An Easter Reflection: Gentle Jesus & His Gentle Resurrection 3/27/16

                        (Based on John 20:1-28 and John 21:4-17)

            We think of Jesus’ resurrection as a pretty big deal, don’t we? I mean how much bigger can it get than a guy being crucified and then walking out of the grave three days later? We think of Jesus’ rising as an incredible display of his strength and power, and for sure it was. But this morning, I’d like to focus on a different dimension of Jesus’ resurrection. I’d like to focus on its gentleness. You’ve probably never thought of Jesus’ resurrection as gentle, but perhaps it’s time you did.

            Let’s look at a few of the details we heard in John’s account of that resurrection morn and the days that followed. The first person Jesus appears to in risen form is the person who was the most faithful to him, the most loyal. While all the male disciples ran like heck when Jesus was arrested, Mary Magdelene didn’t. She stayed as close as she could to Jesus through his whole trial, his walk down the Via de la Rosa, carrying his own cross. She even stayed at the foot of the cross, through his cry of dereliction, until he breathed his last breath, and until the soldiers allowed him to be taken down from it. Mary was there, weeping, praying, grieving, but never leaving.

            How incredibly kind and gentle it was that Jesus appeared first to Mary, and he did it in such a gentle way. “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it that you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, Mary says gently and respectfully, “Sir, if you have carried him away, please tell me where you have put him, and I will go to him.” Ever-faithful Mary. Jesus then, according to John, says only word… “Mary.” He spoke only her name, that one, single word. And he spoke it so gently, so full of compassion, that Mary turned toward him and cried out “Rabboni!” which means “My teacher!”

            Indeed, Jesus had been Mary’s teacher over these last three years. And she had paid attention to all his lessons. That’s why she stayed with him, no matter how scary and how bloody things got, no matter who else ran away. Mary knew what Jesus would do if she had been the one to suffer. And that is what she did – what her teacher would have done. And in this powerful Easter morning moment, she reached for Jesus, to hug him, but he gently says to her, “Don’t hold on to me, Mary.” It may strike us as harsh, a bit cold even. But Jesus knew what Mary had already been through; she’d already lost him once. He knew that in a very few days, Jesus would be leaving again to be with his father, and from there he would not be coming back. Mary had suffered enough. Gentle Jesus wanted to teach Mary to live with open hands, open arms, not closed ones.

            Gentle Jesus would go next to some of his disciples. They’d all betrayed him in one form or another. They’d all “forsook him and fled,” as Mark’s gospel puts it. He goes to them quietly, into that little upper room where they hid trembling with fear, riddled with guilt, paralyzed with no sense of what to do next. And his first words, Jesus very first words to them were these: “Peace be with you…Peace be with you.” Not “What in the hell happened out there!” Not “What kind of friends are you, leaving me all alone to suffer and die!” Not even “I told you I’d be back, but you didn’t believe me, did you?” No. He just says “Peace be tith you. He even said it twice, “Peace be with you!” And then, John tells us that Jesus breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” that same comforter and counselor he had told them about less than a week before, the One who would lead them into all truth, the One who would empower them to do all the things Jesus himself had done and then some!

            Folks, this was a moment when it would have made perfect sense for Jesus to get a little angry, to call these bozos into account, to exact at least a little emotional revenge by making them squirm with guilt. But gentle Jesus did no such thing. He didn’t come to get something from them or to exact some payment. He came to give them 3 things – peace, his Father’s spirit, and the reminder that forgiveness is the most important thing. He said, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven!” What a wonderful and gentle reminder to bestow upon these struggling, failing disciples. Gentle Jesus…ever Gentle Jesus.

            Now we know that at least one of the disciples missed out on this upper room reunion with Jesus. He was the one who probably felt particularly foolish and worthless for all his doubting. Thomas was the one who had said, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” Gentle Jesus didn’t want to miss Thomas. He knew just what Thomas needed, and he came back a second time, to make sure he gave that very experience to Thomas. He came back saying, “Peace be with you!” And then he said, gently and directly, to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side.” And in one of my favorite moments in all of scripture, Thomas says, “My Lord and my God!” Gentle Jesus brought Thomas peace, forgiveness, and an experience with the risen Christ that Thomas would never, ever forget.

            But Gentle Jesus wasn’t done yet. There was one more crucial errand he had to run. It would involve a long walk – anywhere from 2 to 5 days, walking from Jerusalem back up to the Sea of Galilee. But Jesus would take that walk. It was that important to him, for he knew that the most tortured, guilt-ridden disciple of all needed him. Peter had gone fishing – not just as a little one-day outing, but as in going back to his old life, to his career, to what he was doing long before he ever met this Nazarene. Peter had said, “I’m going fishing,” because he was done as a disciple. He’d blown it in the worst possible way, denying that he even knew Jesus, and he did it three times.

