Luke 9:51-62
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Before the World Cup started, few would have predicted that France would fail to advance from the first round of play. After all, the French not only won the World Cup back in 1998, they played in the championship match in the last World Cup in 2006.
So what happened? First, in their match against Mexico, a French player crudely insulted his coach during halftime. He was subsequently expelled from the team by the French Football Federation for his unsportsmanlike conduct. Then, in protest, the entire team skipped practice three days later.
According to France’s sports minister, Roselyne Bachelot, by insulting the coach and boycotting practice, the French players were a “moral disaster.” In a stern rebuke of the team, she told the players that “they could no longer be heroes for [French] children. They have destroyed the dreams of their countrymen,...friends and supporters.” (1)
What happened is that the French players forgot that they play soccer, not for themselves and for their own personal gain, but for a team, a team which represents a nation. They seemed to believe that their coveted roles as France’s most talented soccer players gave them the freedom to behave however they wanted...as if the rules no longer applied to them.
It’s not uncommon to think of freedom as the absence of rules and restrictions. When we long for freedom, we typically mean we wish to be relieved from the regulations that constrain us. Children wish to be free of parental rules and guidance; citizens don’t want the government legislating morality or taking their money; even many churches wish to be free of their parent denominations which have certain expectations of what church life should look like.
But, as writer Mark Douglas puts it, “freedom is not the absence of entanglements; entanglements are the means by which freedom becomes meaningful.” (2) Think, for example, of the freedom that comes with the so-called “entanglements” of marriage or parenthood -- freedom to discover the many challenges and blessings that result from these committed relationships. Think of the freedom that comes in a society where citizens vote for the leaders who make the laws; yes, the resulting laws may restrict us, but the alternative is to either not vote and have no say or to live in a society where voting is not even an option and a self-appointed ruler dictates the laws for everyone.
So when Paul declares to the Galatians that “for freedom Christ has set us free,” he is not saying that becoming a follower of Jesus means that you can now do whatever you want. Paul is saying that Christ sets us free from the heavy chains of self-absorption; Christ sets us free to become entangled in a community where the overriding rule is “love one another.”
Several years ago, my husband Derek traveled to Tokyo, Japan, to visit his friend Craig. One evening, he and Craig met up with some of Craig’s Japanese friends to share a pot of green tea. As if being 6‘5” didn’t give it away, Derek quickly revealed his ignorance of the culture when he poured himself a second cup of tea. You see, in Japan, there is strict etiquette around sharing a pot of green tea. When your cup is empty, you are not permitted to refill it yourself. You may refill the empty cups of others, but you must wait patiently for someone else to refill your cup. As long as everyone tunes into the needs of everyone else at the table, then no one will go thirsty, and everyone will receive just as much as they need and desire.
“For freedom Christ has set us free...but do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.”
Christ sets us free only to enslave us to one another in the context of a loving community. And if there’s any question whether Paul gets this right, in our passage today from Luke’s gospel Jesus himself makes it very clear that as followers of Christ our priority is not ourselves and our own concerns.
In this passage, we hear of three would-be followers of Jesus, each of whom proclaims a genuine desire to embark on a journey of discipleship. To the first, Jesus makes clear that he should not anticipate this journey to be full of creature comforts or luxury accommodations. To the second two, who want to follow Jesus but first have some important business back home to take care of, Jesus makes clear that being a part of the kingdom of God means that God must be our number one priority.
This is a hard passage to hear. It certainly makes it seem as though if you haven’t rejected your family, left your hometown, and lived a life of self-sacrifice and misery for the gospel, then you haven’t been truly faithful. But if that’s all we hear, then we will miss the important message of this text, which ultimately is the same message Paul sends to the Galatians. As followers of Christ, we are called to continually evaluate our priorities.
Our faith in Christ sets us free from our tendency to focus on ourselves and our needs. Our faith sets us free to love others, to live in community in such a way that we all know and trust that everyone’s needs will be met, because we are looking out for others and they are looking out for us.
Just to make sure his readers understand, Paul lists the kinds of behaviors that are based on selfish desires and contrasts them with those that come from the Holy Spirit. Most of us modern Westerners struggle with this list. When we hear the word “flesh” we are likely to think that Paul is saying that all the desires of our bodies are bad, while anything spiritual is good.
That’s not what Paul is saying. If you notice, some of the things he lists as “works of the flesh” are actually spiritual in nature, such as idolatry and sorcery. And some of the fruit of the Spirit intimately involves our bodies, such as gentleness and self-control. Paul is really making a distinction between, on the one hand, being enslaved to our own desires -- desires that all too often destroy community because they are self-serving in nature -- and, on the other hand, submitting to desires that arise from the Spirit moving in us -- desires which build up and strengthen our community of faith because they enable us to put the needs of others before our own. As followers of Christ, in our community of faith, we must continually evaluate our priorities.
It doesn’t make it any easier to prioritize the needs of the community over our own individual needs when so much of the language we hear today about spirituality focuses on the individual. Many popular spiritual practices are ones that enable us to cultivate their spiritual life in the comfort and privacy of our own homes. Well, for Paul, there is simply no such thing as individual spirituality. (3) The very idea of it is likely to lead to the kind of behavior seen by the French soccer players who seemed to forget that they played for a team which represented a nation. Rather, the Spirit moves in and through us in order to create a stable, cohesive community, one that witnesses to the love and mercy of God...a community participating in something like Japanese green tea etiquette, where there is always room at the table for another thirsty pilgrim and where there is a deep sense of trust that everyone will be served, not because each person is looking out for his or her own needs, but because they are looking out for the needs of others and the trust that others are looking out for their needs.
On the day of Columbine school shooting, Patrick Ireland, a junior at Columbine High School, was in the library. During the shooting, a shotgun pellet lodged in Patrick’s brain, disturbing his vision, wiping out his ability to speak, and paralyzing the right side of his body. His foot had also been badly injured. For a while he blacked out, but when he regained consciousness, he had only one coherent thought: he had to get out of there. It took him three hours to drag himself across the library to a blown-out window. He eventually managed to pull himself up and jump from the window into the arms of a SWAT team waiting below.
