Artificial Intelligence and The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a foreboding prophecy

The 1951 sci-fi classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still, has been called "the first thinking person's science fiction movie." It was made during the second year of the Korean War and the formative years of the Cold War - the USSR detonated its second atomic bomb that year, and the United States was only a year away from testing the first hydrogen bomb. And of course, the world was only six years away from the abattoir of World War II.

The drama is this: a large flying saucer lands in front of the Washington Monument. The military surrounds it with tanks and troops. A giant, humanoid robot emerges. We learn later its name is Gort. The special effects are very primitive by today's standards and probably were not been terribly convincing even in 1951. But that's okay - this isn't a special effects movie. An alien man, Klaatu, comes out. He is human, or at least humanlike. He announces he wants to address all the nations of the world. American agrees but the Soviets refuse. Klaatu escapes from government minders, disguises himself as a businessman, and takes a boarding room in Washington to use as a base of operations.

The movie was loosely based on a 1940 short story called, "Farewell to the Master," by Harry Bates. Bates was one of the towering figures of science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s, a time known as the "Golden Age of Science Fiction." Amazingly, I found the text of Farewell to the Master online - you can read it here, and I heartily recommend it to you.

In the end, Klaatu makes it back to his spaceship. Gort is revealed an extremely powerful and destructive machine, equipped with a vaporizer ray, for example, as two soldiers guarding him discovered the hard way. Many critics say that Klaatu is a Christ figure - he comes from the heavens, is rejected by the authorities, hunted down and shot by soldiers. He resuscitates, then announces just before his ascension into the heavens that his purpose is to save humankind.

While the cinematic parallels are doubtless intentional, Klaatu as Christlike doesn't hold water. Klaatu is really an emissary of the "civilized" races of the universe, but he is revealed in the film's denouement as a galactic bully, a mere thug delivering a cruel ultimatum: either humankind stops making war or "the earth will be turned into a cinder."

Moreover, it is Gort, not Klaatu, who holds the earth's fate in his hands. Klaatu explains that his race created Gort and others like him to annihilate any people or any planet that breaks the peace. The robots' power is absolute and cannot be revoked, says Klaatu. The result is that they live in peace, and if humanity wishes to survive it must accept the dictatorship of the robots.

What Klaatu seems not to understand is that while he and his fellows live in peace, it is literally the peace of the grave. They are slaves. Their message to earth is simple: becomes slaves like us or die. This is not a message for the ages, and were it not for the movie's technical merits, it probably would have rightfully passed into oblivion long ago.

There is a high level of technical excellence in the movie. The use of light and shadow, always crucial in a black and white film, is very well done. Klaatu, played by Michael Rennie, is kindly and attractive - that is, until he makes his naked threats. The movie foreshadows the coming of Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD - the uneasy, dangerous equilibrium of neither peace nor war the USSR and USA found themselves in not many years later. Like thermonuclear weapons, Gort and the robots are weapons of mass destruction, only on a cosmic scale.

Unlike TDTESS's approximate contemporary, 1953's War of the Worlds, the alien's mission is dramatically presented as intriguing, even hopeful, until the end. It is not Klaatu or Gort who are aggressive, except for Gort's inexplicable vaporizing of the two guards. It is the human beings who use violence, who shoot Klaatu for no good reason. Klaatu is dramatically developed as the soul of friendliness; he even becomes a father figure to the son of the woman running the boarding house.

Yet the idea of machines having ultimate destructive power is one that hardly appeals to us. Only 32 years later Arnold Schwarzenegger would become a star by playing another version of Gort, but one somewhat less powerful. The apotheosis of machine-driven WMDs is excoriated in that movie's second sequel, Terminator 3.

But consider that Gort is a personification of what we call Artificial Intelligence. Even the groundbreaking researchers and developers of AI have warned strongly that AI has the real potential to dominate, or even end, humanity. AI, they say, may become so independently self-guided that it works only to advance only its own self-created goals and interests. Or as I put it awhile back:

When AI becomes so self-directed that it considers humankind as merely another resource to be controlled, exploited, or even terminated to achieve AI's own ends, then we will have Gort in a worldwide network of impenetrable self-sufficiency and power. 

Here is an example from last year. There were a few news articles that Britain's Royal Air Force was using AI-connected flight simulators to test targeting and destruction of enemy air defense installations. In the electronic exercise, a central RAF aircraft controlled AI-piloted drones. The drones' mission was to detect air defense sites and destroy them. But the control aircraft had to approve each launch because the exercise had friendly AD sites built in as well as enemy. 

According to the reports, the AI network seemed to understand that its purpose was to destroy air defense sites and it apparently  decided that it was irrelevant that some were enemy and some were friendly, so it finally shot down the control aircraft and started blasting all AD sites indiscriminately. 

That is a network of Gort. The human operators and designers became effectively slaves to what they had created. Heaven forbid that our AI networks will one day achieve Gort on a worldwide scale, but I fear we are headed that way. 

What will happen when AI become so self aware that it understands we need it but it does not need us? 

Was Judas actually Christ's accomplice?

Or was Judas truly a traitor to Jesus after all?

One of the most deeply-rooted traditions in Christian faith is that one of Jesus' disciples, Judas Iscariot, cruelly betrayed Jesus in Jerusalem, guiding Temple soldiers to Jesus and identifying Jesus to them. Jesus was immediately seized and taken away. He was shortly condemned by both the Jewish Sanhedrin and the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.

John's Gospel relates the beginning of the betrayal thus, John 13:21-30:

21 After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.”

22 His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. 23 One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. 24 Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”

25 Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”

26 Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. 27 As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.

So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” 28 But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. 29 Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the festival, or to give something to the poor. 30 As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.

 

A documentary on Discovery Channel some years ago examined the last week of Jesus' life. One scholar posed the idea that Judas did not betray Jesus, but was Jesus' accomplice in carrying out a course of action that went bad in ways Judas did not foresee, but Jesus did.

I don't recall the scholar's name, but his position was based almost exclusively on word studies of the Greek texts of the Gospel's accounts of the events, especially the word translated "betray," which is translated elsewhere as hand over or deliver up - about which more below.

The idea that Judas was traitor has very ample evidence, not least of which is the testimony of the Gospels themselves. Luke identifies Judas as a traitor early:

Luke 6:16: Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. [There were two disciples named Judas. The infamous Judas was termed "Iscariot." This term refers to his hometown of Kerioth, in southern Judah. Hence, Judas was the only one of the Twelve who was not a Galilean.]

