From the Beginning

From the Beginning

Mark 10:1-12[1]

Human relationships are wonderful and complicated, mainly because we humans are wonderful and complicated. This applies to marriage, if for no other reason than it involves two human beings trying to live together. We bring all that we are into a marriage, and that can lead to a wonderful union. But because a marriage involves two flawed and broken people, that’s not always how it turns out. Some think of this in terms of what’s “right” and what’s “wrong,” as if these things are clear-cut. I’ve found it more helpful to look at human relationships, including marriage, from the perspective of what’s “healthy.”[2] The fact is that there is a wide spectrum between what’s “healthy” and “unhealthy,” with a lot of room in between.

 There simply is no “one size fits all” approach to human relationships, and that applies to marriage. In our setting, we believe that marriage is about love. That’s not always been the case historically. From ancient times, marriage constituted a contract between two families that involved property and wealth. In other cases, marriage was primarily about having children and extending the family name. The meaning of marriage has changed and developed throughout history. And, for better or for worse, it is still changing and developing today.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus responds to a challenge from “some Pharisees” who were trying to “test” him. More likely, they were trying to trip him up and catch him saying something they could use against him! We should understand that their question about divorce was not a sincere one! They rather casually assumed they had the right to divorce their wives. And they cited Moses as “allowing” them to do so, quoting from the book of Deuteronomy. But Jesus attributed this to the “hardness” of their hearts, or their stubborn insistence on going their own way rather than obeying God. I think we should notice that while the Pharisees assumed they were shining examples of moral purity, Jesus reminded them of their own sin!

But more than that, Jesus challenged them to go beyond what Moses “permitted.” He pointed them back to God’s original intention for marriage “from the beginning of creation” as expressed in the book of Genesis: “a man shall … be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Jesus concludes, “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together let no one separate” (Mk 10:8-99). Here Jesus makes the biblical ideal clear: marriage is intended to be a permanent relationship that lasts for a lifetime.

The Pharisees appealed to Moses, so in order to reinforce what he was trying to say to them he went to the Ten Commandments. Jesus applied the commandment against adultery to the issue of marriage and divorce. I think what we must understand here is that Jesus wasn’t addressing every possible situation involving divorce. He was confronting a situation in which men casually assumed they had a right to divorce their wives without any concern for their well-being. He challenged them to take marriage and divorce much more seriously. More than that, Jesus made both husbands and wives accountable to each other, which was groundbreaking in that day. Even Jesus’ disciples assumed they had the “right” to divorce their wives.

We have our own assumptions that may make it difficult for us to hear what Jesus was trying to say. Many have taken what Jesus says about remarriage after divorce and used it as a “club” against hurting people. But the reality is that we all fall short of the ideals set for us in the Bible. That’s true whether we remain married or have been divorced! No one perfectly maintains an ideal relationship![3] Again, it seems clear: divorce and remarriage is not what God intended “from the beginning,” but that doesn’t mean every situation involving divorce and remarriage is “sinful.”[4] We can already see an effort to address the complexities surrounding divorce and remarriage in the New Testament. Jesus himself mentioned infidelity as a basis for remarriage after divorce (Mt 5:32). And Paul allowed believers from Corinth to remarry if an unbelieving spouse wanted to divorce them (1 Cor 7:15). Neither of these situations were the ideal, but that doesn’t make them “sinful.”

In this day when the meaning of marriage is changing dramatically, it’s especially important for us to uphold God’s intention for marriage “from the beginning”: a life-long relationship of mutual respect, friendship, and care. But not every marriage turns out like that and sometimes divorce happens. Divorce is not an “unforgivable sin,” and it doesn’t mean that God is finished with you. We believe that God can bring good out of all kinds of things in this life, and we should not think of divorce as an exception. While we uphold God’s intention for marriage, we must also recognize that we all fall short, and therefore it’s just as important that we apply the biblical ideal with compassion, particularly toward those in our family of faith who may have to endure the heartbreak of divorce.

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[1] © 2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 10/3/2021 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. The Book of Order 2019-2021 W-4.0601, p. 106: “Marriage is a gift God has given to all humankind for the well-being of the entire human family.”

[3] Cf. “The Westminster Confession of Faith,” ch. XXVIin The Book of Confessions, p. 178, where it is acknowledged that due to the “weaknesses” of married partners it can happen that “the marriage dies at the heart and the union becomes intolerable.” 

