What If Jesus DIDN'T Die for our Sins?? What if...?

        A Talk Inspired by Richard Rohr and Delivered to the Living Vision

                                            Community on 7/14/15

For the last 3-4 Tuesday nights, we’ve been getting together in this beautiful riverside spot to celebrate life, to enjoy music, and to reimagine spirituality – to dream a little bit about other possibilities for spiritual community than the institutionalized ones most of us were brought up with. I’ve been asking a different “What if?” question every Tuesday, and you folks who have come have been kind and open-minded enough to entertain these questions with me.

Before I ask tonight’s “What if” question, let me ask how many of us have heard that “Jesus came to die for our sins”… ? It’s virtually impossible to live in America and to have spent any length of time in a Christian church and NOT to have had this little theological nugget hammered into our heads again and again and again. We’ve heard it; we were taught it; and, if we were Christians, we were expected to accept and believe it. The result is that now most of us assume it to be absolute “gospel” truth and that to question that sacred doctrine is tantamount to not being a Christian at all.

Well, I would like to challenge this notion today. And I hope you will come along with me as I do. So here’s tonight’s what if question…What if Jesus didn’t come to die for our sins? What if Jesus didn’t suffer and die to pay some price in blood so that we could all somehow be forgiven? What if?

One big reason I think we need to engage this question is the fact that so many post-Modern people – now numbering in the hundreds of millions - have given up on the Christian church, and this blood atonement business is one of the primary theological reasons they cite for totally bailing on Christianity. One church outsider put it this way: “Serious questions must be asked about a God who would have to have ANYONE, much less His own son, die a gruesome death to accomplish anything. One contemporary theologian called this “cosmic child abuse.” Brian McLaren, another incredibly influential contemporary theologian, has wondered how a God who would require such a punishment to truly accomplish forgiveness, could then expect us to do the very thing that He, himself, couldn’t do – forgive withOUT hurting or punishing someone. McLaren said, “It would be like your wife sins against you and you say, “I forgive you,” and then go and kick the dog because someone has to be punished in order for the forgiveness to really work.

So how did we ever get into this blood atonement business in the first place? A little history might help. Remember that Jesus was a Jew. Remember that he grew up Jewish, in a Jewish family, in a Jewish community and a Jewish synagogue. His context was the context of sacrifice. Jews were big on sacrifice, but they didn’t invent it. The idea of sacrificing innocent animals to appease an angry God pre-dates Judaism by a couple thousand years. So by the time Judaism was in full swing and long before Jesus came on the scene, every single temple and synagogue was built with an entire altar area set up specifically to sacrifice young animals in attempt to appease an angry, Old Testament God. So it’s no wonder that when Jesus’ blood was spilled by the Romans on that cross, early Christians and later theologians – most of whom were either Jews or heavily influenced by Judaism - could only interpret Jesus’ death in light of what they’d always known – that spilled, innocent blood must somehow make God happy. So Jesus became the “perfect sacrifice,” the final payment.

But just because the Jews had been big on sacrifice doesn’t mean Jesus was. In fact, you may remember, he said, “I desire mercy, NOT sacrifice.” (Matthew 9:13) Jesus LOVED his Jewish faith and heritage. But he also came to reform it. And near the top of his list of what to reform was this notion that God wanted innocent blood in exchange for forgiveness. Any serious and comprehensive study of the gospels reveals a Jesus who both spoke and lived in an attempt to end all such sacrifice and score keeping.

Philosopher and theologian Richard Rohr writes that “the common Christian reading of the Bible is that Jesus "died for our sins"… to pay a debt to God the Father.” This ‘theory’ was “proposed by Anselm of Canterbury sometime between 1033-1109 AD. Anselm's infamous Cur Deus Homo has been called "the most unfortunately successful piece of theology ever written."  (That’s a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one!)

So here’s the deal, folks, this one man, Anselm, who lived a thousand years after Jesus, reflected as best he could on the meaning of Jesus’ life and death, and he, relying almost exclusively on Paul’s letters – not upon Jesus or the gospels - came up with what theologians ever since called the "substitutionary atonement theory"--the strange idea that before God could fully love and forgive us, God needed and demanded Jesus to be a blood sacrifice to atone for our sin-drenched humanity. As if God could need payment – in the form of a very violent transaction - to be able to love and accept "his" own children?