            One can only imagine the terror and the horror that filled Peter’s head and heart that morning on the fishing boat, when an all-too-familiar voice came from the shore, saying, “Haven’t you caught any fish…? Throw your net on the other side of the boat and you’ll find some.” Peter froze in absolute horror. John made things worse by saying, “It is the Lord.” Can you imagine what must have run through Peter’s head as he started to picture this face-to-face encounter with the risen Jesus? “He’s going to kill me! He’s going to tear me a new one! Jesus is going to call me out and humiliate me in front of all the others…and I deserve it.”

            We know that Peter was pretty darn scared and messed up inside, for John tells us that before he dived into the water to swim to shore with the others, he first put his shirt back on!

            When Peter reached the shore, expecting the worst, Jesus said, “Bring some of the fish you just caught…Come and have some breakfast with me.” And then, after a great breakfast, like so many of the great breakfasts they’d enjoyed together over the last three years, Jesus asks Peter a question: “Simon, do you love me more than these?”  “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you,” Peter replies, feeling the ache of guilt and failure. Again, Jesus asks him the very same question; “Simon do you love me?” Peter must have thought Jesus was trying to pour salt in his wound, for why else would Jesus ask him the very same question a second time? “Yes Lord, you know I love you.” When the question came the third time, Peter must have wondered whether the cock was going to crow again, for that’s what happened on that awful night when he denied this same Jesus three times. But no cock crowed. No lightning struck. No harsh words came. Jesus – the ever-gentle Jesus – just sat there, smiling. And it slowly began to dawn on Peter what was happening. Jesus was reinstating him. Jesus was making sure Peter knew that he was not only forgiven, but loved! Here Peter had thought Jesus had come all this way, back from the dead, to ream him, to humiliate him, to give him the old “Donald Trump” from The Apprentice days – “You’re fired!” But Peter couldn’t have been more wrong. I guess Peter didn’t realize just how gentle Jesus really was.

            I wonder if we realize that – the depth of Jesus’ gentleness? Gentleness is arguably the most consistent thread in Jesus’ life when you really think about it. He came into the world in such a gentle, humble, quiet way: a silent, holy night in a Bethlehem manger. He went about his work so gently, without fanfare. Every time Jesus performed a miracle or a healing, he tried to do it in secret. And when circumstances wouldn’t allow for secrecy, he charged those who’d witnessed it to tell no one. Jesus embraced his capture, his trial, and his crucifixion so gently, without resistance, and so it only makes sense that his resurrection would be handled with that same characteristic gentleness, doesn’t it?

            I don’t know about you, but when I look around at this season’s Presidential debates, at all the terrorist attacks, at the incredibly vitriolic, anger-laden, and vengeful speech, I can’t help but think that this world could use a little gentleness. The next time you’re in a tough situation and you’re trying to discern what Jesus would do, start with gentleness and you won’t be too far off the track.

            When Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, an event that seems so powerful, so mighty, may you always remember that Jesus even managed to do that with gentleness. He used his precious little time on earth, after conquering death not to flaunt his strength, nor to seek revenge, nor to tell people that he told them so, but to make sure everyone knew they were loved, forgiven, and restored. Wouldn’t it be great if we used whatever little time we have left to do the very same thing? Amen.

A Good Friday Reflection: It's Time to Take a Fresh Look at the Cross

At so many levels, the cross simply doesn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense to the original disciples, and, if we’re really honest, it doesn’t always make sense to us either. After all of the powerful, miraculous things we saw Jesus do, from walking on water to healing the blind and the lame, from cleansing those 10 lepers, to raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus’ dying on the cross defies logic. His succumbing to human power – particularly corrupt human power – when he was so incredibly powerful, just doesn’t make any sense.

Now, I know that many of us, when faced with the paradox of the cross, will be immediately tempted to parrot the Christian party line that we’ve all been taught for years and years - that Jesus “HAD TO die for our sins,” or that “God’s plan from the beginning was to send his only son to pay the penalty for sin, a penalty that God’s divine justice demands.”

I realize that is the traditional theological explanation for all this blood, and it’s certainly the one that I grew up with. But have you ever wondered why God would HAVE to do anything? Does God really HAVE to have some innocent man pay for everyone else’s sins with blood? Folks, I think it’s time we realized – if not for own sake, for our kids’ and grandkids’ sake - that the traditional explanation for Jesus’ dying on the cross isn’t working anymore; at least it isn’t working for the millions of folks from younger generations who want nothing to do with us and with our Christianity. Listen to this compelling argument from contemporary theologian Tony Jones:

“A lot of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the dominant interpretation of Jesus’ death as primarily the payment required of a wrathful God. For one thing, we don’t experience God as uber-wrathful toward us. For another, it simply doesn’t make sense that God would set up the whole system so that he has to kill his own son just to make it work. It just doesn’t smell right.”

Putting it bluntly, to folks my age and younger with a post-modern mindset, why would we ever want to love and worship a God who demands blood - INNOCENT blood - to pay for guilty people’s sin? That just isn’t a God I want to cuddle up to and worship. And I don’t think I’m alone here. There has to be another way for us to understand all this Good Friday injustice, violence, and blood.