[4] Cf. Shelby Spong, Living Commandments, 80: “there is a very large area between what we would call ideal and what we would call immoral.” Cf. also John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 2, p. 384. Although Calvin only grants divorce on the grounds of infidelity, he does recognize that “though Christ condemns as an adulterer the man who shall marry a wife that has been divorced, this is undoubtedly restricted to unlawful and frivolous divorces.”

Trial and Error

Trial and Error

Ephesians 5:8-20[1]

There is a tension in the Scriptures regarding the moral standards for the life of faith. In some places, the “precepts” of the Lord about right and wrong are presented as absolute. It would seem that what Scripture teaches on how we are to live our lives is clear and unchanging. On the other hand, there are other places where the Scriptures seem to speak with a different voice. In those passages, the will of the Lord is expressed in general principles more than clear-cut rules. Indeed, those of us who embrace the New Testament are used to hearing that we are set free from rules and regulations. It can be confusing to try to know just what it is we’re expected to do.

That tension translates into two basically different approaches to the Christian life. Some of us believe that all the teachings of Scripture are indeed rules for living, with all the authority and finality of the Ten Commandments. Therefore, to depart from any of them is to depart from God’s will. Unfortunately, life tends to be messy, and we all make mistakes. And so that has led some of us to embrace the opposite extreme: we cannot possibly keep all the commands the Bible presents, so we think we are free to live as we choose. In the process, however, we can go so far as to abandon the Scriptures entirely as the basis for our life and faith.

Our lesson from Ephesians for today presents us squarely with this problem. On the one hand, in the preceding verses St. Paul speaks about the behaviors that must be avoided, indeed must not even be mentioned, as well as those which prevent any who practice them from having an “inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God” (Eph. 5:5). In our lesson, he speaks in seemingly absolute terms of the contrast between those who are “disobedient” because they are in the darkness and we who are “children of light.” If you only pay attention to what our Scripture lesson negates, it would seem that the matter is clear and unambiguous. Those of us who practice the Christian faith are to separate ourselves from the behaviors of those who walk in darkness.

But the problem with this is that it’s hard to make such an absolute separation when it comes to human behavior. Whether we like it or not, we all contain both darkness and light, and there are times when our behavior reflects one or the other.[2] Those who cannot accept this typically have not had much experience with the brokenness of life. And even if they do, they only cinch up their resolve even tighter and refuse to admit that they might ever “fall short of the glory of God.” But the attitude that sees the speck in the other’s life and is blind to the log in one’s own is itself a part of the darkness in us all. We just cover it up with a veneer of piety.

Despite our best efforts at avoiding this difficult truth, the fact of the matter is that we all fall short. We all make mistakes. We are all human, which means we are all fallen and flawed and fallible. And oftentimes we fail precisely at the point where we think we are invulnerable. I think that’s what Jesus’ saying about the speck and the log is about: recognizing that none of us holds the moral “high ground,” and if we think we do, it should be a warning signal that we are headed in the wrong direction.

So if we cannot construct an air-tight absolute set of life laws from the Scripture that any flesh-and-blood human being can possible keep perfectly, what are we to do? Many in our day have decided that the thing to do is to ignore the Scriptures. After all, they do come from a time and a place that is very different from our world. The logical conclusion would seem to be to think of the Bible as a historical relic, one that might have some snippets of wisdom. But since it’s basically out of touch with our lives here and now, we are free to take it or leave it. Since it comes from a very different setting, we can view its teaching, especially its moral precepts, as descriptive of a way of life that no longer really applies to us. But to make that assumption would be to abandon one of the essential foundations for our faith.

What are we to do then? If we look at the positive teachings in our lesson for today, I think they may point us in the right direction. We are to “live as children of light”, which means practicing “all that is good and right and true” (Eph. 5:8-9). We are to “be careful” how we live, seeking to be wise, “making the most of the time” (Eph. 5:15-16). We are to “understand what the will of the Lord is” and seek to “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:17-18). And I think the guiding principle behind all of this is found in the appeal to “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph. 5:10).[3]

If you’re like me, you may be wondering just how specifically we’re supposed to do that. But that’s where the heart of what the Scriptures have to say can be challenging to us. There are indeed some very clear-cut teachings, but the Bible doesn’t tend to prescribe specific actions. Instead it teaches us principles for living, principles like “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” Our job is to “try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” That may sound frustrating. We’d much rather have a clear-cut list of do’s and don’ts. But that’s not the way God works in our lives. The call to follow Christ is a call to live intentionally, every day.[4] It is a call to continually seek God’s will in every aspect of our daily lives.[5] In a very real sense, it is a call to a life of trial and error—figuring out how God wants us to live our lives as we face each situation, each crisis, each opportunity, and then doing our best to put that into practice.[6]

