is continually possible.  

The Gift of Repentance

John called for repentance as the means to prepare the way for the new things God was going to do in and through Jesus. 

This too is a priceless Christian treasure: the freedom to admit our failings. In fact, the regular self-assessments we do in prayers of confession are powerful tools of spiritual growth. 

We have received the gift of a pattern of living that starts with acknowledging our human capacity to get it wrong, knowing that the invitation to confess and repent, or change our thinking, is a gift that leads to growth, not a prelude to judgment. The judgment is that, as Paul proclaims, “in Christ, we are forgiven.”  

The Gift of Forgiveness

The new thing that John wanted to prepare us for by repentance includes not just the liberating message that we have been forgiven by God, but a new vision of life in a covenanted community, in which we freely forgive one another. This is the antidote to toxicity in communities. 

The teachings of Jesus help us to understand how to live in a healthy, life-giving community.  One of Jesus’ central themes was that God’s beloved children must forgive each other. In the prayer Jesus taught us we say, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”. 

The early Christian communities worked hard to learn and teach this. The writer of Ephesians says, “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”  

There is no room for the evil eye in the communities that gather to follow Jesus, in other words, churches. There is no space for bitterness, jealousy, resentment, or vengeance. 

Instead, we are called to check our egos; to let go of the need to be seen as justified, to have our excuses taken seriously. This is a huge gift of the Christian tradition: that the cycle of wrong following wrong can stop. Instead of cycles of violence, Christian communities can be sources of healing and wholeness, of reconciliation and mutual encouragement.  

This is our baptismal identity.  

And this is what we celebrate in Advent.

That You May Live

Matthew 6:24-33

“No one 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.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Where did Jesus get his ideas?  We know that Jesus was very familiar with the prophets of Israel; he quotes freely from them.  Today we will look at ideas in Amos that stand behind Jesus’ perspective.

We only read a snippet so far of the prophet Amos, but Amos reads like a rant, as we will see.  He feels passionately about issues so he uses intense language.  And because he is a prophet, and prophets speak for God, he makes it sound like God is ranting too.  

We recognize that when we speak about God, or when the Bible speaks of God, we are using human language, metaphors, and analogies.  That is all we can do, as finite humans.  So, we speak of God as male or female, knowing that God is beyond gender, but is nevertheless, personal (at least, not less than what we understand as personal).  

God’s Emotions

We also speak of God as having emotions – even strong ones – because how can we imagine a person without emotions?  Amos (and other prophets) can speak of God even hating.  God hates what is going on.  The idea of God experiencing hatred is clearly an off-the-charts rant.  But the point is that what is happening is horribly wrong.  

I do not want to have hate as a part of my life.  But it is easy to want to use the language of hatred in conditions that are severely wrong.  It is easy to think of hating the suffering that mass killings cause.  It is tempting to speak of hating the conditions that women endure from men or that people suffer in terrorist attacks and war.  

Amos used the language of hate to describe how God felt about the obscene gap between rich and poor in his day.  Listen to some excerpts:

2:6    Thus says the Lord:

For three transgressions of Israel,

and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;

because they sell the righteous for silver,

and the needy for a pair of sandals— 

7 they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,

and push the afflicted out of the way;

He insults the people who live in easy luxury in the face of other people’s poverty, predicting that it will all come to their own ruin:

4:1    Hear this word, you cows of Bashan

who are on Mount Samaria,

who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,

who say to their husbands, “Bring something to drink!” 

2 The Lord God has sworn by his holiness:

The time is surely coming upon you,

when they shall take you away with hooks,

even the last of you with fishhooks. 

Amos rants against the corrupt legal system that always works in favor of the wealthy – the legal system in those days was conducted at the city’s gates, so he says again, they are going to experience futility instead of the prosperity they feel entitled to.  This is where the “hate” word comes:

5:10    They hate the one who reproves in the gate,

and they abhor the one who speaks the truth. 

11 Therefore because you trample on the poor

and take from them levies of grain,

you have built houses of hewn stone,

but you shall not live in them;

you have planted pleasant vineyards,

but you shall not drink their wine. 

12 For I know how many are your transgressions,

and how great are your sins—

you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,

and push aside the needy in the gate. 

13 Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time;

for it is an evil time.

Hating Religion

So, how does God feel about this?  Amos says that when people who are content to live with this kind of injustice go to the temple, and try to make God happy, it does not work.  In fact, the opposite; it makes God even angrier.  Notice the “hate” word again:

5:21    I hate, I despise your festivals,

and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 

22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

I will not accept them;

and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals

I will not look upon. 

23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;

I will not listen to the melody of your harps. 

24 But let justice roll down like waters,

and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

Most of us did not grow up on the farm, nor have we seen the inside of a meat packing plant, so this image is a bit graphic for our modern imaginations.  In an age of animal sacrifice, there was a lot of blood that flowed down the sides of the alter. The contrast is powerful.  Instead of flowing blood, and religious music, God says, 

“let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”

Flowing Justice, Seeking Good

The prophets had a vision of a world in which there was justice, and justice means fairness.  It means nobody has an advantage over anyone else, and no one takes  advantage of anyone.  That was not the world Amos lived in, but it was the one he imagined, as a person of vision.  It was the world he longed for.   The goal of his rant was to motivate his people to long for the same vision because it is what God wants:

5:14-15 Seek good and not evil,

that you may live;

and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you…

Hate evil and love good,

and establish justice in the gate;

it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts,

will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph….

24  …let justice roll down like waters,

and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

“Seek good…love good.”  Be a person of desire – of strong desire – of passionate desire.  And turn the desire into concrete action:

“establish justice in the gate (= legal system).”  

“Establish justice” – make it happen.  There is no room for passivity; this must be our passion.  Why?  Because when there is injustice, people suffer.  They get trampled on.  They get pushed aside.  And God hates that.  So be passionate for justice until it flows as unstoppably as water does downhill.  And make sure the flow is not intermittent, but constant, 

“like an everflowing stream”

Because the spiritual principle at work is that when justice is flowing constantly, it means life and goodness for you!  Hear it again:

5:14-15 Seek good and not evil,

that you may live;

and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you…”

Jesus and True Spirituality

Living with a passion for justice changes you.  It makes you more spiritually alive and aware.  You become a person conscious of the presence of God when you love what God loves.   This is true spirituality.

And this is exactly the kind of spirituality that Jesus taught us.  Look around; look at the birds, look at the lilies.   This starts out sounding like a call to passivity – the birds “neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns”  the lilies “neither toil or spin.”   

But this not about being passive; it is a picture of living without the anxiety of longing for more than you need.  It is not that we are not to be striving, but that we are to strive for the right thing. What is it that we are to strive for?  