There’s nothing wrong with Anselm struggling and doing his best to make sense of Jesus’ life and death. And, like I said, it’s understandable that Anselm would go to a sacrifice-based understanding to make meaning of Jesus’ death. But does that mean Anselm’s has to be the ONLY understanding of what Jesus’ death was about? And in case you haven’t noticed, there are an awful lot of people who just aren’t buying it. If fact, there are hundreds of millions of people who don’t want anything to do with Christianity precisely because of Anselm’s substitutionary atonement theory. I mean, who wants to worship a God who somehow wants or requires human blood - innocent blood - in order to love and forgive?

(At this point in the talk, I interviewed Billy Crawford, a church outsider who shared his views on the notion of Jesus dying for our sins.)

I think it’s time to at least consider some other possibilities for making meaning of Jesus’ life and death, don’t you? We could start with Franciscan philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus, who lived from 1266-1308, only a century or two after Anselm. Scotus was not guided by the temple language of debt, atonement, or blood sacrifice.

Richard Rohr writes, “For Scotus, the incarnation of God and the redemption of the world could never be a mere mop-up exercise in response to human sinfulness, but the proactive work of God, who, from the very beginning, loved us. Our sin,” Rohr continues, “could not possibly be the motive for the divine incarnation, but only perfect love and divine self-revelation!”

Rohr continues: “The best way I can summarize how Scotus tried to change the old Anselmian notion of retributive justice is this: Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity (for that did not need changing!) Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God. In Jesus, God sought to move people beyond the counting, weighing, and punishing model, that the ego prefers, pointing us instead toward an utterly new world, a world where God's abundance has made any economy of merit, sacrifice, reparation, or atonement both unhelpful and unnecessary.” Rohr concludes, “Jesus undid "once and for all all notions of human and animal sacrifice and replaced them with his new economy of grace, which is the very heart of the gospel revolution. Jesus was meant to be a game changer for the human psyche and for religion itself. When we begin negatively, or focused on the problem, we never get off of the hamster’s wheel. To this day – thanks to Anselm - Christians begin with and continue to focus on sin, when the crucified one was pointing us toward a primal solidarity with the very suffering of God and all of creation.”

(Here Craig Cottrill played and sang George Harrison's "While my guitar gently weeps")

Sometimes when I look at Christian theology and its hyper focus on sin, I wonder if we may have forgotten about Genesis 1 and 2. You remember how the Bible, the whole story starts? It starts with the beautiful creation narrative, right? It starts…well…just listen to how it starts… (live reading of Gen 1:1-31a by Melissa Ludwa and LJ Greer)

The story starts with a loving, creative God, making everything and then declaring everything that God made “good.” GOOD! “And God saw that it was good.” Matthew Fox, Quaker theologian, calls this “original blessing.” Original blessing – THAT is what we are all born with, folks! THAT is what we are born into – NOT original sin, but original blessing.

Any of us who are parents, who’ve had the privilege of being present at the birth of our children, know exactly what I’m talking about, right? I came face to face with the deep truth of original blessing on January 7, 2008 at 12:20 am, when that midwife at Northern Michigan Hospital put Eloise Anna Jones into my trembling, new father hands. I knew right then that I could never believe in original sin again. I knew that the God of this amazing universe loved my daughter even more than I did, and that He or She certainly did not require blood or to have his son crucified for the sake of my good, blessed daughter.

So where does that leave Jesus? If he didn’t come here to “die for our sins,” then why did he come? Well, for starters, just as Rohr said, Jesus came precisely to change our minds about God, to show us that God wasn’t keeping score and isn’t interested in our rule-keeping or our sacrifice, and certainly not our blood! He wanted us to know we were forgiven and to be forgiving. If there is one thing we followers of Christ are supposed to be known for, it is to be our capacity for forgiveness, for mercy, and for love. Every time we turn around in the gospels, Jesus is forgiving somebody who probably doesn’t deserve it. The woman caught in adultery, Zacchaeus the corrupt tax collector, the prodigal son, Peter the thrice denier, the woman at the well. Jesus did everything he possibly could to show us that the way of forgiveness and mercy IS the way of Jesus. Never once did he or God require some sort of payment or sacrifice to forgive these people!