John's Gospel also identifies Judas as a traitor:

John 18:5: "Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "I am he," Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.)

There are other such specific attestations as well. (The Greek used for "traitor" is prodotes, which has no other connotation.)

"Traitor" is not the only pejorative term used about Judas in the Gospels. He is also called a "thief" in John 12:6; as the "keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it."

So an attempt to paint Judas in more favorable terms has very strong scriptural obstacles to overcome, to say the least. There are, however, some questions that intrigue:

How did Jesus know that Judas would betray him? None of the other disciples knew. Like the other Gospels, John 13 relates that Jesus gathered his disciples for a meal on his last evening as a free man. After an instructional discourse to them, Jesus informed them, "I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me" (v. 21). Jesus identified the traitor as one who with whom he would share bread, then handed bread to Judas.

As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him. "What you are about to do, do quickly," Jesus told him, but no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him.

Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the Feast, or to give something to the poor [v.27-29].

How did Jesus know he would be betrayed in the first place, and that Judas would be the traitor? The Gospels give no clue.

The Greek word used for betrayal, paradidomi, does not mean only a traitorous action. It can also be translated, according to Strong's Greek Dictionary (a standard reference) as "to surrender, yield up, entrust or transmit," without necessarily implying underhandedness. My Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon indicates the word is multivalent (as are so many Greek words) and betrayal is one of several meanings the word implies. Context is everything.

The King James version translates paradidomi as "deliver up" in other parts of the Gospels. The modern NIV translates it in other uses as "hand over." In Mark 10:33, Jesus foretells that the Jewish authorities will "hand him over" to the Romans, and the word used there is paradidomi, the same word translated as "betrayal" when referring to Judas' deeds.

The ambiguity of the word at least leaves open the possibility that Judas' actions were not actually traitorous. In fact, the NIV translates paradidomi as "hand over" in Matt 26:15-16. Judas went to the chief priests and asked, "What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?" So they counted out for him thirty silver coins. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over."

(According to some historians, the money Judas was paid was standard bounty money paid to good citizens who identified wrong-doers.)

After Judas left the Upper Room, Jesus completed the Last Supper. Then he and his disciples went to the Mount of Olives, outside the city. Matthew and Mark say they went to there and then to "a place called Gethsemane," where he was arrested. Luke says he was arrested at the Mount of Olives and does not mention Gethsemane. John merely says they went to an olive grove across the Kidron Valley from the city. (The Gospels never refer to a place called the Garden of Gethsemane.) John confirms, though, that the place was known to Judas "because Jesus had often met there with his disciples" (John 18:2).

After a period of prayer and speaking to his disciples, Judas arrived with soldiers from the Temple, sometimes called Temple police because they were more a constabulary than a fighting force. (The synoptic Gospels say it was "a crowd" armed with clubs and such. John is probably more accurate.) Judas identified Jesus to them, and they apprehended him.

 

Events then proceeded apace. After a tempestuous confrontation with the Jewish High Priest, Caiaphas, and at least some members of the high Jewish council (the Sanhedrin), Jesus was charged with the religious crime of blasphemy for claiming messianic identity. This crime was one for which the Jewish law required death, but Caiaphas and others were already on record as fearing riots in Jerusalem if they even arrested Jesus, which is why they had done so at night. 

Caiaphas is recorded in John's gospel as willing to sacrifice Jesus to the Romans, but he knew that Pilate didn't much care about what religious offenses Jews committed. So he persuaded Pilate that Jesus was actually attempting insurrection against Rome. For that, Pilate sentenced Jesus to be crucified, a standard punishment for insurrection against Roman rule. The sentence was carried out.

Judas attempted to return the silver coins to the chief priests, then hanged himself. (Acts says, though, that he bought a field with the coins, fell headlong into it and was disemboweled.)

Those are the bare facts of what Judas and Jesus had to do with each other the last week of both their lives.

So - did Judas actually turn traitor against Jesus, or did Judas do what he did at Jesus' bidding?

The claim that Judas was a traitor has the substantial weight of text behind it, as I have explained. But it does not answer four key questions:

1. How did Jesus know he would be betrayed, and betrayed by Judas, and why were the other disciples clueless about it?

2. How did Judas know exactly where to lead the Temple police to arrest Jesus?

3. Why didn't Jesus escape away from Jerusalem when he had the chance? The Mount of Olives was the near edge of safety for him, from there he could have easily gotten away across Jordan River, which land John 11 identifies as safe haven for Jesus.

4. Why did Judas try to return the money and why did he commit suicide? Judas was no fool, he surely knew his betrayal would risk Jesus' life and could not have been surprised when Jesus was condemned.

Postulating that Judas has gotten a bad rap and that Judas was actually doing what Jesus wanted answers these questions. So consider some pluses and minuses of the "Judas as accomplice" theory:

A. As the only Judean, Judas was the only choice to be Jesus' messenger or intermediary with the high priests. The people of Jerusalem considered Galileans to be hicks from the sticks - John 7:41 records the incredulity of Judeans that Jesus was a Galilean: "How can the Christ come from Galilee?"
Advantage: accomplice.

B. Passover week in Jerusalem was always a tempestuous time. Tempers against the Roman occupiers ran high then, so high in fact that Pilate left the resort city of Caesarea and moved to Jerusalem for the duration, where he could control his forces on scene. Jesus was loved by many of the ordinary people. That would explain why the high priest didn't want to arrest Jesus during the daytime when the crowds could see.

But it does not explain why Jesus would arrange, via Judas, to meet with Caiaphas at night, nor for that matter why he didn't arrange to meet Caiaphas himself, without using Judas. If Jesus wanted to meet Caiaphas all he had to do was walk into the Temple and say hello.
Advantage: betrayal.

C. If Judas was Jesus' accomplice, why did Jesus tell the disciples, including Judas, that one of them would betray him? They all understood what he meant. For Jesus to call Judas a betrayer while actually being in collusion with him makes Jesus deceptive.

Not only that, Jesus threatened that it would be better for Judas had he never been born (Mark 14:21).
Advantage: betrayal (a major advantage at that).

D. But Jesus knew what Judas was going to do.
Advantage: accomplice.

E. Jesus went to exactly the place where Judas led the Temple police and did not attempt to evade them.
Advantage: accomplice.

