Tag: John Wesley
0 The Christmas Gospel (in Chairs): Audio and Video
The audio from this weekend’s sermon is now available in the iTunes Store for free. Search under ‘Tamed Cynic.’
This weekend’s sermon was more visual than usual. For that reason, the video might be more helpful if you missed it.
Click here to view the video.
1 The Christmas Gospel (In Chairs)
Sermon for 1st Advent based on 2 Corinthians 5.16-20 (my favorite scripture).
I used two chairs as props in this sermon to illustrate my point. A white folding chair (God) and a black folding chair (humanity). I’ve included the blocking cues for this to make sense in the text.
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On my blog last week I solicited questions that people have about Jesus’ birth. I promised that the best questions- at least as they’re judged by yours truly- would make their way into our sermons during Advent.
I’ve received all sorts of questions.
Some questions were from church members but many were not.
Some questions were anonymous and others were not.
One question- it wasn’t anonymous, not exactly.
The email wasn’t signed. I don’t know who it was from but the email address identified the writer as ‘emmasmommy@.com
The email said:
‘I suppose you can chalk this up to ‘kids ask the darndest questions.’ Tuesday afternoon I was driving home from Target with my daughter who’s a first grader.
We were listening to Christmas music on the Christian radio station when out of the blue my daughter asked me: ‘Why do we celebrate Christmas?’
I was about to say to her ‘Because Christmas is Jesus’ birthday,’ which is true obviously, but I stopped myself because all of a sudden that struck me as a not very meaningful answer. Think about all the Christmas carols there are- seems silly if ‘Happy Birthday to you; Happy Birthday dear Jesus’ will do the job.
So instead I said to her: ‘We celebrate Christmas because Jesus is the one who saves us.’
I should’ve known better because she came right back and asked me: ‘How does Jesus save us?’
And I answered: ‘He dies on the cross.’
That’s when I started wishing I’d just gone with the birthday answer because naturally, being a child, she had more questions.
‘Why does Jesus have to die?’ she asked me.
‘So God can forgive us’ I said, confidently, hoping that would be the end of it.
But no.
She must’ve seen me in the rearview mirror and known I was out of my depth because she pressed me: ‘Why does Jesus have to die? Why can’t God just forgive us?’
‘Because that’s just the way it works’ I told her, which by the way is the same answer I gave her when she asked me how gas makes the car go: because that’s just the way it works.
She chewed on that for a while and then she said, like she was tattling on a bully at school: ‘God doesn’t sound very nice.’
Here’s what I did not have the courage to tell her: ‘I agree.’
I should’ve just stuck with the ‘Christmas = Jesus’ Birthday’ bit, because the alternative makes Christmas seem awfully dark and it makes God seem that way too.
So there’s my Christmas question: Why Christmas? Why can’t God just forgive our sins and be done with it? Why is Jesus born just to die?
I don’t know if ‘emmasmommy’ goes to this church or not.
Even if she does, I don’t know if she’s here today.
But emmasmommy’s question is an A+ question.
In fact, I think it gets at the most important question.
But before I can answer emmasmommy’s question I need to unpack two different versions of the Gospel for you.
So what I want to do today is offer you a presentation of the Gospel in two different versions. I want to present to you the Modern, Western, Judicial version of the Gospel- the version that most of us in North America assume is the only version.
Some of you will want to argue with me that there is no other version; and you if you do, you will be wrong and I will be right 🙂
And then I want to present to you a version of the Gospel that is more ancient.
It’s the Patristic understanding of Salvation, meaning it comes from the early Church Fathers.
So what I want to do is contrast the Legal-Judicial understanding of Salvation with the Patristic understanding of Salvation, and I want to do it with chairs.
Already I can see some of you tensing up. I got this idea from a colleague who’s an Orthodox priest.
First, the Legal-Judicial understanding of Salvation. It goes like this:
In the beginning, God created man in God’s image to reflect God’s glory and to enjoy fellowship with God [chairs face each other].
But man in the Garden sinned [turn black chair away from white chair].
And as a result, man became sinful, and God, because God is holy and righteous, cannot look upon man in his sin.
And so God turns away from man [turn white chair away from black chair].
But God in his love for humanity sends his Son to occupy our place [bring black chair around to face white chair].
Jesus Christ lives as one of us, lives as we were intended to live, lives in full relationship with the Father, never turns away from the Father, trusts the Father at every juncture of his life, alway does the Father’s will.
And at the end of his life, Jesus is put to death.
In that moment, the Father does the unthinkable. He takes our sin- our personal and collective sin- and he puts it on Jesus; so that, Jesus becomes sinful and guilty [turn black chair away from white chair].
As Paul writes, ‘God made him to be sin who no sin.’
And God, because God is holy and righteous, cannot look upon sin, and so God turns away from his Son [turn white chair away from black chair].
When Jesus cries out on the cross: ‘My God, why have you forsaken me,’ in this understanding of salvation, that’s Jesus experiencing the full wrath of God.
Now, if we sinners believe that God has done this and that Jesus has born the wrath of God that we deserve then we’re protected from the wrath of God. It’s like we’re born all over again and we receive the righteousness of Christ as our own [move black chair to face white chair].
As Martin Luther said: ‘We are like snow-covered crap,’ which maybe sounds better in German I don’t know.
Or, as modern preachers have put it: ‘Christ becomes our asbestos suit to protect us from the white, hot wrath of God against sinners.
Now that’s if we believe this.
If we don’t believe that Jesus has done this for us, then we remain in our sin [turn black chair away from white chair].
And God’s wrath remains against us and we remain alienated from God and eventually the sinner is condemned to everlasting Hell [turn white chair away from black chair].
Merry Christmas!
That’s the Legal or Judicial understanding of salvation.
And it’s the version assumed in the question from emmasmommy because emmasmommy assumed the problem Jesus is born to solve is our guilt and the punishment required for God to forgive us.
It’s a modern understanding in the sense that it only became a common way of thinking about salvation more than a thousand years after Jesus.
It’s sometimes called the Satisfaction understanding of salvation because it’s Jesus’ suffering and death that ‘satisfies’ God’s wrath towards us.
[turn chairs back to face listeners]
Now the Patristic version is the more ancient understanding; it’s how the early Christians understood salvation.
It’s also how John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement, thought about salvation.
It goes like this:
In the beginning, God created man in his image [turn black chair to face white chair].
To reflect his love and to share in the fellowship of the Father, Son and Spirit. But in the Garden man sinned and turned away from God [turn black chair away from white chair].
As a result- pay attention, this is important- having turned away from God, we’re no longer fully who God created us to be.
Genesis says, literally, God created Adam and Eve to be ‘eikons’ of God, and when we turn away from God, it’s like those ‘eikons’ get cracked.
So the problem Jesus comes to solve is not our guilt and God’s wrath towards us.
Because sin isn’t so much something we’re guilty of and need to be punished for.
Sin is primarily something we’re afflicted with. By.
John Wesley said that sin is like a disease that impairs every part of our lives and only a restored relationship with God can heal us.
That’s the problem the Gospel addresses.
Now, because God loves humanity and refuses to turn his back on the creatures that turned their backs on him, God takes takes flesh. God becomes one of us.
[move white chair to face black chair].
God comes as Jesus not to judge but to restore.
And so, imagine a woman who, because she’s cracked ‘eikon’ of God, she’s gone from man to man, marriage to marriage [turn black chair away].
She’s been married five times and now she’s living with a sixth and still doesn’t have the love that she longs for.
And what happens?
[move white chair to face black chair]
God comes.
God comes and sits down beside her at a well and says ‘I am the Water of Life. I will love you.’
Picture a man [gesture to black chair].
Because he’s a cracked ‘eikon’ of God, for the sake of greed and ambition has become a tax collector, that is, he colludes with the Roman occupation. He articipates in the oppression of his own people [turn black chair away from white chair].
As a result, he’s ostracized by his people. He’s alienated from society. No one will have anything to do with him.
But what happens?
God comes [turn white around to face black chair].
God comes and sees this tax collector up in a tree and God says ‘Zaccheus, I’ll eat with you. I’ll come to your house.’
And in that moment, God says: ‘Salvation has come to this house.’
Imagine a woman [gesture to black chair].
She’s been caught in adultery. She’s guilty. She’s another cracked ‘eikon’ of God [turn black chair away from white chair].
The religious establishment has condemned her and now they want to stone her.
But what happens?
God comes [bring white chair around to face black chair].
God comes and when this woman is brought before God and thrown down at his feet, God kneels down beside her and says: ‘Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.’
And then he says to the woman: ‘I do not condemn you. Go and sin no more.’
Here is a young man, who because he’s a broken ‘eikon,’ out of greed and resentment, wishes his father dead [turn black chair away from white chair].
He demands his inheritance. And the young man takes the money and leaves to spend his father’s fortune.
But what happens?
When that man’s broke and desperate and returns home, his father does what no fathers in the ancient world ever did [bring white chair around to face black chair].
His father runs up to him and embraces him and throws a feast to welcome him home.
And God says: ‘That’s what I’m like.’
And when humanity [turn black chair away from white chair] is driven by fear and power, takes God and betrays him and spits upon him and scourges him and mocks him and condemns him and crucifies him, what does God say?
[bring white chair around to face black chair]
‘I forgive you.’
And when humanity falls away into death to be forever separated from God [lay black chair down on the floor].
God says: ‘Love is greater than the grave and stronger than Death and, though you make your bed in Sheol, I am there.’
And God joins humanity in Death [lay white chair down on the floor beside black chair].
In his pursuit of restoring relationship with us, God is willing to go all the way down in to Death.
But God also says ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life. I died and am alive for evermore and I hold the keys of Hell and Death. Because I live so shall you live.’
