Cheering for Death.

            In the last two presidential debates, the audience, all of whom were from a particular party, erupted into spontaneous cheers on two telling occasions.

            In the first case, the governor of Texas was asked a question about the hundreds of people who were put to death by the State during his administration.  Before he could even answer, the crowd started clapping its approval.  A group of people who are supposed to be against government and its overreaching, started cheering the ultimate expression of State power: killing people.  The governor, no doubt sensing a friendly audience, then stated powerfully and without a hint of apology his belief in the State’s right to take life.  So much for “smaller government.” 

            But it’s not just the hypocrisy that is disturbing.  It is the overt, shameless enthusiasm for State-sponsored murder that chills the soul. 

            The second example was in the next debate.  One candidate was asked a question about someone who intentionally declined to purchase health insurance.  What, if anything, should be done if this person gets seriously ill?  The candidate danced around about personal responsibility for a while, until some in the crowd started helping him out: “Let him die!” they shouted.  It was the clear implication of the candidate’s “philosophy,” and he did nothing to separate himself from this sentiment.

            This enthusiasm for death – and I am waiting for the next debate when someone asks a question about war – indicates a deeply hateful, fearful, violent, and angry way of looking at the world.  It demands that we ask whether we want such people, or leaders beholden to such people, in charge of our government.

            What is even more perverse is that at the former candidate loudly proclaims his Christianity.  Jesus Christ was himself executed by the government.  Is it possible to read the New Testament in such a way as to imagine Jesus approving of the death penalty?  Jesus freely healed anyone who came to him, regardless of their politics, religion, morals, or responsibility.  Is it possible to read the gospels in such a way as to imagine Jesus letting someone, anyone, die rather than be healed of a disease?

            No.  The governor’s “Christianity” is the Christianity-without-Jesus we see all too often.  Except to reject it, Jesus does not recognize the murderous, vindictive, hateful, bigoted, violent, self-righteous, judgmental, condemnatory, unforgiving version of religion that many calling themselves “Christians” espouse and practice.  (To his credit, the other candidate as far as I can tell doesn’t even pretend to be a Christian.  He clearly and explicitly follows the godless philosophy of the novelist, Ayn Rand.)

            In both of these cases I am reminded of another crowd gathered before another leader.  That crowd also made its enthusiasm for death known.  Their cry was “Crucify him!”  We’re dealing with the same kind of people here.

            John writes that “perfect love casts out all fear.”  Today we see the opposite in the words and actions of some: that perfect fear casts out all love.  These people already control a large part of our government.  May God have mercy on us if we give them any more authority.

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Everything Is Forgivable, Except Not Forgiving.

Matthew 18.21-35

I.

            Peter approaches the question from the point of view of an offended person, a person who has been sinned against.  A person who understands her- or himself to be a good person, on the right track, doing good things.  A person for whom sin is mainly someone else’s problem.  Sin is what other people to do me.  I am the forgiver of sin, not its perpetrator.

            We know what this is like.  It’s not that we don’t sin.  But we do our best.  We are certainly not as bad as many people.  Sometimes we are even offended by the idea that someone forgives us, because it is based on the assumption that we did something wrong in the first place.

            No.  Forgiveness is something we are responsible to bestow on other people, people who do bad things.  From this point of view we ask reasonable questions, with Peter:   

            Exactly how many times am I expected to forgive someone?  He asks.  Isn’t there a point where forgiveness declines into merely letting people get away with bad behavior?  Don’t we eventually find ourselves getting taken advantage of, as people sin against us again and again, and we keep forgiving?  How will they ever learn their lesson?  How will they avoid learning that they can sin as much as they want and there will never be any consequences?  How does this not actually encourage sinning?  How do we avoid becoming abused doormats for every twisted person who wishes to do us harm?

            Should there not be limits to our forgiveness?  How about: Three strikes and you’re out; we’ll cut you some slack a few times, but after that we decide you’re incorrigible and we lower the boom.  What would happen to society if we just forgave wrongdoers all the time without requiring any kind of improvement of their behavior?  It would be chaos and anarchy!  We would be positively inviting people to do us harm!

