Day 1553 - On Being Holy and Right

A sermon shared with First Presbyterian Church, Spring City, TN, March 12, 2017

Isaiah 55:1-9

Luke 10:21-22

A few months back, a young person in our congregation asked me, “How do I know God exists?” A few weeks ago, someone asked me what the words “Holy catholic Church” in the Apostles’ Creed mean. (I used the link to the Wikipedia site since it provides an unabashed presentation, rather than one of the denominational sites.) Since the answer to the first question leads us to the answer to the other, I thought I’d tackle them both today.

We are theological people. Theology is the study of God. We study God to know what we believe. Like the young person who asked, we are preoccupied by the unknown, e.g., who is Jesus and God, how Jesus began and what he stands for. As responsible Christians who love fact-based reason, we are theological inquirers. Judaism and Christianity, perhaps alone, share that urge to know God and how God shapes our religious beliefs.

We have the feeling that we cannot demand allegiance to and worship something unless we understand it with some clarity. Who are we? Where did we originate? What do we know about God?  We want to write down the answers. Inquiring minds want to know the truth.

At times that urge for certainty blinded the early “church fathers” (and us) to some of the key teachings about God by the prophets and Jesus. The Lord tells Isaiah, “…my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Jesus tells his disciples, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” The bottom line is that we cannot know and understand God or God’s reasons by human understanding. God must reveal himself to us by the Holy Spirit.

This answer to the young person’s question, "you have to experience God," may not be satisfying, but scripture says we neither fully define God or explain God. We may feel we have a “glimpse” of God, but that is it. The very essence of belief embodied in the good news demands faith alone in who God is.  Faith alone comes from prayer, reading scripture and serious effort to live the good news ourselves, not from a logical and reasonable explanation. We believe because we have had an experience that supports our faith. Think about what I just wrote. You can discover in perhaps the only certain way the nature of God and the good news by the experience of living and sharing the grace given you, because it is revealed to you in your experience. (So get off the pews and out into the  world!)

Most Christians use the Apostles’ Creed as a declaration of what we believe about the Trinity  (to preserve monotheism). (Declaration is what the word “creed” means.) But… we seldom notice that all Christian congregations do not use the same version of the Apostle’s Creed.  Many Methodists do not use the words, “He descended into Hell.” Catholics capitalize “catholic” (catholic means “universal”) in “I believe in the holy Catholic church,” but Presbyterians and other Protestants do not capitalize “catholic.”

This raises a more critical issue. We Christians all do not explain our faith the same way. Most important and overlooked, people of faith interpret scripture differently to define what they believe. Is our Presbyterian version the “right” way and everyone else not a Christian? Or more technically, is PC(USA) correct and PCA wrong, or the reverse? Or are the Methodist, right? Or, the Catholics? Or those who refuse the Apostles Creed, or any creed at all? It is going down a rabbit hole, if it is anything, to fight over denominational polity, in my opinion.

Let’s go back to the early days of Christianity when it was a truly Christ-centered movement with no denominations (but plenty of arguments I will ignore for now and not mention for our humility's sake) to find the answer. In the span of perhaps 50 to 75 years after the crucifixion and resurrection, Christianity spread from a strand of Jewish theology centered in Jerusalem to synagogues in Gentile communities, and to the populace in Syria, Egypt, Greece, the islands of the Mediterranean and even to Rome, itself, and beyond. (For the first 250 years, one can account for the total population of Christians by only 10% of the  Jewish believers in the synagogues of the Diaspora! See pages 133-140 of Stark’s Cities of God. )

These earliest congregations focused on the life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel of Mark and letters of Paul (or on the writings attributed to John in sectarian groups). Christian life centered on the substance of who Jesus was and what he preached, not where he came from and how.

Mark challenges us to a radical confidence in our faith. His gospel, according to the consensus of scholars, begins with an adult Jesus walking out of the desert to be baptized and ends at 16:8, with a man clothed in white standing in an empty tomb saying to the women, “If you are looking for Jesus, he has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” Then the women went out and fled from the tomb in terror and amazement and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

This is the end of Mark’s story of the good news in the most reliable manuscripts. It leaves unanswered questions, “Where did Jesus come from?” and “Where did he go? Mark places us in the predicament to accept that Jesus is the Son of God, was raised from the dead after crucifixion, may have met the disciples afterwards and is in Heaven as an article faith. 

