Of M.I.C.E. and men (and women)

 I once went to an apologetics conference at Trevecca-Nazarene University in Nashville. Christian apologetics is the investigative, coherent and evidence-based defense of the claims of Christian faith. One of the speakers was named J. Warner Wallace. Mr. Wallace comes from a fully-atheist family. He is one of multiple generations of his family who have served the Los Angeles police department, working as a cold-case detective. It was his professional investigative skills that led him, a confirmed atheist at the time, to investigate the death and claimed resurrection of Jesus in order to prove that the story was nonsense. Instead, he found that the hard evidence of history firmly supported the proclamation that “Christ has died, Christ is risen.” He became a Christian and wrote a book called Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels. It’s worth your time and money.

One thing Wallace did was explain the investigative process and how evidence comes together to support or rebut certain conclusions. In explaining this process, using a real murder case he had solved, he said that there are three, and only three, motives for committing a crime. They are greed, lust, and pursuit of power. That’s it, he said, just those three and all motives criminals have fit somewhere in them. 

I found this interesting because it helps explain also why we sin. It does not explain everything about why we sin since Wallace’s three motives only from within the human person. But when we combine this explanation with an understanding of temptation, which comes from outside us, we have a pretty good overall understanding of the human tendency to sin against God and one another. And when temptation combines with built-in desire, watch out!

Think about this while hearing Joshua’s admonishment to the children of Israel after they had established tribal provinces in the Promised Land in Joshua 24.1-3, 14-25. 

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. 2And Joshua said to all the people, "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors--Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor--lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. 3a Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many.

14"Now therefore revere the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. 15 Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." 

16Then the people answered, "Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods; 17for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; 18and the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”

23He said, "Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your hearts to the LORD, the God of Israel." 24The people said to Joshua, "The LORD our God we will serve, and him we will obey." 25So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and made statutes and ordinances for them at Shechem.

The people of Israel were not yet the strict monotheists they would become. Like all other people of the ancient Near East at the time, the ancient Israelites had a very ethnic concept of divine beings. Their God was Yahweh, as they called him in their language. But they didn't yet insist that only Yahweh existed. Other nations had other gods: the Egyptians had Ishtar, Horus, Anubis and many other gods, the Canaanites had Baal and Anat and others. The ancient Israelites did not think those other deities didn't exist. Those were the foreigners' gods and Yahweh was their God. The belief that only Yahweh existed took time to develop. 

That is why Joshua found it necessary to admonish the people that they must choose whom they would serve. He reminded them that their ancestors had worshiped other gods than Yahweh, and the people who still lived in the Promised Land, the Amorites, also worshiped other gods. 

He reminded the people of the liberty that Yahweh had given them in bringing them from Egypt and giving them their new homeland. But, said Joshua, the choice is yours. Serve Yahweh or something else. But they would serve someone so they must choose. There is no neutrality. "As for me and my household," concluded Joshua, "we will serve the Lord." 

Rarely is the choice between serving God or false idols presented to us as starkly as Joshua presented it. Usually the choices are presented subtly. 

Detective Wallace’s explanation of the motives of human criminality made me recall a conversation I had years ago with an officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He told me the secret of MICE. It was an acronym for the four main reasons an officer or diplomat of one of our nation's adversaries would defect. It stood for Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego. Find the right way to press those buttons, he said, and the chances of recruiting a foreign official to serve the interests of the United States would be much improved.

Some people betray their country, he said, simply for money. Both the old Soviet Union and the United States, he said, were very successful in gaining defectors simply by paying them enough money. 

We can take it for granted that if spy agencies know people can be bought off by money, then the devil knows we can. I used to subscribe to a weekly email newsletter. One of them told of a chief executive officer of a large company who retired. At the retirement dinner he looked at all the young executives and said, “I know you want my job, and I’ll tell you how to get it. Last week my daughter was married, and as she walked down the aisle, I realized I did not know the name of her best friend, or the last book she read, or her favorite color. That’s the price I paid for this job. If you want to pay that price, you can have it.”

It is not true that whoever dies with the most toys wins. Whoever dies with the most toys just dies. Money itself is morally neutral. Money is a tool, that’s all. We can use it for good or for evil, or we can just trifle it away. “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,” says First Timothy 6. "No one can serve two masters," said Jesus, "for he will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth" (Mt. 6:24). We have to choose!

Ideology. 

Ideology is another way to displace God. Ideology is a pernicious temptation because many ideologies have great similarities with religion. In fact, I wonder whether the slide from religion to ideology is a particular weakness for religious people. Over the past twenty centuries the Church has been admonished over and over not to turn Christian religion into an ideology. 

Political parties have ideologies, and Lord knows we have enough such ideology in America today to last us for decades to come. In fact, the entire idea of America began as an ideology. Being involved in politics is not a bad thing for Christians unless our loyalty to party is greater than to Christ. Political affiliation must never take priority over the way of the cross.  

Unfortunately, the whole concept of "church" itself can be an ideology, too. This is the special temptation of clergy, I think, to become so loyal and devoted to the institution of the church that we forget the church exists not for us, nor even for itself, but for the kingdom of God to do what God wants.

Compromise. 

We live in an imperfect world. Ideal solutions to issues we face as individuals or as the church are rarely going to be possible. We make compromises of one kind or another every day. We have to. But the necessity to compromise easily slides into a willingness to make excuses: I won't pray this morning because I'm running late, so I'll pray tonight. I can't pray tonight because I'm too tired. Compromises, excuses.

Compromises can be disastrous. A New York family bought a ranch out West to raise cattle. Friends asked if the ranch had a name. "Well," said the would-be cattleman, "I wanted to name it the Bar-J. My wife favored Suzy-Q, one son liked the Flying-W, and the other wanted the Lazy-Y. So we're calling it the Bar-J-Suzy-Q-Flying-W-Lazy-Y ranch." 

"How many cattle do you have?" the friends asked. 

“None,” said the New York man, "They didn’t live through the branding." 

Usually, though, compromises are the death of a thousand cuts, each small and insignificant on its own, but in total lethal to Christian character or ministry. Most sins we commit are compromises of one kind or another, but they are always for sound reasons, are they not? As author James Moore put it, “Yes, Lord, I have sinned, but I have several excellent excuses.” We should remember that there is no right reason to do a wrong thing. 

But the worst kind of compromise is this: Because we all sin, there is nothing the devil likes more than to try to convince us that our sins prohibit us from serving God. Have you ever thought, "I would pray, I would take Holy Communion, I would go to Bible study, I would participate in this ministry, but there's this sin in my life and I can't face God until I've stopped it." I've thought that and sometimes still do. It's a compromise all right, but it's a compromise with the devil. When we dwell on our sins instead of the One who takes them away, we've compromised ourselves out of God's service.