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[1] ©2015 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 8/16/2015 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 38, where he offers the suggestion that for ministers to truly offer others a way to connect with God we must “enter ourselves first of all into the center of our existence and become familiar with the complexities of our inner lives.” I think this applies generally to all, and he says that when we do this we will “discover the dark corners as well as the light spots.” Cf. also Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, 15-16, where he says, “Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. … Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter—the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.” Cf. further Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 34-35, “Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. … All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered.” Cf. Richard Rohr , Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, 33, where he says that the “ego” or the false self “wants to think well of itself and deny any shadow material.” He continues, “Your shadow self is not your evil self. It is just that part of you that you do not want to see.”

[3] Cf. Pheme Perkins, “The Letter to the Ephesians,” New Interpreters Bible XI: 437: “Christians will be active moral agents in their world. They are to ‘try to find out’ [dokimazo, ‘discern’ or ‘test’] what is pleasing to the Lord (v. 10). This implies that believers must determine what is suitable behavior in concrete circumstances.” Since the main idea is one of “figuring out” what is pleasing to the Lord, I like Gene Peterson’s translation of this verse in The Message: “Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.”

[4] Cf. Perkins, “Letter to the Ephesians,” NIB XI: 443: “Believers must attend to their own conduct. Ephesians never suggests that such attention requires detailed moralism and legal observance. It does require consistent turning away from the old way of life.”

[5] In this regard, it seems to me that the highest example of this approach to life is the one modeled by Jesus. As the Declaration of Faith, 1978 PCUS (adopted by PCUSA in 1991) puts it: “Jesus lived with a constant sense of his Father’s presence. He put God’s claim on his life above all else.”

[6] I think one of the best expressions of this approach to life is a prayer written by Thomas Merton, in Thoughts in Solitude, 79: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I’m going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. There for I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.” (emphasis added)

Living Witnesses

Living Witnesses

1 Jn. 4:7-21[1]

It’s not hard to see when we look around us that we find ourselves living a world in which a lot of people are looking for love in all the wrong places.  We are one of the most connected generations of all time, and yet we are more isolated from those around us, more separated from friends, family, God, and even ourselves, and therefore lonelier than any generation of humankind.  In a recent article, one observer argued that all of our “connectedness” through social media like Facebook is in fact only an unsatisfying substitute for real relationships.[2]  The study shows that it seems the more “connected” we are through our social networks, the more lonely we’re actually likely to be!

We who have looked to the church as a place of community are, to some extent, more fortunate than most.  Communities of faith like ours serve as extended families and support groups for many of us.  But I think even those of us who continue to actively participate in church would have to admit that the Church doesn’t always do a very good job of practicing the central command that we love one another as we love ourselves.  Sadly, as much as we might wish it were not true, in the church we are all too often guilty of “shooting our wounded.”

Our lesson from 1 John for today suggests that we look to a different source to meet our needs for love.  The elder John calls us to love one another based on the fact that God is love and is the source of love.  More than that, John points to the ultimate demonstration of God’s love in Jesus.  There is some significant theology behind this.  We call it the incarnation, the belief that in Jesus, God somehow came to walk in our shoes, to experience the fullness of our suffering, our struggles, and even our loneliness. Through this amazing demonstration of love, John says that we come to know and “believe in” the love God has for us (1 Jn. 4:16). 

Now, I think the theology of incarnation is an important basis for understanding God’s love for us.[3]  But I doubt seriously that most of us came to know and “believe in” God’s love for us in the first place through dogma.  It seems to me that most of us come to know and “believe in” God’s love because somebody at some point or another in our lives served as a “living witness” of God’s love.[4]  And because we have received that love, that means that we in turn have the opportunity in each and every interaction with other human beings to be the one who helps them know and believe in God’s love for them.

Unfortunately, we often fall short in this. Even in the earliest days, the church fell short.  John the elder, who says that anyone who doesn’t love a brother or sister cannot love God (1 Jn. 4:20), also attacks people who had separated from his community over doctrinal disagreement (1 Jn. 2:22-23).  In fact, he condemns them as “antichrists” (1 Jn. 3:18-19) and children of Satan (1 Jn. 3:10)!  Doesn’t sound like there’s much love there.[5] But if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to confess that we have all been there.  We have all fallen short of relating to those around us as living witnesses of God’s love.

