Letting Go and Letting God

 Letting Go and Letting God

Romans 7:7-25, Matthew 11:16-30[1]

Many of you may know that “Let go and let God” is one of the slogans of the Twelve-Step movement. It’s based on the principle that many have learned to be true: when we try to control circumstances and people we wind up with a life that’s too much for us to handle. We feel overwhelmed, we feel frustrated or anxious or both at the same time, and we may feel defeated. All that comes from the “insanity” of thinking we can get the outcomes we want in life with enough effort. Some of us don’t think that’s “insane” at all; it’s simply stepping up and taking on our responsibilities. But even if we don’t feel the frustration and helplessness of trying to control other people, they most certainly do.

Last week we talked about how making our religion a matter of following rigid rules leads us to a way of life defined by whom we exclude. But the other side is what we do to ourselves when we take that path of religious perfectionism. When we think we can “do it all by ourselves” when it comes to following Jesus and honoring God, it’s a lot like thinking we can control our lives and the people in it. We wind up frustrating ourselves, or those around us, or both. More than that, we tend to express our religion by condemning people. On one side we see people who are more conservative than we are and we think that they’re too strict. On the other side we see people who are more progressive and we think they’re too lax. It seems like what we really want is to be in control of everyone around us.

That’s what’s going on in our Gospel lesson with the strange comment Jesus makes about people being like children who whine, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn” (Mt 11:17). John the Baptist lived simply and practiced a rigorous form of discipline. And because he wouldn’t “dance to the tune” they were playing, they wrote him off as demon-possessed (Mt 11:18).[2] On the other hand, Jesus came and lived life and laughed and welcomed all kinds of people, and, perhaps worst of all, shared meals with so-called “sinners.” Because of that, they wrote him off as a “glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Mt 11:19).

Here’s the problem with making religion about following the rules: we always wind up making ourselves the measure of all things spiritual. Like the crowds responding to John and Jesus, we condemn those who are too conservative in our eyes, and then we turn around and condemn those who are too liberal. But the hard truth is that making yourself the measure of all things spiritual boils down to appointing ourselves as the official rule-makers. And in the process, we make religion into something oppressive. For ourselves, and for others. In contrast to all that, Jesus announced that he had come to set people free from their burdens. He came to free people who, no matter how hard they tried, could never live up to the religious rule-makers’ demands. But he also came to free the rule-makers, because what gets hidden beneath the façade of a “holier than thou” attitude is the lingering doubt about whether you can ever fulfill all the rules perfectly.

I think we see some of that burden in St. Paul’s anguish over his inability to keep the law. In our lesson from Romans for today, he talks about the freedom that comes from letting go the effort to control all things spiritual and letting those things rest in God’s hands, which is where they belong. I’ll be the first to say that Paul’s teaching about sin and the law in this chapter is another example of the challenge we face when we try to read Paul’s letters: it gets really confusing really fast! But I think the main point of what he’s trying to say is that any means we can come up with by which we try to attain a “righteousness” of our own making is doomed to fail!

The logic of Paul’s argument here is complicated, and it’s difficult to sort out. But I think it points to the truth that all our efforts to serve God in our own strength are flawed. All of it comes under the heading of “religion”, and religion can only remind us of how far we fall short.[3] It’s no wonder Paul is torn—not just about the fact that his own conscience is guilty, but because he recognizes that anything he could possibly do to gain eternal life by his own effort is ultimately futile. The only way to find freedom is to turn to Jesus Christ. That’s where Paul winds up: “I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different” (Rom 7:24-25, MSG). I think that sums it up pretty well.

The truth is that we will always struggle with “this life of contradictions” as Gene Peterson puts it in The Message translation. And all too often, we respond to the frustration of trying to practice our religion on our own by simply trying harder. When we do, it all becomes a burden that’s too heavy for any of us to bear. More than that, this approach to religion brings with it other burdens. There’s the fear that what we do may never be good enough. Sometimes we convert our frustration and fear into anger. And we take it out on those we think are a “threat” to us. The final burden is pride. When you put it all together, it’s all too heavy for any of us to bear.