Paul wrote in Second Corinthians that he was prone toward unwarranted pride but that a “thorn in the flesh” tormented him too much to allow it. We do not know what this thorn was; speculations have ranged from physical disability to temptations of the fleshly kind or even a personal opponent. But we don’t know. He said he prayed over and over for this thorn to be removed but it was not. Finally, he realized that God’s grace was greater than this thorn and Christ’s power was made perfect in human weakness. So he learned to live with it because it was in his human weaknesses that Christ could be strongest. 

When we compromise with our sin, sin wins. I know exactly what my thorn in the flesh is and I have prayed much for it to vanish. Many have been the times when I thought it disqualify me from even attending church, much less preaching in it. But, like Paul I think, I have come to know that sin wins when we let it rule and nowhere is our defeat more decisive than when we let some sin make us withdraw from Christian service. That is not really a compromise; it is a surrender. So, as Paul wrote in Philippians, I want to serve Christ and so press on to reach the goal of the heavenly call of god in Christ Jesus. 

No thorn in the flesh may rightfully hinder us from serving our Lord because there is nothing in this life that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Ego. 

The DIA operative told me that successful diplomats or intelligence operatives can become so self-impressed that they defect to the other side just to play the game at a higher level. They try to “play” both sides. That’s a mindset that Joshua was denouncing: We can’t “play” God.  God knows everything about us. But it’s easy for us to think, “I have everything completely under control,” including where Christian devotion fits in. It’s easy to slide into thinking that the church is there to prop up the lifestyle we want to live rather than admit that a just and loving god has every right to take a wrecking ball to all of it for the sake of his kingdom. 

Paul admonished us in Philippians chapter 2, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves." Jesus said, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." 

In Herman Melville's book, Moby Dick, the sailors go to a service at the Whalemen's Chapel before setting to sea. Preacher Mapple tells them, "All the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do - remember that - and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists."

And that is really the central issue: Do we decide to obey our fallen selves and yield to the temptations of money, ideology, compromise, and ego? Or do we say yes to God and accept his grace, mercies, and gifts? As Joshua put it, we have to choose. Let us choose widely!

A reflection on World Communion Sunday

John 15:1-8:

1 “I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the vine grower. 2 He takes away every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he cleanses it to make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.

4 Abide in me as I abide in you. A branch is not able to bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. 

5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is cast out like a dried branch; such branches are gathered, cast into the fire, and burned.

7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

Around these parts when we hear the word, “vine,” we tend to think of either honeysuckle or ivy. In Jesus’s day the word vine would have evoked the image of the grapevine. Grapevines require intense cultivation. Left to itself, a grapevine becomes useless for bearing good fruit. Arborist and gardening author Lee Reich wrote, “Few garden sights are as sorry as an untended grapevine. Its branches become so tangled that sunlight and air no longer dry them readily, making the plant prone to disease. The grapes become difficult to harvest because they are out of reach.” 

Jesus used grapevines to explain his purpose in the world and the common life of those who follow him. His hearers understood vine as a metaphor for Israel and its people. Psalm 80 says, “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land. Watch over this vine, the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself” (Ps. 80:8-15, excerpts). The Jews understood themselves as a people of God, a vine, planted and cultivated by God. 

The biblical image of a vine conveys a deep sense of community and mutuality of the people with God and one another. The fruitfulness of the branches depends on their connection to the vine. 

“To live as the branches of the vine is to belong to an organic unity shaped by the love of Jesus, and individual branches join together to bear fruit, of living in a way that reveals us to be a community of Jesus’ disciples” (NIB). As branches of a vine, the church is a community of persons collectively known for their love for God, one another and the world at large. 

What makes us a Christian community is solely our relationship to God and Jesus. Our mark is how we love one another as Christ loves us. There is only one task, to bear fruit, and any branch can do that if it remains with Jesus.

To our modern ears, the image Jesus evokes of taking away fruitless branches and throwing them into the fire seems stern. Yet that is not what Jesus said. The fruitless branches of verse 2 are not the branches cast into the fire in verse six. 

Verse two actually shows the patience and grace of God. Grapevines bear more fruit when they are elevated off the ground. In ancient Israel, modern wires and frames to hold the whole vine off the ground did not exist. There was no wire. Rope was expensive so dressers used rocks, which were plentiful, to hold the vines off the ground. So even the main trunk was only a few inches off the ground. 

Vines that grew from the main trunk often dropped to the ground. In the rainy season they either rotted or they took root themselves. Neither are fruitful. In the eight-month dry season they could dry out completely. Verse two says that fruitless branches are taken away but verse six does not say they are burned. It is the dried, dead branches that are burned. 

The word used for “taken away” also means “lifted up.” In ancient Israel, vine dressers liked new branches to form because larger vines produce more fruit. So they did not “take away” new branches that crawled on the ground, they elevated them off the ground with rocks. They lifted them up.

Jesus’ hearers knew that he meant that fruitless branches were lifted up off the ground, not that they were severed and thrown away, because they knew that was how vineyards were cultivated and made fruitful. They would have understood Jesus to say, “He lifts up every branch in me that bears no fruit.” Such branches are nurtured because they are still living and are still connected to the vine. They are cared for so that they may start to bear fruit. 

Vine dressers also prune – Jesus says “cleanse” because he is speaking spiritually – fruitful branches to enable the vine to produce fruit according to the dresser’s needs. Pruning sounds destructive, but it is actually creative. Pruners examine the plants to locate unwanted branches, imagining the plants without this or that branch, imagining how it will grow, seeing what needs to be done. Like a haircut, it's easy to take it off, hard to put back on, so pruners know when to quit.

God knows how to prune so that growth and fruit-bearing are enhanced. The problem is being the “prunee” is usually not very pleasant, either for pastors or congregations. It’s hard to see how losing something we thought we wanted or needed to have can make us better disciples. The status quo is too easy to cling too, even when we understand that God has better things in store.

But we bear fruit only when we submit to pruning. If we do not do that we do not abide in Christ. And that lead us to the sharp, serious warning of verse six: “Whoever does not abide in me is cast out like a dried branch; such branches are gathered, cast into the fire, and burned.”

A vine branch that does not abide in the main vine, or stay connected to it, is one that has stop receiving nourishment from the main vine and so dried up and died. Vine dressers try to prevent this, but if a branch does it, there is no solution except to tear it off and throw it away. The deadening can spread elsewhere. So vine dressers cut them off and in Jesus day they burned them as fuel. 

Jesus’ warning is one of the harshest in the New Testament. Individuals, congregations, or whole denominations can wander away from God, fail to abide in Christ, and suffer the grave consequences. Jesus’ words are matter of fact and severe. God is serious about the work of his church now and its salvation in eternity. God’s rescue of us from death was no halfway measure, and he accepts no half-hearted measures in return. 

A Methodist lady named Elaine Olsen watched a wrecking crew demolish three houses in North Carolina damaged by Hurricane Floyd so badly they couldn’t be occupied again. Two homes went down quickly. The crew moved to the third one. Elaine wrote, 

Vince and I walked around the house for one last glance. It was then that I saw them, the last and final living remnant from 104 Lower Street. Vines, clinging beautifully to the white brick chimney, reaching almost to the top. Moments later, the first blow came from the hammer.

