Tag Archives: Preaching

Love The Sinner

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Matthew 7.1-5

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. 

Love the sinner, hate the sin.

It’s sounds so Christian, doesn’t it? 

Surely, when Jesus was delivering his sermon on the mount, he summarized the whole thing with love the sinner, hate the sin.

Surely, if we Christians lived according to those six words, the world would be a better place.

Surely, loving sinners and hating sin is what the church is supposed to do!

And yet, it’s not in the Bible.

In my experience, when people, and by people I mean Christians, say, “love the sinner, hate the sin” they are almost always referring to the LGBTQIA community. For them, it’s a Christian way to say, “I love my Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Transgender/Queer/Intersex/Asexual friend, but I hate that they’re Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Transgender/Queer/Intersex/Asexual.”

In our post-truth, post-liberal, post-whatever period, “love the sinner, hate the sin” is the means by which we can cover our real feelings all while appearing congenial toward those with whom we fundamentally disagree.

However, over the last few years, I’ve heard Christians use the expression within the realm of political disagreement. And, frankly, its been rather amazing to see how quickly the Christian cover-all for conversations about the LGBTQIA community has shifted to conversations about who, or who isn’t, running the country.

“Well, I know that dirty rotten scoundrel is going to vote for Trump again, but he’s my brother so I still love him” Or, “If Joe Biden is elected he’s going to absolutely ruin this country, but he’s a Christian so I’ve got to try and love him.”

So, whether it’s disagreements about who can get married or who can lead the church or who should be President, love the sinner, hate the sin has become our go-to expression. 

Love the sinner, hate the sin.

It sounds good, but in actuality it’s rather difficult to hate another person’s sin alone, without harming the sinner.

Sin! Can you believe you’re listening to a preacher talk about sin? We don’t talk about it much anymore in mainline protestant circles. 

Pastors, like me, would rather talk about God’s loving nature, God’s unending forgiveness, God’s desire for mercy, instead of God’s judgment. 

We would rather tell people like you to love your neighbors than to tell you to tell your neighbor that they’re sinners. 

We would rather skip over the hard and strange passages about condemnation than truly proclaim that God’s scripture is still speaking something fresh and new even today.

But for a long time, and I mean a LONG time, sin was THE thing that pastors talked about – sinners in the hands of an angry God, fire and brim stone, repent or burn forever.

That stuff.

We’re largely afraid of sin today. And not sin as a particular set of behavioral patterns, but because talk of it simply makes us uncomfortable. I’ve heard from countless people on countless occasions how they don’t want Sunday morning to feel like a drag on top of their already difficult lives, so preachers like me talk about the Gospel without ever mentioning sin.

In fact, I had a professor in seminary who once taught us to preach ten sermons about grace for every one sermon about sin.

And, because it has been removed from the lexicon of church, we don’t really know what sin is anymore.

In both Hebrew and Greek the words for sin basically mean “to wander from the path” or “to miss the mark.” Sin is any action, thought, or behavior that divides us from God and from one another. Sin can be a choice, or a lack of making a choice, that results in failing to do something we know we should.

And here’s the chief thing about sin: We all do it. 

All of us.

From the preacher preaching right now to every person listening.

We are all sinners.

But, more importantly, we are all sinners for whom Christ died.

Love the sinner – of course we’re supposed to love the sinner – that’s what Jesus did. The problem with it is that Jesus does not call us, his followers, to love sinners, but to love our neighbors.

And the distinction is important. It is important because if we say, “we’re going to love sinners” we will automatically view others as sinners before being our neighbors. Which, even though its true, it tends to put us in a place of judgment where we are the righteous and they, whoever they are, are not.

Loving sinners is further problematized by the fact that we already often understand and label others by their mistakes and failures and sins. Regardless of when the sin occurred, or even the frequency, we are very quick to call people cheaters, adulterers, liars, etc.

Or, to put it another way, instead of seeing our neighbors as neighbors, we tend to see them through the lens of their biggest mistake.

When I started at my first church I was pretty nervous. I was fresh out of seminary, with a head full of ideas, and no real understanding of what I had gotten myself into.

Nevertheless, I found myself unpacking all my big and important theology books in my first office, all while day dreaming about what to say in my first sermon, when I opened the top drawer of the desk and found a sealed envelope with the words, “For The New Preacher” on it.

Up to that point I had not had a single conversation with the pastor I was following – the pastor had recently retired and moved away and I was therefore entering the church without any knowledge of the church.

But there was this envelope, in the desk, for me, and it was clearly left by the last pastor.

So, eager to glean anything that I could, I tore it open.

Inside I found a solitary piece of paper with the words, “DO NOT TRUST.”

Underneath which were five names of individuals from the congregation.

Can you imagine? No matter how hard I tried to forget the note, no matter how hard I tried to embrace the particular individuals in spite of what I read, my entire perspective had been upended by those three words: “DO NOT TRUST.”

The same thing happens when we view others as sinners first, and neighbors second. 

And yet, of course, Christians are called to love sinners. 

Because, in the end, that exactly what Christ does for all of us.

All of us would do well to remember that we’re in the same boat with everyone else. Which is to say, sinners are who we are. The best of us and the worst of us, we’re all sinners. The challenge with that recognition is that we are almost all better at recognizing the sins in others far before we can recognize them in ourselves.

Which brings us to the second part of the statement in question today. Love the sinner, hate the sin.

Jesus says, “Why do you look for the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”

We’re mighty good at seeing and pointing out the sins in others. That’s what Facebook and Twitter are all about! There’s just something so enjoyable when we can vent about the sinners in our midst and all the problems they’re causing for the rest of us!

To bring it back to politics for a moment: We’ve seen the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in the last two weeks with leaders from both parties speaking publicly about who should be elected (or re-elected) come November. And, without getting into specifics, both parties spent the majority of their conventions not talking about themselves and what they want to accomplish, but what’s wrong with the other party and how if those other people over there are elected (or re-elected) it will ruin everything. 

Judgement, contrary to the commands against it by Jesus, is our cup of tea.

And whenever we “hate the sin” we jump straight up onto pedestals of our own creation to look down about the weak.

Jesus himself spent his whole ministry with sinners: drunks, prostitutes, thieves, murderers, traitors, and countless others who sinned against the Lord. You know, people like us.

Jesus routinely chose to gather with the likes of the worst to break bread, to offer healing, and, perhaps most importantly, to offer them most precious gift of all: his time.

And he said to all those sinners, “Follow me.”

But Jesus never, not even once, said to any of them, “I love you, but I hate your sin.”

Instead, when Jesus encountered the utter depravity of those in his midst, he offered them, strangely enough, forgiveness.

But we are not like Jesus. We regularly fail to love the other as brother and the stranger as sister. We see the world in all of its wrongness and we believe, deep in our bones, that the problems of the world can be blamed entirely on other people.

Even preachers, preachers like me, fall into this trap. Just take a gander at some of the sermons online throughout this pandemic, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find me, standing right here wearing a slightly different outfit, calling out the mistakes of others. I mean, this whole sermon series “That’s NOT In The Bible” is about calling to question the Christian types who use these non-biblical expressions which, at the end of the day, is remarkably judgmental!

And yet, the irony notwithstanding, saying “love the sinner, hate the sin” makes us purveyors of judgment. It gives us the space to ridicule and belittle those with whom we disagree all while maintain some semblance of a Christian disposition. But whenever we fall back to that frame-of-reference, whenever we use it as the means by which we can justify our judgements, we fail to recognize the logs in our own eyes.

Should we pretend then that sin doesn’t exist and that we can continue merrily doing whatever we want whenever we want?

Or course not.

There is sin in the world, plenty of it. But before we go out pointing at all those sins, we all do well to look in the mirror.

Because all of us make bad choices. We all avoid doing things we know we should do. We all flock together for like-minded judgments against others. And we all keep dropping vaguely Christian expressions that aren’t in the Bible.

But, in the end, Jesus looks right at us, right into the depths of our being, and says, “I forgive you, log and all.”

And that’s rather staggering. It’s staggering because we don’t deserve it.

Just look at the parables; more often than not they end with someone throwing out the ledger book, or offering forgiveness before an apology, or being invited to a banquet they have no business attending.

Just look at Jesus life; pronouncing forgiveness from the cross, or reconciling with the abandoning and disciples in the upper room, or choosing the murderous Paul to be the chief evangelist of the first century.

God in Christ knows the prejudices we’re ashamed of (and even the ones we’re proud of), God knows the golden calves we worship instead of Him, God sees all of our self-righteous indignation, and still says, “I forgive you, log and all.”

God has read all the emails we craft out of anger but are too afraid to send, God witnesses the manifold ways we lie to our families and friends, God knows our internet search histories and still stays, “I forgive you, log and all.”

God is there with us in the comments section of Facebook, God hears the sighs we offer in response to those on the opposite end of the political spectrum, God knows about the biggest mistake we’ve ever made and still says, “I forgive you, log and all.”

Love the sinner, hate the sin.

We say it, we read it, we might even live by it (or think we live by it), but it creates more problems than it solves. Sure, loving sinners is what we’re supposed to do, but it often results in us lording it over those we deem sinners, which doesn’t sound a whole lot like love to begin with.

Loving sinners is the aim of the church, but most of the time we fail. We’ve simply got logs too big in our eyes to do much of anything.

Thanks be to God, then, for Jesus Christ who loves us and forgives us in spite of those logs. Amen. 

God Said It

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1 Corinthians 14.32-35

And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder but peace. As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

We, the church, have been breaking one of God’s laws, and it’s high time for us to atone for our sin. Frankly, I can’t believe we’ve been so brazen to keep wantonly going on like this, but I guess we’ve been drunk on our own self-righteousness to do much of anything about it.

So, today, I’m going to get us all squared away so that we can get back on God’s good side.

We need to destroy the church bathrooms.

It’s as clear as day in scripture and if God says it, then it’s settled.

Now, I’m sure some of you are wondering, “What’s Taylor on talking about church bathrooms at a time like this? We haven’t even used the church bathrooms for 5 months?” While some of you are wondering, “What Bible has he been reading?”

Deuteronomy 23.12-14, a paraphrase – “You shall have an area outside the camp for you to take care of your bathroom business. Make sure you bring a shovel with you, and when you relieve yourself outside, cover up your excrement. God is with you, to save you from your enemies, therefore your place of worship must be holy, so that God may not see anything indecent among you.”

Look it up sometime.

So, after prayerful consideration, whenever we do reopen for in-person worship, we will no longer have bathrooms in the church buildings. We will, however, endeavor to construct some outhouses on the edge of our property for excrement disposal.

Just kidding.

Have you ever read that passage from the Bible? Have you ever heard someone preach on it? Chances are, you haven’t. But in the 1880’s, here in the US, churches and bathrooms were quite the topic of theological debate. The advent of indoor plumbing had arrived and the question about whether or not to have bathrooms in churches started to pop up.

Seriously.

For some, the Old Testament rules about the Israelite encampments were just as valid for churches as they were for God’s wandering people. Therefore, some preachers stood up in their pulpits nearly over 100 years ago to fight against the growing trend of bathrooms in churches!

Today, of course, when designing a new church, one of the first questions isn’t about what the sanctuary should look like, or what kind of design would enhance the altar, or even how many people can fit inside the building, but how many bathrooms should there be and where should they be situated.

God said it, I believe it, that settles it! 

It’s a common refrain among Christian types though it can appear in different ways. “The Bible is clear about this…” is another similar expression, as is “We’ve got to follow the Bible.”

Years ago, in a Bible study, we were going through the appointed text for the day when a woman interrupted the conversation with a personal dilemma. She told us that her son recently came home with a tattoo on his arm and she was completely devastated. And I, being the young and naive clergy that I was (and still am) said something like, “It’s not the end of the world, it’s just a tattoo.”

To which she replied, “If God says it’s not allowed in the Bible, then the issue has been settled!”

I should have stopped right there and moved the conversation to another place, but I couldn’t help myself. I said, “Oh, so you don’t eat pork or shrimp or cheeseburgers? And you’re telling us about your son so that we can join you in stoning him to death this afternoon for disrespecting your wishes? And, you didn’t mean to wear those earrings today because you know the Bible forbids them as well? And, for that matter that polyester jacket you wore in today is also off limits, as is your husband’s clean shaven face!”

I repent, O Lord, for my unChristian Bible Study behavior. 

This sort of extreme biblical literalism is wildly problematic, and basically impossible. If we strive to live by the Word with extreme rigidity, we would not be able to wear blended fabrics, sow two different kinds of seed in one garden, children who curse their parents would be put to death, and if you mowed your lawn on Sunday afternoon you would be put to death as well. 

God said it, I believe it, that settles it. 

It’s another one of those trite and cliche Christianisms that often float around in our conversations. When we get into debates and arguments with others about particular biblical concepts, like prohibitions against tattoos, watching movies about wizards, or any other number of things, someone is likely to take a verse out of content and use it like a bludgeon against the person they disagree with.

Because, you know, if God said it then it’s settled.

Right? 

Or maybe there’s more to the Bible than the way we’ve been treating it.

Today, as I already noted, no one is worrying about whether or not to build a church with a bathroom, we don’t hear preachers belittle the men in their congregations for trimming their beards, and we all neglect to adhere to certain passages all the while holding other passages over the heads of others.

The Bible is full of all sorts of rules and regulations that we pick and choose according to our own proclivities.

Our passage today comes from Paul first letter to the church in Corinth and he drops a line on the dozing Corinthians that makes (some of) us cringe today: “Women should be silent in churches.”

This, of course, is a line we willfully ignore/disobey regularly. Back in the days when we still gathered in-person for worship (remember?) we regularly had female liturgists who stood to read God’s Word for all of us, we’ve had at least 3 guest preachers in the last 3 years all of whom were women, and that’s to say nothing of the many times we’ve had women lead us in congregational singing.

However, there are churches who believe the language regarding the supposed subordination of women is the Gospel truth. In those churches, women are not allowed to serve in leadership positions, they are not allowed to teach Bible studies when men are present, and they are not allowed to do anything that would ever require them to speak in front of the gathered congregation.

Which, to be honest, is rather strange – even from a biblical standpoint. Paul certainly offers his opinion here in 1 Corinthians, and he does so in other letters as well, but the New Testament is filled with other examples that completely contradict Paul’s words. Women are noted as prophets, evangelists, and apostles, Paul even refers to Euodia and Syntyche as coworkers who struggled together with him in the ministry of the Gospel, and Aquila taught the ways of God among the earliest Christians.

And that’s not even mentioning the fact that without female preachers, none of us would’ve heard about the resurrection of Jesus Christ!

Contrary to the verse in question from Paul today, the Gospel (Good News in a world drowning in bad news) radically altered the position of women, elevating them to a partnership with men that was unparalleled in the first century. 

And yet, the church, as a whole, has been remarkably slow in embracing the New Testament’s vision of mutuality among people regardless of any distinctions. Even within the New Testament, there is a vacillation between a vision of things not yet seen and a keeping things the way they are.

And its that dance, it’s the movement back and forth, that really stands at the center of the statement, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

Like the many apostles and disciples before us, we read scripture and we hear God speaking to us even today. But we aren’t just passive recipients of what it says, lifting it up like a weapon to be used against others. We ask questions of it. We pray for the wisdom and guidance to discern how it shapes our lives. We wrestle with the text and then, in community, we do the hard and important work of interpretation. 

Paul might have something to say about women being silent in church, but many of us would simply not be Christians unless women were brave enough to stand and speak in churches.

The Bible might have more than 200 verses in support of slavery, but we recognize that slavery is incompatible with God’s kingdom here on earth.

We might read about doing our business outside the boundary of God’s holiness, but we don’t build churches without bathrooms.

The best way to do the work of interpretation is to be the disciples Jesus has called us to be – in short, we follow Jesus’ example.

Contrary to how we might imagine the Lord in scripture, Jesus did not adhere to the strict biblical literalism that is still found in some churches today. He had wildly different ideas and interpretations of Sabbath restrictions, he had stronger opinions about divorce and adultery, and he regularly violated the Law of the Old Testament by eating with those deemed unclean.

Living as a Christian today is all about developing a lens by which we can encounter the strange new world of the Bible and proclaim it for this time and this place.

Even the Bibles to which we turn are themselves works of interpretation. 

Someone, and more often than not some people, made particular choices about how to translate particular words from the Hebrew and Greek into English. This might not seem like a big deal, but the words we use can make all the difference. 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” That’s how the New Revised Standard Version renders John 3.16 – easily one of the most well known verses in all of scriptures. But what many of us do not know is that the word for “perish” in Greek is APOLLUMI and it can mean perish, but it can also mean to die, to be destroyed, to be lost, to be killed, or to be ruined. 

Each of those different words can change the meaning of the text in ways both small and large and they are a product of interpretation.

Therefore whenever we take up a Bible, whenever we flip to a particular passage, the work of interpretation started long before our eyes flow over the words. And to make it all the more challenging, even the best translations leave us to continue the work of interpretation.

So, how do we do it?

Well, we don’t do it in isolation. We don’t read our Bibles all by ourselves and decide we know exactly what God is saying, we don’t listed to a sermon and decide that the end all be all on the subject.

We interpret God’s Word in community. 

We read from commentaries on scripture from those who came before us, we engage in Bible studies where iron sharpens iron and we come to know more than we would on our own, we send emails to our friends and pastor with questions so that we can come closer to the strange new world of the Bible.

And, we let Jesus help us interpret. 

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. As God’s definitive Word, Jesus helps us understand the words within the Word. We read from both the Old and New Testaments through the lends of Christ and we can then do the good and sometimes hard work of wrestling with how these words continue to speak into our lives.

But that requires a whole lot more than, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” 

For, those who say “The Bible is clear” are those who have never really read the Bible. Reading scripture, the work of interpretation, is hard work. It calls us to become servants of the Word rather than masters of the text. And, frustratingly enough, that work never ends.

People have used God’s Holy Word with understandings like “God said it, I believe it, that settles it,” to attack and belittle people for far too long. It has been used to justify the horrific practice of slavery and racism. It has been used to subjugate and relegate women’s rights. It has been used to rationalize physical violence and aggression toward those who believe differently. 

It has been used as a weapon over and over again.

So today, we, the people of God, who come to the text with fear and trembling witnessing to the fact that it gives life, we repent for the ways we have used it to take life away.

And with the courage of the Spirit we join together to say, “no more!”

“No more!” To the use of Scripture like a weapon to oppress the weak and the marginalized.

“No more!” To the complacent Christianity that stands idly by as people are attacked for being exactly who they are.

“No more!” To the backward ways of the past that lose sight of God’s grace here and now.

“No more!” To God said it, I believe it, and that settles it. 

I love the strange new world of the Bible. I fell in love with it as a kid sitting between my parents in the pews on Sunday mornings, I still fall in love with it every time I take it up and read. And I think what I love most about it is the fact that it is alive. It is not some dead book that demands to be kept in the past. 

It is alive, and it gives life. Amen. 

Be Peculiar

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This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Jason Micheli about the readings for the 12th Sunday After Pentecost [A] (Exodus 1.8-2.10, Psalm 124, Romans 12.1-8, Matthew 16.13-20). Jason is the lead pastor of Annandale UMC in Annandale, VA and one of the hosts of Crackers & Grape Juice. Our conversation covers a range of topics including reading in quarantine, managing people, personifying the powers and principalities, leading questions, preaching for the eye or the ear, participating in Christ, and making the right confession. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: Be Peculiar

God Won’t

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Mark 2.1-5

When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Doomscrolling.

Have you heard of it?

It’s falling into deep, morbid rabbit holes filled with negative content, agitating oneself to the point of physical discomfort, erasing any hope of a good night’s sleep. 

Basically, instead of retreating to the binge-worthy content of Netflix many of us are actually binge-watching the world flush down the drain.

We can’t unplug or disconnect ourselves from the headlines – COVID cases spiking across the country, a horrific blast rocking Beirut, social unrest resulting in broken buildings and broken people.

And, like slowing down on the interstate past a wreck, we can help ourselves from staring.

We’ve become addicted to the world of bad news so much so that a new word was created to help explain it – doomscrolling.

And it’s not just what we’re doing on social media – it’s how we’re having our conversations with friends, family, and even neighbors.

Did you see the latest numbers for the virus?

Can you believe he went golfing again during all of this?

What kind of idiot posts a video of a Corvette while preparing to run for president?

So it goes.

And, I must confess dear online worshippers, even I am not immune to the bizarre charms of doomscrolling. I find myself, at times, scrolling through the likes of Twitter and Facebook only to discover more and more bad news. 

Last weekend the city of Staunton, on the other side of Virginia, experienced heavy rains in a very short period of time that resulted in horrific flooding. Restaurants, businesses, homes all filled with water that destroyed everything.

The videos and the pictures have been devastating. And they felt all the more pressing for me personally because Staunton is where I was first appointed before coming here. The restaurants and businesses were those that I frequented, and now they’re all navigating through a completely unknown future.

So I was scrolling through the videos and images, reading the comments from various community members offering support, and then I noticed a comment that seemed to keep cropping up on every different post. No matter how bad or grim the situation appeared, someone felt the need to write, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”

It is my sincere hope and prayer that, in the midst of a moment of pain or fear or grief, no one has ever dismissively said to you, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”

But chances are, someone has.

It is near the top of the list of Christian expressions used when we don’t know what else to say and, spoiler warning, it’s NOT in the Bible.

Sure, there are plenty of verses about how God will see us through to the other side, about how we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, and so on. But the specificity of claiming that God won’t give us more than we can handle implies a whole lot about God that it absolutely shouldn’t.

To begin with, “God won’t give you…” immediately sets up a theological understanding that God, you know the author of salvation, gives every single little thing to us, on purpose; the good and the bad, the joy and the sorrow, the love and the pain.

Which means, according to the expression, God sows our suffering.

As has been said from this place on a number of occasions, if God delights in our suffering, if God purposely sends bad things to happen to us in order to punish us or teach us a lesson or make us stronger, then God isn’t worthy of our worship. 

God, absolutely, rejoices with us when we rejoice and God, absolutely, weeps with us when we weep, but that’s not the same thing as God authoring and willing every little thing that happens to us.

God is not some sadist who rejoices in our tribulations.

God is not an architect of divine destruction.

God is not sitting up in heaven plotting away about what difficult things he should send for us to handle.

Let me put it this way: Can you imagine reaching out to a neighbor whose house just burned to the ground only to pithily remark, “God won’t give you more than you can handle?”

Maybe you can imagine it, maybe you’ve even said it to someone before. And, chances are, dear listeners, you’re pretty decent people, and if you ever said something like that you were only doing so because you wanted to cheer up the person suffering, or you wanted them to believe they could make it through, or you believe that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.

And we should try to comfort those in the midst of tragedy, suffering, and grief. 

We should help in ways both seen and unseen.

But the more we say things like, “God won’t give you more than you can handle” the more we make God into monster and the more we place the burdens of the world entirely on one person’s shoulder.

Jesus has been doing his Jesus thing for a little bit. Been baptized by his cousin in the river Jordan, called some of the first disciples, and word has started to spread about this Messiah man.

Did you hear the he healed Peter’s mother-in-law?

What kind of Kingdom is he talking about all the time?

And have you seen his followers – what kind of Messiah enlists fishermen?

Jesus moves from town to town, synagogue to synagogue, preaching about a new age and healing the sick all while seeking the last, least, lost, little, and dead.

But Jesus needs some rest, so he returns to Capernaum for a spell.

He’s sitting in the house, kicking up his feet, when the whole town shows up at the door looking for a word, hoping to catch a glimpse of something they’ve longed for, yearning for someone to make something of their nothing.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, some friends are milling about, loitering their afternoon away, when word of the Messiah reaches their ears.

And, without taking much time to discuss their plan, they drop everything and run to their friend’s house. They find him like they always do, laying on a mat in the corner of the room, wasting away without the use of his legs.

He can’t even put up a word of protest before the friends are dragging him out of the house because, surely, if anyone can do something about the condition of his condition, Jesus can.

They carry him through the streets on a blanket, knocking people from side to side, but as they arrive in front of the house the crowds are so thick they can’t get any closer.

Ah, but these are no ordinary friends and this is no ordinary day – they take matters into their own hands.

They lift the paralyzed man up onto the closest rooftop, and they cross from house to house until they reach their destination. They dig a hole straight through the roof, and they lower their friend to the Lord.

Jesus, now interrupted from his sermon, looks up to see the spectacle above his head and smiles saying, “Good job! I’m impressed!” 

And then he looks straight into the eyes of the paralytic, having witnessed the faith of his friends, and says, “You are forgiven.”

The strange new world of the Bible is indeed strange.

Notice: Jesus doesn’t berate them for destroying property in the midst of the reckless hope for healing and transformation. Jesus doesn’t wax lyrical about what is and isn’t possible in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus doesn’t interrogate the paralyzed man about his past and every choice he ever made.

Instead, Jesus offers forgiveness.

The rest of the story includes a rebuttal from the scribes accusing Jesus of blasphemy to which he memorably replied, “Which is easier to say? ‘Your sins are forgiven’? Or ‘Take up your mat and walk’? Well, to show you that I really mean business I’m going to say both. Hey formerly paralyzed man! Get outta here and go celebrate with your friends.”

It’s wild stuff.

Jesus delights not only in forgiving the man of his sins (what sins?) but he also restores him to wholeness. 

And why does Jesus do this? Well, Jesus can do whatever Jesus wants, but scripture also dangles out this little thread of the faithfulness of the man’s friends. 

Friends who, in the end, have such a profound hope in what Jesus can do they carry their friend, literally dig through a roof, just so something remarkable might happen.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but think about pallbearers when I read this story – those who carry the dead into and out of the church.

I also can’t help myself from considering the many who have carried me during times when I needed it most. Friends, family, and even strangers who, when encountering the condition of my condition, said, “Okay, it’s our turn to carry you for a bit.”

Because whether it’s a friend in need, or a body being put into the ground, when we can’t handle what’s happening in our lives, we need others who can carry us, and who can carry us to Jesus.

Life tends to come at us pretty fast. These days all the more. We might’ve been fed the lie since birth that “we’re in control of our destinies” but a pandemic and economic instability is quick to remind us of the truth – all of us will face things that are more than we can handle, on our own.

So here’s a potential corrective to the statement in question today: It’s not that God won’t give you more than you can handle. But when life give you more than you can handle, God will help you handle all that you’ve been given.

This acknowledges that tribulations and hardships will occur and that when we go through the muck and mire of life, God will be there in the midst of it with us.

And when those time comes, because they will, it is good and right for us to admit, “You know, I can’t do this by myself – I need help.” There simply are times when we need a doctor, or a financial expert, or a pastor, or a therapist to help us through to the other die.

God does not give us what we can or can’t handle – but God does give us Jesus so that we can handle what life gives us. 

There was a woman who, back in the 90’s, was struggling with a horrible drug addiction and was trying her best to kick the habit all while her newborn baby was asleep in the next room. The new mother was at the rock bottom of her life, fearing that every day she wouldn’t be able to get the kick she needed, or that her child would be taken away, or (most frighteningly) maybe her child needed to be taken away, from her. 

So one night, around 2 am, she was lying in the fetal position on the floor desperately trying to will herself into turning her life around. In her hand she kept folding and unfolding a piece of paper with a phone number on it. It was the number for a Christian counselor that he mother had sent in the mail 4 years earlier, back when they were still talking.

The new mother didn’t know what to do, or where to turn, but she knew she couldn’t do it on her own so she grabbed the phone and dialed the number.

A man answered, and the woman blurted out, “I got this number from my mom, do you think maybe you could talk to me?”

She heard some shuffling around on the other line and then the man said, “Uh, yeah. What’s going on?”

She realized right then that she hadn’t told anyone the truth, not even herself, and without thinking much about it she said, “I’m not in a good place and I’m scared.” And she kept going, she told the man about her drug problem, and that she was worried about her baby, and on and on and on.

And the man, well, he listened.

He didn’t judge, he didn’t offer advice, he just stayed with her on the phone.

They phone call lasted until the sun started to creep through the blinds and the woman, noticing how long she had been on the phone, said, “Thank you for staying with me, and I really appreciate your listening, but aren’t you supposed to tell me some Bible verses I should read or something?”

The man laughed, brushed her comment aside, and she interrupted by saying, “No I need you to know how grateful I am. How long have you been a Christian counselor?”

And he said, “Listen, I’ve been trying to avoid this, I need you to not hang up. That number you called, the one your mom gave you… wrong number.”

She didn’t hang up, but thanked him nonetheless and they talked until the conversation came to its natural conclusion. In the hours that followed the woman experienced what she calls a peace she didn’t know was possible. She said she discovered, for the first time, that there is love out in the world, some of it being unconditional, and some of it was meant for her.

After that, everything changed. Not right away, but slowly, her life transformed.

When she tell her story she always ends it with this: “I now know, that in the deepest and darkest moment of despair, it only takes a pinhole of light, and all of grace can come right in.”

Today we live in a world under the shadow of fear. Between civil unrest, an infectious pandemic, and economic uncertainty, we’re all looking to put our hope somewhere. The world puts its hope in human strategies – the belief in progressivism is very tempting! But as Christians, we know that human strategies rarely, if ever, work.

But God is full of impossible possibility. God can make new what no one else can. God can make a way where there is no way.

In the end, that’s what God’s all about. God helps us handle what life gives us through Jesus Christ.

Sometimes it’s through a wrong number.

Sometimes it’s through a group of friends willing to dig through a roof.

God won’t abandon us to our own device. God won’t leave us alone. God won’t let life get the better of us. 

Because when life give us more than we handle, God will help us handle all that we’ve been given. Amen. 

What Is Our Why?

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This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Matt Benton about the readings for the 11th Sunday After Pentecost [A] (Genesis 45.1-15, Psalm 133, Romans 11.1-2a, 29-32, Matthew 15.10-28). Matt is the pastor of Bethel UMC in Woodbridge, VA. Our conversation covers a range of topics including Augustine’s Confessions, the cost of reconciliation, Last Week Tonight, the oddity of unity, oily abundance, the irrevocability of the Gospel, cancel culture in the church, preaching in prison, and identifying with the right characters. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: What Is Our Why?

God Helps

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Psalm 121

I lift my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber not sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.

A woman was walking down the street one afternoon when all of the sudden the ground fell out beneath her and she fell into a giant sinkhole. After she brushed herself off, she realized that the walls were far too steep to climb out by herself so she began crying out for help.

A doctor was passing by and looked down into the pit when the woman yelled up, “Hey! I’m stuck down here. Can you help me out?”

The doc thought about it for a moment, pulled out a notepad, wrote a prescription, tossed it into the hole and kept walking.

Later, a preacher came walking along and the woman shouted up, “Hey Rev! Please help. I’m stuck down in this hole and I can’t get out!” 

The pastor slowly put his hands together, said a prayer for the woman, and kept walking.

Next, a sweet older woman from the local church walked to the edge and the woman in the pit shouted, “Please help! I’m starting to get desperate down here.”

To which the older lady replied, “Honey, don’t you know that God helps those who help themselves?” And she kept walking.

Finally, a friend of the woman in the hole arrived. “Hey! It’s me down here,” she shouted, “Can you please get me out of here?” And the friend jumped straight down into the pit. The woman said, “You idiot! Now we’re both stuck down here!”

And that’s when the friend said, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.” 

A few years ago the results of a national poll were published and it was discovered that more than 8 out of every 10 Americans think, “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves” is in the Bible. Even more troubling is the fact that more than half of the people who were part of the poll were strongly convinced that is is one of the core messages of scripture!

And it’s not in the Bible!

The expression itself is thought to be traced back to Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1736.

And yet a super majority of Americans (even American Christians) believe it’s straight from the lips of Jesus!

Now, of course, there is a small smidgen of truth to the statement. After all, if we sit around at our dinner tables praying for manna from heaven, we’re probably going to be left empty handed. However, we can eat because God has blessed creation with abundance and the means by which we can procure food for our tables whether its gardens in our yard or employment in order to purchase food.

Likewise, focusing in school, listening and responding to our spouses, nurturing our children, all of these things result in the betterment of our lives because we have worked for them to be better.

However, all of that pales in comparison to how “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves” has been used by Christians to avoid our obligations to help others.

The expression in question has far more to do with capitalism than it does with Christianity. In fact, it’s rather antithetical to the message of scripture as a whole for God is the God of deliverance for a people undeserving.

People like us.

The truth is: some people cannot help themselves.

Period. Full stop.

Societal discrimination, generational poverty, institutional racism, natural disasters, and a host of other problems prevent people from helping themselves.

Some people, in fact most people, are in holes so deep with walls so steep, that there’s no way they’ll ever climb out without help.

Food scarcity is a major problem in our area here in Woodbridge. As long as I’ve been the pastor here we’ve participated in a food distribution program once a month where huge crowds of people show up just to receive food. They will often stand in line in the heat of summer and in the cold of winter for hours at times just for a chance to bring home a grocery store bag’s worth of food.

Our local elementary school, right across the street, has a majority of students who, when schools are actually open, have free or reduced price lunches. And for many of those students its the only reliable food source they have in any given week.

And I lost track a long time ago how many people have stopped by our doors on any given day asking simply for food. Not for money, not for gas, not for anything else but food.

Now, can you imagine what it would be like if, every time someone asked the church for food we responded with, “Um, don’t you know you’re supposed to work on yourself before God will do something for you? How about you come back next week with at least three examples of how you’ve turned your life around before we give you some food? Ok bye!”

And, just for the sake of clarity, food really is everything. A few years ago a national study was published in which countless researchers looked into what were the best things to do in order to increase the education of students across the country. They looked at smaller class sizes, access to newer textbooks, different educational models, and on and on and on. And do you know what they found to be the best indication of increasing education?

Food.

In the end, they discovered, it doesn’t matter whether students have computers, or better textbooks, or smaller class sizes. If they don’t have access to food, none of those things make a difference.

The Church, and I mean the whole big “C” church, cannot shrug off the responsibility to care for the other with the use of yet another trite and cliche non-biblical sentence because God, more often than not, actually commands the people called church to specifically do for the last, least, lost, and little what they can’t for themselves.

Just pick up a Bible sometime, scan through any number of prominent stories from both the Old and New Testaments – it will become quickly clear how the actual biblical truth is that God helps those who CAN’T help themselves.

Leviticus 23.22 – God says, ‘When you harvest your land’s produce, you must not harvest all the way to the edge of your field; and don’t gather every remaining bit of your harvest. Leave these items for the poor and the immigrant; I am the Lord your God.”

It’s as if God is saying, “Look, I know you think these fields belong to you, but they actually belong to me. So quit hoarding up all your food because there are others who need it more than you. My kingdom is bigger than your field.”

Hosea 6:6 – The prophet writes on behalf of God, “I desire faithful love and not sacrifice.”

It’s as if God is saying, “Look, I know you think you’ve got this whole worship thing figured out. That, as long as you do enough good things for your faith, you’re covered. But do you know what I love more than all your singing and all your praising? When you actually put your faith into action and care for the people I care for most.”

James 1.27 – James implores the early church that, “true devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulty.”

It’s as if God is saying, “Look, remember how I delivered you out of slavery in Egypt, remember how I delivered you out of the bondage to sin and death in Jesus Christ? The kingdom is all about delivering people from a worldly reality into a kingdom reality. The kingdom is all about doing things for people who can’t do them on their own. Get it?”

I could go on and on.

And, you what? I think I will…

Consider Jesus and the feeding of the 5,000. He’s been out teaching and preaching and healing all day in the heat of the sun, and as the day comes to a close the disciples realize that these people need something to eat so maybe it would be better for them to return home.

And what does Jesus say?

“Hey, listen up, uh you all need to start pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps. There are no handouts in the kingdom of God. Thanks for coming out today. Bye.”

Or: “Look, I know you’re hungry, but if I give you fish to eat it will only help you for today. So instead we’re going down to the water and I’m going to teach you how to fish for yourselves.”

No.

Jesus says to his disciples, “You give them something to eat.”

And when they can only rustle up a few loaves of bread and a handful of fish, Jesus miraculously makes it into a meal for 5,000, with leftovers.

Jesus did for the crowds that day what the disciples and the crowds themselves could no do on their own.

Again and again in the New Testament Jesus connects with the brokenness within every community and brings healing.

He sends the abandoned and forgotten back to the villages that disowned them.

He feeds and heals and teaches out of the abundant mercy of God.

Jesus helps people precisely because they cannot help themselves.

I don’t know what you’ve got going on in your life right now, I can’t even see you to know, on your faces, whether this is sinking in at all. 

But maybe, just maybe, you feel like you’re down in a pit – life just won’t let up and you feel overwhelmed and suffocated by worry, fear, and anxiety.

Or perhaps you’ve lost someone you love and every single day is a biting and ringing reminder that you will never get them back.

Or maybe you’re struggling with an addiction that, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t kick it.

We can claw at the walls all we want. We can fashion ladders of self-improvement. We can even make promises to ourselves that tomorrow we will finally become the best versions of ourselves.

But sometimes, the only way out of the hole comes when someone else is willing to jump in and show us the way out.

The psalmist puts it this way: “I lift my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.”

We lift our eyes to the edge of the pit and we discover, bewilderingly enough, that our help comes from God.

God, in the person of Jesus Christ, is the friend who recklessly jumps into the depths of our despair, who never abandons us even we go off assuming we can do it all on our own (thank you very much), who humbles himself to the humiliating status of humanity just to be born into this broken world of ours.

That’s who comes to help us.

And that’s the whole point.

God helps those who cannot help themselves, and so too we do the same because that’s exactly what God did, and does, for us.

God was born into the world as a fragile child into the deepest pit of fear and terror for a couple all alone in the world.

God went to the margins of society in Christ Jesus sinking lower and lower just to be with the abandoned, neglected, and forgotten.

God chose the broken and the battered to dwell among in order that, in the end, they would be delivered from the miserable estate.

God even went the depth of death just to bring each and every one of us to the other side of salvation. 

And God did and does all of this without cost. 

The grace of God made manifest in Jesus Christ is not something we can earn, buy, or even work for. To put a finer point on it – We cannot help ourselves into grace.

Grace is something done for us and to us.

It jumps into the hole right next to us, and it shows us the way out. Amen.

The Hardest Part Of Being A Christian

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This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Matt Benton about the readings for the 10th Sunday After Pentecost [A] (Genesis 37.1-4, 12-28, Psalm 105.1-6, 16-22, 45b, Romans 10.5-15, Matthew 14.22-33). Matt is the pastor of Bethel UMC in Woodbridge, VA. Our conversation covers a range of topics including Coronatide, NOVA, the case for Karl Barth, narrative theology, dreamers of dreams, church leadership as evangelism, different righteousnesses, exegetical grammar, and God’s oddness. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: The Hardest Part Of Being A Christian

Everything Happens

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Romans 8.28, 31-39

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Everything happens for a reason. We say something like that to bring comfort to people in the midst of uncertainty, or tragedy, or difficult circumstances mostly because we don’t know what else to say. It is a remarkably common expression among Christian-types and it’s not in the Bible.

Years ago I received a phone call that a woman in my church was in her final moments. She had been suffering from a great number of chronic problems for the better part of two decades and most of her family had not expected for her to live as long as she did. We all stood around her bed together praying and sharing those final moments before she died. 

A few days later, on the eve of her funeral, her now widower husband fell down the steps in front of their house after returning from the wake and was rushed to the hospital. He needed a few days to recover and we delayed his wife’s funeral until he was better. Eventually he sat in the pews with surrounded by his family and worshipped with the rest of us as we gave thanks to God for his wife.

After the burial and reception he returned to his now empty house complaining of our tired he was and after he went to bed, he never woke up again.

A husband a wife dead less than a week apart.

When I got the call about his death, having only seen him the day before, I rushed to the house to meet with the family who were still in town from the wife’s funeral. And one by one I watched and listened as every single family member exchanged a version of “everything happens for a reason.” 

“God just needed another angel in heaven.”

“God wanted them to be married in heaven just like they were married on earth.”

“This was all part of God’s plan.”

And the more I heard it the more my blood boiled. But before I had a chance to blurt out something pastors aren’t supposed to say, one of the couple’s daughters beat me to it.

“That’s BS” she stammered.

Though she didn’t use the acronym.

“If this was all part of God’s plan, then why did God take away my Mommy and Daddy so quickly? Why would God do that to me?”

And that’s when the whole room turned to me, the pastor, the so-called expert on God.

So I said, “If there is a reason for everything, if God killed both of them on purpose, then God isn’t worthy of our worship.”

When we throw out trite and cliche sentences like, “everything happens for a reason” it puts all of the responsibility of every single little thing entirely upon God. 

It makes God into a monster.

The author of car crashes, incurable childhood cancers, and unending wars.

And yet, more often than not, it is our go-to expression when we don’t know what else to say. 

If there are two things that we, as human beings, just can’t stand they are mystery and silence. It’s no wonder therefore that when we face a situation that has no explanation we get as far away from mysterious silence as we possibly can by saying something we think is helpful. We both want to have an answer for every question and we want to be able to get out of uncomfortable moments when we don’t know what to say.

The problem with all of that is we think we’re helping someone when we’re actually making things worse.

Anyone who claims that everything happens for a reason are those who believe God wills every single horrific death, every incurable diagnosis, and even something like the Coronavirus. They see and imagine God as some great puppeteer in the sky instituting every possible contingency such that it must be this way at all times no matter what.

And if that’s true, then every rape, every murder, every act of child abuse or neglect, every war, every storm or earthquake, are all part of God’s plan.

To those who believe that is the case, the response from the daughter whose parents died should suffice.