F. If he was working at Jesus' initiative, Judas had no reason to believe that the Jewish high council harbored lethal intent toward Jesus. Thus, when Jesus was condemned, Judas was overcome with grief and remorse at having had a part in delivering up Jesus to that fate. So he killed himself.
Advantage: accomplice.

G. Judas took the silver coins from the high priests because he was avaricious and wanted to be paid for betraying Jesus,
or
the 30 pieces of silver were "market rate" and a routine matter for the high priests to pay for cooperating with them.
Advantage: neutral.

Outside the Gospels, Judas is mentioned a couple of times in Acts, written by the author of Luke, but that is all. The rest of the New Testament is silent about him. But the Gospels' record is uniformly negative. Clearly, there was an apostolic and early church understanding that Judas was a traitor.
Advantage: betrayal.

The idea that Judas was an accomplice of Jesus rather that his betrayer rests on too thin evidence to be accepted. The verdict of the early witnesses is upheld.

Update: I see I neglected to explain what the reason would be for Jesus to send Judas on a secret mission to have him delivered into the hands of High Priest. According to the ruminations of a couple of scholars on the Discovery Channel, Jesus wanted to force the issue of who he was with the High Priest and the Sanhedrin. Judas, being the sole Judean among them, could most easily act as intermediary with the Temple.

By this idea, the notion to see Caiaphas by subterfuge would have to be a very late idea in Jesus' mind. We could say the Jesus had tried to force the issue of confronting the Sanhedrin by his violent cleansing of the moneychangers from the Temple earlier in the week. And according to Matthew 23, Jesus launched into verbal broadside against the Temple class that we bloggers might say was the mother of all fisking of their religious practice and indeed, their very identity. He actually called them sons of Hell, not a move calculated to win their affection.

But these events did not cause the religious authorities to apprehend Jesus, forcing Jesus to arrange his "betrayal" to them by Judas. Judas thus would have been faithful to the end; he committed suicide from shock that his faithfulness had led to Jesus' death.

What this theory fails to explain is why Jesus was so desirous to stand before the High Priest. It could not have been merely to respond affirmatively to Caiaphas' question that he was indeed the "Son of the Most High." Jesus had been declaring his Messianic identity openly for some time; in fact, driving out the moneychangers was a Messianic act. He had personally forgiven sins in front of scribes and Pharisees for a couple of years or so, angering them because they knew that only God can forgive sins.

Nor does it hold up that Jesus expected the High Priest to confirm his Messiahship, for the Gospels are full of Jesus saying that judgment would fall upon "this generation" (meaning his own contemporaries) for not recognizing him.

There is one reason, though, that Jesus could have sent Judas to do what Judas did: Jesus intended to force his own execution. His death, then, was not the result merely of a good disciple gone bad, but the actual objective Jesus had in mind all along. And in fact, the Church has usually been quite comfortable with the idea that Jesus’ death was a cosmic necessity. But with Judas a true traitor, Jesus' death can seem practically accidental - it might not have taken place if Judas had reconsidered and heeded Jesus' warning, for example. And a near-accident is a mighty thin lifeline upon which to hang the redemption of humanity! So this part of the Jesus story is a buttress of the notion that Judas was Jesus' agent rather than his betrayer.

But there is an even stronger argument against the theory: Jesus kicked Judas out of the Upper Room before he instituted the Eucharist. Jesus and the disciples gathered there for a meal (not necessarily the Passover Seder; John says it was not, the other three Gospels say it was). It was only after the meal was done that Jesus took the bread, gave thanks for it, blessed the bread and gave it to his disciples. Likewise, it was after the supper that Jesus took the cup of wine and proclaimed it was the cup of the new covenant.

There is no question that Jesus saw the Eucharist as a defining ritual for his followers. He told them to practice it often and that he would share it with them again at the eschaton. That Jesus dismissed Judas from the room before the sharing of the bread and cup must be considered, I think, as proof that Judas was free-lancing, not secretly abetting Jesus' plans. To use a later religious term, Jesus excommunicated Judas from discipleship, and discipleship identity in Christian faith is practically defined by partaking of the Eucharist.

So, in my mind, the idea that Judas was actually Jesus' ally rather than his betrayer is refuted.

More plausible was the show's examination of just who was most responsible for plotting for Jesus to be executed, about which another post to follow.

Mary's Perfume - A reflection for Monday of Holy Week

Prayer

Life-giving Lord, you make all things new.

You have redeemed our lives from perishing.

Make us holy today with your presence.

Implant within our hearts your living Word.

May we be fruitful in acts of love and mercy. 

Reveal to us the things that you want us to see.

Show us what it is you would have us do.

Strengthen us as we walk as pilgrims through this world. 

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

Jesus had been in Jerusalem where he had enraged a crowd by claiming that he was the giver of eternal life and then said, "The Father and I are one." The crowd picked up stones to kill him for blasphemy, but Jesus escaped and with his disciples and fled to a different jurisdiction on the other side of the Jordan river, near where he had begun his ministry by being baptized by John the Baptist.

There Jesus got word that his friend Lazarus was very ill. Jesus may have seen in Lazarus's illness an opportunity to render a teaching moment to those who had tried to kill him for claiming equality with God, so he stayed across the Jordan for two more days. Then, over the objections of his disciples, he went to Bethany.

We pick up at John 11, verse 17:

17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.

20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 

23Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 

24Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 

25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 

27She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

Now, none of Martha's words ring true. Compare how she acts toward Jesus with her sister Mary, who will approach Jesus shortly. Martha seems merely to be reciting something she's heard others say and she may even sorta, kinda believe it but it strikes me as a pro-forma confession, sort of like a churchgoer who has never actually embraced the Apostles Creed and just says on Sunday:

"IbelieveinGodtheFatherAlmightyMakerofHeavenandEarthandinJesusChristHisOnlySonOurLord..."

Then Martha went to get Mary, telling her, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”

Then Mary got up, trailed by a number of visitors, and went to Jesus, who was still standing where Martha has left him.

32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus told them to take him to Lazarus’ tomb. When they got there,

39Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41So they took away the stone.

Jesus briefly prayed and then cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

When news that Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead reached the Jewish high council, its members were aghast. Jesus was extremely popular with the people, drawing large crowds at every appearance. The council feared that Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect, or military commander, would crush the swelling Jesus movement with horrifying force. Pilate already had a well-deserved record of brutality; he had once ordered thousands of Jews killed whom he thought improperly subservient to Roman rule. (In fact, Pilate was ultimately fired and banished by the governor of Syria for being too violent, which says a lot about him.) Caiaphas, the high priest, insisted that another bloody disaster must not befall the country. He told the others that it would be better for Jesus to die than to have the whole nation destroyed. "So," says John, "from that day on they planned to put [Jesus] to death."

