Sermon From January 10th, 2010

The sermon for 1/10/2010 is available here.

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Amen - and see you all this Sunday at 10:00.

--

Jeff

Belief in the Word

Why Believe?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' "From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.

The final bible verse of Tim Tebow’s college career was Ephesians 2:8-10, in short: we are saved by faith that we may do God’s work. Many churches, many Christians forget or ignore one half of this truth. As Brethren, we have not and we must not. A great part of God’s work is knowing and understanding His word. I pray that we will all commit to reading the Bible anew in 2010. Today we’ve all started with the first chapter of John.

This first third of the first chapter of John explains belief in five parts. Each of these five parts has a triune aspect. These three aspects are three facets of Christianity: the literal, the personal, and the symbolic.

On the literal we have verse twelve, in which the reward for belief in the Word is given: that we may become children of God. This verse serves as a foil to the 20^th chapter of John, where Thomas is made to believe.

“Made to believe” is the most correct term here – Jesus upbraids Thomas a bit – that Thomas could not believe but by sight and those who came after, “who have not seen and yet have believed” would be blessed.

Blessed by being Children of God, of course, as we are told at the beginning of John. So this chapter bookends John and its reassurance that belief in the Word will be rewarded mirrors the blessings Jesus promises at the end of the Gospel.

The next part of the literal aspect concerns translation. It might be interesting to replace “at the Father’s side” with the more specific “in the Father’s bosom” and “made him known” with “reveals” or, my favorite, “unfolds.” But what is a bit of a sticker is that repetition of God: “no one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only” seems like a bit of a tautology – you know, “boys will be boys” or something else that is both obvious and meaningless. Until we dig a bit deeper into the translation. The term used for “the one and only” is elsewhere translated as “only begotten” – that makes a bit more sense: No one has ever seen God, but the only begotten God reveals Him. That is, no one has seen the Father but Jesus reveals Him.

Most times when we hit a difficult passage of the Bible the problem is in our knowledge, either our collective knowledge in the translation we use or our personal limited understanding. As always, is it our duty – the work for which we have been saved – to look deeper and cure our deficiencies.

But why? I spoke several times with my brother Matthew while he was here about why he should believe. Matthew made the argument – but why can’t I just live a good life? That is one of the most common arguments you hear against faith – why can’t I just be good and not worry about the rest?

There are two good answers. One is a bit of a pat response: we simply can’t live a good life without God. Jim has spoken to us about order in our lives and in our faith – without that order, without the guideline of the life of Jesus, we are gone astray. The second is perhaps the better answer for some – that we exist in order to learn things. Were this not true, were we merely here to replicate ourselves we would have no call to live past forty or fifty – by that time we could ensure the health of our children and grandchildren. But we don’t – we live to seventy or eighty or ninety, long past the time when we are able to be primary or even secondary caregivers – why? What is the purpose of this extended life other than to learn and to discover? And once we have mastered all the science of the world we are left with mystery. Perhaps mystery, then, is where we should begin.

Which takes us to the third of five parts: Jesus the Christ as the Word of God. Obviously this is a central part but it is so simple and fundamental that it might require only the briefest of mentions this go round – Jesus is the Word, not the Bible. That does not detract in the least “one jot or tittle” from the Bible but it does remind us where our focus should lie – we don’t worship pages, we don’t worship sages, we worship the ageless Word of God who was made flesh and dwelt with us and died for us.

And, to bring us to the fourth fifth, by whose power creation was made. As both a teacher and a writer, I am witness daily to the power of words. There are even philosophers who have decided that our only existence is through words. These thinkers are close to grasping the camel but they’ve got the wrong end. It’s manifest to us that words are powerful because The Word is power. Just like God uses rainbows to remind us that rains end and flood waters recede, each time we are struck by the power of language we are reminded that through the Word God created everything. Genesis 1:3 can’t really be any clearer – all is formless until God speaks, until the Word of God is loosed upon creation. Using this language – these words, John tells us exactly what creation is and was and who was responsible.

The last part of belief explained in the beginning of John brings us back to mystery. John deliberately uses repetition and ambiguity both to connect Jesus to the Father and to tell us that there is more in that connection to understand than we may ever have understanding. “No one has ever seen God but God has made him known.” Even at its most literal English translation – no one has seen God but the only begotten God unfolds Him -- it traps us, it snares us on the words to make us, like Thomas is made, to poke and prod at the Word until we understand, until we believe, until we know.

So in this first third of John chapter 1, John has taken us through five literal levels of belief:

doubt

struggle

faith

yearning

learning

These five levels also extend to the personal level.

The discourse on faith and the rewards for belief – when set up against the negative example of Thomas at the end of the Gospel succinctly describe the nature of belief – especially the dichotomy of faith versus not works but visceral knowledge. Thomas was not blessed as we are because he had to, not only see, but touch to believe. We, on the other hand, have only our ears and our minds and our hearts with which to build belief. We and Thomas both are given access to the Word – but it is in our acceptance of the Word, our belief, that we are blessed to become the children of God. The nature of belief is an acceptance in that which cannot be proven but does not need to be. I love my wife, I love my children – they don’t need proof of it other than my life, at least I hope not – God’s love for us is made manifest in both creation and in the grace that waits for our belief. The reward not for “living a good life” but for believing so that we can live that good life – so that we can do those great Ephesian works for God.

The problems inherent, inbuilt even, in translating from Greek – which is itself a translation of revelation are, on a personal level, those problems of the outside world – of the seed sewn on weedy ground. No, this translation is wrong – no, that translation is wrong – no, use this version of the Greek – know this, brothers and sisters – the Word is not subject to translation. The Word speaks the language of your heart and mind and flesh; when you trip on words in the Bible remember that they are words of men – the Word will never trip you – Jesus is no trap; pray for clarity and pray for revelation and do the work for which you were created and you will build understanding; do not fall to the arguments of men that quibble over the placement of a comma – God has everything ordered and the Word is not chaos. When the world is calling you, remember that the Word is your calling.

Which leads us to simple faith, which on a personal level is that spark of interest that finally reaches your heart – whether it is music or friendship or good coffee, the part of the life of Christ that you are unable or unwilling to resist. It is as plain and powerful as “the Word was God.” For me, and probably the reason I love this passage so much, is the acknowledgement that my chosen vocation – for first of everything I am a writer – taps into the same energy – the same force – by which I came into being. I think the fact of Jesus as the Word is irresistible to any writer – and similarly I believe that there is some part of the life of Jesus and the life of the church that will speak to everyone; as we reach into the second decade of the twenty-first century think back on your calling – what drew you to the church? What can you do to be drawn anew? What can you do to draw others?

After simple faith we experience the power of God – we develop in our belief and faith – perhaps so that we can move mountains – but certainly so that we may, as Paul clearly states in Ephesians, do the work of the Lord. When we are fresh in our faith we are like children, but as we grow, so grows our responsibility. We are no longer simply called by the Word to faith but called by the Word to works – we are now God’s children and it is our duty to continue the work of creation.

Finally, after faith and work we are left with contemplation – the power and truth of the beginning of the Gospel of John has washed over us and we are still left with the mysteries encountered by the patriarchs of the church – and, as they did, we – as mature believers – contemplate the mysteries. This fifth step in personal belief is not reached by all at the same time – indeed, to stretch the edge of belief and to contemplate the nature of God by trying to understand the fine distinction between the Only God and the Only Begotten God can be terrifying – certainly simple faith is more comforting and the work we have been called to fills us so that we do not have to dwell on such difficulties; but we do. In this way we go beyond the nature of belief – the doubt of Thomas – we don’t ask “do I believe” but “why do I believe” – and this is a question that can not be asked too soon. That’s a phrase that’s often misunderstood – the question “why do I believe” cannot be asked too soon because it must not be asked too soon – the immature believer will never be able to answer that question to his or her own satisfaction; one thing that Jewish mystics get right is a gradation of study systems – you ask a certain set of questions and have access to a certain set of knowledge before you get to go on to the next part. Because of the nature of post-Catholic Christianity, we’re often left adrift on a sea of belief because no one realizes you can drown in belief – brothers and sisters don’t let a young Christian drown; be there for them to guide them in the Word.

So as our guide to belief, John has given us the five phases:

doubt

struggle

faith

yearning

learning

that become, on a personal level,

what belief means

the interference of the outside world

the irresistible call of the Word

the development of our calling in God

and a maturity of belief

These five aspects of personal and literal belief also mirror five parts of the life of Jesus – as foreshadowed by these first eighteen verses of the Gospel of John.

