Sin and the Wrong Questions

The other week in the Thursday Bible study, the question of why bad things happen came up. As often happens when this issue arises, no one had a satisfactory answer. From the time we are toddlers to our years as elders, “I don’t know” is the least comforting answer to the question, “Why?” The problem with “why” is not in the asking; sometimes it is in the idea that the question has an answer we can know in this life.

As Jesus and his disciples walk along, they encounter a man who has been blind from birth. For the disciples, his blindness is a puzzle to be solved. He isn't a person to them yet; he is a theological case study. "Rabbi," they ask, "who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

It is such a tidy question. It assumes a universe that functions like a vending machine: you put in a certain amount of sin, and you get out a certain amount of suffering. If you can just find the cause, you can justify the effect. This is the snare in the pursuit of "why." Discovering a “why” shores up our illusion of control. If a "why" is linked to a specific sin or a specific mistake, then as long as we don't make that mistake, we can believe we will be safe. A cause-and-effect God is a predictable God, and a predictable God feels comfortable.

But consider the world right now. We should ask “why” in regard to news cycles filled with the smoke of cities at war, the cries of the displaced, and the silent grief of those who have lost everything to powers far beyond their control. If we ask "who sinned" that these children are dead or these families are grieving, we end up in a spiral of blame that never actually heals, achieves justice, or rebuilds. Do we ask "Why me?" only when the difficult diagnosis comes, or "Why them?" when tragedy strikes? The “why” that only comes in pain assumes that God’s presence is only marked by an absence of struggle. We treat peace and health as the default settings of a blessed and faithful life, and anything else as a glitch in the system that must be someone’s fault.

Jesus, however, refuses to play this game. He looks at the disciples and effectively says, "You’re asking the wrong question." He rejects their binary of sin versus health, of blindness set against wholeness. He moves the conversation away from ancestry—where this came from—and shifts it toward agency—what God is going to do with it. It is not simply that God’s work has been dormant in the blind man until this moment; it is that the moment is needed so that those who are around the man can see that God has been with him all along (even if people haven’t).

It would be a cruel misinterpretation to state that God made the man blind just for him to wait around to be healed in adulthood. That is not a kind of puppetry that I am willing to attribute to the Fount of Every Blessing. Rather, Jesus is saying that in the kingdom of God, the point is not the origin of the wound, but the opportunity for grace. The focus isn't on the "why" of the past; it's on the "what now" of the future.

When we ask our “whys,” we want God’s answers to conform to our expectations of where, how, and when. When something takes too long, doesn’t happen like we expected, or isn’t convenient, we sometimes wonder if God is at work at all. We love reformation, restoration, and resurrection, but we like them on our own terms.

Think for a moment about the resurrected body of Jesus in the upper room at the end of the fourth Gospel. Remember Jesus showing the wounds in his hands, his feet, and his side. The triumph over death did not come with the erasure of the signs of pain. If the resurrected, conquering body of Christ still bore the marks of the nails and spear, then we may have to rethink what wholeness actually means.

In our culture, we sometimes act as though healing equals erasure. We want the scars to disappear. We want the memory of the trauma to be wiped clean. We want to go back to the way things were before the war, before COVID, before the change (whatever that was), before the pain or loss. But Christ’s Gospel doesn't promise a return to the Garden of Eden. It promises something much more profound and necessary: accompaniment and solidarity through the Garden of Gethsemane. 

True healing isn't the erasure of the hard parts; it’s the scab, then the scar, and then the going on in hope. The man born blind didn't just get his physical sight; he gained a testimony that confounded the most powerful religious leaders of his day. His "flaw"—the very thing seen as a mark of sin—became the site of God’s most visible work. His history of blindness wasn't deleted; it was the very thing that allowed him to see Jesus more clearly than the people who were sure they were watching for a Messiah so closely they’d never miss him.

When we look at our own lives, and when we look at a world ravaged by conflict, we often miss the reformation that is happening right under our noses because we are waiting for a version of "fixed" that God never promised. We are waiting for the scars to vanish. We are waiting for the "why" to be answered so we can finally feel okay again.

Todays’ psalm (23) doesn't say, "The Lord is my shepherd, everything will go great for me." It says, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." The valley is there. The shadow is real. The rod and the staff aren't there to magic us out of the valley; they are there to comfort us while we are in it. God’s presence isn't the absence of the shadow; it is the light that the shadow cannot overcome.

When we pray for wholeness, sometimes the answer comes as the strength to carry scars as witness. Restoration can look like a new way of seeing, even if the physical circumstances haven’t shifted to our liking. It is the ability to look at a weary, aching world and not see a lost cause, but a place where the works of God are waiting to be displayed through acts of mercy, through the courage of peacemakers, and through the stubborn hope of the church.

We are often conditioned to see perfection as the goal: the perfect body, the perfect family, the perfect peace. But the cross tells us that God works through imperfection. God works through the mud and the spit. God works through the man who has spent his whole life in the dark.

This past week, when our girls’ basketball team lost two games in a row at the State level, it was a bummer. We ache for them. We cannot undo the pain of that loss for the team, nor the feelings of the boys’ team in a similar situation a few weeks ago. Yet there was something else that happened. Sweet Grass County High School had one of the larger student cheering sections, a pep band, and cheerleaders present. Due to the weather, the team from Shepherd did not have those things. Even in their own disappointment, the SGCHS students stayed and cheered on the Shepherd Mustangs to victory. It wasn't the win they wanted at the start of the day. It didn’t redeem the loss. But that effort was its own kind of win, its own blessing, its own act of agency and revelation of what it means to be team players.

Losses, wounds, pain, grief, and scars are not receipts for sin. These are not signs that God has abandoned you. They are the place where your testimony is being forged; they may not ever answer the question “why,” but they do point to Who—who is acting, who is bringing wholeness, who brings life out of dust, mud, spit, and nothing.