What if violence simply is NOT in God’s nature? What if, long before Jesus arrived on the scene, God decided that He didn’t want any more blood shed, not animal blood, not human blood, not any blood? And what if God particularly didn’t want another drop of blood spilled for Him or for His sake? What if God was looking for a way to stop all the madness and violence and this sense we humans have clung to for thousands of years of having to pay Him something, of having to give him some fresh meat to keep Him from smiting us?

Well guess what? God was trying to stop all this blood sacrifice and payment for sin, 4 and 5 hundred years before Jesus even came! Read the prophets – Amos, Hosea, Joel, Micah, and Malachi! Every one of them says something likes this: “I hate your religious rituals, though you bring me burnt offerings and sacrifice offerings, I will not accept them! I despise these offerings!..For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, says the Lord.”

The prophetic message is filled with God’s attempts to put an end to all our sacrificing and shedding of blood to forgive sin. But we didn’t listen. We missed it! So what DOES God do to get his point across, his point that violence is NOT his way, and that blood will NEVER accomplish anything other than more blood and more violence?  What does God do…? He submits to violence…He submits to violence in its worst, most heinous form. He allows his son, his only son, to submit to human violence and die by its hand.

Then, to be sure we get His point, this crucified One raises! He appears to his followers and shows them the wounds and the holes, and he promises THEM that no matter how or when THEY die, they too will raise up; they too will live on. They’ll resurrect, just like Jesus. He assures them that no matter how things APPEAR to work in their world, violence does NOT win. Death does NOT get the last word. Instead, what APPEARS so powerful here on earth – namely violence, brutality, bloodshed, and death - really aren’t that powerful at all.

And then, in case we still missed the point, God has the followers of his crucified son go on doing exactly what Jesus would be doing if he were still around. The disciples of the crucified Christ carry on preaching and teaching, healing and caring for the poor, just as if their Lord were still with them. Can you imagine how that must have ticked off the Romans and the Pharisees? Here they went to ALL that trouble to arrest, torture, and kill the ringleader of this Christian movement in a very public, dramatic and example-setting way, but it didn’t change a thing! In fact, his disciples went right on acting as if their Messiah were still around, as if he’d come back from the dead, as if He were still alive IN THEM.

        

         Maybe this clip from the film “Gandhi” will help you understand what I’m  trying to say about finding another way to understand the meaning and purpose of the cross. Let me set the scene for you. Gandhi is helping the Indian people achieve independence from the Brits, who have ruled their country oppressively for nearly 90 years. He is teaching the Indian people – Hindu and Muslim alike - that to become self-sufficient, they must break Britain’s economic hold on their country’s valuable natural resources, particularly salt. In this scene, a planned non-violent protest is about to occur at the country’s largest salt mine. Having heard about this protest in advance, the British powers had Gandhi arrested the night before, thinking that would derail the protest. But all of Gandhi’s followers went right ahead with this incredible and courageous protest, as if their leader were right there with them. I warn you that this is difficult to watch; but I believe it will be worth it. (scene 19 - from the Salt Mine – 4:35 where line after line of unarmed protesters march up to the armed soldiers guarding the salt mine and get beaten and bloodied. Each fallen line of protesters is tended to by the women protesters and the next line of sheep step up to be slaughtered. This awful scene lasts through an entire day and into the night. Martin Sheen, playing an American reporter phones in his narration of this, ending with the following line:)

“Any moral ascendancy that the West formerly had was defeated here today….India is free!” Gandhi’s disciples defeated the violent, tyrannical occupation of the British empire NOT by returning her blows, but by RECEIVING its blows, by exposing the impotence and immorality of the Empire's violence. 

Could Jesus have been doing the same thing? What if God DIDN’T “send” Jesus to the cross to “PAY FOR our sins,” but rather allowed Jesus to be subject to the worst, most extreme form of human violence, in order to show us just how weak and wasteful such violence is? Maybe God wanted all of us to live in the sure knowledge that violence has no place in the kingdom of God, that violence will never achieve what God wants us to achieve. Maybe the cross was meant to teach us that we no longer have to be afraid of weapons and those who wield them, because in the end, it is love that wins. Love always wins in the end.

Friends, Good Friday confronts us with a sort of ultimate choice, the choice of how we are going to live the rest of our lives. Will we live in accordance with the principles of violence and bloodshed to bring about our will, or even worse, what we perceive to be God’s will? Or will we live non-violently, fearlessly living out the radical and courageous love of Jesus?

  

God wants people who are willing to march non-violently into the unjust salt mines of this world. And God wants us to do this, NOT because He’s some sort of vampire with a sick taste for blood, but because He showed us in Jesus the ways of violence and torture are ultimately both powerless and ineffective. Even when Jesus himself was tortured and killed, both He and his principles lived on in the actions of his followers. And no matter how many Christ-followers the Romans killed, the power of Jesus, his love, and his non-violent way could not and would not ever be defeated.

So while today may SEEM like a day when those who shed the blood of Jesus won, it is a day when they lost. While today may SEEM like a day when God, once again, demanded innocent blood to appease Him, it was actually the day God hoped to put an end to the spilling of blood forever, by showing its ultimate impotence.