I watched this flimsy structure wobble and fall into pieces. But the chimney with the vines took longer. It was the last to fall. It was as if those vines, encircling the chimney, provided protection of some sort. And as the blows crashed, I strained to see the green ropes as the chimney fell. The house was down. I went across the street to survey the remains.

Tears came, and through my blurred vision I spotted a most unusual gift, green, unbroken, dusty, yet somehow reaching far above the pile that was the end of this one-hundred-year-old memory. Life reaching forth, calling for notice. A garden of mercy amidst a pile of surrender. Hope springing to life in the middle of crucifixion. 

A vine. A journey. A weeping. A surrender. A springing forth. A resurrection. A promise to remain until the end, to fall alongside in the midst of the blows, to rise above the dust and bring forth the vibrancy of the green.

Sometimes it takes a demolition to see the green. Sometimes our brokenness brings such a death that all that remains is that Vine, forever alive, forever reaching, forever protecting. Reminding us that life issues forth from the surrender.

“May you sense the clinging of the vine,” Elaine concluded. “May you walk with Christ into that garden of surrender, remembering all the while” that life issues from ashes.( )

Pruning at the hand of God while we abide in the vine of Christ is a form of practice, perhaps, for the consummation of eternity. Death and the resurrection the Scriptures promise us are a logical extension of the pattern of our lives: the old passes away and the new is born. 

The difficulties we have in our cycles of being pruned and growing may come from our need to control the process. But we are amateurs. We don’t know how to do the job. So we prune and cut and pull and burn blindly. Yet we have to surrender to God’s cultivation to bear fruit, and we have to stay entangled with our brothers and sisters in faith to the vine, which is our life, our Savior. Apart from him we can do nothing. Connected to the vine, we bear good fruit. 

The right thing for us to be is a branch on the vine we know as Christ. We are a people who believe in our hearts that Jesus rose from the dead and we confess that Jesus is Lord, and so we have been grafted by God onto the vine of Christ. May it ever be so, and may we bear much fruit. 

The Myth of Christian Obligations

 Let me start with a short list of our privileges before dealing with obligations. Some of the privileges are:

·        We are adopted by God into his family

·        We are given God's favor without having to earn it.

·        The Holy Spirit is always with us and mediates us to God.

·        We are freed from sin and fear of death and so can move onto perfection in this life.

·        We receive the renewing and sustaining grace of God through the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion

·        We enjoy the fellowship of other Christians for the sustainment and improvement of our moral character and ability to do godly works.

There are many more. There is an old saying that that with great privileges come great responsibilities. The saying has been variously attributed to Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and others. But in fact, it was Voltaire who first wrote it, and the exact quote is a little different: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Maybe Jesus should get the credit, though, for he said in Luke 12.48, “To those whom much is given, much is required.”

With this in mind, are we who follow Christ encumbered by certain obligations? That is, once we have confessed Christ as risen Lord of our lives, are there certain requirements we must carry out if we are to be counted as Jesus’ disciples and granted eternal company with God and other saints? 

I submit that the answer is both yes and no. So bear with me and let me confuse the issue as only a seminary graduate can.

That there are such things as commandments of Christ is explicitly stated by Paul in Galatians 6.2: “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” As a former Pharisee, Paul did not use the word “law” lightly. He meant it was a requirement. Jesus himself spoke of a new covenant and new commandments. The longest description of judgment day in the New Testament is given in Matthew 25, where Jesus explains that the ones who thought themselves Christ-followers are rejected because,

“… I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”

So, we can’t much deny that authority and a commanding voice that we should not ignore undergird a disciple’s life. And then we come to Luke 17.7-10, in which Jesus is teaching his disciples:    

7“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8 Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’ ”

 This passage does not present “Jesus meek and mild.” This is a pretty tough Jesus speaking. This is not a Lord who would say, “I’m okay, you’re okay, can’t we all just get along?” He is speaking to his disciples and his words are direct. Does Jesus really consider us no better than his worthless slaves?

In fact, we should take Jesus’ words as great assurance, not threat. Here’s why.

Jesus risks comparing God to a taskmaster to drive home some basic truths about our relationship with God. We tend to think that if we behave a certain way, live a good, Christian life, that we deserve some reward from God. But that’s not true. There are benefits to living the Christian life, but they are not rewards. We have no right to expect rewards. To do so rejects grace as the basis of Christian living and replaces it with a bartering relationship. But grace is freely given and cannot be earned. We can’t earn “more grace” by living rightly.

We do not live together righteously as God requires. The disciples begged Jesus for more faith because they realized they couldn’t meet even the basic requirements from their own strength or merit. What Jesus points out is that kingdom living is God’s gift through faith but is also an act of the will by Christian disciples. God has already given us the faith we need. Jesus lays out the basic commands of the kingdom: don’t lead others astray; rebuke, repent, forgive, love God and neighbor. Living together as God commands rests on these things. And when we have done that, Jesus says, we have merely done the bare minimum, so don’t get all puffed up about it and expect God will reward us specially. After all, as Paul explains, we should understand that if we think we are meeting the standard of saving ourselves through what we do, then we don’t understand how high the standard really is. It is too high for human beings to meet.

Therefore, to imagine ourselves as slaves to Christ, as repugnant as that metaphor is, really is good news. We are not in a market economy with God. We don’t have to barter with God for grace. We cannot earn God’s grace. Grace is not a bonus check. God’s grace is always before us. It is through grace we are called to be God’s family, it is through grace we can be God’s family, and it is through grace that we will move on to Christian perfection together.

But it gets better, for Jesus did not think we were his slaves in the first place. He used that illustration, I think, to make us understand how spiritually empty our relationship with God would be if we were mere task performers, burdened with strict requirements of obedience. Elsewhere, Jesus states plainly he does not think of you and me as slaves, but as friends. Here is what Jesus told his disciples in John 15, shortly before he was crucified:

15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. … 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

What then shall we make of what Paul called the law of Christ? I would like to suggest that we should think of Christ’s commandments as liberating opportunities rather than mere commands. We should understand missions, ministries and services in Christ’s name as the means of freedom far greater than mere obligations.

The great myth or misconception about Christian obligations is that they are obligations. Jesus is not recruiting puppets, he seeks soul mates. We do not have a contract with God, we have a covenant sealed with his Son’s own blood. With that great privilege comes not great obligations, but the ability to live liberated from all that separates us from what God created us to be. As Paul wrote to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” We are liberated from the dictatorship of a personal autonomy unshaped by godliness or divine virtue. In contrast, wrote John Wesley, we are made alive as people who are washed and sanctified, “as well as justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.’ [1]

You are really changed [Wesley wrote]; you are not only accounted as righteous but actually made righteous. The inward power of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made you really, actually free from the power of sin and death. This is liberty, true gospel liberty, experienced by every believer: Not freedom from the law of God, or the works of God, but from the law of sin and the works of the devil. See that you stand fast in this real, not imaginary liberty, wherewith Christ has made you free. And take heed not to be entangled again in the yoke of that vile bondage to sin, from which you are now clean escaped.