We are not called to be people who have never been hurt. We are called to be people who have been healed into something new—something that still bears the marks of the struggle, but shines with the glory of the resurrection.

Why? “I don’t know why,” said the man born blind. “Don’t know where exactly or how exactly. But I do know who. And I want to follow him.”

May this be our response. Every time.

Amen.

 

Unthinkable, But Required

I am a pastor of a small church- a church full of people whom I love and whom I greatly trust that God loves. On Sunday mornings, there may be any number of children and older people, this includes my own children and some of their best friends. 

I have spent a lot of time thinking about what I would do if someone came in and began shooting.

I've analyzed what I could throw, how quickly I could get to any part of the sanctuary, and how much time I could buy for others by engaging with a shooter- hoping that my death through that engagement would buy others time to attack unseen, hide children, or escape. 

I move my cell phone around in the sanctuary- to be within my arm's reach- so that my last act prior to engagement would be to call 911. I worry about if I don't have time to do this and I may not, but it's part of my mental plan. 

I am a gun owner. I'm an okay shot, better than okay at close range. My husband has asked me, on more than one occasion, to keep a gun with me at church. 

Where? 

In the pulpit next to the Bible? 

In my pocket?

In a shoulder holster, under my diaphanous robe? 

In my purse, carrying said purse with me everywhere like Queen Elizabeth? 

I can't bear this. I cannot bear the thought yielding to my fears. There is making a plan and then there is introducing another problem into the situation. 

My need to have this plan and think these thoughts is not because God "isn't allowed in schools" or because of the use of psychological drugs or even because we have culturally determined that child sacrifice is preferable to some restrictions on gun ownership. 

The need to have this plan is because we have chosen as a culture to make guns our idol of choice. Believing their false promises of safety and self-determination, we have put them on a pedestal and worship them at the altar of unrestricted access and personal freedom. Our call to community living as a nation, cities, and smaller groups has been sublimated to believing that we are entitled to having what we want, when we want it and to extracting revenge and never dwelling for long in feelings of discomfort or pain. 

This is the direct result of patriarchy, white supremacy, and rape culture.

Let me be VERY CLEAR that I am not saying that everyone who owns guns rapes or is a white supremacist. 

I am, however, saying that we (almost all of us) have contributed to a culture where many people, especially white, cis-gendered, heterosexual men, have been socialized to an unhealthy level of entitlement regarding other people's bodies, property, and opportunities. And, through our gun idolatry, they see a cultural worship of tools that allow them to respond with deadly force when they do not get what they have been taught and believe they "deserve". 

This is a complex issue, but it isn't actually that complicated and it's not impossible to improve. 

But we have to want to. All of us have to want to. 

And until that happens, I will be preaching with a phone nearby, thinking about how far I can throw the large rock that sits on the altar, and praying that most of the congregation will be saved, even if I am not. 

How's that for your thoughts and prayers?

Repost: 10 Things to Know about Hell

I wrote and posted this originally in 2015, but I recently dusted it off and updated it to preach to a group of clergy colleagues. It's one of those sermons that is truly written for oral delivery with asides, facial expressions, and gestures, but it's still good in the reading.
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The Top 10 Things to Know about Hell

10. About 99% of the images in your head of hell- the red demon with a pointed tail, the levels of suffering, the pit of fire, the presence of those who never knew Christ, the darkness, AND the eternal wailing and torment (plus the image of Judas in hell)- are all from Dante’s The Divine Comedy (or The Inferno). His writing was a piece of political literature that condemned powers of his day that he didn’t like. It also was Dante’s way of confirming himself as a poet for the ages by using the poet Virgil, who lived and died before Jesus, as his guide. Additionally, Dante’s work was a distillation of Greek and Roman mythology, some alleged gospels from the second, third, and fourth centuries, and one other work that had serious influence in Dante’s lifetime. The majority of the artwork about hell is not from Biblical interpretation, but is based on The Inferno- which takes very little from actual Holy Scripture.

9. What was the influential work that circulated in Dante’s life? It was a work that had been translated into Latin and was very popular in upper class Italian household in the thirteenth century. Even if Dante hadn’t read this work, he would have been familiar with its descriptions of a fiery hell, divided into seven levels, and particularly populated by people who did not believe in God. What was this book? The Koran.

8. Isaiah 14, when it mentions Lucifer, is not talking about Satan. It is a prophetic statement against the then present-day Babylonian leader who brought suffering upon God’s people. The punishment for the shining leader would be an ignoble death and then to be completely forgotten. The prophecy also turned about to be prediction as no one is quite sure to which king this passage refers. Dante, as well as John Milton in Paradise Lost, expounded upon medieval Christian ideas of the ruler of the underworld being an eternal force that opposed God and was cast down. What force, anywhere, would have the temerity to attempt to oppose an eternal God? God has no eternal counterparts. Only God, as the Holy Parent, Holy Word, and Holy Spirit, exists outside of time.

7. The four horsemen in Revelation are not signs of the apocalypse. Apocalypse means disclosure. The four horsemen, as the images in Revelation 6 are called, are signs of apocalyptic literature. They help readers to know that they are dealing with a story that seems to be about the future, but is really dealing with present realities. The four horses and their riders are the gospel, war, poverty, and death. These things struggle, but one will triumph. (Hint: it won’t be war, poverty, or death.) Those who are believers or who wish to be believers must remember to place their trust in what is truly permanent and act accordingly.

6. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the dead are dead. Period. Sheol is a place where the dead may be gathered and perhaps they are shades, or shadows of their former selves in that place. Ancient Israelites did not engage in ancestor worship, unlike most of the other regional religions of the time. Furthermore, an attempt to contact the dead (as Saul did when he used a fortuneteller to contact Samuel) is a sign of failure to trust in God as the one who holds the future and in whom one should place all confidence. Sheol is sometimes perceived to be a pit where one might descend spiritually- like the psalmist or the prophets Jonah or Jeremiah. Yet the fear is of being forgotten and God does not forget God’s children. Even in the deepest depths, God still knows the intimacies of creation.

