“Blasphemy!”

1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10[1]

The Apostle Paul was a man of contrasts. By his own confession, he had been a zealous Pharisee, devoted to obeying every rule in Judaism in every possible application. As a result, when confronted with the gospel, Paul’s initial response was violent hatred. He tells us in the book of Acts that he was relentless in his pursuit of Christians, dragging them before the Jewish authorities, compelling them to recant their faith, even taking part in their execution. Yes, Paul helped execute Christians.

What makes a person who professes such devotion to God turn into a hateful murderer? The “new Atheists” would say that it’s built into the nature of faith itself. At least that’s what Richard Dawkins, professor of Biology at Oxford University, claims in his TV show entitled “Religion is the Root of All Evil”! As Will Durant, the famed historian of civilization, puts it, “certainty is murderous.”[2] When we’re absolutely certain that we’re right and our enemies are wrong, we’re much more likely to kill in God’s name.

Though religion’s newly famous critics have touched on some grains of truth, I’m afraid they’re guilty of throwing the baby out with the bath water! Another Oxford professor, Keith Ward, says that while religion can be turned to evil (like any other facet of human culture), the roots of this problem are in the capacity for hatred and self-deception within us![3] If you doubt that we all have the capacity for hatred, just take a look around the next time you’re trying to find a parking place in a busy parking lot!

There is a very real sense in which religion can turn into neurosis: what a person has repressed—self-hatred, excessive pride, unbridled desires—becomes what they see around them in others. Of course, however, this is all an elaborate if unconscious ploy to avoid having to face the ugly truth within themselves![4] This repression one’s own guilt inevitably leads to a rigid set of rules and authoritarian beliefs that are considered absolute precisely because they protect the guilty from having to face their own shame.[5] Anyone or anything that opposes, challenges, questions, or simply departs from their self-made “idol” becomes the target of vicious hatred and violent attacks, whether verbal or actual.

But the truth is that their “faith” is not motivated by the gospel, or by grace, or by love, but by hatred. It’s no wonder such a “faith” is toxic, violent, and vicious![6] When you start with that kind of hatred, it’s no wonder that people kill others in the name of God, just like Paul did.

Jesus proclaimed a gospel that turned the obsessive Phariseeism of a man like Paul upside down. Instead of calling for strict obedience to rules and promising rewards only to those who succeed while threatening punishment for those who don’t, Jesus offered grace and mercy to those who had failed to keep all the rules. Jesus’ whole life, from birth to death, from the manger to the cross, was one of a shepherd searching the hills for the lost sheep, bringing “liberating grace to those who were cursed” according to the religion of the day.[7] His gospel was that “the outcasts are accepted, the unrighteous are made righteous, and justice is secured for those without rights” who had been denied justice by repressive religion.[8]

What made Jesus’ gospel an outrageous blasphemy to someone like Paul was the fact that it implied a completely different view of God. Instead of the stern and impassive judge who doles out rewards and punishment in strict conformity to obedience and sin, Jesus’ gospel presents a God who loves everyone so much that he goes out searching for those who have lost their way![9] That was an intolerable upheaval in faith and in the image of God for Jewish zealots like Paul. It was outright blasphemy!

But something happened to Paul. He came face-to-face with the risen and exalted Christ, who loved Paul enough to die for him, who gave his life for Paul that Paul might have peace with God, freedom from the burden of guilt, and new life of grace and mercy and love. In First Timothy, Paul says that the reason he experienced such mercy was to show that there is no one who is beyond the grace and mercy and love of God. If he, one who blasphemed God and viciously attacked Christians, could receive mercy, there was no one in Paul’s mind who could not. This was such a revolution in Paul’s life that he came to the conclusion that it was not the Christians who were guilty of blasphemy, but it was his hate-filled attack in the name of his faith that was the real blasphemy!

What an ironical twist—to say that a “religious” person like Paul who obsessively follows a set of rigid rules and authoritative beliefs is actually lost in his own guilt and self-hatred (see Romans 7!). But more than that, when people project their self-hatred onto God and create a religion of condemnation, they actually blaspheme the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ just like Paul did! In the face of the gospel of grace and mercy and love and life, any religion that claims to represent God’s purposes through violence or hatred must be seen for what it is—an absolute contradiction of the truth that God is love.

The only appropriate response for those who have been found by the shepherd of grace and mercy is to give their lives to others out of that grace and mercy, instead of living out of guilt and hatred.