For freedom Christ has set us free: free to love, free to live in joy and peace and patience. Free to be generous in all we have, free to be gentle with even those who offend us, free to control ourselves to live in ways to please God.

We enjoy privileges of receiving and liberty of giving. Privileges of receiving are the work of the Holy Spirit. Liberties of giving are what we do in return. We have the privilege of gathering for worship, for singing, for studying the Scriptures together. We can do most of these things privately as well. Wesley called them acts of piety. In these acts the Holy Spirit is the principal actor spiritually renew and restore us.

And we also have the freedom to carry out acts of mercy, done both on our own and in cooperation with other disciples. These are what we do to bring the good news by word or deed to one another and to those whom God seeks to bring into his family.

It matters to Jesus and it should matter to us how we think of him and our relationship to him, so here is why we can be assured we are friends of Jesus serving in love rather than slaves of God obeying in fear:

   Slaves try to do as little as they can to get by. Friends look for ways to help one another.

   Slaves try to avoid the master. Friends seek one another’s company.

   Slaves wait to be told. Friends volunteer.

   Slaves want to escape. Friends want to draw closer.

   Slaves serve the master out of fear. Friends serve one another out of love.

   Love is the key.

We are free to relate to one another the same way that God relates to us: in grace and mercy and love – especially love.

God is love, and any community following God must be love, also.

4 Love is patient, love is kind [says Paul]. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. (1 Cor 13:4-8)

I used to think it was a tossup whether the greatest privilege God gives us is to receive his love or to be empowered ourselves to love divinely. And then I realized there is no real difference because God both loves us and loves others through us.

The work that Christ does today he does with our arms. When we embrace the outcasted, the scorned and unloved, we hold them with Jesus’ arms. When we bear our neighbors’ troubles, we uplift them with Jesus’ hands. When we give food to the hungry, it is by Christ they are fed. When we welcome a stranger, we clasp his hand with the hand of Christ. When we carry clothes to the naked it is Jesus’ fingers which button their shirts. We heal the sick with Jesus’ hands and we visit the dying to embrace them to Christ’s own breast.

In Christ we accept our flaws and imperfections not because we condone them in ourselves, but because Jesus accepts us despite them. Therefore, we can boast in our shortcomings because Christ’s love is perfected through them.

There is no greater privilege, nor any greater freedom, nor any greater joy to be found in this life.

---

[1] “A Blow at the Root,” http://ucmpage.org/articles/wesley_blow_at_root.html, slightly paraphrased

We are saved by works and nothing else

 James 2:14-24

   14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. 18 But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. 

   19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. 20Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith without works is barren? 21Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. 23Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, and he was called the friend of God. 24You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

This is one of the most vexing passages in the New Testament. Martin Luther, who insisted that salvation is by faith and nothing but, said that he wished the whole book of James could be deleted from the New Testament.

Since Luther’s day at least, different flavors of Protestants have been arguing about the relationship between faith and works. Are we saved merely because of what we confess or are deeds of Christian service also necessary?  

Nothing is truer, I think, than the claim that we are saved by works. It runs through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Though I try not to be hardline dogmatic, I do not see how anyone, based on Scripture, can deny not only that we are saved by works, but we are saved exclusively by works. 

I had this discussion once with an ordained Baptist minister who was, as you might imagine, somewhat resistant to the idea of salvation by works, right up until I said to him, “The question is not whether we are saved by works. The Bible argues conclusively that we are. The question is, ‘whose works?’”

I could almost see the light bulb illuminate over his head. We are saved by works, but not our own works. We are saved by the works of God in Christ Jesus, and by Christ’s works alone. 

I hope that this makes it easier to grasp what James is talking about. James is not trying to show that our faith in God and our works of Christian discipleship are two different things. James is trying to show that our faith includes works, else it is not faith at all. Faith is not something merely spoken or affirmed, it is also that which is lived and done. “Saving faith,” said John Wesley, “is not just believing beliefs. One may affirm the truth of one, twenty or a hundred different creeds and yet have no saving faith at all.” 

James quotes Genesis 15.6, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” James points out that we have no idea what Abraham believed apart from what Abraham did resulting from his belief. We know that Abraham believed God because he did what God told him to do.

What we do reveals what we believe. And that is why James says that faith without works is dead faith, because faith and works are not independent entities. We can no more say that faith and works are separate than we could claim we can spend one side of a dollar bill without spending the other side.

So we are saved by the works of God in Christ Jesus. We cannot earn salvation by our own works alone because the guilt and stain of human sin is too deeply rooted in us to do that. It is true, as James says, that faith without works is dead faith, but our works that do not spring from our faith are equally lifeless. Paul argues in Galatians that doing deeds ungrounded in faith in Christ is fruitless. 

Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” What is our faith? It is that in Christ, God was reconciling the world unto himself and that in the life, death and resurrection of Christ everything has been done that is needed to bring us into eternal company with God. We do good works in gratitude and loyalty to the One who has redeemed us, not to earn salvation but to rejoice in it. 

Christ is both redeemer and judge of the world. Matthew 25 is one of Jesus’ discourses on his judgment. There is not a word in there that anyone is justified before Christ because of membership in one denomination rather than another, or by mode of baptism, or by being able recite the Apostles Creed. 

Jesus says that the basis by which he judges us is what we do as his disciples. “For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat,” he said, “and I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. For when you did it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it also to me.” Those are the disciples whom Jesus calls righteous, bringing them to eternal life. 

But the ones who tell him, We ignored your brothers and sisters when they were hungry or naked or sick, and so never gave them aid, Jesus calls cursed and does not permit into eternal life with him. 

And that should fill us with dread because the consequences of complacency are severe. If I may slightly paraphrase John the Baptist, it won’t do any good to tell Jesus, “But we are church members” because God can make church members out of rusty beer cans lying along the road. 

“But my heart is in the right place,” someone might protest. That is a leading way we deceive ourselves. The Bible says that our hearts are almost never in the right place but are “deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17.9). 

We are to live integrated lives of faith. Faith is:

• affirming the truth about God based on reason and evidence. “Blind faith” is not a biblical concept at all. Blind faith is not even faith; it is wishful thinking at best. The resurrection of Christ was a supernatural event, but none of the reasons to believe in Christ's resurrection are supernatural reasons. They just require logical thinking. 
• but faith is more than making reasonable conclusions or knowing the truth. As James says, even demons know the truth about God. 
• faith is also commitment to God based on trust in God. 
• trust in God is founded on God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, whose resurrection proves that God will keep his promises. 
• faith, then, is love before it is anything else. Faith transcends merely knowing the truth to become living the truth in love.