Friends, there IS another way to understand this bloody mess of a cross. God is not a vampire. He neither wants nor needs our blood, any more than He wanted or needed Jesus’ blood. I don’t think God caused or wanted Jesus to die on that cross. But he may have allowed it in the hope that we might finally get it through our thick heads that violence in any form will never solve the world’s problems, and blood, no matter whose it is, will never bring us closer to God. And this truth, this ultimate truth that violence and bloodshed will never be a part of God’s will, should compel us to live non-violently and fearlessly, knowing that what was true for Jesus is most certainly true for us: that in the end, love wins.

On this “Good” Friday of 2016, may we expand our understanding of the cross. May we open ourselves to the deeper truth that Jesus didn’t merely die to “pay for” sin, but rather to expose and to reveal just how impotent and worthless all our violence and bloodshed really are. May we be a people with the courage to stand up in love against violence in every form (stretch out arms), knowing that, ultimately, love wins…Love always wins. For the God of the scriptures has made it clear again and again, that God desires mercy – NOT sacrifice. Amen.

Adventures in Missing the Point: A Palm Sunday Meditation

               (Based on Zechariah 9:8-10, 14-16, & Luke 19:28-42)

      

         I’ve always thought that if I could re-title the Palm Sunday story, I would call it “Adventures in Missing the Point.” For if ever there was a time when people showed just how little they understood who Jesus was and what he had come to do, this Palm Sunday parade was it.

          Do you know why all those people were lining the streets with their palm branches and shouting “Hosanna!”? They thought Jesus was on his way into town to kick some Roman tail, to expel the Romans from Israel once and for all, and to sit on the throne of David as the first legitimate political king that Israel had had for a long, long time. The prophecy that we just heard Don read from Zechariah said that the person who came into Jerusalem riding on the donkey would also “appear over them; his arrow flashing like lightening.” He was to “sound his trumpet and march south, leading Israel’s army and destroying their enemies, shielding them from all harm.” The truth of what Jesus did, of course, was very different from that prophecy, irreconcilably different, in fact`. Jesus came into town peacefully. He submitted to the Roman authorities, rather than overthrowing them. Palm Sunday was a big adventure in missing the point.

         But to be fair, this huge throng of Palm Sunday hopefuls wasn’t the first group to miss the point where Jesus was concerned, and they certainly wouldn’t be the last. Think of the Pharisees and the Scribes. They had their image of what a Messiah was supposed to do and be. In their highly educated view, Jesus was a Rabbi, and thus they expected him to comply with their scriptural laws. They wanted Jesus to fulfill their expectations of what a rabbi, a holy man of God should be. They didn’t want a messiah who fraternized with sinners and tax collectors. They couldn’t have a messiah who touched lepers and unclean women. They wanted Jesus to separate himself from all that was common, impure, and sinful, The Pharisees time with Jesus was one big adventure in missing the point.

         The disciples weren’t really any better when it came to grasping who Jesus was and what he’d come to do. They missed the point too. Think of Peter. He loved all of Jesus’ miracles – the healings, the feedings. Peter was the one who boldly jumped out of the boat to walk on the water with Jesus. But Peter’s problem came whenever Jesus started to talk about the suffering that would be a part of Jesus’ life, including his death. Peter yelled, “Never, Lord! You shall never be hurt or killed by these Romans!” Peter, like the Pharisees and like that huge Palm Sunday crowd, wanted to hold onto his notion of a messiah - a victorious, miracle-working, and mighty king, not some silent, non-violent sheep. Despite living with Jesus for 3 years, in the end, Peter’s time with Jesus was one big adventure in missing the point.

         Think of all the people who tried at some point to define Jesus, to fashion and shape him, and to make him conform to their image, to pigeon-hole him, and to get him to do what they wanted him to do rather than what he came to do. Remember the mother of James and John, who tried to get her two sons special seats in the kingdom of heaven, right alongside of Jesus? Remember the disciples trying to shoo away all those little children who were flocking to Jesus and trying to touch him, while Jesus kept saying, “Let the children come to me! For to them belong the kingdom of heaven….” Or what about the time Jesus entered Samaria instead of walking all the way around it – which is what law keeping Jews were required to do? Jesus walked right into Samaria, sat down at the well in the center of town, and had a conversation with a Samaritan woman, who had been married five times! The disciples were freaking out! They were thinking, “C’mon, Lord! We don’t do this! We don’t enter Samaria, and we certainly don’t talk to unclean Samaritan women!” The disciples missed Jesus’ point every bit as much as the Pharisees did.

Now it’s one thing that all of these people who should have known better completely missed Jesus’ point. But the real tragedy in all of this is that these same people – whether they were Jesus’ supposed enemies or his supposed friends – also missed the point of the community Jesus was trying to establish. Have you ever noticed that everyone, from his disciples on up to the Scribes and Phariseses, sought to limit who could and couldn’t be a part of Jesus’ ever expanding community? This is where missing Jesus’ point crosses the line from being foolish to being dangerous. This is the real problem with missing the point of who Jesus was and is and what he came to do. For when we miss the point of who Jesus was and the kind of Messiah he came to be, then it becomes a virtual certainty that we will also miss the point of and the nature of the community he came to establish. When we limit Jesus and box him into our own narrow understandings, we can’t help but also limit and define his community, his church, his people.