[pick up both chairs so that they’re facing each other]
To those who respond to God’s love with love then God’s love is experienced as a radiant Light and over time as we live in God’s grace we’re restored to who God intended us to be from the very beginning.
We’re saved, healed.
That’s what the word ‘salvation’ means in Greek: healing.
John Wesley said that as our relationship with God is restored and we grow in grace we really do recover the image God intended for us; we can become perfect in love- as Jesus was.
St Athanasius put it this way: God became like us so that we might become like God.
But to those who reject God’s love, who refuse fellowship with God, then that same Light feels unbearable and is experienced as wrath [turn black chair away from white chair].
You see, it’s not that God is angry and wrathful.
Rather that’s what we experience and perceive when we turn our backs on God.
As Paul said, to someone who rejects God’s love, God’s love feels like burning coals upon his head, but it doesn’t mean God’s love is not upon him.
All he ever has to do is turn to God and say: ‘I will love you’ and what had felt like a torment will feel like grace.
That’s the Patristic understanding of salvation.
That’s what you need to have in mind for my reply to emmasmommy to make sense.
Dear Emma’s Mommy,
Thanks for your questions.
As far as answers go, first, keep in mind two core convictions of Christianity:
1) God is immutable, which means God doesn’t change. Ever.
2) God is perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ.
That’s the incarnation. That’s Christmas.
Jesus does not come at Christmas in order to change how the Father feels about us.
God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus.
There’s never been a time when God wasn’t like Jesus.
That’s what’s revealed to us at Christmas.
The Apostle Paul says: ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.’
He doesn’t say: God was in Christ reconciling himself to the world.
It’s not the Father who needed to be reconciled to the world; it’s the world that needed to be restored to the Father.
And so the problem isn’t how God feels about us.
The problem is how we feel about God. We turn our backs on God. All the time.
And that can be like an illness that impairs everything about our lives.
That’s what we call sin.
To your second question, forgiveness doesn’t just begin with the cross.
It begins at Christmas.
In fact, you could say it starts the second Adam and Eve step out of the Garden. Because God never turns away from us.
Like I said, God is perfectly revealed in Jesus.
When do you ever see Jesus turning away from a sinner and saying ‘I am too holy to have anything to do with you?’
Jesus never did anything like that. The Pharisees did.
And maybe it sounds simple and obvious, but I think we can get confused at Christmastime and so I’ll just say it: God is like Jesus not like a Pharisee.
The Pharisees weren’t very nice. But tell your daughter that God is nice because Jesus is.
Lastly, I have no idea how to explain this to a first-grader so that parts up to you, but here goes:
‘Salvation’ isn’t just something that happens on the cross.
And it definitely isn’t just something that happened once upon a time.
In the Gospels, salvation means ‘healing.’
To be saved means to be healed, restored to who God created us to be.
And our relationship with God- that’s the medicine that makes that healing possible.
And that’s why its such a big deal, it’s such good news, that at Christmas we realize that even though we are determined to live our lives without God, God is determined not to be God with out us.
Merry Christmas!
Jason
1 Exactly Who Took Christmas from Whom? And Do We Really Need to ‘Reclaim’ It?
One of John Wesley’s mandates to his pastors was that they be ‘punctual’ in all things. In fact, this is one of the vows the bishop asked me to make at my ordination- along with another Wesley mandate to avoid unseemly debt, which we all sniggered at, weighed down as we all were/are by student loans.
I’ve been thinking about that mandate to be punctual, to never tarry too long, to never be late. Specifically, I’ve been wondering if maybe Wesley’s point should be applied to more than just church meetings and worship services?
Perhaps JW’s mandate forbids us Wesleyans from being behind the times too?
Just as my vow to be punctual in all things meant I shouldn’t show up late to a Trustees meeting, I wonder if maybe it also means my Church should stop- routinely- showing up late to the marketplace of ideas, should stop tarrying so long in the past that it misses present cultural trends, only to belatedly make an appeal for ‘relevance’ that inevitably smacks desperately of just the opposite?
Alright so I’m a Tamed Cynic, but I’m still a cynic. How can I not be?
For example, the United Methodist Church has recently jumped on the Bill O’Reilly ‘Take Back Christmas’/Mike Slaughter ‘Christmas Is Not Your Birthday’/Emergent Church ‘Advent Conspiracy’ bandwagon….several years behind the curve.
Before you know it we’ll be putting ‘Lord I Lift Your Name on High’ in our hymnals…oh wait…never mind.
If the UMC truly wanted to get ahead of the curve, we’d ditch the Heifer Project model and praise regular ole materialistic gift-giving as a way both to boost the economy and model the inner life of the Trinity in which Father, Son and Spirit are constantly exchanging gift and grace to one another (maybe that’s a bit heady for Xmas).
Macro-picture rant: the very suggestion we should Reclaim/Take Back Christmas implies that everyone who celebrates ‘Christmas’ (ie, the culture) is Christian. That lie, and it always was a lie, died sometime during the Ike Administration if not at Plymouth Rock. Christmas is the story of the incarnate God revealed in the flesh of a peasant baby to a shamed teenage mother in a small pocket of the globe to the very least of society and was ignored, written-off or outright rejected by…people like you and me.