5. Satan is an adversary in the Hebrew Scripture, but not an eternal being. When Satan’s name is used in the New Testament, it is either a pseudonym for powers and principalities or how the presence of evil, within one’s own heart or outside of one’s self, is named. When contemporary religionists empower the name of the enemy by attributing works to Satan or giving Satan characteristics that are not biblical, they are engaged in a form of idolatry. Idolatry is not only worshipping the wrong god. It is also idolatrous to be afraid of the wrong power. The idea that there is a force equal to God with evil intent and the power to lure us into eternal separation and that we would be motivated by the fear of that being… Nope. That is not the essence of the Gospel, which is about the good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

4. When Jesus talks about hell and says, “hell”, he is referring to an actual geographical location outside of Jerusalem. There, outside the city, was a horrible trash pit that burned constantly. The place was called Gehenna and it is the word that we have translated in the gospels as “hell”. Gehenna had once been the site of child sacrifices, the very sacrifices that were forbidden to Jews, but were practiced by other religions to appease their gods. It eventually became the place of the very worst trash and it was where Roman soldiers would dump the bodies of people who were crucified. It was this horrible place- a place of ignominy, terror, and avoidance- that Jesus urged people to avoid by encouraging them to care for one another, to tend to the sick and the dying, and to practice a radical kind of welcome. The Way of Christ would have meant being a community that saved one another, and the outcasts of society, from being burned with trash and forgotten.

3. In the fundamentalist Christianity in which I grew up, I understood the following: “Baptism, praying in the name of Jesus, and the King James Version of the Bible are all magical talismans against suffering in hell. Not drinking, dancing, swearing, or getting caught wanting to are also important.”

If “I will draw all people to myself” (John 12) AND “Nothing can separate us from the love of God” (Romans 8) and “I have seen the Lord” (John 20) are true, then which of God’s children will be cast into an eternal separation from the presence of grace? We are not all traveling up the same mountain. We are not all feeling different parts of the same elephant. But if God is God AND God is love AND God has been revealed in the person of Jesus AND the Spirit intercedes for us in a variety of ways, then we cannot confidently make predictions about anything that comes after what we know, except to say, “God will still be God and, therefore, in charge.” Is it in keeping with how God has revealed the Divine character to the world to punish people for an infinite amount of time for bad decisions made during a finite period of time?

2. He descended to the dead. Everything from Acts to 1 Peter to the Gospel of Nicodemus to The Inferno written about Holy Saturday- the day between Good Friday (when Jesus was crucified) and Easter (when he was known to be raised from the dead)- everything written about this is an attempt to answer the question, “Where the hell was he?” Truth: no one knows. We are comforted by the idea that Jesus took the message of his triumph over death to the spirits of those who had died and brought them (or those who believed) to heaven. It makes great artwork. We don’t know. Theologian Yvette Flunder says, “Religion is violent because we insist on making the uncertain certain.”  Trying to create a definite answer for what happens on Holy Saturday is, essentially, an attempt to nail Jesus down. Again. So that we don’t have to live with a little mystery.  

1. Hell is not a geographical location. It may be a spiritual location. Hell, if it is anything, is a perception of the absence of God. A perception that is patently false, but that appears when our own experiences, ideas, certainties, or doubts attempt to make gods of themselves through confidence or through fear. That perception is transformed through our acceptance, with Christ’s help, of the height and depth and breadth of grace. People need hell to exist as a reality because they don’t trust that there’s enough of God’s love, grace, or mercy to go around. If there’s not, they want to be sure they’re on the receiving end of it.

When we open ourselves to the hopeful truth that God’s grace overflows- in terms of time, space, context, materiality, and spiritual revelation- we then become more rooted in the joy of our salvation and the good news of freedom in Christ. Rejecting hell as something that must exist removes the scales from our eyes so that we can see how the kingdom of God is at hand.

Living faithfully, through God’s grace, means separating what we have ingested culturally through literature, art, theater, movies, and television and actually examining the written Word and the revelation that can come from tradition, reason, and experience. We reflect on those things in community and with the help of the Holy Spirit. Anything else leads us away from the grace that is amazing, transformative, salvific, and eternal. What can be said about anything that leads us away from the fear, love, and trust of God?  Resurrection grace says, “To hell with that.”

Amen.

Dare I Ask (Dare! Dare!)

Maybe you have a question about one of these topics? 

I would like to emphasize how much I appreciate questions. As a pastor, questions help me to know how people are thinking around me. They point me to information that I might have that I could share. They provide a path for me to encourage discernment by and wisdom gathering in others.

I have previously answered questions here and here. These aren't two "good" questions. They were genuine questions that people asked of me and gave me time to ponder my answer.

Recently I did "Ask a Pastor Anything" or "Pastor in the Hot Seat" with a confirmation class. The group of 11-14 year (and a couple adults) asked the following questions:

- Were there any conflicts between people who believe in religion and people who believe in science? If so, what happened?

- What is theodicy?

- Could God have said things much differently and we misunderstood his teaching or mistranslated his ideas and, therefore, some things seen negatively could've been positive? (sic)

- What happens to people when they die?

- In Revelation, God speaks through John to tell us about the "overcomers" who rule/reign with Christ for a thousand years. Who are the "overcomers"?

- Is there resurrection for everyone?

- Have Lutherans ever tried to force their religion on other people, when they're missionaries or anything? (sic)

- Where did Jesus die?

- When was the Holy Bible made?

- Why should I care about being a Christian at all? What's in it for me? Why is this important?

