According to Jesus, the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor. Neither is easy. Both are necessary.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the end of the twenty-second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 22:34-46), which describes events during Holy Week, that last week before Jesus’ crucifixion.
Jesus had been teaching in the Temple. Somewhat more accurately, he had been responding to challenges from the established religious leadership gathered in the Temple. As this passage begins, Jesus had just silenced the Sadducees, most closely associated with the Temple leadership, when they had asked a question that they thought he could not answer.
At this point, the Pharisees stepped up and they asked him a question: Which is the greatest commandment?
Jesus actually answered this question — sometimes he answered questions with questions, but he answered this one. “The greatest is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.”
These are challenging commandments.
They also are found in more or less those words in the Law of the Old Testament. Jesus did not make these up.
Is it difficult to love God? It is difficult to love God with the thoroughness, with the commitment, with the loyalty of which Jesus spoke. And what about loving our neighbors as ourselves? In the passage in Leviticus from which Jesus quoted (Leviticus 19:15-18), there is more specificity to this commandment. To be protective of your neighbor, and also to correct your neighbor when they are in danger of infringing on the law.
How many of us are really willing to protect our neighbor against the dangers of the world? And how many of us will really dare risk that kind word to a neighbor to let them know that they are running afoul of trouble? Some of us do, and it’s a wonderful thing, and some of us hesitate, and it’s not such a wonderful thing.
Love God, love neighbor: the two greatest of the commandments. May we fully love one another and our maker.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Paul complimented the Thessalonians for doing something so basic and so important: for receiving the word with joy. So may we.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:1-10). I’m actually thinking about the entire first chapter. Those ten verses are what is laid out as the passage for this coming Sunday in Revised Common Lectionary.
Paul’s custom when opening a letter was to compliment his readers, and First Thessalonians is no exception. The rest of the letter actually continued to be fairly light and loving. In some of his other letters, Paul had more difficult things to say to his correspondents. In First Thessalonians, the occasion for writing seems to have been that Paul was delayed. He had wanted and expected to come to visit. He had been prevented. And he wanted to let them know he was still on his way.
There is an interesting compliment that Paul paid them, which you might look at in a couple of different ways. He commended them for becoming imitators of us (Paul and his companions), and of the Lord (Jesus). For in spite of persecution, they had received the word with joy.
Becoming imitators of figures in the Bible can be a problem. There are plenty of attributes of Biblical heroes and heroines that I would love to imitate. And pretty much all of them have attributes that I would not care to imitate. That, in fact, includes Paul. The hubris, the pride, with which he commends them for imitating him, is probably not something that I should do, not something I should imitate.
There is, however, something that was a characteristic of Paul, and that he noticed in the Thessalonians, that I do want to imitate, and which I commend to you to imitate as well: to receive the word with joy.
It is too easy in religion, any religion, to follow the trails into all sorts of self-condemnation. Any religion has lots and lots of options for self-improvement, and in many cases, those are well-commended to you. But that’s not where we start.
We start with joy.
Paul was abundantly clear throughout his writing career and in all of his work with the churches, that God took the first step through Jesus to bring a new and deeper relationship with people — relationship which was extended to people that nobody had thought could have that kind of relationship with God — to receive the word with joy.
So that is my advice for you today: to imitate Paul at least to that extent (try and skip the hubris). To imitate Jesus to that extent, because oh my goodness, what joy he could display in his relationship with God. Receive the word with joy and be grateful and exultant in the fact that God loves you.
Receive the word with joy and let the rest of your goodness follow from that.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
You could argue that things had gone very well. Very well indeed. Better than anyone could have expected.
A large group of people – how many people is one of the things that Exodus scholars argue about – had escaped slavery in Egypt. Mass escapes from bondage are pretty rare in history, and successful escapes even rarer. Enslaved people from Africa called the Maroons successfully established and maintained regions in Jamaica in the 18th century. According to the National Geographic Society, some historians estimate that the American Underground Railroad freed around 100,000 people between 1810 and 1850, but that wouldn’t have been all at once. But most attempted escapes or rebellions by enslaved people have ended badly for the people seeking freedom.
These people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had done very well. They were out of Egypt. They had survived a vengeful army. In the dry wilderness of the Sinai peninsula they had water. They had bread. They even had meat – poultry.
They had these things because of the clear intervention of God, the same one who had guided their ancestors of the past. God had first recruited a leader – Moses. God had performed a series of signs for the Egyptians to persuade them to let the Hebrews leave, a series of signs that, I’m sorry to say, got steadily more drastic as Pharoah “hardened his heart.” God had parted the sea for them to escape from the Egyptian army. God had given them drinkable water not once but twice. God had provided the bread. God had provided the quail.