So how else might we understand Jesus’ death? Well, his death isn’t that unique when you think about it. The Romans crucified thousands of men and women in the very same way that they did it to Jesus. In one sense, Jesus' torturous death is just one more example of what this world does to its prophets, to those who speak truth to power, to those like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and all those who threaten the established order of things. In other words, I don’t think that Jesus “had to die” for my sins or anybody else’s. I don’t think that Jesus’ blood that the Romans shed accomplished anything, other than a) to show us just how familiar God is with human suffering and b) to show us – particularly through the subsequent resurrection - just how futile and ineffective violence is as a means to an end. The Romans thought that the violence they perpetrated upon Jesus of Nazareth would squelch his revolution forever. It did no such thing; in fact it did the opposite. The violent, bloody death of Jesus was an utterly ineffective and impotent act on the part of the Romans. It should remind us of the absolute futility of violence as a solution to anything. (For more evidence of the futility of violence, go to youtube and watch Gandhi's march on the salt mine and listen to Martin Sheen's lines as he watches it.)

Friends, Jesus came here to change our minds about who God is and what God is like. Jesus came here to get us to throw away our score cards and our tally sheets of sin, because God threw His out a long, long time ago. Jesus came here to remind us of our original blessing, our original, created goodness. Jesus came here to show us how to live – with joy and celebration, with forgiveness and mercy, with passion and compassion, with service to and in loving community with one another. But he also suffered and died to show us how to handle the suffering that comes our way AND to remind us that violence is never an effective means to a godly end.

So what if Anselm’s interpretation of Jesus’ death isn’t the only way to understand it? What if Jesus didn’t die for our sins? What if God doesn’t need innocent blood to forgive and love us? What if…? What if….?

(* Please leave your thoughtful comments below!!)

What if...God really IS inside every living creature? What if?

If you missed this Tuesday's (July 7's) gathering at the Bear River, here is a little of what you missed. Toby's talk tied together one of the central tenets of Hinduism with Christianity's notion of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Check it out and leave a comment! Get in the conversation and come next Tuesday where our What If series will continue!

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking and reading about Hinduism and studying the Bhagavad Gita with my World Religions students at North Central Michigan College where I teach. For Hindus, the essence of life, our ultimate purpose, is to unite with the Infinite. Our life is a journey to reconnect with God, with what Hindu’s call Brahman.

There are all kinds of things I like about Hinduism and Hindu thought, but perhaps my favorite is their contention that what we humans most want and need is union with God. For Hindus, the Godhead is known as Brahman – that’s God with a capital G, the big guy. But in this ancient and wonderful faith there is also the Atman - the notion of a divine spark, a piece of God that resides in all people and even in all living beings. The Hindu path is all about reconnecting, reuniting the Atman with the Brahman. 
If you think of having a bit of the living God inside you, at the core of your being, it’s not hard to imagine that life can conspire to cover it up, squelch it. Your little spark or burning coal can get gradually covered up with ash, the detritus of a busy, noisy, unfocused, technology saturated life. So a faithful Hindu spends his or her life seeking to clear away the clutter, sweep out the ash, rekindle the divine flame within. Our Hindu brothers and sisters want union with Brahman, unfettered, unimpeded, day-to-day union with the Godhead, and so all of their spiritual disciplines – from yoga, to silent meditation, to Puja are all about unity, union with God. Pretty cool, huh?
But an even cooler tenet of Hinduism is their contention that we all already have that which we most want. Huston Smith calls this “the most starting claim of Hindu anthropology.” “That which we most truly want, we can actually have…because we already have it.” (The World’s Religions, Harper One, 1991)

What do you and I already have…? We already have the living presence of God inside us. The Atman already resides in the human soul – in every human soul – not just a Hindu’s soul…not just in a Buddhist’s soul…not just in a Christian or a Jewish soul – but in EVERY soul, even among the animal and plant kingdom. For Hindus, God is already fully and permanently present in each and every one of us! I hate to break it to your folks but the same is true in Christian theology, isn’t it? When did Jesus promise he would be with us…? ALL the time! Where did he tell us God’s living, holy spirit would dwell…? Inside us…in the depths of our soul.

This is why I think “Namaste” the traditional Hindi greeting should also be the way Christians and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists greet each other. Namaste is spoken with a slight bow and hands pressed together, palms touching and fingers pointing upwards, thumbs close to the chest. This gesture and the accompanying word means, "I bow to the divine in you.” Some translate Namaste as “the God in me greets and acknowledges the God in you.” How cool is that??? The God in me greets the God in you! Remember Gandhi’s quote from last week…the essence of Hinduism is to learn to see God in every living creature and then act accordingly.” What a way to live? What a way to love!!!