- When were you baptized?

- The Bible says women should remain silent in church- why, then, do we ordain women?


These are good questions. Most of them reflect the internal struggles of the asker, but almost everyone present was curious about the answer. Perhaps you, too, are curious about some of the answers.

There's another "Ask a Pastor Anything" event coming up at Lutheran Church of Hope on Wednesday evening, 4 April (6:15 pm). In the meantime, you can always put a question in the comments or email one to me (lcohpastor@alaska.net). People at the event will have the benefit of being able to ask anonymously, but I never publish names with questions if you send one via email.

Jesus never punished anyone for asking questions. God encourages our desire for knowledge and understanding. The Spirit draws us together that we might learn from each other.

Crosspost: Gaslighting

This was originally written for and posted on RevGalBlogPals.org and posted on 3/21/16. At the time of posting, it generated considerable conversation and commentary. I recommend that you go over there for interesting thoughts beyond this writing.

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Gaslighting is a strong word.

It’s a strong word with psychological triggers for many people, including me.

Gaslighting involves the perpetrator trying to convince the target (the one being gaslighted) that what they perceive is not actual reality. By convincing the target to doubt herself, the gaslighter gains power through distortion, lies, and misinformation. Soon the target may come depend on the gaslighter for “truth”, since the target no longer trusts his senses, perceptions, or even basic reasoning ability.

Donald Trump has been accused of gaslighting the entire United States of America. By doubling-down when caught in a lie, Trump makes his accusers doubt themselves, rather than backing down and admitting to the truth. His supporters refuse to see the lies because a gaslighter convinces his targets that only he holds the truth. If he says it’s true, it is true. If he says it is not, it is not.

How did we get here? Is this really the to-be-expected results of reality television, endless undeclared war, and a disappearing middle class? Is this the natural result of denying climate change, ignoring global political crises, pretending that we were post-racial, and arguing that the poor are poor due to lack of motivation as opposed to systematic and specific reductions in services and aid?

That’s a short list of topics on which people are gaslighted every day, through various media outlets and from the mouths of leaders. We are hardly able to have conversations with friends and neighbors any more because we have been presented with a specific set of facts in a certain way so many times that we are unable to process contradictory information.

Which brings me to a very difficult question and its answer. Does gaslighting happen in theology? That’s a different question to “Does it happen in church or the Church” to which the answer is, regrettably, yes.

Does gaslighting happen in theology? Is there a line of “truth” that has been presented for so long that no one dares to question it, even though it’s very, very wrong? The answer to this question, as with almost every question in a children’s sermon, is “Yes. Jesus.”

I do not mean that Jesus was or is a gaslighter or that God was or is. However, I believe that the church has been gaslighting Jesus’ story for close to 1800 years or more. We see the worst products of gaslighting in this week, which we call Holy Week.

I once asked a congregation in an open discussion time if Jesus had to die. They all, to a person, said, “Of course. That’s why he came.” For a second, I felt crazy, since I thought otherwise. In that situation, I had the authority, but I was being presented with 60 voices unified (with some, perhaps, afraid to say otherwise), something that I patently held to be false. Yet, the theology of substitutionary atonement had sunk in, somewhere and somehow.

Almost everyone in that room believed that Jesus came to earth with the specific task of getting to the right spot at the right time so that he could die in the right way. And to what end? So God’s honor would be avenged? So satisfaction could be attained? So Christ’s holiness could be swapped for ours in a cosmic deal between the Satan and God?

The Church, or most of her priests and theologians, has promoted some version of this for years. This theological gaslighting comes to a head in Holy Week wherein we feel that we see the culmination of God’s love for us on the cross. We beat our breasts, say we’re not worthy and dare to walk away, telling ourselves we would have been different. We can’t see the truth because the gas lights have been changed so many times that we doubt ourselves.

Good Friday is the depth of human depravity. God did not have a thing to do with it, except to grieve our inability to perceive the Holy. Jesus did not have a thing to do with it, except to forgive whom he could as long as he had breath. The Spirit did not have a thing to do with it, except to shake the earth, rip the curtain, and generally raise a ruckus in frustration at human cruelty. We have been gaslighted into years of believing that there was goodness in the death penalty being applied to the Word Incarnate- another brown man, with a shoddy trial, accused of being an enemy to the state and the establishment.

When we believe this about Holy Friday, we completely miss the point of Easter. It becomes about God being indulgent: “They’ve been punished enough.” We are gaslighted into downgrading the extravagant, holy, uncontrollable power of grace that brings life where breath and hope were gone. If we aren't able to realize the depth of total depravity, then we aren't actually able to hope in the heights of grace. When we’ve been led to that trough, it’s not hard then to drink the waters of works righteousness and apply them in our secular life, as well as our religious practice.

If we believe that our Creator requires a blood sacrifice to avenge honor or expectation.. if we put forward that God gets angry enough to kill a human being (even one who is also fully divine)… if we believe that God makes deals with Satan and they have to engage in a little horse-trading now and then, we do not have very far to go, then, in being gaslighted by leaders and would-be leaders.

Resisting the forces that oppose God (we renounce them!) means being truthful about God’s character and where we have gotten it wrong in the past. It means being honest about the failures of historical theologies and the shortcomings of present ones. It means freeing our Holy Week practices from the hair shirts of reenactments and groveling and being honest about the depravity of people and the amazing-ness of grace.

We must stop theological gaslighting, which can occur in even the most mainline of congregations. If we begin to be honest about the expansiveness of grace, then we will come to look for it in our daily lives. We then will recognize its opposites for what they are and can point them out with confidence and we will not accept being silenced. We will then be closer to working side by side with and for our neighbors for the good of creation and all. The truth will out. Out of the tomb, out of the evangelists, out of our mouths, out in the world.

He Doesn't Have to Be Jesus

"Martin Luther King Jr NYWTS 4" by New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer: Albertin, Walter, photographer. - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c22985. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

I'm familiar with a certain type of conversation around Martin Luther King, Jr. 

When he's being noted or praised, one or more people in the conversation will decide to mention that MLK, Jr cheated on his wife or plagiarized parts of this thesis or committed this kind of crime or that.

Keep in mind the conversation was never about whether we should add him to the Trinity or the Pantheon or what-have-you. Yet, in the conversation, there seems to be the need to shine a spotlight on MLK, Jr.'s flaws. 

It is also characteristic of this conversation to note "If he hadn't been martyred, he wouldn't be so beloved." 

I've heard all of these comments more that once, more than twice, more times that I can count. 

The truth is, though, he was killed. Martin Luther King, Jr was shot and killed because he advocated for equality of black Americans with white Americans and because he was part of a group that was no longer prepared to see the goal of justice pushed away until a "more convenient time". 

My first-grader came home this week and asked me if I knew about "King Junior". Once I figured out who he was talking about, I asked what he'd learned. He told me that once there was a time when kids with different skin colors could go to the same school. "King Junior" helped fix that so kids [like black kid in his class] could all go to the same school. I asked if he learned what happened to Martin Luther King, Jr. He said, "They shot him." 

They shot him. 

I did explain that Martin Luther King, Jr didn't exactly work with schools all the time. That he did a lot of work so that people with different skin colors would be allowed to choose who was in charge and who makes decisions...  what we do when we vote. Some people did not want to allow people with black and brown skin to vote. 

As I drove and talked, I wondered when I should explain that it is still that way. 

And I wonder how long it will be before someone adds to the "conversation" about MLK, Jr with my son. How long will be before someone feels compelled to mention the character flaws of the man alongside his work? Will this be the same person who is silent about Tamir Rice or Freddie Gray or believes the death of Michael Brown was justified or has no concerns about Sandra Bland? 

When I read "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", it is everything to me that Romans or Galatians was and is. I expect no more perfection from the author of those epistles than I do of the later letter, itself as much an epistle. 

Martin Luther King, Jr didn't have to be Jesus to be right. He didn't do everything perfectly, but he was still right. He didn't have to be a non-sinner to still be a saint. He didn't have to be Jesus carry a message of justice to the world. He didn't have to be Jesus to see God's affection for all people. He didn't have to be Jesus to dream of a time of unity and community. 

And he didn't have to be Jesus to be killed for being a threat to the status quo. 


There are times when I haven't replied in The Conversation. When the other words start and I have indigestion, but I don't say "Stop right there." I wish I had. I hope that I will. 

In the meantime, many people have a three-day weekend. Sales, vacations, rest, family time... Somewhere in there, let us remember the man who was one of the main voices of a movement that dared to dream of something different for the world, for America, for their communities, and even for the church. 

Dr. King wrote in the aforementioned letter: 

We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

A three-day weekend contemplating that will not be wasted. 

Difficult Questions: Return of Christ

Malachi 3:1-7; Psalm 98; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-5:4; Matthew 24:36-44

            I did not anticipate that this sermon, the one on the return of Christ, would be the hardest to write. When I was planning the series, judgment, heaven, and hell all seemed like hefty theological balls to smack into the stands. The return of Christ seemed like a wiffle ball in comparison: Don’t know when it’s coming. It will surprise us all. Be ready by keeping the faith through loving your neighbor and caring for creation. Voila, let’s eat!

            Yet this topic wouldn’t let go of me. I regretted the chosen texts. (Never mind that I chose

them.) Malachi pushes his hearers into a fearful anticipation of what it to come. The one they anticipate will burn off their impurities and everyone who has done any wrong will have it revealed. Those who hear this are supposed to look forward to this day with hope and dread.

            I sometimes visit a Korean spa that offers a full body scrub. (Stay with me here.) You have to soak in a hot tub and then a very aggressive woman scrapes you down with the roughest cloth you’ve ever felt. Your dead skin piles up next to you- if you’re like me. It’s horrible and wonderful all at once and you definitely feel purified- at least skin deep- after it’s over. Is Malachi’s one who is to come going to do this for us- but spiritually and with finality? Is soaking ourselves in the written word and the experiences of community and communion the way of being prepared for this eschatological scrubbing?

            Eschatology is the fancy word for the last things or the end things. If you use it too much, it means you’re not focused on the things of right now, which is its own problem to scrub out. 

            Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians connects us to some of the earliest followers of Christ. Likely, it is the oldest part of the New Testament. The people receiving the letter wrapped themselves in the good news of Jesus Christ that they heard from Paul. Part of his understanding of that gospel and their take-away was that Jesus was returning soon and very soon (as in he’s just around the corner).

            When some of these first believers died, those who remained panicked. How would those who died be able to enjoy what Jesus was going to institute when he came back, which should be in just a few moves on the sun dial. Any moment now… Part of the reason this matters is that the early Christians lived in what historians call the Pax Romana. This was a nearly 200-year stretch of peace achieved by Rome, not because it was actually peaceful, but because Rome had so beaten down its enemies that none had the power to rise against it and break the “peace”.

            This did not mean that the surrounding areas, the Roman territories, felt at peace. Local governors and governments had their own discretion and power to wield in local affairs.  Often this passage from Thessalonians is used not only for its “thief in the night” intimidation, but also as a consolation to Christians who worry that they are wrong. Wrong about God, wrong about Jesus, wrong about what it all means. The Thessalonian Christians were among those who hoped Jesus would return, and soon, so that they would know true peace. They would worship without fear. They would see their loved ones again, according to Paul. And they would be able to show everyone that they were right.