         Think about it…The Pharisees didn’t think that Jesus’ community should include or embrace sinners, tax collectors, lepers, or prostitutes. The disciples didn’t think Jesus’ community should include children, teachers of the law like Nicodemus, or Samaritans like that the woman at the well.

If our scriptures are clear about anything, they are clear about the fact that those who thought they knew Jesus best, those who should have known better, were as wrong about Jesus and about the community he came to establish as they could have been. And if they – the very people who lived with Jesus, heard him speak, saw his miracles and his unlimited compassion and love – could be wrong about Jesus and who would be a part of his community, then so can we…so can we. Palm Sunday nineteen hundred and eighty three years ago was a gigantic adventure in missing the point. Could Palm Sunday 2016 be an equally mistaken endeavor?

         Every single generation of Christians, going all the way back to Jesus day, has tried to draw boundaries around the Christian community. For the first chunk of years, followers of Christ believed that Gentiles or non-Jews should not be permitted into the Christian circle. For the next hundred or so years, Christians battled about whether the followers of John or the followers of Peter should be considered the true fellowship. Moving into more modern times, American Christians debated whether African slaves should even be allowed to be baptized, much less welcomed into the full fellowship of the church. And you know the debates about women being allowed to speak or minister in Christ’s name, and whether gay, lesbian, and transgender people should be allowed into our churches. There are tons of Christians today who still don’t think that Jesus’ community should include assertive women, gay, lesbian, and transgender people, pro-choice proponents, or those who are open to other religions.  

Self-proclaimed followers of Jesus are still trying to limit and narrowly define Jesus, his ministry, and his community today. Faithful men and women are still trying to pin Jesus down, to confine God and ways of thinking about God. Do you know that in my former denomination – the Presbyterian Church – people are fighting about the doctrine of the trinity? There are many Presbyterians for whom understanding God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit doesn’t work. It feels too limiting, too gender specific. It reduces God instead of magnifies Him. So these folks have been working on alternative language to express God’s multi-faceted nature. But even as they do, more traditional Presbyterians are saying, “You can’t do that! You can’t change the way we’ve always talked about God. God IS Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and always has been, and if you try to say that in some other way, you’re going to have to leave our denomination.” We’re still fighting about our words and doctrines, words and doctrines that we humans made up in the first place to try and express something that’s beyond human words.

         Jesus is more liquid than solid. He’s like the water I poured into our children’s hands earlier this morning. He gets us wet, but we can’t contain or hold onto his living water. The living water of Jesus keeps flowing through us, it keeps squeezing out of the cracks and crevices of our lives, so that others can taste and feel and see his living water too.

         It is this deep truth of our wanting to contain Jesus and Jesus’ refusal to be contained that has led me to be very careful and very suspicious of doctrines and systematized, institutionalized beliefs. It is this flowing and liquid nature of Jesus that makes me equally suspicious of any efforts to limit or draw boundaries around Jesus’ community – who can be in it and who is to be kept out. We Christians have a long, long history of trying to hold onto Jesus and to our particular understanding of him, of trying to draw lines around him and around his community by constructing doctrines and then casting them in stone as a way of saying, “This is how we will understand and talk about Jesus and his community forever. Amen.”

With both his actions and his words, Jesus was always saying, “Do not hold onto me!” Why? Because Jesus doesn’t want to be doctrinalized or institutionalized or put into some theological box. Even our best, most clever doctrines can only give us a tiny glimpse of God. They never have been and they never will be entirely accurate or true.  Every doctrine, statement of faith, or way of talking about Jesus that we’ve ever come up with is a bit misleading, incomplete, and seen through that foggy mirror Paul spoke of in 1^st Corinthians 13. When it comes to Jesus and his community, we, too, have missed the point, and in so many ways we continue to miss the point.

But God knew this was going to happen, which is why He didn’t want Moses to pin Him down for a name back in Exodus 3. Moses asked, “What is your name?” And God showed his infinite wisdom by answering, “I am who I am, and I will be what I will be.” “Yahweh” is so much more than a name. It’s a reminder and a warning that the God we worship is not to be quantified, categorized, nor contained in any way. And when God gave Moses that second commandment, “You shall not construct graven images of me,” God wasn’t just talking about golden calves, folks; God was forbidding us from ever limiting Him or boxing Him in with words or doctrines or anything else that fixes Him – or his ever expanding community - in some permanent, solid, unchanging state.

God is like water, and what He wants more than anything else is people and churches and communities that are willing to have that living water flow through us – not just INto us, but OUT of us as well, to all people…to ALL people!

The people who waved those palm branches and shouted loud Hosanna’s 1983 years ago couldn’t have been more wrong about who Jesus was and what he’d come to do. I hope and I pray that they won’t be saying the same thing about us a few years from now.

