How Are We Using Our Talents
"For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, "Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.' His master said to him, "Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, "Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.' His master said to him, "Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, "Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.' But his master replied, "You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'- Matthew 25:14-30
So, what do you do with your talents? Do you invest them? Do you bury them in the ground? If you invest them, how do you invest them? Do you invest your talents in a way that’s supposed to make you money, or in a way that serves God?
The last question is the key question for us, isn’t it? When we think of investing, we pretty much always think of it in financial terms. We don’t think of it in spiritual terms. Why is that? Why don’t we think of our service to God as an investment? I’m pretty sure Dan Barker sees what he does as an investment.
Dan Barker has lived a tough life, but that never stopped him from investing in life. Barker grew up as a troubled child in Sacramento, California. His father left home when he was four, and he never saw him again. His mother remarried soon after, but it was never a happy marriage. What Dan remembers most of his childhood was the overwhelming sense of sadness in his home. It just seemed that everyone was continually melancholy. His half-brother and half-sister manifested the sadness more in their lives than Dan. The brother ended up in prison and died of a drug overdose. His sister struggled her whole life with anorexia. To get out of the home, Dan enlisted in the Marines as a 17 year-old.
It was 1964, and he served in Vietnam as a medic. It was a terrible time for him, and he saw things that have haunted him throughout his whole life. As he says, he doesn’t know if he has ever had a good night sleep since he left Vietnam.
Returning from Vietnam, Dan went to college on the G.I. bill, studying history, English, and philosophy. Upon graduation he really didn’t know what to do with his life. He bounced around from job to job, eventually working for Garland Nursery in Albany, Oregon. It was there that he found his calling. He loved to grow plants. It became a passion. His favorite time of year was when the seed catalogues came out. He would pour over them from cover to cover, delighting in their descriptions of the plants that would grow, such as the “rich flesh” of the cantaloupes. They touched him on a spiritual level.
He continued working in the nursery, but had to get other jobs to supplement his income. It was in one of these other jobs that he made a decision to invest his talents. He was working at the Hoot Owl Grocery, a convenience store, when three men came into the store and robbed it at gunpoint. Pointing the gun at Dan’s head, the leader said, “You can identify me, can’t you?” Dan replied, “No, not really.” The man then turned and fled, taking with him $117. At that moment Dan knew two things: First, he knew that he never wanted to work in a convenience store again. Second, he knew he had to share his passion for growing with those in need. He had already been thinking of an idea of what to do, but now he knew that he needed to pursue it.
Here was his idea. He would build gardens in the inner city for poor people to grow vegetables so that they could improve their health and supplement their income. So in the spring of 1984, supported by a $5000 government grant, as well as 15,000 packets of year-old seeds donated from a local firm, he loaded up a truck full of dirt and wood, and went to the inner city of Portland, Oregon to build a vegetable garden in the back yard of a man named Al Honeyman. Honeyman had muscular dystrophy, and was on disability. Dan built the frame for the garden and filled it with dirt. He then taught Honeyman and his neighbors how to care for the garden. That spring he built 21 gardens in the city. The next spring he built 56. The following spring he built 117. In 1989 he went national, expanding his talent to other cities. To date, over 50,000 of these gardens have been built across the nation, and more are coming. Barker himself has built well over 1400 of them, but because of his arthritis he mostly supervises now (taken from Biography Magazine, 2003). Dan Barker was given a very small talent, and he multiplied it a thousand-fold. The spiritual irony about Dan Barker’s talent is that he actually invested his talents in the ground, and it multiplied them a thousand-fold.
Where do you invest your talents? Everyday, God gives everyone some sort of gift and calls us to use it to make the world better. And every day millions of people ignore that call. They don’t mean to ignore it. They just don’t listen for God much, and when they do, they don’t think creatively about what they hear. They don’t connect what small skills they have with the possibility of sharing them beyond themselves in a way that makes the world just a little better. They bury their talents in the ground by doing nothing. I’m not saying that we have to do everything with every talent God gives us. That would leave us with no balance in life. I’m simply saying that too often we hear God’s calling to invest our talents, and we do nothing.
For example, we are in our annual stewardship period when we receive pledges for the next year. Do you consider your pledge to be just what you give to support the church, or do you think beyond that by recognizing it as an investment in what God is doing? Too few Christians recognize their giving to the church and to charity as an investment, mostly because when they think of investments they think only in terms of investments that come back to them. They worry about whether they will make or lose money, whether their investment will be good for them or a waste of time. When God calls us to invest our talents, God doesn’t think the way we do. God calls us to make investments that come back to God, so that through God they can make the world better for everyone, including us.
Do you look at your giving that way? Do you consider your giving be an investment in God in which you are investing back into God part of what God has given you? I want you to consider it this way. Everything you have is from God. Everything. What are you willing to give back to God to invest in life? 1%? 2%? 5%? 10%? I know that for myself, I am very committed to giving back to God at least 10%, which is why each year I give back to Calvin Church almost ¼ of my salary. I don’t do it to be seen as good or to get into heaven. I do it to thank God and to invest what God has given me back into God.
Our Forward in Faith campaign, the one responsible for our renovation and new building, is exactly that kind of investment. We invested money into this church to create a facility that would multiply our talents for God. This building was never about the building. It has always been about investing in God. Nobody thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if we had a bigger, nicer church?” The whole focus was on the fact that the small, cramped, falling apart building that we had was causing us to start burying our investments in the ground. The building was impeding our ministry. Our classrooms were too small. Only a few on our staff had offices or workspaces. Our downstairs was chronically moldy, musty, and unsafe. What we did was to invest in God by creating a place where God could do more through us. And this is why we will be embarking on a new campaign in the spring. We will be embarking on a campaign to invest more in God so that we can retire our debt and be able to grow our ministry into the future. In the end, the question is always, “Are you investing your talents in God, or burying them in the ground?”
Throughout our lives God is constantly calling, saying, “Do something with what I’ve given you.” We don’t have to change the world. We only have to invest in a way that changes the small part of the world we live in. The question is, where are you investing your talents?
Amen.
To Pray Without Ceasing
Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing. But we appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to respect those who labor among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you; esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good;
- 1 Thessalonians 5:12-21
You know, one of the problems of being Protestants in American is that often we act like Christianity started in America, and that the only true Christian faith is an American Protestant faith. The tragedy of thinking this way is that we often miss amazing movements of faith that take place in other Christian sects, movements that can draw us closer to God if we’re willing to pay attention and to follow.
One such movement took place in Russia around 1888. Out of nowhere a book was published by an anonymous author, and this little book revolutionized the way people thought about prayer. The book was titled The Way of a Pilgrim. It is the autobiography of an Eastern Orthodox pilgrim on a circuitous route to the Holy Lands. No one knows who wrote it, or even if it was a true autobiography or simply a profound work of fiction. What was powerful about the book was that its made our little passage for this morning come alive for millions of Christians by teaching them a way to pray without ceasing.
After the book was published it spread throughout Russia, and then throughout Europe, eventually making it’s way to America. Along the way it has influenced millions of Christians.
The book begins with the pilgrim telling of how he once had a wife and child who died during a smallpox outbreak, or something like that. In despair he wandered, not knowing where to turn. So he sought out a staret, which, in the Orthodox tradition, is the title given to a great spiritual master and guide. The staret teaches the pilgrim the secret of praying without ceasing. He teaches him to practice a form of prayer called hesychastic prayer, which is a Greek word meaning “Jesus Christ.” The prayer is based on breathing. As the person breathes in, he prays in his mind, “Lord Jesus Christ.” As he breathes out he prays, “Have mercy on me.” It’s a constant cycle of prayer, breathing in, “Lord Jesus Christ;” breathing out, “have mercy on me.” Breathing in, “Lord Jesus Christ;” breathing out, “have mercy on me.
The staret tells him to practice this prayer several hundred times a day. Then he increases the number of times he prays it. The pilgrim begins to journey around Russia, hoping to eventually reach Jerusalem, increasing his prayer as he walks: 1000 times a day, 3000 times a day, 6000 times a day, 12,000 times a day. As he increases his prayer, he finds that he is slowly becoming transformed. He becomes more patient, wiser, more understanding of life, and more courageous in simply following wherever God leads. The prayer centers him, allowing him to overcome anything in life. As his prayer moves from his mind to his heart, his focus becomes more and more simply on pleasing God. Toward the end he says that the prayer moves from his conscious mind to his heart as his heart prays it no matter what he is doing—talking, working, or eating. The book is remarkable in its simplicity, but also in teaching a form of prayer that is so simple, and so powerful.