The promises of God, however, are not our trump card when our back is against the wall. When rulers say “peace, peace”, but there is not peace, the promises of God are our consolation. The comfort of knowing that God does not lie is not meant to keep us cocooned in denial or ready to say “Told ya so!”, but to break us out in resurrection freedom so that we may take up our baptismal callings, our vocations, our avocations, and be part of the kingdom that come near right now.

            The passage from Matthew has been so misused that I’d prefer if we never read it. (Yeah, I did say that.)  Without its surrounding passages, it means nothing. Pulled from the context of Matthew’s “Little Apocalypse” or revelation, the gospel writer is explaining to the disciples what it means to faithful. In Matthew, there are only either/ors, this or that, goat or sheep. Period. For this writer, the disciples are either keeping the faith and are among the elect or they are not. End of story.

            This call to righteous living has been manipulated to point toward a “rapture” that has its own theology of discipleship around it. When we have stories that are not centered in Christ, that are not anchored in grace, that do not point to the on-going, merciful, inviting work of the Spirit, or do not fit with God’s eternal character of creation and creativity, then these stories (including the rapture, the tribulation, and all their fabled friends) cannot be part of our way of talking about faith and faithfulness. Matthew’s entire gospel is a guide to those who have found themselves outside of the place they once called home and now need to form a new community. Matthew is writing for spiritual refugees.

            The fancy theological word for the return of Christ is “parousia”, meaning presence or arrival. When I think of the parousia, I think of my junior year of college. I was a transfer student, so this was my first year in this school. I noticed the girl who sat behind me in Italian did not come to class for two weeks and this was after the drop period. Not coming meant either she left the school or was planning to fail the class.

            I did not know many people, but she had been friendly to me. I called the office and found out where she lived in the dorms. I made some brownies and went to make a call. I found her in her dorm room, alone and lonely. She’d decided to attend this formerly Baptist women’s college because it was where her girlfriend wanted to go. Two months into their first year, they broke up. The girlfriend had moved out of their room and, being the more social of the two, had taken most of the friends.

            The tearful girl in front of me looked at me and waited to see what I would do. I wasn’t prepared with a good speech. I didn’t come from any church tradition, family practice, or even friend history that gave me a script for what to say the first time someone told me that they were gay and then cringed to see how I would react. Then the parousia happened. My dad’s refrain of “You know what’s right. Do it” played in my head, overlaid on a soundtrack of every hymn about welcome and grace and hope and love I’d ever sung or heard. Here is how the parousia happened: Deep breath, “Okay. Want some brownies?”

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            This arrival, the return of Christ, is not just far off. If the body of Jesus wouldn’t stay dead, wouldn’t stay entombed, and wouldn’t bother to only speak to the upstanding in the religious community, how can we believe that the spiritual presence of that body will be contained merely to a future date and time. Surely there is a both/and reality that would make the writer of Matthew go wild, but it cannot be denied. Christ is present and Christ is coming. God created and God is creating. The Spirit resurrected and the Spirit is resurrecting. The return of Christ is coming and the return of Christ is here. In our conversations, in our baptisms, in our communion, in our dark nights of the soul, in our singing of “Joy to the World”, in our brownies, in our learning, in our repenting, in our life, and in our death.  

            Embracing the return of Christ as the mystery that it is means letting go of the false gods of bad theology, releasing our fear of hell, rejecting heaven as a prize that we can earn, and realizing truth of the presence of Christ in, with, under, and for us and all creation at all times and in all places. Furthermore, embracing the return of Christ as the most concrete reality of our sermon series forces us to reject spiritual complacency. We must embrace the tangible things that draw us together as a congregation and push us out toward community. These things, from water and wine to sandwiches and books and peanut butter and Christmas stockings and bible studies, are clues. They are clues that point to mystery of how the Savior of the world can be as close as our hands.

            Christ has died. Christ is living. Christ will come again. And he does.

           

Amen.

Difficult Questions: Hell

Difficult Questions: Hell

20 September 2015

Texts: Isaiah 14:12-20; Psalm 139:1-18; Revelation 6:1-8; Luke 12:1-12

The Top 10 Things to Know about Hell

10. About 99% of the images in your head of hell- the red demon with a pointed tail, the levels of suffering, the pit of fire, the presence of those who never knew Christ, the darkness, AND the eternal wailing and torment (plus the image of Judas in hell)- are all from Dante’s The Divine Comedy (or The Inferno). His writing was a piece of political literature that condemned powers of his day that he didn’t like. It also was Dante’s way of confirming himself as a poet for the ages by using the poet Virgil, who lived and died before Jesus, as his guide. Additionally, Dante’s work was a distillation of Greek and Roman mythology, some alleged gospels from the second, third, and fourth centuries, and one other work that had serious influence in Dante’s lifetime. The majority of the artwork about hell is not from Biblical interpretation, but is based on The Inferno- which takes very little from actual Holy Scripture.

9. What was the influential work that circulated in Dante’s life? It was a work that had been translated

into Latin and was very popular in upper class Italian household in the thirteenth century. Even if Dante hadn’t read this work, he would have been familiar with its descriptions of a fiery hell, divided into seven levels, and particularly populated by people who did not believe in God. What was this book? The Koran.

8. Isaiah 14, when it mentions Lucifer, is not talking about Satan. It is a prophetic statement against the then present-day Babylonian leader who brought suffering upon God’s people. The punishment for the shining leader would be an ignoble death and then to be completely forgotten. The prophecy also turned about to be prediction as no one is quite sure to which king this passage refers. Dante, as well as John Milton in Paradise Lost, expounded upon medieval Christian ideas of the ruler of the underworld being an eternal force that opposed God and was cast down. What force, anywhere, would have the temerity to attempt to oppose an eternal God? Also God has no eternal counterparts. Only God, as the Holy Parent, Holy Word, and Holy Spirit, exists outside of time.