 I myself have to confess that I have in fact cherished hatred in my heart toward other human beings.  The sad thing about it is that when we retreat behind our walls of bitterness and hatred, we are only increasing the isolation, the separation, and the loneliness in our world.  And we do it by isolating and separating ourselves from the world of humanity around us—a world crying out for some indication that there is someone out there somewhere who cares about them, who loves them, who values them as human beings.[6]

But because we know and believe in the love God has for us, we have the opportunity to turn all that around every time we encounter another person.[7]  We have the opportunity to choose compassion, to choose to be living witnesses of God’s love for that person.  We talk a lot about God’s love; we sing songs about God’s love; God’s love and grace and mercy are at the center of our whole approach to Christian faith.  But the real question is whether we actually show that love toward the real-life people we relate to everyday. 

The challenge is that relating to other human beings can be a messy proposition; even on Facebook our relationships can get complicated.  But that’s the way life is.  It’s complicated; it can hurt to relate to another human being; it’s frustrating and challenging to try to show love.  And that’s precisely why God’s incredible love for us calls us to love each other.  God’s love for us calls us to enter into the messy, complex world of flawed people and live as witnesses to God’s love for each and every one of them.[8]

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[1] © 2012 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 5/6/12 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Stephen Marche, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” The Atlantic (May 2012):60-69. He cites a 2004 study that suggested 25 percent of Americans reported that they had nobody they could talk to, and 20 percent only had one confidant!

[3] Cf. D. Moody Smith, First, Second and Third John, 107; cf. also Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 2.1:275: “The love of God, or God as love, is therefore interpreted in 1 Jn. 4 as the completed act of divine loving in sending Jesus Christ.”  See further, Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 83.

[4] Cf. Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, 127: “All human relationships, …, are meant to be signs of God’s love for humanity as a whole and each person in particular. … Jesus reveals that we are called by God to be living witnesses of God’s love.”

[5] Cf. Raymond Brown, The Epistles of John, 85.

[6] Cf. Smith, First, Second and Third John, 108: “Apart from love shared, whether by God for us or by ourselves for one another, it is meaningless to inquire about God’s reality or being.” (!)

[7] Cf. Paul Tillich, “The Golden Rule,” in The New Being, 30: “For the other one and I and we together in this moment in this place are a unique, unrepeatable occasion, calling for a unique unrepeatable act of uniting love.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 121: “Christians must show the friendship of Jesus in openness for others and totally.”

[8] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 115: “if we say ‘God is love,’ that means we are expected to get off our haunches and do something, make that truth happen, amidst our sisters and our brothers.”

Random Kindness?

Rom. 11:1-6, 11-12, 25-32[1]

Thirty-five years ago, Karl Menninger, the man whose very name was once synonymous with Psychiatry, wrote a book with a strange title: “Whatever Became of Sin?” In it, Dr. Menninger outlined his thesis that we have gradually eliminated what was once known as “sin”—first by redefining it as a “crime” for which the state was responsible, and then redefining it again as an “illness” for which nobody is responsible![2]

And yet, with all due respect to Dr. Menninger, we do have some notion of sin.[3] We see giant corporations reaping huge profits while the buying power of the average consumer goes down the drain, and we call that “sin.” We see governments forcibly imposing their will on other nations and we call it “sin.” We see people indiscriminately pursuing sexual satisfaction to the destruction of others and even themselves and we call it “sin.” “Sin” is what other people do—whether it’s financial or political or sexual, “sin” inevitably concerns “them.”

I think one reason why we don’t like St. Paul telling us that we’ve all sinned is that we’d much rather focus on someone else’s sin. But there’s that pesky Apostle, telling us yet again that we’ve all sinned. He does it in our lesson from Romans this week right in the middle of making the point that all those who are now seemingly “excluded” God will include in the benefits of salvation! Paul says, “God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (Rom. 11:32). That language offends us. What kind of a God “imprisons” people in disobedience? But once again it’s easy to miss the point Paul is trying to make: the reality is that we’ve all imprisoned ourselves in our own disobedience, and God works to include us all in mercy!