And then God had provided something else. God had given commandments, the foundations of law, the structure not for a band of escapees, but for a nation. Not just a nation, but a holy nation, a priestly kingdom. This disorganized band, homeless in the wilderness, would be one established to strengthen people’s relationships with one another, and with God.
It was going very well.
Then it was going sideways. Moses, the leader who had dealt with Pharoah and led them through the sea and brought forth the water and the food when they complained, Moses was missing. He had gone up a mountain they were forbidden to climb – and given how much thunder they’d heard from it, they had no interest in climbing – and he’d been missing for a long time. The text says he was there forty days and forty nights (Exodus 24:18), but don’t take that too seriously. For centuries, Jewish writers used “forty” as a figure of speech, basically meaning, “a long time.” Which, if you’re a group of traumatized people scraping together their food and water each day, might have been forty hours.
“Make us gods,” they said to Aaron, Moses’ brother – they were still relying upon the same leadership family. Or they might have meant, “Make us God.” You see, the Hebrew word for some generic deity, a god, was “El.” But when they wrote about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they used the plural form: “Elohim.” Which is the word used in verse one. “Make us gods,” or “Make us God.”
Mind you, they’d already heard the ten commandments. They knew not to have any other gods before God. They also knew not to create any idols. The question is somewhat meaningless. Breaking one commandment really isn’t much better than breaking two. When God saw it, God was not happy.
“The LORD said to Moses, ‘Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it…” (Exodus 32:7-8a)
God was ready to abandon the whole project of a holy nation, or rather to start over again with a single person: Moses. “Of you,” God said, “I will make a great nation.”
Callie Plunket-Brewton writes at Working Preacher, “In vv. 11-13, he [Moses] speaks to God of the divine promises to the ancestors of the people, thus implicitly urging God to be faithful to those promises. He also speaks of the terrible waste represented in bringing the people out of Egypt just to destroy them. Granted, he puts it in terms of being bad public relations, but I think it is clear that Moses is reminding God of the tremendous investment God has made in saving the people. Thus, Moses serves to remind YHWH of God’s own character, a character spelled out in 34:6-7: ‘slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness … ‘”
Moses argued with God. And… in this argument, Moses won. The nation would be formed from these people, not just one person.
Moses had argued with God more than once. He’d argued with God about the summons to free the Hebrew people. He lost that one, but he’d successfully negotiated a fair amount of support. I’m not sure that I would call some of Moses’ conversations with God about water and food arguments, because they usually sound to me like complaints, but Moses did get God’s help each time. Nor was Moses the only one to argue with God. Adam and Eve had – badly. Abraham had – rather better. Jacob argued with everybody, including God, and after a memorable wrestling match had received a new name: “Israel,” “One who struggles with God.”
The tradition of arguing with God continued after Moses. Gideon did. King David did. The prophet Jeremiah called God, “a deceitful brook.” And, of course, the most famous arguer with God of all was: Jesus. “Let this cup pass from me.” I grant you, it’s not an angry argument, but Jesus certainly did ask God to reconsider the course before him.
So should you argue with God?
Christianity has, for the most part, discouraged it. Judaism, I must say, hardly encourages arguing with God, but can’t help noting that most of those closest to God and God’s will have done so. But should you?
Sara Koenig writes at Working Preacher, “…the Old Testament gives us examples of humans who understand prayer to be a conversation, and God to be a relational God who actually listens to humans. To settle here does not deny that God is God, but clarifies that God is a God for us and with us.”
Prayer can be a conversation. I’d venture to say that from time to time, prayer should be a conversation. It’s a funny thing. So many people have been taught that prayer is a one-way thing. I’m talking to God. God is listening. Okay.
But prayer can be more than that. Prayer can be a relationship. Prayer can be responsive. Prayer can be an argument. Prayer can make change. The first step toward this kind of prayer is to do something that we’ve been trying to persuade people to do for millennia with uneven success: Listen.
People aren’t all that good at listening to people. But oh, how wonderful it might be if people listened to God. And as I’ve been told in active listening workshops for decades, the first step to effective listening is: stop talking.
I know that doesn’t sound consistent with effective argument with God. But how will you explain yourself to God if you don’t listen to what God has to say to you? Moses listened. God responded. Moses argued. God took another direction. So when you pray, make pauses in your prayer, and listen. Listen.
Note as well why Moses’ arguments were persuasive. Yes, he sounded like a public relations manager, but what did he remind God of? God’s promises. Moses went directly to the remarkable characteristic of Israel’s God: faithfulness. Dependability. Steadfast love.