            These questions come from the perspective of a person who is liable to be harmed.  They are about whom we need to forgive.  There is a certain superiority involved in seeing things this way.  We are the good people.  They are the bad people.  They do bad things to us.  We are the ones who have to wrestle with whether to forgive them or not.

            Jesus sees through this bias.

            He tells a parable to point out that forgiveness depends on our sense of having been forgiven ourselves.  Spiritual growth depends on our getting out of this superior, patronizing attitude, and realizing that we are primarily people who are ourselves forgiven.  It is only on the basis of our own forgiveness that we are able to forgive others.

II.

            Jesus’ parable has to do with a king who has a slave who owes him 10,000 talents.  Now, this is an absurdly large amount of money.  Ten-thousand talents would be as much as $60,000,000.  Jesus obviously intends it to be an impossibly and ridiculously huge sum.  Not the kind of debt that you work off by skimping on lunch or saving your loose change or having a garage sale.  Most people don’t make that kind of money over the course their whole lives.  It is supposed to be an amount of money that is utterly beyond the possibility of repayment. 

            The solution to this is for the king to cut his losses and get whatever tiny return on the investment that he can, by selling the slave and his whole family, and all his possessions.  He gets to keep his life; the slave is no good to the king dead. 

            However, the slave pleads pathetically for forgiveness, saying, “Have patience with me and I will pay you everything.”  How he intends to do that is a mystery.  The king does not believe him... yet the king forgives him, out of pity.  He lets him go.  He cancels the debt.  He doesn’t say, “Okay, I’ll let you keep working off the debt.”  No.  Forgiveness means no more debt.  The slave is given a new lease on life.  He is out from under this curse whereby he and his family could have been sold off to much more harsh masters, even separated.  The king writes off the debt. $60M.

            I think that Jesus is saying that we are like the slave.  We have been given a spectacular gift: life itself, on a beautiful planet, with other people, with bodies, minds, souls, spirits.  We are transcendent miracles!  The gifts God gives us are worth considerably more than $60m.  They are gifts which we cannot reciprocate.  So we are in God’s eternal debt. 

            God has the option of selling us off to the highest bidder, giving us up, surrendering us, abandoning us to the whims of the market.  But he doesn’t do this.  That is not the kind of God we worship.  We worship the God of grace and forgiveness.  We worship the God of love revealed in Jesus.

            God has chosen to forgive us.  God cancels the debt altogether.  Which means we are allowed to live.  For free.  Our crushing debt has been forgiven.  We have been given new life.

III.

            In other words, we are more like the forgiven slave.  We have received a new lease on life.  We are the recipients of a tremendous gift.

            (It has been forgiven, by the way, not because someone else came along and paid the debt off.  Jesus doesn’t say that anyone intervened and paid the debt for the slave.  No one satisfied the “honor” of the king.  No, the king redefined justice by issuing a decree of forgiveness.)

            The point being that we live, we all live, under this cosmic umbrella of forgiveness.  We exist by means of the forbearance, mercy, and patience of God.  We are only here at all because of an inexpressible gift.  We did not deserve it.  We did not earn it.  We did not work for it.  It is not due to our own merits or because we are such good and worthwhile people.  It is simply a free gift.

            This is the context of our life at the outset.  This is the original human condition: grace, forgiveness, gift.  The earth and everything and everyone in it belong exclusively to God.  We are blessed just to be here to enjoy it.  Our response to that ought to be gratitude, love, joy, and peace.   

            But the slave doesn’t respond in this way.  Having been freed of his own debt, he goes out to deal with someone who is indebted to him.  This other person owes him approximately $200.  It is a significant sum, but nowhere near the $60m he has just had lifted off his own head. 

            But instead of spreading the grace and forgiveness of the king to someone indebted to him, he has the person thrown in prison until someone else comes and pays the debt for him. 