Not to mention the whole Reclaim/Take Back language suggests none of us participate or encourage the very capitalist system from which we need to rescue Christmas (as if Jesus needed our rescuing…).
So let everyone do what they will at Xmas time. Maybe we Christians should just worry about how we- not others- celebrate the Feast of the Incarnation.
Anyways, here’s a post I could’ve written myself by a Jesus Lover/Cynic after my own heart:
Am I the only one who is shaking my head at what our friends at Rethink Church are doing this season? The marketing arm of the United Methodist Church is now joining in the battle to “Reclaim Christmas.” It was bad enough that the whole Rethink Church thing happened at almost exactly at the same time that famous chicken join (not the homophobic one) launched their “Unthink” campaign in the same font and colors.
It is quite possible that the words “rethink” and “Christmas” put together are almost as tired and loaded as “Christmas” is by itself. No comment yet from evangelical publishing house Zondervan who started using this marketing gimmick on Facebook in 2009. Or from Benjamin Husted and family who wrote a book about it in 2006. Or from Keep Christmas Alive who started it in 2005. Or the RETAILERS (you get that?) who tried to do the same in 1999.
One ally may be a woman that I helped by loading her groceries in her car in 1993. She had this bumper sticker on her 1977 Plymouth. I’d imagine she is delighted. But she’s also likely dead, and the bumper sticker had little chance of surviving the Cash for Clunkers purge.
It is fitting for my church to be 20 years behind on this, because it is on everything else, too.
Seriously friends, what do we really need to “reclaim” about Christmas? For years, I’ve been one of those jerks who has been saying that if we need to reclaim anything it is Advent. It is impossible to understand what a “Christ” celebration means without also understanding why Christ came and will come again. It is impossible to get what the incarnation means without examining that for which your spirit and all creation longs.
Let the kids have Christmas. Let it be a cultural thing. Let Macy’s decorate their store windows on Halloween. Let the city put up a giant tree on public property. Sing trite songs about other dead and gone things like sleigh bells and Yul Brynner Yule logs. And have fun with it.
But, if we are going to claim to be followers of Jesus, we also must know our Christ. And a marketing campaign isn’t going to make that happen any more than “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors” made the UMC open and affirming of all people. So let’s save the clever stuff for people selling cars and bunless chicken sandwiches, and let’s get back to the business at hand: promoting personal piety and spreading scriptural holiness. Like Advent, that is something worth reclaiming.
Here’s the full post.
0 No, United Methodists, the Gospel Requires Words
There’s a saying (cliche) that’s floated around the United Methodist Church for as long as I can remember: ‘Preach the Gospel. If necessary use words.” Despite how often people quote this, it’s stupid.
It’s attributed to St Francis of Assisi but frequency of citation has made it almost a Methodist slogan of sorts. And, like all cliches, there’s some wisdom once you dig to the bottom of it. In this case, our actions and way of life with others should be in concert with what we believe about the God who comes to us in Jesus Christ.
Sounds good and obvious, right?
However, it’s a cliche that depends upon bad, unhelpful theology. Tim Keller, in his book Center Church, points out that ‘Preach the Gospel. If necessary use words’ relies on the assumption that the Gospel is primarily about things we do to achieve salvation, in which case communicating the Gospel can be done without words.
But that’s not the Gospel.
The Gospel’s not a message of things we must do.
The Gospel’s a message about what we could /can not do for ourselves. The Gospel’s a message about what God has done for us, once and for all. And that’s not a message that’s self-interpreting or self-evident.
The Gospel requires preaching or, rather, proclamation. As scripture says, salvation comes by ‘hearing.’ Good works are the fruit of hearing the Gospel; they are not the Gospel.
Part of me fears Francis’ quote is so popular in the Methodist world because we’ve lost the ability and the boldness to proclaim, in pulpits and in every day speech, the Gospel. The cliche has become, for us, an excuse. (And part of me wonders if our denominational inability to communicate the Gospel is what has led to us being behind the curve in communicating via social media.)
But with all due respect to Francis, the message about the Word become flesh very definitely and even primarily requires words.
0 Michigan State Research Proves What Methodists Have Long Believed
According to the WSJ, researchers at Michigan State: perfectionism “appears to be greatly due to genetic risk factors as well as the unique experiences people have outside the home.”
So the reason I cannot- absolutely cannot, under no circumstances, no matter how long it takes me to rewrite everything- have any scratched out words or misspellings or edits-to-be on my sermon manuscripts, to do lists or planning calendars isn’t just by quirk of personality it’s because my mom is/was a perfectionist the nth degree. I’m hard-wired that way.
But perhaps I’m hard-wired that way not just by virtue of genetics. Or rather maybe my genetic code alone doesn’t get all the way to the bottom of the matter.
Perhaps I’m hard-wired by the Almighty to desire almighty-like things.