In his book The Doors of the Sea, David Bentley Hart recalls reading an article in the New York Times shortly after the unimaginable tsunami that wrecked South Asia back in 2015. The article was focused on a Sri Lankan father, who, in spite of all his efforts, which included swimming in the rolling sea with his wife and mother-in-law on his back, was unable to save his wife or any of his four children from drowning in the waters. The father recounted the names of his children and then, overwhelmed by his grief, sobbed to the reporter, “my wife and children must have thought, ‘Father is here… he will save us” but I couldn’t do it.”

David Hart wonders, in his book, If you had the chance to speak to the father in the moment of his deepest pain, what would you say? Hart then argues that only idiots would have approached the father with trite and empty theological expressions like: “Sir, your children’s deaths are part of God’s cosmic plan” or “It’s okay this was God’s design” or “Everything happens for a reason.”

Most of us, Hart believes, would have the good sense not to talk like that to the father. And then he takes it one step forward. “And this should tell us something. For if we think is shamefully foolish and cruel to say things in the moment when another’s sorrow is most real and irresistibly painful, then we ought never to say them.”

And to take it one step even further, if we mustn’t say things like that to such a father, then we ought never to say them about God. 

St Paul wrote to the early church in Rome: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” Which, for many, justifies the desire to say “everything happens for a reason.”

And yet we so often forget that this verse is the beginning of Paul’s big crescendo to one of the texts we use most often at funeral – nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

What we miss in that profound and powerful declaration is that there are powers and principalities contending against God in this life.

That is, death is something that is trying to separate us from God, but God wins in the end. 

The Good News of Jesus Christ is that death is God’s ancient enemy, whom God has defeated in Christ Jesus, and will ultimately destroy forever in the New Jerusalem. 

That is, to put a fine note on it, the whole point of the Gospel in the first place. 

It would then be nothing but ridiculous for God to delight or even ordain the deaths of those whom he loves for it would run counter to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.”

God does not want bad things to happen to us. But bad things do happen in this fallen and fallible world we find ourselves in. We, all of us, make choices we know we shouldn’t and we avoid doing things we know we should. We contribute in ways both big and small to the tremendous suffering in the world. From delighting in being able to purchase a banana whenever we want from the grocery store (a banana that requires low waged work, an absurd amount of fossils fuel, and harmful chemicals to make it to our plate) to texting while we drive (which distracts us from the kid running into the street to grab his wayward basketball) to a great number of other scenarios. 

Some of the suffering of the world is willed, but not by God. It is willed by us in our relentless pursuit of whatever we think we deserve.

And yet a fair amount of suffering in the world exists not because of us or God, things just happen without explanation. 

And when those things occurs, whether willed by human beings or random events in creation, we do well to close our mouths and rest in the knowledge that God has defeated death.

Does that erase death’s sting here and now? Of course not, death always hurts.

But as Christians, we know how the story ends, we know that those we lose in life will be waiting for us at the Supper of the Lamb surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses that have gone on before us. 

The “for good” that God works to achieve is the proclamation that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That even in our suffering, even in our deaths, God is with us.

Look, I hear it a lot in my line of work, people showing up at the church or calling me on the phone to ask, “Why is God doing this to me?”

The loss of a child. The loss of a job. The loss of health.

And for as many times as I have heard questions about God’s purposes behind the purposeless moments in life, I’ve heard from just as many people wondering, “What can I possibly say to someone in their suffering, in their loss?”

Sometimes the best thing to say is absolutely nothing. As hard as it might be to sit with someone else in their pain and in their suffering, just listening to them is far better than trying to fill the time with trite and meaningless aphorisms. At the very least, it’s the most faithful thing we can do.

Life is hard and all sorts of things happen without explanation. I know that might not sound very pastoral, but it’s true. Can you imagine how you would feel if you came to the church one morning in your grief or suffering or pain, and you got down on your knees to pray to God when all of the sudden you heard a voice booming from the heavens declaring, “I”M DOING THIS TO YOU ON PURPOSE! THIS IS PART OF MY PLAN!”

If that’s who God is, then God isn’t worthy of our worship.

Thankfully, that’s not who God is. God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead having first raised Israel out of Egypt. God is the author of salvation and not the dictator of death. God is the one who would do everything, and already did, to make sure that nothing, truly nothing, could ever separate us from the his divine love.

Our hope is not contingent on finding reasons to explain everything that happens – instead our hope is built on Christ who shows us in his life, death, and resurrection that God is with us, always. 

And there’s nothing we can do about it. 

For I am convinced, like Paul, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That’s the gospel.

Jesus is the reason that even when things happen, we are not abandoned. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Don’t Lie

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This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Kenneth Tanner about the readings for the 9th Sunday After Pentecost [A] (Genesis 32.22-31, Psalm 17.1-7, 15, Romans 9.1-5, Matthew 14.13-21). Ken is the pastor of Holy Redeemer in Rochester, Michigan. Our conversation covers a range of topics including Biblical character identification, new names, God’s marks, pentecostal prayers, divine time, false witness, Pauline anguish, faithful food, better education, and bigger tables. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: Don’t Lie

https://www.spreaker.com/user/crackersandgrapejuice/9th-sunday-after-pentecost-1

The Kingdom of Judgment

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Matthew 13.47-50

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

We’ve come to the end.

Both the end of our series on the parables of the Kingdom and to Jesus’ proclamation, parabolically, about the end of all things.

The Kingdom is like a net that catches everything so that the angels can sort out the evil from the righteous.

This is a story about judgment.

And we don’t like judgement.

You know, judge not lest ye be judged and all that…

But I think it’s more that we like to talk about not being judgmental while actually being addicted to the judgments we make against ourselves and others.

Consider this: How many conversations have you had recently about people and their willingness or unwillingness to wear masks?

It’s notable that, having talked at length about the Kingdom, yeast and seeds and weeds, Jesus ends the entire sequence of these parables with a story about fishing. 

It is an ending about the end.

Jesus has been laying it on thick for the crowds and for the disciples. But then we encounter, “So it will be at the end of the age” – the Eschaton, a final period on the whole kit and caboodle.

This is the moment in which all of the stories about the Kingdom are summed up by the Lord of lords.

Listen – The Kingdom is like a net thrown into the sea that catches everything. And, only when the net is full, is it brought ashore and the good are put into baskets while the bad are left on the sand. So it will be at the end of the age. My angels will come and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Sounds like a party, right?

The Kingdom is like a net. Strangely enough the net, SAGENE in Greek, is what we call a hapax legomenon, a word that only appears once in the entirety of the New Testament. 

It’s very very rare.

Nevertheless, the net here is one dragged through the water indiscriminately taking up everything in its path.

It is not the tiny net I carry on my fly fishing bag to help collect the one solitary fish I’ve been trying to reel in for fifteen minutes.

It’s more like a trawler that picks up everything.

And everything means everything. Not only fish but also seaweed, trash, and other oceanic items. 

This, of course, runs counter to how we often imagine the fishing stories from Jesus and the way we portray them in Children’s Bibles. 

Jesus says, “If I be lifted up I will draw all to myself!”

Which is all to say, just as the net fetches out everything it meets in the sea, so too the Kingdom fetches out everything in the world. When Jesus proclaims that a new heaven and a new earth are coming, they are not replacements for the old ones, we don’t get zapped from one to the other – they are transfigurations of them.