Moses asked God to be God.
“’In God there can be no wrath,’ 14th century visionary Julian of Norwich wrote in her A Revelation of Love, the first book that we know of written by a woman in the English language.” Amy Frykolm writes of Julian at JourneyWithJesus.net, “During Julian’s day, the wrath of God was everywhere… And yet she was insistent that, no matter how hard she tried, she could not see wrath in God because there was no wrath in God. The reason is simple: God is all love. ‘Wrathfulness and friendship are two contraries,’ she writes. Where one exists, the other cannot exist.’
“If that is the case, then where does all of this talk about God’s wrath come from? Julian’s answer again is simple: it comes from us. We are the wrathful ones. We project that wrath onto God, who is all love.”
If you believe that God is all love, then you can approach God with anything, any feeling, any need. I don’t know how God will respond. I do know that God will listen, and God will respond.
The way to argue with God is to start.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the text as prepared does not match the sermon as delivered.
The image is L’Adoration du Veau d’Or (The Adoration of the Golden Calf) (ca. 1633-1637) by Nicolas Poussin – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=157563.
When they built the golden calf, God got very angry, but remained true to the promises that had been made to them. We worship a God who keeps promises.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the thirty-second chapter of Exodus (Exodus 32:1-14), in which Moses learned about the golden calf.
Moses had already received and delivered the Ten Commandments to the people, not the tablets of stone,. God had informed Moses of what the Ten Commandments were down in the camp. Moses in turn had communicated those commandments to the people. These were the broad outlines, the foundations of their relationship with one another and of their relationship with God. Moses had ascended the mountain to learn more, to get more detail, to get more instruction.
At the bottom of the mountain, the people got frightened with Moses gone so long. And they wanted to make their God tangible, they wanted to make their God more real. So they did what people of that age did, they made an idol. People of our age are more likely to invest or build a house or have something that they can touch.
Moses’ brother Aaron — well, he did what they asked, he made them an idol, a golden calf.
Up on the mountain, God saw it and God was angry. They have already broken all the laws that I commanded them, God said to Moses. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to leave these people to die in the wilderness and I will make a nation from you.
I imagine it might have been a tempting offer, but Moses would not go there. Moses said to God, You promised. These people know what you promised. I know what you promised. The world knows what you promised. Can you be seen as a God who does not keep divine promises? “And God changed his mind about the evil that had been prepared.”
God is a God of promises. The promises of Exodus, the promises of First and Second Samuel, the promises of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the promises of Jesus. Despite what we do that hinders our covenant with God, that damages our relationship with God, despite the sins that we commit before God, God’s promises remain and God remains faithful to those promises.
It is a startling thing. What greater love could anyone have than to love through all the misdeeds and the mistakes? All the errors and omissions.
All the things that we do day-to-day to place something else between us and God might not be a golden calf, but if you think about it, you know what it is. And God loves us still.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you.
The Apostle Paul was proud of many things – and he came to value the love of Jesus more than any of them.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the third chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians (Philippians 3:4b-14).
Paul began this section by listening some of the reasons he had for confidence. Confidence of his worth as a human being. Confidence of his place in society. Confidence of his value to God.
Paul’s first attributes were those that he was born with, that he was born amongst the people of God, the Jews. He was even born into the tribe that had provided the House of David. Some of the other attributes were things that Paul had worked for. He had studied in order to gain position amongst the Pharisees. He had exercised his zeal on behalf of the Jewish faith in trying to suppress this dangerous Christian movement. And, he wrote, as to keeping of the law he was “blameless.”
Now we might consider that Paul exaggerated a little bit. We might consider that Paul’s zeal in the light of his later conversion might not have been such a great thing. Paul’s point was that he had left all of these behind his place in the world, even his value to God because he had been embraced, and had embraced in return, Christ Jesus.
The faith of Christ Jesus said to Paul that these other things, these expected things, these ordinary things, these accomplished things of life no longer had any value relative to being accepted into the community of Jesus’ faith. To be known by Christ, to be embraced by Christ, to be called by Christ was worth far more than any of the rest.
That kind of valuing of the things of life versus the things of faith continues to be a struggle for Christians to this very day. We are told that a lot of things are important in the world, and some of it is status, and some of it is accomplishment, and some of it is wealth, and some of it is… and it goes on and on and on. It is outrageously difficult for us to look at all those things and say to ourselves, “But you know what? I’m loved by Jesus, and so the rest of this I can set aside.”