John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, took many of his theological cues from Eastern Orthodox Christianity rather than Western (Catholic and Calvinist) models. Whereas Western Christians, at times believing more in sin than grace, have traditionally taken a dim view of human nature and the goodness of which we’re capable, Eastern Christians have typically argued that ‘grace works.’ Namely, the operation of the Spirt upon us cleanses us of our sin nature and fashions us more and more into the image of God which God originally desired.
Wesley termed this process, which is really the work of the Christian life, ‘sanctification,’ our growing in holiness that has as its destination or outcome ‘perfection.’ The Orthodox call this ‘divinization.’ Methodists are people who believe that we’re not simply sinners and that’s how we stay. Methodists believe we can with God’s help become perfect in love as Jesus was perfect in love.
So then, maybe we’re hard-wired towards perfectionism because we’re made in the image of God who is perfect and the Spirit, by hook or by crook, is nudging us along towards that God who is perfect.
0 Not Perfect But Being Perfected
For our sermon series, this weekend I’ve been thinking about Justification by Faith Alone (vs Works). There’s no way to talk about Justification without talking about Martin Luther, the catalyst of the Reformation.
Luther carried this understanding of justification one step further.
Because the Gospel is God’s declaration to us and because this is a grace that is totally outside of us to which we can only respond with trust, there is no discernible interior change in us.
God looks on us with favor. God declares the Gospel to us: ‘For the sake of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.’ And the only response possible to such a promise is trust.
What Luther understands happens in justification then is that God chooses to see Jesus when he regards us. And God always does choose to see Jesus when he looks upon us. For Luther, even after we’ve responded in trust (even after we’ve had faith for a lifetime) we never cease essentially to be sinners. The new life faith makes possible always remains, in Luther’s view, nascent. Fundamentally, sin remains our determinative attribute even after justification.
This is Luther’s doctrine ‘Simul iustus et peccator.’ It translates to ‘at once justified and a sinner.’ Properly understood (and logically) Luther does not have a doctrine of sanctification, whereby God’s grace works within us to grow us in holiness. Karl Barth, a 20th century theologian in the Reformed tradition, emphasized this point by using the term ‘vocation’ rather than ‘sanctification.’ Christians have a calling in the world even though living out that calling does not effectively change or heal our sin nature.
Thomas Aquinas (and John Wesley after him) would argue this point. While admitting our sanctification can never be complete this side of heaven and so we retain a proclivity to sin, they would argue that once we respond to God in faith we truly do begin to heal. Wesley would even make the plain point that Jesus’ teachings seem superfluous if our nature never heals sufficiently that we can live out those teachings. Jesus’ teachings, for Wesley, were attainable expectations for Christians, but for Luther-convinced of our permanent sin nature- saw such an expectation as a depressing command (‘Law’ in Luther’s terminology as opposed to ‘Gospel’) we can never meet.
To be fair to Luther, his doctrine of ‘simul iustus et peccator’ wasn’t intended to recommend Christian passivity in the face of sin. We shouldn’t just resign ourselves to our sin nature; however, many of those who followed after Luther argued precisely this perspective.
1 We Are What We Love?
Think about it this: If I say I love my wife, Ali, but you witness no actions, passions or behavior that affirms this then you would conclude I don’t really love her. Right?
Yet how often do we accept the exact opposite when it comes to someone who says they love God or Jesus?
How often do we accept as legitimate the faith of those who say they believe in God but give no evidence of love in their lives- love for God or for others?
We’re in the midst of our fall sermon series, Seven Truths that Changed the World: Christianity’s Most Dangerous Ideas.
But why ideas? It’s common to reduce Christianity to a system of beliefs, but it hasn’t always and wasn’t originally so.
St Augustine of Hippo was a 5th century theologian and bishop of North Africa. In response to the fall of Rome, which many Romans blamed on Christianity and which was an almost inconceivable event at the time, Augustine wrote a long work of theology entitled The City of God.
In it, Augustine characterizes Rome’s fall as inevitable by drawing a contrast between the earthly city (Rome) and the heavenly city. Interestingly, according to Augustine, what distinguishes citizens of the two cities is not beliefs but love.
The earthly city is necessarily finite, even doomed, because its citizens’ love is directed towards finite ends whereas what distinguishes the citizens of the heavenly city is a love aimed towards God. For Augustine, and I would argue for the scriptures, our primordial orientation to the world as creatures is not knowledge or belief but love. We are not led in the world by our head. We instead feel our way in the world with our hands and our heart. As creatures we are not mere containers for ideas or beliefs. As creatures our lives are dynamic, aimed outward from ourselves to the world.
Another way of putting this is that humans are not primarily rational creatures we are intentional creatures; that is, we are aimed towards an object other than ourselves.
For Augustine, we are essentially and ultimately lovers. To be human is to love. And it’s what we love that defines who we are. Our ultimate love is what constitutes our identity. It’s not what I think that shapes me from the ground up; it’s what I love.