Mark tells a gospel story that hangs on an article of faith alone to resolve the uncertainty of his gospel. That posed a real problem for many believers. It did not take long before smart people like our young perosn began asking questions such as “Where did Jesus come from and where did he go after the Resurrection,” and “How is Jesus connected to God.” 

The first congregations posed these questions and arguments over God and the life of Jesus to the 12 Apostles and Paul. These questions comes from a fundamental consequence of being human. We want to reduce everything to a reasonable explanation. We thirst for certainty. We hate ambiguity.

Luke understood that. The introduction to his gospel says, “Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.” We read the disagreement and uncertainty over what it means to be a Christian between the lines of this introduction.

Luke’s gospel, like Matthew amplifies Mark with other sources.  “The Acts of the Apostles” describes the history of the earliest congregations (not in perfect agreement with Paul's). In Acts, (2:41-42) Luke defines “Christianity” as “the teachings of the Apostles” who were with Jesus, who observed his resurrection and experienced the revelation of the Holy Spirit. Luke tried to give “an orderly account” of these “eye witnesses” about “the truth” in short as logical explanation as he can give.

You will find in Mark, Luke, Acts and Paul’s letters (also John and Matthew) the conviction that the whole Gospel, including who God is, that God is the father of Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all linked carefully to Jewish history and God’s compassion for his creation, but you will not find certainty, only faith that any of them writes truth.

Presbyterians and most people who claim adherence to the Reformed faith do not rely upon another person to reveal who God is and God’s reasons for acting. We can only read the scriptures, everything written and said about Christ, God and the good news, but we do it holding this caution clearly in front of us at every moment: We read and understand using our judgment guided by praying for illumination by the Holy Spirit.  We cannot know the mind of God even in scripture except as God chooses to reveal it to us. As I said earlier, books don’t do it, the most direct way to understanding and belief is through the personal experiences of God’s action in the world that supports our faith.

Even if we accept the answer to the young person question, we do not let well enough alone. We create “Creeds,” or “statements of faith” that define our system of belief. We are following that Judeo-Christian thirst for theology to tell us what we believe about God.  Remember the Shema the young people placed in mezuzahs? That is an example of the Jewish Credo.

If we take this urge to write down what we believe too literally and ignore the irony of our task, it can get us into trouble. If we believe we can write down everything about God then we say we can understand God completely by reason. Yet the prophets and Jesus tell us God is above description and in control. God decides to reveal himself, God decides how he is reconciling himself with humanity that rebels against God. Not us.

Our creeds are human statements of belief interpreting scripture in the context of a present-day problem that challenges the church and its members. The Confession of 1967 was the Presbyterian attempt to seek reconciliation over slavery and war, the Barmen Declaration was an attempt to define the independence of the Church from Nazi Government. (You can find all the creeds we acknowledge here except the last one, the Confession of Belhar. The controversy over this last confession only underscores what I am about to write.)  I use the words “attempt to define” because every creed is subordinate to scripture and its words depend on the understanding that the Holy Spirit leads us to believe about the issue. We discuss creeds with our fellow Christians and if we all come to agreement, we accept them as a human expression of belief guided by scripture.

The Apostles’ Creed is one of the earliest creeds accepted by Presbyterians and most other Christian denominations. It seeks to do what we cannot do perfectly, describe God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit by reason and logic. (If you want to read one of the earliest in hymn form, read Philippians 2: 5-11, perhaps one of the most moving declarations of who is Jesus. Paul came back to it in Romans 10:8-10.)

Creeds are a valued human expressions of God plan. But I repeat, they are subordinate to scripture. The scriptures say God alone is in control.  We must acknowledge that the creeds (and sermons) rely upon our conscience to decide what we believe. 

We have the humility to know that we may be wrong. It is demanded. We rely on our brothers and sisters as sounding boards that creeds make sense. We admit even if we all agree on something that we are fallible and liable to make an error and misunderstand what the “right thing to do is.” (Slavery is a good example.)

