Ayn Rand, Jesus, and Donald Trump

Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”
Genesis 4:8-10

Cain assumes that he is asking a rhetorical question.

But he is mistaken.

The question is real and it will be fundamental to the long biblical narrative that follows through the Hebrew Scriptures to the end of the New Testament. Cain poses the question for God, but it is quickly turned back as the question God asks of us. 

And Jesus will tell his followers that it is the question by which their lives will be judged.

Ayn Rand, on the other hand, sides with Cain.

I first encountered Ayn Rand (her first name, she said, rhymes with swine) late one night in the fall of my freshman year in college. I was quite entranced for at least half an hour. 

My brief enthusiasm for her philosophy was, I thought, a sort of “rite of passage;” something everybody did at least once. But it was not anything to be taken seriously.

In the movie “Dirty Dancing” one of the major sub-plots is that Baby is trying to help Johnny’s dance partner get an abortion. She confronts the college kid who got Johnny’s partner pregnant and asks him to pay for the abortion. The young man, who is also romancing Baby’s sister, refuses. 

Then he pulls out a dog-eared copy of Rand's “The Fountainhead” and tells her she should read it, that she’ll like it, but that when she finishes it, he wants it back because he has notes in the margins.

He tells her that she needs to understand, “Some people count, and some people don’t.”

“You make me sick,” she tells him. And then she pours a pitcher of water down the front of his shirt and pants.

The philosophy of Ayn Rand should make us sick.

Her basic position is that selfishness is a virtue and altruism is a sin, though as a staunch atheist, she would not call it a sin. It is not just that we are not obligated to help others; we ought not to do it.

In Rand's view, our responsibility is to take care of ourselves. Period. 

In a report in the Washington Post, detailing connections between Rand's philosophy and key players in the Trump administration, James Hohmann describes Rand as “perhaps the leading literary voice in 20th century America for the notion that, in society, there are makers and takers, and that the takers are parasitic moochers who get in the way of the morally-superior innovators.”

“Her books portray the federal government as an evil force, trying to stop hard-working men from accumulating the wealth that she believes they deserve. The author was also an outspoken atheist, something that oozes through in her writing. Rand explained that the essence of ‘objectivism,’ as she called her ideology, is that ‘man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.’”

In an interview with Kirsten Powers, Donald Trump described himself as a Rand fan and said that he identifies most with Howard Roark, the hero of “The Fountainhead,” an architect who blows up a housing project he designed because his blueprints were not exactly followed by the builders. He told Powers, “It relates to business, beauty, life and inner emotions. That book relates to ... everything.”

It is ironic that the evangelical embrace of Donald Trump has not been hindered by his admiration for one of the most famous atheists of the twentieth century. 

But for serious Christians, her atheism is not the most important issue. 

Unlike the theoretical atheism of those who reject the idea of God as unnecessary or unscientific, Rand’s rejection is primarily a moral one. 

Many atheists reject Christian theology while expressing an admiration for the ethics of Jesus. Rand rejects the core of Christian ethics as “immoral.”

Onkar Ghate, a Senior Fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, posted an essay titled, “Does America Need Ayn Rand or Jesus?” 

Ghate argues that for Rand, “morality is not about subordination or service to others or to some ‘higher power’; it is not about self-sacrifice. Hers is a morality that upholds egoism and individualism: it seeks to teach you the difficult task of pursuing the values that achieve your own individual self-interest and happiness.”

In the ethics of Ayn Rand, pursuing your own self-interest and happiness is a “difficult task.” And she believed it was “immoral” to love others more than you love yourself.

Hers is a curiously non-ethical ethics. Historically, the task of ethics has been to balance the self-interest of the individual against the needs and interests of the community. Ethics restrains our natural selfishness. In Rand’s system selfishness is a virtue. 

Ghate is to be commended for his honesty in clearly stating that Rand's philosophy is opposed to the central core of Jesus’ teaching. 

And he is right. We have to choose Ayn Rand or Jesus. We can’t have both.



Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Wealth and Poverty and Taxes

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.
James 5:1-6

I do not generally think of myself as a rich person. I think in household income we are outside of the top quintile, but we are still comfortably above the median. That’s in the United States, of course. 

In global terms, I am rich.

And that is an uncomfortable thought, because the Bible is hard on rich people.

The Letter of James is especially hard, but the theme is consistent. When Mary announces the coming of the Messiah, she sings about the poor being filled with good things and the rich sent away empty. Jesus says that it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells the story of “The Rich Man and Lazarus.” The rich man does not directly refuse to help poor Lazarus, he simply ignores him. And for that he is consigned to eternal darkness.

For the Bible, the problem is not wealth, but the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty, and the disparity between rich and poor.

There are warnings about focusing too much on possessions and not enough on justice, and it’s clear that we don’t really own things; we are only stewards of what ultimately belongs to God. But the biblical ideal is for everyone to have enough, “every man under his vine and fig tree.” No one should have “too much,” but the definition of “too much” is flexible and the real emphasis is really on “enough.”

All Christians live with a certain amount of tension on this. We are not called to renounce everything and live in poverty, although some embrace that calling. We are called to live life fully and abundantly, to accept and rejoice in the good gifts of life. 

But if we are sensitive to issues of global poverty and inequality, then our thanksgiving for our own comfort includes a concern for those who have less. And we need to be good stewards, setting aside a portion of what we have to do God’s work in the world.

Within the United States, the gap between rich and poor has increased dramatically over the past three decades. Almost all of the gains in economic growth over that time have been funneled to the wealthiest among us. The middle class is stagnant. The poor have less. And the rich have more. 

We have been redistributing income from the bottom to the top.

The richest 1% of Americans have more wealth than the total combined wealth of the lower 90%. At the same time, the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans are lower than they have been in decades.

Increasing the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans would be a good idea even if we did not have concerns about debt and deficits. A tax increase would slow the rate of increase in the gap between wealth and poverty, and reduce the upward redistribution of income.