As a way of introducing you to this prayer, I want to give you an opportunity to practice it. I want you to stop right now and try it. We’re going to change the prayer a bit. As you breathe in, pray in your mind, “Bless the Lord,” and as you breathe out, “O, my soul.” Try it for two minutes of silence. Your mind will wander a bit, but don’t worry about that. Just stay with your breathing, and see what effect it has on you.
Bless the Lord,
O my soul.
What did you experience? This way of praying is very much centered in the guidance of Psalm 46, where we hear, “Be still and know that I am God.” It’s meant to center and still us.
A hundred years before The Way of a Pilgrim was published, another little known book was published that also revolutionized Christian faith. The book was a compilation of writings about an unknown French monk named Brother Lawrence. After he died, his eulogy was shared with others, and copies spread around Europe among Roman Catholics and even Protestants. Then reflections on the life of Brother Lawrence were shared. Finally, letters that he had written to others were spread about Europe. Eventually all were compiled in a book that has influenced generations of Christians for centuries. The book is titled, The Practice of the Presence of God. The book describes another approach to praying without ceasing.
Brother Lawrence was a latecomer to monastic life. He joined the monastery at age 41 or so. He was not considered a great man of prayer. In fact, he often wrote about how poor he was at staying awake during worship, and at keeping regular times for prayer. So he created a different way of praying. He kept a conversation with God going on throughout his day. His job in the monastery was to keep the kitchen clean. So as he swept he talked with God, both sharing his heart and listening to God’s soft, still voice. As he washed dishes he talked with God. When doing errands for the monastery, he spoke with and listened to God. He worked at becoming fully aware of God throughout his day, looking for God’s presence everywhere. He also prayed without ceasing
So, how do you pray? Do you pray? I don’t know about you, but I find prayer to be both the most important, and the most difficult, part of the Christian life. It’s hard to find the time to pray. It’s hard to know what the right way to pray is. It’s hard to tell if God is listening because silence always accompanies prayer. We pray, but we don’t always get tangible evidence that God has listened or is responding.
Another problem with prayer is that if we’re actually going to become people of prayer, we have to begin to care about what God wants, but that’s not always our focus in prayer. Think about how most of us pray. When are we most likely to go to God in prayer? Isn’t it when we need something? Usually our prayers are filled with requests for God to do this or that. We aren’t usually focused on what God wants. Really, what happens is that we treat prayer much like Aladdin’s lamp, hoping that we can find the secret to rub God just the right way. We focus on holding our hands just the right way, trying to use just the right words, sitting in the right position, praying in the right place. We have a hard time just praying and trusting that God’s listened.
To really pray in the depths of our souls we have to care about what God wants. How much do we really want to know what God wants? When I came to Calvin Church that was my central question: How much do we care about what God wants? I learned to care about that question when I was an associate pastor prior to coming to Calvin. Specifically, I learned it while helping to lead a retreat for our session. I did an exercise in which we looked at Moses’ life and how he desperately did not want to lead the Israelites. He asked God to send another. He asked God why he was chosen. God told Moses to serve anyway. The question I asked the elders was what Moses’ life tells us about what we are to seek as elders. We talked about how we were to make decisions based on what God wants, not on what we want.
During the discussions one of the elders said, “I don’t like this at all. I don’t like asking what God wants. I know what I want, and I like voting based on what I want.” I was taken by surprise a bit, but then I asked, “Are you saying that we shouldn’t seek what God wants?” He said, “Oh no! We should always seek what God wants. I’m just telling you that I don’t like it.” That stuck with me. Coming here I was determined that we would be a church that prays as a session, as leaders, and as a congregation, seeking what God wanted rather than what we wanted. That needed to be our focus: “God, what do you want? God, how do you want me to be?”
Seeking what God wants is the calling of our passage. It’s not only to pray, but to pray without ceasing. We’re called to talk with God constantly. We’re called to listen for God constantly, and to let God lead us constantly, even to where we don’t want to follow.
Do you have any idea why God wants us to pray without ceasing? It’s simple: God wants a union of mind, heart, and soul with you and me. God wants a relationship with us, but God wants more. God wants to penetrate our hearts, minds, and souls. God wants to be part of everything we are. God wants to share a life with us. The question, in the end, is whether we are willing to share our lives with God?
Amen.
Loving God, Loving Others
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, " "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."- Matthew 22: 34-40
I love this passage. To me, it explains Christian faith in a nutshell. What's Christian faith about? Loving God with everything we have, and then others as ourselves. In fact, I think this passage is ground zero for the whole Bible, the place out of which everything else in the Bible flows. It is not only the central teaching of Jesus in the gospels, it emanates from the first commandment in the Old Testament.
So if love is so central to the Bible, why do we have such a hard time making love central our lives? We're not necessarily bad at love, but we're sure biased in our love. Think about this for a moment. We generally love the most those who like us and are the most like us, and we love the least those who dislike us and are the most unlike us. Ponder what I just said for a moment.
I'll show you what I mean. There was a woman who met a friend from long ago in the checkout line of a supermarket. They hadn't seen each other for years. Her friend asked her, “So how your children? Are they married?” “Yes,” the woman replied. “One has a great marriage, the other a bad one. My son, he is in a bad marriage. He is married to the laziest woman on earth. She expects him to do everything. She won't cook, she won't clean, she doesn't pay the bills. All she does is lie in bed all day reading, and expects my son to even bring her breakfast in bed.”
“What about your daughter,” the friend asked. “Oh, my daughter is in the most wonderful marriage. She is married to a prince. He does everything. He cooks for her. He cleans. He tells her just to take it easy, sit in bed or lie on a couch all day and read. And get this. He is so thoughtful that most mornings he brings her breakfast in bed.”
We are so biased when it comes to our love. Why do we have such a hard time loving everyone? Truth? It all comes down to the conflict between biology and spirituality. I'm not sure why this is, but most of us somehow think that because we are spiritual, or because humans are a sophisticated and higher form of creature, that we aren't influenced much by biology. We are. In fact, our biological wiring influences most of everything we do. Let me give you a basic introduction to psychology 101. Psychology understands that biology plays a huge part in our everyday behavior, and it is a discipline devoted to understanding the role biology plays. It understands that our minds are often controlled, or at least heavily influenced, by our endocrine systems, hormones, frontal lobes, pituitary glands, amygdalas, reticular activating systems, rigt and left hemispheres, and so much more. Our thoughts and actions have a heavy biological basis.
One of the ways our biology is influences us the most is through our survival instinct. Most of us don't even come close to realizing how much this survival instinct plays in everyday life, and how it influences our ability to love. We not only have a strong survival instinct when it comes to protecting our food sources, our families, and our homes. We also have a strong survival instinct that protects our beliefs and values. I don't just mean our religious or political beliefs. I mean our beliefs about others and ourselves. We humans are a very self-protective species.
We sense threats all the time, whether in the workplace or at home. For instance, are you married? If so, do you ever fight with your spouse? And if you do, what do you fight about? We may think we are fighting over the dishes, finances, and intimacy, but the truth is that we are generally fighting because we feel threatened in one way or another by our spouses. They say things to us in ways that cause us to be defensive. Defensiveness is a survival reaction. It is a reaction to a threat, whether it is the threat of someone telling us that we're slobs, which we hear as them telling us that we are bad, or the threat of someone telling us that we aren't a good husband or wife. These feelings of being threatened extend to the workplace, among friends, or even listening to the radio. Most of us feel threatened in one small way or another throughout our days. It's all part of our animal nature.
When we defend ourselves by criticizing them, we are acting out of our survival instinct, trying to protect ourselves and diminish others who may be a threat. You see this same biology playing out in our elections. Have you noticed that as the election campaigns get closer to the wire, the attacks on each other become more aggressive? Why? Because the candidates are getting closer to the end, and they see their opponents more and more as threats. So they do what anyone does when threatened: they attack as a way of defending themselves and diminishing the threat. We may not like it, but it happens. In fact, the more we identify with a candidate, the more we tend to feel threatened not only by his or her opponent, but by his or her supporters. This is why politics is so hard to talk about. People get incredibly defensive about their candidates and their own political opinions. They see others as threats to their beliefs and values, and act aggressively to protect themselves.
We cannot escape the fact that we are biological and act too often out of our survival instincts. We may be biological beings, but we're also spiritual, and it is the spiritual part of us that connects us with love. C. S. Lewis points out our double nature when he says that we are amphibians. And just as amphibians inhabit both watery world and an earthy world, we inhabit both an earthly world and spiritual world. The problem is that love is really of the spiritual world, not the earthly.