To write a creed, or say, “I believe this is God’s plan,” a responsible Christian accepts that the only way we can truly know is by the presence and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That comes by thoughtful and meditative prayer, discussion with peers and most importantly, through the experience of God’s presence.

Presbyterians believe that the ultimate authority of human understanding of scripture and God is our conscience. No creed, or claim by another overrules what our conscience tells us is what scripture says is Christian behavior, even if it results in our exclusion from their fellowship. The dispute over same-sex issues is a classic example where so many on both sides lost that humility to acknowledge human fragility and the essential nature of Paul’s declaration.

This sermon began with two questions.  The answer to “Who God is?” comes by the human experience of gracious living according to the good news and discovering God’s presence. It isn’t a rational scientific answer but it is the best there is. You must discover God on your own.

That leaves ‘What is the Holy catholic Church?” whose answer depends on the first question. Remembering that making and accepting a creed requires great personable responsibility, trust in our fellow Christians and the humility to always recognize that you may be wrong. The word “catholic” means universal.  The phrase one “Holy universal Church” means there is one Church that belongs to Jesus Christ.

When the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Church write the Apostles’ Creed they capitalize Catholic because they believe their leader is connected to the original Apostles who began the first organized “congregations” and then the first organized Church of Jesus Christ. Catholics are saying “there is one universal Church, Christ’s Church” and believe they are the Church whose purpose is revealed by the Holy Spirit as I have described today to its human leader.

Protestants believe the same thing, there is one universal church, “Christ’s Church.” But Protestants recognize human fallibility and read scripture to say that only God can reveal his purpose and intent in the world to anyone. Protestants and Catholics have struggled to death at times over this issue that one human should have ultimate responsibility to understand the revelation of God for everyone. Catholics and Protestants are closer to agreement than ever before because now we both acknowledge the one universal Church, though Protestants persist in keeping the lower caser “c” and Catholics keeping the capital “C” in the universal (C)(c)atholic Church.

Presbyterians recognize no denomination is the Church. Denominations are all local expressions of the universal Church whose head is Jesus Christ described by Paul in Philippians 2: 5-11.

We can say the apostles’ creed as our statement of belief without worry that we are endorsing Catholicism. When we say the Apostles Creed we are affirming regardless our differences in interpretation, that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ’s Church.

Here for your benefit is that powerful Philippians credo:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

            who, though he was in the form of God,

                        did not regard equality with God

                        as something to be exploited,

            but emptied himself,

                        taking the form of a slave,

                        being born in human likeness.

            And being found in human form,

                        he humbled himself

                        and became obedient to the point of death—

                        even death on a cross.

Therefore, God also highly exalted him

                        and gave him the name

                        that is above every name,

            so that at the name of Jesus

                        every knee should bend,

                        in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

            and every tongue should confess

                        that Jesus Christ is Lord,

                        to the glory of God the Father.  AMEN!

Note the "stripped down- bare minimum essence" of faith embodied in this declaration.

Grace and peace to you all.

Day 1546 - Why is It So Easy to Be a Good Neighbor?

A sermon shared at First Presbyterian Church, Spring City, TN, March 5, 2017

Psalm 15

Luke 10:1-5, 16-37

Why is it so easy to be a neighbor? Before answering, let’s sort out Luke’s record including this parable about neighbors. Throughout his ministry, Jesus used parables to ask questions that were often answers to a questioner, using a story that has a double meaning, one that sounds reasonable on the surface but on thinking about it becomes disruptive, turning reason on its head. We think we know where Jesus is going, but when he is done, we wonder, how in the world did I get from where I started to here??

A unified message threads its way through this part of Luke starting with the disciples being sent off on their first mission trip and ending with the parable about the Good Samaritan.

First, Jesus tells the disciples the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few as he sends 70 more of them (the workers) off on their first “harvest” journey (previously he sent the 12), so this suggests truly the urgency of “the harvest.”) The instructions are simple, take nothing with you except the clothes on your back, sandals on the feet, and speak to no one on the road, only knock on doors of homes. When someone answers the door, greet them, ‘Peace to this house!’ And they invite you in to share the peace, your peace will rest on them; but if not, it will return to you. If they reject you, shake the dust from your shoes/sandals and go on to the next home.

“Shaking the dust from your shoes” is an old Semitic custom that more, or less says, “I tried to help you but you have rejected me, so I leave your fate in your own hands.”  The instructions then are that the disciples are to have patience and restraint towards all those folks who reject and put them down. “Shaking the dust of your sandals” isn’t judgment, it acknowledges one’s faith is in one’s own hands. We are not responsible for “making” someone a Christian, only for having the kindness to harvest the ripened crop.

We know this is true. The last comment by Jesus before they leave is, “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”  (You know who that is.)

Surely enough the 70 return, reporting great success, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” Jesus pours cold water on their pride, saying, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning... do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Jesus refocuses their attention from the power he gave them to the deed itself, sharing their peace. It was their faith that kept Jesus with them as they shared peace and faced ego-piercing rejection.  

When we say, “Peace be with you,” we are following the response of God to Gideon who feared he would die. It means “The Lord is with you, you shall not die.” Passing the peace turns us away from self and towards the other person. That is why the 70 disciples “names are written in heaven.”

Jesus knows the disciples (and us) will not get the message without some divine help, because he utters a prayer of joy for the Holy Spirit, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” We are infants in living our faith. – Infants learning to walk…

The requirement to turn from self and to the other, passing the peace, readies us for one of the more widely known parables, the “Good Samaritan.” Everything about this parable is important.

First, look at the participants in the conversation leading up to the parable. Turning from this prayer with the disciples, and talking about eternal life, Jesus makes an aside so quietly that only the disciples hear it, “Blessed are the eyes (of others) that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”

Is he reminding them of all those who shared peace with them, and all those who did not? Or is he sharpening their minds to understand how “passing the peace” connects to what happens next?

An expert in the Law listening to these public comments by Jesus stands up and asks the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” 

We call him a lawyer. But he is a religious lawyer of the Law of Moses. Remember Jesus said he came not to overturn the law but to fulfill it. We have two “legal beagles” schooled in the Law, ready to argue. Jesus answers the lawyer’s question with a question, in classic form, “What does the Law say?”

Everyone knows that answer (Psalm 15), it is written on their doorposts Remember the mezuzah?  The mezuzah holds the Shema, the ultimate assertion of the supremacy of the Lord and source of our being,  “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength and mind.” And, “and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

You can imagine an inward smile on Jesus, the constant fisherman, as he casts his line, saying, “Do this and you shall live.” The lawyer took the bait and ran with it, asking, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus answers with the parable involving four men, a priest, a Levite, a Samaritan and a half-dead, naked man in the ditch beside the road.

We need to know some things about these four men and Jerusalem as the parable unfolds. A priest is a member of the tribe of Levi. They are set aside for duty in the Temple. A priest is a Levite. All Levites were not priests but Levites had some religious duty in the Temple. They were bound by the purity practices of The Law in order to administer their duties in the Temple. If they are unclean, they cannot enter the Temple and fulfill their duties without going through an arm-length list of rituals of purification. Touching a dead person, or human blood required purification. Also, it is considered a sin to look on another person’s nakedness. (One of Noah’s sons was cursed because he saw Noah drunk and passed out naked on the floor of his tent.)

As the Samaritans, they shared a mutual hate with the Judeans. The nation of Israel split in the reign of Solomon into ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom in Samaria and two tribes of the Southern Kingdom in Benjamin and Judah. They fought and argued other over religious precepts as Catholics and Protestants did in the days of Martin Luther, even the way some Protestant denominations do today.  Each saw the other as a heretic to be avoided.

Jerusalem is on a hill and this road up to the Temple is steep, on a hill 2500 feet above sea level and 3800 feet above the Dead Sea. A traveler from Jericho would make a 3500 foot climb over 14 miles.   During the time of Jesus, it also a dangerous road where traveling Jews bringing money to buy sacrifices for the Temple could be assaulted by robbers hiding off the roadside.

That is the setup as Jesus begins his parable with, “Once upon a time” there was a priest, a Levite and a Samaritan. The Levite and priest see this half-dead, naked man in the ditch on the side of the road, an obvious victim of violent crime.  Or is it an ambush, perhaps?