At the end of the day, as Paul recognized, the only path to freedom from these burdens is through God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. That’s where the wisdom of “Let go and let God” comes in. When we try to control our lives, we take on a burden that will crush anyone who tries to carry it. The wisdom of the ages has taught us that the burdens that we carry only trap us in prisons of our own making. Jesus said come to me, lay down your burdens, and I will give you rest. Of course, that’s not something we do once, and call it good. Sometimes, it’s something we have to do every day: come to Jesus, lay down our burdens, and accept the rest he offers. Sometimes we may have do that multiple times a day. When we let go our own efforts to please God by ourselves, to make our lives turn out the way we want, we can lay down the frustration and fear and anger and pride that burden us. When we let God be the one on whom we depend for everything, not only salvation and eternity but also today and tomorrow, we can open our hearts to receive the joy, and love, and life, and rest that Jesus promises.

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[1] © 2026 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm on 7/5/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Douglas Hare, Matthew 123-24.

[3] Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 252: when we undertake this effort on our own, “we do but display the catastrophe of human impotence in the things of God.”

Living in Freedom

Living in Freedom

Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:34-42[1]

Sometimes I think organized religion may be more of a hindrance to people who are looking for God’s love than a help. You may find that strange for someone who’s spent his whole career working in organized religion to say! Nevertheless, after spending almost five decades working in the church, I would say that religious organizations tend to get in the way. We create structures and rules to ensure that everyone winds up at the same place in their spiritual journey. But structures and rules always have to be tweaked. It might be tempting for us to point the finger at those “other” religions out there, for “straining a gnat and swallowing a camel” (Matt 23:24), as Jesus put it. But the reality is that all religions are human attempts to understand ultimate things like God and eternity. And because they’re created by flawed and fallible people like you and me, they all in one way or another tend to get in the way of those who are looking for God in this life.[2]

In the Hebrew Bible, we see an approach to God that essentially defines the spiritual quest in terms of carefully conducted rituals and equally careful observance of rules about staying “pure.” Holiness is defined by eating the right foods and having the “right kind” of relationship the “right kind” of person. That may have been a good place to start, but I would say that many very deeply religious people no longer believe that we please God by observing the right rituals, or eating only the right foods, or having the “right kind” of relationships with the “right kind” of people. And yet, even in our day there are still some who cling to those old rules. As if Jesus endorsed all of that! They may not believe that having a plate of oysters somehow makes us unclean in God’s sight. But there are still many Christians these days who believe that the essence of sin is having the “wrong kind” of relationship with the “wrong kind” of person. Many still believe that marrying a person outside your faith, or person of another race, or anyone who is somehow “tainted” by our human standards makes you “sinful” in God’s sight.

As Jesus pointed out in many ways, the main problem with this approach to religion is that it becomes about what we avoid and whom we exclude. Last week I talked about one aspect of what makes it difficult to read Paul’s letters. I think another challenge we face is that Paul’s letters still reflect some of this kind of thinking. I see it when we read our lesson from Romans for today. While we are clearly indebted to the great Apostle for many of the building blocks of our faith, I think his views on sin may have some problems. In a very real sense, I would say Paul has a very “First-Century Jewish” notion of sin. Of course we don’t want to be “slaves of sin” but “servants of righteousness,” as Paul urges us to be in our lesson for today. But the problem comes when you ask how Paul defines “sin.” It sounds very much like it’s about what we avoid and whom we exclude.

But I would say that while Paul may have hung on to some of those notions, he was a follower of Jesus. And that meant ultimately he was much more concerned with putting faith into practice by treating other people as Jesus did. I think that should give us some sense of focus when we talk about how “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). I want to ask where you see sin leading to death in our world. Well, I see power-hungry dictators unleashing drones and missiles against innocent people. And the result of that sin is death. I see impoverished people living in ramshackle slums that are swept away completely—men, women, and children—whenever an earthquake or a flood or a hurricane comes through. And the result is death. I see the death that results from the sin of the wealthy hoarding all the resources so that the weakest and poorest of their people literally starve. I realize that Paul was talking about a “spiritual” kind of death. But I think it would do us well to ask ourselves where we see sin leading to death in this world. I would have to say, in all honesty, that I don’t much “death” resulting from failing to exclude the “wrong kind” of person. 