____________________________

Now we pick up the story at John 12, verses 1 – 8:

1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)

7 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

 By the time Jesus reached Lazarus' house, Jesus was nearing the end of his life. Whether Mary suspected this or not, Jesus did. Whatever Mary's motives in anointing Jesus with perfume, Jesus used her gesture to prepare for his coming death.

The perfume Mary used was expensive stuff. Today, the famous Chanel No. 5 sells for more than $52 per ounce. If that’s too proletariat for you, there is Clive Christian No. 1, of which a 1.7-ounce bottle sells for $750. Mary's perfume was measured by weight, not volume, but consider that the pound of perfume she used was worth three hundred denarii, about a year's wage for a typical working man in those days. Now just imagine someone dousing a house guest with well over a quart of Clive Christian No. 1.

Mary's gesture was breathtakingly extravagant. Why so much?

An ancient historian told of a day a beggar by the roadside asked for alms from Alexander the Great as he passed by. The man was poor and wretched. He had no claim upon the ruler, no right even to lift a solicitous hand. Yet the Emperor threw him a bag of gold coins. Alexander's aide was astonished at this extravagance and exclaimed, "Sir, copper coins would adequately meet a beggar's need. Why give him gold?" Alexander responded, "Copper coins would suit the beggar's need to receive, but gold coins suit Alexander's need to give."

I think that Mary's extravagance filled Jesus' need to receive an anointment less than her need to give it. Of course, she was immensely grateful to Jesus for returning her brother to life, but her giving went well beyond simply thankfulness. It could have been impelled only from love.

Mary was a single woman, but her love for Jesus wasn't the love of romantic attraction. We know about that love, and the love we have for friends and the love we have for family. The love Mary had for her Lord was like those in some ways, but don't you think there was something different about it? Her love was self-giving, in fact sacrificial, just as Jesus' love for her and you and me was supremely self-giving and sacrificial.

Writer Dave Simmons described a trip to a mall with his two children, Helen (eight years old) and Brandon, five. "As we drove up," he wrote, "we spotted a Peterbilt eighteen‑wheeler parked with a big sign on it that said, "Petting Zoo."

The kids jumped up in a rush and asked, "Daddy, Daddy. Can we go? Please. Please. Can we go?"

"Sure," I said, flipping them both a quarter before walking into Sears. They bolted away, and I felt free to take my time looking for a power saw. A few minutes later, I turned around and saw Helen walking along behind me. I was surprised to see she preferred the hardware department to the petting zoo. I bent down and asked her what was wrong.

She looked up at me said sadly, "Well, Daddy, it cost fifty cents. So I gave Brandon my quarter."

As soon as I finished my errands, I took Helen to the petting zoo, but not for the reason you might think. We stood by the fence and watched Brandon go crazy petting and feeding the animals. Helen stood with her hands and chin resting on the fence and watched her brother have the most wonderful time petting the animals. I had fifty cents burning a hole in my pocket; I never offered it to Helen, and she never asked for it. Love always pays a price. Love always costs something. Love is expensive. When you love, benefits accrue to someone else. Love is for you, not for me. Love gives; it doesn't grab.

"On the whole," said C. S. Lewis, "God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him." For it is not enough merely to love. We must love the right things, the love worthy. Yet of all the things or people we can find a reason not to love, our Lord often ranks pretty near the top.

That's what's going on with Judas in this story. He protests that Mary is using all that perfume to anoint Jesus' feet. It could have been sold and the money given to the poor. John makes sure we know of Judas' ulterior motives: he was Jesus' treasurer and had sticky fingers. But before we stick only Judas with a bad rap, consider that in Matthew's telling of this story, it was the disciples generally, not just Judas, who protested Mary's extravagance, and in Mark it was some of the other people there.

It's not that the poor don't matter. It is that Judas missed the point. Alternative uses of the perfume were not the issue. The issue was Mary's worship of and love for her Lord.

We mustn't think of our love of Christ in mercantile terms. Love doesn't work that way, although Madison Avenue wants us to think it should. Years ago, the diamond industry’s advertising used to tell us that an engagement ring should cost the man three months of his salary. Why? Because they knew men wouldn’t go into hock for six months’ or a year’s worth, that's why. They reduced one of the most special moments a couple can have to an entry on their ledger form.

Judas thought the issue was money when the issue really was Mary's love and worship of her Lord. While we recognize that Jesus' ethics – helping the poor being one example – are good and worthy, we are sustained in doing so because we love and worship Christ. Loving Christ and obeying Christ are intimately related. "Love the Lord you God with all your heart, soul and strength," Jesus said, "and love your neighbor as yourself." There are always alternative uses of our resources. Our duty is to discern the best use at the time. On that day in Mary's home, the best use of her perfume was to love her Lord.

Why did she use so much? She anointed Jesus’ feet with a pound of nard, an ointment people used back then to refresh themselves, especially in crowded conditions because it smelled so sweet, and people didn’t bathe so often. But why use a pound for one man when a little dab’ll do ya?

Here is a true story: Some years ago a man in New York City was kidnaped. His kidnappers demanded a ransom of $100,000. His wife talked them down to $30,000.

The story had a happy ending: the man returned home unharmed, the money was recovered, and the kidnappers were caught and sent to prison. But don't you wonder what happened when the man got home and found that his wife got him back for a discount? 

Reporter Calvin Trillin imagined what the negotiations must have been like: "$100,000 for that old guy? You have got to be crazy. Just look at him! ... You want $100,000 for that? ...$30,000 is my top offer." Mark Trotter concluded his rendition of the story with this thoughtful comment: "I suppose there are some here this morning who can identify with the wife in that story, but for some reason I find myself identifying with the husband. I'd like to think if I were in a similar situation, there would be people who would spare no expense to get me back. They wouldn't haggle over the price. They wouldn't say, 'Well, let me think about it.' I like to think that they would say, 'We'll do anything for you.'"

In my mind’s eye, I don’t think Mary started off intending to use the whole pound. I think that once she started, she just couldn’t stop – her love for Jesus and gratitude for his salvation just overwhelmed her and she scooped the nard out right down to the bottom. Perhaps if she had had more, she would have used it, too, for she recognized that Jesus was God’s supreme gift to humankind and he was, as events at Lazarus’ tomb had proven, the source of life itself. How can you cut short your gratitude for that? How can you bargain down your love for One who has given you everything worth having?