The priest and then the Levite cross to the other side to road to avoid the man. Thus far, the Jewish listeners might consider this a proper, if slightly questionable decision of expediency since they have religious duties to manage and avoiding becoming unclean is of primary importance.

Then a Samaritan comes down the road and the logic of the story breaks down. The Samaritan’s presence makes no sense to his Jewish audience. He would not have been welcome, or safe in Jerusalem among Jews celebrating Sabbath. What is going on??

Nevertheless, he sees the man in the ditch and pity moves him.

PITY. On occasion, the committees who translate the old Greek NT manuscripts into English make choices about how to express the deeper meaning of Greek words. (See an earlier post for more on this word.)  To us, pity, compassion, sympathy, loving kindness can all mean the same thing.  But pity can also have the flavor of a sad event, e.g., what a pity your dog died, or even be negative, e.g., “your excuse is pitiful.”

The Greek word described by “pity” is a special word. It is used about six or seven times in the Gospels to describe the compassion Jesus feels towards a human who is suffering, ill, or over the death of child. It is the strongest word for compassion in biblical Greek. For the Greeks, the seat of deep emotion was the gut, the bowels.

The literal meaning of this word is having one’s entrails twisted, so the most direct translation might be “gut-wrenching.” Have you ever had an intestinal virus, if so, you may appreciate the power of the word.

For us modern, delicate folks who think the heart is the seat of emotion, we could say “heart-breaking compassion.” Either way, biblical Greek means, “divine compassion.” It is the love that God has for humanity that moved God to send to us the good news of how to live the good life through Jesus who defeated death by dying. That victory left us with the most precious religious image of divine compassion, the empty cross. Remember the lawyer is asking the answer about gaining eternal life.

There are two instances in parables where Jesus uses this word not to describe his compassion but human compassion towards another person. One parable is the man who had two sons, the older son and the prodigal son. The father saw his prodigal son coming up the road home and was filled with divine regardless of wasting his money. Most of us see the father symbolizing God and the two sons symbolizing the Hebrews and the Gentiles (or Samaritans) coming home to the celebration of salvation.

The other parable is this one. The Samaritan, the hated heretic, sees and has divine compassion for the wounded man (who is probably a Jew). He ignores the potential danger of the robbers lurking nearby. He ignores that he is getting bloody as he tends the man’s wounds and lifts the man onto his draft animal to take him to an Inn. There he leaves a large sum of money for safekeeping the man, promising to return to cover any more expense by the innkeeper.

Jesus has the probably angry attention of the Jewish audience with this Samaritan becoming the hero of the story.

Then Jesus does his little trick. He answers the two questions of the lawyer, “How do I inherit eternal life?” and “Who is my neighbor?” with a single question, “Which of the three was the neighbor to the wounded man?” The lawyer replied correctly, probably through clinched teeth, “I suppose the one who showed him mercy.” Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.” (Left unstated but implied: “if you want to inherit eternal life.”)

So, is it so easy to be a good neighbor? Is it as a sarcastic question, or a statement of faith, or both? The mission of the 70 preceding this parable carried a message to share the peace focusing not on ego and self but the other person. Jesus says this is what put the names of the disciples in the register of Heaven.

To seal that message, the parable states unavoidably that the Divine compassion the Lord has for us is exactly the compassion we should have for each other. You cannot escape this conclusion.

Love the Lord with every part of your being, love your neighbor the same way. Jesus turned the tables on us, the man in the ditch is not your neighbor, you, like the Samaritan, are the neighbor. The question becomes not, “Who is my neighbor?” but “Am I a good neighbor?”

So, “Is it so easy to be a good neighbor?” is not sarcasm but is a statement of what our goal of behavior towards each other ought to be.

Did the Samaritan expect a reward for treating a stranger as a friend? Jesus said it is easy to love your friend, which may be sarcasm. We often treat strangers better than we treat our friends and brothers and sisters.

The true measure of grace is how well we love those who are not very friendly and those with whom we disagree or are angry. It is the constant battle between ego and humility. I know from personal experience how hard that battle is, and I’m sure you all do also. But if we take one thing from this passage, it ought to be that as Christians, we are in the business of having divine compassion towards each other.

Amen.