You can see the spiritual nature of love in John's writings. In 1 John 4, John writes, “ God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” That is a radical statement. What he is saying is that love not only comes from God, but that it is the essence of God. God is love. The two are indistinguishable from each other. Not only that, but anytime we truly love another, we are letting God love through us. We become spiritual in that moment. Anytime we lock love out, we lock God out and we become merely biological.
John also says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” What is he saying here? Among other things he is saying that love casts out fear, which is our biological survival instinct. He is saying that when we fear, we cast out God because we are living purely according to our biological instincts. When we love, we are living in the spiritual, and if not overriding the biological, we are at least allowing the spiritual to guide the biological. In effect, love means being rooted in God. When we love, we are living more in the spiritual than the biological, and it enables us to be more than just our biological wiring.
The whole point of our passage is that we have a choice: will biology control us, or will we choose to let the spiritual guide us? There's a very simple way to tell whether biology and protectiveness, or love and spirituality, reigns in our lives: to what extent do we tend to get irritated with others, feel threatened by others, need to be approved by others, need to put others in their place, criticize others, or defend ourselves from others? If the answer is that these feelings are strong in our lives, then biology determines a lot in our lives. On the other hand, to what extent do we tend to like others, want to help others, offer to do things for others without expecting a reward, like to compliment others, find the good in others? The stronger these are, the more we live in the spiritual.
Our passage teaches us to live in the spiritual by loving God with everything we have, and then making that the basis for our love of others. And Jesus gives a great example of this. In Luke's gospel, a parable is added to Jesus' command to love God first, then others as ourselves. He tells the story of the Good Samaritan. This is a story of spirituality overriding the survival instinct.
You know the story. A man lies beaten by the side of the road, and three people come upon him. The first, a Levite, will not help the man because the man threatens his survival. He knows that there may be bandits lurking behind the rocks who have beaten the man and are now using him to a lure, beat, and rob others. Also, he knows that if he touches the man, and he is dead, he'll be unclean for 7 days. He is afraid. So he keeps going. The priest also sees the man, but similarly fearing touching a dead body, he passes by. You see, as a priest in the Temple of Jerusalem , he serves only two weeks a year. He is probably in the midst of his two-week service. He doesn't want contamination and defilement to interfere with his service to God in the Temple. So he keeps going.
The Samaritan, in contrast, is the one who has the most to fear. The Jews hated Samaritans. Why? Because they were syncretists. This means that they had been Jewish centuries before, but as they had been attacked and overcome by enemies, they had allowed other religious beliefs and practice to change their Jewish faith. They still saw themselves as Jewish, but now had their own Temple and their own practices. The Jews considered them to be among the most sinful of all, more sinful than Gentiles, because they had defiled the Jewish faith. The Samaritan was at the most risk by helping the man. He not only could be beaten by other bandits and be declared unclean, but he if he was falsely accused by the Jews of beating the man, who would believe him? Who would take the word of a Samaritan? Yet, amidst all his fears, he is the one who lets go of fear, acts out of love, and helps the man by binding his wounds, taking him to an inn, paying for his stay, and offering to pay for longer if need be. He put aside his animal anxiety to live out of his spirituality—to live according to God's love and to let God love through him. This parable shows us the way of love.
We are called to live according to love. We are called to let go of our animal natures to be able to love more and more out of our spiritual natures. Our passage is basically a call to rise above our animal natures to take on God's nature . The question is to what extent are we willing to put our biology aside for God?
Amen.
Do Religion and Poltics Mix?
Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.- Matthew 22:15-22
About a month ago I saw an interview on television that irked me. A reporter was interviewing different people about their thoughts on Barack Obama, and one woman said, “I don’t like Obama. He’s a Muslim, and this is a Christian nation.” Can you tell which part of that statement irked me? It wasn’t the part about Obama being a Muslim, although I am tired of people saying that. When people say that, it’s an ignorant statement on so many levels. First, because it’s not true. Second, because it’s a statement that’s prejudiced against Muslims, and I find that destructive. I’m also not saying that you should vote for Obama. I’m just pointing out the ignorance of saying he is a Muslim. Despite my disagreement with that part of her comment, it is her saying we are a Christian nation that bothers me.
Now, why would it bother me to hear someone say we’re a Christian nation? Shouldn’t I agree with her? After all, I am a pastor. The truth is that a lot of Christians would agree that we’re a Christian nation, and a quick look at American history seems to support this belief. The only problem is that you’d have to look at American history very quickly and very narrowly to support this belief. The truth is that the Founding Fathers never saw us as a Christian nation. In fact, they didn’t even think in categories of Christian/non-Christian at all. They thought in terms of denominations and whose version of Christianity was right. The people of the time saw their own denominations as being truly Christian, and all others as being false to one degree or another. To say that they saw us as a Christian nation is misleading because they didn’t see Christianity the same way we do now, as one religion with many difference expressions.
To understand the differences, you have to go back to understanding the colonization of North America. Most of those who migrated to the colonies, especially those who established the colonies, did so as a way of establishing a state where they would be free to pursue their own religion. For instance, the Puritans who settled in Massachusetts came from the east of England. These were Calvinists who believed that to truly be Christian meant to seek a way of purification during this life. They strove to overcome sin, and to create God’s kingdom on earth. They also saw all other Christians, and especially the Anglicans (whom today we call Episcopalians), as misguided and unchristian. They were especially against the Anglicans because it was officially the Church of England, and thus the state religion. What made it worse was that they had been persecuted at the hands of English Anglicans.
Meanwhile, those who settled in Virginia were mostly Anglicans. They saw the Church of England as the only true church, and all others as heretics. These folks came from the south of England and were part of the landed gentry class. They believed in a hierarchy in which God came first, then the king (or queen—Virginia was named after Elizabeth, the “virgin queen”), then the Lords, then everyone else. They believed that the bottom of this hierarchy, religiously, were the Roman Catholics because they were followers of the pope, whom they suspected of being the antichrist.
The Quakers settled into Pennsylvania as part of a great experiment by William Penn. Penn wanted to create a colony of tolerance, love, and peace (hence they name Philadelphia, or city of brotherly love). Pennsylvania was later settled by the Scots-Irish, the Lutherans, the Mennonites, and the Amish precisely because they were welcomed by the Quakers, even if they were somewhat distrusted.
The Scots-Irish originally came from the borderlands between Scotland and England, where they developed a fiercely independent brand of Christianity. It was a brand rooted in scripture, but only to the extent that scripture agreed with what they agreed with. They did not see people of any other denomination as Christians. These folks saw themselves as the only Christians, and they weren’t always convinced that each other were Christians.
Maryland was settled by Roman Catholics (hence the name Maryland, which venerated both the virgin Mary and Mary the Roman Catholic sister of Elizabeth). The Roman Catholics were universally disliked by all the other denominations. They were considered to be papists and followers of the fallen faith. Remember that the Reformation had taken place only 50 to 100 years before. Distrust and denigration of Roman Catholics was high among all the other colonies.
As the colonies matured, there may have been a tentative willingness to come together as colonies economically, but there was still as distrust of each others’ faith. Again, they did not see themselves as Christian. They saw themselves as whatever denomination they were.
By the time of the Founding Fathers, the different denominations still looked down at each other—a condition that really wasn’t overcome until the 20th century. Even when it came to signing the declaration, there was reluctance to join each other because of distrust until one particular Anglican clergyman stated that despite his distrust of Presbyterians and Congregationalists, he would sign the declaration for the benefit of the all. Again, they didn’t see themselves as Christians in the way we see ourselves as Christian. They saw themselves as Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Congregationalists, and even Methodists.
In addition, while many of the Founding Fathers were religious, they saw themselves more as learned men. Not all saw themselves as Christians, and some never even went to church. While basic Protestant theology influenced their beliefs, they were just as heavily influenced by the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, the tradition of Roman democracy, and the English parliamentary system since the signing of the Magna Carter. To say that they were Christians trying to found a Christian nation simply isn’t true. Christian ideals under girded part of their beliefs, but they would have been reluctant to identify themselves as Christians.
So, would Jesus promote any nation being a Christian nation? Not if you believe our passage for this morning. Our passage is one in which a trap is set for Jesus. The Pharisees and the Herodians (those charged with maintaining peace on behalf of the Romans) wanted to find a way to arrest Jesus. So they ask him a cleverly designed question: is it lawful to pay taxes. Here’s the trap. If Jesus said yes, then the Jews, who hated the Romans and saw paying taxes as a form of Caesar worship, would have rejected Jesus. Remember that in the Temple of Jerusalem, the whole problem of the money-changers existed because the Jews demanded that temple tax be paid in Jewish shekels, not Roman denarii. If Jesus supported paying taxes, he would have been seen as being in collusion with the Romans. The people would have rejected him and his message. If he had said that it wasn’t right to pay taxes, the Herodians, the government of the province, would have had him arrested for sedition. It was a pretty good trap. How did Jesus answer? He said that we should give to God what is God’s and to the Romans what is the Romans.
In essence, what he was saying is that there is a separation between the spiritual and the material realms, and that to confuse them meant giving to the world that which is due God. In other words, it’s okay to wrap yourself in the American flag, but don’t get confused in thinking that God is wrapped in an American flag. If we do, that becomes a problem because it assumes that God is God of this nation and no others. And Jesus already was telling the Jews, the “chosen people,” that God was ready to expand to all people as chosen people. This ideal of Jesus influenced the Founding Fathers, who recognized that there was an inherent separation between church and state.
So, does that mean that politics and religion shouldn’t mix? Not at all. The Founding Fathers all recognized the importance of religion. They believed that it should mix, but not in a state sanctioned way. What the Founding Fathers absolutely did not want was the institution of a European understanding of state and religion. At the time of the Revolution, the nations of Europe believed that the state should establish a state religion, and that religion should get preference above all others. So, in England the state religion has been the Anglican Church, or the Church of England, ever since Henry VIII. In Scotland the state religion is the Church of Scotland, or the Presbyterian Church. In Sweden and Norway it is the Lutheran Church. In France and Italy it is the Roman Catholic Church. Even today, in Italy there are roadblocks put up for Protestant churches because they are violating the state church. The Founding Fathers wanted our nation to be a place of religious freedom, not necessarily to be a place just for Christianity. In fact, the Founding Fathers were much more receptive to Muslims and Jews than they were to Roman Catholics. So for those promoting our country as a Christian nation to lump Romans Catholics in with other Christians today takes liberties with what the Founding Fathers believed.
I think that one of the basic issues that causes us to think that the Founding Fathers were all Christian is that so few understand their faith. People believe that they were Christian, but that’s not quite true. I saw fully how easy it is for people to misrepresent the Founding Fathers’ faith during a one-month sabbatical I took in 2003 to finish writing my book, Becoming a Blessed Church. During that month I visited several area churches on Sunday morning to see what they do. I visited one local church, a large, nondenominational church. on the 4th of July weekend. They started the service with a rousing version of “American the Beautiful” as power point screens on either side of the stage displayed an American flag flapping in the breeze. After each verse, they stopped the music, and someone dressed up as a founding father (or mother) in colonial garb walked forward to address the congregation. The message of each person—Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, and Ben Franklin—was pretty much the same: “We founded this country on Christianity. We founded it on the words of scripture. This is the word that we trusted in, this is the word I believe in, and this is the word we follow!” There was only one problem. Two out of those three were not really Christians in the strict sense of the word.
I have no idea what Abigail Adams believed, but I do know what Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin believed. Thomas Jefferson was a deist, meaning that he believed in a remote, impersonal God. He did not believe that Jesus was anything more than a great teacher or prophet. In fact, the Bible bothered him so much that he created his own Bible by cutting out anything in the gospels he disagreed with (Jefferson didn’t have much use for any part of the Bible other than the gospels). He cut out the virgin birth, the resurrection, and any miracles. He kept Jesus’ teachings and parables. You can actually go out and buy a copy of Jefferson’s Bible. While Jefferson was technically an Episcopalian, he rarely went to church. Ben Franklin was a deist who bordered on atheist or agnostic. He didn’t believe much in God. He rarely went to church. And he lived a life that often ignored Christian principles or morality. He believed in human reason, rationality, philosophy, and science. For that particular church to have portrayed Jefferson and Franklin as bible-thumping Christians was just untrue. But people believed what the church said because they want this to be a Christian nation.
So in the face of all this, what should we believe? What do I believe? I believe that I follow the beliefs of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson. who was the one who coined the term “separation of church and state.” I believe as they did, which is that the state should not establish a religion. That being said, is there a role for religion in politics? Absolutely. The Founding Fathers believed that religion should mix, but in us. The church shouldn’t establish religion, but religion should influence politics. In essence, we should bring our faith into our voting. And our government officials should bring their faith into their decision-making, but not to the point of establishing one religion over another.
So what’s wrong with the state encouraging religion, say, in areas such as teaching a biblical view of creation? The problem is that if you bring creationism, or even intelligent design, into teaching, the state either has to choose one faith over another, or teach all faiths. Which version would we teach? I’ll be honest. I don’t want schools teaching about creation because invariably they won’t teach what we Presbyterians believe. We believe that God created everything, but that God has used evolution. When you are teaching creation in a school, what version do you use? The fundamentalist one? The Catholic one? The Muslim one? The Wiccan one? The Native American one? Do you teach all of them, and if so, how? And if you teach all of them, do you have time for teaching science? I would rather have schools stick to teaching science, and let us teach about creation, which is partly what we are doing right now in our adult education class, Science and Theology Shake Hands.
I also don’t want the state determining what faith to teach or encourage because invariably they won’t pick mine. Right now the evangelicals have more political power than we in the mainline churches do, and I’m not an evangelical. When people say we are a Christian nation, what they usually mean is that we are a nation founded upon evangelical Christian beliefs. That’s only not true, but if flies in the face of my beliefs because I’m not an evangelical. I don’t want to impose my beliefs on them, and I certainly don’t want them imposing their beliefs on me. I want the state to stay out of this.
So, again, how do politics and religion mix? Ultimately they mix in each one of us. I wrote about this in the Calvin Newsletter in August. I wrote then that I believe that we should bring our faith, and especially our prayer, into our voting. We should be asking questions such as, “which candidate is the one who seems most open to God’s will? Who will care about Christian issues, not only about abortion, but about the poor, the hungry, the hurting, the marginalized, and the struggling? Who will treat others in the most Christian way?” This is where religion and politics mix. This should be part of our voting.
I believe that the Founding Fathers wanted us to mix religion and politics in this way. That’s why the first amendment is so sacrosanct in our country. I defend the right of anyone to say that we are a Christian nation, even if they’re wrong. I defend it because even though I disagree with it, I recognize that even saying that brings faith into our politics. What I don’t want is for the state to agree with them and establish their religion as our state religion to the point at which we become so intolerant of other faith that my and our faith becomes diminished by the very people who are sworn to protect my rights to pursue my faith. And I believe that this is the faith that the Founding Fathers had.
Amen.
About a month ago I saw an interview on television that irked me. A reporter was interviewing different people about their thoughts on Barack Obama, and one woman said, “I don’t like Obama. He’s a Muslim, and this is a Christian nation.” Can you tell which part of that statement irked me? It wasn’t the part about Obama being a Muslim, although I am tired of people saying that. When people say that, it’s an ignorant statement on so many levels. First, because it’s not true. Second, because it’s a statement that’s prejudiced against Muslims, and I find that destructive. I’m also not saying that you should vote for Obama. I’m just pointing out the ignorance of saying he is a Muslim. Despite my disagreement with that part of her comment, it is her saying we are a Christian nation that bothers me.
Now, why would it bother me to hear someone say we’re a Christian nation? Shouldn’t I agree with her? After all, I am a pastor. The truth is that a lot of Christians would agree that we’re a Christian nation, and a quick look at American history seems to support this belief. The only problem is that you’d have to look at American history very quickly and very narrowly to support this belief. The truth is that the Founding Fathers never saw us as a Christian nation. In fact, they didn’t even think in categories of Christian/non-Christian at all. They thought in terms of denominations and whose version of Christianity was right. The people of the time saw their own denominations as being truly Christian, and all others as being false to one degree or another. To say that they saw us as a Christian nation is misleading because they didn’t see Christianity the same way we do now, as one religion with many difference expressions.
To understand the differences, you have to go back to understanding the colonization of North America. Most of those who migrated to the colonies, especially those who established the colonies, did so as a way of establishing a state where they would be free to pursue their own religion. For instance, the Puritans who settled in Massachusetts came from the east of England. These were Calvinists who believed that to truly be Christian meant to seek a way of purification during this life. They strove to overcome sin, and to create God’s kingdom on earth. They also saw all other Christians, and especially the Anglicans (whom today we call Episcopalians), as misguided and unchristian. They were especially against the Anglicans because it was officially the Church of England, and thus the state religion. What made it worse was that they had been persecuted at the hands of English Anglicans.
Meanwhile, those who settled in Virginia were mostly Anglicans. They saw the Church of England as the only true church, and all others as heretics. These folks came from the south of England and were part of the landed gentry class. They believed in a hierarchy in which God came first, then the king (or queen—Virginia was named after Elizabeth, the “virgin queen”), then the Lords, then everyone else. They believed that the bottom of this hierarchy, religiously, were the Roman Catholics because they were followers of the pope, whom they suspected of being the antichrist.
The Quakers settled into Pennsylvania as part of a great experiment by William Penn. Penn wanted to create a colony of tolerance, love, and peace (hence they name Philadelphia, or city of brotherly love). Pennsylvania was later settled by the Scots-Irish, the Lutherans, the Mennonites, and the Amish precisely because they were welcomed by the Quakers, even if they were somewhat distrusted.
The Scots-Irish originally came from the borderlands between Scotland and England, where they developed a fiercely independent brand of Christianity. It was a brand rooted in scripture, but only to the extent that scripture agreed with what they agreed with. They did not see people of any other denomination as Christians. These folks saw themselves as the only Christians, and they weren’t always convinced that each other were Christians.
Maryland was settled by Roman Catholics (hence the name Maryland, which venerated both the virgin Mary and Mary the Roman Catholic sister of Elizabeth). The Roman Catholics were universally disliked by all the other denominations. They were considered to be papists and followers of the fallen faith. Remember that the Reformation had taken place only 50 to 100 years before. Distrust and denigration of Roman Catholics was high among all the other colonies.
As the colonies matured, there may have been a tentative willingness to come together as colonies economically, but there was still as distrust of each others’ faith. Again, they did not see themselves as Christian. They saw themselves as whatever denomination they were.
By the time of the Founding Fathers, the different denominations still looked down at each other—a condition that really wasn’t overcome until the 20th century. Even when it came to signing the declaration, there was reluctance to join each other because of distrust until one particular Anglican clergyman stated that despite his distrust of Presbyterians and Congregationalists, he would sign the declaration for the benefit of the all. Again, they didn’t see themselves as Christians in the way we see ourselves as Christian. They saw themselves as Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Congregationalists, and even Methodists.
In addition, while many of the Founding Fathers were religious, they saw themselves more as learned men. Not all saw themselves as Christians, and some never even went to church. While basic Protestant theology influenced their beliefs, they were just as heavily influenced by the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, the tradition of Roman democracy, and the English parliamentary system since the signing of the Magna Carter. To say that they were Christians trying to found a Christian nation simply isn’t true. Christian ideals under girded part of their beliefs, but they would have been reluctant to identify themselves as Christians.
So, would Jesus promote any nation being a Christian nation? Not if you believe our passage for this morning. Our passage is one in which a trap is set for Jesus. The Pharisees and the Herodians (those charged with maintaining peace on behalf of the Romans) wanted to find a way to arrest Jesus. So they ask him a cleverly designed question: is it lawful to pay taxes. Here’s the trap. If Jesus said yes, then the Jews, who hated the Romans and saw paying taxes as a form of Caesar worship, would have rejected Jesus. Remember that in the Temple of Jerusalem, the whole problem of the money-changers existed because the Jews demanded that temple tax be paid in Jewish shekels, not Roman denarii. If Jesus supported paying taxes, he would have been seen as being in collusion with the Romans. The people would have rejected him and his message. If he had said that it wasn’t right to pay taxes, the Herodians, the government of the province, would have had him arrested for sedition. It was a pretty good trap. How did Jesus answer? He said that we should give to God what is God’s and to the Romans what is the Romans.
In essence, what he was saying is that there is a separation between the spiritual and the material realms, and that to confuse them meant giving to the world that which is due God. In other words, it’s okay to wrap yourself in the American flag, but don’t get confused in thinking that God is wrapped in an American flag. If we do, that becomes a problem because it assumes that God is God of this nation and no others. And Jesus already was telling the Jews, the “chosen people,” that God was ready to expand to all people as chosen people. This ideal of Jesus influenced the Founding Fathers, who recognized that there was an inherent separation between church and state.
So, does that mean that politics and religion shouldn’t mix? Not at all. The Founding Fathers all recognized the importance of religion. They believed that it should mix, but not in a state sanctioned way. What the Founding Fathers absolutely did not want was the institution of a European understanding of state and religion. At the time of the Revolution, the nations of Europe believed that the state should establish a state religion, and that religion should get preference above all others. So, in England the state religion has been the Anglican Church, or the Church of England, ever since Henry VIII. In Scotland the state religion is the Church of Scotland, or the Presbyterian Church. In Sweden and Norway it is the Lutheran Church. In France and Italy it is the Roman Catholic Church. Even today, in Italy there are roadblocks put up for Protestant churches because they are violating the state church. The Founding Fathers wanted our nation to be a place of religious freedom, not necessarily to be a place just for Christianity. In fact, the Founding Fathers were much more receptive to Muslims and Jews than they were to Roman Catholics. So for those promoting our country as a Christian nation to lump Romans Catholics in with other Christians today takes liberties with what the Founding Fathers believed.
I think that one of the basic issues that causes us to think that the Founding Fathers were all Christian is that so few understand their faith. People believe that they were Christian, but that’s not quite true. I saw fully how easy it is for people to misrepresent the Founding Fathers’ faith during a one-month sabbatical I took in 2003 to finish writing my book, Becoming a Blessed Church. During that month I visited several area churches on Sunday morning to see what they do. I visited one local church, a large, nondenominational church. on the 4th of July weekend. They started the service with a rousing version of “American the Beautiful” as power point screens on either side of the stage displayed an American flag flapping in the breeze. After each verse, they stopped the music, and someone dressed up as a founding father (or mother) in colonial garb walked forward to address the congregation. The message of each person—Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, and Ben Franklin—was pretty much the same: “We founded this country on Christianity. We founded it on the words of scripture. This is the word that we trusted in, this is the word I believe in, and this is the word we follow!” There was only one problem. Two out of those three were not really Christians in the strict sense of the word.
I have no idea what Abigail Adams believed, but I do know what Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin believed. Thomas Jefferson was a deist, meaning that he believed in a remote, impersonal God. He did not believe that Jesus was anything more than a great teacher or prophet. In fact, the Bible bothered him so much that he created his own Bible by cutting out anything in the gospels he disagreed with (Jefferson didn’t have much use for any part of the Bible other than the gospels). He cut out the virgin birth, the resurrection, and any miracles. He kept Jesus’ teachings and parables. You can actually go out and buy a copy of Jefferson’s Bible. While Jefferson was technically an Episcopalian, he rarely went to church. Ben Franklin was a deist who bordered on atheist or agnostic. He didn’t believe much in God. He rarely went to church. And he lived a life that often ignored Christian principles or morality. He believed in human reason, rationality, philosophy, and science. For that particular church to have portrayed Jefferson and Franklin as bible-thumping Christians was just untrue. But people believed what the church said because they want this to be a Christian nation.
So in the face of all this, what should we believe? What do I believe? I believe that I follow the beliefs of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson. who was the one who coined the term “separation of church and state.” I believe as they did, which is that the state should not establish a religion. That being said, is there a role for religion in politics? Absolutely. The Founding Fathers believed that religion should mix, but in us. The church shouldn’t establish religion, but religion should influence politics. In essence, we should bring our faith into our voting. And our government officials should bring their faith into their decision-making, but not to the point of establishing one religion over another.
So what’s wrong with the state encouraging religion, say, in areas such as teaching a biblical view of creation? The problem is that if you bring creationism, or even intelligent design, into teaching, the state either has to choose one faith over another, or teach all faiths. Which version would we teach? I’ll be honest. I don’t want schools teaching about creation because invariably they won’t teach what we Presbyterians believe. We believe that God created everything, but that God has used evolution. When you are teaching creation in a school, what version do you use? The fundamentalist one? The Catholic one? The Muslim one? The Wiccan one? The Native American one? Do you teach all of them, and if so, how? And if you teach all of them, do you have time for teaching science? I would rather have schools stick to teaching science, and let us teach about creation, which is partly what we are doing right now in our adult education class, Science and Theology Shake Hands.
I also don’t want the state determining what faith to teach or encourage because invariably they won’t pick mine. Right now the evangelicals have more political power than we in the mainline churches do, and I’m not an evangelical. When people say we are a Christian nation, what they usually mean is that we are a nation founded upon evangelical Christian beliefs. That’s only not true, but if flies in the face of my beliefs because I’m not an evangelical. I don’t want to impose my beliefs on them, and I certainly don’t want them imposing their beliefs on me. I want the state to stay out of this.