Now, the Apostle didn’t leave everything aside. His learning to become a senior person amongst the Pharisees is obvious throughout his letters. So also is the faith, the core of the faith that was taught to him as a child and as a young adult that continued to inform him all through his ministry as a Christian evangelist.
What is also abundantly clear through all his letters, not just here but everywhere, is that even as he used what he had been given, he embraced more and more fully this invitation from God that came through Jesus. He valued that far more than anything else in life.
So I suggest, may we.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Jesus’ story about every worker getting the same wage makes no sense in the business world – but it does make sense in the love world.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the twentieth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 20:1-16) Jesus’ story that we usually give the title, “The Laborers in the Vineyard.”
On its surface, an easy, if somewhat puzzling, story. Jesus described a vineyard owner who went out to find workers for the day. He went to the marketplace early, found some folks who were available. They went to work in the vineyard and were promised a denarius, which was the usual daily wage for a laborer.
But this landowner went out several times. He even went as late as about five o’clock in the afternoon, not long before the work had to end because of darkness. And each time he found people and sent them off to work.
When the sun had gone down, he gathered everybody up and had those who had arrived the latest receive their wages first. They received a denarius. Those at the end of the line who had worked the whole day, they also received a denarius, and were angry. Because they had worked much longer, why should they receive exactly the same wage?
The landowner replied, “My money is mine to do with it as I like. Are you upset because I am generous?”
As a story of business and economics, I suspect that anybody who taught in a business school would say this is not the way to do it. Among other things, it means that you’re paying expenses that you probably shouldn’t. It also means that some of your workers are angry with you about the way you treat other workers. It isn’t fair.
As is common in Jesus’ stories, it’s the place that somebody departs from the ordinary and the expected that we typically find the point that Jesus was trying to make. And in this case, it is that unexpected and extravagant generosity: that each person who worked in the vineyard, no matter how long, received the same amount. They received what they needed to live on.
Is it a model for business? Probably not. Is it a model for salvation? I think so. In the end, what can God give us that is more than salvation? If we arrive in the vineyard — that is, if we make the effort to participate in the community of God — what more can God give us than membership in that community? There isn’t anything more.
I think also, however, this is a model for relationships. It’s also something that we know.
We labor to try and treat our children fairly, but we do not treat them equally. Because one has skills and talents the other does not. That same one has needs that the other does not. And so we spend our time focusing on the things that they need or spend our time focusing on the things that they accomplish and that time will be different from one child to the next. We are perhaps not fair, not absolutely even-handed in our love for our own children, because it would be wrong to treat all human beings as if they were exactly the same.
Love can’t be absolutely fair. Love has to respond to what is. Love has to reveal what might be.
Jesus, I’m sure, in part spoke of the love of God here. The love of God is what it is and it is shared equally. And that may not seem fair, but that is what it is. And our love, we’re also called upon to respond to the needs and to rejoice in the successes of those we love, as they occur, but also in such a way that all know that they are loved.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
In a community made up of people from different religious backgrounds, the temptation to judge was hard to resist. Paul urged them to resist.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fourteenth chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 14:1-12).
The Roman church was made up of people from quite startlingly different backgrounds. Some had been raised as Jews, others had been raised in the traditions and religions of Rome, Greece, Egypt, and for that matter, many other cultures around the Mediterranean world. They brought very different assumptions about what a faith life was supposed to be like.
Christianity, originating as it did as a reform movement within Judaism (and indeed continuing to attempt to be a reform movement within Judaism in Paul’s lifetime), nevertheless welcomed folks from these other traditions and expectations. And Christianity did not fully endorse or fully reject religions and religious ideas of Judaism or Greece or of Rome. There was a lot to learn and to adapt to and to reframe for both those coming from Judaism and those coming from other faiths.
As a result, they were feeling at their way through the expectations of this new religion that they were calling the Way of Jesus.
Also as a result, they were criticizing one another, and sometimes fairly harshly.
Paul’s advice was, “Do not judge one another.” Those who observe in one way, well, they observe these things in faithfulness to God. And those who do other things to observe, they do those things also in faithfulness to God. It is God who is going to judge in the end. It is not up to us to judge one another.
Well, it is certainly true that a society without any kind of judgment or discernment rapidly draws into chaos as people do this, that, and the other thing. It is also true that the apostle Paul deeply disliked chaos and, as we noted from last Sunday’s reading, had some pretty firm notions on things that were to be done and things that were not to be done. But in matters of faithful observance, Paul was far more willing to let God be the judge of the heart, to let God be judge of the intent, to let God be judge of the devotion, than to permit Christians to run around willy-nilly judging one another.