More than a year later--after a long year of recovery--Patrick graduated from Columbine High School and gave the valedictory speech. In his speech he admitted that “it had been a rough year...’The shooting made the country aware of the unexpected level of hate and rage that had been hidden in high schools,’ he said. But he was convinced that the world was inherently good at heart. He had spent that year thinking about what had gotten him across the library floor. At first he assumed hope, but then he decided that wasn’t quite right. What had gotten him across the library floor was trust. ‘When I fell out the window, I knew somebody would catch me,’ he said. ‘That’s what I need to tell you: that I knew the loving world was there all the time.’” (4)
For freedom Christ has set us free. And perhaps this freedom will become most meaningful and precious to us when we allow it to free us from selfishness and free us to be part of a community in which people are bound together in trust and love, when no matter what trial or tribulation confronts us we trust that the loving community is there to catch us, and when we see another about to fall, we reach out our hands to catch them, knowing that together we will carry each other on this journey of faith, on which our first priority is to follow Jesus, who shows us the love that truly sets us free. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. quoted in the article “Loss Completes France’s Dishonor” by Jere Longman in the New York Times on June 22, 2010.
2. Mark Douglas, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 3, Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett, eds. WJK, 2010, p. 186.
3. Thanks to the Sermon Brainwave crew for this insight: David Lose. Karoline Lewis, and Matt Skinner. Listen to the episode in which they discuss this passage here.
4. David Cullen, Columbine, Twelve, 2009, p. 302.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The Naming (sermon, June 20, 2010)
Luke 3:21-22
Luke 8:26-39
Galatians 3:23-29
What names would you use to describe yourself? Mother? Father? Daughter? Son? Teacher? Student? Nurse? Retiree? Addict? Maybe you describe yourself by the things you like to do: bread maker, gardener, quilter, reader, singer. Then there are those names we use for ourselves that link us to other people, first and foremost, of course, our family names: Miller, Ross, Clevenger, Wilson, Starr Redwine; but also names like “lifelong Ohioan”, American, Republican, Democrat, Christian, Presbyterian. Each one of us has a multitude of words, a variety of names, that together describe the totality of who we are, both as individuals and as members of communities.
But when Jesus asked the demon-possessed man in the country of the Gerasenes his name, the man gave a one-word answer: “Legion.” This one word, which means “many,” was meant to stand for the many demons who had taken over his body and mind, pushing aside all the other things this man might have once used to describe and name himself. By casting out that legion of demons from the man, Jesus didn’t just give him back his right mind and in so doing, give him back his life, he gave him back his name, his identity. (1)
Once word of what happened spread through the town, all the people came out to see if it was true. Now these people had been forced to bind up this man -- who was surely one of their sons, brothers, co-workers, friends -- to bind him up in chains and shackles not just once but numerous times, because clearly, his primary identity was a man possessed, inhabited by brutal demons that no one could control. But when they saw him sitting there, calm, utterly sane, they did not run to embrace him. They did not rejoice that their son and brother and co-worker and friend had been returned to them. They were afraid.
They were afraid...and they wanted Jesus to leave. As the old saying goes, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. They didn’t know just yet whether Jesus was really a devil, but the very fact that he could cast out the demons from a man they were convinced was beyond hope suggested that his powers were greater than anything they had ever seen. If he could do that to the town crazy man, what might he do to the rest of them? Thanks, but no thanks, they said. We’ll stick with what we know. And they asked him to leave.
The man whose identity had been restored wanted to go with him. No one could blame him for wanting to stick close to the only person who had been able to save him from that legion of demons. But Jesus had other plans for him. You need to stay right here at home, said Jesus. You need to be a walking, breathing reminder to the Gerasenes that God transforms lives. You need to stay so that the people can remember that with God we do not have to be defined by the demons that haunt us or even by the roles of which we are proudest. You need to stay home to show people that, through Jesus Christ, God reveals our true identity.
And when it comes to figuring out just what, exactly, is our true identity, there is no better place to turn than Galatians chapter 3. In this chapter Paul looks at the two primary identities that are in conflict in this new community of Jesus followers -- Jew and Gentile. The Jews, God’s chosen people, have been living under the law. In this passage Paul refers to the law as a disciplinarian, a kind of guardian. The Greek word he uses was actually a word that referred to a tutor that a wealthy family would hire to educate and discipline their children until they were fully grown and could go out into the world on their own, confident in their ability to make good choices.
Now, Paul declares, such a disciplinarian is no longer necessary, neither for Jews nor for Gentiles. For in Jesus Christ, it is now faith, not the law, through which we claim our true identity as God’s beloved children.
Two weeks ago I spoke about Father Gregory Boyle, the priest who has worked for almost three decades with gang members in LA and who founded Homeboy Industries to help gang members leave the gang life and find productive work. He tells a story of a man named Bill, who took time off from work to care for his dying father. At the end of each day after which Bill had done everything for his father, he would get him all ready for bed and then sit by the bed and read to him -- just as his father had done for Bill when he was a child.
Every night, Bill would read and his father would lie there, staring at his son and smiling. Bill, exhausted from his day, would plead with him, “Dad, here’s the idea. I read to you and you fall asleep.” His dad would sheepishly apologize and dutifully close his eyes. Bill would start reading again and when he glanced up, he’d find his father once again gazing at his son with a smile on his face. This routine happened night after night, and after his father died, Bill knew that the ritual was really about a father who simply couldn’t take his eyes off his beloved son.
How much more so God? Boyle asks. “What’s true is Jesus is true of us,” he continues, “and so this voice breaks through the clouds and comes straight at us: ‘You are my Beloved, in whom I am wonderfully pleased.’” (2)
Here in chapter 3, Paul reminds the Galatians what baptism is all about: a once and for all moment when God claims that we are God’s beloved. Paul is making a distinction here between the names that describe us and the Name that defines us. All those names we tend to use for ourselves: teacher, Presbyterian, father, daughter, legion -- these are not the things that define us; they are mere descriptors as we make our way through life. What defines us is the name Christ, who was declared God’s own beloved son in his baptism, and who claims us as his own beloved in our baptism.