I’d have to say that this is one area where some of the most “religious” people of our day still “miss the point.” I would go further and say that whenever we make the essence of our relationship with God a matter of following religious rules, not about the love we have received from God through Jesus Christ, we continue to miss the point. But more importantly, our manmade and rigid religious rules always become obstacles to loving other people. Jesus called them “burdens too heavy to lift” (Mt 23:4) and points the finger at religious perfectionists of all stripes for ignoring their own sins and focusing on the mistakes of others (Mt 7:3-5). It all becomes just an elaborate way of justifying oneself by condemning others. But at the end of the day, even religious perfectionists can’t bear the burdens they create for others. And so, as Jesus said, they condemn themselves when they condemn others! That’s not only because they fail to live up to the expectations they demand of others. It’s also because making our devotion to God about what we avoid and whom we exclude inevitably turns into hostility toward them, whoever “they” may be. You can’t love your neighbor if you really hate them down deep inside!

Jesus had a way of cutting through all this religious hypocrisy. He said that true holiness is about loving God and loving others (Mt 22:37-40). He said that true spirituality is about embracing a child (Mt 18:1-5). True religion is about not only having empathy for the weak and outcast, but also about taking steps to care for them (Mt 25:34-40).[3] It’s about feeding a hungry person, visiting the sick, and being a companion to those who are in prison. For Jesus, a truly spiritual way of living is about being willing to give someone a cup of cold water on a hot day (Mt 10:42). It’s really no more complicated than that. No elaborate systems, no obsessions with keeping tedious rules. At the end of the day, it’s not about what we avoid or whom we exclude, but rather it’s about having a heart that’s willing to give to others the same mercy that we have received.

That doesn’t mean it’s “easy.” In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus describes this kind of life as “losing your life for my sake” (Mt 10:39). But he also said that was the way to truly “find” your life. I think that’s the lesson we can take away from Paul talking the freedom to live for God. Through the love we encounter in Jesus Christ, we’re set free from all the habits and attitudes that bring “death” not only to ourselves but also to those around us. Through the love from God that we encounter in Jesus Christ, we’re set free from all the habits and attitudes that harm not only others but also ourselves. That’s how I would define “freedom from sin.” It’s the freedom to stop draining the life out of ourselves and others by our actions and attitudes. And in the process, we’re set free to live for God, to live a life of love and mercy, which is the life we were always meant to live.

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[1] © 2026 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 6/28/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 1933, 242: “Religion compels us to the perception that God is not to be found in religion.”

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 126-9, where he says in effect that those who truly follow Christ are to be serving where Christ awaits us, “amid the downtrodden, the sick, and the captives.” 

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)

“Special” People

Mt. 13:24-30, 36-43[1]

As a child, like many of you I was raised on the great American myth. You know, it’s the one where you’re told that you can be anyone you want to be and do anything you want to do. It’s the myth that I’m “special.” Now, I don't mean "special" in the sense of having a healthy sense of one's uniqueness and value. I mean "special" in the sense of having special privileges, special benefits, special advantages. I think one of the hardest lessons in life for those of us raised on that myth is to come to grips with the reality of life. The reality is that each of us is born with a set of circumstances, a genetic inheritance, a personality that, try as we may, we can no more change than a leopard can change its spots or a zebra its stripes. I think my generation especially has had great difficulty accepting the reality that I’m not “special.”

It seems to me that religious perfectionism thrives on the desire to be “special” in God’s sight. In fact, I think that’s putting it mildly. I’d have to say that religious perfectionism is positively obsessed with being “special.” To some extent, it’s an obsession whose seeds are planted early in the biblical narrative. In a very real sense, the stories about the patriarchs and matriarchs are all about the idea that the children of Abraham and Sarah are special. God promises them special blessings—they will be so numerous as to be “like the dust of the earth.” They will be given a “land flowing with milk and honey,” a land that belongs to other nations. With that kind of outlook in the very beginning of the Bible’s story, it’s no wonder that religious perfectionists throughout the ages have sought to lay claim for themselves on God’s special attention and blessing.

Religious perfectionists have used all kinds of strategies to guarantee that they get to be “special” people in God’s sight. One of those strategies is reflected in the parable from our gospel lesson for today: making it all about “us” against “them.” It’s a parable that is difficult to understand, and perhaps it may have been tampered with to make a point.[2] The community Matthew was writing for was probably struggling with the fact that, though they were Jewish, they had been thrown out of their synagogues. Now they were probably feeling displaced and struggling to justify themselves in the face of rejection.