Leave that to God, said Paul, and in such a way we can build a religious community together that is supportive rather than a religious community that drags one another down.
“Do not judge your brother or your sister,” wrote Paul. We will all be accountable to God, and that is more than enough.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking.Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
In his commentary on Galatians, the fourth century theologian Saint Jerome told this story: “The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words. During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, ‘Little children, love one another.’** The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, ‘Teacher, why do you always say this?’ He replied with a line worthy of John: ‘Because it is the Lord’s commandment and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.’**° He said this because of the Apostle’s present mandate: ‘Let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the household of faith.’”
Jerome wrote nearly three hundred years after John wrote the Gospel, so it’s hard to tell whether he’d preserved an authentic memory, or whether he’d preserved a story that reflected the way people thought of John. It certainly honored teachings of Jesus. We honored the “new commandment” Jesus gave at the Last Supper by calling the Thursday of Holy Week “Commandment Thursday” – “Maundy” is an English shortening of the Latin “Mandatum,” which means “commandment.” Jesus also spoke of love as the basis of the “greatest commandments.” As recorded in Mark’s Gospel: “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
This wasn’t a new idea. The Babylonian Talmud records this story about Hillel the Elder, who lived in the century before Jesus was born:
“It happened again that a certain stranger came before Shammai and said to him: –‘I will become a proselyte providing you teach me the whole Torah while I’m standing on one foot.’ (Shammai) knocked him down with the builder’s rule in his hand. (The stranger) came before Hillel, who made him a proselyte. He told him: –‘What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go, learn (it)!’”
I note that when Paul spoke of love as the fulfillment of the law, he used the negative form that Hillel had, avoiding doing harm. In contrast, Jesus used the positive form, love your neighbor as yourself.
So what is the good of law?
The Apostle Paul had, in fact, spent a good deal of the Letter to the Romans arguing that the Law of Israel had become a problem. When there’s a standard, he said, there’s not just the risk, there’s the likelihood that people won’t meet it. And when they don’t meet the standard, they’ve fallen into sin. Without the standard, there would be no transgression.
Paul argued persuasively that the Law had failed to prevent people from sinning – it’s an impossible argument to counter. No legal system has ever entirely prevented people from breaking the law. People make unintentional mistakes, such as not noticing that stop sign at the corner. People make uninformed mistakes, such as believing that those entering a traffic circle have the right of way rather than those in it. And people make deliberate decisions to break the law, passing in no-passing zones because they think it will save them time.
Mind you, most people follow traffic laws fully informed and faithfully. Law brings a basic order that’s really useful. Law also gets into the specifics of things. Like most of us on this island, I try to “drive with aloha,” and I’m glad for all the others who do. If we had no speed limit signs, however, I’d have more difficulty doing it. I wouldn’t know, necessarily, whether the road ahead was straight enough for high speeds, or whether around this next curve there is a series of small curves which I may or may not be able to navigate safely.
Not to mention the challenges of a traffic circle. It’s one thing to drive one with aloha, but if you’re driving with aloha, who goes first?
Despite dismissing the Law as a saving force, Paul definitely believed in offering specific guidance. Nancy Lammers Gross writes at Working Preacher, “In the event we are not clear about what the law of love looks like, even after the gifts for ministry and the disposition of love as described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and alluded to in Romans 12, Paul spells out for us what is singularly inappropriate with regard to the law of love as we prepare for the return of Christ: Avoid reveling, which is excessive partying and wild behavior; avoid drunkenness, debauchery, and licentiousness, which may be taken as reckless indulgence in immoral behavior; avoid quarreling and jealousy.”
Indeed, Paul’s letters are full of lists of things to do and things not to do. If you’re looking for guidance in what to do, read Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and so on. Paul happily told people what to do two thousand years ago, and people like me have been happily telling people what to do using his words ever since.
In the end, yes. Paul was right. Love does fulfill the law, at least as long as the law is dedicated to avoiding harm to the neighbor, as long as the law is dedicated to lifting up the neighbor. As we also know, that’s not always the case. Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “When Paul reflects on the second commandment in Romans 13, he writes, “’Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law’ (Romans 13:10). But I can imagine [Maria] Skobtsova having a fiery argument with him about this. She would say, ‘How can you sell love that short?’ She thought of love of neighbor as a ‘dangerous thing’ that immersed a person in the world and in its suffering, stopping short of nothing. Her life itself was a parable about this commandment and her deeply uncomfortable answer to the question: How do you love your neighbor as yourself?”
Maria Skobtsova was an Orthodox nun who hid Jews from the Nazis in occupied Paris, and died in a gas chamber in 1945.