Check out these passages from the Hindu scriptures and see if they don’t resonate with your soul…

“I am ever present to those who have learned to recognize me in every creature. When you learn to see everything - all of life - as a manifestation of me, then you are never separated from me. These enlightened ones worship me in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from me. Wherever they live, they abide in me.” (That’s from the 6^th chapter of the Gita, verses 30-31) Doesn’t that sound like John 15 from the Christian New Testament…Jesus said, “I am the vine and you are the branches. If you abide in the vine you can do all things…”

How about this one, also from chapter 6 of the Gita… “When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.” I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds an awful lot like 1 Corinthians 12:25 “There should be no division in the body, but the members should have the same care for one another. So that if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it.

So underneath all its teaching, Hinduism is all about unity – unity with God and unity with all other sentient beings. Yoga – the central Hindu discipline and spiritual practice MEANS “unity.” I don’t think it is an accident that the practice of yoga is literally sweeping the nation. It is the fastest growing form of both exercise and meditation in the US. People here are so hungry for unity, particularly as the religious landscape around us becomes more and more divisive. Did you know that there are over 2000 Christian denominations in the US alone? Talk about division!!

People are hungry – even starving – for unity. The ancient Hindu practice of Yoga is all about seeking unity and through unity, achieving peace…

Let’s hear from one of our group who just completed her instructor’s certification in Yoga. She is also teaching mindfulness in the public school system in Hailey, Idaho. LJ – come on up here and tell us a little about what you’ve been up to and what you’ve been learning and practicing lately. (Here we interviewed LJ Greer on Yoga as a spiritual practice and she led us in a mindfulness exercise!)

So the essential teachings and practices of the Hindu faith are all aimed at getting us back in touch with the God within and getting us back in touch with one another – unity with God…unity with all others.

But what is so vital to understand – and this is the good news from Hinduism’s perspective – is that the Atman, the real presence of God, never goes away. It is always there in all of us, all the time. We can think of it as a coal, a burning ember that is buried under the cumulative ash in our souls. But it is still lit! Our job is to uncover it, to clear away the ash, and to fan that ever-burning flame, that living presence of God in us.

This powerful, compelling Hindu concept, as I mentioned before, should not be foreign to Christians. What our Hindu brothers and sisters call Atman, Christians call the Holy Spirit. To Christian’s this Atman is God’s living presence within us, a strikingly similar notion. Shortly before his death, Jesus told his disciples that it was to their benefit that he leave, so that a “counselor” could come, one that would live within them forever. In fact, Jesus’s final words prior to his ascension, “And remember I am with you always.”
Imagine…what if…what if we took seriously these last words of Jesus? What if we took to heart this central Hindu teaching, that the living God lives and dwells in each and every one of us? How would we treat each other if we REALLY believed that? How would we treat strangers if we REALLY embraced and believed in Namaste – the God in me greeting and bowing before the God in you? What if….Can you imagine it?

But no matter what we do, no matter what spiritual discipline or practice we use to fan the flames of God’s spirit within, what is most important is realizing and remembering that God’s Spirit, the Atman, is always there. God’s real presence, God’s spirit is eternally there, or, perhaps more accurately, here! No matter where we are, no matter what we have done or left undone, no matter how far we have fallen or how abandoned we may feel, that Atman is still here, deep within us. That counselor, that slice of the Spirit, that God presence is still right here, abiding within us, as close as our very next breath. We cannot extinguish that flame. We cannot snuff out that coal. Cover it up? Perhaps. Lose sight of it in the clutter of our soul’s closet? Maybe. But we cannot ever extinguish it. We cannot separate ourselves from the loving, in-dwelling presence of God. Find it in yourself…Fan it in yourself. Believe and trust that it is in every person you will ever encounter

The writer of the epistles of John put it this way: “See what great love the Father has for us, that we should be called Children of God. And that is what we are.” That is what we are. And there is nothing we can do to change or lose that.

You remember from last week that Mahatma Gandhi once summarized the essence of Hinduism as “learning to see God in every creature and then acting accordingly.” I’m not sure the message of Jesus is all that different.

And so may we – each and every one of us – know that the Atman does, indeed, reside in us. May we also know and always remember that a very real slice of the Living God abides within everybody else as well, all other living creatures. It always has and it always will. And in that light, doesn’t “Namaste” living make an awful lot of sense? What if each of us – at least all of us who are here tonight – could learn to see God in ourselves and in every living creature…and then act accordingly. What if…What if? Amen.
One by U2…Melissa & Toby

What If...We Stopped Judging Others? God's preference for an UNweeded Garden

   The following is the full text of Toby's message delivered Tuesday, June 30 at the Bear River POW gathering....

         So last week, when we were here, we talked about a few “What If’s…” We asked 3 What IF’s of the church – what if a church or spiritual community didn’t have to be a place or a building, bounded by a uniform set of beliefs? Tonight I want to continue with our What If theme for the summer. Tonight I want to ask What If a church or spiritual community completely refrained from judging others? What if a spiritual community or church made an absolute, unwavering covenant never to judge, condemn, or belittle others, no matter what their identifiable differences…? What if…?

         Part of the reason I ask this particular question is that several years ago a research team from the Barna group polled people across this country to determine what the first thing or things people thought of when they heard the word “Christian.” Care to guess what the top three answers were – from millions of interviewees nation-wide…? The top three answers were judgmental, anti-homosexual, and anti-abortion. Those are the top 3 answers of what people associate with followers of Jesus. I’m sure Jesus is really proud to have his supposed followers known for those 3 things above all others. In fact, I bet for him it’s almost as good as…well… being crucified all over again!

         So can you see why I want us to explore the question of what if we were to let go - once and for all - of our incredibly pervasive tendency to judge, categorize, and condemn others?

         I’d like you to meet our musical guest tonight and get to know him a little better, because his story and journey have a lot to do with moving beyond judgment of others.  (Interview with Musical Guest - Rokko Jans)

         (Rokko and Melissa play "Geodes" by Carrie Newcomb) 

      I’ve never been much of a gardener but occasionally I’ll have the chance to spend some time in some of my friends’ gardens. Some of them have an amazing way with flowers, vegetables, and all things green. I don’t have free reign when it comes to other people’s gardens. I’m relegated to watering when they’re out of town or unable to get to it. I’m occasionally granted permission to weed, though my gardening friends are pretty leery – just as my own mother was - about turning me loose on the weeds. You see, I’ve pulled out more than a few good plants and flowers when I thought all I was doing was weeding. I’ve pulled out little fledgling something or others - chives, parsley, and even some tomato stalks. Nowadays, about the only way anyone lets me into their garden to weed is if they can actually point out exactly what to pull out and what to leave – AND stay there watching so I don’t screw it up!

         You know there’s a great story Jesus told about weeding a garden. Does anybody remember it? Check it out…(read Mt. 13) God’s kingdom, Jesus says, is like an unweeded garden, a huge mixture of good and bad, of productive and unproductive. And did you happen to hear that it is NOT for the Lord’s servants to do the weeding? The servants of the king come to their Lord dutifully and ask, “Do you want us go and pull the weeds up?” And without hesitation the king replies, “No, for while you are pulling up the weeds, you may root up some of the wheat as well. Let both grow together until the harvest.” Let them BOTH grow TOGETHER until the harvest.

         What a lesson! What a challenge! What a metaphor for life! If we are going to call ourselves followers of Jesus, then we are supposed to live and love in an UNweeded garden. We’re to make no distinctions about who is good and who isn’t, about who is in and who is out, about who gets water and who doesn’t.

         It really shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus prefers the garden of his creation to be unweeded. Remember in his famous Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus put it this way: “You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you; Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be true sons of your father in heaven. For God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45) That’s our model; that’s our calling – to live and love in an unweeded garden and to make no distinction in how we treat people. When it comes to people, we are called and commanded to stay out of the weeding business, to let our light shine and our love fall upon the evil as well as the good, on the righteous as well as the unrighteous.

         As a teacher of World Religions at NCMC, one of fascinating things I’ve observed is the growing interest my students seem to have in Buddhism and Hinduism, while their interest in Christianity continues to wane and fade away. We saw this from Megan who was with us last week for the interview, right? Do you know what draws them to those religions, rather than to say Christianity or Islam…? The fact that Buddhists and Hindus don’t dismiss, criticize, or condemn people of other religions.