The parable itself seems to talk mainly about the difficulty of separating good from evil in this world. That would be a point that is consistent with Jesus’ teaching—that it is difficult if not downright impossible to accurately judge another person’s motives and actions. [3] It would seem that, in the hands of Matthew’s church, that story turned into a means of supporting an “us” against “them” mentality: they are the “wheat” that will one day be harvested and gathered into God’s barns, while their enemies are the “weeds” that will one day be gathered up and burned. It’s a strange text. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says that God gives the blessings of sun and rain to all alike (Mt. 5:44-45). Here, however, he tells a parable about separating the “children of the kingdom” from the “children of the evil one.” When you look at what Jesus says elsewhere, this parable about “us” against “them” stands out like a sore thumb. [4]

You may find it hard to believe, but religious perfectionists use this still today to support their “us” against “them” mentality. I heard this reflected in a recent BBC interview with Jerald O’Brien, a leader in the Aryan Nations organization in the Pacific Northwest.[5] He believes that he and all “Aryans” are “the children of God,” the true descendants of Israel, while others, especially the Jewish people, are “children of Satan.” Of course, that means anyone he doesn’t like, including President Obama, is Jewish, and therefore a “child of Satan.” Now, when we hear someone like that, we can all agree that it takes a lot of nerve to think you can confidently identify another person as a “child of Satan!” Or perhaps in this case at least a few screws loose.

But unfortunately we are not immune from the desire to be “special” when we hear this parable and its allegorical interpretation.[6] Who among us doesn’t assume that we are the wheat and “they,” whoever they may be, are the weeds. We all tend to approach a parable like this one and assume that we are the favorites, we are the chosen ones, we are the “children of the kingdom.” But the plain truth of Scripture is that in God’s sight all people are loved and valued. There is no such thing as “special” people in God’s realm, in the sense of having special privileges. [7] God does not single anyone out for special attention or blessings. God gives the blessings of sun and rain (Mt. 5:44-45), compassion and care (Ps. 145:9), to all people on earth alike. All people are God’s children—both by virtue of creation and redemption—and our faith and our way of life and our outlook on other people ought to be consistent with that basic truth.

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[1] © 2011 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/17/11 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Cf. M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreters Bible VIII: 308, 310.

[3] William G. Doty, “Parable of the Weeds and Wheat” Interpretation 25 (April 1971):192. He says, ““The outcome of the parable … is the Father's business. The believer is free to go about his task … without intensive, extensive, frenetic justifying and judging and rooting-out of the ‘enemy’ or his deeds.” Cf. also Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, 155.

[4] Barbara E. Reid, “Matthew’s Nonviolent Jesus and Violent Parables,” in Christian Reflection 2006, 31. In response to the violence of the parable, Reid asks, “What has happened to the boundless, unreciprocated divine love described in the Sermon on the Mount (5:44-48)?” unfortunately she resolves the tension by advocating the view that violence in this day and time is different from the end-time violence of judgment.

[5]Jonny Dymond, “US ‘hate groups’ bolstered by Obama’s election,” BBC News, 5 July 2011; accessed at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14018798 .

[6] John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, 473, says this is due to our “innate pride, which makes us very indulgent to our own faults and inexorable to those of others.”

[7] From a biblical standpoint, if anyone is singled out in God’s sight, it’s for the same reason the children of Abraham and Sarah were singled out: to serve others; to be agents of God’s compassion, of God’s peace and freedom and justice.

Sowing and Not Reaping

Mt. 13:1-9[1]

There are some vocations that I think by definition can be incredibly discouraging. I would think that being a police officer can be one of them. Depending on where you work, you may spend most of your days working with the most troubled and violent members of the human family. I think teachers must also face this challenge. You go into teaching out of a sense of idealism about making a difference in the younger generation. And unless you’re very fortunate, you may wind up spending your days trying to teach kids who are much more interested in everything but learning. I would think it would be very easy to become cynical about the prospects of making a difference in the world.