7. The four horsemen in Revelation are not signs of the apocalypse. Apocalypse means disclosure. The four horsemen, as the images in Revelation 6 are called, are signs of apocalyptic literature. They help the reader to know that they are dealing with a story that seems to be about the future, but is really dealing with present realities. The four horses and their riders are the gospel, war, poverty, and death. These things struggle together, but only one will triumph. Those who are believers must remember to place their trust in what is truly permanent and act accordingly.

6. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the dead are dead. Period. Sheol is a place where the dead may be gathered and perhaps they are shades, or shadows of their former selves in that place. Ancient Israelites did not engage in ancestor worship, unlike most of the other regional religions of the time. Furthermore, an attempt to contact the dead (as Saul did when he used a fortuneteller to contact Samuel) is a sign of failure to trust in God as the one who holds the future and in whom one should place all confidence. Sheol is sometimes perceived to be a pit where one might descend spiritually- like the psalmist or the prophets Jonah or Jeremiah. Yet the fear is of being forgotten and God does not forget God’s children. Even in the deepest depths, God still knows the intimacies of creation.

5. Satan is an adversary in the Hebrew Scripture, but not an eternal being. When Satan’s name is used in the New Testament, it is either a pseudonym for powers and principalities or how the presence of evil, within one’s own heart or outside of one’s self, is named. When contemporary religionists empower the name of Satan by attributing works to him or giving him characteristics that are not biblical, they are engaged in a form of idolatry. Idolatry is not only worshipping the wrong god. It is also idolatrous to be afraid of the wrong power. The idea that there is a force equal to God with evil intent and the power to lure us into eternal separation and that we would be motivated by the fear of that being… Nope. That is not the essence of the Gospel, which is about the good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

4. When Jesus talks about hell and says, “hell”, he is referring to an actual geographical location outside of Jerusalem. There, outside the city, was a horrible trash pit that burned constantly. The place was called Gehenna and it is the word that we have translated in the gospels as “hell”. Gehenna had once been the site of child sacrifices, the very sacrifices that were forbidden to Jews, but were practiced by other religions to appease their gods. It eventually became the place of the very worst trash and it was where Roman soldiers would dump the bodies of people who were crucified. It was this horrible place- a place of ignominy, terror, and avoidance- that Jesus urged people to avoid by encouraging them to care for one another, to tend to the sick and the dying, and to practice a radical kind of welcome. The Way of Christ would have meant being a community that saved one another, and the outcasts of society, from being burned with trash and forgotten.

3. Some strands of Christianity hold these truth to be self-evident: “Baptism, praying in the name of Jesus, and the King James Version of the Bible are all magical talismans against suffering in hell. Not drinking, dancing, swearing, or getting caught wanting to are also important.” If “I will draw all people to myself” (John 12) AND “Nothing can separate us from the love of God” (Romans 8) and “I have seen the Lord” (John 20) are true, then which of God’s children will be cast into an eternal separation from the presence of grace? We are not all traveling up the same mountain. We are not all feeling different parts of the same elephant. But if God is God AND God is love AND God has been revealed in the person of Jesus AND the Spirit intercedes for us in a variety of ways, then we cannot confidently make predictions about anything that comes after what we know, except to say, “God will still be God and, therefore, in charge.” Is it in keeping with how God has revealed God’s own character to the world to punish people for an infinite amount of time for bad decisions made during a finite period of time?

2. He descended to the dead. Everything from Acts to 1 Peter to the Gospel of Nicodemus to The Inferno written about Holy Saturday- the day between Good Friday (when Jesus was crucified) and Easter (when he was known to be raised from the dead)- everything written about Holy Saturday is an attempt to answer the question, “Where the hell was he?” Truth: no one knows. We are comforted by the idea that Jesus took the message of his triumph over death to the spirits of those who had died and brought them (or those who believed) to heaven. It makes great artwork. We don’t know. Theologian Yvette Flunder says, “Religion is violent because we insist on making the uncertain certain.”  Trying to create a definite answer for what happens on Holy Saturday is, essentially, an attempt to nail Jesus down. Again. So that we don’t have to live with a little mystery.  

1. Hell is not a geographical location. It’s not even a spiritually geographical location. Hell, if it is anything, is a perception of the absence of God. A perception that is patently false, but that appears when our own experiences, ideas, certainties, or doubts attempt to make gods of themselves through confidence or through fear. That perception is transformed through our acceptance, with Christ’s help, of the height and depth and breadth of grace. People need hell to exist as a reality because they don’t trust that there’s enough of God’s love, grace, or mercy to go around. If there’s not, they want to be sure they’re on the receiving end of it.

When we open ourselves to the hopeful truth that God’s grace overflows- in terms of time, space, context, materiality, and spiritual revelation- we then become more rooted in the joy of our salvation and the good news of freedom in Christ. Rejecting hell as something that must exist removes the scales from our eyes so that we can see how the kingdom of God is at hand.

Living faithfully, through God’s grace, means separating what we have ingested culturally through literature, art, theater, movies, and television and actually examining the written Word and the revelation that can come from tradition, reason, and experience. Anything else leads us away from the grace that is amazing, transformative, salvific, and eternal. And you know what? Resurrection grace says, “To hell with that.”

Amen. 

Difficult Questions: Judgment

Texts: Amos 5:18-24; Psalm 9:1-12; Revelation 20:11-15; 21:5-8; Luke 11:14-23, 29-32   

       Imagine that you are an Olympic athlete. You’ve trained for years and years. You’ve fallen and gotten up more times than you can remember or even estimate. When you finally make it, there are the judges waiting and watching you. Their eyes catch every twitch, every flinch, every false start, every slip, every stroke. If you are in a sport that requires speed, your timing is everything. If you are in a sport that requires assessment for skill and technique- the judges decide your fate.