         When asked by a reporter during his march to the sea if he wanted to convert the whole world to Hinduism, do you remember Gandhi’s reply? ”No! I simply want Hindus to be better Hindus, Jews to be better Jews, Christians to be better Christians, and Muslims to be better Muslims.” This was his way of acknowledging that no religion is superior to any other and no truly religious people would ever judge or condemn those of another religion. Gandhi also once said that “the essence of Hinduism is to learn to see God in every living being and act accordingly.” Isn’t that pretty much the essence of Christianity, too? Isn’t that exactly what Jesus did? If only his followers could do the same, right?

         Judging others is such a slippery slope, isn’t it? We are always making judgments and acting on such limited information. We have some teachers here tonight, don’t we? Teachers know a little something about working in an unweeded garden, don’t we? Each and every classroom is the ultimate unweeded garden. For 14 years, when I was teaching, every fall when I’d get a new class list, I’d do the same, stupid, judgmental thing. I’d run my index finger down the list, hoping that I’d have certain “good kids” in my class, and hoping even more fervently that I’d NOT have to endure certain “weeds” in my classroom. But despite my hoping and praying, I always got some unique mix of the kids I wanted and those I didn’t want to have. And do you know what else I remember about all my classes over 14 years of teaching? Some of the kids I thought I really wanted to have weren’t always so great, AND one or two of the kids I thought would absolutely ruin my class, turned out a lot better than I thought. In the end, I guess I wasn’t that good at telling which were the weeds and which were the flowers. In the end, the true challenge of teaching was to give all the kids in my classroom my absolute best, whether I thought they were weeds or beautiful flowers. The challenge was to learn to see God in every student and treat them accordingly.

        

         You know, we live in a time and in a country where more Christians than ever want to weed the garden, which is why that Barna survey revealed what it did about what people associate with Christians and Christianity. And it’s not just that Christians want to weed the garden: they want to weed it NOW. For many Christians, it’s the Muslims who are the weeds, and if we could just separate and get rid of “them” with all their terrorists and suicide bombers, we’d be set. For others in our so-called Christian family, it’s the pro-choicers, the homosexuals, and the liberals that need to be weeded out so that God’s true kingdom can come. You can fill in the blanks on who and what your weeds are, but we’ve all got them, don’t we?

         But our Master Gardener – Jesus the Christ - has made it clear; we’re not very good weeders. Despite our good intentions, when we weed, we pull out and get rid of too much stuff that God wants and that God is still working with. In our impatience to “get-r-done,” we lose sight of the fact that, as Isaiah said some 2,800 years ago, “God’s ways are not like our ways.” (Isaiah 55:8)

(Insert song – What’s Going On?)

         ‘Come on, Toby. Aren’t there are a number of passages in our scriptures that seem to give us Christians license to weed, or at least criteria that we think we can use to weed on God’s behalf?’ Yes, as a matter of fact there are. I won’t chronicle all of them now, but I do want to examine one of the biggest and most influential of these apparent license-to-weed passages Christians often call upon, just to show you how dangerous AND misused such texts can be. In John chapter 10, beginning in verse 7, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not heed them. I am the door; if any one enters by me he will be saved.” License to weed, right? Could this be any clearer? Jesus puts himself at the door of the kingdom of God. He’s the gatekeeper. That means, that as followers of Jesus, we’re set! We’re on the “right” side of this whole religious argument, right! The God we worship is the true God, and so all the Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists must be the weeds. Let the weeding begin!

         Not so fast. Not so fast. If we keep reading in this very same chapter of John’s gospel, we come to verse 16. Jesus continues: “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them in also, and they will heed my voice. So, ultimately, there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” What did Jesus say? Other sheep? Not of this fold? Sheep that WILL hear his voice – note the future tense. Can you see how John 10 – when you read it entirely and in its context – is NOT license to weed at all, but, in fact, quite the opposite?

         My friends, the God we worship is alive. The God that these scriptures give testament to is still working! He’s not finished with any of us yet, and He’s certainly not finished with the world. We can’t start weeding. It’s too soon, and it’s not our job.

         So what if…what if we agreed to let go of weeding forever? What if we agreed to let go of judging forever? What if our only job were to love, to serve, to feed, and to lift up others indiscriminately? What if a spiritual community committed to letting the rain of our love fall on the just as well as on the unjust, for that is the model we’ve been given in Christ?

         What if…? Can you imagine it? Can you imagine…

     (the message concluded with Toby, Melissa, and Rokko singing John Lennon's "Imagine.")