Divine love is vertical and horizontal. Love comes to us from God and from us to God in return. This gift from God enables us to accept the saving grace God offers. It is personal and specific for each one of us. 

Divine love is also horizontal, intended to spread through us outward to others. And so Jesus said that everything God wants is simply this: Love God and love others. Paul said it was even simpler than that, “The commandments,” he said, “are summed up in one command, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ... Love is the fulfillment of the Law” of God (Romans 13:9).

The vertical and the horizontal together make the cross. Jesus on the cross was God’s love for humankind come down to earth in Jesus, and also God’s love for humankind outward through Jesus to all people. 

Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said his disciples must take up their cross and follow him. Actual crucifixion was a very real possibility for Christ-followers back then, but perhaps Jesus also meant that we are to embody the love of God coming down from God to go through us to the world. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God and love neighbor – reaching up to heaven and out to everyone in the world. 

So what do we do with the love of God? How do we live lives of Christian integrity? Methodist author Robert Kohler wrote, “The kind of work that God usually calls you to do is the kind of work that you need most to do and that the world most needs to have done.” If you jump out of bed every morning so eager to go to work that you skip breakfast, but your work is writing ads for casinos in Tunica, it’s safe to say that you are not living your vocation. If you are a doctor in a leper colony but are personally miserable, chances are that you are not living your vocation. 

Your vocation is not necessarily what takes the most time in your daily lives. It is what gives the rest of your life focus and meaning and may change over time. “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (Frederick Buechner). God calls each Christian to use his or her gifts in the world. One test of identifying your vocation is to discern whether it satisfies your hunger to be about the work of Christ in the world. But if someone doesn’t have a hunger to be about the work of Christ in the world, then their chances of discovering their vocation are slim. 

How to discern one’s vocation? John Wesley said that effective and genuine discipleship is lived according to three general rules. The Reader’s Digest version is simple:

1. Do no harm and do not sin.

2. Do positive good in the world.

3. Love and worship God.

I want to talk a little about the second rule, doing positive good. Wesley put it this way:

By doing good ... of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to everyone.

To their bodies, by giving food to the hungry, by clothing the naked, by visiting or helping them that are sick or in prison.

To their souls, by instructing, reproving, or exhorting all; trampling underfoot the false belief that "we are not to do good unless our hearts be free to it.”

By doing good, especially to them that are of the household of faith or groaning to be. 

Let me emphasize one of Wesley’s points: It is false that we don’t need to be active in ministry unless we think our hearts are in the right place, or unless we think we are called to it or unless we feel like it. 

We don’t do ministry because our hearts are in the right place. We do ministry to put our hearts in the right place. 

We don’t do ministry because we think we are called to it but to better discern the calling God gives us.

We don’t do ministry because we feel like it but precisely because we usually don’t feel like it. 

We do ministry because Christ commands it and we have decided to follow Jesus including when we don’t know where he is leading. 

We do ministry because Jesus promised unpleasant consequences if we don’t and eternal life if we do. 

We do ministry because it is the only way to affix ourselves to what is of ultimate value and eternal significance.

We do ministry because we are profoundly thankful to Christ for redeeming us from ways of sin and death and promising to lift us to the heavenly places. 

 We do ministry because we love God and therefore, we love those whom God loves. 

We do ministry because while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That proves God’s love for us. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!

We do ministry because we are Christians. It is what Christians do.

The psalmist wrote,

If the LORD delights in our way, he makes our steps firm; though we stumble, we will not fall, for the LORD upholds us with his hand. (Ps. 37.23-24).

If we believe that then we will act like it.

Was Odysseus a real person? Why, of course!

 This video documentary from PBS is about a Greek amateur historian, Makis Metaxas, who claims "he found the bones of Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey. But the discovery is soon embroiled in controversy, and Makis embarks on his own odyssey to convince the world he is right."

(There is only one episode; it is not a series.)

Here is the link to the PBS page for it: https://www.pbs.org/video/odysseus-returns-1fpjod/

Reforming Work - a Reflection for Labor Day

Genesis 2:15

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Colossians 3:23-24

Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, 24 since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ.

Today is Labor Day, when Americans pause and reflect on the meaning of work and honor working people. Let us acknowledge that that many people who are looking for employment, perhaps within our own families. Let us keep them in our prayers and send them job leads if we find any. And those of us who are working or, in retirement, enjoying the fruits of labor past, let us be thankful for it and be willing to help others now. 

On Labor Day we acknowledge the importance of work. We spend more time working or perhaps looking for work than anything else we do. It would pay, therefore, to take a look at what Christian faith can tell us about work and its place in our lives. 

I remember when people used to utter the words, “Protestant work ethic” as a shorthand way of talking about certain habits of work that were seen as the foundation upon which America’s material prosperity was built. The Protestant work ethic was a philosophy born from the Protestant Reformation of the early 1500s. Until then the labor or ordinary people was thought to lack either divine sanction or divine opportunity. Instead, what ordinary working people did was seen as necessary but spiritually deficient. Ordinary people were thought incapable of attaining anything better than a "secondary grade of piety." The "perfect form of the Christian life" was "holy and permanently separate from the common customary life of man." devoted "to the service of God alone."  

Reformation theology turned that around. The Protestant reformers insisted that the ordinary occupations of men and women should be understood as honoring God just as well as the monastic or priestly life. One’s “calling” in life came to be understood as any honorable occupation that a person understood was willed by God for him or her, so anyone, not just clergy, could be called by God to a lifetime of Christian service in different ways.

This Protestant work ethic says we are to be honest, hardworking, reliable, sober, mindful of the future, appropriate in our relationships and successful. We add that those things enable a Christian to give glory to God.

In Ephesians 4:28, Paul said that people should work with their own hands at what is good, in order that to have something to share with one who has need. Honorable work is honest work, honestly performed. The Protestant work ethic extends past that simple rule, though. There is an object to work for Christian people: to build up the Kingdom of God for the greater benefit of all the people of God. In the final analysis, all our labor is to be for the glory of God by the way it enables us to be about the ongoing work of Christ in the world.

I think we must not separate the dignity of work from human dignity. I read recently that in Japan almost no one ever gets fired from a job. We probably might say that is because the work ethic and skill levels among Japanese workers are so strong there. But that is not the reason. The reason hardly anyone ever gets fired is because by law terminated employees must be given very substantial separation payments and benefits. But if an employee simply quits, there is no such requirement. 

So a common practice in Japan is for nonperforming workers to be assigned extremely menial, unimportant duties that, the company hopes, will so dispirit the worker that he will finally quit in despair rather than go nuts. 

If you think that can never happen here, think again. In New York City it is so difficult to fire certain kinds of city employees that the ones identified for termination wind up being reassigned to completely empty offices or even utility closets, devoid of any responsibilities at all, while continuing to collect full salary and benefits, which cost the city $22 million one year recently. 