“strive first for the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Strive for God’s kingdom and God’s justice, and you will be given all you need.  It will be okay.  You will be taken care of.  The same God who watches over creation cares for you.  So strive for justice because that is what the kingdom of God calls us to do.  Strive for a world in which no one has the advantage over anyone else, and no one takes advantage.  

Strive for a world in which men do not take advantage of women.  Strive for a world in which one race does not have the advantage over other races.  Strive for  world in which no gay or transgendered person is being pushed aside or trampled on.  

And in that striving, you will find life, you will find contentment, and in that striving you will experience the presence of God.  

The Community Gathered in Jesus’ Name

Sermon for Sept. 10, 2023, Pentecost 15A, Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR

Matthew 18:15—20

“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”                   

The text we read from Matthew’s gospel reflects a time in Matthew’s young Christian community as they tried to work out life together.  To read this in our context we will need to clear out some weeds that we will get to in a minute. But let us start with this:  Communities are made up of people, and people will never fail to step on each other’s toes, offend each other, try to control each other, and hurt each other. 

People are people; we are human, and we all have both positive characteristics and dark sides, good days, and bad days. 

So, how should a community handle the behaviors that come from those dark sides on those bad days?  Well, a principle that they knew from the Jewish Law in the Hebrew Bible was that you never convict a person on the basis of a single testimony (Dut. 19:15). 

Whenever you hear a story from one person about another, always remember that you have heard one side of the story, and every story has more than one side. So, be slow to join accusations.  

The whole point is to try to work it out. Don’t rush to judgment. Try to get to a resolution, to reconciliation. In other words, keep your ego in check. 

The goal is not punishment, but the peace that comes from honesty. In order for this to work, someone is going to have to back down. Someone is going to have to admit fault. Someone is going to have to own what they did, stop making excuses for it, and apologize. 

Then, the other one is going to have to accept the apology and move on. Otherwise, what would be the point of talking about it?  

Ego Work

Both admitting fault and forgiving require ego work. What does that mean?  We all have egos, meaning our sense of who we are and what we are entitled to. 

We all think everyone in the world owes us respect. We all want to be taken seriously. 

We all think our own perspective is right. 

We all want everyone else to give us the benefit of the doubt, to assume that we had perfect motives, and did our best, even when we didn’t. 

All those things are what we call ego. The self, or the ego, is that part of us that takes offense, and holds grudges. The ego is that part of ourselves that gets its feelings hurt when we don’t get what we think we are entitled to.  

Now, this is tricky for two reasons. We believe that Jesus taught us to live in such a way that we show respect to everyone, so, in that sense, everyone deserves respect. That is what we extend to others. But that is not what we are to demand for ourselves in the context of our community.  

The second way this teaching is tricky is that we are talking about life together in community. We are not talking about larger social issues. It is right for oppressed groups to demand justice and to be treated with respect. But inside the community, we are to turn the other cheek, and forgive “seventy times seven times.” 

Clearing Matthew’s Weeds

Now, I mentioned that there were weeds that needed to be cleared away from this text.

The following advice, I believe, is not a memory of the historical Jesus, but an expansion on that memory from Matthew’s community. It is the advice about what to do if negotiations fail and the one at fault does not own it, back down, admit it, and apologize. Matthew says, 

“if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector.”

Scholars do not believe the historical Jesus said that, because of the way he treated Gentiles and tax-collectors. In fact, Matthew’s gospel tells us that the disciple named Mathew was himself, a tax collector, and also that Jesus accepted him, and that he was compassionate to Gentiles.  

The Community Gathered in Jesus’ Name

But the final statement in this teaching is the key. Matthew says Jesus said:

“where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Two or three is the smallest community you can imagine, but it is sufficient.

When we gather, we gather in the name of Jesus. That means that Jesus is the basis for our community. The life and teachings of Jesus show us the way to live, including how to live together in community. 

We gather to remember Jesus and to let his words shape our lives. What we see, when we look at Jesus, is a person who demonstrated love at every turn. 

He loved his disciples, even when they failed. 

He loved people whom he called “lost,” whom other people wrote off as “sinners.” 

He loved people whom other people neglected, disrespected, or despised: sick people, Samaritan people, women, Gentile people, poor people, even children, which was counter-cultural at that time. 

Jesus was able to love because he had his ego under control. He did not get offended, even when he was being challenged. He did not need to be first, in fact, our tradition tells us that he washed the feet of his disciples; something only servants did. 

Jesus practiced the kind of spiritual practices, like meditation, or contemplation, that put his own ego in place. The community that gathers in his name seeks to do the same.  

Liberation from Enslavement to Ego

This is one of the forms of liberation we talk about: we can be liberated from slavery to ego when we practice the Jesus way of living. 

We can be freed from the necessity of protecting our pride and defending our right-ness. 

We can be unshackled from the need to have the last word, be recognized, and be taken seriously by everyone. 

That is what Jesus saves us from, if we let him.  

The sign we wear to the world is the sign that Jesus said would distinguish us as his followers: love.  

I cannot think of a time when we have needed this more than today. Our country is so divided; there is so much hostility, anger, arrogance, and derision — we all know it. Let us not be part of it! Let us be the solution. 

Let us be a community that models the Jesus-way of love; love for each other, and love for our enemies. 

All of our work for justice, equity, and inclusion is motivated, not by resentment and bitterness, but by love. Even when we have to confront systems of injustice and repression, we do it in love. Even when threatened, we respond with love. 

We keep doing the ego-work, keep our spiritual disciplines alive, we keep meditating, so that we can pray for those who oppose us: 

“may they be happy, may they be well, may they be filled with kindness and peace.” 

As our scriptural wisdom tradition teaches,

“love covers a multitude of sins.”

Romans 12

Jesus’ Radically Inclusive Agenda

Matthew 15:10—28

Then [Jesus] called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.   

Did Jesus exist as a historical figure, or was he just a fictional character in a story? Usually, the church does not spend time on that question: we tend to assume that Jesus existed historically. As it turns out, most scholars agree that he did.  

There are two primary arguments that scholars have adduced. One comes from evidence external to the stories of Jesus in the Bible, and the other from internal evidence. 

Externally, ancient historians Josephus and Tacitus both discuss Christ, who is identified as Jesus, and both say that he led a movement that continued to persist in their day, though he was executed by Governor Pilate. That is the external evidence for the historicity of Jesus.

The internal evidence is what I find interesting, as we look at the text before us today. 

The gospels tell the story of Jesus, as a radically non-violent person, who was even against rhetorical violence; the violence of words. Jesus said, for example,  

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”

Luke 6:27-28

The Tradition Developed

But most people, then and now, do not like non-violence; it’s just too radical. And so, as the story of Jesus developed over time, Jesus himself is described as sometimes being rhetorically violent. 

For example, in Luke, he pronounces “woes” to the Scribes and Pharisees — which is essentially a curse.  So, in one place Jesus says, “bless and do not curse” and in another place, he curses.  What’s happening here?