Love does not just fulfill the law, it goes beyond the law.
Poet Wendell Berry died this week. For decades his work has inspired people of faith, so I’ll close with his words:
“I know that I have life only insofar as I have love.
I have no love except it come from Thee.
Help me, please, to carry this candle against the wind.”
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching. Sometimes he makes them without intending to. Sometimes He hope they’re improvements. The sermon as written does not precisely match the sermon as preached.
When I served the historic Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, I shared an office with my colleague Drew, who also worked in communications and publications. We managed to keep one another entertained when a joke needed to be told, and comforted one another when we were sad, and supported one another when there was simply a lot to be done and less time than we really needed to do it.
From time to time Drew and I would find ourselves really easily distracted. A random glance at some word and we’d be thinking about what a strange way that was to spell it. A name would float by and we’d be thinking about all the people we’d known with that name. The phone would ring and it would take ten minutes afterward to remember what we’d been doing.
We had a name for these days. Based on the dogs in the 2009 movie Up, who could always be distracted by the mere mention of the word, “squirrel,” we called them Squirrel Days.
“Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to mount Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.’”
From a work productivity point of view, Moses had little business turning aside to see this burning-but-not-consumed bush. I’m no shepherd, but here’s what I imagine I, as a competent shepherd, should do if I see a fire in the wilderness.
Move away from it.
Get downhill from it, if I can. Get upwind from it, if it’s possible. Do both, and take the sheep with me. Fire in the wilderness, as we know from our wildfire experiences here on this island and from the terrible disasters in Canada, California, and Maui, is dangerous. Getting out of its path – getting my father-in-law’s sheep out of its path – is the first, most urgent priority.
Turn aside to look at this great sight? I don’t think so.
Nevertheless, that turn to the side, that step in an unanticipated direction, that movement toward risk and not away, was as crucial to the deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery as any step thereafter. Without this step, there would have been no steps toward Egypt. Without this step, there would have been no steps into Pharoah’s palace. Without this step, there would have been no steps across the exposed bottom of the Red Sea. Without this step, there would have been no steps up Mount Sinai to receive the Law of God.
As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “God notices that Moses has ‘turned aside’ and then calls to him. Imagine if Moses had ignored that little impulse, that desire to know more.”
Imagine.
Fortunately, Moses did get curious. Fortunately, Moses sought to learn more. Fortunately, Moses took a closer look.
Moses himself was probably not so grateful. Like the later prophets who left us their stories of call – people like Isaiah and Jeremiah – Moses had reservations about his selection as God’s ambassador. Given the message he’d been given, I’m a little surprised that he didn’t run away faster than Jonah. As Amy Merrill Willis writes at Working Preacher, “The typical commissioning scene involves the prophet’s objection to God’s commission. The objection highlights the prophet’s dependence upon God in undertaking sacred work and reveals an appropriate sense of humility. But Moses is not typical in any sense. Instead of one objection, Moses raises four (3:11,13; 4:1,10) before saying flat out, ‘O my Lord, please send someone else’ (4:13)!”
So, not so grateful. Gratitude aside, however, and request to be set aside set aside, he accepted the commission and he assumed the mantle of prophet, leader, and lawgiver.
Because he’d taken a closer look.
It’s time I asked the question: Have you taken a closer look? What do you need to take a closer look at?
Taking a closer look isn’t always popular. Some people these days eagerly ignore expertise. There is a movement of people frequently referred to as “sovereign citizens,” who have adopted a legal theory that essentially means nobody has to obey a vast number of criminal laws. They refuse or ignore the advice of lawyers if they’re brought to court.
It’s hard to tell, but it doesn’t seem likely that that will go well. It’s one thing to look at some documents you found on the Internet. It’s another thing to take a closer look at actual lawbooks, professional rules, and court precedents. I grant you that it’s a shame that law is so complicated, but it is complicated. So is medicine. So is automobile mechanics. So is software development. So are ecological systems. So is plumbing. So is theology.
I’ve heard this statement from before I started my professional education: “I heard of people who went to seminary and they lost their faith, so I didn’t go.”
Because yes, seminary was taking a closer look, and yes, I learned things in seminary that were different from what I learned in Sunday School. That’s OK. There’s a limit to what you can teach in Sunday School.
The British authors Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen described this as a “lie-to-children” in The Science of Discworld: “A lie-to-children is a statement that is false, but which nevertheless leads the child’s mind towards a more accurate explanation, one that the child will only be able to appreciate if it has been primed with the lie. The early stages of education have to include a lot of lies-to-children, because early explanations have to be simple. However, we live in a complex world, and lies-to-children must eventually be replaced by more complex stories if they are not to become delayed-action genuine lies. Unfortunately, what most of us know about science consists of vaguely remembered lies-to-children.”
[Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, The Science of Discworld (New York, Anchor Books), 1999.]
The same might be said of auto mechanics, literature, carpentry, law, accounting, and, of course, theology.
You’ve got to take a closer look.
Just like Moses. As role models go, that’s a pretty good one. As with all Biblical figures, there are things you’d like to avoid – my God, that man could whine – but he took that crucial first step. He turned aside to learn more and it opened up the world.
As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “The poet William Stafford called this kind of curiosity and the following that it leads to ‘the golden string.’ And unlike Egeria or Moses, he saw the ‘end of a golden string’ in everything, in every detail of human life that we notice enough to write down. For Stafford, the whole of the sensual world was alive with the possibility of the sacred practice of noticing. Which makes me wonder: what did I walk by today that I could have turned aside to see with curiosity? What ends of the golden string did I pass by?”
As you’ve probably noticed, I’m a photographer and, increasingly, a bird photographer, so for me some of the golden strings are the movement of feathers in greenery, the hops of clawed feet across the grass, the gentle glide of a floating body over the water. Those aren’t the only ones. I’m fascinated by people’s stories, so another golden string is the things people share about what they’ve experienced, what they’ve valued, what they’ve learned. The Scriptures themselves are a golden string – or a big set of strings – for me. So yes, I keep coming back to this story and looking for new things, because each new discovery in Exodus 3, or Luke 2, or John 20, or Romans 8, or Micah 6, or a raft of other texts invite a closer look each time.
What are your golden strings? What do you need to take a closer look at? What would fill your mind to learn more about? What will fill your soul to experience more deeply? What experience can you embrace and, by God’s grace, it will change the world?
I’m talking to you – not because of your impressive brain, compassionate heart, not the beautiful singing voice, rippling muscles, spiritual depth, perfect complexion, long hair.
You with the toes, are you listening?
This is the holy moment.
Take a closer look.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes to his sermon while he preaches, so the prepared text above does not necessarily match the recording of how he preached it.
The image is Moses Before the Burning Bush by Gebhard Fugel – Photo permission – Own work (fotografiert in der Ausstellung “Gebhard Fugel 1863-1939. Von Ravensburg nach Jerusalem”. Galerie Fähre, Altes Kloster, Bad Saulgau, 2014), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32072413.
The circumstances of our lives do not match those of those who first read Paul’s Letter to the Romans. We, after all, are not a congregation containing both Jews who had embraced the new Way of Jesus, and Romans who had once worshiped such deities as Jupiter, Vesta, Mithras, or Isis.
Mind you, we are a congregation that contains people from a number of different national and cultural backgrounds, and from several different religious backgrounds, some of which weren’t Christian. So… it’s still not the same.
We do not live under the authority of the Roman Empire. I grant you that those who wrote the US Constitution were substantially guided by the Roman Republic, and used the Latin “senator” in creating one of the legislative bodies. So… it’s still not the same.
But it’s close enough that Paul’s advice to “not be conformed to this age,” meaning the first century around the Mediterranean, is still good advice in the twenty-first century in the Pacific Ocean. We just can’t assume that the cultural pressures of the first century Roman Christians he addressed are the same problems we face. We also can’t assume that the cultural pressures of the twenty-first century are entirely different from the pressures they faced.
For nearly two thousand years Christianity has worked very hard to create a society in which it was easy to follow Jesus. I’m not convinced that we’ve been as successful as we’d like. Europe’s history of wars between its acknowledged Christian nations – not to mention repeated persecution of non-Christians or not-acknowledged as Christians – has echoes in lots of other non-Christian nations in the course of human history.
What are our cultural pressures? First and foremost, I think, there’s pride. Hubris. Arrogance. The conviction that I and I alone am right. The conviction that me and mine are the center. The conviction that my chosen community is the greatest, and by rights should be in charge.
As Elizabeth Shively writes at Working Preacher, “Paul has exhorted his audience to be transformed by the renewal of their mind; now they are to use that new mind to think rightly about themselves and each other: ‘I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment … ‘(verse 3). Paul calls for a new way of thinking that takes account of others.”
I think that Paul addressed that advice about not thinking to highly of yourself as much to himself as to his readers, then and now. Paul was on his best behavior writing to the people he hadn’t met in Rome. He wasn’t so restrained in his other letters. His arrogance took center stage in parts of Galatians, even daring to call Simon Peter a hypocrite. He was self-aware enough to call himself a fool in Second Corinthians, but only after he’d demonstrated the foolishness of his own ego in response to criticism he’d heard. Yes. It was hard for him. I resonate with that from the inside. I think I’ve mentioned that I share that temptation to arrogance. It’s one of the few things I can claim to share with a saint.