            Maybe the slave is thinking that being more hard-nosed towards others would show his gratitude and loyalty to the king.  He could actually show that he wanted to repay what he owed; maybe he just can even imagine that he doesn’t owe it anymore. 

            How often to Christians do just this?  They respond to God’s forgiveness by being more strict, more judgmental, and more condemning towards others!  They attach conditions to their forgiveness: “I’ll forgive you, but only when you stop sinning!”  Maybe they don’t believe that God doesn’t attach any such conditions to their forgiveness.   They still think they owe God something, and they are still trying to earn God’s favor by their zeal, which is more often than not destructive and hateful.

            But by thinking this way the slave is rejecting and excluding himself from the king’s forgiveness.  Does he think he can gratify the king by wringing some of the money out of someone else?  Does he plan on going to the king and proudly saying, “You know that $60m I owe you, well here’s $200 of it”?   The debt is cancelled!  He doesn’t get that.

            Upon hearing of this, the king goes ballistic, as they say.  Jesus tells it: “Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave!  I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.  Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?’  And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt.  So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

IV.

            Apparently, everything is forgivable... except not forgiving.  Jesus is saying that forgiveness may be rejected, we are able to exclude ourselves from God’s grace, we may separate ourselves from God’s infinite love, we may choose permanent condemnation.  It’s not God’s will.  It’s not God’s intention for our lives.  It’s not what God wants.  But we can still choose it.

            And the way we do it is by not forgiving.  How many of us are torturing ourselves because we can’t repay what we think we owe to God no matter how hard we try?  We think we’ll be punished if we slack off.  In reality we punish ourselves when we keep trying to earn God’s favor.

            Forgiveness is something you only receive when you give it to others.  If you hold on to the sins of others, that is itself to hold on to your own sins.  These sins become in effect a wall between you and God.  And to be separated in this way from God is to be in torment.

            The main thing about forgiveness is that it is not about that other person.  It is primarily about you.  You are the forgiven sinner, the recipient of inestimable and infinite gifts, you have had the crushing debt removed.  And in order to fully receive and keep this forgiveness you need to pass it on and forgive others, not holding on to their faults but holding only on to the grace you have received in Jesus Christ.

            Extending God’s forgiveness to others means continuing to enjoy that forgiveness, and all its benefits, ourselves.  I don’t want to dwell on the consequences of rejecting forgiveness.  Let us dwell instead on the amazing goodness we receive from God, when we pass on this forgiveness to others, in Jesus’ name.  And let us make ourselves by Jesus’ example and in his name, a community of forgiveness.

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Take Up Your Blasphemy and Sedition.

110904.Matthew 16:21-28

I.

            No sooner does Jesus declare Peter the “rock” upon which his church will be built, than Peter turns to equivocating mud, oozing the with flow of public opinion and mucked-up by the status quo.  He is confused by what he knows people expect and what he thinks will sell.

            Two weeks ago we heard Peter make his famous confession: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  This week, Jesus points out more of what this means exactly: It means that he “must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

            The Messiah, or anointed one, was related to three roles: prophet, king, and priest.  Last time we talked about what it would mean to treat Jesus as king, in terms of the leader of a new kind of community.  Here Jesus describes the priestly element of his role.  Priests were in charge of the sacrificial rituals that took place in the Temple.  Jesus will become both priest and victim, both sacrificer and sacrificed, when he gets to Jerusalem.  This is an essential and unavoidable aspect of his work. 

            But apparently Peter only understands the anointed one as a king, and a pretty conventional king at that.  Peter takes Jesus aside and starts rebuking him.  It is as if, now that he is the “rock,” Peter thinks he gets to be Jesus’ public relations manager, advising him on what will work politically.  And this talk of suffering and death is not going to be good for business.  Or maybe now he thinks he is Jesus’ personal coach and cheerleader, pumping him up when he gets down enough to say crazy and depressing things like this stuff about suffering and dying.  It is as if Peter encourages Jesus by saying: “No, Jesus, you’re not going to suffer and die.  Repeat after me: ‘I am a good person.  People like me.  I am the anointed king of Israel!  No one is going to kill me….’”