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[1] A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 9/16/07 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX.

[2] Will Durant, The Age of Faith, 784; cf. Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 85.

[3] Keith Ward, Is Religion Dangerous?, 25-41.

[4] Cf. Paul Tillich, “The Yoke of Religion,” in The Shaking of the Foundations, 93-103; Emil Brunner, Revelation and Reason, 258-273; Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 236.

[5] Jürgen Moltman, The Crucified God, 300-302.

[6] Moltmann, The Crucified God, 296-297.

[7] Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 82, 87; cf. Moltmann, Crucified God, 129, 131, 176.

[8] Moltmann, Church in the Power, 88.

[9] Moltmann, Crucified God, 142.

“Solid Ground”

Isaiah 58:6-12; Psalm 103; Hebrews 12:18-29[1]

One of my favorite movie lines is found in the 2003 film Seabiscuit. The film is based on the true story of three men who are broken, wounded, and rejected: Charles, Tom, and “Red.” They all find new life and redemption through a horse that was written off as too small and “un-trainable”, but becomes a champion. At one point, when Charles decides to invest in a horse, he meets Tom outside a track in Tijuana, Mexico. Tom had been a top hand on a ranch in Colorado, but was forced to become a drifter during the Great Depression. In Tijuana, he happened to come upon a horse that had a broken foreleg. They were going to “put him down” but Tom stopped them. When Charles meets Tom, he’s well into rehabilitating the horse. When Charles asks why, Tom says, “You don’t throw a whole life away just ‘cause it’s banged up a little.”

That’s not a philosophy that I would say is very popular these days. We throw away everything that’s “banged up,” whether its banged up a little or a lot! We are obsessed with what is newest, what has the best “bells and whistles,” and with what is the most fashionable. The personal computer industry has dramatically changed the definition of “new” and “old.” There was a time when a new car was new for many months. A new house was new for several years. But these days, we buy a new computer, and as soon as we take it out of the box, it’s “old” and obsolete. Be honest—how long did you wait after buying your last computer before you started looking at newer ones that were faster and better?

Our “throw away” mentality extends beyond the latest gadgets. It also includes lives. People. We throw them away all the time. Whether it’s a difficult employee, or a handicapped person, or a spouse, or even a parent. We live in a society where it’s much easier to simply throw lives away. And that’s what we do with “our” people; I’d hate to even go into what we do with people who are “foreign” to us!

I’m afraid the action of a broken down old cowpoke to save a hobbled horse from the soap factory looks a bit impractical from the perspective of our world. But that is precisely what’s wrong with our world! We have no “ideal” that we look to for guidance, to provide meaning and direction.

Instead, in our world kingdoms rise and fall based on things like profit, military technology, and propaganda. People are viewed as cogs in a machine. And the “laws of the jungle” are “bigger is better,” “money makes the world go around,” and “survival of the strongest.”

The letter to the Hebrews reminds us, however, that what looks strong and stable may not always have the capacity to endure. Many of the “strong” and the “powerful” have met their undoing because they founded their kingdoms on the “laws of the jungle” rather than on God’s justice. All of the “rich” and the “beautiful” who have clawed their way to the top on the backs of others have met their ultimate demise when death comes knocking!

The letter to the Hebrews uses a metaphor for judgment that is very appropriate—shaking. It says that one day, everything will be shaken. Those things that are built on any foundation other than the kingdom of God will fall to pieces. They may look strong and enduring now, but they will not stand. What will stand is the kingdom of God. That’s solid ground.

Psalm 103 praises God’s essential character as the foundation of his kingdom that will never be shaken: “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” In a very real sense, I think the Psalmist invites us to build our lives on the foundation of God’s character, God’s truth, God’s justice.

And the defining qualities of God’s character are mercy, grace, and love. God is compassionate. And those qualities—mercy, grace, and compassion—are the foundation for God’s justice in the world, for God’s kingdom in the world. It is the kind of outlook that says, “You don’t throw a whole life away just ‘cause it’s banged up a little.”

There are a lot of lives around us that are “banged up”—some a little, some a lot. If we have eyes to see, we can see all around us the lives of children, families, and senior adults shattered by homelessness, drug abuse, alcoholism, and poverty. In some respects, they are the victims of their own bad choices. But in every case, they suffer in part because the kingdoms of this world do not practice the justice of God.