So, again, how do politics and religion mix? Ultimately they mix in each one of us. I wrote about this in the Calvin Newsletter in August. I wrote then that I believe that we should bring our faith, and especially our prayer, into our voting. We should be asking questions such as, “which candidate is the one who seems most open to God’s will? Who will care about Christian issues, not only about abortion, but about the poor, the hungry, the hurting, the marginalized, and the struggling? Who will treat others in the most Christian way?” This is where religion and politics mix. This should be part of our voting.
I believe that the Founding Fathers wanted us to mix religion and politics in this way. That’s why the first amendment is so sacrosanct in our country. I defend the right of anyone to say that we are a Christian nation, even if they’re wrong. I defend it because even though I disagree with it, I recognize that even saying that brings faith into our politics. What I don’t want is for the state to agree with them and establish their religion as our state religion to the point at which we become so intolerant of other faith that my and our faith becomes diminished by the very people who are sworn to protect my rights to pursue my faith. And I believe that this is the faith that the Founding Fathers had.
Amen.
Can We Reject God So Easily?
Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, "They will respect my son.' But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, "This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.' So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time." Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls." When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.- Matthew 21: 33-46
This was a very dangerous parable for Jesus to tell? Did you hear the danger in it? It would be a safe bet to say that this parable probably had a lot to do with getting Jesus killed . Did you hear the danger in it?
You probably didn't hear the danger because you were listening to it from Jesus' point of view, but take some time thinking about it from the perspective of the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Jesus had a very special talent. He had the ability to bring conservatives and liberals together. Of course he did it by doing things that caused them to hate him. The Sadducees were the conservatives of the day. They were trying to conserve the old traditions, especially the traditions of the Temple . They believed that holy scripture should be treated literally with no room for interpretation. The Pharisees were the liberals. They believed that scripture could be interpreted and applied in new ways to life. They took liberties with scripture, and added their own beliefs, including the idea of resurrection. Yet Jesus managed to threaten both groups.
This parable was about them. What Jesus was saying in this parable was that Israel was like the vineyard, and the Pharisees and Sadducees were like the tenants on the vineyard. God is the owner of the vineyard. Basically, Jesus was saying this: “Look, God sent prophets to you, and you beat them up. God sent more prophets, and you killed them. God sent more, and you stoned them. And here I am, the son of God, coming to you, and you are going to kill me. In the end, God's kingdom is going to be taken away from you and given to the Gentiles!” Imagine you are the Sadducees or Pharisees. If you are them, how do you take this parable? He's accusing them of leading people to ignore God, and on top of that he is calling himself the son of God. How blasphemous!
Why would Jesus provoke the Pharisees and Sadducees so? Did he want to be killed? Actually, my guess is that he just expected to be killed. He figured that leading people back to God, and teaching them truth, was enough on its own to get him killed. So he told this parable to explain his death before it happened. He wasn't trying to provoke the Pharisees and Sadducees. He was simply trying to prepare his followers for what was to happen.
Listen to the parable from Jesus' point of view. He is telling the people, “Look, way back in the past God kept trying to bring prophets to you to show you the way to God. And your leaders kept misleading you. They led your ancestors to beat some of the prophets, kill others, and stone others. And now the Father has sent me to you. I am the son of God. I am the incarnation of God right here and now. You know this because of my teachings and my miracles. I'm teaching you the truth: the Pharisees and Sadducees can't stand me speaking the truth, so they are going to kill me, too. But don't worry. God is going to take the kingdom of heaven away from ones such as these and give it to ones such as you. So have faith.”
This passage not only tells why Jesus was going to die, but it was telling us about the kind of relationship God wants with us, and how we reject it. Jesus was telling the people about themselves, and what to be careful about. Again, listen to the parables from a human point of view. Jesus was saying, “Look, you know that even though God is trying to constantly teach you, you struggle to listen. No one wants to hear truth. We only want to hear what we want to hear. But God is speaking to you. God sent you prophets and now me. Your natural sinful nature will cause many of you to want to kill me and to reject God. That may happen. The reason it happens is that you want to be the master and not serve God. But trust me on this. If you decide to serve God, it's amazing how much fruit your life will bear. If you decide not to serve God, then all of this will be taken away from you. You will no longer be the chosen people. Choose who you want to serve—yourself or God.”
Jesus is speaking truth in all three perspectives. Ultimately he is saying that this relationship we have with God is a difficult one . It's based on our loving and trusting a God who we often experience as an absentee landowner . We live in a world created by God, blessed by God, endowed by God with amazing wonders, but because we don't see God's hand in it all, it's so easy to ignore and reject God. And we all reject God at one point or another. Often we end up rejecting God by becoming enamored with our own thoughts, beliefs, and prowess that we only see what we do, not what God does. Let me show you what I mean.
A number of years ago a brilliant scientist unlocked the secret of creation. He figured out how to create life out of dirt, and to create new animals, plants, and even humans. He was celebrated far and wide for his brilliance, his ingenuity, his prowess. Eventually God heard about this man, and about his claims that we no longer need God because we can create like God.
God wasn't offended, but God did want to see whether or not this scientist could do as he said. So he visited him. The man showed God what he could do in his lab, and after looking at it all God presented the man with a challenge: God would create a human, the man would create a human, and anyone in attendance could judge whose creation was better. The winner would be master of all creation.
The day of the challenge came, and the scientist was surrounded by curious onlookers, all waiting to see whether God could be beaten by this scientist. The scientist stood in front of his laboratory, while God stood barefoot in the grass. God explained the rules: “We will both grab dirt from below our feet, and we'll begin to create. The crowd can judge the results. On your mark! Get set! Go!” At that, both bent over to grab a handful of dirt. As the scientist reached into the dirt, God looked up and said, “No, no, no. If you want to be master of creation, you first have to create your own dirt!”
See the point? We can become so enamored with our own intelligence, our own beliefs, our own insights, our own abilities that we ignore or diminish God in the process. We think that we are more powerful than we really are. We think this as individuals and we think this as a people.
This pride of ours, which leads us to reject God, gets right to the heart of the parable, which is this. God created us and has given us life. Everything we have, everything we are, comes from God . God is all around us and wants to be part of every experience we have, everything we do, and every event in the world . But it is up to us to let God into the world. God is a polite God. That's what scripture says. It says that God only rarely barges into our lives uninvited. For instance, in Revelation it says, “ Listen! I am standing at the door , knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door , I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” Also, the story of the Prodigal Son teaches us something similar. You remember the story. The son wants his inheritance from his father, and then goes out and squanders it, ending up living among pigs. He returns home, hoping to be a slave in his father's household, but is surprised to find that the Father runs to embrace him, gives him the ring off his finger, and has a feast to celebrate his return. This is a metaphor for the way God is. God, like the father, gives us to freedom to reject God. And if that happens, God will wait patiently for our return. God won't follow us, intervene in our lives, or try to convince us to return. Instead, God will wait patiently. But when we return, God will immediately bless us. The point is that it is up to us either to embrace or reject God, embrace or reject faith.
Here's the point. The economy is bad, and we're all nervous about it . Will we let God in to help us with our anxiety? Will we trust God to help us and take care of us? Do we trust that God, ultimately, is in charge?
Some of us have troubled relationships at home, work, the neighborhood . Are we letting God in to make things better? Are we willing to let God show us what to change to make it better? Are we willing to seek God's way to love and peace?
Some of us are struggling in life . We don't have a sense of direction. We aren't sure what are the right decisions for our lives. Are we willing to let God guide us to a better life, even if it means changing our thinking and living?
We are surrounded by God's love, beauty, grace, and possibility . Are we doing enough to recognize God's hand in it all, and letting that hand bless us?
Amen.
Being of One Mind
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. - Philippians 2:1-14
A friend of mine told me a story about a Methodist pastor's experience in a Northern Pennsylvania church fifteen years ago. It was the pastor's first worship service as the new pastor of a church. After he finished his sermon, he went to the back of the sanctuary to shake everyone's hands as they walked out. This was a church with a large center aisle leading to large double doors. There were also doors leading out of the sanctuary at the back left and right. He stood at the center door, waiting to shake everyone's hand, but only about ten out of the 80 or so in attendance came to him. The others went out the doors on the right and the left.