Here is where the internal evidence for the historical Jesus presents itself. Let’s say the stories of Jesus are fictional.  You might make up a story of Jesus who was comfortable with cursing the bad guys, but why would you include in your story his condemnation of that kind of cursing — unless it was part of the historical memory that you couldn’t ignore?  

So, what we find in the growing stories of Jesus, which scholars call the “Jesus tradition” an increasing softening of his radical positions. 

By the time, many decades after Jesus, the book of Revelation was written, instead of riding a harmless donkey colt, as he did entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Jesus is pictured returning to earth, riding a warhorse, slaying his enemies. That is a completely different Jesus. 

And, as a side note, maybe that is why the Left Behind series of novels, based loosely on Revelation, was so popular with so many Evangelicals, who also support aggressive militarism today.  

Anyway, it is important to be aware that the Jesus-tradition developed. It contains both memories of the historical Jesus and expansions to those memories by the early Christians. 

I believe that is helpful to keep in mind when we encounter a story in which Jesus seemingly ignores a woman’s plea for help, then puts her in an excluded ethnic category, and finally insults her by obliquely calling her a dog.  

I do not believe that the historical Jesus, who told us to love our enemies, to bless and not to curse them, to forgive those who trespass against us, and to give alms to the poor without expecting anything in return, would do that.  

Nevertheless, this story is of great significance, and probably does contain historical memory as well.

 It is also radical in its implications. So we will look at this story. But before we do, let us notice briefly the scene that comes right before this story, because the two are working out the same issue, as we will see.  

Jesus, Purity Laws, and Food

Jesus has been in conversation with the religious leaders of the day. They have come to him, according to the story, complaining that the disciples of Jesus eat with unwashed hands. 

This is not about germs. They had no idea about germs. This was about ritual purity. Purity concerns is the issue that bind these two stories together.

Many laws in the Hebrew Bible describe what was pure, and therefore, okay to touch, and what was impure, and which defiled the person who touched them. You cannot raise animals without becoming defiled by touch, so ritual washing was required to remove the defilement.  

In Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, the concern of the two people who passed by the robbers’ victim was defiling touch. If they touched blood, or if he was dead and they touched him, the priest and the Levite who both worked at the temple, would have become defiled. 

Jesus thought that was a terrible reason not to help someone in need, so he made up a parable about it. 

In other words, Jesus radically subverted the purity system. God, it seems, had larger concerns.  

So, for the same reason, Jesus takes advantage of this criticism of his followers’ about impure eating habits to again undermine the whole purity agenda. He said it this time as clearly as you could: 

“it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”

When Mark told this story, he made the implication clear to his readers, saying “

Thus he declared all foods clean.” 

Mark 7:19

Now, this is radical indeed! The Law of Moses in the Hebrew Bible contains page after page of foods that are forbidden. Today we call these Kosher laws. That is why Jewish people do not eat pork, shrimp, or lobster. They are unclean; impure. 

But Jesus said that the impurity that matters to God is a matter of your heart, not of what you put in your mouth.  

Jesus, Purity Laws, and Outsiders

So, to make the same point, Matthew then includes this partly historical memory, and partly expanded story, of Jesus and the Canaanite woman with the sick daughter. 

This time the central purity-concern is not hand washing but ethnicity. She was not Jewish, and Jews considered foreigners impure.  

Why do I think that this story contains historical memory? Because it includes a description of things that Jesus did that many people of his culture would not find acceptable: namely the fact that the entire setting of the story is outside Jewish geography. 

Jesus intentionally left the Jewish territory of Galilee and took his disciples on a mission trip to Tyre and Sidon, two Gentile cities. 

Jesus intentionally broke down the purity barrier between insider-Jewish people and outsider-Gentile people. This is going beyond healing a Roman Soldier’s servant, back home in Galilee, or talking to a Samaritan woman at the well, as you go through their land on route to your destination in Israel. This is a move specifically to outsiders; into their space.  

So, as the story goes, this woman calls out to Jesus for help. She is identified as Gentile. She is a “Canaanite woman,” Matthew tells us, using that word to remind us of the ethnicity of the original inhabitants of the promised land many years ago. 

In this telling of the story, Jesus at first ignores her, yet she persisted. When the disciples beg him to send her away, which is ironic, given that she is in her homeland and they are not, Matthew says Jesus said, 

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  

That sentence is impossible to imagine the historical Jesus saying, in my view, precisely because he has gone into the territory where there are few if any “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Why was he there, if not for them? But that is how the tradition developed.  

So she continues to persist, not taking silence for an answer. The Canaanite woman breaks protocol for a woman in her culture, and challenges the man, Jesus. She takes him on.  

“She came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”

This is where Jesus, in this story, insults her. Matthew says he replied, 

“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 

If Jews are the “children,” then Canaanites are the “dogs.“ And, we know that in the ancient world, dogs were garbage-eating scavengers, not cute house pets. And yet she persisted, even after this affront. The story continues:

“She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

There are only two people, according to the gospels, whom Jesus says have “great faith.” That highest of praise goes to this persistent Canaanite woman, and the Roman Centurion who came to Jesus on behalf of his sick servant. Both were foreigners; Gentiles.  Neither one of them converted to Judaism, according to the stories.

The Point: Radical Inclusion

Even though, as Matthew tells it, Jesus was reluctant at first, nevertheless, this story is about Jesus’ radical refusal to exclude people. Even though the exclusion of Gentiles was demanded in parts of the Hebrew Bible, Jesus took a different view.  

He abandoned the purity trajectory in favor of the trajectory towards inclusion, justice, and love. He did so because he conceived God as a God of inclusion, justice, and love, not judgment, exclusion, and punishment.  

What does this odd story teach us?  As followers of Jesus, it is not possible to be racists. It is not possible to despise people of color. 

It is is not possible to think brown or black bodies matter less than white bodies. It is not possible to be in favor of exclusion of any kind. 

We take this same inclusive perspective and apply it to all people who have been called “dogs” in our society, and discriminated against. 

Today, we believe this includes people who are not like the majority of us, in every category: race, gender identity, sexual orientation, and mental or physical disability.  It includes homeless people that get pushed out to the margins so that we don’t have to look at them and formerly incarcerated people.  

As followers of Jesus, we are called not to be silent about excluded people but to persist in demanding that they are seen, heard, and loved. 

This is not only about personal behavior, although it starts there. We are also called to dismantle systems of racism and discrimination, instead of ignoring them. We are called to change laws if need be, to hold our leaders accountable, and to work for change.  

We are the people who turn the lights on to expose all injustices, because we are followers of Jesus.

The bottom line for us is the core belief that God is love. We believe that we are all beloved by God — all people are, without exception.  We believe that God is just, and seeks justice for all. 