Again, I like the way Gene Peterson puts it in The Message: “In one way or another, God makes sure that we all experience what it means to be outside so that he can personally open the door and welcome us back in.” When you read Paul’s statement in that light, you can see that the emphasis is on all. Yes, Paul wants to remind us that we’ve all fallen into the trap of sin, we’ve all wandered into the prison of disobedience. But we have to understand what Paul means by “disobedience.” “Disobedience” is first and foremost dis-belief, un-faith, the unwillingness to respond to God’s gift and claim with trust. Beyond that, “Disobedience” in this context doesn’t mean standing up for a different point of view (as in civil disobedience), it’s going our own way regardless of the consequences to ourselves or others. “Disobedience” here is not a courageous refusal to be coerced by the powerful, it is indulging in the satisfaction of our own desires at the expense of others. “Disobedience” is not simply accidentally failing to follow the rules, it’s willfully doing what is destructive to oneself and/or others. And Paul insists over and over again, that we have all fallen short, we have all given in to the temptation of indifference toward others, or to the opposite temptation of using others for some form of self-gratification.

But what he insists on with even more conviction is that in response to our disobedience, God works to extend mercy to us all, to include us all in the embrace of salvation. God’s plan is to see to it that we all may enjoy the free gift of new life. And Paul says that this happens because of God’s grace (Rom. 11:6). “Grace” is another word we need to understand.[4] In this context it means “undeserved kindness” (cf. Rom. 11:6, CEV). The fact that it’s undeserved means that God gives it to us as a gift that we have no claim to but God gives it any way because that’s how God relates to people!

God’s kindness may be undeserved—by us all—but it really isn’t a random in any way. In fact, God’s kindness is very intentional: God has determined from all eternity to be the God has mercy on us all! God deliberately chose to include everyone—especially those who seem to have been excluded. That’s what Isaiah the prophet had said long before Paul:

And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, … these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered (Isa. 56:6-8).

God’s purpose is about inclusion, not exclusion. That’s always been true. God called Abram and Sarah, not just to single out one family, but in order to “bless all the families of the earth” (Gen. 12:3). What God chooses—always has chosen and always will choose—is to extend kindness to us all![5]

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[1] © 2008 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 8/17/08 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] That this continues to be an issue 35 years later can be seen in Norman L. Keltner, “Whatever became of Sin? Revisiting Menninger’s Question,” Perspectives in Psychiatric Care July-Sept 2005.

[3] Cf. David H. Kelsey, “Whatever Happened to the Doctrine of Sin?” Theology Today 50 (July, 1993): 169-78.

[4] Cf. D. Mark Davis, “The Centrality of Wonder in Paul's Soteriology” Interpretation 60 (October 2006): 415, “when Paul tries to communicate the mystery that, in Christ, God is fulfilling the covenant to both Jew and Gentile, Paul is pointing to a grace which lies beyond both comprehension and language.”

[5] cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 2.2: 232, “the end and aim of all God’s ways … is the act of His free mercy”; cf. also 2.2: 259.

“Freedom”

Rom. 6:1-11[1]

Reading the Apostle Paul can be a little depressing. It’s easy to miss the good news in Paul’s message and hear only the negative tones. For example, in his letter to the Romans, Paul clearly works on the premise that we are all fallen, enslaved to the power of sin. If we’re not paying attention, we can easily turn Paul’s “good news” into a pretty gloomy take on how bad things are.

I think we really don’t like having anyone tell us that we are fallen. But I would suggest to anyone who has lingering doubts about the fallenness of humanity that they consider the fact that from a very early age we tend to think of “freedom” as being able to do whatever we want. We even have a credit card company that advertises its services with the jingle, “I’m free to do what I want any old time.” We have a skewed version of freedom![2]

Of course, Freedom can be good. Augustine said “Love, and do what you will.”[3] But his premise was that if we truly love God and others, then “what you want” will take on a whole different meaning from the way we usually think of it. In our context “I’m free to do what I want” usually means something very different from what Augustine had in mind. It usually means “I can do whatever pleases me,” or “I can fulfill my own selfish desires without caring what it does to anyone else.” We mistake license for freedom, and in so doing we give up true freedom!

If you have grown children, you have probably witnessed a bit of the comic irony in all of this. Most teenagers living at home will say that what they look forward to most when they “grow up” is “I can’t wait until I’m free to do whatever I want.” The irony is that they will never be more “free” than they are when they say those words. When they “grow up” and get out on there own, they’re free, alright—free to pay all their own expenses, free to work full-time, free to bear the consequences of their choices on their own!

The good news of the Gospel of Jesus the Christ is that one of the main reasons for his death and resurrection was to set us free—truly free—from everything that would bind or oppress or hurt or even destroy us. In one sense, Jesus did this in that he is the only person who has ever fully embodied what it means in human terms to be “free.”[4] But what made him free was the fact that he consistently and continually kept his life in line with God’s will, God’s truth, and God’s way! We might think of a statement like “the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing” (John 5:19) as a kind of servitude rather than freedom. But in fact, that kind of submission to God is a central aspect of the truth that makes us free (John 8:32).

But Jesus didn’t just go through all that he did to show us the potential for freedom that we have in our relationship to God. Jesus’ death and resurrection effectively determines what life looks like for all of us. I think that’s what Paul is thinking when he says that “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17) I don’t think he’s referring just to the change that happens in an individual person. Rather that person becomes a beacon of new life that God has brought into this dark world through Jesus the Christ. That person becomes a sign that “everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

In fact, Paul can say that the transformation we have all undergone because of what Jesus did for us is as if we all had died with him on that cross and we were all raised to new life with him on that first Easter. In our lesson for today he says it this way, “For when we die, we are set free from the power of sin. Since we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” (Romans 6:7-8, TEV) Again, the point of that is that it changes everything—not just for one person, or a few! As he says elsewhere, “Everybody dies in Adam; everybody comes alive in Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:22, MSG).

That is where true freedom lies—finding our true humanity in the example of Jesus, experiencing the life that comes from relating to God in such a way that we seek to follow God’s will and God’s way, that we seek to promote God’s justice and not our own.[5] All of life is then set free from the power of everything that threatens to enslave or oppress or distort or destroy our humanity. All of life is then set free to serve one another in love.[6] We have new life in the risen Christ, and that sets us free to live the life that truly is life.

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[1] © 2008 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 6/22/08 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] John Paul II, in “The Gospel of Life,” 19.3, says that we have “a notion of freedom which exalts the isolated individual in an absolute way, and gives no place to solidarity, to openness to others and service of them.” See J. Michael Miller, C. S. B., The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 808.

[3] Augustine, Homily 7 on the First Epistle of John; accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/170207.htm.

[4] See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.2:133, 135, 137, where he elaborates on the idea that in Jesus Christ we see what all humankind were intended for in the first place—to fulfill the will of God.

[5] The Study Catechism, 1998, question 16, says that to be human, created in the image of God, means that “God created us to live together in love and freedom.”

[6] John Paul II, “The Gospel of Life,” 19.4, says that our true freedom is fulfilled through “the gift of self and openness to others”; cf. Miller, Encyclicals, 809.

“Unclean”

Isaiah 6:1-12; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17[1]

Isaiah’s vision of the holy God is unusual in comparison to other prophetic visions. Isaiah does not calmly negotiate the fate of the city, like Abraham did with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. He doesn’t offer a heartfelt plea to God to forgive the people, like Moses did on Mt. Sinai. And he doesn’t simply call down curses on a sinful people as Hosea or Amos did. No, when Isaiah has a vision of the holy God exalted in the temple, he becomes keenly aware not only that his people are unclean but that he himself is unclean as well. Isaiah’s vision reminds us that a genuine encounter with God makes us aware, among other things, that we are all unclean.[2] The word that the prophets of these latter days use for that awareness is “fallen.” When we recognize God’s holiness, we must also recognize that we are fallen—all of us.

That reality is powerfully portrayed in the 2003 film The Human Stain. It’s a story about three people who are irrevocably stained by their past. Coleman Silk is the powerful dean of Athena College who was forced out over an alleged racial slur. But he has carried a secret with him for his entire adult life—though he has passed himself off as a white man, he was in fact born to black parents. His “stain” is his shame over his identity and his fear at being discovered. Faunia Farley is a beautiful young woman half his age with whom the dean enters into an affair. She is bitter over her own past and she masks it by flirting with and seducing older men. Her secret is that she fled from her wealthy home as a teenager to escape the sexual abuse of her step-father. And her “stain” is that she blames herself for the death of her children in a fire. Lester Farley is a Vietnam Vet who is Faunia’s estranged husband. His secret is that he did what he was told to do in the war, things that were too horrible for him to mention even years later. His “stain” is the uncontrollable anger he carries with him from that experience and that makes him still a vicious killer.