First we have a definition of what Jesus is – Jesus is the Word and the light of the World. John says in four verses what it takes Luke, what, four chapters to get through? But it is important to the story of how belief is made – for that’s what the New Testament and especially the Gospels are, are they not? – that we have a clear definition of what Jesus, the Word, the fundament of our belief, is.

Then we have the purpose of Jesus’ life – the struggle on a literal level against the persons of the outside world – the light in the darkness that is not received by his own; John spells out clearly what Jesus is and what He will do. As Jesus was not caught up by the outside world – even beating death, so we are reminded that our struggles have already been fought and won.

John then gives us the story of the Baptist – the announcing of the coming of Jesus; what is this but the irresistible call given to the entire world? As John the Baptist preached to those on the banks of the river Jordan so must we make the whole world our river Jordan. We must have the faith in our calling to repeat it to the world as children not of desire or of families – but children of God.

Creation was the first ministry of Jesus. Creation is the only ministry of Jesus. Creation is the ministry of Jesus. That is, as we see in John, it is the work of God to continue and care for his creation and we, as his children, are the stewards of his work. As Jesus, the Word, created all and died for all so must we give our lives to the work of God.

Finally we have the revelation of God through Jesus the Word. Before the Word God the Father was unknowable – through the Word God the Father is revealed, unfolded, made known – it is as if Jesus reverses the doubt of Thomas through God – if we have the faith to abandon the desire of Thomas to know – if we can instead believe, then it is God who places his hand in our wounds – it is God who knows us and we who know God through Jesus, the Word.

On a symbolic, personal, and literal level we are made and sustained through the Word of God; we don’t need preachers to tell us this, we don’t need buildings to proclaim it, we can see it clearly in the imperfect translation of a two-thousand year old text – out of more than 30,000 verses we can see the entire truth of what faith is, what OUR faith is, and what the life of Jesus means to both in a mere 18 lines. A half of a tenth of a percentage of the Bible can tell us everything we need to know about faith and how Jesus works in our faith; how much knowledge is waiting for us in that other 99.95%? As I said at the beginning of the message, I pray that in 2010 we will read the entire Bible and begin to contemplate its mysteries. Will you pray with me?

Heavenly Father,

you have given us the Word

so that you may be revealed to us

and that we may become your children.

Give us the strength

and the time

and the will

to read the record of your Word

to understand it

to write it on our hearts

and to take the Word into ourselves.

In Jesus name we pray,

Amen.

Which War is Sin?

Which War is Sin?

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."

"What should we do then?" the crowd asked.

John answered, "Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same."

Even tax collectors came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?"

"Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told them.

Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?"
He replied, "Don't shake people down for money and don't accuse them falsely—be content with your pay."

This week, Cordelia and I went to see A Christmas Carole at the Alhambra Dinner Theater. The Theater closed in October, but was bought by an investor. They stripped the place, cleaned it, got new cooks, and they are off and running.

I tell you, we had a great time. After the play, all Delia could talk about was how she wanted to act in a play and how wonderful the show and the fish was. She really liked the fish.

Delia even got to be on stage at the very end, after Scrooge had undergone his transformation. He apologized for despising all children. Delia said it was okay. She forgave him.

In 1934, the Church of the Brethren accepted the following statement at Annual Conference: all war is sin. We, therefore, cannot encourage, engage in, or willingly profit from armed conflict at home, or abroad. We cannot, in the event of war, accept military service or support the military machine in any capacity.

Seven years later 80% of those Brethren drafted joined the military and fought in World War II. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:34 not to worry about tomorrow. Likewise He tells us in Matthew 8:22 to let the dead bury the dead – I’m not interested in debating the morality of World War II. Church is not a history lesson but a place for a discussion of now.

In the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the very Ancient Mariner shoots an albatross in the middle of an ocean voyage. Albatross were tokens of good luck, sacred, in a way, to sailors. Shooting one was a grave sin. In fact, it resulted in the death of all aboard the ship, save the Mariner, who had to wear the Albatross, hung like a leaden cross, around his neck.

We are warned by Jesus of a similar punishment for a certain action. He tells us, in both Mark 9 and Matthew 18, that being a stumbling block for a child who believes in him is a sin – that it would be better to have a millstone hung about your neck & be cast into the ocean – that is, to be drowned.