Look at the creation story in Genesis.
Jews and Christians have always taught that God created ex nihilo, out of nothing. In other words, God didn’t need to create. Father, Son and Spirit didn’t need us because God was incomplete without us or because God was lonely.
No, creation is grace all the way down. God makes us for no other reason but to share God’s love and life. Creation is the joy and love God has within God spilled over.
In Genesis we are made for no other reason but to love God.
Augustine’s way of putting this is that we are teleological creatures. ‘Telos’ means end. We are creatures directed towards an end: God and God’s Kindgom. That’s how we’re wired from the Day One of creation (and this is what Sin is: to have our loves directed towards something other than the Kingdom. Sin isn’t the absence of love it’s misdirected love).
We’re teleological, End-driven, creatures. We’re not pushed by beliefs; we are pulled by a desire. It’s not that we’re intellectually convinced and then we muster up the heart to follow Jesus. It’s that we’re attracted to a vision of the End that Christ gives us.
Look at the Sermon on the Mount, the crux of Jesus’ earthly teaching.
Standing on top of the mountain, preaching to the crowds but speaking to his disciples, Jesus uses not the language of belief or ideas. Jesus speaks in the language of desire: ‘Blessed are those who mourn for you will rejoice. Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness sake…’
It’s the language of want Jesus uses to form his people.
It’s possible to persuade me rationally. You may logically convince me. But until you’ve gotten me to want differently, until you’ve redirected my love and desire, you’ve not changed me.
And I am still far from being a disciple.
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement in 18th century England, called such Christians ‘almost Christians.’ For Wesley, believing in Jesus was a pale imitation of what we were made for: having the love of God ‘shed abroad in our hearts.’
For Wesley, like St Augustine, since we are made to love God and be directed towards God, to be a disciple is not about having right ideas. Being a disciple is about becoming the kind of person who loves rightly- who desires God and loves neighbor and is directed beyond oneself towards the world in love.
0 What Methodism (am I really typing this?) Got Right
Maybe it’s always been the case and I’ve simply not noticed it, but lately I’ve taken a lot of crap (fairly?) for criticizing my alma ecclesia, the United Methodist Church. Honestly, it’s not hard. Critiquing the several-decades- too-late- and-many-dollars-short UMC is like Jerry Seinfeld telling jokes to a besotted night club audience. If the crap I’ve taken is fair so is, I believe, the crap I’ve given. After all, we Methodists are predictable, sentimental and pop-cliche. In typical modernist fashion, we’re enamored with bureaucracy, meaningless legislative gestures and the latest fads which might appeal to seekers- which is impressive since we’re also impervious to change and innovation, allergic to accountability and unaware of genuine cultural trends.
I often point out how our terminology for church governance betrays how we traded in the Gospel for Robert’s Rules of Order. Instead of a diocese (a nice churchy word) we have a district, as though we worked for Dunder Mifflin. Instead of an archdiocese we have a conference, like the ACC. Instead of a proud episcopacy, we have a superintendents, just like the public school system, which ironically is also an unwieldy outdated bureaucracy.
But maybe that’s harsh 🙂
Given my usual prickly posture of critique, I thought I’d offer up an unusual praise. As you may know, I’m reading NT Wright’s, How God Became King. Here’s a previous entry.
Wright’s thesis is that Christians in the West have historically and categorically misread the Gospels. We’ve read them through the cipher of the creeds and our prejudicial understanding of Paul. We’ve read them as modern liberals and conservatives. As a consequence, we’ve missed how the Gospels all attempt to tell a WHOLE story not isolated teachings or vignettes. They attempt to tell the story of how the God of Israel became, in Jesus Christ, King on Earth as he is in Heaven. Wright’s thesis is one that puts ascension not crucifixion or resurrection as the climax to the tale. It’s one that marries worship and social witness in a way I think the usual liberal and conservative options miss.
And that’s where Methodism- actually John and Charles Wesley- come in. Wright cites Wesley as a rare example in the history of the Western Church who ‘got’ both the experience of loving God in one’s heart (worship) and practicing that love in a life of loving neighbor by serving the poor and advocating for justice.
I think Wright’s reading of the tradition is correct as is his identification of this Wesleyan synthesis as we Methodists’ true treasure.
2 The Jawbone of an A%$
We’re doing a sermon series this August on ‘Stories They Never Taught You in Sunday School.’ As part of the series, I’m posting some old sermons on random, bizarre stories of the bible. Here’s one from Judges 15. Turns out, Samson’s not the savory character we make him out to be when teaching his story to children.
Judges 15
“With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps (of bodies), with the jawbone of a donkey I have slain a thousand men.”
This is the Word of the Lord?
Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I swear I will not stop until I have taken revenge on you.”
This is God’s Word?
As I’ve confessed before, I’m a closet Calvinist. So I know the First Article of the Second Helvetic Confession of 1563 states: ‘The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.”
That is, when scripture is proclaimed faithfully and faithfully received by its listeners, it ceases to be an historical word and becomes a Living Word from God.