Opponents of increasing the taxes of billionaires point out that the richest one percent of Americans now pay approximately 40% of all income taxes. That sounds like a lot until you realize that the richest one percent also have 40% of the wealth. In other words, the amount they pay in taxes is about average. They pay more dollars but they don’t pay at a higher rate. When we compare wealth (not just annual income) to taxes paid, the tax rate for billionaires is about the same as for average Americans.

Raising the marginal tax rate for the richest Americans would make a significant contribution to reducing the deficit. It would be fairer. But it would also be good. And it would be good for the rich as well as for the poor. In the words of the prophet Isaiah:

If you offer your food to the hungry,
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.
Isaiah 58:10-11


Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

*A slightly different version of this post was first published on July 15, 2011.

May the Peace of the Sabbath Be with You

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.                                                                       Genesis 2:1-3

On the Sabbath day, Jesus went to the Synagogue, 

as he always did.                                                                Luke 4:16

This past Sunday during the Children’s Moment I talked with the kids about Sabbath and summer. When I asked if anyone knew why there was a Sabbath, Evan was quick to answer, “Because in Genesis God rested on the seventh day.”

Exactly right!

  

Someone once asked a rabbi, “Why did God give us this mighty poem of Creation? The Rabbi answered, “To teach us to rest on the Sabbath.” 

Jesus kept the Sabbath, as did his disciples. 

Even on that darkest of days, on the day after the crucifixion, they kept the Sabbath. Keeping Sabbath is at the center of our spiritual practice.

One of the most memorable experiences of my life was observing Sabbath in Jerusalem. With some rabbi friends I went to three different synagogues (Friday evening, Saturday morning, and Saturday evening). The Saturday evening service, at the close of Shabbat, was at a tiny ultra-orthodox Synagogue which seemed to have been transported, unchanged, from eighteenth century Eastern Europe.  We had Shabbat dinner at the elegant King David Hotel. And throughout the day there was fellowship and conversation.

The most significant part of the experience was the sense of peace I felt. That feeling is brought back in the traditional Sabbath greeting, "Shabbat Shalom." It means, "Sabbath peace." It is a short way of saying, "the peace of the Sabbath be with you." 

The refreshing gift of Shabbat is not that work is forbidden, but that rest is permitted. For one day, we are reminded that life does not depend on us; that we can trust God; that we do not have to be busy every moment; that God provides.

At its best, summer in New England is a kind of Shabbat. My prayer for you this summer is that you will have a sense of Shabbat. Resist the temptation to turn leisure into work. Just say "no" to the cultural pressure to fill the summer with so many fun activities that it feels like a part time job.

In the summer, at the United Methodist Church in East Greenwich we make a special effort to create a time of refreshment and renewal in our worship services. We will have childcare for infants and toddlers, and our “one room Sunday School” for older children. And summer, with its more informal atmosphere, is a wonderful time for children to attend worship with their parents and learn what it’s like to experience the whole service.



Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

A Parable about Healthcare in the United States

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney holds a copy of the 2018 budget proposal.

When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” 
. . . . “Stand up, take your mat and go to your home.”And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
Mark 2:1-5, 11-12

This story is a wonderful parable about some of the key issues in the current debate about healthcare in the United States.

But I need to begin with a footnote.

The healing stories in the Gospels are always problematic texts for preaching, because all of us know people who have not been healed. At least, not in the way that they would wish. 

And it is important that Christians never, never burden those who are already suffering with the notion that if they had more faith they would, in fact, be healed. The healing power of God must always remain a mystery. And the forms of God’s healing must also be a mystery. But in spite of that caution, these stories speak to us in a profound way about our need for healing and about God’s vision for our lives.

In those days, in Palestine, houses were often made with a mud and thatch roof. Sometimes they were built into the side of a hill, so that you could actually around he side of the hill and up on top of the roof. And that’s what they did. When they couldn’t get in through the door, they went around the side and up the hill onto the roof. Then they set their friend down and began digging through the thatch and the mud.

The scripture says, “He was teaching them the word,” which probably means he was teaching Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Pentateuch, the Books of Moses). 

Suddenly, things begin to fall from the roof. 

Things begin to fall. First dirt and dust sifts down. Pretty soon Jesus can’t even tell his story. Everyone is looking up at the roof, and by now large chunks of things are falling on them. People scramble and cover their heads. And then the roof opens up. 

Jesus looks up there where there are these four guys looking down, probably pretty proud of themselves. What a great opportunity! They have been able to engage in an act of vandalism and do a good deed, a mizpah, at the same time. It just doesn’t get any better than that!

Before Jesus can say anything, the four guys are lowering a fifth guy down into the house right in front of Jesus. They lean down as far as they can, and then pass him to those in the house.

Jesus is amazed at what he sees. Mark observes, “When he saw their faith . . . .” Not the faith of the paralyzed man. He is marveling at the faith of the four guys who carried him through town and ripped up the roof. 

What a risk they took! 

“When he saw their faith, he said to the man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” 

Somehow, Jesus understands that what is paralyzing this man is an overwhelming sense of guilt. There may be fear also, but guilt apparently plays a major role. He is so scared and so guilty, that he cannot even move. Jesus understands that the only way for the man to be healed is for him to feel a sense of grace and forgiveness. 

Jesus turns to the paralyzed man and says, “Take up your mat and walk!”

The man stands up. And takes his mat. And walks out of the house. People are in shock. The crow gathered around the house saw the man carried up onto the roof, and now they see him walking out the door. They are excited and amazed, and they shout, “We never saw anything like this!” Which is the only proper response to the church in action. 

When the church is really the church, when we are really being the people God has called us to be, the only proper response is, “We’ve never seen anything like this!” It is always amazing to believers and non-believers alike. 

In terms of the current healthcare debate, the story makes at least three important points.

First, when people can’t walk, we need to carry them.

The basic theory of health insurance is that the healthy people carry the sick people. And when we are dealing with serious illnesses like cancer and heart disease, where the costs of treatment are measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars, we need a lot more than four healthy people to carry one sick one.