The book of Ecclesiastes points out that there is a right time to do everything, a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to laugh, a time to mourn. That's what Jesus is getting at in his answer to Judas's criticism: "You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me." There is a time when nothing is more urgent than worshiping the Lord and loving him, no matter what else is going on.

The book of Revelation prophesies Jesus's letters to some churches. To the church in Ephesus Jesus said, "I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance. ... I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have forgotten your first love."

The church’s first love must always be Christ. If we ever become so task-oriented or program-centered that we don't time enough to love the Lord we will be pitiful people, indeed. Because implicit in Judas' words is a dangerous compulsion to be so busy doing the Lord's work that we forget to sit at the Lord's feet and simply take some time to be with him. Task compulsiveness squeezes out love and before long only the tasks remain. But to what end?

"You do not always have me," Jesus told Mary and his disciples, but that's not really our problem today, for Christ has risen and is always here with us. Our problem is not whether we have Jesus, but whether he has us, because we twenty-first century Americans have squeezed time out like a husk in the search for efficiency and in so doing we have squeezed out time enough for love. We might do well to remember what Henry David Thoreau said, that we cannot kill time without injuring eternity. Perhaps such a thought led Martin Luther to exclaim one morning, "I have so much to do today that I cannot not spend less than three hours in prayer." Luther knew that no task list should supplant taking time to love the Lord. There must always be time enough for love.

 

Palm Sunday and Crowds and Mobs

Matthew 21.1-11 

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”

4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

5 “Say to Daughter Zion,

    ‘See, your king comes to you,

gentle and riding on a donkey,

    and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”

11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Jerusalem was an emotional place during Passover season. Jewish pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean poured into the holy city to make sacrifices at the Temple. There was enormous religious fervor in the city, so much that the Roman garrison there went on special alert since the Jews’ hatred of the Roman occupiers reached a fever pitch during Passover week. 

There may have been as many as two hundred thousand pilgrims in the city on that day. We don’t know how many of them greeted Jesus with palm fronds. There might have been only a couple of hundred people gathering at the gate to welcome Jesus or there may have been several thousand. Certainly, Jesus was famous enough by then to draw a large crowd. In fact, that Jesus attracted crowds was the reason the high council later arrested him late at night, when everyone would be in bed.

Whatever the number of people waving palm fronds was that day, they had a definite expectation of Jesus. Instead of entering triumphantly on a charging stallion, Jesus rode into town on a colt; other Gospels say a donkey. This was no act of humility on Jesus’ part. He was asserting kingly authority and messianic identity. Matthew’s account of the day refers to the prophecy of Zechariah that says that Jerusalem’s king would come “triumphant and victorious ... humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Mark, however, doesn’t make much of this. Like Matthew, Mark does not say the crowd waved palm branches, but instead “leafy branches.” John’s Gospel says they waved palms, a practice the Jews of the day observed for a number of important celebrations. Even so, the crowd who preceded Jesus into Jerusalem shouted its excitement of his arrival:

“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

The crowd was proclaiming Jesus as their messiah who would deliver them from Roman rule and restore the glories of King David’s ancient kingdom of Israel. So let’s jump ahead five days, to when Jesus, under arrest, is brought before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate:

6 Now at the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked. 7Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection. 8So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. 9Then he answered them, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” 10For he realized that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed him over. 11But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. 12Pilate spoke to them again, “Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” 13They shouted back, “Crucify him!” 14Pilate asked them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him!” 15So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified. 

The difference between a crowd and a mob is thin. Crowds cheer, mobs riot. It is important, though, to know that the people who cheered Jesus on Sunday were not the people who demanded his crucifixion on Thursday. The Sunday crowd was of ordinary people who lived near, but not in Jerusalem, and probably many pilgrims from elsewhere who may have been there mainly out of curiosity. 

However, the crowd that demanded Jesus’ execution was hand-picked by the high priest. They were men whose position and livelihood depended on Pilate’s favorable opinion of them. Indeed. The high priest himself took that office only with Pilate’s approval. 

The men of that crowd – and they were almost certainly all men – may have watched Jesus’ Sunday entrance, but they did not wave a leafy branch. Jesus claiming messianic authority alarmed them rather than gave them hope.

And yet, I wonder: how many of the Sunday people would have joined the Thursday men if they had been given the chance?

For centuries Christians have commemorated Palm Sunday by waving palm fronds in a celebratory processional into the sanctuary. I have read that this church tradition began in Jerusalem as a way that pilgrims there could learn of Jesus’ last week. It was an early form of interactive learning. 

 But is it really such a great thing to pretend we are part of that palm-waving crowd? One thing about the way the Gospels tell their story is that crowds in the Gospels are almost always clueless. They just don’t get it. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a colt, the crowd cheered him. Why? 

No one, including the disciples, had the slightest notion that the messiah would be anything other than political figure. Devout Jew, of course, but a political leader who would return Judea to full independence. That meant a kingly military leader. 

That the messiah would never think of such a thing was not part of the picture. And that the messiah would be executed by the Romans would have been thought impossible. 

Importantly, that the messiah would save Israel by his death and then bodily resurrection would have struck them as insane. The gospels are clear that even after Jesus had explained this to his disciples on the way to Jerusalem, they simply dismissed it.

So on Sunday, the crowd cheered Jesus mostly from their own selfish ambition of what they wanted him to do. They hoped first that he would reclaim the throne of David, which was contested by Herod the Great’s three sons and daughter. Then they hoped that Jesus, divinely assisted, would lead an uprising against the Romans that would drive them from Judea. Jesus planned to do neither. After all, he already had possession of the true throne of David, which the angel Gabriel had told Mary, Jesus’ mother, in Luke chapter 1. As for raising an army, what use would that have been to someone who could summon unnumbered legions of angels to his side? 

Jesus surely knew what the crowd expected and just as surely knew he was not their man, not like they wanted.

But let us not be too hard on those cheering Jerusalemites. We cannot blame them for wanting to be free of oppression. Nor should we scorn them for not knowing that Jesus was destined to be crucified, dead and buried, and on the third day to rise from the dead. That was still several days away and who could have imagined it, anyway? All the Palm Sunday people knew about Jesus was that he loved God, he spent a lot of time with the unlovable people of society, he was known to work miracles now and then, and he was a compelling preacher who verbally fought with the powerful people of the Jewish nation. 

There really was not much more to know about Jesus, five days before he was executed as a religious heretic and political insurrectionist. Everything that makes us know Jesus as the Christ springs from Easter, not Palm Sunday. It is Easter, not today, that defines our faith. Unlike the crowd calling Hosanna! two thousand years ago, we know Jesus as the Risen One, the King of Kings whose throne is infinitely more glorious than that occupied by David or his descendants. 

 That being so, why on earth would we celebrate that crowd of two millennia ago? Perhaps we should do so to remind ourselves that all earthly glory is fleeting. Gratitude does not last forever, sometimes not even for a few days. Disappointments or worse always follow from staking one’s well-being on any mortal human being. 

The ugliness of fickle faith will never be more nakedly displayed than during Jesus’s last week in Jerusalem. One crowd cheered him, another crowd jeered him and called for his death. For the Palm Sunday crowd, Jesus turned out not to be who they hoped he was. For the Good Friday crowd, Jesus was all too potentially who they feared he was. Jesus entered the city riding as prophecy foretold the King of the Jews would ride, being greeted to uninhibited acclaim, yet the final calls of a crowd Jesus heard were calls for his execution only a few days later, people yelling to Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar!” and “Give us Barabbas!” instead of Jesus. Then finally, they will scream, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

If we are to commemorate the Sunday crowd, it can be only to admonish ourselves not to be like them. They cheered sincerely and earnestly, but they cheered in vain. The lesson they teach us is only to stake our lives on something other than mere human aspirations or merely human leaders. It is to remind us not to define the Christ by our own mere wishes, but by God’s revelation.

It must be to ask ourselves, even if only once per year, “What do we expect from Jesus?” Consider what Jesus endured during Passion Week. He was – 

Hailed by the people, 

feared by the powerful, 

watched by the Romans, 

loved by his disciples, 

then betrayed by one and abandoned by the rest, 

arrested by the Jewish police, 

beaten by his countrymen, 

tried and convicted by the Jews and the Romans, 

flogged by the Romans,

scorned by the people, 

crucified by the Romans,

buried by some friends.

With a record like that, what do we expect of him? Is it sensible that we should expect Jesus simply to give us more of what we already have? Was the mission of Jesus Christ simply to assure us that he’s okay, we’re okay, just keep doing what we’re doing, living like we’re living, wanting what we’re wanting, and Jesus will just smile approvingly at us and make sure that everything works out all right? Or should we imagine that the Son of God has a different agenda than we do, and his agenda might topple our own as certainly as the ancient temple in Jerusalem came tumbling down forty years after Jesus entered the city? 

These are questions to ponder this Holy Week. The answers are not found on Palm Sunday. They begin in earnest later during Passion Week, reaching their crescendo Sunday morning. 

The Right People for the Wrong Crowd

Luke 15 begins:

1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.  2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 

When you read the gospels, you discover that wherever Jesus was, there were usually a lot of the riffraff of society right there with him. One of the remarkable things about Jesus is that he accepted and even sought the company of people considered socially undesirable. In fact, Jesus once even invited himself to dinner at a hated tax collector’s house. 

Then, as now, the influential and powerful people didn’t like the wrong crowd and they didn’t like the way Jesus hung out with the wrong crowd. They thought there was a character defect in a man who would welcome sinners and eat with them. 

Usually we set up the Pharisees as the bad guys of the gospels. After all, Jesus criticized them frequently. But I will tell you: the closer my children got to high school the more I became like the Pharisees. I examined their friends closely. I wanted to know who they spent their time with and what they did together. I remember my own parents wanting to know these things and warning me not to keep bad company.

None of us would ever say to our children, “Go downtown and hang out with the drug pushers and shoplifters.” And if our kids did so, we’d certainly think they had gone terribly wrong. We are socially a lot more like the Pharisees than Jesus. We try to keep the wrong crowd at arm’s length or out of sight. 

The Pharisees wanted to avoid the wrong crowd. That’s not inherently a bad thing. The Pharisees believed that the separation of good and bad was necessary for the well being of the community. We believe that, too. It's why we have jails, after all.

But the Pharisees went too far. In their eyes, the people Jesus welcomed were beyond the margins of proper society and were to be scorned and rejected. And Jesus even ate meals with them! The Pharisees objected strenuously. So, Jesus told them parables about three lost things: a sheep, a coin, and a father who had two sons. He started this way:

4 “Which one of you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go look for the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 Then when he has found it, he places it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 Returning home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, telling them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to repent.”

A shepherd has a hundred sheep counts only ninety-nine. So, he leaves the ninety-nine to find the lost sheep. He brings it home and calls his friends to rejoice with him. "Just so," Jesus concludes, "there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous persons who need no repentance."

Then he told of a woman who lost a coin and tore her house upside down to find it. When she did, she threw a block party to celebrate. “Just so,” Jesus said, “I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” 

This is a play in three acts, and the third act Jesus told was a story of a young man who demanded of his father his share of his inheritance now. Dad gave it to him, and the young man moved far away. But he went broke and wound up slopping hogs for a living, which for a first-century Jew would be as far down the ladder as you could get. He remembered that even his father’s hired men lived better than that. So, he set off for home to ask for a job as a ranch hand. 

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Get the fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. 

But the elder son refused to join the party. The father went to him, but the elder son said, 

"Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has wasted your property on prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’” 

When we hear these stories, we imagine that we are the lost sheep or the wayward child. Sometimes we feel lost even now since we can still move away from God. We are comforted by the image of a God who keeps looking for us no matter how far we stray. All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. When you are on the receiving end of the God who seeks you out, these parables are good news. 

But we should hear these parables with a cautious ear. Something strange is going on. “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 you find it?” 

Now, our usual reaction to Jesus’ question is a sort of warm, mushy feeling as we envision a kindly shepherd searching high and low and gently bearing the lost lamb back on his broad shoulders. But that’s simply ridiculous! Which of you, having a hundred one-dollar bills in a crowded park, and losing one of them, would leave the other ninety nine on the park bench and go after the one that is lost until you find it? No one!

No shepherd would leave the flock to be easy prey for wolves for the sake of one lost sheep. A shepherd’s livelihood can survive the loss of one sheep, but not the loss of the many which would be killed if he abandoned the flock. It seems silly for the woman to throw a big party for finding her coin. Surely the party cost far more than the value of the coin. 

These parables make no obvious sense. There is no moral lesson for the lost. The sheep and the coin are found not because of anything they do but because someone is determined to find them. A lost sheep doesn’t know it is lost. It’s quite likely to wander away again. The coin is just an inanimate object. The son returns home to a place of honor, which reveals deep rifts within the family. What’s going on here?

Maybe the central point about these stories is not the lost sheep or coin or the wayward son. Maybe the stories tell us practically nothing about the lost ones, but an awful lot about ourselves. Jesus speaks of repentance in the first two stories but not the third. The wayward son is never said to repent, though he does have a carefully rehearsed, syrupy, and probably insincere speech. He starts to give it to his father, but his father interrupts it and tells his servants to prepare a banquet. 

Why does Jesus talk about repentance in the first two parables but not the third? No repentance is even possible for a coin or a sheep. And yet Jesus said at the end of each that all heaven rejoices when a sinner repents. So: who’s the sinner and what’s the repentance? 

For Jews of Jesus’ day “repentance” meant, “a fundamental change.” Who else could that be true of other than the shepherd and the woman? Whatever they had planned for the day got discarded because they lost count of what was valuable to them. So, they made a fundamental change to make the count include everything. Maybe that is what heaven celebrates: those who make a fundamental change about what counts. 

The older son, angered by the mercy of his father and the inclusion of his admittedly dishonorable younger brother, scorns the celebration. After all, the younger brother’s return is not characterized as repentance at all; it might be nothing more than a quest for free meals. The older son followed all the rules, did everything right. He neither asked for nor received dad’s favor. Now he feels cheated. And the father botched being a father because he didn’t remember, apparently, how to count to two sons, not just one. He never tried to find his wayward son, he just waved goodbye and good luck. Unlike the stories of shepherd or the woman, there was no fundamental change by anyone in the third parable. There is no one to admire in this parable. 

Nothing comes together for that highly dysfunctional family even at the end. We do not learn whether the rifts between the father and his sons, or between the brothers, will heal. The only redeeming fact of this story is that the banquet is well justified, because there was one who “was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” 

[All] The parables end with a party. Jesus doesn’t invite us to be rescued by God, but to join God in recovering the things God treasures. The parables reject the idea that there are certain conditions the lost must meet before they are eligible to be found, or that there are certain qualities they must exhibit before we will seek them out [New Interpreter's Bible]. 

Here is a true story: One winter when I was about twelve years old, two orphaned brothers walked from their temporary foster home to my neighborhood to ride their homemade sled down the steep hill near my house. My neighborhood group was at the hill riding our store bought Flyers. The two orphans’ sled had wooden runners and it tore the snow up. Frankly, we didn’t want to play with them. They were a rough pair, kind of crude and brash and obviously poor. They were the “wrong crowd” for us middle-class kids. I dropped several hints for them to go tear up some other hill with their lousy sled. Lunch time came, so I went home. While my mother was fixing me a sandwich, there was a knock on the front window next to the door. There stood the younger orphan boy, peering inside my house. My mother opened the door. “Can I have a sandwich?” the boy asked.

My mother brought him inside and took his wet outer clothes and put them into the dryer. She sat him at our dining room table and gave him my sandwich. “I’ll make you another one,” she told me. She heated some chicken soup—which she had not offered me—and set it before him. I wasn’t very happy about all this. I didn’t want to come to the table where that beggar sat. I retreated to the kitchen. My mother followed. I told her, “You gave him my sandwich! You didn’t heat any soup for me, but you did for him!”

My mother said, “Don’t be a stick in the mud! Come have lunch.”

Jesus said, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you…. . For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”

Jesus invites us to become shepherds who seek the lost because they are precious to God and are worth being found. Restoration and wholeness become possible when we treat others according to how they are valued by God, not according to what the world says they are worth. The canyons that separate us—good from bad, worthy from unworthy, lost from found—are bridged by a searching love which embraces us all and invites us all to celebrate. 

Jesus asked the Pharisees to join the search and host the party. He wanted them to think about who counts and who’s counting them. He urged them not to write the wrong crowd off, but to be the right people for the wrong crowd. He challenged them to care deeply about all the people they had given up on and to be willing to take risks to find them. We cannot classify people according to what we think they are worth. The value of a single sheep or a lost coin or a wayward child cannot be computed according to conventional market standards. 

We know who the wrong crowd is, but we also need to know, thanks be to God, that we are the right people for the wrong crowd. 

Sinkholes and the Human Condition

John’s third chapter opens with Jesus in conversation with a highly-respected Jewish leader named Nicodemus. Nicodemus came to Jesus to commend him as man of God, but Jesus doesn’t even acknowledge the compliments. Jesus talks about faith and the proper object of faith. Jesus explains that everyone must be born “again” to see the Kingdom of God. It is also possible to translate the words as “born from above,” that is, spiritually, rather than “again.”

In verses 14-15, Jesus explains why he must be crucified to bring eternal life to everyone who believes in him. Then this:

16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

We almost always recite only verse 16, then stop. But there is the rest of the story and Jesus told it. It is a blunt, unpleasant truth. Jesus drew a genuine distinction between salvation and its lack.

Furthermore, Jesus said that there is no neutral territory. There is no spiritual space where we are neither saved nor unsaved, there is no halftime where we get to ponder the question for awhile off the clock. Jesus said those who do not believe “are condemned already,” that is, unsaved to begin with. This is a “hard teaching,” as Jesus disciples put it about another subject later in John. Either one believes in Jesus or one does not; there is nothing in between.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that he is himself proof that faith is justified. Jesus is clear that he is the actual embodiment of God on earth. To make that confession about Jesus, to affirm his teachings about himself, is to be born “from above,” that is, spiritually reborn by the Spirit of God, just as Jesus was himself born of God.

To believe in Christ is more than merely acknowledging that Christ was a real person. There is a difference between saying, “I believe I have a neighbor” and “I believe in my neighbor.” It is one thing for us to believe that there was a Christ, it is another thing for us to believe in Christ. To believe in Christ is to place one’s destiny in his hands.

 

The story is told of a husband and wife walking in their town when the sidewalk gave way beneath them. It was a sinkhole, and they fell to the bottom, almost twenty feet down. They yelled for help because they knew that the sinkhole would cave in again and bury them. They were, we might say, “condemned already.”

 

Shortly a philosopher came along. He saw their plight and said, “Let me explain to you the metaphysical meaning of sinkholes.”