In other words, when I preach scripture faithfully and you hear scripture faithfully its no longer something God spoke long ago, it’s something God speaks, to us, today.
And most of the time I believe that.
But today I wonder.
I wonder about scripture like:
“Samson said: when I do evil to the Philistines, I will be without blame…
So he struck them down hip and thigh with great slaughter.”
I wonder how this is (or ever was) God’s Word?
The Book of Judges could be the book of the bible people have in mind when they say dismissive things like: ‘The Old Testament- it’s so bloody and violent.”
It’s in the Book of Judges that the tribe of Judah- the People of God- kill ten thousand Canaanites and then celebrate their victory by cutting off the thumbs and toes of the Canaanite leader.
The Judge Gideon is well-known for the 300 trumpets that give God’s People a surprising victory over the Midianites. Not as well known is that Gideon later slaughters a whole city of his own people out of rage.
It’s in the Book of Judges that Abimelech, Gideon’s son, executes all seventy of his brothers on the same altar stone.
It’s in the Book of Judges that Jephthah burns his daughter, his only child, alive to honor a victory God gave him over the Ammonites.
That’s all in the Book of Judges, God’s Word.
And it’s in the Book of Judges that Samson, the hero of children’s stories, first kills 30 after losing a wedding feast bet; then kills even more for the death of his wife and father-in-law; then kills 1,000 of the Philistines who try to capture him; and finally kills over 3,000 in a dying act of revenge.
I don’t know what they told you in Sunday School, but Samson is like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elliot Spitzer, Anthony Wiener and Tony Soprano rolled into one.
Samson’s story is blood-soaked and sordid, it’s seedy and salacious. Samson’s sinful and selfish and, ultimately, a failure.
But that’s not how his story was supposed to go.
His birth announcement came by way of angelic annunciation. When the angel gives his mother the good news, the angels tells her that her son is to be set apart- just as God wants his People to be set apart from the idolatrous peoples around them.
So, her son is to drink no wine, to touch nothing unclean and to cut not a hair from his head. Her son is to deliver Israel from the Philistines who rule over them. That’s what it meant to be a judge.
After Samson grows, the Spirit of the Lord stirs in him; the Spirit of the Lord blesses him; the Spirt of the Lord gifts him with great strength.
But being blessed by God and fulfilling God’s will for your life are not the same thing.
Rather than being set apart, Samson sets his sights after a Philistine woman that catches his eye.
And when she’s given to another man, it sets off a spiral of vengeance that consumes him.
Samson sets fire to the city’s grain and crops and vineyards and olive groves. He ruins their whole economy, and they determine to ruin him. The Philistines retaliate by setting fire to the woman and her father.
For the two lives they take, Samson takes a great many more lives until, finally, blinded and shorn of his hair and bound in chains, Samson kills himself and takes 3,000 others with him.
‘So those Samson killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his life.’
That’s how Samson’s story ends.
This is the Word of God for the People of God.
How?
What are we supposed to do with this scripture? What are we meant to learn from this scripture? How are we to believe God can speak through this scripture?
Perhaps, notes one biblical scholar, Samson’s story is meant to be a cautionary one. According to this biblical scholar, Samson illustrates “the challenges of God’s People remaining faithful in a hostile culture.”
Thus Samson is consecrated to not drink a drop of wine and instead he drinks himself into a violent rage.
Thus Samson is consecrated to never touch anything that is ritually unclean and instead he cannot keep his hands off of Philistine women.
Thus Samson is consecrated to deliver the Israelites from the Philistines, but the Israelites prefer the Philistines and they betray Samson into the enemy’s hands.
So perhaps the Word God wants us to hear in this story is a word of caution about living in a culture that doesn’t share our values. Perhaps.
But then what lesson are we to draw from the fact that Samson all but annihilates that culture with his final act of revenge?
Or maybe, argues another biblical commentator, God gives us Samson’s story to function like an allegory.
According to this biblical commentator, Samson signifies all of Israel. And so Samson’s promiscuity with the Philistine woman from Timnah, and after her with a Philistine prostitute, and after her with Delia- Samson’s promiscuity symbolizes Israel’s religious infidelity.
And the way God’s Spirit comes to Samson again and again and again when he least deserves it is a metaphor for how God can’t help but be faithful to God’s People.
So it’s kind of like Amazing Grace but with a much higher body count.
In his commentary on the Book of Judges, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, said we should see Samson as a Christ-figure.
There’s the fact that his birth is announced by an angel to an unlikely mother-to-be- just like Jesus.
There’s the fact that from the day of his birth he’s set apart to bring deliverance to his people- just like Jesus.
There’s the fact that the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him and anoints him for God’s purpose- just like Jesus.
And he’s betrayed by his own people- just like Jesus.
He’s bound and handed over to his enemies- just like Jesus.
He’s tortured- just like Jesus.
He dies with his arms outstretched- just like Jesus.
And with the jawbone of a donkey he slays a thousand men- just like…no, wait.
Far be it from me to critique John Wesley, but he doesn’t answer the question any better than the biblical scholars do.
How is this God’s Word for us?
On October 2, 2006 Charles Carl Roberts carried his guns and his rage into an Amish schoolhouse near Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania and shot ten children, killing five and then killing himself. The Amish community’s display of forgiveness, in the aftermath, became an international story.
Not as well-known is that eight days before the school shooting, in a neighboring Amish community in Georgetown, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Emmanuel King left his home around 5:30, as he did most mornings, to help a neighboring Amish family milk their cows.
He rode his scooter out his family’s mile-long farm lane and turned right onto Georgetown Road. As he rounded a slight turn, an oncoming pickup truck crossed the center line, struck little Emmanuel and threw him to the far side of the road.
The truck hit a fence post and sped away.
The next day, a reporter covering the hit-and-run accident went to Emmanuel’s home, but what the reporter found was not what he had expected- a gracious spirit toward the woman whom police considered and later confirmed to be the hit-and-run suspect.
Emmanuel’s mother was grief-stricken but nevertheless wanted to convey a message to the woman: “She should come here. We would like to see her,” she told the reporter. “We hold nothing against her. We would like to tell her we forgive her.”
When the driver read the newspaper headline, ‘A Boy’s Death, a Family’s Forgiveness,’ she did a surprising thing: she went to the King family home to receive their words of forgiveness. She returned again for Emmanuel’s viewing and again for his funeral. Over the next several weeks she came back three more times and, later, she bought a new scooter for the children on what would have been Emmanuel’s thirteenth birthday.
When a reporter asked a family member why they would forgive the woman who killed their son and left him dead in the ditch, the reporter was told: “Because when you forgive, you’re the one set free.”
When you forgive, you are the one who is set free.
That’s it.
Even though Samson can break any bonds they bind him with; even though he can pull down the pillars of a palace; even though he can shake off any shackles they snap on him- Samson’s never really free.
He’s never really free because he never stops being a prisoner to the wrong that was done to him. He never stops being captive to thinking he’s without blame. He never escapes the urge to ‘do to them as they did to me.’
He’s never really free because Samson was a Judge for twenty years, yet when he dies, even after his eye-for-an-eye ways have left him blind, he dies praying vengeance for a wrong that by then is twenty years old.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve solicited your religious questions to help shape our fall sermon series. And many of your questions have been just what I would expect.
There have been questions about heaven and hell, salvation and people of other religions, faith and science, and homosexuality.
But what’s surprised me is that more so than any other question, you all have asked me questions about forgiveness:
What exactly is forgiveness?
How do I forgive?
How do I know if I’ve really forgiven my ex-husband?
If I tell my mom I forgive her for her drinking do the words mean forgiveness has happened or is something else required?
Do I have to forgive the person who abused me?
My brother hasn’t apologized for what he’s done to our family. Is it possible to forgive someone who doesn’t apologize?
How can I forgive God for my child’s cancer?
Are there conditions for forgiveness?
Is it ever too late to forgive?
Maybe God gives us this scripture because Samson hits closer to home than we think.
Sure, Samson torches the tails of foxes, but plenty of you know what its like to set off land mines in your marriages.
Sure, Samson sets fire to vineyards and olive groves, but plenty of you know what its like to burn and smolder with anger.
Samson slays with a jawbone, but plenty of you know what its like to grab after any word you can find to hurt someone who hurt you.
You know what its like to be convinced you’re the one without blame.
You know what its like to say they did it to me first, they have it coming, they deserve what they get.
Sure, Samson pulls down the pillars of a palace, but he’s not the only one who’s nursed a resentment for twenty years.
He’s not the only one whose life got derailed, whose gifts from God got wasted, whose purpose in life went unfulfilled because of a wrong that went unforgiven.
Samson hits close to home.
So I want you to know-
Even though he can tear a lion in half with his bare hands; even though he can slay one thousand men with a jawbone, even though he can shrug off chains like they were melted wax- Samson’s actually incredibly weak.
Even though he had the strength to bring down the walls of a castle- Samson never had the strength to forgive.
Because with his dying breath, Samson prays for revenge.
But with his dying breath before he gives up his Spirit, Jesus Christ prays ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’
If you think Samson is stronger then you haven’t lived.
Because:
To bear the cost yourself of a wrong done to you takes strength.
To refuse to make someone pay for what they did to you takes strength.
To refrain from lashing out at someone when that’s all you want to do takes strength.
It takes strength because that kind of forgiveness hurts.
It takes strength because that kind of forgiveness can feel like agony.
It takes incredible strength because that sort of forgiveness will only add to your suffering.
To give up all the anger, to sacrifice every justification you’re entitled to, to absorb the pain done to you rather than pass it on, that is suffering.
But with Jesus Christ as my witness, it’s the only suffering that leads to Resurrection.
Because when you forgive, you’re the one who’s set free.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Amen.