What had he said that was so bad? He thought that it was among the least controversial sermons he had ever preached. Did he do something wrong? Finally, he asked one of the members what was going on. “Ah, the big butter controversy,” replied the man. “The big butter controversy? What's that?” asked the pastor. The man then proceeded to tell him about something that happened a long time ago.
Fifty years before, the church had had a big dinner. Since it was a farming community, many brought food from their farms. One woman (we'll call her Maybelle) churned a lot of butter, bringing it to share. After the dinner was over, everyone cleaned up and left. The unused butter was left behind. Another woman (we'll call her Kelly Sue), worried that it might spoil since the church didn't have a refrigerator. So she took it home with her. A little while later, Maybelle came back to get her butter, but it was gone. She was convinced that Kelly Sue had taken the butter because she was always jealous of her butter-churning skills. So, she complained to her relatives in the church about what Kelly Sue had done, and everyone in her family took her side. Kelly Sue's family, seeing that she was being attacked, took her side against Maybelle and her family. The church became split, but being a family church they weren't willing to leave and go somewhere else. So they came up with a solution. On Sunday mornings, the family and friends of Maybelle went out one door, and the friends and family of Kelli Sue went out the other. Fifty years later the split still remained, even though all the original people were dead and no one really remembered the reason for the feud anymore. They weren't even fighting anymore. But the remnants of the fight still existed. It's amazing what can divide Christians against one another. It's amazing how easily divided we are by things big and especially small.
Why are Christians so divided? I look at our denomination and divisions are tearing us apart. We've been fairly good here at Calvin Church in avoiding the splits. We're bucking the trends. But nationally the PC(USA) is a mess. For instance, it's this problem of division and fighting that causes me to hate being involved in our presbytery. For the whole 12+ years I've been here our presbytery meetings have been filled with fighting and rancor. Just this past week I was at our presbytery meeting, and yet again another potentially divisive issue was brought up. Several pastors, who believed that actions taken by our General Assembly this past summer were horrendous, created a document to be sent to the national church, criticizing them for their decisions. One decision in particular that galled them was a statement from the General Assembly encouraging Presbyterians to hold joint worship services with Jews and Muslims as a way of overcoming our differences. These pastors believed that the idea of Christians worshiping with Muslims and Jews was a horrendous one because Jews and Muslims don't believe in the same God as us. They don't recognize Christ as God, and so they consider it to be blasphemous to worship with Muslims and Jews. This despite the fact that Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 9 about becoming a Jew with the Jews, and a Gentile with the Gentiles, and basically adjusting himself to how others are. This is despite the fact that in chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians he tells us that it is okay to eat food sacrificed to idols in chapter, except when it offends those of a weaker Christian faith. From my reading, Paul is encouraging peace and exchange with others. In other words, this issue just brings up our divisiveness again, pitting one Christian against another, despite scripture that teaches us to hold fast to our faith while having healthy relationships with those of other faiths. Why are we always dividing in our denomination today?
Whether you know it or not, these division are nothing new. Presbyterians have been fighting since the beginning of Presbyterianism in the 1600s. For example, we've been fighting in our present denomination ever since the southern and northern strains of the largest two Presbyterian denominations rejoined in 1983. The reunion of 83 actually repaired a split that occurred in 1860 over slavery, with the northern church against it, the southern church in favor of it. That issue obviously doesn't divide us anymore, but we've found others to take their places.
What may surprise you is that the split of 1860 wasn't a rare occurrence. Presbyterians have been splitting since the begging. Look at the chart below. It's a chart of Presbyterian schisms. It reads from left to right, and shows that even in the beginning there were three strands of Presbyterianism that had already split back in Scotland and northern England between the 1600s and 1700s. The chart itself looks like some sort of engineering schematic, perhaps diagramming an intermittent windshield wiper or something like that.
All of these Presbyterians split over issues that seemed so important, so earth-shattering at the time, and that we don't even remember now. What was the Old School/New School split about? What was the Old Side/New Side split about? Why did the Cumberland Presbyterians split from us? What was the Old Light/New Light split about? I have no idea. Presbyterians traditionally have gotten so angry at each other that they split. Then, generations later,we forget what the split was about.
(Chart 1)
Looking at this chart, and knowing the history of Presbyterians, the obvious conclusion is that to be Presbyterian is to be in conflict. There must be something about us that creates division, right? Actually, it isn't just Presbyterians who split. Christians have been splitting since the beginning. Take a look at this next chart—a chart of Christian schisms since the beginning of Christianity:
(Chart 2)
Looking at this chart, it probably makes sense to think that Christianity is a religion of conflict. Certainly a lot of non-Christians would say that. How can you look at that chart and not think that we encourage division? Isn't division part of our blood? Certainly a rational person would conclude that Christianity causes conflict? I mean, think of how many wars seem to have been caused by Christianity?
The problem with this line of argument is that if you look at every other religion, you'll see the same conflicts. In Islam there are Sunnis, Shiites, Sufis, and numerous other sects that have divided against each other. In Buddhism, a religion that many see as conflict-free, you find Theraveda, Mahayana, Zen, Hinayana, Dharmaguptaka, Mulasarvastivada, and numerous other sects of Buddhism that have split from each other. Judaism has Reformed, Orthodox, Hasidic, and numerous other conflicting schools. Every religion has its splits. So, the rational person would conclude that it's religion that causes conflict. Certainly there are many atheists and agnostics who will gleefully point out that religion has caused more wars than anything else. They are wrong, but the love to point that out.
To say that religion causes war is to be ignorant of the real causes of conflict. Why do humans fight? Not because of religion. We fight because to be human is to be in conflict. Where do you see an absence of conflict in the world? Wars rage all over the planet, abetted by conflicts great and small. What company, organization, political body, community, or even family is conflict-free? Humans don't need religion to create conflict. We do fine without it. In fact, what happens brings religion into conflicts is that people misuse religion to justify conflict. I believe that all our conflict is a remnant of our animal nature, trying to create security for ourselves at the expense of others. Conflict comes about because of the need for rightness. We have this survival need to be right, to be in charge, to seem to be in control because those feelings make us feel safe. Conflict ensues when we don't feel safe and feel the need to gain security, even at the expense of other people's security. So we lash out. Religion tries to overcome these impulses.
Look at our passage again. Read what it says. Paul isn't advocating conflict. He's helping people overcome it. He knows that the church at Philippi is rife with conflict between Jewish followers who believe that the Jewish traditions should reign in the church, and Gentile followers who believe that Gentile traditions should reign. They are fighting. What's Paul's answer: “ be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”
Christianity recognizes this basic human tendency to fight and tries to overcome it. Looking at our passage, Paul basically said that there is one way to overcome the basic human need for conflict. First, he says, treat others as better than yourself . In other words, if we work on being hospitable, caring, compassionate, and loving as we raise others up, we eradicate conflict. Conflict comes about from treating others with disdain, indifference, or denigration.
Second, he tells us to look for places of connection, not conflict. So often we look for what divides us, not what connects us. We look for what's different, not what's the same. We have to train our minds to see what we share.
Third, we need to care about others and make that our focus. It's hard to be in conflict when we care for another, especially when we act out of care rather than out of irritation, coercion, or a demand that another do our bidding.
Finally, he says that we should take on the mind of Christ. The natural thing to say to that is that we can't because Jesus was special and different. Paul would never accept that answer. He believes we can and should work to think in Christ's way. He would say that we take on the mind of Christ any time we do what Christ did, which is to seek ways to bring about unity with the Father, with each other, and with him. All it takes is a willingness to see with Christ's compassion.
Ultimately the lesson here is that we live in a world of conflict, but we don't have to be of a world of conflict. There is another way, a way offered by Paul. The question is whether we are willing to take that way.
Amen.
Have You Taken Up Your Cross Lately?
Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?- Matthew 16:24-26
What would you be willing to sacrifice for God? What would you be willing to give up in your life in order to serve God better? What would you be willing to change in your life to live more the way God wants you to live? What would you be willing to sacrifice? A lot? A little? Whatever you have left over?
Is sacrifice a word you use to describe your relationship with God? It's not a concept that many modern Christians use to describe the Christian life. Many modern Christians think that if they are good Christians then they will be rewarded with stuff. They don't necessarily think that being a Christian means making sacrifices, except, perhaps, during Lent, and a lot of the non-denominational churches have given up Lent.