            Peter knows that nobody will want to follow a guy who is about to crash and burn.  Who wants to follow a spectacular loser?  Who wants to get on an airplane destined to crash?  Who wants to be associated with another failed Messiah?

            But Jesus knows his calling is to go to Jerusalem, and he knows what kind of a reception he will certainly receive there.  He knows he is walking right into the lair of those who hold the power who would like to see him dead.  So we might be justified in asking why he insists on going to a place where his arrest and execution would be inevitable.

           

II.

            The priestly, sacrificial role of the anointed one, the Messiah, is part of his work that we 21^st century people really don’t get.  We have very little experience with the way of thinking and worshiping characterized by the sacrificial religious practices of the first century.  We can understand Jesus as prophet, teacher, healer, and  preacher; we can even understand him as our Lord and King whom we obey and whose commandments we keep.  But the idea of Jesus as a high priest is a bit more remote for us. 

            What Jesus was about to do in Jerusalem was to fulfill and complete in himself the whole complex of Jewish sacrificial rituals, most of which were designed to restore and maintain a good relationship between God and God’s creation, especially humans. 

            Like so much else in the religion of Jesus’ day, these rites had become empty ceremonies, done by rote, justified by tradition, and controlled by a wealthy and powerful elite for their own benefit.  The sacrificial ceremonies had largely lost their meaning.  They became just one more way for priests and rulers to maintain their power over people.  We see an example of this in the money-exchange practice, which was a virtual racket designed to rip people off.  

            As Protestants we talk about “the priesthood of all believers.”  This is something the Reformers recognized in Scripture, indicating that, contrary to the Roman church, each believer had direct access to God.  We don’t need any intermediaries, hierarchies of bishops, saints, and angels, through whom we have to go to get to God.

            What Jesus is saying here is that the priesthood of all believers is an extension of his priesthood.  He indicates that he “must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”  Then he says: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  He clearly intends his priesthood, that is, his sacrifice, to be something his followers participate in by making their own sacrifice.  The priesthood of all believers is expressed in the sacrificial suffering of all believers.

            But the church allowed to get out of hand the mistaken belief that because Christ suffered we don’t have to.  When according to Jesus’ own teaching just the opposite is the case: we follow him by suffering with him.  Even now we may be able to talk about what Jesus did for us, but the second part of what Jesus says here, about how all his disciples have to take up their own cross and follow him, is largely lost. 

             

III.

            We do know that we’re supposed to mention the cross and all, but it is always only Jesus’ cross.  We don’t talk much about taking up our cross and following him.  Sometimes, if we talk about this at all, we think of it in terms of the various horrors and liabilities to which we are all subject as human beings: grief, disease, loss, pain, disappointment, unfairness.  As if these were our “crosses” Jesus is asking us to bear. 

            But we don’t have to “take up” the normal pains and difficulties of existence; we get them for free whether we want them or not.  The cross Jesus is talking about is a direct consequence of becoming a disciple.  This cross happens to you because you follow Jesus and this following has placed you at cross-purposes (so to speak) with the powers that dominate the world.

            Jesus was crucified for two crimes: blasphemy and sedition.  According to the religious and legal authorities of his day Jesus was guilty of these crimes.  And the crosses we are called upon to bear are laid upon us for the same offenses: we transgress the prevailing religious rules and standards, and we express disloyalty to the ruling economic and political order. 

            Jesus’ blasphemy and sedition grew out of his main agenda which was the proclamation of the Kingdom of God.  Jesus Christ is the incarnation of God with us, and the final and complete demonstration of the love of God for the whole world.  If you live your life according to God’s love revealed in Jesus it is often going to look to the people who run things like… blasphemy and sedition.