This is not what God intended from the beginning. In the beginning, God gave Adam work to do in the Garden. This means that Adam in his vocation was a partner with God in accomplishing God's intentions for the created order. It’s true that things went sour later. Indeed, the first murder recorded in the Bible, when Cain killed his brother Abel, was in part over the way Cain perceived the nature of Abel’s work and vocation. 

Paul wrote in Colossians 3, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for mortals, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”

Paul points toward a unity in our lives that brings even our jobs under the lordship of Christ. In other words, he is describing striving for a restoration of our work to the kind that Adam enjoyed. We are not to spend our lives idly, but in divine vocation. And even though there is an earthly imperative to pay bills and hopefully enjoy life without financial worry, we also are called to remember what Jesus said: we cannot serve both God and money. 

But we can serve God by making money while remembering that no earthly treasure lasts and that Jesus also told us, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,” where it can be lost, corrupted or stolen. “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,” for God's care never ends. Where our treasure is, that’s where our hearts follow. 

Jesus is talking about more than money. He means the whole of life and what we do with our time. And that is the necessity of seeking a divine vocation because there is a difference between a job and a vocation. A job is what we do to earn a living. A vocation is what gives our lives meaning and purpose. A job is always related, usually closely, to worldly affairs. A vocation transcends the world even though it is carried out in the world.

For truly fortunate persons their job and their vocation can be united or closely related. When I was a candidate in ministry, I decided to ask a number of serving pastors what was the single most important thing about pastoral service to each of them. I asked twelve pastors independently, over a period of a few months and all twelve gave me exactly the same answer: “I know that I am doing with my life what God wants me to do with it.” 

That is precisely how I feel, too. I consider myself profoundly blessed to have my vocation and my work united into a singularity. I never awake in the morning wondering what my life is about. 

I am not saying, by the way, that I do this job well or effectively. It is to say that in my heart I know I have found that place that Methodist author Robert Robert Kohler wrote about: “There are different kinds of voices calling you to different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which” voice is the call of God rather than the voice of self-interest, cultural values or something else. 

One’s vocation is the life-work that a man or woman is called to by God. It is always a call to ministry of some kind. One’s vocation may or may not be the way that you make your living. I have known some persons who thought their income-producing job was merely a crutch that propped up their true mission in life, their vocation. 

Kohler wrote, “The kind of work that God usually calls you to do is the kinds of work that you need most to do and that the world most needs to have done.” Your vocation is not necessarily what takes the most time in your daily lives. It is what gives the rest of your life focus and meaning. Frederick Buechner wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” God calls each Christian to use his or her gifts in the world. One test of identifying your calling is to discern whether it satisfies your hunger to be about the work of Christ in the world. If someone doesn’t have a hunger to be about the work of Christ in the world, then their chances of discovering their true vocation are slim. Yet unless persons discern their vocation, they waste their time, money and in fact their very lives.

In 1967, Martin Luther King preached on, “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” in which he said, 

… we must discover what we are called to do. And once we discover it we should set out to do it with all of the strength and all of the power that we have in our systems. And after we’ve discovered what God called us to do, after we’ve discovered our life’s work, we should set out to do that work so well that the living, the dead, or the unborn couldn’t do it any better. Now this does not mean that everybody will do the so-called big, recognized things of life. Very few people will rise to the heights of genius in the arts and the sciences; very few collectively will rise to certain professions. … But we must see the dignity of all labor. 

Perhaps some of you feel that your work is a calling, enabling you to honor and serve God in ways you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. If so, be glad! Christian faith sanctifies every honorable occupation. There isn’t any difference between the secular and the sacred, not really. Jesus was a preacher for three years but a carpenter for at least twenty. That sanctifies work. All of life is God’s, so let us strive to make sure that all we do glorifies God.

Here is Dr. King's complete sermon:

The voice of my beloved!

What do the following words have in common?

• Unforgettable
• Crazy
• Truly
• Always
• Enchanted
• Amazed

They are all the titles of love songs. Here are the lyrics to two of the biggest-hit love songs ever recorded:

When no one else can understand me,
When everything I do is wrong,
You give me hope and consolation
You give me strength to carry on.
And you're always there to lend a hand
In everything I do. (Do you recognize it yet?)
That's the wonder,
The wonder of you.

Name that artist? Elvis, of course, a 1970 hit about the blessings good spouses bring to one another. Here’s the other love song:

Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something,
I think you’ll understand.
When I’ll say that something
I want to hold your hand,
I want to hold your hand,
I want to hold your hand.
Oh please, say to me
You’ll let me be your man
And please, say to me
You’ll let me hold your hand.
Now let me hold your hand,
I want to hold your hand.

The Beatles, naturally, the name of the song being pretty obvious.

What has happened to the love song? I like rock and roll as much as anybody, but let’s face facts: love songs these days are pretty crummy: ka-thumpa, ka-thumpa, ka-thumpa; oh baby, oh baby, oh baby, love me, love me, love me, ka-thumpa, ka-thumpa, ka-thumpa.

Here’s a love song, too:

8 The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. 

9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. 

10 My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; 
11 for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. 12 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

13 The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away." 

Song of Solomon 2.8-13 

 Now, that’s a love song! The Song of Solomon, often called the Song of Songs, is an unabashed love song. There are two principal speakers. The main one is a dark-skinned woman, probably African. The other is her lover, a man apparently of Israel. At places the book is fairly explicit about the erotic passion they feel for one another. 

This is not a book of piety. It is probably more fitting for the book to be set to the blues than high-church music. Like the blues, the Song of Songs is about personal, individual struggles, the joys and sorrows of love, and the confounding chasm that exists between reality and fantasy. In both this ancient Jewish song and the American blues, the voice is first person singular voice and the subject matter is deeply, intensely personal.

Song of Songs is one of two books of the Jewish Scriptures that does not talk about God, does not even mention God. The other book is Esther. Esther’s religious significance is much more apparent than the Song. Esther refers to rituals of fasting and prayer and to the celebration of the Feast of Purim.

But the Song of Songs is patently secular. Besides not mentioning God, the book also does not mention any of Israel’s sacred traditions, no covenants, no mention of any of God’s saving acts in the history of the children of Israel. 

The only religious content of the book might be its setting of the scene, the backdrop of the narrative, which features garden settings that may call to mind the story of the Garden of Eden. But that’s a stretch. 

Song of Solomon is the only book in the Bible in which a female voice predominates. In fact, this book features the only unmediated female voice in all of Scripture. Elsewhere, women’s perspectives are filtered through presumably male narrators; Ruth, for example is about two women but is told in the third person. But in the Song of Songs, fifty six verses are directly spoken by the woman, only thirty six by her lover. The book may even have been written by a woman, even though a tradition gives credit to King Solomon. Solomon had seven hundred wives and concubines so the tradition arose that he must have been a great lover – or at least a tired one! 