            For some reason, we who dare to believe in God, the one creator of all that is, seem to picture God in this same way. Even the most grace-oriented people I know have an image of God as the ultimate judge, watching our performance. At the end of all our days, all our events, when we reach the judge’s platform, we anticipate watching for the card with our score. Did we achieve gold (as in golden streets) or did we receive fire (as in eternal damnation)?

            Why do we have this image of our faithful life as a sporting event? As though, if we accrue enough points through right actions, then we will “win” the good judgment and will be able to enter heaven. What does that say about God? While this description may seem very far-fetched to some of you, others who fairly consistently worry about the fact that we are told we cannot earn grace know what I am describing all too well.

            The passage we heard from Revelation today does speak of a judgment. The end result of that judgment, though, is not what determines heaven and hell. Your eternal retirement plan, the life of the world to come for each of us, is not determined by our works. Period. Not by our faith, faithfulness, or faithlessness. Period. Jesus the Christ determines the life of the world to come and what it contains for each and every person. Being written in the Lamb’s book of life is not your work, not your handwriting, not your effort.

            There is an additional judgment mentioned in that section of Revelation. It is a judgment based on works. It is a judgment based on how time, talents, efforts, and relationships have been used. In Revelation, every single person is accounting for what they did with what they had at the time they had it.

            Now, if we were to read Revelation as a book that was about telling us the future and exactly how things are going to shake out at some time which none of us know or can know, then perhaps this would be the time to be worried. You can’t get yourself into the Book of Life AND you’re going to have to answer for every minute of your life, well… let’s sweat about that for a while.

            However, that is NOT how to read Revelation. Let me repeat, that is NOT how to read Revelation. Revelation is written in a specific style, called apocalyptic literature. That style of writing at the time of Revelation, at the time of Daniel, at the time of the Hunger Games, is meant to cause the reader or hearer to reflect on the events that are happening around them at that specific time. Apocalyptic literature may be structured to give hope or to change behavior or to point to larger truths that are being masked by world events.

            For the original audience of Revelation, we are talking about Christians being threatened under the Roman Empire. Some have already been killed. Others have been driven out from their homes or towns to become refugees. Others are being enslaved. Revelation is being circulated among Christian communities as a letter meant to give hope and courage. The Book of Life is an image that is meant to give hope to them, a metaphor to remind them that their place with God has been won through Jesus’ own life, death, resurrection.

            They may well fear where the emperor may send them, these first century Christians, but they do not need to fear the rejection of God- specifically because of Jesus Christ. The book of life metaphor makes that clear. The judgment portion, then, is a reminder that they are still accountable for acting faithfully- for caring for strangers, widows, orphans, and outcasts. They are still responsible for acting morally, ethically, choosing the good, keeping the commandments, and worshipping God together in community. The casting out of murderers, sorcerers, fornicators, liars, etc, is a reminder that these behaviors have no place in the community of believers.

            It is not simply because they are wrong. It is because the adoption of these behaviors, or the allowing of them in the community, fails to put God first. Murder makes a god of revenge or anger or violence. Indiscriminate sex makes a god of pleasure or the feelings of the body. Lying elevates dishonesty and brokenness over truth and community.

            We are no longer the Christians who were in the Roman Empire at the time of Revelation. We are not a persecuted minority. In fact, in some places, Christians are the persecuting majority- where those who claim to follow Christ want to make decisions for everyone around them. Even now, in Europe, there are countries who are refusing entrance to non-Christian refugees from Syria. Jesus and his parents were refugees once, but now Christians are often more known for who they turn away, than for their radical welcome in the face of all else. And, yet, we still act as though our actions have no impact on our relationship with God now or in the future. Judgment for these behaviors doesn’t wait until some distant day. The judgment for failure to be faithful happens when all hell breaks loose because we can’t trust one another, children die, people don’t have enough, and everybody does what seems right in their own eyes.

            The people hearing Revelation at the time it was written did not fear a future judgment day. They understood the letter to be reminding them that their actions had immediate implications. God’s judgment happened for all of us at the time when God shook God’s head and said to the Word and to the Spirit, “All right, one of us is going to have to go down there and explain this more clearly.” (Apparently the Spirit quickly touched her nose and said, “Not it.”)

            In the Luke passage today, Jesus tells those who are gathered around him, “The forces that oppose God are real, but they do not have ultimate power. You do not need something extra or more special to defeat them. You have something greater. You have prophets like Jonah, who witnessed to people who did not know God. You know the wisdom of Solomon, which drew rulers from outside his kingdom to hear of God.”

            Jesus continued, “Judgment is at hand. God has come to you. The kingdom is at hand. With the kingdom comes judgment.” What is happening, then, is that God judged creation to be worthy of grace, worthy of experiencing eternal love enfleshed, worthy of seeing the good news, worth of resurrection in the face of betrayal, humiliation, desertion, crucifixion, and death.  

            What if we can let go of the image of God’s judgment as a final score that tells us about our prize? Can we trust grace enough to come to understand that God is our coach, the Spirit-our advocate, Jesus-our role model? When we fall, when we fail, when we do not do the very thing we know we are to do (through the prophets and the wisdom and the Son), we are not being flashed a score that says “To hell with you” from a distant judge’s booth. Instead, they are right beside us. “I messed up”, we say. “We know”, they reply. “You’re forgiven. Let’s try again. You can do this.”

            The judgment of God is not supposed to strike fear in our hearts. It is meant to give us hope… that we have been made for better, that we have been made to do better. God’s judgment is meant to be medicine for our souls, motivation for our hands and feet, metabolism for our faith. We are accountable for what we do, what we say, what we give… and all the times we don’t and we should have. Yet, that account is reckoned every single day- by the measure of Christ to give it balance- and we are restored to and through grace. To live the baptized life again tomorrow. And to be lead closer to getting it right for the good of Christ in the world and the health of our souls.

Amen.