We take our cues from Jesus who excluded no one, but who crossed boundaries to spread God’s healing love. We are here for a purpose, we believe; one that is larger than ourselves.  

We are how God gets love, justice, and inclusion done in the world. We are committed to not being silent, but like the Canaanite woman, in being persistent. That is the only way that love will win. And love must win.

Risks Worth Taking

Sermon for Aug. 13, 2023 Pentecost

Matthew 14:22—33

Immediately [Jesus] made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking towards them on the lake. But when the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, “Truly you are Son of God.”

One of the riskiest things you can ever do is leave the home of the family who raised you. While at home, for most of us, everything we needed was provided; food, clothing, shelter, and all the rest. 

But we all gave all of that up, taking the risk that we would be able to meet all of our needs independently. Of course, we did. No one can become a mature adult without taking that great risk.  

We keep taking risks throughout our lives. For example, all financial investments entail risk. The higher the risk, the greater the chance of return. But also the greater the risk of loss. 

Financial advisors tell us that the older we get, the more risk-averse we should become, because if the risky investment turns out badly, we have less time to recover.  

Risk Aversion as a Life Strategy

This strategy of increasingly avoiding risks is the strategy for life that most of us employ. We seek security. Who has never suffered setbacks and loss? Those are painful and often scary. So, we are highly motivated to keep safe and avoid risks.  

We start with the idea of risk because this famous parable of Jesus challenges us — if we allow it to — to think deeply about the continued role of risk-taking in our lives.  And yes, I believe Matthew intends us to read this story as a parable about risk taking.  We will see why as we go through it.

This parable challenges us to take risks, in spite of our risk-aversion. This is because faith itself is a risk; not just a one-time risk, but a continual risk.  

The returns on investment, however, can be enormous if we are willing to take the risk.  

Jesus’ Risks

So let us “dive into it,” so to speak.  There are several risks in this story.

The first risk is the one Jesus took. Actually, the ones (plural) that Jesus took. Jesus’ first risk is betting his life that there is an unseen Divine Presence, a depth dimension to life, and that that Presence is personal and good. 

So, Jesus had a set of spiritual practices to nurture his relationship with that good, personal Presence.  

Jesus’ concept of the Divine Presence was quite different from the way God has been often been conceived of, as a narrow-minded, exclusionary, judgmental autocrat. 

For Jesus, the best metaphor for the Divine Presence was a loving, welcoming, forgiving Father, or Abba.

So, Jesus risks his life that the Divine Presence is real, and is relational, so he spent time nurturing that relationship. Matthew tells us, “after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray.” 

Jesus practiced what we call contemplative prayer, or meditation, as other Jewish mystics of his day did. Regularly, he spent long periods alone in silent prayer. 

Matthew tells us this story this way to show us the basis for Jesus’ capacity to calmly walk through life, when other people were franticly panicking. He took the risk that the Divine Presence would uphold him, and it did.  Not that he would escape suffering, even death, but that his Abba, or, good shepherd, would always be with him, even “in the valley of the shadow of death.”

The disciples, meanwhile, have apparently not spent enough time in meditation. It is not that they have not taken risks: they have. They are, after all, in the boat, meaning they have taken the risk to become followers of Jesus. 

They have taken the risk of venturing out onto the water to “cross over to the other side,” at Jesus’ behest. They are doing their best. 

But it is hard. It is nighttime, the sea is rough, the boat is “battered by the waves” and “the wind was against them.” It is literally life-threatening. For all their efforts to be followers of Jesus, there they are, without him.  

The early Jesus-followers used a boat as a metaphor for the church.  Disciples are in the boat, which is good, but if Jesus is not in the boat with them, there is trouble!

The Disciple’s Risk Scene

The next scene is where this simple story starts to become other-worldly. The disciples see Jesus nonchalantly walking towards them on the sea. 

They are terrified, think they are seeing a ghost, until he says to them, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” In Jesus’ presence, people felt the presence of the Divine.  

When early Christians thought about Jesus, they tried to work out several  confusing problems. One of them was this: how is Jesus related to the Divine? Jesus was intimate with the Divine, Jesus’ presence was a healing presence, so clearly he operated in the spirit and power of the Divine, and Jesus helped others encounter the Divine.  

Whichever way you answer that question, this story shows us the extent to which Jesus’ spirituality was manifested in his life. He believed that no matter what storms were going on around him, he was upheld by the Presence of the Divine.  

Matthew received this story from Mark, and adds this next scene about Peter. In the gospels, Peter is often the spokesperson for the disciples, and so represents them.  (John picks up Matthew’s story and retells it too.)

He wants to be like Jesus; he too wants faith strong enough to be upheld, even in a storm, even out on the water itself. He takes the ultimate risk. He gets out of the boat and starts walking on the water. 

Matthew makes no effort to make this realistic. Imagine if the waves were solid enough to walk on; on a stormy sea, it would be like snow-skiing down a course of moving moguls, almost impossible to keep your balance.  But never mind; there is, again, no attempt here at realism. The point is the risk. Peter knew the risk, but he took it.  

You know the rest of the story. He took the risk, but then started re-calculating, and lost his nerve. He cried out, using words written many years ago in Psalm 69 where the poet said to the Divine, “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.”

Faith Takes Risks

Matthew tells us, “Jesus reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” 

By telling the story this way, Matthew focuses on faith that is strong enough to take the risk; faith that is stronger than doubt. 

Faith simply means trust. It is not about believing creeds. It is about saying, “Yes, it’s a risk; no, there is no certainty on offer here, but the risk is worth it. I will go all in. I will risk having faith that the Jesus-path is the one on which on which I will be upheld. The waves may batter me, the wind may be against me, but I’m going to make it, crossing over to the ‘other side’.”

Now, Matthew is not suggesting that complete security is on offer here. Some sailors die at sea. But rather, having confidence in the Presence of the Divine is what helps us endure any and every storm, even the ultimate one, as Jesus did, for we are all mortal.  

Why Tell a Risk Story?

So, let’s stand back and look at the story as a whole. Why tell a story about risk-taking? What is it about following Jesus that is like Peter getting out of the boat in a storm? 

The answer is that following Jesus has always required risk. The Jesus-path may not be the easiest, most comfortable path to take.  

Let us offer some specifics. It is risky to forgive; what if forgiving someone just gives them the idea they can hurt us again? 

It is risky to be the good Samaritan that stops to help the victim: what if the robbers are lying in wait for another victim? 

It is risky to hang out with the “wrong” crowd; you can get a reputation (as Jesus did).  It is even risky to advocate for them.  

It is risky to open your heart to ideas that most of “your kind of people” disagree with.  

It is risky to get out of the boat, but that is exactly what we are called to do.  Like Peter, we meet Jesus not just within the safe sanctuary on Sunday, but out in the middle of the storm.

It is true that working for social justice can feel as risky as walking on water.  Confronting the big money interests that oppose climate legislation can feel risky too.  