The ancient Jews were often uncomfortable with this book. What can you make of Holy Scripture that begins, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth – for your love is more delightful than wine” (v. 1.2)? The Jews did not finally decide which books were definitely Scripture until after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. The Song of Songs, Esther, and Ruth were the only books to be strongly debated for inclusion. They were included because they were already held to be sacred, inspired writings. 

The rabbis decided that if Song of Songs was a sacred book, it must have a sacred meaning. They concluded it was an allegory of God's love for his people, Israel. Early Christian scholars were also embarrassed by the frank sexuality of the Song and argued that it could not possibly be talking about erotic love. Some wrote that the Song was really an allegory of Christ’s love for the Church. Later, Christian consensus was that the Song concerned God's love for the Virgin Mary. Medieval monks went to extraordinary lengths to explain away the obvious sensuality of the verses. Bernard of Clairvaux recommended that monks and priests not be allowed to study the book while they were still young and prone to inflamed passions. How about that - he gave a book of the Bible an R rating!

Today, interpreters tend to see the book as an anthology of love poetry that captures the joys and sufferings of intimate relationships and of sensual love. Song of Songs tells a story familiar to any viewer of made-for-TV movies: a woman’s desire to love and be loved by a man who is strongly attracted to her but from whom she has not yet gained a definite commitment. And so her dilemma is whether to continue to love him or not. 

The drama appears to center around their passion, but in the end, it is not about sex. It is about the power and politics of human love. The lovers’ humanity, not their passion, captures our attention. We are drawn first to contemplate the fact that we all need to be loved, then the Song makes us ponder where does erotic love fit into what love is really all about, especially in a modern culture that seems to think love is nothing but sex.

So while the book is talking about exactly what it seems to be talking about, does it have a deeper layer? Do the book’s verses of passion have a sacred subtext? 

Passion has a burning intensity, whether romantic passion is involved or not. Yet while love and passion easily go together, passion itself is not love. “I love to play golf,” one might say, and play eighteen holes every day. But there is no love there, only passion, for golf cannot love back. 

Love, to be love, is capable of being returned by the other. But even love can be frightening. Love requires commitment. And love and commitment and indeed, passion, are at the center of the story of men and women serving God. 

The Bible is full of stories of people who play hide and seek with God’s calling. Their faith falters, their obedience is short lived, their worship wanes, and their commitment must be tested and reestablished again and again. The stories of Elijah withdrawing to a lonely cave, Jeremiah refusing to preach, Jonah sailing away to Tarshish, and Peter worshiping then denying Jesus are stories of men who resisted God’s total claim upon them. In the Song of Songs we see that relationships of love and passion must be nurtured, safeguarded, and cherished.

And so it is with loving God. Intimacy with God and with each other costs us our time and our energies and more. A willingness to be present, to remain, to be accountable, to see things through, to come out from hiding are necessary to nurture relationships, both with one another and with God. 

The language of love matters, too. The Song of Songs uses the language and imagery of an agricultural culture to evoke passion and desire. The lovers compare one another to graceful animals and speak of their love as partaking of sweet fruit. Comparisons to stags, gazelles, and apple trees sound strange to people who live with manicured lawns in crowded neighborhoods and who know of deer only from petting zoos. How much stranger must the Song of Songs seem to big-city folk whose apartment buildings complexes have no lawns, and who take the subway to work. 

And yet, everyone recognizes the seductiveness of the Song of Songs when they hear it. Even though much of the speech in the Song book is lost on our modern ears, we do hear it as a language of intimacy and longing. 

So do not scoff at the Jews and Christians of long ago who saw the Song as an allegory of God’s love for his people. The intensity of God’s desire for his people to love him and one another righteously is inadequately described by human language. Even the Song of Songs, evoking the most primal elements of desire and passion, is not really adequate to the task. Yet the Song is not the only Scripture to use such language of love and romance and abundance. The Jewish prophets sometimes did also. 

Speaking through Hosea, the Lord promised his people, 

19 I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. 20 I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD. 21 "In that day I will respond," declares the LORD   "I will respond to the skies, and they will respond to the earth;

23 I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God.'" (Hosea 2:19-22, 23)

You see, God knows of the inconstancy of the way we love and commit. He knows of our need for passionate love, so he beckons us to divine romance. For romance is full of joy, not only duty; not only passion, but compassion. Just as lovers in the rush of their first attraction to one another, the divine romance makes every day a holiday and every meal a banquet. Somewhere along the way, the love of God for us and our loving of God in return is supposed to make us feel tingly all over, at least once in a while. 

And so the voice of God is in this book, telling us in ways our hearts want to hear: 

Arise, my love, and come away. For the winter is past and the sound of the doves is heard in the land. The time of singing has come. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

Armed and Vulnerable

 Ephesians 6:10-18

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. 15 As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. 16 With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.

Early one morning the general manager of a very large department store got a phone call from his security director. “There’s been a break in,” the director reported. The manager drove right over. When he entered the store, the sight took his breath away. Merchandise was scattered everywhere. Clothes were hanging in the sporting goods section. Wristwatches and bracelets were stacked in the linens department. Men’s shirts were arranged in a neat display in the middle of the children’s shoe section. As the department managers sorted the merchandise out, they made a startling discovery. Nothing was actually missing. As far as they could tell, whoever had broken in had not stolen anything, but had just rearranged the store’s goods. It was all still there, just in the wrong place. Most puzzling, all the price tags were switched around. A diamond brooch had a price tag for $12.95; a bath towel was priced at $599. It was completely baffling, and no one could make any sense of it.

It seems odd that Paul would write about military armament on behalf of the prince of peace. It’s quite unlikely Paul was ever in military service, since Jews were excused from serving in the Roman army. So Paul surely had no first-hand experience with the outfit of armor he described in his letter to the Ephesian Christians.

It also seems unbecoming that Paul would use warrior images in giving advice to Christian people, whose savior rejected the use of armed force. When soldiers came to arrest Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane Jesus stopped Peter from using his sword to protect him. Yet, there it is, smack in the middle of the New Testament, the armor of God and the sword of the Spirit, the basic kit of the well-armed Christian.

Ephesus was on the west coast of modern Turkey. It was the most important trading city of its region, with a population of about three hundred thousand people. The temple of the Diana at Ephesus was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, housing an image of Diana that was said to have dropped directly from the home of the gods.

The temple was supported by 127 columns, each of them almost two hundred feet high. The Ephesians were very proud of the temple. During the Roman period, they promoted the worship of Diana by minting coins with the inscription, “Diana of Ephesus.”

The book of Acts relates Ephesus did not accept Christian preaching and evangelism easily. The silversmiths of the city had enormous financial interests in selling their goods to the temple and the temple’s gift shop. They stirred up the city’s various artisans against Paul and his companions. Soon the whole city was in an uproar and Paul’s companions were seized. Eventually, things calmed down and the men were released, but the Ephesians weren’t happy that substantial numbers of their residents were converting to Christianity and abandoning worship at the temple of Diana.