            Jesus’ blasphemy consisted of the way he would overrule both Scripture and the religious hierarchy, especially in his claim to be in union with the God whom he referred to as his Father.  Jesus’ death warrant was signed as soon as the authorities heard his repeated formula in the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard it said [this], but I tell you [something else].”  Not only was he contradicting the Bible, he put himself in a position to contradict the Bible.  And of course he was contradicting the official interpreters of the Bible, who conspired to have him done in.

            Jesus’ sedition was in claiming to be a king, as opposed to the reigning kings, and in calling people to a way of life that was outside of the domination of those kings.  Pilate and Herod went along with his conviction and execution because they recognized how dangerous he was to their power.

IV.

            What do blasphemy and sedition look like today?  In other words, what does taking up your cross and following Jesus look like in our own time?  What do disciples of Jesus do in the name of God’s love revealed in him, that bring accusations of blasphemy and sedition?

            As with Jesus, whenever someone suggests that God’s love and justice are more important than our religious rules, doctrines, standards, traditions, and polities, that is considered blasphemy and receives the appropriate response from the authorities.

            Blasphemy is not really about God; it is about maintaining theologies that keep people in shackled in guilt, fear, hatred, and anger.  Because we live in a religiously diverse culture, one person’s blasphemy is often another’s orthodoxy.  You offend Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Unitarian authorities in different ways.

            But the result is the same.  You get accused of blasphemy against God, but what you’ve really done is undermined the power of the powerful.

            Some of the greatest saints were accused of blasphemy and heresy because they chose to follow Jesus rather than the authorities.  Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Jan Hus, John Wycliff, Blaise Pascal, Albert Schweitzer, Leonardo Boff… the list is long.  If we truly follow Jesus, being accused of blasphemy is almost a given.           

            Sedition is easier to identify, and way more dangerous.  While blasphemy is a kind of internal argument among Christians, sedition runs afoul of the values and loyalties of the larger community.  It can get you into a lot more trouble.  That’s why, in order to get him crucified, Jesus’ persecutors had to charge him with sedition.  If he was only guilty of blasphemy they could have had stoned him to death.  But crucifixion was for political crimes.  This is what “taking up your cross” is really about.

            The primary Christian confession is “Jesus is Lord,” which tells the rulers, “and you’re not.”  Many saints throughout history have heard Jesus call them to pacifism, or to being critical of commercial interests and the military.  Many worked against imperialism, nationalism, and racism and suffered greatly for it.  They sacrificed themselves to end slavery, genocide, and the heartless reign of greed that economies so easily fall into.

            Sedition means refusing to hate those you’re supposed to hate.  It means refusing to kill those you are supposed to kill.  It means advocating for those whom society would oppress and exclude.  It means caring about the Earth, the poor, the foreigners, the sick and disabled, the imprisoned, the undocumented, minorities, women and children.  It is hard to follow Jesus with any integrity without at least being suspected of sedition in the minds of some.   

V.

            In the end what Peter’s shortsighted reaction to Jesus reveals is that he didn’t hear the last part of what Jesus says: that “on the third day [he will] be raised”.  The promise and hope of the Resurrection is the whole point.  This is not a tragic martyrdom, a terrible defeat we can cherish our anger over for centuries.  Jesus is telling Peter about his coming victory and triumph over the power of death!  And Peter doesn’t get it because, as Jesus identifies, Satan is clouding his mind and imagination.

            We who follow Jesus Christ are not a mass suicide cult.  It’s not about the suffering.  It’s always about the resurrection.  Jesus’ defeat of death is what gives his followers the strength to stand up in the face of violence and ignorance.  “Those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  Jesus’ message is always about finding new life.  And it is this new life that makes blasphemy and sedition and their consequences worth it.

            For at the heart of Christianity is this unspeakable joy at realizing the truth about life: that God is love, and God has entered human life in Jesus Christ to save, to heal, to redeem, and to liberate.  As our great High Priest, Jesus gives his life, he spreads his life over us so we might continue to share this life – this love and justice – with others.  As the apostle Paul writes, if we have died with him in a death like his, we will surely be united with him in a resurrection like his.