Why should we care? The Bible says we should care because God cares for them. We should care because God has shown his care to us, and expects us to extend that care to others. We should care because Jesus made it clear that God intends to redeem the poor and the destitute. It is to them that the kingdom of God belongs, the kingdom founded upon the solid ground of grace, mercy, and love.

But the prophet Isaiah also reminds us that we should care, and should put that compassion into action, because it is only as we get outside ourselves and share God’s compassion with others that we ourselves find life. As Jim Wallis puts it, when we share God’s grace and mercy and love with those around us who are hurting and struggling, “we all get healed.”[2]

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[1] A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 8/26/07 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX.

[2] Jim Wallis, “We All Get Healed,” a sermon preached Nov. 21, 2000; accessed at http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/wallis_4416.htm.

“Good Fruit”

Luke 13:1-9[1]

One of the most dangerous facets of religious faith is the tendency to assume that we’re right, we’re on God’s side, we’re the “good guys.” Of course, that often means that we assume the people who are different from us are wrong, they’re outside of God’s grace, they’re the “bad guys.” What makes this particularly toxic is when the “good guys” who think God is on their side presume that they can do what they like with the “bad guys”—and that they do so with God’s sanction.

For some reason, this aspect of religious faith is universal. It doesn’t matter what the faith, I would be willing to bet there have been fanatics who committed horrible acts of violence in the name of God. Of course, we’re not people who tend to go out and slaughter innocents in the name of God! But part of what makes this problem universal to religion is that most people of faith either think they are immune from any and all scrutiny or they are obsessed with the notion of divine scrutiny and go to the extreme to “please” a God for whom nothing is ever good enough.

I think that is the heart of what Jesus is addressing in this strange text. It’s strange to us in the first place, because Jesus says, “unless you repent you too will all perish.” I think talk about “repenting” and “perishing” sounds pretty foreign to our ears. I’m afraid it just doesn’t compute with us. After all, when we assume that we’re the “good guys,” why should we be concerned about repentance?

I’m not really sure how we got to this point, because much of the message of the Scriptures is concerned with calling the people of God back to obedience, back to faith, back to God. Prophets like John the Baptist continually called Israel to repentance and to produce “fruit worthy of repentance” (Matt. 3:10). In this respect, Jesus wasn’t very different from the prophets of old. Much of his ministry was occupied with calling Israel to repentance. Jesus warned that a tree is known by its fruit—whether it bears good fruit or bad fruit (Lk. 6:43-44). The fruit Jesus was looking for was for those who consider themselves “God’s people” to renew their commitment to love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love their neighbors as themselves.

The crowd comes to Jesus to get answers from him about how God could allow the tragedy they reported to Jesus. They come to him questioning God’s justice, and Jesus reminds them that everyone must stand before a holy and just God someday, where God will do the questioning.

When John the Baptist told the people of his day they were to produce “fruit worthy of repentance,” he was quite specific about what that should look like. He told the crowds, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” He told the tax collectors to “collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” He told the soldiers not to threaten anyone for money. In a nutshell he was telling them to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God (Mic. 6:8).

I think it’s a good thing to be reminded of that. It is when we think we are exempt from scrutiny that we turn faith into something toxic, poisonous, harmful, exclusive, prideful, arrogant, selfish and even cruel and heartless. A good dose of repentance is essential to maintain a proper attitude of “walking humbly” with God.

This text is also strange because, just when it seems that he couldn’t be more demanding, Jesus turns around and tells a story about grace! The parable of fig tree in this context depicts God as patient gardener, always allowing people another chance to respond to him in faith and obedience. Of course, that too was not a new idea. The story of the Bible shows that God demonstrated his steadfast love time and time again by disciplining Israel and then restoring them after they returned to him. Even after he handed them over to exile, he did not abandon his disobedient people. God continued to love them fervently, to long for them to return to him, and to send his messengers to them to draw them back to their relationship.

I think this is Jesus’ answer to those who are obsessed with the idea of pleasing a merciless God. The heart of the Bible’s witness to God always has been and always will be: “the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6).

Like the prophets before him, Jesus called God’s people to bear the good fruit of loving the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving their neighbors as themselves. But he also called them to live in relationship with a God who is all love, all grace, all mercy. That’s why we observe Lent: it reminds us that “we must all repent,” but it also reminds us that God always gives us one more chance.

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[1] A sermon preached 3/11/07 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX.