The only way in

 John 10:1‑10

 “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

   7 So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

How do you go to a place you want to be? GPS answers that question easily for driving there. You enter your destination and Google Maps, for example, usually offers three different routes.

Have you ever wanted to go somewhere and found there was only one way to it? Or along the way there was a place that there was no choice but to pass through? When Cathy and I lived in Oklahoma, we found there are destinations in the Great American Desert for which there is one way to go and that’s it. Either follow it or don't get there.

In our passage for today, Jesus describes himself like that. He speaks of himself as a shepherd who guides and leads his sheep. In fact, Jesus taught that not only is he the Way, but he is also the gate for his flock. The actual gate.

The only legitimate way into Christ’s kingdom is through him. He is the gate. We may think there is another way, but we are only fooling ourselves to think that.

We are familiar with thinking of Jesus as a Good Shepherd whom we follow. But what about Jesus as the actual gate, or actual entrance to the kingdom?

The implications of that are very important. So let’s take a look.

I was stationed in Germany from 1983 to 1986. Cathy and I lived in a small farming village called Dorf-Guell, about 35 miles north of Frankfurt. Behind our house was a large, open field that lay fallow the three years we were there. One morning I opened the blinds in the back window and was startled to see a flock of sheep all over our backyard, some grazing right next to our house’s wall. At the edge of the field stood the shepherd, attired in German shepherd’s clothing just as if he had come straight from central casting. I called Cathy and we watched for awhile. After several minutes, the shepherd walked to the right. When he reached the side of the flock he turned and spoke to the sheep. Right away the sheep stopped grazing and walked toward him. The shepherd turned and walked on, the sheep following docilely behind him. The sheep dog brought up the rear, keeping the sheep in formation.

Jesus' hearers would have understood the images of ancient Judea shepherding, of course, in a way that tends to escape us. At night, shepherds in Judea would bring their flocks together for the night for security, but how to separate them in the morning? Each would simply call his sheep, who recognized their shepherd’s voice and ignored other voices.

William Barclay explained that in the fields shepherds would construct a simple pen for the flock at night with only one entrance, and the shepherd would sleep across the entrance. The shepherd literally was the gate for the sheep. Obviously, anyone having legitimate business would come to the shepherd. Anyone who went into the pen by going through the simple fence was up to no good.

But, as John explains in verse six, Jesus is speaking figuratively. His words must have called to mind passages of the Jewish Scriptures in which God describes himself as a shepherd and the people as his flock. Ezekiel 34, for example, portrays most kings of Israel as bad shepherds who through misrule and corrupt religion place the flock - the people of Israel - in danger both physical and spiritual. Ezekiel counters that God alone is the good shepherd who will rescue the sheep and place them in the care of “my servant, David” - meaning a monarchy restored to righteousness of King David.

But in Jesus' day the kingdom of Israel was gone forever. The Romans ruled Judea, so it is highly unlikely that Jesus was referring to any political entity as thieves and bandits. Nor would he have meant that the long line of Jewish and Hebrew prophets who came before him were the bad men because Jesus respected Moses and his successors.

Jesus' teaching, then operates on a religious level, and on at least three of them. New Testament scholars agree that Jesus was directly referring to the Pharisees as the thieves and the bandits. Some versions of the passage say so explicitly. John's Gospel is especially harsh toward them - the prior chapter relates their cold accusations of blasphemy toward a blind man Jesus has healed. They hardly have the best interests of the flock in their hearts, while Jesus, who removed the blindness, is a shepherd to tends to the sheep. So, at one level Jesus is contrasting himself with the Pharisees and the Pharisees come off poorly.

But there is more. If the only authorized access to the sheepfold is through the gate - and the gate is Jesus himself - then membership in the flock is determined solely by one’s relationship to Jesus. The only approved way into the fold is through Jesus.

We live in a tolerant age, and this is an intolerant passage, at least in part. On the one hand, there are no preconditions as to which sheep can be part of the flock. If they enter through the gate, through Christ, then they are part of the flock not because we say so but because Jesus says so. Their membership in the flock is assured. On the other hand, there is no way to be a rightful part of the flock except through Jesus; sheep who try to jump over the fence may get into the sheepfold, but they don't belong and are merely Christian imposters whom Jesus does not include in his flock.

There are staggering implications for churches here. It is easy to become a member of a congregation or denomination. But this passage constrains us from thinking that being listed on a church’s membership roll is the same thing as being part of Jesus' own flock. The act of joining a church does not guarantee salvation, for if the joining is done by jumping the fence, then it is religious pretension. The only thing that counts is one’s relationship to the shepherd: Christ alone gives entrance into the eternal Kingdom of God; no one else does, and there is no other way.

This is not a warm, fuzzy teaching. It's a smack upside the head. Whoever enters the sheepfold through Jesus is saved - but no one else can admit entrance nor is anyone who enters another way saved. By Christ and by Christ alone is our eternal place in the pasture both granted and assured.

Jesus is at one time the entryway into the eternal kingdom, and at the same time the true leader of the flock for abundant life. The church's identity can only be determined by the identity of Christ: if Christ is the one who saves and leads, we are those who are saved and are led.

We become members of Christ's flock by entering into relationship with God through Christ, in whom we receive abundant life. Most importantly, we are among those for whom Jesus was willing to die. By his death Jesus paradoxically opened the gate to life both abundantly Spirit-filled in the here and now and to eternal life in the presence of God.

So, we cannot understand ourselves as some of his sheep unless we keep foremost in mind who Jesus is as our shepherd. When we reflect on what and whom our church is supposed to be in the world, we should ask ourselves whether we are being sheepish enough to be part of Jesus' flock. What does it mean for us to live as Jesus's sheep? How do we manifest our sheepish identity in the world? How do we as Christ's flock point the way to Christ as the shepherd, and not merely the shepherd for us alone, but for the world?

Most urgently, perhaps, we need always to remind ourselves of whose voice to listen to. There are hundreds of different voices calling to us sheep and it is easy for the shepherd's voice to be lost in the cacophony. As author Robert Kohler wrote, there are different kinds of voices calling us 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. "All we, like sheep, have gone astray," said Isaiah, we are all doing our own private thing (Is. 53:6). We are called by the thieves and bandits of politics, consumerism, selfishness, entertainment, inactivity, work work work work - the list is endless. Do we still hear the shepherd's voice?

What does the Good Shepherd call us to?

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

He calls us from labor to rest (Matt. 11:28): Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

·     Calls us from death to life (1 John 3:14): We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another.

·     Calls us from bondage to liberty (Gal 5:13)

·     Calls us out of darkness into light (1 Pet. 2:9)

·     Calls us from bondage to peace (1 Cor. 7:15

·     Calls us to the fellowship of His Son (1 Cor. 1:9)

When we faithfully answer the call, here is what happens:

·     We become children of God (John 1:12)

·     We become the servants of God (Matt. 25:21)

·     We become God's witnesses (I Thess. 2:10)

·     We become workers together with God (2 Cor. 6:1)

·     We live a holy calling (2 Tim. 1:9)

These are merely some of the things that come to mind from this passage. But foremost always we have to remember:

·       the only valid way into God's kingdom is through Christ. To think we have a place apart from going through Christ is lethal self-deception.

·       only Christ is the shepherd; the sheep must heed only his call and follow where he leads.

·       that is the way to life more abundant.

Remember what Paul wrote in Galatians 5.13: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self‑indulgence, but through love become servants to one another.”

When Jesus forced the issue

The eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John begins with Jesus learning that his friend, Lazarus of Bethany, had fallen ill. Despite the news, Jesus stayed two more days where he was.

Then he told his disciples they were leaving for Bethany, which was only two miles from Jerusalem. The disciples want none of it, reminding him that he and they had almost been killed in Jerusalem less than a week prior. Finally, they agreed. When they arrived, Lazarus had already been in his tomb for four days. Many people had come to console Martha and Mary, Lazarus’ sisters; some had come from Jerusalem.   

Martha went to Jesus [and said], “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Martha went to her sister Mary and told her that Jesus was here. Mary quickly went to him. There were many people nearby.

Mary said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.  He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus 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.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The 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.”

The story of Lazarus perplexes and confuses almost as much as it enlightens. Jesus showed no sense of urgency about Lazarus’ illness. He seemed strangely unconcerned when he got the news. He responded, “This illness does not lead to death,” yet Lazarus had died either the day the messenger arrived or the day before. “Rather,” Jesus continued, “it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 

This statement almost makes Jesus seem cold or calculating. First, he dismisses the seriousness of the report, then he says that Lazarus’ illness is not really about Lazarus at all – it’s about him, Jesus. Despite the apparent callousness of Jesus’ attitude, I think this statement really holds the key to understanding the whole story.

The Lazarus story is the pivot point in the life of Christ as John tells it. The raising of Lazarus is the last miracle Jesus performs in John. John says that many of the people who saw Lazarus come forth from the tomb put their faith in Jesus, but others went to the Sanhedrin and reported what had happened. “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him,” said one of its members, “and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

Caiaphas, the high priest, said, “It is better for you that one man dies for the people than that the whole nation perishes.” So, from that day on the Sanhedrin plotted to take his life (John 11:48‑53).

Jesus almost certainly knew how those things would work out if he went to Bethany. Tempers were flaring all over about him. Jesus must have known he was the center of potentially deadly controversy. Then he got the message of Lazarus’ illness and said that the illness would not lead to death, but it would serve for God’s glory, so that he, Jesus, might be glorified through it.

I don’t think that “glorified” refers to the raising of Lazarus here. In every instance where John uses the word glorified, he means Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. I think Jesus understood as well as the Sanhedrin that the Romans might respond violently to his ministry. Jesus was well connected, with friends who were members of the Sanhedrin itself. Lazarus himself was probably wealthy and also well connected. They well understood Pilate’s mass murdering record and so did Jesus.

If so, then it may make sense to understand Jesus’ words this way: “This illness does not lead to death [of the Jewish nation at Pilate’s hands], rather it will lead to my death, which will glorify God.” The resuscitation of Lazarus’ corpse, then, may be seen as a powerfully symbolic act of Jesus preserving the life of his people. Jesus is probably less focused on Lazarus himself than on the big picture. Maybe that’s why he waited two days before setting out for Bethany, to think, ponder, and pray whether it was the right time to force a decision by the Jewish hierarchy about who he was. Could he, by bringing Lazarus forth from the tomb, force the Sanhedrin to recognize him as the Messiah? Or would the act drive them to turn him over to the Romans for their perceived good of the nation?

Whether these questions and considerations were actually ones that Jesus pondered we cannot know. But he finally made up his mind to go to Bethany.

The sacrificial scene is set. Jesus goes to meet Martha and Mary and tells them that he is personally the resurrection and the life. But at that time and place, in the cemetery, surrounded by death and wailing and grief, words are cheap. His acts are required, and they will prove decisive. 

 Often you will hear preachers try to humanize Jesus with the verse that says, “Jesus began to weep.” It seems a sentimental scene: Jesus, disturbed in his spirit, deeply moved, weeping in sympathetic grief with Mary and Martha. And no doubt that was part of it, but not the main part. As John wrote it, which doesn’t translate to English very cleanly, different language describes the mourners’ crying and Jesus’ weeping. The mourners are wailing in despair, but Jesus’ tears are of anger and frustration. John says some people comment on Jesus’ tears by saying, “See how he loved him.” In John, the crowd never understands what’s really going on. Jesus did love Lazarus, but his love moves him to action, not weeping.

Perhaps Jesus is “greatly disturbed” to tears because no one gets it. The disciples didn’t get it back across the Jordan when Jesus told them Lazarus’ illness would bring Jesus to be glorified. Martha doesn’t get it when Jesus tells her plain as day, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Her response is rote repetition of religious affirmation. Mary doesn’t get it. She sees Jesus as nothing more than a divine rescuer from the troubles of this world: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” Mary says, accusing him of dereliction of duty. Jesus weeps because everyone, including his disciples, so profoundly misunderstand what he is all about. Jesus is not a divine knight in armor who rides in to shield tragedy from our lives. Rather, he is the walking proof of God’s promise that despite the troubles of the world, we should take heart because Christ has overcome the world.

Maybe Jesus is troubled and weeping also because he knows that to bring Lazarus out of the tomb will irrevocably set him on the course to Golgotha. If people tried to kill him for saying who he is, then to raise Lazarus will make them go bananas. But he can’t back out because he knows why he came into the world. He calls Lazarus forth from his tomb and within a day or two Jesus is marked for execution.

You know, Jesus’s religious talk with Martha pretty much goes nowhere. When a loved one dies no one is in the mood for theology, not right away, at least. People who cry in anguish when their children or spouses or other loved ones perish are reacting appropriately to the tragedy. And yet, we do not accept death as the final reality. Our real desire is not things that never end, but that when they end, they end well. After all is said and all is done, is everything going to be okay? That is the problem of the grave.

The apostle Paul wrote that all things finally work for the good. He does not mean that tragic deaths are somehow actually good, he means that death and evil and suffering are not powerful enough to prevent God from bringing creation to its final, good fulfillment. The present life of good and evil, pleasure and pain, is eventually resolved beyond this world. When God brings creation to its final fulfillment, the promise is not a point-for-point reward for suffering, but “an infinite good that would render worthwhile any finite suffering endured in the course of attaining it” (John Hick).

Jesus told Martha that he is the resurrection and the life, and that those who believe in him, even though they die, will live. Everyone who believes in him will never die. Then he went to the tomb of a man dead for four days and told him, “Come forth!”

I think John has done us a favor by downplaying the humanity of Jesus in this story. If Jesus, the Son of God, in whom all things were made, responded to the sisters’ plea, and wept at the cemetery from nothing but sympathy with their grief and sorrow at Lazarus’ death, then we have put our faith in a mighty small god. Even we, finite in understanding, can see that there are cosmic dimensions here, such as the pervasiveness of suffering and tragic death in a world we say is governed by a wholly good and infinitely powerful God. Martha’s faith is at best ambiguous, and considering the circumstances, we can identify with that. I would hope these issues, at least, occurred to Jesus.

Do we really want the Christ to approach the graves of our loved ones merely as a sympathetic friend who helps us cry? We can do that on our own quite well. No, we want someone with the power to order them to come forth, who can demonstrate that we do not die, period, we die, comma. And if the Lord is sometimes frustrated at us while we cope with what life throws at us, that’s quite okay. By such things we can come to understand him more fully. In faith, we can turn pain to power, tragedy to triumph, and crucifixion to resurrection, even though it may not be an easy or quick thing to do.

There was a decidedly unordinary day in Bethany about two thousand years ago, a day in which Lazarus came forth, wrapped in grave clothes. “Unbind him, and let him go,” said Jesus. We are no longer bound by death, in this life or the next. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. We shall not reckon our lives by the power of death, but by the fact that in Christ we have the sure promise of eternal life with God.

We are not blind, are we? Well . . .

The Gospel passage for today is the first 14 verses of the Gospel of John. It is a long passage so rather than include it it here, I offer this link. I also include the YouTube video of Jesus giving sight to a blind man – and what happened after that. It is from the 1977 mini-series, Jesus of Nazareth.

Did you know that this story is a joke? I don’t mean that it is funny, not at all. It is quite serious. Nor do I mean that it did not happen in real life. I believe it did. I am not mocking the passage and what it conveys. I am referring to the narrative structure of the passage.  

That is, this passage presents a situation that begs to be resolved, the blind man. Then the situation is resolved; Jesus gives the man sight. But then notice that the story continues, and in the end, there is a punch line: “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

This punch line is the actual point of the story. It is not a funny story but a very serious one. Unlike a normal joke, though, this story tells you the punch line at both the beginning and the end: the kind of sight that matters most is spiritual sight that recognizes the true light of the world, Jesus. Those who think they can spiritually see without him are really the blind people of the world.

The disciples saw the blind man and immediately thought that he was blind because of his sin, or maybe his parents’ sin. Jesus will have none of that, for he knows that God does not smite sinners with such misfortunes – after all, where would God stop? The beggar's blindness is not punishment from God. Jesus knows it is an occasion for the redemptive and healing power of God to be displayed in him.

The man's blindness in this story serves as the dramatic foil for the real point, a point repeated throughout John's Gospel: sin is failure to respond to the presence of Christ and the Gospel. Jesus tells the Pharisees at the end of the story that if they had been blind – that is, never exposed to the presence of God in him, then they would be blameless for not acknowledging him. But they have encountered Jesus, and their assertion that they surely are not blind is the basis for Jesus’ judgment of them as sinners. Unlike the beggar, the Pharisees' physical sight is not the issue. What they refuse to perceive is that God is present and revealed in Jesus. They are blind to the most important fact of all, a fact that should be obvious to them. Hence, says Jesus, their sin remains because they continue to insist that they can see. 

Throughout John, sin is defined not so much as what one does but as how one responds to Christ. For John, the moral foibles of men and women living their daily lives is of concern mainly to lead people to know Christ as savior of the world. This recognition can be likened to a form of new sight.

 Have you ever needed your sight restored? A dad once told me of his son, whom I will call Sam, in fourth grade when they learned that he needed eyeglasses; in fact, he probably had needed them all along. 

Like most children who need glasses, Sam was very nearsighted. When his glasses were ready, his dad took him to get them. When they stepped outside Sam suddenly stopped, his jaw dropped, and he just stood there and stared around him for quite some time. 

"Look!" he exclaimed. "There are birds in that tree! There are wires between the telephone poles." All the way home he stared out the window, marveling at all the things he saw that he had never seen before.

So just imagine what the nameless beggar's reaction must have been to have his eyes opened! A miracle, you say? It's a greater one than you think,

Physicist Arthur Zajoc wrote that light and the mind are entwined. Many studies, he said, have investigated recovery from congenital blindness. Thanks to modern medicine and new surgery techniques, many people who had been blind from birth could gain their eyesight, perhaps not perfectly, but well enough to function as sighted persons instead of blind ones. Yet success is rare for adults even when the surgery is successful. Zajoc wrote, "the world does not appear to the patient as filled with the gifts of intelligible light, color, and shape upon awakening from surgery." Light and repaired eyes were not enough to grant the patient sight. "The light of day beckoned, but no light of mind replied," despite their "anxious, open eyes."

 The patients can see technically, but not practically. Surgeons alone cannot complete the task. The patients’ minds must be trained to recognize what the eyes detect. When patients’ bandages are removed, they are no longer physically blind, but they are perceptively blind, They do not recognize anything they look at. A clock may chime. The patients know what they are hearing, but they have no idea what to look for. They recognize the sound but have no way to associate the sound with anything they see.

Dr. Zajoc concluded, "Vision requires far more than a functioning physical organ. Without an inner light, without a formative visual imagination, we are blind. [That] inner light must flow into and marry with the light of nature to bring forth a world." 

The question for us all is whether we are seeing with inner sight, with spiritual sight. Do we train our souls to recognize what God wants us to see? What are we looking at, and are we failing to perceive the most important things of all? 

During the Covid lockdowns earlier this decade, an American missionary in Italy wrote what it was like to be in the severe social isolation Italy put in place. He emailed to a friend in America, 

But if you do end up in quarantine-- so far, it's not that bad. We've discovered how it's forced us to stop and notice the beauty in the world and our fellow humans and be grateful for things and people we used to take for granted-- sunshine and birds, flowers out the window, calls with people we've been meaning to catch up with one of these days when we both had time.

If there is a silver lining in the cloud of anxiety and fear that often surrounds us, maybe that is it: that we have the chance to see ourselves and others, and indeed the world itself, with new sight and renewed understanding. Despite all the turmoil, it is still a wonderful world, and we still belong to God. 

Remember these things: 

 There is a light shining named Jesus Christ. The light of Christ can never be extinguished.

 We are called to be reflections of Christ’s light – mirrors for Christ, as it were. These days give us the chance to polish that mirror!

“We are not blind, are we?” I do not believe we are – as long as we remember this: when we think we see everything God wants us to see, that is when we blind ourselves. It is not about simply opening our eyes, but also our hearts and our souls. Look first to Christ, and with Christ at one another.

War, Iran, and Just War Theory

As you probably know by now, there is a greater concentration of US armed forces in the Middle East today than at any time since 2003. Yet there has been no attack by any country there against America. There have been over time threats and attacks against US warships in the region prior to the military buildup, but with little consequence. 

From the Wall Street Journal, free link to article:
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-middle-east-us-military-7400d800?st=du2MWT&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

The American forces are, of course, directed toward Iran. Last June, President Trump ordered US Air Force B-2 bombers to bomb Iran's nuclear-weapons production facilities, specifically those used to process uranium and related materials. This was done with great success, though whether those facilities can be reconstituted is uncertain. 

In early January, massive demonstrations against Iran's dictatorial regime began by Iranians began across the country. They continued for more than a month, although the regime suppressed them with increasing brutality; Britain's The Guardian reports 30,000 or more were killed. It was during those demonstrations that the American naval buildup began in the region. In early January 2026, Trump stated the U.S. was "locked and loaded and ready to go" to support protesters. No such action was taken, but the American buildup continued.

Presently, the US and Iran have delegations in Oman negotiating over the future of Iran's nuclear program. 

Iran and the United States have differing views over sanctions relief in talks to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Sunday, adding that new talks were planned in early March as fears of a military confrontation grow.

Iran and the U.S. renewed negotiations earlier this month to tackle their decades-long dispute over Tehran’s nuclear programme as the U.S. builds up its military capability in the Middle East, fuelling fears of a wider war.

Iran has threatened to strike U.S. bases in the Middle East if it is attacked by U.S. forces.

“The last round of talks showed that U.S. ideas regarding the scope and mechanism of sanctions relief differ from Iran’s demands. Both sides need to reach a logical timetable for lifting sanctions,” the official said.

“This roadmap must be reasonable and based on mutual interests.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Friday that he expected to have a draft counterproposal ready within days, while U.S. President Donald Trump said he was considering limited military strikes.

The prospect of American war against Iran is real, though its probability can't be assessed with any degree of assurance. This essay is my assessment of the prospective war in the context of Just War Theory (JWT henceforth), a theological inquiry in Christianity going back at least to Saint Augustine, 354-430. It's most robust treatment was by St. Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274, whose exposition was so thorough that it still forms the basis of modern theory. I have written over the years quite a bit about JWT in different contexts.

Today my main points are that going to war justly requires that at least these questions to be answered in the affirmative, below.

1. Is there just cause for the war?
2. Is the war authorized by proper authority?
3. Is it wise, as far as we can discern, to wage the war?
4. Is there a just objective to waging war?

First, though, there is the question whether the bombings last June of Iranian nuclear production constituted "war," or were they military violence of a kind other than war. I think the answer is straightforward, for here the key point is not what President Trump wanted to do (destroy those facilities) but the means he used to do it. And the means were exclusively military and violent, though of course there was no other way.

Throughout history, to attack another country with military forces has been seen unambiguously as an act of war. Just imagine that the evening of Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese government messaged President Roosevelt that the air raid against Pearl Harbor should not be construed as as act of war, but only as a warning to the US not to inhibit Japan's imperial plans in the Far East. "We are prepared to do more," Japan might have said, if the United States did not comply. What do you think Roosevelt's response would have been?

And that leads to a second key point: President Trump ordered the air raids, so he does not get to call it war or not-war. That is Iran's decision. To expect that Iran's regime and their Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) to think of the strikes as anything other than war is fantasy thinking. However, that is no change of status for them. Successive ayatollah regimes there since 1979 have affirmed they are at war with the United States, which they nickname "the Great Satan" of the world. 

And Iran has been carrying out war against us. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran and its network of proxy groups are responsible for the deaths of more than 1,000 American soldiers and civilians. These deaths have occurred through direct attacks, embassy bombings, hostage-taking, and, most prominently, through the training and arming of militants in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. A partial list is here. 

One thing we must understand, then, is not whether we should go to war with Iran, but that we have been at war with Iran since 1979, which they have prosecuted in both word and deed. The question is, then, do we continue with the status quo or do we prosecute the war with means directed toward an end that we select? 

1. Is there just cause for war? 

Since just cause (meaning justifiable cause) is a basic tenet of JWT, it must be addressed. However, as I explained just above, we already are at war with Iran, which it initiated based on Shia Islam eschatology. When presented with such a fait accompli, asking whether we should recognize and act on that fact has no basis. On Dec. 8, 1941, President Roosevelt did not ask the Congress to declare going to war with Japan, but simply to declare that the state of war already existed. 

The question, then, is what is the justifiable conduct of the war we are already in. That is a question of our objective to end the war and of the means we use to do so: What constitutes a level of violence inflicted upon Iran's regime and armed forces that is would effectively deter them from attacking Americans or especially developing and using atomic weapons? 

That is, from the Trump administration's view, the very point of the negotiations with Iran in Oman today, to achieve that goal without military force - but with its threat looming always in the background. The American objectives to end the war must be tightly defined to enable planners and assessors to determine what must be done to achieve them, though certainty will not be possible. 

2. Is the war authorized by proper authority?

The US Constitution clearly grants to Congress, and only to Congress, the authority to "declare war." However, the Constitution does not define  what constitutes a declaration. As then-Senator Joe Biden accurately explained in 2001, the Congress has declared war when the Congress thinks it has. Hence, he said, an Authorization for the Use of Military Force meets Constitutional muster as a declaration of war.

I happen to be a professor of Constitutional law. I'm the guy that drafted the Use of Force proposal that we passed. It was in conflict between the President and the House. I was the guy who finally drafted what we did pass. Under the Constitution, there is simply no distinction between a formal declaration of war, and an authorization of use of force. There is none for Constitutional purposes. None whatsoever. 

Constitutional lawyers over the decades have held that varying kinds of enabling acts, such as monetary appropriations for military action, have also amounted to Constitutional satisfaction and, at least, consent of the Congress to action ordered by the president, in whom the Constitution grants authority to conduct warfare.

Since the dawn of the American republic, the Congress and the presidents have generally agreed that the president may order US forces into combat against another nation, solely on his own authority, if and only if there is:

1. Imminent danger of attack from the other power, so imminent that time taken for Congressional deliberations would hinder defense against it, or,
2. To protect actual threat against US citizens abroad, or to rescue them from actual danger.  

At this time, neither of these are the case versus Iran, otherwise justified though it may be. My conclusion is that if President Trump or his successor decides to elevate military actions against Iran, Congressional authorization must be granted. 

3. Is it wise, as far as we can discern, to wage the war?

With war already a fact, the question is how to wage it wisely. However, this question is really one of setting the national objectives and predicting their consequences. But that will always be broadly uncertain and as cannot be well answered except retrospectively. But doing nothing or taking indecisive actions would be profoundly unwise. 

The question of wisdom must be faced because JWT has long held that waging war futilely is it self unjust, no matter the justification of other tenets of JWT. And that leads directly to the doctrine of proportionality, which so many people think means that we may not respond to an attack with more force than the attacker used. It absolutely does not mean that. 

As I explain in my essay, What does "Just War" mean?, 

The doctrine of proportionality is simply stated that the means of conducting the war must be proportionate to the goal for which the war is waged. Another way of looking at it is that while the just ends desired do not justify any means to attain them, they absolutely justify some means. The tenet of proportionality, then, is to assess what the justified means are, then employ those means and not the unjustified ones. ...

Hence, proportionality means that one cannot use more force than necessary, but must use all the force that is necessary.  It is critical to understand that proportionality does not mean, and never has meant, anything like a tit-for-tat response. 

4. Is there a just objective to waging war? 

At a minimum, a just objective to the war must be cessation of hostilities by Iran upon US persons and  facilities. That means to do that range from settling treaty agreements in Oman to using military force against Iran and its  proxy militias. I personally am sure that Iran will not ever cease its warfare against the US and our interests (and allies) unless the ayatollah regime is ended and the IRGC is destroyed. 

That is exactly is the reason that Congressional and public debate must be entered into sooner rather than later. Actively warring against Iran may be the right thing to do (or maybe the least-bad option) but it must be the right way politically, strategically, and tactically. And IMO, that starts with explanations to the public of what is at stake and sober discussions in the Congress. What I do not affirm is that this or a successor president should wage this war on his own authority only. 

Related: 

Why Iran is betting on war, from the Financial Times. 

Lent and Chocolate - What's the Point?

The story is told of Sean O'Flannery, a lad who moved to Boston from Dublin. Coming home from school one day he went into an ice cream shop and told the jerk behind the counter (the soda jerk) "One scoop of yer best chocolate ice cream in four dishes!"

Soda jerks get strange requests, so he set four dishes with one scoop each in front of Sean. Sean took a spoon of one, held it before his face and loudly announced, "This is me beloved cousin eating ice cream back in the old country!" He ate the ice cream and took a spoonful from another scoop, "This is me dear friend Kelly eating ice cream back in me homeland!" The third dish he said was his favorite uncle, Finian, eating ice cream back home.

Sean raised the last scoop and said, "And this dish is for me!"

This practice went on for several months until one evening as the soda jerk was filling the four dishes Sean stopped him and said quietly, "Only three dishes today, please."

The soda jerk asked, "Did you suffer a loss and that is why you only want three scoops?"

"Heaven's no!" protested Sean O'Flannery. "It's Lent now, and I've given up ice cream!"

The word “Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word, “lencten,” meaning Spring, the season in which Easter occurs. The forty days before Easter constitute the Lenten season, but the forty-day count does not include Sundays. All Sundays celebrate the resurrection, and so are excluded from the forty days count. The forty days duration is drawn from the length of time Jesus spent in prayer and fasting in the wilderness before he set out on his three-year ministry.

Matthew 4.1-4:

1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

As originally conceived by the church long ago, the Lenten sacrifice was instituted as a “means of penitential preparation and preparation for baptism, which in the early church customarily took place on Easter Sunday.”

The tradition of fasting during Lent is an early one, originally done between Good Friday and Easter morning, the forty hours that Jesus was in the tomb. Christians would partake of no food or drink at all during that time. The fast was extended to the forty days before Easter sometime between 300 and 325, and changed so that food could be eaten only when evening had come.

The idea behind the fast was to imitate Christ. In addition to fasting, Christians would devote themselves to making prayer a faithful habit. So “prayer and fasting” have been closely linked for a long time.

And that brings me, by a rather circuitous route, to chocolate.

Chocolate is an absolutely unessential food, nutritionally speaking. We eat chocolate for no reason other than it is pleasurable. Since denial of the flesh is a prominent theme of Lent, rejection of chocolate in Lent is often offered as the Lenten sacrifice, particularly by people who wish to diet anyway.

The Lenten season is the time when we are supposed to ponder the extravagance of God’s love for us through Jesus Christ. Perhaps that fact could put a different spin on our concept of giving something up for Lent. The Lenten sacrifice is best oriented toward that which most blocks our spiritual growth. If that thing is chocolate, then it is appropriate to give up chocolate for Lent. But if something else is one’s greatest obstacle in being more Christlike, then giving up chocolate is spiritually pointless. 

The question is this: “What is the one thing that most hinders my Christian growth into the person whom God wants me to be?” The answer may not be easy, but it will always involve self-denial. We think that following Christ is hard because to obey Christ we must first disobey ourselves, and it is disobeying ourselves that makes us think following Christ is hard.

But Jesus said his yoke is easy, his burden is light. We just have to get over ourselves to do it.

As Robert Mulholland put it, “Jesus is not talking about giving up candy for Lent. He is calling for the abandonment of our entire, pervasive, deeply entrenched matrix of self-referenced being.”

If we focus on that between now and Easter Day, then we have a chance to become more mature in Christian faith and practice. It may be a habit that is out of true with Christian character that needs to be overcome for further growth. Or it may be a thing undone which must be done for deeper development to occur. The Lenten idea is for our habits to change enough in the next few weeks so that we can continue at a higher level of discipleship after Easter. The Lenten season and the Lenten sacrifice are not the points in and of themselves, the whole life of discipleship is.

Focusing on the one big thing is not the only Lenten discipline that would be helpful for spiritual development. Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, insisted that the only thing that distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian are how we use our time and money. So, for the period of Lent I would suggest focusing on those two things in addition to whatever one big spiritual obstacle you might have. Some suggestions:

• Tithe your income until Easter. 
• Devote yourself to prayer daily and attending worship every Sunday. If you are traveling, say on business or spring break, then worship wherever you are.
• Read the Bible each day. 
• Call someone you love and let them know. 
• Ask people who live alone to join you for lunch or whether you can visit them. 
• Become involved in Christian ministries.
• Re-establish or reinforce important relationships in your life.

Spiritually speaking, it is not enough to simply excise sin or personal vices from our lives. We have to replace vice with virtue. Thus, simply giving up something like chocolate for Lent is simply silly if we are only counting the days when we can start doing it again. That’s a game, not a spiritual discipline.

Lent should be a period of joyful, God-directed introspection into how we may be further united with Christ in godly love. If we make Lent into a severe, joyless, self-justifying exercise in self-denial, we have missed the point. Jesus sternly admonished teachers of the religious law and the Pharisees not to practice the letter of the law while neglecting “the more important matters of justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matt 23:23).

When a lawyer asked Jesus, “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

That is the whole point of spiritual growth and spiritual discipline, and hence the whole point of Lent: love. We are to be living ambassadors from God to one another and the world at large in Christ’s name. Christ was crucified, buried and raised from the dead for our sake and the sake of the whole world. Let us rededicate ourselves to being Christ’s ambassadors. It’s Lent, after all; it’s all about love, you see, Lent is all about love.

Life and dust and promise

Before I retired from full-time pastoral ministry, I had a particular dread every Ash Wednesday that lay people did not share. It arose from the fact that I imposed ashes upon everyone’s foreheads, but in years past I also placed ashes on the foreheads of my wife and children and said to them, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” I really would rather not have said that to my own blood.

Ash Wednesday is the one day of the Christian year that is supposed to fill us with dread. Dread that God is just, dread that God will judge, dread that we might be judged in justice rather than in love. If wearing ashes on our foreheads should do anything for us, it should confront us with the fact that for all of us, there is an end coming one day. Before the most holy God, all the things we value will be as ashes. 

The American dream is that we can have it all. Therefore, we often seem not to understand that Christian discipleship is a zero-sum game: if we are to grow in discipleship, we must shrink in something else. If we are to add holiness to our lives, we must give up ungodliness. In his book I Surrender, Patrick Morley writes that the church’s main misconception is “that we can add Christ to our lives, but not subtract sin.” We think we can change what we believe without changing what we do. We want revival without reformation, we want rebirth without repentance. 

To repent means more than to regret. Originally a nautical term, it meant to change course, to go in a new direction. Repentance means to change, to be different. That’s the real reason why people are supposed to “give up something” for Lent. How often do we give up something trivial, like desserts or going to movies? It’s no repentance to give up something that we can easily do without and then, once Lent is over, resume. It’s no repentance to pretend we are turning away from actions instead of sins. Repentance is to pull out our deepest sins by the roots, and that will hurt! 

Fasting for Lent means to repent, not merely to do without food for part or all of a day. Fasting means to be focused on repentance so intently that we give up the ungodliness that pervades our lives. It is to be a holy man or holy woman for forty days. We express that turn toward holiness by symbolically wearing ashes to signify our awareness of our mortality, and to turn to ashes the parts of our lives, the parts of our character, that separate us from fullness of grace. 

Yet there is a danger in Lent as well as opportunity. Repentance is necessary, but repentance does not save us. We are saved by what God has done in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Repentance springs from understanding that we have no hope apart from Christ. The danger in Lent is that we will emphasize repentance of our sins to the exclusion of their cure. Our works are part of our faith, but we are justified before God by our works in faith not because of what we do but because of what God has already done. From the ashes of repentance, in grace, God can build anew. 

Peter Perry, a pastor in Texas, told of the time his neighbor’s house burned to the ground. “The trees all around were scorched,” he wrote. “The grass was brown."

A few blackened timbers stood near the back of the house, and the remains of the cast iron plumbing system rose out of the ashes. The day after the fire, as I walked to school with a friend, we saw the woman who had lived there, standing in the midst of what had once been her home, weeping and wondering aloud what would become of her and her family. As she gazed at the ruins of her life, she despaired. But her husband was comforting her. “We can rebuild,” he said. And they did. One year later, a beautiful new home graced that lot. And the home they built was built around the old home’s massive, stone fireplace. But I wonder . . . Did the woman and her husband and their children sit around that fireplace on winter nights, look at the dancing flames on the logs they were burning, and remember the ashes?

We do remember the ashes of our past, do we not? Old hurts, ancient wrongs. Writer Hazel Farris told of her childhood’s fiery temper. 

One day, after an argument had sent one of my playmates home in tears, my father told me that for each thoughtless, mean thing I did he would drive a nail into our gatepost. Each time I did a kindness or a good deed, one nail would be withdrawn. Months passed. Each time I entered our gate, I was reminded of the reasons for those ever‑increasing nails, until finally, getting them out became a challenge. At last the long‑awaited day arrived – only one more nail! As my father withdrew it I danced around proudly exclaiming, ‘See, Daddy, the nails are all gone.’ Father gazed intently at the post as he thoughtfully replied, ‘Yes, the nails are gone—but the scars remain.’

Scars do remain, and we wear them. We’ve made them, too. Sometimes we count our scars and relive the hurt and anger and pain of each one. Sometimes we love to inflame the passions of righteous indignation. But God does not do that. God forgives our sins and God forgets those sins. God does not carry grudges. In our repentance and humility before God, we can see that God’s ways are not our ways. God forgives, God forgets. Our sins were nailed to a cross on Calvary. In Christ’s triumph over the powers of sin and death, our sins have become like ashes, blown away in the wind. 

So, the call to repent must not be ignored. We must respond to God’s initiative. “If there are a thousand steps between us and God,” said Max Lucado, “God will take all but one. God will leave the final one for us. The choice is ours.” 

We are dust and to dust we shall return. The urgency of Lent is that we turn to God now, for later may never come. Dr. George Sweeting told of a visit to Niagara Falls. 

It was spring, and ice was rushing down the river,” he wrote. “As I viewed the large blocks of ice flowing toward the falls, I could see dead fish embedded in the ice. Gulls by the score were riding the ice down the river, feeding on the fish. As they neared the falls, their wings would go out, and they would escape from the falls.

I watched one gull which seemed to delay and wondered when it would leave. It was engrossed in the carcass of a fish, and when it finally came to the brink of the falls, out went its powerful wings. The bird flapped and flapped and even lifted the ice out of the water, and I thought it would escape. But it had delayed too long so that its claws had frozen into the ice. The weight of the ice was too great, and the gull plunged into the abyss.

The moment to turn back to God is this moment.

When we receive the ashes on our foreheads, there first stroke usually is a vertical one with the ashes on our forehead. Think of it as an “I.” The “I” is the egoistic part of each one of us that is the sinful self, the rebellious self, the self that wants to walk alone instead of with God. But right after the “I” we receive a horizontal line, and the “I” will be crossed out. Crossed out. As Bass Mitchell explained,  “The ashes made in the form of a cross remind us of the cross of Christ by which our sins and the sins of the whole world are canceled out!” 

Ash Wednesday reminds us that we come from a world of death and sin, but that we do not have to stay there. “We are dust, and to dust we shall return. Let us repent and believe in the Gospel!”

Epiphany 3A Calling the Fishermen

Mt. 4:12, 18-23:

12 Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. ... 18 As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen.

19 And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

 

A young lady was accosted by her father one morning after she had come in very late from a date with her newest boyfriend. Dad demanded to know why she had allowed him to keep her out until well after midnight. “Oh, Daddy,” she exclaimed, “he just has that certain something!”

Dad reflected on the young man’s appearance when he had arrived the night before: he was not especially well mannered, he had ragged hair, wore baggy clothes of no particular fashion, and drove a dirty car. “Well,” Dad told daughter, “he may have that certain something, but it would be much better if he had something certain.”

I wonder why Simon Peter and Andrew dropped their fishing trade and walked off after Jesus when he told them to do so. The Gospel gives no indication that they knew Jesus before this time, but they might have known him or at least known about him. In either event, when Jesus said, “Come,” they followed. Then the brothers James and John did the same when Jesus called them, leaving their hapless father to mend nets alone.

Was Jesus’s charisma, that “certain something,” so strong that grown men engaged in their trade would just drop it – immediately – when he said to?

Few people are blessed with such charisma. Everyone else has to develop high expertise to be successful leaders. They have something certain – competence. People do not follow these leaders because they are charismatic or personable. For every Robert E. Lee whose regal appearance and courtly demeanor could cause his soldiers to weep with devotion, there are a dozen like U. S. Grant, whose appearance was uninspiring and mannerisms dull to all who met him. But Grant’s competence was legendary.

Charismatic leaders cause change, and so do competent leaders. When charisma and competence combine in one person, an explosion of change results. George Washington combined these two natures. So did Billy Graham.

Jesus may have combined charisma and competence so supremely that his call to follow was irresistible, which would explain very well why men and later, women, would just up and leave their homes and way of life to follow him. But to follow Christ was different than following Washington across the Delaware River one night and different than helping Billy Graham build the furthest-reaching ministry the world has ever known. Washington’s soldiers and Graham’s workers had first devoted themselves to a cause greater than all of them – the former to freedom and the latter to evangelism. They had a prior commitment to the larger mission, and to accept the leadership of Washington or Graham resulted from their commitment rather than caused it.

Such was not the case when Jesus walked along the lakeshore. No doubt these four fishermen were religious. They probably worshiped faithfully at the synagogue and made the necessary pilgrimages to Jerusalem for Passover. But there was no cause Jesus served to which Simon, Andrew, James, and John had already committed themselves. There was no Gospel yet, there was no church yet, there were no great social or political movements Jesus headed. There were, apparently, no prior points of contact between Jesus and the four men. Yet when Jesus simply told them, come, and they dropped their work and went.

The men could not yet have known of Jesus’ unequaled competence. Jesus was an expert prophet, teacher, preacher, and healer; his expertise in conducting his ministry was unparalleled. He made no mistakes. He did not waver from his mission even when arrest and cruel death threatened. This fantastic level of competence is not hard to accept if one has already accepted the fact that Jesus was the son of God, and that in him dwelt the godhead fully. But none of the disciples knew any of this when they began to follow him. Jesus was still mostly unknown to them when they left their work and homes to follow him.

And Jesus may not have been very charismatic. Isaiah prophesied of the messiah in another passage that, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isa 53:2). Jesus may well have been a plain-vanilla sort of man to look at, with no imposing physical presence. We don’t know.

So the riddle of what made these men follow Jesus remains a riddle.

“A reasonable response to his command ‘Follow me’ would be ‘Where are you going?’ The fishermen do not yet know the destination, which they must learn along the way. . . . The fishermen are already at work, already doing something useful and important, thus they are not looking for a new life. Jesus’ call does not fill an obvious vacuum or meet an obvious need in their lives, but, like the call of prophets in the Hebrew Bible, it is intrusive and disruptive, calling them away from work and family” (NIB).

Jesus did not call the fishermen to admire him or accept his principles, but to follow him personally. Throughout the gospel accounts, Jesus made it clear that those who followed him were to be devoted to him personally. To what degree Jesus understood he was God-in-the-flesh is argued among New Testament scholars; his self-awareness of his deity seems stronger in some parts of the gospels than in others. But it cannot be doubted that Jesus saw a co-identity between his work and the work of God and thus believed that loyalty to him and loyalty to God were so close that the difference was nil. In fact, Jesus said that God enabled people to follow him.

His call to follow him was primarily to follow him personally, not to adhere to some ethical principle, success program, political campaign or even a ministry of compassion. The ethics and ministry of the apostles and the church grew out of personal loyalty to Christ, but before all, there was loyalty to Christ himself. The first devotion of the apostles was not to good works, or to faith statements, or to social justice, or to religious propositions, or to a church organization. It was personally to Jesus Christ.

We don’t easily realize what an extraordinary thing this is. Throughout history there have been many men who demanded personal oaths of loyalty, but even the best results have been tragic, more often downright evil. Here is a short list of examples, none of which turned out well, most of which became evil outright:

• The cult of the Roman Caesars that began during Jesus’ lifetime,
• In the late 1700s, the rule of the French monarchy,
• Adolf Hitler, who required the proud German army officer corps to pledge its honor and loyalty to him personally rather than the German nation,
• The cult of the Japanese emperor,
• American Jim Jones founded a “People’s Temple” and demanded complete obedience, even to requiring all 900 of them to drink poisoned Kool-Aid and die in 1978.

The historical record is not kind to those who make themselves the first and foremost object of loyalty or worship for people. Yet Jesus of Nazareth is a singular distinction. He did not found a “Jesus cult.” His disciples sometimes got into serious arguments about what following Christ meant, and Jesus just let them work it out. Jesus would patiently explain what his teachings meant when the disciples didn’t understand, but he never attempted to compel people to follow him. They were free to answer his call or not. And some changed their minds: Jesus was abandoned wholesale by many disciples in John’s Gospel, and Jesus just let them go without a word. On the night he was arrested, Jesus seemed more pitiable than heroic in Gethsemane. Before the soldiers arrived, he had to plead with someone to stay awake with him. Then his disciples abandoned him as the soldiers took him away. Jesus was either history’s most spectacular blunderer in creating a personal cult about himself, or he was so purely good that complete devotion to him personally could serve only God’s good purposes, even when that devotion faltered.

But Jesus’ tragedy and triumph were far in the future when Jesus walked along the lakeshore summoning the two sets of brothers. We are no closer than before in understanding why these men, successful in their trade, would give it up to follow Jesus with just a word of a summons.

Perhaps we need to remember that the gospels don’t quite tell history in the way we think of history. The gospels are not simply accounts of what happened. When their writers set the story down, they knew how it would end. From the beginning of these accounts, Jesus is known to them as the Risen One. Thus, the individual motives that each disciple may have had in following Jesus at the beginning of his ministry do not seem very important. The point is that they did follow the One they later came to know as their risen Lord. Matthew simply ascribes to all of them, including himself,

“a common denominator: ... People become believers by the power of Jesus’ word; they follow him because he has spoken to them, and his word generates faith. For Matthew, Jesus’ call to discipleship was spoken not only to a few disciples in first-century Galilee but to the church throughout history (28:20). ... In and through the words and deeds of preachers, missionaries, teachers, family, friends, and the nameless doers of Christian service, the voice of the Son of Man continues to speak and to generate faith” (NIB).

So for Matthew and for the church in every time and place, the call to follow is given to us just as it was to these four men beside the lakeshore. Yet only a few of us will immediately drop everything to follow him. (I certainly didn’t!) The rest of us will wrestle with the call. We’ll temporize and delay. We’ll ask for the details of the program and want to have the objective explained to us. Or we’ll show Jesus all the other work we have to do and all the obligations we have, or we’ll love our leisure time too much and treasure our entertainments and pastimes.

Jesus has heard it all before. He won’t try to coerce us into following him, and we sure can’t talk him out of calling us. To all our objections, Jesus makes no argument. He simply says, “Come and follow me” and walks on. He will do this over and over and over, until we finally realize that all our encumbrances and reasons to go on with life as usual mean not a thing any longer, not to Jesus, not to us, and then we have to follow him – not to join a new project or find a new cause, but simply to be with him and to have him be with us.