If we look at an earlier place in Mark 9, Jesus tells us to welcome children – and that welcoming children not only greets Jesus but the Father as well. I spoke about that last month, that Jesus equates children with himself and with God. Certainly an appropriate thing to remember at Christmas.

What, though, does this have to do with war? Or indeed with today’s passage from Luke?

It is the traditional belief of the Church of the Brethren that all war is sin. Indeed, there have even been proscriptions against military and governmental service. This would seem to go against Jesus’ recognition of the Centurion in Matthew 8 as a man of great faith and John’s instructions to the soldiers in today’s passage. Neither of them say: “quit the Roman army.” Instead, John says “don’t extort money with violence or threats” – that is, “behave correctly.”

So, for those of you of military age or past military service, if you can or could behave correctly and have great faith, I commend you.

Let’s think for a moment, however, about that Theater.

Theater has often had a shaky relationship with the Church. After the Puritans took over following the English Civil War, the Theater was banned as immoral. Movies and plays are often protested by this church group or that, often with people crying “won’t someone think of the children?” Perhaps you feel the same way, that Hollywood is insidiously invading our homes and warping the minds of our children, crushing and destroying them and you get your friends together at dusk, whip them up into a rage and go burn that theater down

that has me and my daughter in it as we are watching a play about Christmas. Or maybe another parent and child – perhaps watching a terrible, unholy play. Maybe that parent is even a very bad person. And those actors and that director really did want to warp the minds of everyone they could – maybe they even wanted to kill them.

What would you have accomplished in the end by your acts but the murder of a child? How would you feel, seeing that little, broken body?

What if it were not you burning down that theater but your neighbor? How would you feel?

What if that theater were not a playhouse but a theater of war?

I know. We shy away from current political events. We’ve even got justification, as Brethren, for doing this. The Church, in its traditional stance of separatist nonviolence “has a passive interest only in the activities of state and makes no effort to influence diplomacy.” Heck, for a long time, our members didn’t even vote.

But today, today I fear we, as citizens of the United States of America who are more importantly citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven are in grave danger. I believe we have a millstone around our necks. And that millstone is Afghanistan.

You may have heard a term “collateral damage.” This is a 6-syllable word that means “dead children.” Oh, sometimes it also means “dead grown-up,” but what I’m concerned about – what Jesus tells us God is concerned about – are those dead children. How can they come to know the peace of Jesus and the love of God if we are paying to have bombs dropped on them?

How can we balance the safety of our troops, who willingly join to the service of the State, against the weight of a dead child?

Many of you may have voted for our current president in the hopes that he would end war. Some of you knew better. You knew, as the church of the Brethren once did, that “war is an inevitable and recurring evil so long as the heart of man is not at peace with God through the blood of His son.”

But here we have a leader who, far from creating peace, will send more troops and drop more bombs and kill more children who will never hear the good news that they are loved by God.

Brothers and sisters, we have to remove ourselves from this. We must make it clear that any method of war that involves “collateral damage” is unacceptable. But we must also understand that our actions are unlikely to change the behavior of nations – indeed, only God through Jesus can do that. So we must make it clear that we do not condone the murder of children and acknowledge that those murders are being carried out not only in our name but with our money and with our training.

I confess this is a hard message for me to give here, a relatively young member of the congregation, a fairly new member of the church. But when I was called to leadership, I knew that a great part of the call was to speak about how to live our lives each day for God. I’ve talked about what we are called to do regarding service and faith, but I think we’re all a bit afraid to talk about politics in our deeply divided society.

We know, of course, who the source of division is. Would that Satan got behind us all; would that we would crush him under our heels.

I had not intended for this to be my message today. I love the Christmas season. I was all geared up to talk about the coming of Jesus.

But Jesus, as Christmas reminds us, was first a child. And out of our love for Jesus, we should love and protect all children and speak out when they are in harm’s way, even if we are putting them there.

When we pray for our nation and our leaders, we shouldn’t pray in the hateful fashion of those who would abuse the 108^th Psalm, but in the fashion of Tim Tebow, whose eyepatch verse, John 16:33, was especially poignant last night:

“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

We should pray that our leaders remember that peace is in Christ Jesus, not in bombs and drones.

I say this because of a dream. If I despaired in delivering today’s message, I certainly resisted speaking about this. Thursday night, I had the most terrible dream I have ever had. I dreamt that I was in a house with another man. We had a one-year-old Cordelia with us. She was crying. We each shot her, but still she cried, so I had to shoot her one more time. Then her face was frozen with weeping. I threw her dead body on a heap of children. In my dream I wept when I knew what I had done. I woke paralyzed with pain and sorrow; the images from the dream are still fresh in my mind. Helpless I prayed to God: “please take these images from my mind.” To my dismay, I was answered clearly: I was given these dreams because I was doing the very same thing – I and every American was killing Afghan children. We were responsible for those deaths and God despised our actions.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even relax. I tried, believe me. Being a poet, I wrote a little poem in my head that made me feel better:

No peace,
No victory
is worth a murdered child.
We’ve got to stop the war today.

One weight lifted, but I was still restless. I could finally get out of bed, though. I went and cradled my sleeping daughters, overjoyed they were still alive. But the weight was not gone. I went downstairs and wrote of the dream in an email to a few friends I knew, both in real life and online, and felt I could finally sleep.

But I, nor you, can never rest. We are violating the law of God. We must all fervently pray for guidance, forgiveness, and peace. We must remember in our actions and our conversations that we are followers of Christ Jesus and children of the living God before we are anything else.

We must forgive ourselves, our leaders, our enemies, and our soldiers. We must pray for peace.

Pray with me:

God, we sin in so many ways,
but you find a way to forgive us.
Forgive us now,
wash us with your son’s blood
even removing the blood of daughters and sons
murdered in our name.
We pray that we may do your will
and that we may be instruments not of war
but of peace.
Pray for our leaders and the leaders of the world
over whom you hold dominion
that they may seek to create order
through peace and bravery,
not war and cowardice.
Show us your way, Lord,
and give us the strength to obey.

Cliche to Salvation

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

Jesus and Satan were having an argument as to who was the better programmer.

This went on for a few hours until they agreed to hold a contest with God 

as the judge.   

They sat at their computers and began.

They typed furiously for several hours, lines of code streaming up on the 

screen.  

Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning struck, 

taking out the electricity.  Moments later, the power was restored, and 

God announced that the contest was over.  He asked Satan to show what he 

had come up with. 

Satan was visibly upset, and cried, "I have nothing!  I lost it all when 

the power went out."

"Very well, then," God said, "Let us see if Jesus did any better."

Jesus entered a command, and the screen came to life in vivid display, 

the voices of an angelic choir poured forth from the speakers. 

Satan was astonished.  He stuttered, "But how?!  I lost everything, 

yet Jesus's program is intact!  How did he do it?"

God chuckled, "Jesus saves"

“Jesus Saves” is, to put it mildly, an abused phrase in the English language. You can buy a t-shirt that says “Jesus Saves: he passes to Moses who shoots and scores!” in four or five different versions. My favorite refers to nerdy role-playing games: “Jesus saves; everyone else takes full damage.”

The problem when a phrase is overused and “tired” is that it loses meaning. If you repeat a word or a phrase long enough you reach “semantic satiation”; all meaning disappears and all you’re left with is the sound.

Not that the sound of Jesus is unimportant. There’s a delightful hymn about “something about that name” and we sang this morning with the praise band “call upon the name of the Lord.”

But when we reach “semantic satiation” as a culture, well, we’ve got to see things in a new light.

Jesus, of course, was The Light. Perhaps he was curing a bit of “semantic satiation” when he responded to that “teacher of the law.” The first part of Jesus’s summary of the Law is known as the “S’hma Yisrael” – in Deut. chap. 6 -- It’s the most important prayer in Judaism: “Hear O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One!” Observant Jews say it when they rise and when they go to bed. It’s called out in service.

We should try that. Let’s say it together.

Let’s try it again.

Once more.

Perhaps if we did this all the time, we’d reach semantic satiation. I can tell you, as a former Episcopalian, that “the Lord be with you and also with you let us give thanks it is right to give thanks and praise it is a right and joyful thing at all times to give thanks and praise” can pretty easily turn in to background noise. So much so that we’d open our mouths silently with the clear and lovely bells.