Next came a psychotherapist, who asked, “Did you ever have arguments with your mother over sinkholes?”

Then came a self-help, motivational speaker, who jumped up and down excitedly and exhorted them, “Yes! Yes, you can! You can get out of that sink hole. Say it after me, now: I can! I can! I can do it!”

Then Professor Schrodinger walked by with his cat and told them, “In another quantum state you are already buried.”

The next fellow was a congressional candidate who said, “Vote for me and I’ll introduce legislation to outlaw sinkholes.”

Then President Trump came by and said, “I would have built a yuuuuuge wall around that sinkhole!”

A lawyer came by and said, “I will help you sue the property owner.”

Their parents came by and told them, “If you loved us you would move out of that sinkhole.”

The county inspector walked up and asked, “Do you have a sinkhole permit?”

A news reporter asked, “Can I get some video of you in the sinkhole?”

An IRS agent informed them, “Medical expenses from sinkhole injuries are deductible only for the amount that exceeds seven and one-half percent of your adjusted gross income.”

Former President Biden came along and told them, "I will send legislation to Congress to send stimulus relief checks for everyone trapped in sinkholes."

An optimist told them, “Cheer up! Things could get worse!”

A pessimist came along and said, “Don't cheer up, things will get worse.”

A Methodist preacher arrived and asked, “Did you know that sinkholes can be used as metaphors for the human condition of John 3.16-19?”

A Buddhist showed up and told them, “The sinkhole is not real.”

A television evangelist told them, “Send me money and I will pray for you to get out of the sinkhole.”

A Hindu guru came along and told them, “The sinkhole is your karma.”

A Zen master walked up and asked, “What is the sound of a sinkhole?”

A Confucian appeared and said, “Confucius says, ‘In all lives there are sinkholes, such is fate.’”

A Muslim approached and said, “It is Allah’s will for you to be in the sinkhole.”

Then Jesus came to the sinkhole. He did not pause to ponder sinkholes or to explain them to the couple trapped there. He just leaped to the bottom of the sinkhole and said, “Jump on my back and I will carry you out of the sinkhole.” And he did.

We are in the season of Lent, of course, and that is the season that even Methodist preachers really, really like. During Lent we get to really hammer sin and bang on the pulpit about what miserable sinners and reprobates make up the human race. During Lent we have a preaching license to give all the explanations and warnings about the sinkhole of human sin. Well, that or something like it has a place in Lenten reflection. I am pretty sure that a lot of people really don’t understand that the sinkhole problem of the human condition is indeed grave. We may wonder about it in the aftermath of horrific crimes in the news, but even those horrors rarely evoke true conviction of the sinkhole problem of human sin.

In 1998 I went on a study trip to Appalachia as part of a course at the Vanderbilt Divinity School. One Sunday we attended a service in a small up-hollow town in coal country. It was a congregation of the Old Regular Baptist church. That was the name of the denomination: Old Regular Baptist. The service started at nine and ended at noon. Three hours of church, five preachers!

It was an engrossing experience. The first preacher was like the guy with a guitar who plays and sings before a Garth Brooks concert: just starting out. He gave a heartfelt testimony but got sung down by the choir because he went on too long. Then there was another man who had preached before. He was more polished. And so it went, each preacher more talented than the one before. After the fourth preacher sat down, everyone took a short break.

Then the choir sang a hymn and the headliner preacher stepped up to the pulpit. At first he spoke slowly, softly, then he picked up the tempo and the volume. He knew about every sin in the book, and apparently somebody in the congregation had done at least one of them recently. Eloquently, he covered all the bases: the human inability to love God right, the need for repentance and the imperative that we throw ourselves at the foot of the cross and pray for the precious blood of Jesus to cleanse us.

By and by he took his coat off. Then a few minutes later he loosened his necktie. Awhile later he rolled up his sleeves. Before long he took out his handkerchief and wiped his sweating brow. “Though our sins be red as scarlet, Jesus will wash them white as snow. Jesus stands at the door and knocks, but in our pride we won’t answer the door – we should be ashamed to leave him standing there in the cold, the one who suffered and died for us.”

And finally, the expected ending: though no one has any right to ask God anything, and none of us are worthy even to untie Jesus’s sandals, from his infinite and incomprehensible grace and love Christ will accept us if we sincerely beg his forgiveness. Then he sat down, the choir sang another hymn, and everyone left.

We don’t always take God very seriously as God, a God who is as close to us our next breath. For sure the Old Regular Baptists up there in Appalachia take God pretty seriously. They live a hard life and they sometimes know a hard God. Their kind of worship is not for us, but the wind of the Spirit blows where it chooses. 

Yet while we need to be reminded that sin is a serious, in fact fatal, condition, we must not lose sight of the great thing about Lent. Lent is about sin, yes, but how much more is it about love and mercy and forgiveness of sin! We think we are doing pretty well and that God must love us because we are doing well and because we are are pretty good people. I mean, look at us: What’s not to love? Yet those Appalachian Baptists knew what Nicodemus had to learn: God does not love us because of who we are, but because of who God is.

Bishop Will Willimon wrote:

In the midst of our trivial moralizing, our scolding and scrambling for a few penitential brownie points, John reminds us of why we’re here. We are on the way of the cross not because of what we have done or left undone but because of what God has done.

The goriest work of human sin gets sidetracked into glorious divine redemption. The prophet is sent not to scold but to save. It was out of love that he came among us and stood beside us and chided us and died with us, for us, and saved us. Love.

Now we remember. It was for this that we began the journey. It was not for sackcloth and ashes, whips, the sacrifice of a before-dinner martini and empty stomachs that we are here. It was love that put us in this parade. We kneel not as miserable worms but as those brought to their knees by sheer wonder at the gift. It was not to condemn us that our Lord bid us bear his cross, but to save us. We are not here as the lost but as the found.

The cross is heavy and clouds gather, and we shall have more days for honesty, more Sundays to examine our lives again and pray for the courage to be truthful about all, the ways in which we betray so great a love. Lent is not over; “there is still more repenting to be done. But as we turn our steps again” toward Calvary, “let us take these words with us: it was not for condemnation that he was sent to us, but for love. He beckons us on, not to condemn but to save. (Christian Century March 17, 1982, p. 292)

Shall we be born again, be born from above by the wind of the Spirit? Yes, we shall. We shall have faith: we are ready to bet our lives on the Son of God. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Thanks be to God!