Jesus doesn’t abandon planet earth to go stake out a claim somewhere else, he raises creation and glorifies it.

The totality of the net might sound like an overstatement, but the word for fish doesn’t actually appear in the Greek – even though plenty of translators have opted to stick it in.

Its just says the the net was tossed into the sea and caught everything.

This means, parabolically speaking, that everything and everyone gets swept up into it, the good and the bad, the tall and the small, the poor and the powerful.

There is a sorting to come, we cannot ignore that, but not before the net draws everything in. While the net is being dragged behind the boat, doing its work, judgment is nowhere to be found. Which is a reminder for those of us called the church that the kingdom, while still in this world, does nobody any good while remaining in the judgment business.

But judgement, of course, is what we do best!

It’s been one of the favorite pastimes of the church since the very beginning. The practice of tossing out the bad apples while the net is still int he ate drawing everything in has been everybody’s preferred method of “furthering the Kingdom.”

Everybody’s, that is, except Jesus.

Sometimes it takes weeks and weeks of sitting in the parables to realize how much of a miracle it is that the church has made it this far all the while confusing the words of the divine Word incarnate.

We have heaping examples how how judgmental the church has been, all while Jesus has been doing his best to drag the net of the kingdom across the ocean floor of our existence.

Consider how adulterers, murders, and philanderers have been paraded out of both pulpit and sanctuary. But its not even just the really bad sins we hold over the heads of others: we dismiss the liars and the cheats, the questionable and the bizarre. 

Throughout the centuries we have picked our particular flavors of allowable and unallowable all under the auspices of keeping the good in and the bad out.

And what do we have to show for it?

Now, if we talk about sin in church at all, we do so in a way that denies our sinfulness while highlighting the sins of others. We’ve taken down the mirror of the Gospel, the law that accuses us dead in our sins, and instead we wag our fingers at those who don’t align with what we think is good and right and true.

And, I must confess, I’m guilty of this just as much as anyone else. I mean: Do you know how much fun it is to belittle and bemoan televangelists for the wildly inappropriate theology they drop on their dozing congregations? Do you know why it’s so fun? Because it makes me feel better about myself!

We love to point out the sins in others all the while ignoring our own.

But Jesus? Jesus didn’t shy away from sinners. So why should we?

Of course, we might think that the church welcomes sinners. But we don’t. At least, not really. We’re only inclined to welcome the sinful so long as their sins aren’t of much consequence and their willing to repent and never fall back into their sinfulness.

Should we let people get away with their sins? Is that what Jesus wants? A church full of worthless sinners failing in their inability to be good?

Yeah, kind of. 

It’s not so much about letting people get away with it, but recognizing the real condition of our condition such that we see salvation isn’t possible on our own. We don’t have the capacity, on our own, to turn it all around. It’s only ever possible because of the Spirit working in us and through us.

Consider Paul’s argument in his letter to the Galatians: If there had been a law, a rule, that could have saved us then it should have already happened. 

We can change, we can get better. But it’s God who does that work and, like the Kingdom, it’s rather mysterious. There’s no good answer to why one person is better at dropping a bad habit than someone else. There’s no good answer to why someone gets through grief faster than someone else. 

God works and we know not how. It is, to make the point even finer, a mystery.

The church, at her best, is merely a sacrament of God’s Kingdom, an outward sign of the mystery in the world. It is like a version of the net, doing its best to sweep through the dark waters of life, collecting anything and everything.

What happens next is entirely up to God.

And thats when the real judgement begins…

The plunder is brought to shore to sort out, in Jesus’ words, the good from the bad. What makes the good good and the bad bad? Jesus doesn’t give us much to work with here, but its entirely in the eyes of the one who tossed out the net in the first place. That is: Jesus is the one who decides what goes in the basket and what get left on the sand.

Notice, again, that the separation only occurs after the net has already done its job, only after the mystery of the Kingdom has come to fruition, only after the power of Jesus’ reconciling work. 

Everyone who comes before the divine sorting, if we want to call it that, has already been judged by the Judge who came to be judged in our place.

The whole world, the all the Jesus draws into himself, is accepted in the Beloved.

The forgiveness of wrongs, the rectification of sins, pronounced from the cross and the empty tomb is for all. 

What we choose to do with that forgiveness is tricky business.

Think about the older bother from the parable of the prodigal. His Father, rather recklessly, forgives the younger son from his squandering ways, throws him a party and then insists that the older son comes into the cut up the rug. But we never find out whether or not the older brother joins the party.

Does he enter the room, grab a drink, and head for the dance floor?

Or does he stay in the outer darkness while weeping and gnashing his teeth?

In the end, God is throwing a party, the Supper of the Lamb, and we’re all invited, no matter what.

The question isn’t what constitutes a life worthy of the Kingdom, but instead, what are we going to do with out invitation?

Notice: nobody goes to hell because they made too many bad choices in this life anymore than someone goes to heaven because they made enough right choices. Everyone meets Jesus in the mystery of his death and resurrection, they are swept up in the great net whether we think they deserve it or not. 

Counter to many of our church ramblings throughout the centuries, and even today, we are not judged by the Lord in the light of our previous proclivities. If we were, none of us would go anywhere but hell.

Instead we are judged by what Jesus does for us on the cross. He announces a forever and all encompassing forgiveness that transfigures us into his kingdom in ways that are hidden and right here among us.

Let me put it this way: Everybody, even the worst of the worst, is someone for whom Christ died. Whenever the church goes around kicking people out for missed and poor choices, we fail to live into the netted-ness of Christ’s salvific work.

Sinners are the church’s business for God’s sake, literally.

We worship a Lord who came not to condemn the world but to save it. Until the end of the age, the only thing we can do is rest is the Good News that Jesus delights in catching us and everybody else. 

But back to the judgment reserved for the Lord.

So it will be at the end of the age, Jesus says, my angels will come and separate the evil out of the midst of the righteous.

How did the righteous ones get to be righteous? Well, scripture tells us that Jesus makes us righteous and we can’t do it on our own.

To whom is the gift of Jesus’ righteousness offered? Well, scripture tells us that Jesus came for the whole world, the good and the bad, the right and the wrong.

But then how can some of them be judged as evil?

And that, dear friends, is the question of all questions.

Is it because not one of us is righteous, no not one (to steal an expression from Paul)?

Is it because, even though Jesus told us not to judge, it’s still our favorite thing to do?

Is it because we’re all dead in our sins and in desperate need of a Savior who can save us from ourselves?

The angels of the Lord will separate the evil out of the midst of the righteous. This is God’s good work, for there will be no evil in the end of the age – there will be no death, no mourning, and no crying, for God will make all things new.

Even us.

Do you see? Even at the end, God in Christ is hellbent on getting every single one of us into his Kingdom, even if it means separating the evil out of us so that we can feast at the Supper of the Lamb forever and ever.

There is to be joy in heaven! Not just over one found by the Lord but over the ninety nine as well.

There is to be joy over a whole New Jerusalem populated entire by forgiven sinners whose citizenship is based on nothing but their forgiveness. Not their good works of perfect report cards. Only by the forgiving and reconciling work of God. So be it. Amen.