My teenage friends and I even stopped saying “and also with you.” We said “right back at ya!” Of course some folks were a bit taken aback, but it did a good job of reminding them why we were saying those words.

So how does Jesus play with semantic satiation here?

He takes the first part of the S’hma. Jesus says: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'

What he doesn’t say is the rest of the S’hma: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

Why?

Two good reasons, I think. The first is that he was talking to a crowd full of Jews. Everyone knew the rest of the S’hma as surely as if I said “I pledge allegiance” or “who lives in a pineapple under the sea?” in a classroom of first graders.

The second is our more important reason. Jesus was not summarizing the law; Jesus was prioritizing the law. This is something that happens throughout the New Testament. The prioritizing over summarizing speaks to the nature of why Jesus came – the ol’ “spirit of the law vs. letter of the law” only without ambiguity. Jesus came because we were getting it wrong. We were focusing on the law without understanding the law.

So Jesus does not say the rest of the S’hma because the part he leaves out is about following the commandments that the Jews are about to receive. Jesus doesn’t want his audience then or now to think about those 613 mitzvot. And continuing to quote the S’hma is going to put us in that mind-set.

No, what Jesus wants us to think about is the commandment that he is about to give. I think you can argue that Jesus tells us to do three things: forgive each other, sin no more, and this commandment that He sets only below (and directly parallel to) loving God.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you’re reading along, you’ll notice that Jesus is quoting here, from Leviticus 19:18.

Jesus then says that no commandment is greater than these. That is, if you’re doing what Jesus has just said, you’re doing what God wants you to be doing.

Even knowing this puts you, like the teacher of the law “not far from the Kingdom of God.”

Now folks who are caught up in the idea of sola fide might get a little uncomfortable here. Sola fide, for those of you who don’t know is “by faith alone,” the idea that we are justified and saved solely through faith. The ol “faith not works” argument.

‘Course I think it’s hogwash. Because first and foremost, we’re not saved by anything WE do. Thinking that we are responsible for our salvation is hubris which is like arrogance but worse and it discounts the purpose of Jesus’ life and sacrifice. No, we’re not saved by anything we can do. We’re saved by God’s grace shown to us through His Son’s sacrifice. That’s why we’re saved.

Now, we’ve got to accept that. And that’s where the sola fide folks stop. But that’s not where Jesus wants us to stop. If we’ve accepted that God has saved us from death, brought us into a new life, birthed us again we cannot go around acting like we used to.

It’s not faith versus works, brothers and sisters. It’s that without works how do you know that you have been saved and how can you tell others?

We should never be secure enough in our righteousness that we feel we can leave the works Jesus has called us to alone. Because any righteousness we have is a gift from God. We’re broken, we’re sinners, all we deserve is to be flung like trash on the fires of Gehenna. Everything we have is a gift from God and what we ought to do is the work God asks us to do?

And what is that?

Well Jesus says it clearly don’t you think?

God is one. Love God with all you have. Love your neighbor as yourself.

If you rewrote the testimony of the Gospels as a powerpoint presentation with bulleted lists I think that would be a good first slide. You can understand all of what Jesus says and does with those two equally important commandments – now we know they’re equal because Jesus says none of the other commandments are as important as they are. The second comes from the first but they’re both important – just like the Father and the Son.

So what’s the next question we should ask ourselves, as followers of Jesus who thank God every day that the darkness was lifted long enough from our eyes that we called upon the name of the Lord and were made free?

We know we’re supposed to love our neighbor – but how do we do that?

Well like I said, the Greatest Commandment is a good way to understand scripture, especially the New Testament. And Jesus happens to have a nice parable about what it’s like to be a good neighbor.

That’s another cliché we all know, right?

“Like a Good Neighbor. . .”

(you’re humming it even if you aren’t singing it).

And in chapter 10 of Luke’s account – just after Jesus gives the Great Commandment, the teacher of the law asks “who is my neighbor?”

And Jesus replies with the parable of the Good Samaritan:

A Jewish man was traveling on a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road. By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side. Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’

I’m not sure how many of you know this but “despised Samaritan” doesn’t really come close. This is worse than if a Gator fan were stranded on the side of the road and a Bulldogs fan helped him out (you thought I wouldn’t talk about football, didn’t you?). The Jews and the Samaritans loathed each other. They each accused the other of blasphemy and false religion. They had been hating each other for the better part of 7 centuries at that point. They were so foul and low in the eyes of the Jews that when the teacher responds to Jesus, the teacher of the law can’t even say “Samaritan.”

“Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked. The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

So, a neighbor is not someone you like or who looks like you or who you agree with. A neighbor is someone whom you help and love because God has created you to do so.

Were we perfect our neighbors would be the whole of the people in the world.

We aren’t perfect, though, and so we can, with God’s help, make neighbors of all we meet.

Now some of you may be uncomfortable at the thought of helping that beat-up looking bum in the street who happens to be of an ethnic or religious group you and your whole family hates. It may terrify you to reach out and touch that man, pull him up close to you, clean his wounds, take him in your car and drive him where he needs to be.

So you might plunk an extra dollar in the offering plate.

Nope.

What God wants us to do – what Jesus is asking us to do when we are neighborly is to have some faith and to have some follow-through.

Pregnancy counseling clinics get a bad name. Do you know why? Because most of them employ a sonogram tech and they show the mom a picture of her baby and get her all teary-eyed and she decides not to have an abortion and she goes out the door and then what?

Nothing. Nothing but a baby born in poverty to a mother who doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into.

If you’ve seen the movie Charlie Wilson’s War or if you just paid some attention in the early 1980s, you’ll know that the US armed and trained all those mujahadeen in Afghanistan that first Bush and now Obama are so diligently trying to kill.

Why? We trained ‘em to fight the Commies of course. And when they won that war – when they drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan and won back what had become a bombed-out shell of a nation, what did we do?

We left them out to dry. Packed up our money and our muscle and left.

If we give a man the tools to make his own life he will. If we give him a burger and our pocket change we’ve proven to him that begging works.

Charity – caritas – dearness – should be the word “agape” – unconditional love and kindness is not giving out trinkets. Loving our neighbor as ourself means we treat our neighbor as we would be treated – as we would have Jesus treat us.

This is why it’s at once easy and impossible to follow Jesus, brothers and sisters. The next time your heart is moved to help your neighbor, remember the Good Samaritan. To be a neighbor you must show mercy – and you must discover and give what is needed for healing, not just immediate succor but for new birth. It’s hard. It’s impossible to do on your own. But it’s easy with God – and with God you’ll know what to do.

This “easy way” brings us back to sola fide. Those people who think that faith is “enough” – they just don’t want to work.

Jesus may have said “my yoke is easy and my burden is light” – but, people, it’s still a burden. Belief is a burden. It’s also a blessing. The Army isn’t “the toughest job you’ll ever love” unless it’s the Lord’s Army.

Mark 12 and Luke 10 are about Jesus talking to teachers of the Law. Some try to trap Him with logical puzzles. But this one teacher – he doesn’t want to make himself look good, he wants to know what it is to be good.

So Jesus gives him a straight answer. No parable, no hidden meaning. Nothing to puzzle over.

Yet we have puzzled. We have fought against this clearest commandment. We have cursed our brothers’ shortcomings while ignoring our massive failures. We have behaved, not like the filthy, ignorant, hated Samaritan, but like the priest – either the one who walks by or the one who gives his tithe with fanfare and a sense that the size of ones donation to the church equals the size of ones influence; we have assumed that the single, jobless mother would magically be able to feed that baby – that the Afghans would magically rebuild their country from rubble and ash – that the broken man on the street would be healed because we dropped a dollar in his hat.

In short, we have not loved. We have not loved fully and unconditionally. We have not cared enough to answer the needs of our neighbors and instead we answer the calling of our own selfish desires. So we have no neighbors.

And yet we are ignorant and arrogant enough to wonder why we are all alone in this world. To wonder why churches decline and babies are murdered and wars increase.

When the answer is simple. We refuse to be neighbors. We refuse to follow the most important commandment of them all. The pillar and ground of the law – we refuse to follow.

And so we are refuse.

And so we pray,

Lord, we know we are worthy only of fire;

if we must be trash

let us warm the hands of the homeless

let us fill the hearts of the needy

and employ the hands of the idle.

You have shown us how to be neighbors, Lord.

Melt our hearts that

our fears

our desires

our stumbling blocks

may be removed

that we may be a neighbor to those in need

and to all the world.

In Jesus name we pray,

Amen.