All three of these people are fallen. They are irrevocably wounded. They all carry a “stain” that leads them to choices and actions that have tragic consequences.[3] The one ray of hope in this dark film is that in the end, Coleman and Faunia bare their soles and share their secret stains with each other. And as a result, despite all that separates them—age, education, culture—they experience a moment in which they accept one another unconditionally. For both of them it is probably the first time in their lives that they have known the unconditional love and acceptance of another human being. And the tragedy of the film is that it will be the only time. There isn’t much hope in this story. It is a story about how the sinfulness that affects us all leads us into moral dead ends and also tragically undermines even our best efforts at finding meaning and happiness in life.

But then that’s part of the tragedy of human life. When we look only at ourselves to solve the problem of our existence, there really isn’t much hope. The liberators become oppressors; the fortunate become callous; the powerful become corrupt; and the influential sell out. Why is it that despite our best efforts, humanity seems tragically incapable of escaping this dismal fate? It is because we are all fallen.[4] There is something broken at the core of our being. In fact, some of the most famous philosophers of our time have declared in no uncertain terms that our lives are pathetically meaningless, and the best we can do is accept that and go on to find whatever shreds of happiness we can!

But the good news of the gospel is that God is not willing to leave us in the quagmire of our sin! In fact, the Apostle Paul elaborates the lengths to which God is willing to go in order to reclaim us and restore us to life the way God intended for it to be! And the underlying conviction that serves as the foundation for the hope of the gospel that Paul preaches is that at heart, God is essentially “the one who justifies the ungodly” (Romans 4:5). That is not something God does just because God has no other choice. It’s not a last resort or a half-hearted stepping out of God’s “comfort zone” to do what God would really rather not do. No, according to Paul this is God’s essential character. God is by definition the one who “declares the guilty to be innocent” (Romans 4:5, TEV) and who “accepts sinners” (CEV).

The good news of the gospel is that there is no stain so deep that God cannot cleanse it. There is no uncleanness that God cannot purge. There is no sin that God cannot forgive and no guilt that God cannot amend. And it’s not a matter of God making an exception—that’s who God is.[5] God is the one who sent his son into the world not “to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).

The season of Lent is a time for us to come to terms with our fallenness. It is a time to come to terms with the stains that we bear personally. But we face these uncomfortable realities not to somehow diminish our worth or our dignity. We face the truth that we are all unclean so that we may bring it to “the one who justifies the ungodly,” and there we find mercy and wholeness and life.

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[1] © 2008 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 2/17/2008 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX.

[2] Brevard Childs, Isaiah, 55-56.

[3] See the review by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat at http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=6736 .

[4] Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, 211-14; see also Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, II: 38-41, 44-47.

[5] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1:70-71 reminds us that God demonstrates this through the free act of loving “the world” even when it stood in hostility toward God.

“But For Grace”[1]
Mt 18:15-20; Rom 13:8-14
© 2005 Alan Brehm

It’s been a really rough week. There’s just no other way to say it. There are a lot of people out there in our world who’ve had a really bad week. This week, several hundreds of thousands of people—some of whom may be friends or relatives of some of you here today—lost a lot of what defined their lives. Homes, businesses, jobs, churches, schools, and in some cases, family members. The most fortunate of them got out before Hurricane Katrina could do its worst. But others who either chose to stay or were left behind, thousands of people were stripped of much of what I took for granted even as I was having my bad week—a bed to sleep in, a bathroom that is private, air conditioning, running water.

Many of us have watched in horror as the fabric of society came completely unraveled in New Orleans. I can understand someone breaking into a store to get food and water for a hungry family. But I have a hard time comprehending the notion of stealing guns, or computers, or cars just because there’s no one around to stop you. I look at that and I think it’s just not right. It’s all too easy to look at people doing things like that with disgust and disdain.

In fact, it’s way too easy for me to jump to the conclusion that these are just defective people—not like you and me! But the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that it is only grace that keeps us all from sinking to the level of looting and stealing.

I. The Worst of Sinners. The Gospel text for today seems on the surface to grant us the right to carry out judgment on “sinners.” For many in Christian history, this text speaks of the Church’s authority to forgive penitents and censure the guilty who refuse to relent.[2] It has been known as the “power of the keys”—the authority to bind and loosen. The Heidelberg Catechism says that by preaching the Gospel “the kingdom of heaven is opened to believers and shut against unbelievers” (HCat 4.083).
But the problem is that doesn’t fit the Gospel. Until we can admit that, given the right set of circumstances, everyone of us might resort to the kinds of actions that have horrified us this week, we haven’t fully understood the Gospel of grace.

What would have to be taken from you before you would break into an abandoned convenience store to get food and water? I have to confess that I struggle to imagine what it would take to reduce me to the point that I would break into a Walmart to steal a gun and roam the streets in a gang. How many nights without restful sleep? How many days exposed to the stench of flood waters and the constant barrage of insects? How many days and nights of wondering where my loved ones are and whether they are safe? I’m not sure how much could I withstand before it broke me down. But if I take seriously the scriptural truth that we are all fallen, I have to admit that I don’t know what I would do if I were in their shoes.

II. Binding or Releasing? Come to think of it, the idea that Jesus Christ calls us to shut people out of the kingdom also doesn’t fit Matthew’s portrait of Jesus.

But what business does the Church that follows Jesus Christ have shutting the kingdom against anybody? Didn’t Jesus condemn the Pharisees for “locking people out” of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 23:13)? What business do those of us who claim to follow him have shutting anybody out?
Didn’t Jesus condemn the Pharisees for “binding” people with burdens too heavy to bear (Matt 23:4)? What business does the Church have binding anyone?

One way around this is to focus on this as a procedure for disciplining those who go astray in an effort to reclaim them. On the surface of things, that might sound more reasonable. Although we might not be too comfortable confronting others for their “sins,” a process like the one Jesus outlined seems reasonable. First you go individually, then with two or three, and finally you bring the person before the church. The unity of the Body of Christ is important enough that we need some means of preserving the “peace, purity, and unity” of the Church.

I think, however, that even here we have to be careful. It’s all too easy to turn something that’s intended to redeem into something that condemns. And we have to remember that the same Gospel that presents us with this step-by-step procedure for censuring the unrepentant also gives us “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged” (Mt 7:1).[3]

And what does it mean to treat the one who does not respond to censure like a gentile or a tax collector? In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus shared meals with tax collectors, and he commanded his followers to make disciples of all the “gentiles” (the same word in Mt 28:19 means “nations” or “gentiles”).

Come to think of it, if we’re going to talk about the Church’s authority to “censure” anybody, perhaps we ought to take a look at Jesus. Whom did Jesus rebuke? Not the tax collectors; not the prostitutes; not the “sinners,” but rather the self-righteous religious people who dealt out guilt and judgment as easily as some deal cards!

III. The Fellowship of Forgiveness. [4] But we really need look no further than Matthew chapter 18 to see that Jesus is authorizing us not to shut up but to release, not to condemn but to extend mercy. He begins by saying we must all become like children—those who have absolutely no status or privilege, (in other words, the last and the least). Then Jesus talks about a shepherd who leaves the flock to find and bring home one sheep out of his desire that none of the “little ones” should be lost. In the verses immediately following this text, Jesus talks about forgiving not just seven times but seventy times seven times! And then he tells a story that dramatically illustrates that those who refuse to forgive others patently misunderstand what it means to be forgiven by God!

We have plenty of clues in this text to tell us that our Lord doesn’t call us to bind or shut out anyone—rather he calls us to the task of setting captive free, of lifting burdens too heavy to bear. I think Karl Barth is right when he says that we only shut people out of the Kingdom when we fail to do what we’re supposed to![5] The Confession of 1967 defines our task in this way: “To be reconciled to God is to be sent into the world as his reconciling community” (C67 9.31). Paul calls it the “ministry of reconciliation”: the only thing we really owe others is the love that God has given to us!

Conclusion: “There but for the grace of God go I.” It’s a phrase we use so often that it really only means something like, “Boy am I glad that happened to someone else and not me!”

But if we really embrace the meaning of that phrase, we have to recognize that it is only God’s grace that keeps any of us from falling into the depths—not any quality or character or parentage or position or education or any other human basis for comparison (cf. Phil 3)!

It think for those of us who have spent much of our lives in the Church, we have to grasp the truth that we are all fallen in order to extend God’s grace. At least I know that’s the case for me. I’m all too ready to consign someone to the flames of hell—many times just for cutting me off in traffic!

When we understand that we are all fallen, then we are in the position that Jesus envisioned for his disciples: extending grace to others, and mercy, and love, and forgiveness because we have been given the grace of God, along with mercy, love, and forgiveness. Then we can set about the task of releasing all the chains that bind people, and lifting the oppressive burdens, and leading them into the freedom of God’s love.

[1] A sermon preached 9/4/05 at First Presbyterian Church, Baytown TX.
[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.11.1-2.
[3] cf. Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, 214.
[4] Hans Küng, The Church, 331.
[5] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV, 3: 861.