Let’s face it, arrogance is a characteristic of Christianity these days. It’s not just the Christian nationalists, although their manifestation of hubris is, I think, the most dangerous of our time. In the United Church of Christ, I applaud our advocacy for marginalized groups while noting at the same time our curious reluctance to move beyond certain points, and I note that when the marginalized come into positions of authority, they are just as subject to the temptation of “I know it better than you” as their predecessors had been. I’d dearly love it if we could solve the problem of arrogance by replacing all the male leaders with female, or the straight leaders with LGBTQ, or elder leaders with young ones, or… insert your own preferred group here. Regrettably, it seems like our favorite prayer is not the Lord’s Prayer, but what Pearls Before Swinecartoonist Stephan Pastis called “The Genius Prayer” in a 2014 strip:
“God grant me the courage to change the things I cannot accept, serenity to accept the things I’ve changed, and the wisdom to know I’m different.”
It’s not the only struggle we have with our contemporary world, however. I think one of our strongest pressures is the temptation to put people into arbitrary categories and make assumptions about them based on those categories. I’m pretty confident that the first century members of the Roman church had a similar problem – Paul wrote powerfully that both Jews and Gentiles (whom he called “Greeks”) stood in the very same position with God, needing God’s mercy. In other letters he wrote of slaves and free people, of men and women, that God’s grace, love, and power were accessible to them one and all.
In the twenty-first century, we struggle with prejudices within ourselves, and we struggle with the systematic “isms” that enshrine prejudice in law, culture, and religious practice. We have made progress. In 2021 the Rev. Elizabeth Dilley, who supports authorization of ministers in the UCC, wrote, “…women now make up 52.5% of all ordained ministers in the UCC.” At the same time, I’m aware of Christian churches that have rolled back access to leadership positions for women, and others that have simply never opened them at all. On Thursday morning I read a social media post asking for Biblical support for the ordination of women.
People, as we understand ordination, there’s not that much Biblical support for the ordination of men.
In addition, we’ve got people openly calling for the repeal of the nineteenth amendment. That’s the one that enfranchises women in the United States of America, that allows them to vote. I thought that question had been settled for a century. I guess we’ll have to keep it settled.
More of a concern in the twenty-first century than the first is the temptation to individualism, to think that community is less important than the individual. It’s a heritage of the European Enlightenment, and one that was really important to undo the feudal systems of Europe and Asia, which were so arbitrary and oppressive. As with most things, it can be overdone, and it has been. Israel Kamudzandu writes at Working Preacher, “I think of Romans as a call to abandon the sin of individualism and to embrace the cross-cultural Christian life. The life to which Paul calls Christians in Rome, and consequently those in the 21st century, is a life that exhibits the essence of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.”
It’s one that embraces the notion that community is important. It’s not just about me; it’s about us. I don’t have all the skills, I don’t have all the gifts. Somebody else can better find the ‘ohelo; somebody else can fix the plumbing; somebody else can handle the bookkeeping. Look at that list of gifts of the Spirit Paul gave here (he wrote other longer lists in other letters): prophecy, ministry, teaching, encouragement, generosity, leadership, compassion. Any one of us might have some portion of each. Some of us will have deeper reservoirs of one of those gifts, and when we share them in community, everyone does better.
Amy Frykolm, writing at JourneyWithJesus.net, composed a reworked version of Paul’s advice here, and it’s stunning, so I share it with you:
“So then, I ask you, my dear family, in light of all the mercy, compassion, and kindness that God has shown us, place your whole selves in God’s hands — mind, heart, strength — this whole embodied being that is you. Make that offering full of life and vitality, as living as living water. The depth of your spiritual understanding and your willingness will fill the heart of God with joy.
“And do not let the ways of this world — its greed, ambition, empty fulfillments — mold and shape you, make you like itself. Instead be transformed through the renewal of your perceptions. Seek every opportunity to see with new eyes, hear with new ears, try out new paths, feel things for the first time and let them sink into your heart. From your heart, your mind, your senses, and your intuition, let yourself be continuously renewed. In this way, you will know what to do, how to act, how to choose the good, the true, the beautiful, the holy, and the whole.”
From the Apostle Paul, from Amy Frykolm, maybe even a little bit from me, there’s advice for this age or any other.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching – sometimes he intends to. The sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.