The proposed American Healthcare Act, says that healthy people should not have to carry sick people, at least they should not have to carry as many or carry them as far. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 23 million people would lose their health insurance under the AHCA.

In a Sunday editorial, The New York Times describes it this way:

“Consider the fate of Medicaid, a program that provides health insurance to more than 74 million people, among them 60 percent of nursing home residents and millions of people with disabilities. Trumpcare would slash Medicaid spending by $834 billion over 10 years, according to the C.B.O. The president’s budget would take a further $610 billion from the program under the pretext of reforming it. Taken together, this amounts to an estimated 45 percent reduction by 2026 compared with current law, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says.”

Second, some people cannot be healed unless we carry them.

Jesus’ first response is not to the paralyzed man but to the guys who are carrying them. It is their faith that moves him to bless the paralytic.

If they had not carried him, he would not be healed.

The Times observes that the proposed AHCA, “would make it impossible for millions of people with pre-existing conditions like heart disease or diabetes to buy health insurance. That’s because the law would let states waive many of the requirements in the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law known as Obamacare. It would also greatly increase the cost of insurance policies for older and poorer people, no matter where they live. By way of illustration, a 64-year-old earning $26,500 a year and living in a state not seeking waivers would have to pay $16,100 a year for coverage, nearly 10 times as much as she would under Obamacare.”

We can debate the exact numbers, but we know that without health insurance thousands of  people will die sooner and a much larger group will have their quality of life reduced dramatically.

And this will be done in order to reduce the burden on those who are healthiest and wealthiest. The healthy and the wealthy will not have to carry as many poor people.

The third point is counter intuitive.

In the parable of the paralyzed man the happiest and healthiest people are the four guys carrying their friend. Human beings are happiest when they are helping others.

To be fair, the four guys are probably happy about more than helping a friend. They get to parade him through the village against his will, and they get to rip up a roof and terrorize the people inside the house, and be praised for it. It doesn’t get any better than that.

The theory behind the AHCA and the budget being proposed to congress is that the happiness of the wealthy and the healthy can best be achieved by doing less for others and keeping more for ourselves. As the Times editorializes:

“Apart from inflicting hardship, what would Trumpcare and the president’s budget achieve? Mainly a windfall for wealthy families. The administration has not provided enough information to make good estimates, so it’s hard to say how much the rich would gain from the budget, although it would be a lot. We know more about Trumpcare. The Tax Policy Center estimates that almost all of the tax cuts in that legislation would flow to the rich: The top 1 percent would take home an average of $37,200 a year, while people with middle-class incomes would get a measly $300.”

Maybe Jesus is wrong. Maybe what really makes us happiest is having more money and doing less for others.

But I don’t believe that’s who we really want to be as individuals or as a country.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

The ACA Has Achieved Something Significant

Five Year Old James Cook of Cleveland, Ohio

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

“I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

Mark 2:1-5, 11-12


Modern readers tend to focus first on the miracle.

They may believe it literally, or they may see it as a metaphor. They may rationalize it, or they may see it pointing toward larger truths about healing and wholeness and forgiveness, they may focus on sin and guilt in relation to physical health.

But there is something else, central to the story, which is easily missed. What impresses Jesus is the four friends carrying the paralytic. “When he saw their faith” he offered the forgiveness that led to healing.

They picked him up and carried him.

When Jesus saw them carrying the man, he called that “faith.”

Over the past eight years of our national debate about the Affordable Care Act, one of the most contentious questions has been about whether or not healthy people have a responsibility to carry those who are ill.

And the good news is that we have made progress.

In September of 2011 CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer was moderating a Republican Presidential Candidates debate in Tampa Florida. He posed a hypothetical question to Dr. Ron Paul. If a healthy thirty year old man with a good income chose not to buy health insurance and then became catastrophically ill, what should happen? Paul tried to dodge the question by recalling (incorrectly) that years ago the churches took care of people who had no insurance, but a significant portion of the audience could be heard chanting, “Let him die! Let him die!”

Not our finest moment, though the Ayn Rand crowd must have rejoiced in the triumph of “the virtue of selfishness.”

No one is really happy with the individual mandate requirement of the Affordable Care Act. But without some means of requiring everyone to buy coverage it is impossible to pay for the very popular provisions protecting those with pre-existing conditions and eliminating the lifetime limits on coverage.

The ACA is far from perfect. But it has achieved something significant. It has shifted the terms of the debate.

When we first began discussing the ACA, one of the primary objections was that “we can’t afford it.” In other words, we won’t carry sick people. If people need to be carried they will have to pay for it on their own.

In the initial debates and in subsequent attempts at repeal, those against the ACA did not mention the folks without health insurance. And they did not seem worried that repeal would take away insurance from twenty million people who were previously uninsured and now have health insurance through the ACA.

But now that has shifted.

President Trump’s official position is that the ACA should be repealed and replaced with Health Savings Accounts, which is not really a viable alternative to insurance. But in his public statements he has repeatedly said that we can’t have twenty million people losing health insurance. And other opponents of the ACA have said the same thing.

In the long run we need some version of single payer health insurance like almost all of the developed world. And we could do this using the present Medicare model.

But for now at least we seem to have taken a small step toward.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Christian Faith and Transgender Kids

Kai Shappley at age 5 with her mom

Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”
Luke 17:1-2

At age 3 Joseph Shappley began telling her mom that she was a girl.

“From my earliest memories of my child, my child’s been very feminine,” says Kim Shappley. “It’s just always been that way. I don’t know how else to put it. I’m a strong, spirit-filled, Bible-believing, born-again Christian. I’m a Republican.”

‘This was just not going to happen,” she told herself. “At home I had three other boys. I had a very masculine home. Nothing feminine in the home, and Kai started telling us at age 3, ‘I’m a girl.’”

I read about Kim Shappley and her daughter Kai in an article by Nyssa Kruse in the Texas Observer. Biologically, Kai was born a male and she was named Joseph.

Joseph knew at age three that she was a girl. But Kim believed that if she prayed enough and fasted enough, she could change Kai back into Joseph.

Then Kai began having behavior problems at school. Kim recalls, “If another little girl brought a toy for show and tell on Friday, my child would do everything in their power to steal that toy and lie about stealing it. And it just continued to escalate.”

Kim learned of a little boy in Oregon, a four year old, who was beaten to death by his mom because he had acted gay. She said it was something that “kind of struck me hard.” So she began reaching out to her pediatrician and to psychiatrists, “and they all pretty consistently said the same thing: ‘This is a real thing.’”

Then one night when Kai said her prayers at bedtime she started crying and she asked God to “let Joseph go home and live with Jesus.”

As Kim describes that time:

“Joseph is Kai’s male birth name. Kai was actually just begging the Lord to just let her die. Who wants to hear their toddler pray that? And then it starts clicking: 41 percent suicide rate. A 41 percent suicide rate. Why? The suicide rate is high because they don’t have the family support. They don’t have the community support and their self-esteem and their self-worth.”

Kim’s faith shifted and she told herself, “I am a Bible-believing Christian. I love the Lord. But God makes no mistakes, and my child is fearfully and wonderfully made, just as the Scripture tells us.” 

She says she used to listen to other mothers of transgender children say that they just wanted their child to be happy, and in her self-righteousness she would think, “It’s not about your kid being happy. You need to train your child in the ways of the Lord and be a better mom.”

Kai begged her mom to buy her panties, and Kim says it took her three or four trips to Wal-Mart before she could finally go through with it. She put the panties in Kai’s drawer and when Kai discovered the princess panties she fell on the floor hugging her new panties and sobbing to her mom, “Thank you, Mommy, thank you.”

Kim explains, “the thing is, what I saw in my child, when Kai got those panties, was this joy and this peace I had never seen in this child, and I realize it’s not about ‘I’m going to give you these to make you happy,’ it’s about my child had never truly been happy before.”

“We’ve lost a lot of very important people out of our lives and there are some thoroughly burned bridges. My sister has disowned me. I watch cousins and aunts post horrible things about transgender people, trying to rally the troops against the militant gay agenda, that Satan was using these little kids. I will say we’ve lost the majority of our family. I feel like sometimes we’re on a little island, but through this transition, my kid, within a few short weeks, we weren’t having lying anymore. We weren’t having bed-wetting any- more. We have had no nightmares in the past year. No stealing at all. That all was just erased within a few weeks of this. I have a happy, healthy, outgoing, loving, beautiful, sweet little girl who loves Jesus and loves her brothers.”

Finally, Kim Shappley has some thoughts on what lawmakers and public officials could do to help transgender children:

“They could stop fueling the hate. They are making a dangerous and hostile environment for my child, for me, for our family with their hate. The bathroom deal — how did that become an issue? Transgender human beings have been using the gender-appropriate bathroom forever. Forever. And it didn’t become an issue until it was made an issue. The argument about “We can’t let this happen because it will let perverts into the bathroom” — well, hey, make a law that says perverts can’t go into the bathroom. Oh, wait, we already have that law.

“If we were to send my daughter into the men’s bathroom like lawmakers want, there we have a risk. Either she’s gonna get beaten up by people who’ve had their hatred fueled because there’s this beautiful woman in the bathroom with them, where lawmakers want her to go, or she’s gonna get raped because she’s a beautiful little woman. Let her go into the women’s bathroom. The only danger my daughter is gonna do in the women’s restroom that might be a little offensive is try to tell a woman how to fix her hair or makeup better.”

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

It Could Have Been Worse (A Reflection on Our United Methodist General Conference)

Rev. Will Green protesting the exclusion of LGBTQI persons
from full inclusion in the United Methodist Church

Once Jesus was asked when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
Luke 17:20-21

When Christians argue about belief, we generally argue about things that don’t make much difference. It makes no difference whether Jesus really “walked on the water,” for example. And it makes no difference whether or not Mary was a virgin. 

On the other hand, we pay little attention to whether or not we believe in things that really matter. It makes a great deal of difference, for instance, whether we believe in loving our enemies, or forgiving the person who wrongs us, or loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.

This passage from Luke’s Gospel contains one of those ideas that matter. It is in many ways a watershed question: Do you believe that, in fact, the Kingdom of God is among us?

If you believe that the Kingdom of God is among us, then you will see the world differently.

I have been thinking about this a lot as the events have unfolded at our United Methodist General Conference in Portland, Oregon, this past week.  An Associated Press story in the New York Times gives an excellent summary of what has happened and where we are.

In this latest episode of our forty-four year soap opera we continue to wrestle with whether or not our LGBTQ sisters and brothers will be fully included in the life of the church. There is good news and bad news. The good news, not to be confused with the Good News movement, is that we did not institute severe mandatory penalties against clergy who celebrate same sex marriages. The bad news is that the delegates actually voted in favor of the mandatory penalties and we were only saved by a Judicial Council ruling that mandatory penalties violated our church constitution. 

There was serious discussion of schism, dividing the church into at least two groups, one progressive and the other traditional, with options for more. As the rumors and reports became more persistent, Bishop Bruce Ough, the president of the Council of Bishops, addressed the body to deny the rumors and acknowledge that the bishops were themselves deeply and painfully divided about how we should move forward. 

"I have a broken heart in that collectively we have a broken heart," Bishop Ough told the delegates. "Our heart breaks over the pain, distrust, anger, anxiety and disunity" among the delegates at the conference.

As the committee votes against the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons piled up, advocates for inclusion staged protests, at one point standing around the outside of the conference session with rainbow colored duct tape over their mouths, and at another point lying on the floor with their hands and feet bound.

It was heart breaking. "People are walking down the street in tears saying, 'This is not the United Methodist Church that I joined,' " said Dorothee Benz, an LGBT rights advocate and a lay delegate from the New York Annual Conference.

After a roller coaster ride of voting and maneuvering the delegates finally voted 428-405 to accept a plan advanced by the Council of Bishops to delay all consideration of LGBTQ proposals, and instead to create a commission that will devote the next two years to reviewing our present policies and attempt to develop a plan to address our differences.

This does not seem like a very good outcome unless you realize that it could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse. If we had pressed for a vote on those issues it is almost certain that we would have lost every single one.

The reason that the United Methodist Church is out of step with other mainline denominations in the United States, like the Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, and the Congregationalist (though each of those denominations has dissenting traditionalists), is that we are a world church. If the vote at General Conference were only among United Methodists from the U.S., we would have moved forward long ago.

As our church has evolved, the more liberal Methodist churches in South America, South Africa, and Great Britain formed their our indigenous churches and separated from what is now the United Methodist Church. Within our church, the traditionalist minority in the United States has almost unanimous support from the very conservative United Methodist conferences in Africa and together they form an immovable bloc. 

So after all of the tumult, we are left with a commission to study something that is already obvious to most of the people outside of the church. And, honestly, that is embarrassing.

But it should not surprise us.

When Jesus said, “the Kingdom of God is among you,” he was not speaking about the church. He was speaking about humanity. 

We pray that the Kingdom will come on earth because we know that it is not fully realized. And we know that we cannot point with certainty to an event or movement and exclaim, “Look, there it is.” 

But while the commission is conducting its study, more congregations will become reconciling churches, more clergy will conduct same sex weddings, more bishops will refuse to conduct clergy trials, and more openly gay clergy will be ordained.


The Kingdom of God is among us. And time is on our side.

Hating the Sin and Loving the Sinner

"Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.”
Luke 15:4-7

It is time.

It is time to name it for what it is and say it as clearly as we can.

Homophobia is a sin. It is an affront to the Gospel. It is an affront to God and to God’s children.

It is a sin as surely as racism and sexism and classism are all sins.

Once upon a time we could say that homosexuality was a matter about which faithful Christians could disagree. But that is no longer the case.

Just as we gave up that notion of faithful disagreement with regard to women’s issues and racial issues, it is time to recognize that our moral vision and understanding have evolved. Dressing up bigotry with a few carefully chosen Bible verses is not an ethical argument.

Which brings us to Gandhi. And Jesus.

The admonition to “Hate the sin, but love the sinner,” is commonly attributed to Jesus. It was actually said by Gandhi.

Of course, Jesus did love sinners. The orthodox believers of his day were appalled by this and Luke says that he told the parables of the Lost Sheep (above), the Lost Coin, and the Prodigal Son because they were “grumbling” about how “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Two thousand years later, the spirit of Jesus’ critics lives on.

In a website called “Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry,” Matt Slick writes about how Christians are wrong to believe that God loves everyone. He argues, in apparent opposition to Jesus’ life and teachings, that actually God really does hate sinners. Not just sins, but the sinners themselves. It’s all about God’s holiness and righteousness.

That’s embarrassing.

As Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” 

Those of us who are working for the full inclusion of our LGBTQ friends and neighbors in the life of the church and in the wider culture must be careful not to become mirror images of the self-righteousness and judgmentalism we have seen so often from those trying to maintain the legacy of exclusion and rejection. 

We must name homophobia as a sin. Anything else is dishonest. We must confess it as a sin uniquely perpetrated in the church and by the church. Anything else is unfair to those who have suffered great harm. 

I realize this sounds unkind. But it is also honest. Just as it does no good to pretend that racism and sexism are okay. It also does no good to pretend that homophobia is okay. It isn’t. As Christians, we need to say that as clearly as we can.

But we must also love those who are still living within the walls of that bigotry. 

Hate the sin and love the sinner.

Jesus Was a Pharisee (Seriously. He Was)

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, 
"Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”
Luke 13:31

A few years ago at our New England United Methodist Annual Conference we were debating an issue related to how the church treats LGBTQ persons. One of my colleagues, arguing for inclusion, characterized those on the other side of the debate as “modern day Pharisees.” It was, I thought, an unfair comparison, and I quickly made my way to a microphone to respond.

“That’s unfair,” I said, when the presiding bishop called on me.

“It’s unfair to the Pharisees.”

There was a smattering of laughter, but I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was serious. I admit it was a snarky comment. And it was unkind. Not what Jesus would have said in that circumstance, although it seems possible he might have said something similar in one of his many discussions and disputations with disciples and others.

Like everyone else in my generation and like almost everyone who went to Sunday School and grew up in the church, I learned early on that the Pharisees were the bad guys. They were self-righteous and hypocritical, obsessed with observing the letter of the Law, yet utterly tone-deaf to its spirit. They were rich and powerful, and they colluded with the Romans in opposing and eventually killing Jesus. They were ritually clean, yet morally corrupt.

And I learned in seminary that they were the perfect foil for preaching. Every narrative needs a good villain, and the Pharisees were the perfect villains for almost any preaching topic. 

It was perfect, with the slight problem that it was wrong.

The Pharisees were reformers.

They had a three-fold belief that God was a loving father, who loved humanity so much that he gave us the Torah, the Law, so that everyone who followed the law would have eternal life (fellowship with God, now and forever).

Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with John 3:16 will see the parallelism of construction. And beyond the similarity of form, the substance of the first and third points is basically identical. Each speaks of God as a loving father and each points toward eternal life. The difference is in the way. The Pharisees believed that following Torah was the way: John’s Gospel sees the way as believing in Jesus as the Christ.

The three-fold belief of the Pharisees gives rise to the animating question of Matthew, Mark and Luke: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” If the way to fellowship with God now and forever is found in following Torah (the way), what does it mean to follow Torah? What specifically must I do? And the answer is the same in each of the three Gospels: love God and love your neighbor.

Every three years on the second Sunday in Lent, the Lectionary has us reading about how some Pharisees came to warn Jesus that Herod was after him. And after cycling through that text a couple of times I began to wonder. Why were the Pharisees warning Jesus? Weren’t they his enemies?

Two possibilities presented themselves in my mind. The first was mildly unsettling, given everything I had learned up until that point. What if the Pharisees and Jesus were not such bitter enemies?

There are many occasions where he judges them harshly. At one point he tells his followers to listen to what the Pharisees say, because “they sit on Moses’ seat,” but be careful not to imitate what they do. On the other hand, there are also instances in which they invite him to dine with them. Some are attracted to Jesus and believe that he is the Messiah, and the Book of Acts records occasions on which the Pharisees protect early Christians.

The second possibility was even more unsettling. What if Jesus himself was a Pharisee?

If you grew up, as I did, with the image of Pharisees as self-righteous hypocrites, it may be hard not to reject that idea out of hand. 

But think about it.

We know that it was Jesus’ custom to go to the Synagogue on the Sabbath, and we know that the Synagogue was a Pharisaic institution. Jesus and the disciples are in the Synagogue a lot.

We know that the Pharisees believed in the two-fold concept of the Law as written and oral. The written law was understood to be eternal, but the oral law had to be reinterpreted for each generation. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus first declares that he has not come “to abolish the law or the prophets.” On the contrary he says, “I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” Then he seems to contradict that by launching into a series of teachings in which he says first, “You have heard it said,” followed by a commandment, and then, “but I say to you,” followed by a new teaching. It only makes sense when we recognize that in the first statement he is reciting the written law, and in the second statement he is giving a new oral interpretation.

Finally, we know that Jesus was called rabbi. And we know that rabbinic Judaism grew out of the Pharisaic movement. As one of my rabbi friends said, “If he was a rabbi, then he was a Pharisee.”

The Pharisees gave birth to two great religions, Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, the only form of Judaism to emerge from the ancient world. They gave us the animating question for the synoptic gospels and the belief structure for the fourth gospel. They also gave us a model for Bible study and for the focus on scripture as part of the worship service.

Clearly, Jesus did have many arguments with the Pharisees as individuals or in groups. And he criticized the movement as a whole. But those disputes and disagreements should be understood as internal to the Pharisaic movement itself, just as Christians disagree with other Christians and sometimes criticize Christianity as a whole.

And Jesus was not the only Pharisee looking critically at the movement. His scathing criticism in Matthew 23 are mirrored almost exactly in a passage in the Talmud which records a description of seven different types of Pharisaic behavior, only the last of which is an example of the high standards of belief and practice to which they were called.

1. The “Shoulder Pharisee,” who wore his good deeds on his shoulder.
2. The “Wait a Little Pharisee,” who always put off doing good deeds until a later time.
3. The “Bruised Pharisee,” who shut his eyes to avoid seeing a woman and was bruised from stumbling and falling.
4. The “Humpbacked Pharisee,” bent double by false humility.
5. The “Ever Reckoning Pharisee,” who was always counting up his good deeds.
6. The “Fearful Pharisee,” always quaking in fear of God’s wrath.
7. And finally, the “God-loving Pharisee,” who lived with faith and charity, whose deeds matched his professed beliefs.

Whether or not one believes that Jesus was a Pharisee, how we view the Pharisees is very important for modern Christians. 

Apart from the basic idea that historical accuracy matters, a reassessment of our attitude toward the Pharisees is critical for two reasons.

First, when we can see more clearly the Jewish context of Jesus’ life and ministry, we can better understand his teachings. We can see him as a rabbi advocating for his people against an occupying empire, rather than as a religious iconoclast rebelling against religious traditionalists. His religious and political views both come into sharper focus when can see him in his Jewish context.

The second point is also of great practical importance. Many Christians do not understand that modern Judaism, across the spectrum from the Orthodox to Reform and even Reconstructionist, all have their roots in the Pharisaic movement. When Christians slander the Pharisees of Jesus’ time, they are also implicitly criticizing modern Judaism. This is oddly ironic, since both Christianity and modern Judaism share a common beginning in the Pharisaic movement. Although the irony may be amusing, the practical result is that the historic Christian slander of the Pharisees has contributed to anti-Semitism.

A more accurate historical appreciation of the Pharisees can give us a clearer understanding of Jesus’ life and ministry and open the way to a more helpful relationship between Christianity and Judaism.

5 Things Jesus Says to Those Who Condemn LGBTQ Persons

Five Things Jesus Would Say to New Spring Church

When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly.
Matthew 17:14-18

A recent post from New Spring Church is titled “5 Things Jesus Says to the Gay Community.” Though the title sounds promising, the actual post is condemning. If anything, the initially soft tone and the deceptiveness of the article makes it even more damaging.

But I have a solution!

With just a few minor edits, I believe it is exactly what Jesus would say to those who persist in condemning and excluding LGBTQ persons from full participation in the life of the church.

I know. 

Jesus never said anything at all about LGBTQ issues. But bear with me. If “New Spring Church” can pretend, then so can we. 

And when we speculate about what Jesus might have said, we are always on safer ground when we tilt toward grace rather than judgment. So here we go: 

There is a lot of noise on the news and in public forums about gay marriage and traditional values. Everyone has an opinion on what’s right and what’s wrong. But what would Jesus say? How would Jesus address those who persist in the perverse exclusion and condemnation of LGBTQ persons? Do not let homophobia and bigotry possess you. You can repent and change. Looking through scripture, Jesus makes His thoughts fairly clear.

1. I love you.

Amidst the protest signs, yelling crowds and political referendums, the simple message of Jesus’ love for you is often drowned out. Never doubt that Jesus loves you more than you could ever know.

Jesus doesn’t just love a future version of you; He loves you exactly as you are right now. Jesus’ love for you has no prerequisites or requirements.

Even if you hate Him and deny his teachings, Jesus loves you and wants what is best for you.

Love is at the core of everything Jesus taught. Unfortunately, His message of love has been conveniently left out by many who would rather make a point than make a difference (John 3:16; 1 John 4:8-10; Romans 5:8; Psalm 86:15).

2. I understand rejection.

Jesus knows how it feels to be a social outcast.

You would think the religious leaders would have been His best friends, but they hated Him. They sought to kill Him and publicly shame Him any chance they had.

Eventually, the religious elite joined forces with local politicians and murdered Jesus in front of a cheering crowd.

Rejection hurts.

Jesus’ own family thought He was out of His mind; you probably understand how that feels. In Jesus’ greatest moment of need, His closest friends deserted Him.

You may feel rejected by society and the church right now, and that daily pressure takes a toll. Jesus understands.

His heart always breaks for the rejected and the outcast. Jesus wants to gather you in His arms and let you know that He loves you. You have a home with Jesus, you belong to Him and you are His child, even when you reject and condemn others. Even your bigotry cannot remove you from God’s love.

Don’t reject Him because He has not rejected you (Isaiah 53:3; Mark 3:20-21;Matthew 26:55-56; Matthew 27; Ezekiel 18:21-23).

3. I also was tempted.

Jesus was tempted in every way that we are tempted. He does not shame you or reject you because of your temptations and feelings. He understands your fearful temptation to reject others and deny their full personhood.

Some like to pretend they are perfect and never face any struggles, but they’re lying. Jesus really was perfect and still faced temptation. Like you, He battled the desire to run away from His Father’s plan.

He understands what you are going through.

If you read about His life, you will see it was no cake walk, but if you will walk with Him and obey Him, you will find a greater reward than you could ever imagine (Hebrews 4:15-16; Hebrews 2:17-18; Hebrews 12:2-3, 7-11).

4. I want more for you.

God created marriage and sex for your enjoyment. Sex was created to bind us together within the covenant of marriage, and it has been that way from the beginning. Anything else is less than what God wants.

Sin is separation; from God, from one another, and from our best selves. Jesus will not stop bringing it to our attention because we will miss out on the deepest experiences in life if sin is left unaddressed. You may think Jesus is trying to take the one thing you enjoy or spoil your fun, but that is not the case. The reason He blessed our love for one another is because He wants what is best for you. Love overcomes our separation.

Jesus wants everyone to be included. When you reject your LGBTQ sisters and brothers, you are rejecting Him.

Ignore the political arguments, the protestors and the yelling. Jesus wants you to trust Him.

Trust that He has good things in store for you. Trust that He wants what is best for you. Before you decide that what you feel is right, decide if you trust Him (Matthew 19:4-6; Ephesians 3:17-21; 1 Timothy 2:4).

5. I will be here for you.

You may disagree with Jesus’ thoughts on love and commitment, but He will not turn away from you.

You may enjoy the life you live right now, even if it is a rejection of God’s love and Jesus’ teachings. Jesus understands your hesitation to make changes. He does not give up on us.

For a long time now, people have disagreed with Him, yelled at Him and run from Him, and He patiently waits. Jesus is patient with us because He wants you to know Him.

Jesus wants you to live a life that is full and abundant. When you are worn out from doing things your way, He will be here. Turn to Him and ask for help, and He will be there before you can blink.

Jesus wants what is best for you, and He wants you to experience a full life.

Jesus is not concerned with winning an argument or forcing you to do something you don’t want to do. Jesus wants you to know that your relationship with Him is better than anything else out there.

Until you reach that point, He will be here patiently drawing you to Himself (Romans 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9; 1 Peter 5:7; Hosea 14).

Bending the Moral Arc: The Season of Kingdomtide

The poor are invited to the feast. Luke 14:15-24

Once Jesus was asked when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
Luke 17:20-21

At the end of the Selma march, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech titled, “Our God Is Marching On.” And at the end of the speech, he wove together a rich poetic tapestry of Bible verses with hymn texts by Julia Ward Howe and James Russell Lowell. Then he adapted a phrase from the great abolitionist preacher Theodore Parker and declared that although it had been a long struggle for Civil Rights, in the end they would be victorious because “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 

I don’t know whether King would see his phrase about the “arc of the moral universe,” as interchangeable with “the moral arc of the universe,” but I prefer the latter.

If we believe in the Kingdom of God, then we believe that the universe itself has a moral arc that bends toward justice.

Jesus told his disciples that the Kingdom of God was already among them although it was not yet fully realized. This is what God is doing in the world. The moral arc is bending toward justice. Jesus called his disciples to join in what God is already doing, to share in bending the moral arc of the universe.

The liturgical season of Kingdomtide began last Sunday. That is, if we still celebrated Kingdomtide, it would have begun last Sunday. In the old Methodist liturgical calendar the Sundays from the end of August to the beginning of Advent were known as the season of “Kingdomtide.”  It was a time to reflect on the biblical promise of the Kingdom of God and to ask ourselves what the world would look like if we were serious about building the Kingdom of God on earth. 

The loss of Kingdomtide is not a metaphor for everything that is wrong with the world, although sometimes it seems to me as if it is. And the loss of a liturgical season will not stop the bending of the arc or the coming of the kingdom. But it is still a loss. 

Jesus preached the “good news of the Kingdom of God.” He announced that God was already at work in the world, and we were invited to live in the new reality that God was creating. The idea of the Kingdom of God begins with Jesus, but it grows out of the experience of the people of Israel. And a primary theological component is the liberation of the Israelites in the Exodus.

For Jesus, this alternative community was a place where the poor were lifted up, where everyone had a place at the table, where love governed both individuals and institutions. It was a place of radical hospitality, egalitarianism, inclusion, mutual concern, self-sacrifice, and social justice. In this biblical vision, everyone has enough and no one has too much.

“Against the data,” as Walter Brueggeman would say, Jesus declared that this “Kingdom of God” was already among them. In spite of the Roman occupation. The world did not belong to the emperor, it belonged to God. And God was at work in the world. The disciples were invited to live into the new reality; this alternative community.