We take the risk that we might look like we have taken sides in somebody’s culture war.  That is not at all our motivation.  Our motive is to be faithful followers of Jesus who dedicated his life to helping people in need.  

For us, those people include our children’s children who will have to survive on the planet we leave to them, and hopefully, we will leave it in such a condition that it won’t explode into flames and destroy their homes, as has just happened in Hawaii.   

The risks we take include advocating for gay people and trans people.  It includes everyone in need of housing and healthcare and an public education which includes real history and believes in science.  

Most of the the people we advocate for are not here in the boat with us, so we must take the risk of getting out of the boat, like Peter, even in the middle of the storm.

We will not focus our gaze on the storm, no matter how rough it gets, but on Jesus, who molded a spirituality of equanimity, and who was upheld, until the wind ceased, and justice rolled down like water.  

Jesus’ Invitation

Sermon for July 9, 2023, Pentecost 6A, Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR

Matthew  11:28—30

[Jesus said] “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”                                  

When, according to Matthew, Jesus said, “Come to me…” he was offering an invitation, a call.  

What was actually on offer? 

He called it “rest.”  What did that mean, in his context, and what could that mean for us in our vastly different context?  

He specified the people he intended to invite: 

“all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens.” 

What was making them weary, and what were they burdened by?  

Answering Jesus’ invitation included taking his yoke, as an alternative to the yoke that was burdening them and making them weary.  

To answer the invitation, people needed not only to take his alternative yoke, they also were called to “learn from” Jesus.  

What did that yoke mean, and what did he want them to learn from him, in his context, and what could that mean for us in our vastly different context?

Let’s begin with the rest Jesus was offering to those who answered his invitation.  

Let me start with a question.  Can God get tired?  

In the Ancient world, they thought so.  God, or the gods, had a lot of work to do and it made them tired and hungry.  

That is one of the reason ancient people sacrificed to the gods: it was the way to feed them.  Burning meat turned it into smoke, which the gods ingested by inhaling it.  

There is almost a comic scene in the ancient flood story, the Epic of Gilgamesh in which the gods, after going without sacrificial food all during the flood, swarm like flies around the first post-flood sacrifice.  

The work of the gods that made them so tired involved keeping chaos under control.  As is often the case in ancient mythology, states of being, like chaos or death, were depicted as characters.  

Chaos was depicted as the chaos monster that lived in the watery depths under the earth, always threatening to burst out and ruin everything.  

Chaos is when civilization is in a mess, people are being oppressed, justice is not being done, and evil triumphs.

But when everything was working as it should, when adequate sacrifices fed the gods and the work of subduing chaos was accomplished, then the gods got what they most desired: rest.  

Picking up on this idea, the ancient people who gave us our Biblical creation story made the seventh day the climax.  On the Sabbath, the seventh day, God rested.  Creation was complete.  

It had started as a disordered place, but God’s Spirit or breath hovered over the chaotic depths and brought forth light and life, symmetry and beauty, fish, animals and people, peace, and harmony, justice and abundance for everyone.  

The principle of Sabbath rest was then built into the structure of life for the Israelites.  The perfect world was not only when God was resting with chaos under control, but the humans that God had made in God’s image also participated in Sabbath rest.  How?  In multiple rhythms of rest.  

Every seven days, on the Sabbath, there was literal rest from all labor.  It was to be a day of rest for everyone — men, and women, slave or free.  

Every seven years, on the Sabbath year, all debts were forgiven and thus, the cause of debt slavery was reversed.  

Every fiftieth year, after seven Sabbath years, was the Year of Jubilee, on which all land was returned to its original owner and all debt slaves were released. 

The land was also given a year of rest from agricultural production.  

This Sabbath-based redistribution system is what we mean by the term “distributive justice.” 

Well, no one knows when, if ever, this Sabbath-rest system was ever implemented.  But that is the vision of how it should be.  

However, by the time of King Solomon, the story is that all this was scuttled.  The people were put under a heavy taxation system to build up the king’s palaces and temples and to supply his court with lavish opulence.  

It was so bad for the people that when Solomon’s son took the throne, the people came to him begging for relief.  

They said,

“Your father made our yoke heavy. Now, therefore, lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you.”  

1Kings 12:4

Notice they called the oppressive system a yoke.  He did not, however, heed their pleas, and so they seceded.  The nation was split in two, never to unite again.  

The biblical story of the monarchy is told as one long spiral into disaster.  

Prophets periodically inveighed against corruption and injustice, but with limited if any success.  The once-proud nation was eventually swallowed up by the Babylonian empirical regime, and Israel’s monarchy was brought to a devastating end.  

Viewing the smoldering ruins of the temple in Jerusalem, with his compatriots — at least the survivors — in exile, Jeremiah described their plight in prayer, saying,

“With a yoke on our necks we are hard driven; we are weary, we are given no rest.” .  

(Lam. 5:5)

A yoke of Babylonian oppression was hard, making them weary, and giving them no rest.  

Now we are in a position to understand what Jesus was talking about.  

To the desperately poor people in Galilee, under the oppression of both the Roman Empire and the Herodian dynasty’s complicit corruption, Jesus was saying in effect: I see the yoke you are carrying. I see how heavy it is.  I know that you are weary.  This is not the “rest” of distributive justice that God wills for you. This is a condition of oppression.  

So, Jesus extended an invitation: “Come to me…take my yoke, learn from me.”  What was he offering?  

Jesus was offering an alternative vision of life, an alternative vision of God, and an alternative vision of humanity.   

The alternative vision of life was that the earth is the Lord’s.  God is king.  Let God’s “will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  

What is God’s will? It is not a mystery. As Jesus learned from the prophets:

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” . 

(Micah 6:8)

“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” .  

(Amos 5:24)

God’s will is a sabbath rest from the burden of oppression and injustice.  That is a new vision of life.

Jesus also wanted people to learn from him a new vision of God who could be addressed without a priest, a temple, or a sacrifice. A God who was a loving heavenly father/mother who wanted his children to live together as neighbors, as a beloved community of inclusion around a common table. 

It was that God who was for them, not against them.  It was that God who heard the cries of the blessed poor, the meek, and the least of these.  

This vision of God produced a new vision of humanity; not a world of pure and impure people, not a world that excluded the women and children, the sick and disabled, not a world in which it made a difference if you were Samaritan, Roman, Canaanite or Jewish, but a united humanity of sharing and abundance.

What does this mean for us today?  We too are invited by the same offer: “Come,” Jesus says.  Come, embrace this vision of life in the kingdom of God.  Come embrace this vision of the loving God of distributive justice.  Come learn from Jesus that humanity can begin to know each other as “neighbors,” and that there is enough for all of us.   

Today, the sources of injustice and oppression are not the Romans nor the Herodian aristocracy.   But they are nonetheless real and cause suffering.  Many today are weary and carrying burdens, desperately in need of rest.  