Holding lightly to the things that describe us while clinging tightly to the One who defines us is an incredibly hard thing to do. In my experience, the best we can do is catch glimpses of our true identity from time to time and then do everything we can to cling to the memory of those glimpses in the time in between. And while it’s hard enough to remember and accept that we ourselves are God’s Beloved, it’s even harder to remember that of others. There are so many descriptions of ourselves and others that divide us and even though we know divisions aren’t good, they are often comfortable, because with them we gain some certainty of what we are and what we are not. That’s why the Gerasenes were afraid when the man with the demons were healed, because it shattered their ability to label him as the crazy one. It challenged not just that man’s identity, but everyone else’s as well.
In Galatians, Paul points out a few of the divisions common in his day: Jew/Greek, slave/free, male/female. It’s a list we could so easily add to today and it could go on and on: black/white, rich/poor, liberal/conservative, gay/straight, immigrant/native. But here Paul reminds us that these divisions, while they may still exist, are irrelevant when we remember the unity that we have in Jesus Christ -- who defines each of us as God’s beloved.
Father Boyle has seen firsthand these kinds of divisions be overcome, as gang members from rival gangs, people who would have easily killed each other on the streets, work side by side at the various businesses Homeboy Industries has started. Time and time again, Father Boyle has seen people rise above the names that have described them, and find strength in the God who defines them.
Boyle tells one such story about Willy, an overly confident young man peripherally involved in gang life. One night, just as Boyle was leaving work for the evening, Willy approached and asked him for twenty bucks so he could get something to eat. Tired and ready to go home, Boyle agreed, because it was just easier than arguing about it. But he had no cash, so he told Willy to get into the car and they would drive to the nearest ATM. When they arrived, Boyle told Willy to stay in the car while he got the money.
Willy asked Boyle to leave the keys so he could listen to the radio. Boyle shook his head. “How about you pray?” he told Willy.
Willy sighed and rolled his eyes and then assumed an exaggerated prayer position, hands folded, eyes raised heavenward. When Boyle returns to the car with the money, Willy is sitting quietly, eyes still closed, hands still folded. Something has changed. “You did pray, didn’t you?” Boyle asked.
“Yeah,” Willy said, “I did.”
“Well, what did God say to you?”
“First he said, ‘Shut up and listen.’”
“So what d’ya do?”
“C’mon, G,” said Willy, “What am I sposed to do? I shut up and listened.”
After a few moments of quiet, Boyle asked Willy another question. “Tell me something,” he said. “How do you see God?”
“God?” Willy asked. “That my dog right there.”
In gang language, a “dog” is the one you can rely on, the one who has always got your back.
“And God?” Doyle asked Willy. “How does God see you?”
Willy doesn’t answer for so long that Doyle finally turns to look at him, only to discover that he is staring up at the roof of the car, a tear trickling down his cheek.
“God...thinks...I’m...firme.”
To gang members, firme means, “could not be one bit better.” (3)
You are God’s beloved. In God’s eyes, you could not be one bit better, no matter what names you would use to describe yourself. If we can accept that truth about ourselves, then we might begin living out the truth Paul proclaimed in Galatians: that we are all one in Christ Jesus, equally loved, equally firme in God’s eyes. What a world this could be if we could all be defined by that. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. This idea about names came from David Lose in his Dear Working Preacher article “What’s in a Name?” The full article can be found online here.
2. Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. The Free Press, 2009. Find out more about the book here.
3. Ibid.
Luke 8:26-39
Galatians 3:23-29
What names would you use to describe yourself? Mother? Father? Daughter? Son? Teacher? Student? Nurse? Retiree? Addict? Maybe you describe yourself by the things you like to do: bread maker, gardener, quilter, reader, singer. Then there are those names we use for ourselves that link us to other people, first and foremost, of course, our family names: Miller, Ross, Clevenger, Wilson, Starr Redwine; but also names like “lifelong Ohioan”, American, Republican, Democrat, Christian, Presbyterian. Each one of us has a multitude of words, a variety of names, that together describe the totality of who we are, both as individuals and as members of communities.
But when Jesus asked the demon-possessed man in the country of the Gerasenes his name, the man gave a one-word answer: “Legion.” This one word, which means “many,” was meant to stand for the many demons who had taken over his body and mind, pushing aside all the other things this man might have once used to describe and name himself. By casting out that legion of demons from the man, Jesus didn’t just give him back his right mind and in so doing, give him back his life, he gave him back his name, his identity. (1)
Once word of what happened spread through the town, all the people came out to see if it was true. Now these people had been forced to bind up this man -- who was surely one of their sons, brothers, co-workers, friends -- to bind him up in chains and shackles not just once but numerous times, because clearly, his primary identity was a man possessed, inhabited by brutal demons that no one could control. But when they saw him sitting there, calm, utterly sane, they did not run to embrace him. They did not rejoice that their son and brother and co-worker and friend had been returned to them. They were afraid.
They were afraid...and they wanted Jesus to leave. As the old saying goes, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. They didn’t know just yet whether Jesus was really a devil, but the very fact that he could cast out the demons from a man they were convinced was beyond hope suggested that his powers were greater than anything they had ever seen. If he could do that to the town crazy man, what might he do to the rest of them? Thanks, but no thanks, they said. We’ll stick with what we know. And they asked him to leave.
The man whose identity had been restored wanted to go with him. No one could blame him for wanting to stick close to the only person who had been able to save him from that legion of demons. But Jesus had other plans for him. You need to stay right here at home, said Jesus. You need to be a walking, breathing reminder to the Gerasenes that God transforms lives. You need to stay so that the people can remember that with God we do not have to be defined by the demons that haunt us or even by the roles of which we are proudest. You need to stay home to show people that, through Jesus Christ, God reveals our true identity.
And when it comes to figuring out just what, exactly, is our true identity, there is no better place to turn than Galatians chapter 3. In this chapter Paul looks at the two primary identities that are in conflict in this new community of Jesus followers -- Jew and Gentile. The Jews, God’s chosen people, have been living under the law. In this passage Paul refers to the law as a disciplinarian, a kind of guardian. The Greek word he uses was actually a word that referred to a tutor that a wealthy family would hire to educate and discipline their children until they were fully grown and could go out into the world on their own, confident in their ability to make good choices.