When Paul wrote to his Christian brothers and sisters to put on the whole armor of God, it was his way of reminding them that if they were going to follow Christ, they’d best be ready for a real fight. They would have to be prepared to be attacked on account of their faith. Note that all the equipment listed is purely defensive, except the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

It’s tempting to allegorize every element of the armor, focusing upon individual armaments and expounding upon their individual significance. But Paul isn’t writing allegory. It’s more of a metaphor and should be looked at as a whole.

We live in a world that has changed dramatically since the Christian Ephesians began to follow Jesus. In fact, we live in a culture that has changed dramatically since most of us were children. Any of us older than thirty-five or forty know that the culture our children are growing up in isn’t the same one we grew up in. William Willimon of the Duke University Chapel related a conversation he had with a small group of schoolteachers one evening.

“We wonder if you preachers know what we're up against in the schools,” one asked.

“Like what?” Willimon asked.

“Like a sixth grader who has been abandoned by her parents, both of whom are physicians,” said one.

“Like an eight-year-old who is addicted to cocaine,” said another. On and on they went, citing the pathologies common in public schools today.

TV shows once didn’t have ratings to warn parents that they were too racy or violent for children. Supermarket check-out lines didn’t display mainstream magazines that gave explicit advice for “mind-blowing sex” right on the cover. Police didn’t patrol school halls even in inner cities.

There have been an awful lot of good things that have come about in the last thirty or forty years. We have better health care and live longer lives. Our environment is cleaner. We don’t make black people sit in the back of the bus anymore. Yet, despite the many positive achievements and accomplishments of the past generation, many people, especially parents, often find that they are strangers in their own homeland. They are ill at ease because the world doesn’t seem to support the way they want to live and the way they want to raise their children.

It’s as if one morning we woke up early, went outside to the culture we live in, and discovered that all the elements of the good life are there, but in the wrong place, with all the price tags switched. We’re baffled and we can’t make sense of it. We’re unsure that our cultural values are what they should be. The Walking Dead gets millions of viewers but it’s not clear how it is helping us live better lives or that we should let our kids watch it. We strive for a more just society, but watch befuddled as revelations about what Planned Parenthood really does just keep getting more shocking, and that apparently can’t be stopped by the law and the courts. It’s not very difficult to get the impression that the world is marching to a different drummer, buying a different set of goods.

So, yes, the world has shifted. We live in a post-Christian era.

“Having once had a comfortable [monopoly] over American life, [mainline Protestant churches] have now been disestablished from the [cultural] center. Now there is no more free ride for us, no more crutches from the culture. If we are going to remain Christian, if our young [people] are going to grow up embracing this faith, we shall have to make them that way. The world won’t do it for us” (Willimon).

Christianity, which once found itself located firmly at the center of popular culture, now discovers that it is viewed by that culture as subversive. This is not new this year. In the 1990s, Promise Keepers filled football stadiums teaching men how to live honorable lives of duty and loyalty. Pop culture and media derided the movement and accused it of trying to turn back the clock to an earlier time when adultery was still socially unacceptable and men believed in one life, one wife. Pretty dangerous stuff, huh?

So we might ponder that much of the world generally regards us Christians like it regarded the hippies of the nineteen sixties—we are the counterculture of the last gasps of the second millennium. We are regarded with deep suspicion because we live and work in a world that lives by different slogans, has different visions and speaks a different language than the church. We confront a world which often isn’t supportive of Christian ideals and sometimes downright hostile. So Paul tells us we’d better not be unarmed and unprepared. We need to prepare for our struggle as carefully as a soldier prepares to go on campaign.

Being a soldier for Christ is not a solitary venture. The idea that there is such a thing as a solitary Christian is a contradiction in terms. Even the best armed soldier of Paul’s day or our own would perish quickly trying to fight alone. A soldier completely depends on his buddies to see him through tough times, to help him prepare for future rigors, to help him simply survive.

For that reason we have the church. The church is where we find our buddies. Anyone who has seen hard duty in military service never uses the word “buddy” like a civilian. A soldier’s buddy isn’t just some casual acquaintance. Your buddy is your other self. The prospect of your buddy perishing is more horrific than of your own death. Military psychologists learned long ago that soldiers in battle don’t fight for flag or glory, but because they love their buddies.

Soldiers wage war; the church is to wage peace. As Paul wrote, our struggle is not against enemies of flesh and blood, but against the ungodly compulsions and temptations of the fallen world. So we need the moral equivalent of war, in William James’ terms. And that means we need each other, organized in the church.

I am not saying that we can’t be good Christians without actively participating in the life of a church. We can’t be any kind of Christian unless we do so. Christianity is not something that is, it is something that does. And Christianity does only within the collective context of the community of faith. To withdraw from the active life of the community of faith or decline to join it is spiritually suicidal. The whole armor of God can’t be worn by solitary persons. It takes the entire church to wear it together.

So we must gather for worship. We gather to announce God in a world that lives as if there is no God. We speak to one another as beloved brothers and sisters in a world which encourages us to live as strangers. We must pray to God to give us what we cannot have by our own efforts in a world which teaches us that we are self-sufficient. In such a world, what we do on Sunday morning becomes a matter of life and death. (Willimon)

Of all the armament Paul lists, the only weapon for offense is the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. Our helmets and breastplates and shield may get battered and dented, but we can respond only with the word of God.

John’s Gospel relates that the Word became flesh and walked and lived among us. In Jesus Christ there is abundant life. The word of God we know through Christ is the promise of grace and preservation. God is love. To wield the sword of the Spirit is not to strike down with violence, but to embrace with love. When we are assailed, we are to respond in love. We are to announce and do grace and mercy.

So the sword isn’t good for ungodly purposes. This is not a sword you can use to cheat your customers or business partners. It isn’t a sword you can use to chop down the poor. This sword can’t be used to slice people up with rumors or speech of hostility or condemnation. The word of God never does any of those things.

Jesus said we are to do good to our enemies and love them. Perhaps that is the reason we need to wear armor, for love makes us vulnerable. David Lowes Watson wrote,

Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one. Wrap it carefully with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it safe in a casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is—hell.

Because Christian people are a people of love we will always be armed and vulnerable. When that ceases to be, then we’ve defected to the other side.

The Christians in Ephesus had a great advantage over us. Their culture was groping in the darkness of paganism, so it was clear that the culture should have no part defining the role of God’s people in the world. It is not so easy for us, for our culture is not wholly bad. But we have grown accustomed to thinking of ourselves as living in a “Christian nation.” Maybe that was never really true, but if it was, it isn’t true now. Christendom has vanished.

We must reject the illusions, seductions and false alternatives of our time to reassert the ageless truth that only Jesus Christ is Lord. In the very moment of our clearest announcement of the Gospel to the world, we will find that as Christ’s witnesses to truth and life we will have the privilege of helping to make God’s reign real in the world. With Christ, we will “preach good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed [and] proclaim the . . . Lord's favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)