I know for a fact that the same thing applies to ministers. Like teachers, many ministers go into the ministry out of a deep sense of idealism about making a difference in the world. They go through a seminary program that raises their awareness about biblical mandates regarding social justice, and about the joys of deeply spiritual worship, and about the latest strategies for reaching the neediest people in the community. And they get into the church and find out that people can be more interested in which hymnal they’re using, or in making and enforcing ever more specific rules on everybody else, or in keeping all the “squeaky wheels” in the congregation happy. And they work hard each week with the Scriptures trying to discern a fresh and inspiring message, only to wonder, week after week, if anybody is listening at all! Ministry is definitely a vocation that by definition can be incredibly discouraging.

But the reality is that the same thing can be said for Christian living. Most of us embrace the faith in some sense or another out of a feeling of “ought-ness” or a vision to make a difference in the way the world works. And you identify with a congregation and a denomination and find your way onto the session, only to find out that the leaders may spend more time fighting about décor and money than attempting any kind of mission to save the world. It can be incredibly discouraging. But you find your niche in mission and you keep going through the motions month after month and year after year, until you wake up one day so incredibly discouraged from a lack of results that you wonder if you ever really believed in God in the first place!

To some extent, the parable of the sower addresses this aspect of the Christian faith. When we seek to go out and make a difference in the world—whether in church service or in another vocation—we’re very much like the sower, planting seeds as we go. Now, planting seeds these days is quite different from planting seeds in Jesus’ day. These days we have it down to a science when and how and what kind of seeds to plant. In Jesus’ day, planting seeds was much more like life. You scatter seeds all over the place, hoping some of them will take root and grow and bear fruit. In spite of that difference, most farmers still know what Jesus was talking about—the quality of the soil makes all the difference in the quantity of the harvest. These days we can even get crops to grow on bad soil; In Jesus’ day, you had to just make do with what you got.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t really talking about agriculture. Among other things, he was trying to warn those who followed him out of a sense of personal commitment to the vision of a world of justice and peace and freedom that he inspired in them that not all the seeds they planted would bear fruit. There are lots of times when sowing does not lead to reaping. [2] Instead of rejoicing while “bringing in the sheaves,” we find ourselves just sowing and weeping and sowing some more. Despite some of the lofty sounding promises in the Bible, you just can’t always count on results, no matter how hard you try. Obedience doesn’t always mean rewards, even if the Psalmist seems to say it does. Faithfulness doesn’t guarantee results. Sometimes we find ourselves sowing and not reaping.

One of the notions that drive religious perfectionism is the idea that obedience automatically brings rewards. If we do what we’re supposed to, if we live like we’re supposed to, then our lives will be free from suffering and all our dreams will come true. Just the very action of identifying ourselves with faith and the gospel means that we’re on Jesus’ side and we will go from one success to another. But this pipe dream doesn’t live up to reality. In fact, it oftentimes leads to discouragement and even bitterness. As Henri Nouwen put it, the very expectation that our faithful sowing of seeds ought to lead to reaping a harvest leads to the resentment of bitterness when the results fail to appear.[3] That’s why he said that we must sow our seeds in the hope that there really is “light on the other side of darkness.”[4] That means that, even though we find ourselves sowing without reaping, we keep right on sowing those gospel seeds, seeds of mercy and kindness, seeds of love and justice, seeds of peace and freedom. We do it because one day some of those seeds are going to bear fruit.

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[1] © 2011 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/10/11 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel According to Matthew,” New Interpreter’s Bible VIII:306. One of the difficulties faced by Matthew’s audience who were sowing gospel seeds was the fact that “the Messiah had been rejected by his own people.”

[3] Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 76. He says that laboring on the basis of “expectations of concrete results, however conceived, is like building a house on sand instead of solid rock.”

[4] Nouwen, Wounded Healer, 76: “Hope makes it possible to look beyond the fulfillment of urgent wishes and pressing desires and offers a vision beyond human suffering and even death.” Cf. also Linda McKinnish Bridges, “Preaching the Parables of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel in Ordinary Time: The Extraordinary Tales of God’s World,” Review and Expositor 104 (Spring 2007): 340

Lay Down Your Burden

Mt. 11:28-30[1]

Children are wonderful and amazing. Especially as they go through the various stages of development. In our household, our granddaughter Avery is at that stage of development where she is discovering her autonomy. She is learning that she can make choices about what she wants to wear or what she wants to play. Of course, at this stage of the game, what that means is that she wants to choose what we do as well. Many of you have been there and done that. So the decision-making process gets complicated because she decides she wants to wear the pink dress, no the blue dress, no the green dress. And she wants to wear the lace-up sneakers, no the pink crocs, no the new Velcro shoes. You get the idea. What she really wants is to be in charge!

I thought of this when I was looking at our Gospel lesson for today. Last week we talked about how making the essence of holiness a matter of following rigid rules leads us to condemn others while letting ourselves off the hook. But the other side of the coin is what we do to ourselves when we take that path of religious perfectionism. On one side we see people who are more conservative than we are and we think that they are being too strict. And we may wonder whether they have some kind of mental illness. On the other side we see people who are more progressive and we think they are being too lax. And we may condemn them for having loose morals.

That’s what’s going on in our Gospel lesson with the strange comment Jesus makes about his contemporaries being like children saying, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn” (Matt. 11:17). John the Baptizer lived simply and practiced a fairly rigorous form of self-discipline. He withdrew from the normal interactions of life and lived like a recluse. And because he wouldn’t “dance to the tune” they were playing, they wrote him off as demon-possessed![2] But when Jesus came and lived life and laughed and welcomed all kinds of people—and, perhaps in the eyes of his Jewish contemporaries worst of all, ate with the “unclean” and “impure”—they also condemned him. Because he didn’t mourn with them when they “wailed,” they wrote him off as a glutton and a drunkard.

On the surface of things, it can seem that we’re incredibly ambiguous about spiritual matters, first condemning those who are too conservative, then condemning those who are too liberal. But in reality, we’re like children who can’t make up their minds what they want, because what they really want is just to dictate your actions. When we make religion a matter of following rigid rules, we essentially make ourselves the measure of all things spiritual. That’s an incredible burden to bear. It’s bad enough when we define religion by rigid rules; but when we make ourselves the measure of godliness, that’s a heavy burden indeed.

But in response, Jesus announced that he had come to set people free from their burdens. He came to free the people who, no matter how hard they tried, could never live up to the rigid requirements of the religious perfectionists. The rule-makers went around declaring everybody but themselves impure and unclean for some reason or another. But what gets hidden in all of this is that those who make themselves the arbiters of holiness carry an incredible burden themselves. Beneath the façade of “holier than thou” lurks the nagging doubt as to whether they have carried out the rules perfectly. We might see some of that burden in St. Paul’s anguish over his inability to keep the rules. I think Jesus came to free the perfectionists as well.

We live in a society where this kind of compulsive religion is no longer the norm for many of us. But there are other burdens that keep us from freedom that God intends for us all. Fear is a burden. We fear loss or pain or worse. But fear keeps us locked in a prison cell where our only companion what we fear the most. Anger is a burden that some of us carry. Most of us never learn that anger is normally a response to being hurt. But anger keeps us miserable, in turmoil, stuck in a place where we re-live that hurt—over and over again. Pride is our preferred form of perfectionism. We don’t just want to “keep up with the Joneses”; we have a driving need to be “better than” the Joneses. But that nagging insecurity that it’s never good enough is always around.

When children grow up in a stable environment, they have the chance to learn that they really don’t want to dictate what everybody else does. That need to control not only my life but everybody else’s becomes a burden that will crush anyone who tries to carry it. When we try to live that way, we rob ourselves of joy, and love, and life. The wisdom of the ages has taught us that the burdens that we carry only trap us in prisons of our own making. The only way to live—to truly live—is to let go the illusion of control—whatever it is you’re trying to control. Jesus said come to me, lay down your burdens, and I will give you rest. When we lay down the fear and anger and pride that imprison us, we can open our hearts to receive joy, and love, and life, and rest.

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[1] © 2011 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/3/11 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Douglas Hare, Matthew 123-24.

A Cup of Cold Water

Mt. 10:40-42; Rom. 6:12-23[1]

Sometimes I think religious professionals may be more of a hindrance to spiritual living than a help. You may find that a strange thing for a religious professional to say! It seems to me, for some reason, we religious professionals tend to make things more complicated than they need to be. We create systems and rules to ensure that everyone winds up at the same place in their spiritual journeys. But systems always have to be tweaked, as any Presbyterian who has tracked the evolution of the Book of Order can attest. And rules always have to be expanded to take care of exceptions and loopholes, as any tax attorney can attest! It might be tempting for us to point the finger at those other religions out there, for “straining a gnat and swallowing a camel,” as Jesus put it. But the reality is that all religions, as attempts to create a systematic way in which all people can approach ultimate things like God and eternity, can become obstacles in the spiritual quest.

In the Hebrew Bible, we see an approach to the spiritual life that essentially defines holiness in terms of carefully conducted ritual sacrifices, and it defines sin in terms of staying pure by eating the right foods and having intimate relationships with the right kind of people. Well let’s look at this: we no longer believe that people have to offer ritual sacrifices in order to please God. And we don’t think that having a plate of oysters somehow makes us unclean in God’s sight. But many in our faith still believe that the essence of sin is having an intimate relationship with the wrong kind of person (even in the context of marriage). And yet, the “wrong kind” of person for the Hebrew Bible was anybody outside the family of Abraham! Do we really believe that marrying a person outside your faith, or marrying a person of another race, or another ethnic group somehow makes us sinful in God’s eyes? I wonder if it’s time to move past this aspect of the Hebrew Bible as well.

I see some of this when read our lesson from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans for today. While we are clearly indebted to the great Apostle for many of the building blocks of our faith, I think his views on sin have some problems. In a very real sense, I think the main problem is that he has a very “First-Century Jewish” notion of sin. On the surface of things, obviously we don’t want to be “slaves of sin” but “servants of righteousness.” But the problem comes when you ask what kind of sin Paul had in mind. With all his talk of your “members,” or body parts (6:13), presented to “impurity” in the “passions” of the “flesh,” it seems to me pretty clear that the kind of “sin” that leads to “death” in St. Paul’s thinking here is sexual sin—having an intimate relationship with the “wrong kind” of person.

But is that really what we believe? When we look around at the world in which we live, where do you see sin leading to death? Well, I see power-hungry dictators unleashing tanks against their own peoples to suppress dissent. And the result of that sin is death—over and over. And I see impoverished people living in ramshackle slums that are swept away completely—with all their residents, men, women, and children—whenever an earthquake or a flood or a hurricane comes through. I see the death that results from the sin of the wealthy in those countries hoarding all the resources and the sin of the government leaders who profit personally from injustice. I would have to say, in all honesty, that I don’t death resulting from having an intimate relationship with the “wrong kind” of person. I’m afraid I’d have to say that the beloved Apostle missed it on this one. His feet are firmly stuck in the Jewish notions of sin prevalent in his fellow Pharisees.

Whenever we make the essence of spirituality and holiness a matter of following religious rules, it seems to me that we have missed the mark. Rigid religious rules always become obstacles to loving other people; it seems to me that means they are obstacles to truly loving God. Jesus called them “burdens too heavy to lift” and points the finger at religious perfectionists of all stripes for ignoring their own sins and focusing on the minor lapses of others. It all becomes just an elaborate way of justifying myself by condemning someone else. But at the end of the day, even we religious perfectionists can’t bear the burden we’ve created for others.

Jesus had a way of cutting through all the hypocrisy and trivia and nonsense that we religious professionals can generate in that foolish effort. He said that true holiness is about loving God and loving others—all others, no exceptions. He said that true spirituality is about embracing a child, caring for the weak and outcast. He said that true goodness is about feeding the hungry person, visiting the sick, and being a companion to those who are in prison.[2] For Jesus, a truly spiritual way of living is about being willing to give someone a cup of cold water on a hot day (Mt. 10:42).[3] It’s really no more complicated than that. No elaborate systems, no obsessions with keeping every jot and tittle. At the end of the day, it’s about having a heart that is willing to give to others the same grace, and mercy, and unconditional love that we have received.

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[1] © 2011 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 6/26/11 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 126-9, where he says in effect that those who truly follow Christ are to be serving where Christ awaits us, “amid the downtrodden, the sick, and the captives.”

[3] I recognize that Jesus is probably talking about people receiving the “little ones” among the disciples who are traveling as evangelists and teachers, but I think that the same principle of kindness can apply generally. Cf. Ulrich Luz and Helmut Koester, Matthew: A Commentary, 121-22.