Now, Paul declares, such a disciplinarian is no longer necessary, neither for Jews nor for Gentiles. For in Jesus Christ, it is now faith, not the law, through which we claim our true identity as God’s beloved children.
Two weeks ago I spoke about Father Gregory Boyle, the priest who has worked for almost three decades with gang members in LA and who founded Homeboy Industries to help gang members leave the gang life and find productive work. He tells a story of a man named Bill, who took time off from work to care for his dying father. At the end of each day after which Bill had done everything for his father, he would get him all ready for bed and then sit by the bed and read to him -- just as his father had done for Bill when he was a child.
Every night, Bill would read and his father would lie there, staring at his son and smiling. Bill, exhausted from his day, would plead with him, “Dad, here’s the idea. I read to you and you fall asleep.” His dad would sheepishly apologize and dutifully close his eyes. Bill would start reading again and when he glanced up, he’d find his father once again gazing at his son with a smile on his face. This routine happened night after night, and after his father died, Bill knew that the ritual was really about a father who simply couldn’t take his eyes off his beloved son.
How much more so God? Boyle asks. “What’s true is Jesus is true of us,” he continues, “and so this voice breaks through the clouds and comes straight at us: ‘You are my Beloved, in whom I am wonderfully pleased.’” (2)
Here in chapter 3, Paul reminds the Galatians what baptism is all about: a once and for all moment when God claims that we are God’s beloved. Paul is making a distinction here between the names that describe us and the Name that defines us. All those names we tend to use for ourselves: teacher, Presbyterian, father, daughter, legion -- these are not the things that define us; they are mere descriptors as we make our way through life. What defines us is the name Christ, who was declared God’s own beloved son in his baptism, and who claims us as his own beloved in our baptism.
Holding lightly to the things that describe us while clinging tightly to the One who defines us is an incredibly hard thing to do. In my experience, the best we can do is catch glimpses of our true identity from time to time and then do everything we can to cling to the memory of those glimpses in the time in between. And while it’s hard enough to remember and accept that we ourselves are God’s Beloved, it’s even harder to remember that of others. There are so many descriptions of ourselves and others that divide us and even though we know divisions aren’t good, they are often comfortable, because with them we gain some certainty of what we are and what we are not. That’s why the Gerasenes were afraid when the man with the demons were healed, because it shattered their ability to label him as the crazy one. It challenged not just that man’s identity, but everyone else’s as well.
In Galatians, Paul points out a few of the divisions common in his day: Jew/Greek, slave/free, male/female. It’s a list we could so easily add to today and it could go on and on: black/white, rich/poor, liberal/conservative, gay/straight, immigrant/native. But here Paul reminds us that these divisions, while they may still exist, are irrelevant when we remember the unity that we have in Jesus Christ -- who defines each of us as God’s beloved.
Father Boyle has seen firsthand these kinds of divisions be overcome, as gang members from rival gangs, people who would have easily killed each other on the streets, work side by side at the various businesses Homeboy Industries has started. Time and time again, Father Boyle has seen people rise above the names that have described them, and find strength in the God who defines them.
Boyle tells one such story about Willy, an overly confident young man peripherally involved in gang life. One night, just as Boyle was leaving work for the evening, Willy approached and asked him for twenty bucks so he could get something to eat. Tired and ready to go home, Boyle agreed, because it was just easier than arguing about it. But he had no cash, so he told Willy to get into the car and they would drive to the nearest ATM. When they arrived, Boyle told Willy to stay in the car while he got the money.
Willy asked Boyle to leave the keys so he could listen to the radio. Boyle shook his head. “How about you pray?” he told Willy.
Willy sighed and rolled his eyes and then assumed an exaggerated prayer position, hands folded, eyes raised heavenward. When Boyle returns to the car with the money, Willy is sitting quietly, eyes still closed, hands still folded. Something has changed. “You did pray, didn’t you?” Boyle asked.
“Yeah,” Willy said, “I did.”
“Well, what did God say to you?”
“First he said, ‘Shut up and listen.’”
“So what d’ya do?”
“C’mon, G,” said Willy, “What am I sposed to do? I shut up and listened.”
After a few moments of quiet, Boyle asked Willy another question. “Tell me something,” he said. “How do you see God?”
“God?” Willy asked. “That my dog right there.”
In gang language, a “dog” is the one you can rely on, the one who has always got your back.
“And God?” Doyle asked Willy. “How does God see you?”
Willy doesn’t answer for so long that Doyle finally turns to look at him, only to discover that he is staring up at the roof of the car, a tear trickling down his cheek.
“God...thinks...I’m...firme.”
To gang members, firme means, “could not be one bit better.” (3)
You are God’s beloved. In God’s eyes, you could not be one bit better, no matter what names you would use to describe yourself. If we can accept that truth about ourselves, then we might begin living out the truth Paul proclaimed in Galatians: that we are all one in Christ Jesus, equally loved, equally firme in God’s eyes. What a world this could be if we could all be defined by that. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. This idea about names came from David Lose in his Dear Working Preacher article “What’s in a Name?” The full article can be found online here.
2. Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. The Free Press, 2009. Find out more about the book here.
3. Ibid.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Dying to Live (sermon on June 13, 2010)
Galatians 2:15-20
Luke 7:36-8:3
Tom and Carol had been married for over 24 years. But in that 24th year, something happened. You might call it a “midlife crisis”, because in some ways, it was just so stereotypical. Tom hired a pretty, young secretary at work, and within months was embroiled in an affair.
He didn’t even try very hard to hide it. For weeks, Carol was suspicious, and her suspicions were confirmed when she intersected Tom’s cell phone bill and saw the long phone calls and numerous texts to a number she didn’t recognize. Disgusted, hurt, betrayed, she confronted Tom. He didn’t deny it, didn’t beg forgiveness. Instead he told her that he just wasn’t sure marriage was what he wanted anymore. Please, she begged him, let’s try to make this work. Let’s go to counseling. Think of all the years we’ve had together. Think of the children.
“It’s too late,” he kept saying. “What I’ve done is unforgivable. Our marriage can’t ever recover from this.” He left and they soon got a divorce.
“The saddest part of all,” Carol said later, “is that I could have forgiven him. I was willing to move forward from the mistakes we had both made. But our marriage ended because he couldn’t forgive himself.”