We do not live in a society of distributive justice.  Nor do we live in a society that has learned much from Jesus.  Plenty give lip service, but have learned virtually nothing of his alternative vision of distributive justice.  

But the call is still, “Come…learn.”  The call is to join Jesus by taking up his yoke,  his cause on behalf of the weary and burdened people of our day.  

The call is to join Jesus in solidarity with the marginalized in our context.  

The call is to join Jesus in non-violent resistance to systems of injustice and discrimination.  

The call is to learn from Jesus’ teaching and lifestyle which will empower us to resist the gross distortions of Christianity being marketed today.  

The call is to keep answering that invitation until there is the sabbath rest of justice for all.

The Ride of the King

Sermon for April 2, 2023, Palm Sunday

Matthew 21:1-11

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,

“Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written,

‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’;
but you are making it a den of robbers.”

This story is one of the most misunderstood stories of the Bible, in my opinion. What kind of story is it? Is it the story of a triumph? 

It has been called the Triumphal Entry story; is that correct? In the days of the Roman empire, a general who had just won a war was rewarded with a “triumph;” a public parade in which he was honored as king for a day, and given a laurel crown to wear. 

You may have seen pictures of the great arch in Rome commemorating Titus’ victory over the Jews after the Jewish revolt which started about 30 years after Jesus walked the earth. 

On the arch are reliefs showing the parade; the victors are carrying the spoils of war, like the menorah taken from the sacked temple in Jerusalem. 

Is that what Jesus’ donkey ride was; a triumphal entry? I think it is obvious that it was not.  But it raises many questions.

Why did the Roman government arrest and execute Jesus? 

We are all familiar with the gospel stories which tell us that it was the Jewish leaders who conspired to convince Pilate to crucify Jesus, but why did those leaders want him dead, and on what basis did Pilate comply? 

Why was Jesus such a threat?  

For years, Christians have read this story with a theological explanation in mind.  We have read it as a story of a parade honoring Jesus, whom we call “King.”  We say, with the crowd, “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” 

But that theological reading makes it hard to see what is going on here and why it matters so much. Let us put the story in context. 

Jesus and tens of thousands of other people were in Jerusalem for a Jewish festival. It was Passover. Passover was like the 4th of July for Jews. It was their Independence Day. 

Passover celebrates the night on which the Jews escaped from Egypt where they had been enslaved for over 400 years. 

But what was the context in which they celebrated that memory? In the time of Jesus, Israel had been conquered by the Romans. 

For the Israelites, it was almost like being back in Egypt. They were under occupation, like France under the Nazis during the Second World War. 

The Germans prohibited the celebration of Bastille Day during the war for obvious reasons. Remembering your independence from your overlords makes people under occupation more likely to revolt.  

The Romans did not prohibit the celebration of Passover, but it did make them nervous. So, although there was a permanent garrison of Roman troops in Jerusalem, during the Passover festival, Pilate reinforced them with troops from his headquarters down on the Mediterranean coast. 

Imagine Pilate, on a big white warhorse, leading his troops with their swords, shields, spears, and helmets all shining in the sun, clanking and stamping into Jerusalem from the West.  

Meanwhile, perhaps even simultaneously, Jesus comes from the East, from the Mount of Olives, riding into the city on a little donkey colt. 

If you have ever seen someone try to ride an animal that has not yet been saddle-broken, you can imagine what it must have looked like; it was probably ridiculous — especially to see a full-grown adult on an untrained donkey colt.  

What was Jesus doing on that donkey, that day? This whole scene was pre-arranged. Matthew tells us all about the set-up with the donkey and its colt and the owner. Most of the words in this story are about the donkey. 

Jesus was riding a donkey colt into the capital city accompanied by cheering crowds and their hymns of praise. 

They were waving palm branches as their ancestors had done in another historic occasion of liberation, and naming Jesus “Son of [ancient king] David, ” which sounds a lot like calling him the heir apparent. 

But he is on a humble little donkey instead of a big white horse, like Pilate’s. It looks like mockery. It was a mockery. It was intentional parody.  

Was Jesus being celebrated as a King that day? Yes, he was. And remember, “King of the Jews” was the mocking title Pilate ordered to be displayed on his cross. 

This is the point Matthew was trying to make when, as he wrote this story, he said, 

“This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,

“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.“

But was that all a mistake? Was Jesus an actual threat to anyone? Wasn’t his kingdom, as the gospels report him saying to Pilate, “not of this world” and therefore, without anyone fighting for it, as Jesus pointed out? 

Wasn’t Jesus’ kingdom all about “turning the other cheek” and “blessed are the meek”? Why would that kind of a king threaten anyone? Why would anyone want him dead?  

Because of what he did when he arrived. He went directly to the temple, and, Matthew tells us, Jesus

 “drove out all who were selling and, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers.”

New Testament scholars have pointed out that the den is not where the robbers are robbing people; the den is where they hide the loot. 

By driving out the money changers and the dove sellers, Jesus was temporarily shutting down the temple. 

Why? The temple was also the national bank, the place where the records of debts were kept, and the repository for taxes. 

The people running it and benefiting from it were the minority elite aristocratic class. These were the landed families who were, in the time of Jesus, increasing their estates by driving peasants off their land through debt foreclosure. 

These were the ones living in luxury from the temple taxes everyone was obliged to pay. 

These were the ones who were collaborating with the Romans, just as the Vichy government did with the Nazis. 

These were the ones, in other words, who were instruments of oppression; these were the ones who were the reason that the people who gathered to hear Jesus were hungry and needed to be fed with fish and bread. 

The people who show up in Jesus’ parable as day-laborers who got paid whatever the landlord wanted to pay them.  

In other words, the “meekness” that Jesus advocated did not mean passivity in the face of injustice. 

The love of enemy that Jesus called for did not include turning a blind eye to oppression. Jesus’ methods were non-violent, that much is certain.  He had no weapons, no soldiers, and no alternative government.

But Jesus was leading a resistance movement that had direct economic implications for the power-elites running the system. He confronted them on the Passover day of independence, and they got the message.  

So, this parade of mockery, and the temple action that followed, provoked a backlash of violence. The elites collaborated to have Jesus crucified.  

But their violence did not snuff out the kingdom Jesus proclaimed. Jesus’ words and his vision of a beloved community live on, as people gather around inclusive tables, celebrating God’s unconditional love that binds them together into a new humanity. 

So, it is not wrong for the church to think of Palm Sunday as a day of celebration, a day to honor a king. But we must not make the mistake that has been made for so many years of triumphalism — as if Jesus’ kingdom was of this world.  

Jesus is king, but his kingdom, as he said, is “among us;” it is “within us;” it is “at hand.” That is what we act out as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. 

That is what we live-out, as we make 80 dozen muffins every month for the Sack Lunch Program that feeds so many in this city. 

This is the kingdom we embody as we stand up for people who are being marginalized, like the transgendered among us.

Why did Jesus die? Jesus died fighting injustice and oppression. But his death was not a tragic failure. 

Two thousand years later, all of those elites in Israel are long forgotten. 

But in Jesus’ name, millions of meals have been served to the poor. In Jesus’ name, people have marched for justice, for freedom, and full inclusion. 

In Jesus’ name many people have embraced the ethics of non-violence. Because of Jesus’ vision, many people have engaged spiritual practices like meditation that helped them confront their own self-seeking egos. 

In Jesus’ name, thousands of hospitals and clinics have been started all over the world.  

We are not triumphalist. We do not believe that celebrating Jesus as king excludes the notion of God’s work in other religions. 

Neither do we believe that the Spirit is unable to lure people of no particular religious faith to act in loving, even in self-sacrificial ways, just as so many are doing in response to tragedies like the tornadoes. 

But this is the day we celebrate Jesus’ demonstrated willingness to sacrifice his security on behalf of the people he loved. 

In that sense, we can join the crowds saying, “Hosanna! God save us” and “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  

Significantly Human

Sermon for Jan. 8, 2023, Baptism of Jesus Sunday, Year A

Video will be available at the website of the Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR after the service

Matthew 3:13–17 

 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

I watched a short animated video which was amazing.  First, we see our earth from the vantage of space.  We see that familiar blue and white, bowling ball-looking circle against the blackness.  

Then the view zooms back to show the size of our earth in relation to the other planets in our solar system.  If Saturn were a basketball, the earth would be the size of a ping-pong ball.  

Then we see the earth next to the sun.  If the sun is the basketball, the earth is the size of a BB.  

Looking at the earth from Mars, we appear no larger than a little white speck, like a distant star.  If the earth is the size of a BB compared to the basketball sun, our sun is the size of a BB compared to other stars.  

The video animation keeps zooming out and out, further and further, until our whole galaxy is just a speck among galaxies.  

The Hubble space telescope took a picture of one little patch of sky in which there are thousands of galaxies, with billions of stars in them, each star with its own circling planets.  

At first, when you watch this, you feel small.  Then as it continues, you feel insignificant.  Finally, you feel minuscule at an unimaginable scale.  

One way to tell the human story is to say we do not matter.  We could blow up our entire world in nuclear war and the universe would take no more notice than we do of battling ant colonies beneath our lawns.  

Another Story

But another way to tell this story is with awe that in this amazing universe, we, and perhaps only we (although we do not know for sure) have been given the gift of consciousness.   Unlike those billions of galaxies and stars and planets, we know that we are here.  

Along with the gift of consciousness, we have been given other gifts of awareness as well.  Since humans emerged, we have looked out across the stars in the sky and have had a sense that we are not alone.  We have sensed that in spite of our smallness in the universe, we matter to God.  

How we matter to God has been a question answered differently across human history.  For much of the world and for much of that history, the idea of mattering to God has come with fear.  The fear that whatever God wanted, we were not giving it, or enough of it, or in the right way.  

We feared what God could do to us in return.  Everybody suffers, some much more than others, but we all experience pain and loss.  Maybe we were being punished by God?  

The Jesus Story

Into this rather bleak picture comes another story; the Jesus story.  In an utterly amazing and revolutionary departure from the narratives of fear, Jesus presents us with a transforming alternative narrative of love.  

How do we matter to God?  We matter like children matter to parents.  We are loved.  We are family.  

Jesus grew up in Nazareth, probably working alongside his father the builder.  But at about age 30, he left home and his family to join a growing movement of people.  

Their leader was a rough-dressing, rough-living man whom we know as John the baptizer.  Jesus went down to the Jordan River and became a part of John’s movement.  Three of the four gospels tell us about that one day, the day John baptized Jesus.  

We read Matthew’s version.  It leaves so many questions unanswered.  John objects to baptizing Jesus — he says, 

“I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

 Why?  What does he know about Jesus?   John, as a spiritually alive and aware person, a prophet, senses something in Jesus’ spirituality that made him feel lesser by comparison.  

Jesus Into the Water

But this is where the story becomes so radical.  Jesus, with his alternative vision of God, knows what he must do.  He must get down into the water with everyone else.  

He cannot maintain some kind of spiritual superiority, because the God that Jesus believes in does not do that.  Instead of staying on the mountain, as in the Moses story, with fearsome sights and sounds that make the people tremble. Jesus knows God as the father that runs to welcome his prodigal son back home.  

So Jesus gets into the water with everyone else and is baptized in those waters that everyone else has shared, in complete and total identification with them, demonstrating that they matter to God.  

It is in those waters that Jesus has the experience that propelled him into his own public ministry.  Matthew tells it this way:

“When Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

In the waters, Jesus became profoundly aware at a deeper level that he was God’s Son, the beloved.  In the waters, he became aware of the Spirit of God, upon him and within him.  

Our Baptismal Waters

Nearly everyone here has passed through the waters of baptism.  In that moment we have been named and claimed as children of God.  We have been given the identity of “beloved.”  We have become members of the beloved community, the body of Christ.  

Baptism is the perfect symbol for what we believe.  In its original context, baptism involved literally submerging under the water.  

Under the surface, suddenly the sounds and sights of the world change.  It is almost silent.  It is like a grave.  It is like death. Coming up out of the water, suddenly the world reappears; we can breathe again.  It is like rising from the dead.  

In baptism we symbolize dying to an old way of being, and rising to a new life.  It is like emerging from the dark waters of the womb into the light of life.  

We may be specks of dust in an enormous universe, but we are children who matter to our God.  Our identity then, gives us our vocation, our calling.  

As the beloved community of the baptized, as children of God, we are called to get down into those waters with everyone else.  We know that we, ourselves, matter to God.  

We also know that every one of us matters to God.  We know that our place is not to remain aloof on the banks, but it is down in the waters with the rest of humanity, because that is where God meets us.  

On this small blue planet, we humans have had a difficult time, over the years, recognizing each other as beloved children of God.   

Throughout history we have characteristically seen our differences as reasons to divide, and having divided, we have treated others with suspicion, and even harm. But it doesn’t have to be that way.  

Our baptismal calling, is to get into the water with those who differ from us.  Our identity as children of God calls us to get up and move to where sisters and brothers, children of the same God, have been harmed, and to stand with them, recognizing them as we recognize ourselves: as beloved children of a loving God before whom we are significantly human. 

Empires and Immigrants

Sermon for Jan. 1, 2023 at Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR.

Audio is at the church website.

 Matthew 2:13–23 

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt,  and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.  Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” 

When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 20 “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.”  Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.  But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee.  There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”

On social media I saw two pictures of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in the Christmas season, the first from last year and the second from this year.  It was a helicopter view of the theater that became famous as the place all those hundreds of women and children sheltered from the shelling.  

They had written in huge letters the Russian word for children on the big squares in front and back of the theater, so that anyone targeting the shelling would know to avoid it.  Nevertheless, the theater took a direct hit, killing an estimated 600 people, mostly women, and children.

The picture taken last year featured a huge lit-up Christmas tree on the square, and decorations all around.   The contrast was stark.  The Christmas celebration of a new birth is now a ruin; a place of mass death.  

That contrast of new birth and death, hope and terror is at the heart of the Christmas story.  In the story, as Matthew tells it, Jesus is born to Mary and Joseph, not in the best of times, but at least, in safety, at first.  

The wise men come and present him with gifts, honoring him as the newborn king of the Jews.  But the reigning king of the Jews, Herod the Great was not having it.  

In a macabre replay of Pharaoh’s slaughter of the Israelite baby boys, Herod orders a massacre. That is what empires do. Matthew says, 

“he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under….”

What parent could possibly remain under those conditions?  Matthew’s interest is in Jesus’ story, so he says nothing about what others attempted to do, but we can imagine the mass panic and desperate attempts at escape. 

We can imagine the weeping.  Matthew recalls a couplet from the prophet Jeremiah who looked at the captured Israelites, stopping in Ramah en route to  Babylon.  The prophet imagines Jacob’s wife Rachel, mother of several of the 12 sons of Jacob, the eponymous leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel.   Rachel died in childbirth, weeping for her children.  

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” 

Rachel stands for all the mothers of Israel in so many generations, weeping for their children.  In this latest round in the time of Jesus, it is the mothers of Bethlehem, under Herod’s cruel decree, who weep.

But Joseph and Mary somehow successfully escape.  They take the baby Jesus with them to Egypt, out of Herod’s reach.  

Now they are refugees, immigrants.  People who fled intolerable conditions in their own country to try to survive in another.  People who fled in fear for their child’s life.  People who were willing to risk everything to protect him.

At the heart of the Christmas story, the hero of the story, Jesus, begins life as an immigrant to a foreign country.  This will not be their last move.  

When king Herod died in 4 BCE, so brutal had been his oppression that revolution broke out throughout Israel.  The Roman army brought its legions in to crush the revolts, killing tens of thousands and enslaving more.  But in the end, Herod was gone, and it was now safe to return to their native land.  

But not to Bethlehem.  After his death, Herod’s kingdom was split up between his sons.  Archelaus was governing Judah.  Archelaus had a terrible reputation.  He was so cruel, as his father had been, that the Judeans complained to Rome.  Emperor Augustus removed him from his post in 6 CE, and from thence, Judea was ruled directly by Roman governors.  

So, to avoid the dangers of living under Archelaus, Joseph and Mary move again, this time from Judea up to Galilee, to the town of Nazareth.  They have been uprooted again out of fear of the dangers of the political world they lived in.  

The Christmas story is not all angels and shepherds, wise men, and gifts. It is about death, the fear of death, and escape.  It is about politics that makes it intolerable to stay home. It is also a story of dislocation, of immigration.

How does this story speak to us in the season of Christmas in 2023?   I cannot imagine living in conditions so bad that I would set out on foot with my wife and baby, face the dangers along the way, to get to a country where I did not speak the language and had no employment or lodging.  

I cannot imagine it, but the Venezuelans can.  According to Chatham House, up to 

“six million people have fled Venezuela due to the economic and humanitarian crisis in the country… Since 2013, the economy has contracted by 75 per cent and inflation in 2021 is expected to reach 1,800 per cent. Close to 80 per cent of the population is in poverty and around two-thirds are malnourished.” 

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/10/migration-latin-america

I cannot imagine it, but the people of Guatemala and El Salvador can.  

“Guatemala and El Salvador have some of the most unequal distribution of land in the world. Opportunities are limited in a stratified class system, and both nations were wracked by civil wars during the 1980s with 200,000 people killed in Guatemala’s wars alone.” (Ibid)

Could I stay with my baby in Honduras? 

“Honduras is now the murder capital of the world with a worse murder rate than Iraq at the height of its war.” (Ibid.) 

Refugees have reasons.  Many reasons.  Overwhelming reasons.  

If Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus showed up on our border, would we let them in?   What if they came from Central or South America?

Where does this leave us?  As Christians whose story of Jesus begins with Jesus and his parents as immigrants, how should we feel about modern issues of immigration?  

I do not have all the answers; no one does.  But as a Christian in a majority Christian nation, I have some thoughts I hope we can reflect on.

First, though foreign aid cannot solve all the problems and make these countries acceptable, it can make a real difference. 

So, some thoughts about foreign aid.  There is, in some circles, a myth that foreign aid has no effect.  That is simply not true, and no one should believe it.  

Millions of people have been saved from starvation, and millions have survived the AIDS and Ebola epidemics because of foreign aid.  

Second, foreign aid given to people in anti-democratic governments does not go to those governments.  It is distributed through non-governmental relief and development agencies.  

The myth that foreign aid simply gets sucked up by corrupt governments is simply a phony reason not to give. 

Third, most Americans vastly over estimate the amount of foreign assistance we give.  According to the Brookings Institute: 

“foreign assistance is less than 1 percent of the federal budget…There is a broad international consensus that wealthy countries should provide annually 0.7 percent of GNP to assist poor countries. Five countries (Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark, and the U.K.) exceed that benchmark. The average for all wealthy nations is around 0.4 percent. The U.S. ranks near the bottom at below 0.2 percent.”

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/what-every-american-should-know-about-u-s-foreign-aid/

We are a great nation; we can be a great nation in generosity if our people demand it from our politicians.  But let us not believe myths.  

Even if we doubled our foreign assistance, I am sure we would still have immigration at levels that challenge our current capacity.  

But why is our current capacity so limited?  China can build entire cities from scratch, and they are far behind us in development and prosperity.  

Why is it so much easier to raise money for Patriot missiles at $4 million apiece than for humans at our borders?  

Budgets reflect our values.  We Christmas-story-Christians should be taking the lead in challenging our value system. 

The Presbyterian Office of the General Assembly’s Office of Immigration issues reminds us that, 

“The history of Presbyterians advocating on behalf of immigrants dates back to 1893 when the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Today Presbyterians continue this legacy by working locally as well as nationally to join the struggle to ensure immigration policy is more just and consistent with Christian principles.”  

Finally, what kind of issue is immigration?  It is not first a political issue nor an economic issue.  

If we as Christians begin with the Christmas story and reflect on the plight of Jesus and his family as immigrants, we come to understand that this is a human issue.  

If it is a human issue, then it is automatically a spiritual issue.  It was Jesus, the former immigrant who said, 

“I was a stranger, and you welcomed me… ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these… you did it to me.”

(Matt. 25)