The early Christians understood the idea of sacrifice much better than we do. They understood that at the center of the Christian life is the question, “What can I do for God?” Why were they clearer? They were clearer because for them to be a Christian meant making huge sacrifices. For the first three hundred years Christians followed Christ as outcasts from the Roman Empire . For most of that time being a Christian was outlawed, or at least it was forced to be subservient to the religion of Caesar worship. In fact, that little Christian fish symbol that you see on people's cars was a symbol created by the early Christians to express their faith in secret. If you were talking with someone, and you suspected her or him of being a Christian, you would draw an upside down smile. If the person were a Christian, she or he would complete the fish symbol with a right-side-up smile. In those days being a public Christian could mean losing your job, being ostracized by the community, and even sometimes killed during the periodic pogroms against Christians.
Today we think very differently about Christian faith because we live in a culture founded on Christian principles. This is not the same as saying that we are a Christian nation. We aren't. We are a multi-cultural, multi-religious nation built on Christian principles. We have freedom of worship, belief, and religion. We don't generally have to sacrifice much to be Christians. As a result, we tend to think more along the lines of what can God do for me, rather than along the line of what I can do for God.
You can see this “what can God do for me” approach reflected in modern church and worship. There is such a push today to make church more and more accessible, more and more relevant, more and more hip, more and more focused on where our population is. Don't get me wrong on this. You can see from the way we do things at Calvin Church that I'm a big advocate of adjusting our worship to be multi-generational so that it touches people of all ages. With that said, I'm also aware that many churches today do whatever they can to make church easy, and to diminish the idea of self-denial for God. They become so cultural in the way they do things that they turn their churches into religious clubs, offering X-box, Wii, softplay areas, raffles, and the like. One new church in the area advertises itself as a church that is “easy to attend, invite, understand.” The emphasis is on “easy.”
I have nothing against these churches personally because I recognize that they are doing everything they can to reach people for Christ. I just recognize that making things “easy” was never part of Jesus' message, and by making things easy they can easily sacrifice Jesus' emphasis on sacrifice. By trying to make worship easy, scripture easy, church easy, they create the conditions where people think that Christian faith doesn't require sacrifice, devotion, commitment, and denying themselves. The reality is that Jesus says that Christian faith is hard precisely because it calls us to sacrifice for God.
What does Jesus say about all this? He says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Why does he say this? It's an odd thing to say, especially since he hadn't even gone to the cross yet. How can he use the cross as an example, when it hadn't even become known as a symbol? Actually, the cross in Jesus' day was already a powerful symbol. Crucifixions weren't rare events. They were common events. The Romans used crucifixions constantly to keep down rebellions and insurrections. If there was any hint of rebellion by anyone, any hint that someone could be fomenting anti-Roman opinion and starting a movement, the Romans would find him or her guilty and crucify him or her. This is how they kept all the people in line, people who hated the Romans. Crucifixions happened in most towns and provinces. Sometimes, if a rebellion was large enough, the Romans would line the Apian Way , the road that connected the empire, with crosses stretching for five miles. And the tradition was that the person being crucified would have to pick up a large cross and drag it for miles so that by the time he was ready to be crucified, he was already exhausted. So when Jesus used the saying, “take up your cross,” he was using a well-known phrase meaning to sacrifice yourself for a greater good (often the crucified were seen as heroes).
Jesus' disciples all knew the importance of sacrifice. Paul was willing to be beaten and imprisoned for Christ. The apostles all went out into hostile territory to share the message of Christ, and virtually all of them were killed for it. This is one of the reasons, years ago, that I decided that the resurrection must have happened. Otherwise who would die for a lie? These were people who had a passion for the message of Christ, who were willing to take up their crosses daily to spread the word. Who goes into strange lands, traveling hot and dusty roads, with little money, into lands that are unsafe and where they could easily die a painful death, all for a lie? They all believed in denying themselves and taking up their crosses.
What does it mean to deny ourselves and pick up our crosses? It doesn't have to be all gloom and doom . Often we can sacrifice in the simplest ways that bring joy both to others and to ourselves. Real sacrifice eventually brings joy and much more. Let me give you an example.
A number of years ago a young boy named Marty moved with his family to a small house in the forest area outside Redmond , Washington . It was a great place to grow up for a young boy. It was a place filled with rocks, creeks, snakes, salamanders, trees, and so many other natural wonders for a young boy. Within weeks Marty struck up a friendship with Kenny, a young boy who lived a quarter mile through the woods. They did everything together and were inseparable.
Marty's mother noticed one day that Marty had become especially meticulous about cleaning his room, doing his chores, and anything else his mother wanted him to do. And each week, when she gave Marty his allowance for doing all of his chores, she noticed that he would immediately dump out his piggy bank and count the change, adding in his new allowance. It was all very mysterious to her, and when she would ask why he was being so good and so focused on his allowance, he would say, “Oh, no reason.”
Then one day, close to Christmas, Marty came running into the house, shouting “Mom! Mom! Look what I got Kenny for Christmas!” He held out his hand for her to see, and in it was a shiny, new compass. “This is what Kenny wants most in the world! I've been saving up for it forever. I'm going to give it to him as my Christmas gift.” Marty's mom was a bit cautious. She said to Marty, “You know, Kenny's family doesn't have much money. I'm not sure Kenny's mom will be happy with Kenny getting this present because she'll feel that they have to get a present for you, and I don't think they can afford it.” Marty was downcast, moping around for the rest of the afternoon.
In the early evening, Marty came into the room with a smile and said, “Mom, I have an idea. What if I sneak down to his house on Christmas Eve and leave the present for him in secret? He'll never know it was from me.” His mother agreed that this was a great idea, so early in the evening on Christmas Eve Marty left the house in his pajamas, a coat, and a flashlight. He ran through the wood to Kenny's house. Sneaking up on the porch, he carefully pulled the screen door back and placed the present next to the front door. He then pushed the doorbell hard and ran like he was on the lam.
Running through the woods, smiling to himself, he suddenly felt a burning whip across his face that knocked him down on his head. He had forgotten about the electric fence he had to climb under. Walking into the house, he looked at his mother with a quivering lip and a huge, red welt going from the corner of his mouth to his temple. She jumped up to care for his burn, and asked what happened. “I forgot about the electric fence,” he said. “But you know what? I know they didn't see me. Kenny won't suspect a thing.”
On Christmas Day afternoon, Kenny came over and showed Marty his new compass. “I don't know who gave it to me,” he said. “All we know is that last night we heard the doorbell and there was a present for me. Who knew that I wanted this compass? It's perfect!” The rest of the afternoon they played with Marty's toys, and Kenny's compass (adapted from “An Exchange of Gifts, in Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul, 1997).
Listening to this story, you can see that Marty made a sacrifice for Kenny, and beneath all that, for God. He understood that the care for Kenny meant giving up his own money. But he didn't care. All he wanted to do was to care. His sacrifice was a joy. The point of all this is that God calls us to sacrifice, not for a reward, but for Christ. Our calling is to sacrifice—to make it about God, not me; to make it about serving, not being served; to make it about giving, not getting.
So much of what we do in the church is based on sacrifice. Why do we call people to serve on committees? It's not to bore people, it's because making this commitment of time and effort consistently, from month to month, serves God. When our members go on mission trips, they are sacrificing time and money for God. When we ask you to give to the church, it's not because we are a business wanting money. We call you to give because sacrificing money for others serves God. Our entire ministry is based on sacrifice of time, effort, and money in order to serve God and others. Look at our staff. They are a group that sacrifices every day. Pretty much all of them could make more money elsewhere, or would enjoy more time not serving here, but they do what they do because they know their sacrifices make a difference. And they don't expect rewards. They just want to serve.
When we sacrifice, expecting a reward from God, we sacrifice for the wrong reasons. But do you want to know something interesting? Sometimes when we make a sacrifice, we get rewarded anyway. For instance, Marty was rewarded in an unexpected way. You can look at his being hit by the electric fence as a bad thing. How could God treat him this way, after all the sacrifices Marty had made? But that burn was a blessing.
Marty's mom noticed something different about Marty on Christmas. Before, whenever Marty listened to others, he would always cock his head like a puppy because he was deaf in one ear. On Christmas Day she noticed that he was no longer cocking his head. A few weeks later, after hearing tests were done at school, the school nurse called his mother to say that there was something wrong with Marty's records. His records said that he was deaf in his right ear, but the tests showed that his hearing was perfect. Whether it was the electric fence or the bump on his head from the fall, something restored Marty's hearing. That was his reward.
Do you know what the funny thing about all this denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following Christ is? Sometimes expecting no reward we actually get rewarded. But that's not the point. The point of the Christian life is to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and serve God. This is what we are called to every day. And the irony is that in denying ourselves we often discover ourselves.
Are you willing today to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ? If so, how?
Amen.
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