What do you think of when you hear the word “justification”? I’d bet that if it’s a word that’s familiar to you--and especially if you weren’t sitting in church when you heard it--you’d think of word-processing programs. When you type up a document and justify the margins, the program straightens up the words so that they are in right relationship to the page. In theological terms, justification isn’t so different. When Paul refers to “justification” in Galatians, what he’s saying is that Jesus Christ, through his life, death, and resurrection, has done the hard work of bringing us into right relationship with God. This, according to Paul is the essence of forgiveness. It is how Christ, quite literally, saves our lives.
Why does Jesus do this for us? Does Christ offer us forgiveness, does he restore us to right relationship with God because of something we do, because we have somehow earned Christ’s forgiveness and justification? Paul says, emphatically, no: “no one will be justified by the works of the law.” We are not restored to right relationship with God because we follow a certain set of rules. Our life with God is not a schoolroom; we don’t earn our salvation through good behavior and we don’t get detention for breaking the rules. We are forgiven, justified, saved by grace, a free gift from God who loves us before we have done a single thing to deserve it.
You can’t blame the Galatians for wanting some rules to follow, though. After all, early on in our lives we learn the lesson that, generally speaking, good things happen when we follow the rules and bad things happen when we break them. We figure out fast that if we want something, we have to earn it. Want good grades? Then study hard, turn your homework in on time, and perform well on the test. Want to excel at sports? Then practice, work out, eat the right foods, get enough sleep. Want to earn a lot of money? Then pick the right career, work hard, butter up the boss, invest your money in the right places. In every one of these scenarios, it’s all about you, and what you can do. So it’s no wonder that we find it easy to put being a Christian in the same category. As the preacher Brian Blount says, “It’s all about standards. People have to do certain things, believe certain things, act certain ways before we let them have the grace God is allegedly giving out for free.” (1)
The story from Luke we heard today is a perfect example of these kinds of standards. Simon was a Pharisee, an active, faithful Jew. The Pharisees were the equivalent of elders and deacons; they attended every worship service; served on boards and committees, led Bible studies, organized mission projects. On this night, Simon was feeling particularly good about himself because he’d gotten Jesus of Nazareth, the celebrity prophet, to come to his house for dinner. Clearly, he must be doing something right.
But then, just when everyone is settling comfortably down to dinner, in walks someone who breaks all the rules. It would have been bad enough if a woman had walked in this room where only men could gather. But this wasn’t just any woman, it was a woman from the streets, yes, a woman from those streets. There were so many ways in which she didn’t belong. And yet she walks right up to Jesus and then she is crying, she is sobbing, so hard that her tears are dripping onto his feet and she is wiping them with her hair and rubbing expensive ointment on them. It’s not just improper, it is disgusting, it is offensive. Simon is appalled.
Jesus knows just what Simon is thinking and he also knows that Simon will jump at the chance to give the right answer to a question. So he asks him a question about two debtors whose debts--one big, one small--are both forgiven. Which one will be more appreciative? Simon indeed answers correctly -- it was a pretty obvious answer, after all -- and in doing so sets Jesus up to put him in his place. It is this woman, who knows that Jesus has forgiven her sin -- not because of anything she has done or will do but simply because that is the nature of God’s grace -- who demonstrates true gratitude and hospitality toward Jesus.
That woman from the streets knew without a doubt that Jesus had saved her life. And that knowledge inspires her to actions that arise from her faith that Jesus has indeed forgiven what she felt was unforgivable. The same thing happened to Paul. As Saul, a zealous Jew, he was completely convinced that he was earning his place in God’s kingdom by faithfully following the rules set out for him. When Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and told him that was wrong, it saved Saul’s life. Actually, it ended Saul’s life, because in that moment Saul died to the person he had once been and he started a new life as Paul, the apostle who would share the good news of God’s grace with the Gentiles. This is what Paul is talking about when he says “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”
When your life has been saved, when you have been pulled back from the brink of death and destruction, you will live differently.
Lee Kravitz was a textbook workaholic. A magazine editor with weekly deadlines, he worked constantly and left his wife to raise the kids and take care of the house. He missed countless sporting events, recitals, and even family vacations. Then one day, Lee got fired. Lost and confused without his work, Lee realized that he had been sorely neglecting the important people in his life. And so he devoted a year to reconnecting with people, and to fulfilling long overdue debts and promises.
One of the people he decided to reconnect with was his Aunt Fern. Fern had been Lee’s favorite aunt and when he was young they had shared a special relationship. But Fern was also a paranoid schizophrenic and during a period in Lee’s life when he thought he was too busy to get involved, she was sent by family members to live in a home. After Lee got fired and had some time on his hands to reflect, he discovered that he missed Fern terribly and, not only that, he felt horribly guilty that in fourteen years he had not communicated with her at all. He didn’t even know exactly where she was.
So he flew to Cleveland and met with a cousin who knew where to find Fern. The cousin told him that the doctors didn’t want family visiting Fern because it might increase her depression and make her suicidal. But Lee had come this far and he was determined to at least make sure Fern was okay. Even if he could just talk with her nurses or doctor, he thought, that would be enough. To his surprise, when he did that, they felt it would be okay for Lee to see Fern. So he followed a nurse into the dining room and waited. He didn’t see anyone there who looked remotely like his aunt, but then the nurse turned a wheelchair around and began pushing it toward him. In the wheelchair sat a woman he vaguely recognized.
Of course, he didn’t think there was any way she would recognize him. Surely the illness had clouded her brain too much for that. But as she came closer to him she said, “Lee Richard Kravitz, my brilliant nephew. My brilliant nephew is here to see me.” And then she said to him: “Hug me.”
Lee says about that moment: “I hugged her, and I’ll tell you, it was the longest hug I’ve ever had. We hugged, and I felt the weight of the world fall off my shoulders.” (2)
Accepting forgiveness, from another person, from God, even from ourselves, is perhaps the hardest thing any of us will ever do. Because to do it, we have to admit that we were wrong, that we didn’t always play by the rules, that we weren’t as self-sufficient as we tried to appear. It is the hardest thing we do, but unless we receive the forgiveness that Christ offers, unless we, like Paul are crucified with Christ, then we cannot experience the wonder of new life in Christ, a life in which Christ lives in us and through us, a life where the good works we do are not about earning our salvation, they are about celebrating the grace we have already received. That woman from the streets didn’t come into Simon’s house hoping that if she made Jesus’ tired feet feel better he might forgive her; somewhere along the way, she had received that forgiveness, and her hospitable actions flowed from her gratitude toward him for saving her -- even her!
Through God’s surprising, unpredictable grace, Christ justifies the world and all of us struggling to make our way in it. Christ restores this broken world into right relationship with its Creator, bringing peace where there was violence, wholeness where there was brokenness, creation where there was decay. Sin isn’t just the rules we break or the bad things we do, sin is what breaks down all the good things God created. And when Christ saves our lives, by causing us to die to our sin so that we might truly live, he restores us to right relationship with God. That means we get to participate in God’s magnificent work of restoring the world, bringing peace where there was violence, wholeness where there was brokenness, creation where there was decay. We do not do that as a way of continuing to earn our salvation -- if that were the case then Paul is right, Christ died for nothing -- we do it as an expression of our gratitude and astonishment at what God in Jesus Christ has done for us -- even us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Luke 7:36-8:3
Tom and Carol had been married for over 24 years. But in that 24th year, something happened. You might call it a “midlife crisis”, because in some ways, it was just so stereotypical. Tom hired a pretty, young secretary at work, and within months was embroiled in an affair.
He didn’t even try very hard to hide it. For weeks, Carol was suspicious, and her suspicions were confirmed when she intersected Tom’s cell phone bill and saw the long phone calls and numerous texts to a number she didn’t recognize. Disgusted, hurt, betrayed, she confronted Tom. He didn’t deny it, didn’t beg forgiveness. Instead he told her that he just wasn’t sure marriage was what he wanted anymore. Please, she begged him, let’s try to make this work. Let’s go to counseling. Think of all the years we’ve had together. Think of the children.
“It’s too late,” he kept saying. “What I’ve done is unforgivable. Our marriage can’t ever recover from this.” He left and they soon got a divorce.
“The saddest part of all,” Carol said later, “is that I could have forgiven him. I was willing to move forward from the mistakes we had both made. But our marriage ended because he couldn’t forgive himself.”
What do you think of when you hear the word “justification”? I’d bet that if it’s a word that’s familiar to you--and especially if you weren’t sitting in church when you heard it--you’d think of word-processing programs. When you type up a document and justify the margins, the program straightens up the words so that they are in right relationship to the page. In theological terms, justification isn’t so different. When Paul refers to “justification” in Galatians, what he’s saying is that Jesus Christ, through his life, death, and resurrection, has done the hard work of bringing us into right relationship with God. This, according to Paul is the essence of forgiveness. It is how Christ, quite literally, saves our lives.
Why does Jesus do this for us? Does Christ offer us forgiveness, does he restore us to right relationship with God because of something we do, because we have somehow earned Christ’s forgiveness and justification? Paul says, emphatically, no: “no one will be justified by the works of the law.” We are not restored to right relationship with God because we follow a certain set of rules. Our life with God is not a schoolroom; we don’t earn our salvation through good behavior and we don’t get detention for breaking the rules. We are forgiven, justified, saved by grace, a free gift from God who loves us before we have done a single thing to deserve it.
You can’t blame the Galatians for wanting some rules to follow, though. After all, early on in our lives we learn the lesson that, generally speaking, good things happen when we follow the rules and bad things happen when we break them. We figure out fast that if we want something, we have to earn it. Want good grades? Then study hard, turn your homework in on time, and perform well on the test. Want to excel at sports? Then practice, work out, eat the right foods, get enough sleep. Want to earn a lot of money? Then pick the right career, work hard, butter up the boss, invest your money in the right places. In every one of these scenarios, it’s all about you, and what you can do. So it’s no wonder that we find it easy to put being a Christian in the same category. As the preacher Brian Blount says, “It’s all about standards. People have to do certain things, believe certain things, act certain ways before we let them have the grace God is allegedly giving out for free.” (1)
The story from Luke we heard today is a perfect example of these kinds of standards. Simon was a Pharisee, an active, faithful Jew. The Pharisees were the equivalent of elders and deacons; they attended every worship service; served on boards and committees, led Bible studies, organized mission projects. On this night, Simon was feeling particularly good about himself because he’d gotten Jesus of Nazareth, the celebrity prophet, to come to his house for dinner. Clearly, he must be doing something right.
But then, just when everyone is settling comfortably down to dinner, in walks someone who breaks all the rules. It would have been bad enough if a woman had walked in this room where only men could gather. But this wasn’t just any woman, it was a woman from the streets, yes, a woman from those streets. There were so many ways in which she didn’t belong. And yet she walks right up to Jesus and then she is crying, she is sobbing, so hard that her tears are dripping onto his feet and she is wiping them with her hair and rubbing expensive ointment on them. It’s not just improper, it is disgusting, it is offensive. Simon is appalled.
Jesus knows just what Simon is thinking and he also knows that Simon will jump at the chance to give the right answer to a question. So he asks him a question about two debtors whose debts--one big, one small--are both forgiven. Which one will be more appreciative? Simon indeed answers correctly -- it was a pretty obvious answer, after all -- and in doing so sets Jesus up to put him in his place. It is this woman, who knows that Jesus has forgiven her sin -- not because of anything she has done or will do but simply because that is the nature of God’s grace -- who demonstrates true gratitude and hospitality toward Jesus.
That woman from the streets knew without a doubt that Jesus had saved her life. And that knowledge inspires her to actions that arise from her faith that Jesus has indeed forgiven what she felt was unforgivable. The same thing happened to Paul. As Saul, a zealous Jew, he was completely convinced that he was earning his place in God’s kingdom by faithfully following the rules set out for him. When Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and told him that was wrong, it saved Saul’s life. Actually, it ended Saul’s life, because in that moment Saul died to the person he had once been and he started a new life as Paul, the apostle who would share the good news of God’s grace with the Gentiles. This is what Paul is talking about when he says “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”
When your life has been saved, when you have been pulled back from the brink of death and destruction, you will live differently.
Lee Kravitz was a textbook workaholic. A magazine editor with weekly deadlines, he worked constantly and left his wife to raise the kids and take care of the house. He missed countless sporting events, recitals, and even family vacations. Then one day, Lee got fired. Lost and confused without his work, Lee realized that he had been sorely neglecting the important people in his life. And so he devoted a year to reconnecting with people, and to fulfilling long overdue debts and promises.
One of the people he decided to reconnect with was his Aunt Fern. Fern had been Lee’s favorite aunt and when he was young they had shared a special relationship. But Fern was also a paranoid schizophrenic and during a period in Lee’s life when he thought he was too busy to get involved, she was sent by family members to live in a home. After Lee got fired and had some time on his hands to reflect, he discovered that he missed Fern terribly and, not only that, he felt horribly guilty that in fourteen years he had not communicated with her at all. He didn’t even know exactly where she was.
So he flew to Cleveland and met with a cousin who knew where to find Fern. The cousin told him that the doctors didn’t want family visiting Fern because it might increase her depression and make her suicidal. But Lee had come this far and he was determined to at least make sure Fern was okay. Even if he could just talk with her nurses or doctor, he thought, that would be enough. To his surprise, when he did that, they felt it would be okay for Lee to see Fern. So he followed a nurse into the dining room and waited. He didn’t see anyone there who looked remotely like his aunt, but then the nurse turned a wheelchair around and began pushing it toward him. In the wheelchair sat a woman he vaguely recognized.
Of course, he didn’t think there was any way she would recognize him. Surely the illness had clouded her brain too much for that. But as she came closer to him she said, “Lee Richard Kravitz, my brilliant nephew. My brilliant nephew is here to see me.” And then she said to him: “Hug me.”
Lee says about that moment: “I hugged her, and I’ll tell you, it was the longest hug I’ve ever had. We hugged, and I felt the weight of the world fall off my shoulders.” (2)
Accepting forgiveness, from another person, from God, even from ourselves, is perhaps the hardest thing any of us will ever do. Because to do it, we have to admit that we were wrong, that we didn’t always play by the rules, that we weren’t as self-sufficient as we tried to appear. It is the hardest thing we do, but unless we receive the forgiveness that Christ offers, unless we, like Paul are crucified with Christ, then we cannot experience the wonder of new life in Christ, a life in which Christ lives in us and through us, a life where the good works we do are not about earning our salvation, they are about celebrating the grace we have already received. That woman from the streets didn’t come into Simon’s house hoping that if she made Jesus’ tired feet feel better he might forgive her; somewhere along the way, she had received that forgiveness, and her hospitable actions flowed from her gratitude toward him for saving her -- even her!
Through God’s surprising, unpredictable grace, Christ justifies the world and all of us struggling to make our way in it. Christ restores this broken world into right relationship with its Creator, bringing peace where there was violence, wholeness where there was brokenness, creation where there was decay. Sin isn’t just the rules we break or the bad things we do, sin is what breaks down all the good things God created. And when Christ saves our lives, by causing us to die to our sin so that we might truly live, he restores us to right relationship with God. That means we get to participate in God’s magnificent work of restoring the world, bringing peace where there was violence, wholeness where there was brokenness, creation where there was decay. We do not do that as a way of continuing to earn our salvation -- if that were the case then Paul is right, Christ died for nothing -- we do it as an expression of our gratitude and astonishment at what God in Jesus Christ has done for us -- even us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Playing Offense for God (sermon, June 6, 2010)
Our second reading today is from the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. You may have noticed that I rarely preach from Paul’s letters. I usually find that there is a lot of explanation required when you take a brief section from a letter that is best understood as a whole, which makes it difficult to preach from a letter on just one Sunday. So when I looked at the lectionary texts for the summer--the texts for preaching predetermined by a committee of pastors and theologians--I got excited when I saw that there were several consecutive weeks dedicated to Paul’s letter to the Galatians. It seems to me that this is the best way to approach Paul’s letters, to pick one and work through it over several weeks, which is what we’ll do with Galatians.
First, some background. The apostle Paul started multiple churches in the Roman province of Galatia. Paul had received a special call from God to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, people who had no connection to Judaism. He believed that the gospel was extended to all people solely by the grace of God, not by anything they had done or could do. In other words, his gospel was a gospel of grace, not a gospel of works or law. This meant that Paul firmly believed that the Gentiles did not need to follow any of the Jewish laws or customs in order to become Christians. They simply need to walk through the door of faith, a door Paul clearly showed them, a door that was always opened, never locked.
Apparently, though, after Paul left Galatia, some other followers of Jesus, those who might call themselves Jewish Christians, came to the Galatian churches and shared with the new converts what Paul calls “a different gospel.” These missionaries argued that the next step for Gentiles who have come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah is to become circumcised as a sign of their inclusion in God’s covenant. Essentially, they told the Galatians that they had to have a key to open that door of faith Paul had showed them, and the key was circumcision.
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul emphatically and passionately lays out his argument for why circumcision is unnecessary for Gentiles who have become Christian. Although Paul’s passion for the gospel is not unusual, what sets Galatians apart from his other New Testament letters is that Paul is on the defensive. He feels that his authority and his understanding of the gospel has been threatened by the missionaries who came to Galatia after him, and he is infuriated that the Galatian churches were so easily persuaded by a gospel based on law rather than grace. As a result, Paul’s letter to the Galatians is one of the clearest explanations we have of Paul’s theology.
Now a reading from Galatians chapter 1, verses 11-24:
Galatians 1:11-24
For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie! Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, “The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they glorified God because of me.
*****
Today marks the church’s entry into what is known as “ordinary time.” I don’t know who decided to call it that or exactly why, but surely it has something to do with the fact that during this time there are no major church festivals or holy days. During this time, things at church certainly become a little more ordinary. We don’t have acolytes lighting the candles, the choir doesn’t sing--although we do have the extraordinary gifts of our solo musicians--but still, things often feel a little more laid back, a little more casual, a little more ordinary.
So it’s kind of interesting that on this first day of ordinary time, we have this letter which Paul opens with an extraordinary story of how he first heard and believed the gospel. To emphasize how truly extraordinary this event was, Paul begins by recalling his background: he had fully embraced the Judaism of his ancestors, studying theology and gaining notoriety among his teachers and peers. Not only that, he was one of the foremost persecutors of the earliest followers of Jesus, doing everything he could to prevent the spread of the gospel.
Then it happened. Our translation calls it “a revelation of Jesus Christ,” but the Greek word for revelation is “apocalypse.” This means that when God revealed to Paul the truth of who Jesus was it was an apocalyptic moment, one that turned Paul’s entire life--his entire world--upside-down.
In retelling his conversion story, Paul is trying to convince the Galatians that what he taught them was revealed directly to him by Jesus Christ himself. Paul’s authority as a preacher comes from God and God alone.
Just weeks after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon that triggered our country’s largest ever oil spill, representatives from the three companies responsible came to Congress to testify about what happened. There were executives from BP, Transocean, and Halliburton, and in their testimonies it seemed they did little more than point fingers at each other. “It wasn’t my company’s fault,” they kept saying, “because his company had the authority over that particular thing that caused the accident.” What these hearings revealed was that, as one reporter put it, “The command structure on the Deepwater Horizon seems to have been completely muddled, with officials from BP, Transocean and Halliburton hopelessly tangled in confusing lines of authority and blurred definitions of who was ultimately responsible for what.” (1)
When it’s not clear who’s in charge, things get confusing really fast, which is exactly what happened in Galatia. First came Paul, preaching the gospel he claimed to have received from a direct encounter with the risen Christ. Then some other followers of Jesus came along, people who had actually known him in life or had at least known the apostles who had known him. So they too claimed to have a certain authority, but the gospel they preached was different from Paul’s, since they recommended that the Galatians be circumcised to demonstrate their full conversion to the Christian faith. No wonder the Galatians were confused!
The preacher George Buttrick tells a story of riding on an airplane after attending a conference. As soon as the airplane took off, he pulled out a pad of paper and started working on Sunday’s sermon. The man sitting next to him kept looking over his shoulder and finally he couldn’t stand it any longer.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” he said, “I can see how hard you working there and I just have to ask: what are you doing?”
“I’m a minister,” Buttrick replied, “and I’m writing my sermon for Sunday.”
“Ah, religion,” said the man. “I can’t say I’m much into the complexities of religion myself. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’--the Golden Rule. That’s about all the religion I need.”
“I see,” said Buttrick. “And what do you do?”
“I’m an astronomy professor,” said the man. “I teach at the university.”
“Ah, astronomy,” said Buttrick. “I can’t say I know much about the complexities of astronomy. ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’--that’s about all the astronomy I need.” (2)
Wouldn’t it be nice if everything in life, from the stars in the sky to our religious beliefs, could actually be boiled down to a simple saying or a child’s song? Paul went to the Galatians and preached a gospel of grace -- there was nothing they had to do to enter into God’s kingdom other than believe and seek to faithfully follow Jesus. It sounded almost too simple, so when others, some who had actually known Jesus, came along and recommended that the Galatians be circumcised to show their faith, it made sense. It gave them something tangible they could do, something extraordinary that would permanently mark them as Christians, something they could use to defend themselves against anyone who might suggest that they weren’t true believers.
But it turns out that when it comes to our faith, there are no simple answers, there is no one thing we can do, one key we can use to open the door to salvation. Paul was convinced that he had it on the highest authority that the gospel was a gift of grace alone. Yet the missionaries who came after Paul were also convinced that their belief in circumcision also came from the authority of God.
The same challenges constantly play out in churches today when different preachers and denominations claim that there are various requirements for being a “true” follower of Jesus. It’s enough to make you wonder: How are any of us supposed to know what to believe?
The letter to Galatians reminds us that our struggles with authority in the life of faith and the business of the church are nothing new. And although it appears that in this portion of his letter Paul is bending over backwards to defend himself and his authority, we will see over the next few weeks that in the grand scheme of things, Paul isn’t playing defense, he is playing offense for God. He is setting up an argument to show the Galatians that no matter how many other Christians they might encounter who each have a slightly different experience of God or understanding of the gospel, the only true authority is God. That means the Galatians must continually look to God as they figure out what it means for them to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ.
As a young, newly ordained Catholic priest, the Reverend Gregory Boyle was assigned to serve the Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles in the mid-1980’s. The church was nestled in the middle of two public-housing projects which together made up the largest grouping of public housing west of the Mississippi. When Boyle arrived, there were eight active gangs in the neighborhood, the highest concentration of gang activity in the entire city of Los Angeles.
In 1992, Boyle left his position as priest of the Dolores Mission Church to focus on helping ex-gang members find jobs. With help from others in the neighborhood who were committed to keeping the young people safe and helping them find meaningful work, Boyle started several businesses--including a bakery, a cafe, and a silkscreen shop--that employed ex-gang members. Eventually, this grew into an organization called Homeboy Industries, which soon served over a thousand gang members a month from 800 gangs all over the city, who came to Homeboy Industries seeking employment, tattoo removal, counseling, case management, and legal services. Mostly, though, these young people were trying to find meaning in their lives apart from the violence and self-destruction of gang life.
You could argue that Boyle has literally saved the lives of thousands of young people, but he doesn’t see it that way. “I don’t save people,” he says. “God saves people. I can point them in the right direction. I can say, ‘There’s that door. I think if you walked through it, you’d be happier than you are.’” (3)
Ultimately, any of us who have heard and believed the good news of the gospel have authority to witness to that gospel, to tell others the good news of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. But we do that not on our own authority. We cannot force people to believe and we certainly cannot save people ourselves. we can’t even claim that there is one thing people must do to be marked as a Christian, but we can point to the one true authority, the one who is far more capable than us of loving and receiving and redeeming another human being. We can point to the door--to which there is no secret or hidden key--and hope that they choose to walk through it and experience the extraordinary grace of God. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. David Brooks, New York Times op-ed, May 27, 2010.
2. I heard Tom Long tell this story in his sermon “Deeper” which can be heard online here; scroll down until you see “Mark 4” in the reference column.
3. Rev. Boyle was interviewed by Terri Gross for the program “Fresh Air.” The interview can be read or heard online here.
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