Re-Thinking the Faith - Part IV - Another Look at the Cross - Through the Eyes of Eastern Orthodoxy

                
(Based on Psalm 82, John 10:31-39, and John 14:8-14)

       The cross is a pretty unusual choice for a symbol, don’t you think? Christians display this symbol of torture and bloodshed around our necks as a piece of jewelry, in our homes and entryways, and, most obviously front and center in our houses of worship. As one of my Jewish friends put it, “You Christians wearing crosses would be like Jews wearing mini-gas chambers around our necks.” He’s got a point, right? Why glorify or memorialize that particular portion of Jesus’ story, especially when such a death wasn’t at all unique to Jesus. History and archeology confirm that the Romans crucified thousands and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people throughout their empire, both guilty and innocent. In one day alone, Romans once crucified 6000 people. Jesus was, by no means, special or unique in terms of the kind of death he endured. Crucifixions happened all the time.

            So why did we turn the cross into our primary symbol? Why not a basin and a towel – the items Jesus used to wash the feet of his disciples? Why not a descending dove, reminding us of the Spirit’s living presence with all of us? Why not a loaf of bread or healing hands?

            Did you know that there is a fairly significant movement within Christianity whereby many congregations are removing the crosses from their sanctuaries? Can you understand why some thoughtful groups of Christians would be making such a decision?

            What does the cross mean to you, anyway? We’re you raised like I was to believe that we are all terrible sinners, deserving of hell fire, and that only by the blood of Jesus – shed on that cross - will we be made clean enough for heaven? It’s perfectly fine if you were, but what I’d like to do with you today is take another look at this cross and to see if there might not be another way to understand just what happened on that day we’ve come to call “Good Friday.”

            Did you know that there are close to four hundred million Christians in the world who don’t think that the crucifixion of Jesus had anything to do with forgiveness of sin? I’m talking about our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters. They represent one of the three main branches of the Christian family tree, along with Catholics and Protestants. To them, sin was never the problem of humans – death was. Eastern Orthodox Christians don’t believe in original sin or dwell on Genesis 3 the way so many other Christians do. In fact, these Christian brothers and sisters believe that we - and all creatures - were born blessed, pure, wonderful, and – get this – divine! That’s right! Eastern Orthodox followers of Jesus believe that God put a divine spark in all of us from the very beginning, a sliver of divinity. Eastern Orthodox Christians believe that we were intended to live forever, in total union and unity with God.

            But somehow, over the course of human history, we lost site of our own original blessedness, our own divinity, and our own immortality. So the human problem, according to this branch of the Christian family tree has always been one of getting our divinity back, reclaiming our original status as immortal, eternal children of God. The problem is that we die, that our lives are finite and have a point of termination. This problem of death and mortality is why Jesus came, according to Eastern Orthodoxy. Jesus didn’t come to forgive our sins; he came to show us how to live into our divinity, our immortality, our Christ-likeness.

            Athanasius is considered one of the fathers of Eastern Orthodoxy. He lived from 293-373. He didn’t see Jesus as divine, but rather as someone who came to show us all how to achieve divinity. As Athanasius’s quotation on today’s bulletin cover puts it, “In Jesus, God became a man so that man could become God.” It’s a shocking way of putting it, especially for those of us who grew up in Western Christianity. But it’s not all that shocking when you look at it in the context of some of the very things Jesus said, taught, and did.

            Let’s take the John 10:31-39 passage Marilyn just read, for example. Certain Jewish authorities are ticked off at Jesus, claiming that he has blasphemed by calling himself divine. But did you hear Jesus’ response? He quotes the Jewish scripture – Psalm 82: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I have said that you are gods’? If David called them gods to whom the word of God came…why do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said I am God’s son…Why do you not believe and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father?”

            And just four chapters later, when talking to his disciples, Jesus adds, “Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me…and I tell you the truth you will do even greater things than I have done.”

            Jesus told his followers many times that we had access to the very same power that he did, the power of God, the power of the Holy s

Spirit. Jesus told us that we could heal too, that we could restore others too, even that we would be able to raise the dead.

            So Athanasius had this understanding that Jesus came to re-ignite the divine candle that is burning in all of us! It’s gotten covered up; it’s gotten ashed over; but it is still there! Jesus came, in the view of Athanasius and our Eastern Orthodox brethren, NOT to die for our sins, but to LIVE INTO the divinity that is available to all of us – TO ALL OF US!

            So the cross, for Athanasius and the hundreds of millions of Eastern Orthodox followers, is a huge step on the path toward restoring our divinity. Jesus, a human, faced death head on – in the worst possible way – died, and then rose again. He conquered the one remaining barrier between humanity and divinity, between people and God – death itself. In Jesus, God became man, so that once again man could become God.

            Folks, if this is a new and somewhat radical understanding of the cross for you, please know that it is also quite new and quite radical for me too. Nobody told me anything about any of this when I was growing up. Nobody exposed me to much Eastern Orthodox Christianity, not even in seminary. And please don’t think that I’m trying to force this particular understanding of Jesus and the cross onto you. Rather, I’m inviting you to think through it with me, because it’s exciting and I think it deepens and broadens our understanding of Jesus and the crucifixion.

            I’m drawn to consider this view of Jesus’ death, in part, because I’ve never been drawn to all the blood atonement and sacrifice stuff that dominates traditional western Christianity. I don’t believe that we were all born horribly stained, dirty, and in need of some ritual cleansing or saving. I don’t believe that God would create us or any of his children blemished somehow or that he would ever want or need to send Jesus nor anyone else to die for our sins. Blood sacrifice has never resonated with my heart nor with the God I’ve come to know in Jesus of Nazareth. Has it for you?

            So imagine this…What if Yahweh, the “beyond names” God of the entire universe created us beautifully, wonderfully, without stain, without blemish, and without sin? And what if Jesus came, NOT so much to forgive us, but to remind us of our created purpose? What if Jesus’ full and very human life was designed to show us the way to get the absolute most out of life, to live into our created and divine purpose? And what if…what if his death was about showing us that even the most final and most terrifying barrier of all, death – the one that awaits every single one of us, is actually penetrable, is actually something that we can and will get beyond, that that huge, heavy, dark curtain that we, in our humanity, thought was the end, isn’t the end at all. What if?

            I’m glad that there are three full and diverse branches in the Christian family tree. I’m truly grateful that Eastern Christians don’t see everything the exact same way that we in the West do. I’m excited that this Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday don’t have to be celebrated in the exact same way I’ve always celebrated them before. How great that I’m still learning, still growing, still discovering more of the Truth. And I hope you are too! God has so much in store for us…and it’s all good…it’s all so very good!

           

           

Re-Thinking the Faith: Part IV - What in the world is Salvation & How do We Obtain It?

 (* Note – Toby also acknowledges and thanks Rob Bell and a talk he gave in 2000,

          which inspired and directed much of this sermon.)

     

         We’re talking about salvation today, and I want to begin with some BIG questions; important questions; my questions…maybe yours too. They’re the kind of questions that might make you uncomfortable. Ready?

1)    What is “salvation?” Is it really just a ticket to heaven?

2)    Of the almost 8 billion people in this world, is it really only us – only people who believe and live like we do – who “get saved?”

3)    What exactly does somebody have to do to get or become saved?

a.     if it’s really just saying some prayer, what about the people who say the right prayer but never end up living at all like Jesus?

b.    And what about those people who never say the magic prayer but really do live an awful lot like Jesus?

4)    If Jesus is the only way, then which Jesus are we talking about?

a.     there are at least a dozen different Jesus’s talked @ on cable TV

b.    there’s the Jesus who talks to Pat Robertson and tells him about upcoming terrorist attacks and who we all should vote for

c.     there’s the Jesus some people in this room worship who never ever gets political and there’s the Jesus of Martin Luther King Jr. and Jim Wallis, who is inherently political                    

Which Jesus are we talking about when we claim that Jesus is the only way?   Now some of us might be thinking, “C’mon, Toby, don’t make this so complicated and difficult. It’s the Jesus of the Bible that we worship and serve. It’s the Jesus of the Bible that saves us.” OK. Fair enough. So let’s look at this “Jesus of the Bible,” shall we? Let’s pretend that we have nothing else to go on to get at our tough questions about salvation except the Bible. That’s all that we’ve got. So what does the Bible teach us about getting saved, about the way to salvation?

         Get out your Bibles and do your best to stay with me, because we’re going to have to move fast today. Let’s start with our 2 passages for the morning: Romans 10:9 – “For if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart, you will be saved.” Well, there it is, right? Straight out of the mouth of Paul the Apostle, clear as a bell. Confess Jesus with your lips, believe in him in your heart, and that’s it. We might as well all just go home….Unless you think we should look at more than1 verse?

         Luke 18:18-25 – This rich young man asks Jesus point blank, “What must I do to be saved?” And Jesus says, “You know the commandments; follow them.” But the young man pushes further, saying, “Yeah, but what else?” And Jesus says, “Sell everything that you have and give it to the poor, and then come and follow me.” Wo. Just a minute here. Sell everything I have? Paul didn’t say anything about that. What happened to just confessing with our lips and believing with our hearts? Let’s press on.

         Mark 2:2-5 – The great story of the paralytic whose friends carry him to the house where Jesus is and can’t get him in because of the crowd. So they climb up on the roof, cut a hole in it, and lower their paralyzed friend down to Jesus. And the passage says, “When Jesus saw their faith, NOT the paralyzed dude’s, but his friends’ faith, and that’s what led Jesus to forgive and heal the paralytic. So what do we conclude from this passage – that we need faithful friends in order to get saved? Cool! Maybe we can get in on our friends’ coat tails?

         Luke 19:1-10 – The famous story of Zacchaeus, the wee little man, who climbs the tree to see Jesus. Jesus calls him down from the tree, invites himself over to Zach’s house for dinner, and stuns all the people of Jericho in the process. “Not Zacchaeus! He’s a corrupt tax collector.” And then, when Zacchaeus is at table with the Lord, he stands up and declares, “Lord, here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” And what does Jesus say? “Today salvation has come to this house.” Zacchaeus gets saved! How? It appears by giving 1/2 his possessions away and promising to make amends with all those he’s ripped off.

         So is this salvation thing getting any clearer for you? All we’re doing is looking at what the Bible says, right?

         Let’s try Matthew 6:14-15. This is in the Sermon on the Mount, right after Jesus teaches the disciples the Lord’s prayer. He wraps up saying, “For if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do NOT forgive others their sins, your Father will NOT forgive your sins either.” Hmm…So to get saved, it looks like we have to forgive other people’s sins.

         But in Luke 7:36-50, we find still another salvation story, the story of a sinful woman who barges in on a dinner Jesus is having with the Pharisees. This woman never says a thing (she confesses nothing with her lips), but she proceeds to take a jar of very costly perfume and pours it all over Jesus, wiping it with her hair. The Pharisees and Jesus’ own disciples are disgusted by this action, particularly given who this woman is! But check out what Jesus says: “I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven – as her great love has shown…” Then Jesus says to the woman: “Your sins are forgiven,” and “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” What does this beauty suggest we need to do in order to be saved?

         In Matthew 25:31 and following, we find the famous passage where the King separates the sheep from the goats. The sheep enter his heavenly kingdom, while the goats are sent to a burning fire. As the king welcomes the sheep into salvation, he honors them for feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, welcoming the stranger, etc. Salvation in this potent text is procured by using our resources to help “the least of these,” God’s children.

         How’s everybody doing now? Do we all have this salvation thing figured out yet? I can go on all day, if you’d like. But I think you’re starting to see my point, right? Using the Bible as our guide in attempt to understand what salvation is and how one goes about “getting” it does NOT elicit one clear answer. And those who say it does are not reading the whole Bible. Sometimes the Bible seems to suggest that we get saved by saying something. Sometimes the Bible makes it seem that we get saved by doing something. At still other times, it seems salvation is tied to believing something. Elsewhere, salvation comes to those whose friends have a certain kind of faith, right? And in multiple other places salvation is tied to using our resources to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves.

         Brothers and sisters, it’s time we all realized that we Christians have done Jesus and the Bible a terrible disservice by boiling down salvation to any one thing or one simple step or saying a certain prayer. The Bible’s message is much bigger than that, and Jesus is much bigger than that.

It’s time Christians realized that nowhere in this huge and wonderful book is there a prayer called the sinner’s prayer. That’s a man-made prayer designed to get people connected to God in one very narrow and unbiblical way. The truth of salvation is much broader, much deeper, and much more mysterious and grace-filled than that. The truth is that different people throughout the Biblical narrative “get saved” in a lot of different ways, through a lot of different channels and circumstances. The only thing we know for sure is that it’s God who does the saving; NOT us. NEVER us. And God works in many mysterious ways.

         It’s time that Christians realize that people out there have no interest in following a God who has some secret password prayer to divide who’s in from who’s out. People out there are too smart and have too strong a sense of justice to want to follow a God who would withhold grace from those who don’t say the right words, or who happen to be born in a non-Christian culture.

It’s also time we realized that when Jesus spoke of salvation, he wasn’t talking about heaven. He wasn’t talking about some after life. In all the stories we just looked at, Jesus was talking about the here and now, this life. He didn’t tell Zacchaeus that he’d get into heaven someday; he said “TODAY salvation has come to his house. Zacchaeus’s life changed now, in this world where he collected taxes. Salvation in the Bible is not a ticket to heaven. Biblical salvation is a wholistic thing. It has to do with restoring and renewing all creation – THIS creation – THIS WORLD – to God’s intended order and plan – HERE and NOW. The salvation Jesus spoke of encompasses ALL of our life – here AND in the age to come. Salvation is a life-long process of becoming more and more Christ-like, more and more like Jesus. And from all the passages that we’ve looked at this morning, we’ve got to understand that, to Jesus, salvation unfolds in different people’s lives in many different ways. Salvation for Zacchaeus wasn’t exactly the same thing as it was for the woman with the perfume. Salvation wasn’t the exact same process for the paralyzed man with the four friends as it was for Nicodemus to whom Jesus said, “You must be born again.”

         Maybe you’re sitting here today and you’ve never asked Jesus into your heart or your life. That’s an important step in the salvation process and I’d encourage you to think about taking it. Or maybe you’re here today knowing that you have said that prayer, years ago, maybe even a couple of times. But your problem is that you’re not LIVING very much like Jesus. You may have an addiction, a broken marriage, a burden of guilt, or a regret from which you need to be saved. Or maybe you love Jesus and know that he loves you, and maybe you’ve even gotten involved in all kinds of wonderful ministries, but you’re still too worried about money and your own finances to be generous with your resources. Well the salvation process for you might entail God helping you let go of the purse strings.

         Whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey, I challenge each and every one of you this day to admit that your understanding of salvation – what it is and how it happens – has probably been a bit too narrow and probably less than fully Biblical. I challenge you, using the words of Paul in Philippians 2, to “continue to work out your own salvation” (NOT other people’s) “with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose. Amen.