Although Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God occupies the overwhelming majority of his teaching, it has too often been ignored by modern Christians. The popular misinterpretation is that when he talked about Gods’ Kingdom, he was talking about heaven. But he wasn’t. He was talking about happens (and doesn’t happen, but ought to happen) on this earth.

Three Simple Mistakes That Preachers Make

"I give you a new commandment that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." 
John 13:34

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” 
Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
John 6:35, 41-42

On Sunday we went to church. I like to go to church when I am on vacation because it gives me a chance to just sit and listen. I am not responsible for anything. It is Sabbath time in a way that the Sundays when I am preaching cannot be Sabbath time.

The guest preacher was very earnest and he spoke well. He had an engaging manner and a ready smile. Mostly he just repeated Bible stories in colloquial language, but he did it effectively.

The sermon seemed to have three main points:

1. All God asks of us is that we believe.
2. You don’t have to DO anything.
3. It is not about this world.

All three points are very fairly common in traditional Christian preaching, and all three are wrong. 

Part of it was not his fault. At this point in the Lectionary cycle we are deeply mired in John’s Gospel and the stories seem to be on a repeating loop about the bread of life. After a while, even the best preachers will either run out of things to say or get lost in the weeds. This is one of the reasons that at the United Methodist Church in East Greenwich we have departed from the Lectionary and are doing a series on “Faith in Film.”

There was a time in my life when John’s Gospel was my favorite. But that was long ago and far away.

Parts of John are amazing. Few passages in the Bible can compare to John’s prologue in terms of theological and philosophical depth. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That verse alone has launched a thousand sermons. And poems. And philosophical reflections. To borrow a phrase from a rabbi, that verse has infinity within it.

John has incredible stories and character studies: “The Woman at the Well,” “The Man Born Blind,” “The Woman Taken in Adultery.” And then there is the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate. It doesn’t get much deeper than Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” And you get a feeling for both Pilate and Jesus that is unique in the Gospels.

But John has some major failings that are challenging to work around. One of the prominent story lines in the New Testament is the transformation of Christianity from a sect within Judaism into a new religion. The Gospels continually define the teachings of Jesus over against the teachings of traditional Judaism and there is an emphasis on the differences which is inherently anti-Semitic. But John gives us anti-Semitism on steroids. It is understandable, once you consider the historical context. When the synoptic gospels were written (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the church was still part of the synagogue. Those writers wanted to draw a contrast, within Judaism, between Jesus and the Pharisees. Really, they were contrasting Jesus with other Pharisees, since Jesus was a Pharisee. As the church breaks away, John casts “the Jews” in the role the other gospels assign to the Pharisees, although the fact is that Jesus and his disciples, and most of the other early Christians, were all Jews.

And then there are the three points of the sermon. John isn’t really trying to make these points. They are a simplistic interpretation of his theology. It is at least partly their simplicity that makes them so popular. 

Could anything be simpler than the idea that all we need to do is believe? 

What Alfred North Whitehead said of science and natural philosophy is also true of theology, the aim “is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts.” But then Whitehead adds the caution that, “We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest.” And he concludes, “The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity and distrust it.’”

In theology and biblical study we should always seek simplicity, but we should also recognize that a simple explanation cannot fully explain a complex reality.

The idea that all we need to do is believe, ignores the fact that in Matthew, Mark, and Luke there is almost nothing at all about belief. The invitation is simply to follow Jesus. And it also ignores the very strong emphasis in John on servanthood as the evidence that we are Jesus’ disciples. John is the one who reports Jesus saying, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-45).

Believing, as the early Christians understood it, is not the same as what modern preachers mean by it. To believe in Jesus, in the biblical sense, is to give one’s heart to Jesus. It is an existential commitment rather than an intellectual exercise. And there is nothing simple about it.

 “You don’t have to DO anything,” said the preacher. He said it more than once to emphasize the simplicity of Christian faith. This second point is a heresy as old as Christianity. In Paul’s Second Letter to the Church in Thessalonica, one of the oldest texts in the New Testament, he confronts a group who literally will not do anything. They will not work and instead are living off of the work of others. If they cannot earn God’s favor by good works, then what is the point of working? Paul has a simple solution. If they will not work, then they will not eat.

God loves us and accepts us just the way we are. It is a gift of grace. We don’t have to do anything to be loved by God. But that is not the only word. The synoptic gospels are organized around a single question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” What must I do to have fellowship with God now and forever? And the answer is always the same: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” We don’t have to do those things to earn God’s love, but we do have to do those things in order to experience life the way it is meant to be lived. We don’t experience the gift of God’s grace until we choose to receive it.

Point three in the sermon was that it’s not about this world. The preacher said that the Jews in John’s Gospel were looking for a paradise on earth, but Jesus was talking about a “heavenly” kingdom. It is a popular and traditional misconception. In the Lectionary text for last Sunday and at other points, John seems to say that Jesus is focused primarily on something beyond this world. When Pilate asks Jesus if he is a king, Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not from this world,” if it were, “my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over.” But the key point in that passage is that Jesus’ kingdom, the Kingdom of God, is not like the kingdoms of this world. It is not built on violence and domination. It is built on peace and non-violence. To use Paul’s language, it is in the world but not of the world. Most specifically, it is not like the Roman Empire.

Similarly, the preacher pointed out that Jesus was talking about the bread of heaven while “the Jews” were looking for a meal. According to John’s account, Jesus did talk about the bread of heaven, but throughout the Gospels he talks a great deal more about real bread that feeds hungry people here and now.

John’s emphasis on eternal life certainly means more than just the time that we are alive on earth, but it starts now. It is not something that happens to us only after we die. Eternal life means living fully in the presence of God, now and forever. Almost two thousand years later, when Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked about “this worldly Christianity” as he led the Confessing Church against the empire of Hitler, he was much closer to Jesus’ meaning than the popular tradition of an “other-worldly” Jesus. 

After the sermon we said the Lord’s Prayer, which gave a wonderful counterpoint:

Thy kingdom come, 
Thy will be done 
on earth 
as it is in heaven. 
Give us this day our daily bread . . .