Sermons
THE NEW CODE
TEXT: Luke 16: 14-17nRSV
JESUS’ TEACHING
Jesus has been teaching by means of a string of parables with Pharisees in the crowd. Many of these are about money—but only on the surface—Jesus has no interest in effective money management. What these parables all have in common is that they either offend or confuse the Pharisees in the audience. The parables say, one after the other: You just don’t get it!
The constant theme of Jesus’ teachings is that we must not become invested in this world but rather in the kingdom of God.
Just prior to our text, Jesus says one cannot serve two masters; you cannot serve God and money. Our text starts out with a clear revelation of the Pharisees’ character:
The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him.
Note that this works just as well rearranged, which is fair to do:
The Pharisees ridiculed him, because they were lovers of money.
This is a harsh accusation, because based on what Jesus had just said, they were not lovers of God, though they pretended to be.
SELF-JUSTIFICATION
Jesus says, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others,” by which he means “you don’t seem to have any interest in pleasing the Lord whatsoever.”
What does it mean today? Who are the people who justify themselves in the sight of others? Well, that’s everyone! We each go to a lot of psychological work to appear “okay,” even when we’re falling apart. It is our norm to grow up learning how to create a self that is likable, lovable, respectable, competent, and/or reliable. To grow up American is to learn how to build a reputation and protect it.
I once knew a doctor who, when asked about how long he thinks he’ll keep working, liked to say, “I just hope I die before I outlive my reputation.” He was joking, but I think we can admit that for many people, their reputation is the summation of their sense of worth and value. Serving your reputation is one way of justifying yourself before others, and we all do it.
What was specific to the Pharisees was that their good reputations were entirely associated with righteousness and devotion. They were referred to as “the Righteous Ones” but we don’t if that was what others called them or if it was just a name they made for themselves. The point is, they liked being thought of as holy ones, or righteous ones. Jesus makes it clear again and again that they’re not actually righteous at all, but just playing games with themselves in order to feel morally superior to others. And here may be our real connect with today.
HOLIER THAN THOU
Whoever justifies oneself to what appears to be the moral high ground can play “holier than thou.” That is what the Pharisees did and it is just as simple as being competitive. It was religious one-upsmanship, nothing more. Little boys playing King of the Hill, Religious Version.
If I see you praying in the temple for three minutes; I pray for five minutes.
If I see you washing your hands before eating, the I wash my hands twice both before and after eating. If you bring a casserole to the synagogue potluck that feeds 12, I bring one that feeds 24.
Competition, one-upsmanship, besting your opponents—it’s all the same self-serving drive that makes us anxious to “keep up with the Joneses” and it can play out in our religious circles just as easily. Do you see it? As long as you are at least a little bit better than the people of your village or neighborhood, you can feel like you are in fact holy. This is self-justification, and Jesus rejects it.
I guess it’s a good thing we left it behind in the first century and it has never darkened our door since, right? Good thing there’s never been anything like Christian one-upsmanship in the Church, right?
Do you remember the Church Lady character from Saturday Night live? Perfect humorous example. Outwardly pious but inwardly a fiercely-competitive Pharisee hell-bent on proving herself to be “just a little bit” better than everyone else.
So yes, we have the same drive in us and we are equally fallen. I know many ministers who went into professional ministry so that they could “justify themselves” before others—as a way to get respect, a way to feel morally superior, a way to counterbalance a misspent youth, or a way to atone for past indiscretions—all are rotten reasons to enter ministry and the Church rightfully tends to sift these people out.
The only legitimate reason to go into official ministry is the calling which comes from God through the people, not one’s inner sense of worthiness.
Even at the local level, did you know that the quickest way to disqualify yourself for office is to ask for it? “I’ve been going to this church for 15 years, it’s about time I get to be an elder and exert my influence on things!” Nope.
I learned recently that bishops in the Catholic Church take—as part of their vows—a promise “not to seek higher office.” I think that is wonderful. Anyone who campaigns for arch-bishop or pope is automatically disqualified! That’s a great rule, because it undercuts the very heart of Pharisaism, which is the drive to justify ourselves, to move ourselves up, morally speaking.
But the church isn’t alone in producing the morally superior types. All societies do it. In Communist China, you know there must be party circles where people try to outdo each other with demonstrations of their passionate love for the State. In North Korea, citizens vie to appear more lovingly loyal to the great leader. In the secular west, we are riddled with self-righteous Pharisees that have nothing whatsoever to do with religion. Do you know them?
They are: •More concerned about the environment than you and more dedicated to reducing their carbon footprint. Look—see my Prius, solar panels, and fully off-the-grid composting system? What are you doing to save the planet?•Holy Vegans. 100%. And locavores to boot. Take that, meateaters.•Fashionistas. Can you even believe what she was wearing? And that hair? Lord, thank God that I am not like her.
• And politically? Let’s not start. There’s more liberal than thou, more conservative than thou, more knowledgeable than thou.
All of these are evidence of deeply ingrained Pharisaism—all are examples of how we are driven to fight our way—king of the hill style—to stake our claim on the moral high ground. It is what makes politics so exhausting.
JESUS UNDERMINES HUMAN HOLINESS
Jesus undermines it all, saying:
What is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.
There can be no such thing as religious ambition. It can only get us into trouble.
There is no trusting in our own justifications. We are right to call them out as self-righteousness and to expose them when and where we can. Jesus never stopped using the word “hypocrites” toward those who were trying to make their own way, build themselves up, and pretend to occupy the moral high ground.
This is why Jesus teaches his disciples (and us) to seek to be servants, slaves, and the last of all who can only be exalted by God. All who wait upon the Lord and depend upon his exaltation will be justified. All who would take the Lord’s work of justification onto themselves do so at their peril.
We don’t have our hands on the wheel, when it comes to righteousness.
Jesus drives for us. The only way we get to our destination is letting go of the wheel and letting Jesus do all the justification.
“But I want to feel that I’m okay with God!” “Is it so wrong to do some good things in this world so I can feel that?”
Go ahead so long as you don’t think you’re winning brownie points for doing so. Go ahead as long as you simply feel free—liberated—to give.
God loves a cheerful giver, not one who gives in order to get.
BAPTISM
The sacrament of baptism is more than a washing away of sins; it is a resignation of both sin and righteousness from our own hands. We die to sin, but also to any and all attempts at self-justification.
In baptism, we proclaim that our trust—our absolute and total TRUST—is in Christ alone. We die to our need to keep our hands on the wheel. In baptism, we profess our trust in the promises of God, made manifest in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.
Baptism proclaims that we live now beyond the Law in a state of grace. We are saved and can do nothing to add to it or even to take from it—it is God’s work, God’s responsibility, and God’s glory alone.
God must do the work, not us.
“But Pastor, you’re saying that someone can do whatever they want and still get saved? Really? People would sin like crazy if that were true!”
Perhaps, but that isn’t asking the right question. The right question is not “What can someone get away with?” but rather, now that one lives in a state of grace and is forgiven their sins, what is it you really want to do? Anyone who knows God’s love and who loves God even a little in return is going to find their desires reformed as well. The more, the better. We come, by the Holy Spirit, to want what God wants for us. We come to loathe and despise the things that grieve the Lord’s heart. We find ourselves wanting all things that contribute to his glory and a growing distaste for sin. We want sin less and less.
Baptism is the profession of God’s work being done for us, within us, and carrying out the transformation of our souls now and for eternity. In baptism, we are dead to the old ways and resurrected to the new code of Christ.
As we remember our baptisms this morning may we all reinvest deeper and deeper shares of our trust in him, his work, and his kingdom above all else. †
“COST COUNTING”
TEXT: Luke 14: 25-33 nRSV
THE STORY
Large crowds followed Jesus, but let’s be clear about who may have been in these crowds and what their assumptions and expectations were. In short, the followers are first century Jews. They have been living under Roman occupation for roughly a hundred years, and their highest hope was for a Messiah who would restore their independence.
Some of the followers were radicalized, looking only for a military leader who could assemble an effect army. Others were pious Pharisees, who believed that Israel’s success depended only upon the people remaining faithful to the Lord and his Law. Others were “sinners”—commoner Jews who had lost their connection with the Temple. Perhaps they hadn’t paid their tithes or were in some way deemed unfit by the leadership, but either way they were called sinners, which means wanderers. Although informally “excommunicated” from formal Judaism, they certainly hoped to find ways to stay within God’s good favor. Others, like the woman bent double whom we read about last week, followed to partake in Jesus’ now-famous healing powers. Also in the crowd are the twelve apostles, and dozens of disciples.
Jesus turns to them and says:
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
He calls them to count the cost of following him, and the bar is quite high:
- 1.Hate family
- 2.Hate your own life (psyche)
- 3.Give up all possessions
My wife Tara notices how often I use the word hate in the midst of sermons, and she rightly advises me to find some other wording. The word has become a powerful political word in recent years and there are usually better words to use. Except for here.
Jesus’ teaching is pure hyperbole; we would no more take this literally than we would cut off a hand once we’ve sinned. Like a good golf coach trying to correct a bad putter for constantly putting feet short of the hole, we are told to aim ten feet past the hole and put there.
Jesus calls all his followers to total commitment.
TOTAL COMMITMENT
The call to follow Christ, simply put, is all or nothing. It is presented as an absolute. There can be no part-time Christianity, no Christianity plus—as in, I follow Jesus, but I’m also informed by Buddha and the Eastern traditions. There is no such thing as Christian materialism, as in, I’m a Christian, but I’m more interested in this world than in Heaven.
To follow Jesus is to be totally committed or you don’t quite get it at all.
The first phrase of our vision statement—Deeply Committed—indicates the first aim of faithfulness, that we would grow into total commitment. “But wait, why doesn’t it say ‘totally committed’?” The problem with that is that everything you are today is less than everything you will be tomorrow, or even an hour from now, so we are always growing deeper. To be deeply committed means that we are regularly recommitting ourselves. It is total commitment without being able to feel like we’re done now or we have already totally arrived.
What does it look like to be totally committed and more deeply committed with every year? That is between you and our Lord. It would be a kind of idolatry if the church were to spell it out for you into a handful of steps—and we must be wary of any such recipes for spirituality—though they abound.
Yet each of us must live our life in relationship to God wrestling with this question: What does total commitment mean for me, O Lord? And yes, you and I are required to ask this question of Christ and to heed his leading.
A rich young ruler once asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Do you remember what Jesus told him? Sell all you have and give it to the poor so that you may have treasure in heaven.
Let’s here the qualifications again:
- 1.Hate family
- 2.Hate your own life
- 3.Give up all possessions
“Now Pastor, really, do we all have to to that—this could very quickly start to sound like Jim Jones and David Koresh stuff?”
Total commitment may be difficult for us to picture, and since I’ve already warned you against preachers who would try to dumb it down or otherwise spell it out for you—which is just another way of recreating the Law and becoming Pharisees—I’m still left with giving you a picture of total commitment. I think we might begin by looking at what it is not. I’ll suggest three ways churches have missed the mark.
“FAMILY” CHURCHES
Large crowds still follow.
I’ve been part of at least one—those churches that say “We’re all about families,” which always makes single people feel great. They’re quite popular churches because all families are just messed up enough to respond to promises of happier homes.
There’s nothing wrong with happier homes, of course, but once the gospel enterprise turns its focus toward becoming cozy suburbanites two steps ahead of the neighbors, it runs afoul of the calling to discipleship.
Yes, we all would like healing for broken relationships and equipping for life within the cabin comforts of hearth and home, but this is not the same thing as leaving all to follow Jesus.
HEALTH CHURCHES
We’ve all heard that people who attend church regularly live longer and people who pray tend to have fewer heart problems and score higher on basic happiness quizzes.
The idea that having some religion is good for you and your family has been regularly advanced. To follow Jesus because you think it makes your life better-balanced than it would be otherwise has been given a name: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.
Moral Therapeutic Deism is the religion that rationally makes sense, and its followers are reasonably Christian. It is the religion of American populism that speaks of “God” but politely declines mentioning Jesus because doing so is less than fully inclusive. It is a truncated, Christianity Lite, and is not so much discipleship as it is collective narcissism with a holy blessing.
MTD allows you to manage your own life in your own way while the local priests and pastors sprinkle a blessing over you for being nice people. This is the sacralization of our comfort zones, and behind the hypocritical mask of holiness is merely self-love seeking holy blessing.
To “hate our own life” as Jesus says is to forsake our own good for his good. We don’t hate “life itself” so much as we renounce our ego (psyche). We follow Jesus in spite of health questions or issues, not because of them.
WEALTH CHURCHES
Wealth churches are too much fun to criticize, so I’ll exercise some restraint. In short, they believe that we are a blessed people in Jesus and therefore Jesus wants us all to have more cash.
Because you’re “so special” in God’s eyes, he doesn’t want us living so much sacrificially as he does joyously and abundantly—so abundantly that we praise him if we can manage to rake in the dough and sing Hallelujah! as we roll around wallowing in it.
This is the most popular, most successful, and most egregiously un-Christlike discipleship I can imagine.
In these churches—some of them unspeakably huge, I’m sad to say—people are taught to prosper as a sign that their lives have been changed by Christ. Furthermore, personal prosperity and success become the center of their witness, which amounts to: “Follow Jesus and you’re financial dreams will come true.”
This is nothing short of heresy: worshipping Mammon and calling it Jesus.
Part of this same movement includes its shadow side—the anti-wealth churches. These still are focused on money but in the negative.
At what age to children learn that word that has power and individual will to ownership: “MINE!” You know that word. “Mine, mine, mine!” It is a normal part of childishness, but adults—especially Christian adults—are expected to outgrow it.
As a sophomore in college I went through a phase—yes, I was a Christian Communist—I believed that the total renunciation of possessions was closer to the call of Jesus than the ownership-based capitalism. I believed that Jesus was more in favor of an economic system that would redistribute wealth more evenly. It lasted about 5 months.
I concluded that I was wrong to center reality on economics at all, and that the transfer of wealth does nothing to solve the problems of wealth—it just changes who has the problem.
The anti-wealth pietism in Christianity can make some good points, but it too suffers from having the wrong focal point.
IN CHRIST ALONE
All of these ill-focused Christianities subvert the Word and calling of Christ. The only solution for human beings—the only hope we have—is found in Christ alone.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it all so effectively in his book, The Cost of Discipleship. In brief, we Christians who mean to represent the gospel have a very tough sell. To quote Bonhoeffer:
When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
That is a far cry from the popular alternatives:
- •Come be healed and well!
- •Come fix your family!
- •Come and be prosperous!
- •Come and be holier than others!
When we follow Jesus we are given one thing: a cross, a crucifixion devise. We are called to come and die.
In Christ alone is our hope. Alone, alone, alone!
All else is snake oil—Jesus plus, etc.
May God help us all to appropriately reorder our lives as we grow toward total commitment—deeper and deeper with each day, week, month, and year.
And may God lead us in taking others by the hand and walking them gently and lovingly into the ever-deeper waters. †
“BENT DOUBLE”
TEXT: Luke 13: 10-21 NRSV
LEGALISM
Is there anything more frustrating in this life than people who would stop good things—even miracles—from occurring because of some legalistic technicality?
The very idea of justice being thwarted by some tiny, persnickety technicality can trigger outrage. A cop forgets to read Miranda rights during an arrest, a signature on a wrong line prevents key evidence from admissibility, biases and prejudices vented along the way—all can take the clearest, open-and-shut case and turn it into months of nitpicking definitions and exorbitant lawyers’ fees.
We can see the same thing happen in reverse—some good thing thwarted by a technicality as it today’s text.
Jesus elsewhere accuses religious leaders of “straining out gnats while swallowing camels.” This is not only a humorous hyperbole but a scathing criticism of legalism in general. For eighteen years a poor woman has suffered being bent double, but synagogue president was not having any miracles in his synagogue during the sabbath.
BENT DOUBLE
Camptocormia is the medical term for bent spine syndrome—being bent double and unable to stand. The condition is closely associated with Parkinson’s disease and also muscular dystrophy. Luke the physician didn’t have these terms so he just called it “a spirit,” which in this case means of unknown cause or origin. Jesus sees her and obviously has great compassion. He knows better than anyone that it is the sabbath. Notice that he does not cast out the spirit—this is not an exorcism—nor does he otherwise exhibit any kind of healing ritual. He simply announces, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”
The word for ailment is literally weakness or frailty, as in “Woman, you are set free from your weakness and frailty.” He announces that her healing is complete; she just has to recognize the truth of it and stand up straight.
Notice how simply Jesus heals her. “Woman, you are set free from your weakness and frailty.” He simply announces that her healing is complete; she just has to recognize the truth of it and stand up straight, which she does when he touches her.
It’s not about technique—the hows and whats of healing practices—knowing the right procedures, prayers, or mumbo jumbo. It is simply accomplished by Christ. It’s not doing the right thing in order to be healed. Jesus asks nothing of her. He doesn’t even ask her if she believes in him; he simply announces her healing and she is healed.
It’s also not about the Mosaic law or the traditions of the elders; it’s not about the Sabbath; it is simply about justice—doing what is right regardless.
SYNAGOGUE DRAMA
The role of synagogue president is to make sure that everything in the synagogue takes place according to Scripture and the traditions of the elders. It seems he doesn’t seem to care or even notice that the woman’s life has been transformed. As soon as the woman stands up straight he steps forward to rebuke her for coming to be healed on the Sabbath.
"There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day."
“Too late,” she says. Maybe not, but we have a case of a religious man who is so focused on doing what is right and proper that he totally misses the miracle before his eyes. He is blind to the work of Christ, and blinded by his adherence to legal precedents. He says, “There is nothing in the Presbyterian Book of Order about this kind of healing, but first it should have been brought before the Session. This just isn’t the Presbyterian way!”
A JUST REBUKE
Jesus stands above rebuke. In him we see a spirit that is beyond the law, one with authority over and above Scripture and all the traditions of the elders. Jesus stands above the law, and we should as well. If that sounds a bit disturbing, it’s because in our regular experience, someone who thinks they’re above the law is rightly accused of unmerited privilege or even narcissism. We think this because most who play at being above the law are essentially anti-law—people who violate the law in order to take something for themselves. We are right to be opposed to such attitudes. Even so, there are others who, technically, act above the law but for good purposes.
We have no problem with ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars driving through red traffic signals when in the line of duty. Can we even imagine someone saying, “Well yes, the fire department did keep my house from burning down, but… they did drive through several red lights, AND they parked the truck in a curb that was clearly marked red for no parking, so…I guess their authority is less than perfect.”
Likewise, Jesus proclaims that the divine work of healing knows no bounds from the law. He rebukes the synagogue leaders, calling them hypocrites who would gladly fetch an animal out of danger on the sabbath and cut themselves moral slack for doing so, but when Jesus miraculously heals a human being, they find something to gripe about. Paul puts it well in Galatians 5:22-33:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.
BIGGER STORY
There is a bigger story at work here than the mere healing of the woman. The healing presents us with a motif that plays out on many levels.
The story in not just about the woman but about those who are like her. It is about Israel, bent double an incapable of rescuing itself from either sin or Roman occupation.
It is about first century Judaism, which was bent double in obedience to the law and the traditions surrounding the law that had long accumulated to become laws of their own. And not merely laws, but the very substance of Jewish faith, such that they, bent double with eyes toward the ground, were blind to the blossoming messianic ministry before them.
It is about humankind, bent double with sin and hopelessly without direction, unable to stand up straight and perceive its salvation.
It is about our world today, bent double with war, injustice, greed, and every possible combination of the seven deadly sins.
It is about you and me, for within each of us there are mechanisms that keep us bent double, self-absorbed, self-interested, and incapable of rightly descrying the landscape of life and reality.
Like the woman, we and our world utterly depends upon that same power to stand us up straight. That power is announced by Christ and is Christ.
We too do well to live above and beyond mere law in service of the higher good God desires for us and for all people. When our focus rises above the law and rests on the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—we act above and beyond the law, but in the spirit of the law. When our heart and will is drawn forward to be near and like Christ, these fruits grow in us and become our motivation. Our wants and desires are transformed and we come to serve God’s kingdom by doing what we want most sincerely. Doing goodworks—acts of mercy, kindness, peace, joy, love, etc.—are no longer religious duties requiring personal effort; they are our heart and we just do them because it becomes our nature to do them. No self-righteousness added or acquired.
MUSTARD SEEDS & YEAST
Jesus says this kingdom is like a mustard seed that grows into a large tree, or a measure of yeast that fills out the whole lump of dough. What exactly does this mean? From something very small a very large effect is precipitated.
You’ve probably heard of the Butterfly Effect. In 1972, Edward Lorenz, one of the pioneers of Chaos Theory, gave a speech entitled: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? In chaos theory, very small details in initial conditions can play a huge role down the line.
We also know it as the ripple effect: a tiny stone dropped into the water spreads out and has multiple effects as it travels.
The good that Jesus did in his humble ministry as a backwater, itinerant rabbi reverberated out and changed the world. You and I are called to be a part of that same, ongoing ministry and we should be bold in proclaiming its power and affects.
We too announce the presence of Christ because he is here.
We announce—simply pronounce—that healing has come because he has died to conquer all sin and death.
We proceed gratefully in the light of that proclamation pursuing justice and healing because he has announced it and he still empowers it.
We renounce legalism and our adherence to it. We renounce the false securities it promises and seek instead to live by the Holy Spirit, who will turn our hearts to bear fruit as their new nature.
When the Holy Spirit is at work, we too have butterfly wings. We too are drops in the water which have enormous, unforeseen, and immeasurable affects.
May God’s touch stand us all upright!
UNFORGIVABLE SIN
TEXT: Luke 12: 8-12 nRSV
MINING THE TEXT
The role of a preacher has been compared to that of a miner—one who goes down into the mines each week to reemerge with gems and nuggets to enrich the community. As your pastor, it is my role to go down into the mines of Scripture each week and bring up some gold, if and when I can. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to serve you and The Lord in this way.
I confess, this past week has been a tough one in the mines. When I survey a chapter seeking to find the sermon text, I am always struck by something new. It may be something hard and disturbing, or a phrase I never before noticed, but for me, the thing I need to explore more deeply usually becomes the text I deliver to you on Sunday mornings.
This week has been a difficult one in the mines. It’s been a hard week and I have been extremely heavy-hearted—in tears, even—over the terrors of the unforgivable sin: blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.
UNFORGIVABLE
In the gospels of Mark and Matthew, this warning takes place in response to the Pharisees, who proclaim that Jesus casts out demons not by the finger of God but by the power of Satan. These Jewish leaders should have been the ones to recognize Jesus’ messianic ministry and character. They’d been waiting and praying for it for centuries. Now here it was blossoming right before them and they refuse to believe their eyes. While they certainly believed only God could perform such miraculous signs they couldn’t bring themselves to believe that this Jesus—who was so unorthodox in his methods—could possibly be from the same God that produced them, their traditions, and their Jewish authorities. Instead, they proclaimed to the crowds that his power to heal was from Satan. They called God Satan. This may be the blasphemy that is unforgivable, but it may be other things as well. To understand, we might briefly survey the interpretations through church history over what constitutes the unforgivable sin.
Luke’s readers were living in an early church which was persecuted—largely by synagogues—for Jesus’ name. Disciples were taken to trial and charged. It may well be that for them, the unforgivable sin was understood to be denying Christ—throwing him under the bus to save their own skins. This is certainly an offense to Christ and to his Church.
Heresies arose immediately, and many of these distortions of the apostolic gospel were called denigrations of the Holy Spirit. The Church split them out or split away from them in time.
Once the Church become the centralized power of the Holy Roman Empire, Church leaders wielded Peter’s keys of the kingdom at will, determining who did and who did not receive God’s forgiveness. To deny the Church’s authority was blasphemous and unforgivable.
With the Reformation came new interpretations. Martin Luther saw the unforgivable sin as rejecting grace by clinging to the law. He quotes Ephesians:
You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. —Ephesians 5:4
John Calvin made it clear that only those who had received the power and presence of the Holy Spirit were capable of the unforgivable sin. Unbelievers were actually immune:
Shall any unbeliever curse God? It is as if a blind man were dashing against a wall. But no man curses the Spirit who is not enlightened by him.
For Calvin, and many since, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is apostasy: the willful defection from and/or renunciation of faith in Christ. Apostates are those who had the faith but abandoned it.
POPULAR APOSTASY
From the Woodstock generation onward, America has witnessed the steady decline of church-going in general and the meteoric rise of people becoming “nones” (not nuns)—those who now claim no religious affiliation whatsoever.
In my research this week, down in the mines, I found my way into the lower circles of Hell—the internet—and discovered some deeply disturbing trends.
Have you heard of The Blasphemy Challenge? On YouTube, disaffected ex-Christians and otherwise anti-Christians post videos of themselves “denying the Holy Spirit.” It’s heart-rending! One after another, young, beautiful people calmly face the camera and pronounce their disbelief in all things Christian by going right to the unforgivable sin. “I hereby deny the Holy Spirit—see you in Hell!”
To be clear, they are not blaspheming the Holy Spirit though they intend to. They are textbook examples of Calvin’s blind men dashing against a wall. They cannot blaspheme the Light because they’ve never yet been enlightened.
Singer Tori Amos was know for wearing a t-shirt at her concerts with the moniker Recovering Christian, as though faith was something to grow out of or evolve beyond.
Darker still, down in the seventh circle of Hell, I found The Clergy Project. This is an organization of thousands of clergy—ministers, pastors, and teachers—who have lost their faith. They do not believe in God, Christ, or anything resembling faith. In fact, if you believe even a little bit of it, you are not allowed to be a member. Some of these people with names like Dan Barker and Bart Campolo speak across the country for their new “enlightened” perspective, rejoicing in their liberation from superstitious thinking.
I wrote to the president of the Clergy Project, quoting author and pastor Frederick Buechner, who says:
Whether your faith is that there is a God or is not a God, if you don’t doubt it from time to time, what you call faith is something less than faith.
I am struck by how fundamentalistically-sure they are that there is no God, and wondered whether or not they sometimes doubt their atheism? His reply is not hopeful. Among other things, he says:
The Clergy Project now has nearly one thousand participants from every state in the US and nearly fifty countries around the world. We are former pastors, priests, nuns, monks, rabbis, imams, assorted pagans and even a Native American medicine woman. No longer holding supernatural beliefs of any kind is a prerequisite to joining our online support community… Our participants are free to return to their former superstitious ways at any time but of course they would then be ineligible to remain as Clergy Project participants. A Clergy Project participant who desires to return to religion is an extremely rare exception, and again, he or she would be free and even required to depart from our support community.
For the life of me I can’t imagine what these people have given up Christ for.
HOPE FROM HELL
But do not despair. I know many of you have family—children, grandchildren, siblings—who were rightly raised. You took them to church, they were baptized, went to camp, participated in the youth group, and then sometime during college decided that it was all less than true. I can only imagine how heavily that ways on so many of your hearts!
Yet there is good news. Theologian Karl Rahner reminds us that there is no true apostasy in the world anymore because the whole world has been irretrievably affected by Christ and Christendom. Those shunning Christ are like adolescents. Teenagers are still dependent upon their parents and become resentful of that dependency so they express it through rebellion. Remember, rebellion is often just another form of dependence. They are still in orbit around Christ though they fight it.
As for those who have embraced so-called secular humanism or “pure science” as their functional faith, I would quote the Apostle Paul:
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. —1 Corinthians15:19
The world at times may seem to be increasingly hostile toward Christianity, but remember that this is the way it has always been—even from the first century. As for your and my family and friends who were believers and have abandoned the faith, are we to say that they are now unredeemable because they’ve abandoned Christ? No, we are not to say that, because we do not know. We can and ought to pray for them and to meet them as gentle, loving witnesses, but they are not ours to save, they are the Lord’s.
The good news is that God holds many in his hands who wriggle and doubt. Our hope remains in a very big God who sees what we do not and knows what we never shall know. Again, the Apostle Paul:
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. —Romans 8: 38-39
I am convinced that God has many in his hands whose salvation you and I cannot perceive—nor do we need to. His hands have reached down even into the depths of the seventh circle of Hell to retrieve from the fire the unbelieving, the undeserving, and the ungrateful. We are right simply to entrust them all to his care, even as we hope ourselves for that same salvation in Jesus’ name.
Fear not, He’s got us. †
RELIGIOUS TROUBLES
TEXT: Luke 11: 37-44 NRSV
Pharisees R Us
Jesus criticized the Pharisees. They were not a formal organization or political party; they were simply a group of well-meaning, good intentioned Jews who sought to keep Israel well-aligned with the Torah and its traditional interpretations. They were the “righteous ones” of the day—the guardians of public morality. Funny how Jesus reserves his harshest rebukes for the very ones trying hard to be good Jews and keep everyone else aligned with the Jewish religion.
The problem wasn’t their good intentions and desire to follow Torah and please the Lord; the problem was that all of their observances took the place of genuine faith. The outward observances failed to engage the heart.
As we approach Lent 2019, we need to be aware that we all have an inner Pharisee—there are things that turn us into guardians of the public morality. We need to examine ourselves in this light.
Outward Observances Fail to Engage the Heart
I think we know that outward observance are insufficient. Forever we’ve been saying that going to church alone doesn’t save anyone. It was put very well a hundred years ago by the evangelist Billy Sunday:
Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
Still, the outward appearances persist and can even dominate our spirituality. There’s a great painting by Norman Rockwell called “Easter Morning.” What makes it fascinating is not only the squirming father and the envious son, but the sanctimonious posture of the wife:
Since then, we’ve come to literally wearing our faith on our sleeves. Many of these are atrocious and build up the believer up and against everyone else:
It’s no better to wear it on your car. Bumper stickers do not win souls and even cheapen the sacred message, diminishing it into dumbed-down slogans or prideful rah-rah-isms unbecoming of the Christian call to humility and service.
Altogether, these expressions amount to a kind of piety which is a false piety. It is party spirit for the Church—and there must be no Christian pride parades ever. The calling of faith is a call to humility and service, not personal pride or the glories of the Church. To glorify either self of church is nothing short of idolatry. Such piety is only there to boost the self-importance of an insecure believer.
Piety Which Boosts Self-importance
Piety is more than simply devotion to God; it is that passion for righteousness that drives the zealous in their campaigns as guardians of the public morality.
Good causes can breed bad attitudes. There is little in society ultimately more dangerous than a zealot armed with one—and perhaps only one—virtue.
Remember Carrie Nation? She was a figurehead of the Prohibition and was known for smashing pubs and bars to bits.
The problem with such piety is that it can lead even to hatred. We see it widespread today in the popular code of cultural righteousness known as political correctness. It is nothing less than piety, though it is a secular piety.
It’s hard to top George Carlin’s comment on this:
“Political correctness is America's newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control people's language with strict codes and rigid rules. I'm not sure that's the way to fight discrimination. I'm not sure silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech.”
Sometimes, even fools and clowns produce pearls of wisdom.
There’s another great word for this: sanctimonious, which means making a show of being morally superior to others. Again, sanctimony—and its twin sister Pretentiousness—can breed hatred. The bluenosed moralists of the early 20th century are hardly a match for today’s “enlightened” or “woke” zealots. It’s no longer “morality” or “righteousness” on their banner, but “social justice” or “equality.” These virtues (and they are) are wielded by activists with the same, destructive zeal.
It tends to make the righteous ones rather smug. They used to call it “Holier Than Thou,” but today it is something like “More WOKE Than Thou.”
The problem with all moral guardians is that under the surface we see the inherent drive to self-serve, and moralization merely as a means of self-advancement. It’s just a power-game. We all play in our own way. You and I can be triggered by certain politicians speaking their tiny minds on CNN. We catch headlines that make our righteous blood boil. We can become righteously angry.
Our righteous causes inevitably lead to hatred, division, civil wars, and a total loss of perspective on the whole picture of our world. We too cause others to walk over whitewashed sepulchres— defiled as we march for righteousness.
Not all that appears good is good.
Pollution Which Appears Clean and Wholesome
Guardians of the public morality tend to engage in Newspeak—renaming things in order to assert greater control and advance their moral agendas. Often it is a matter of making something ugly look virtuous—whitewash on a gravestone.
The Nazis of Germany, the Soviet Russians, North Korea—all wage their holy crusades by propaganda. Billboards and posters of happy, healthy families waving the flag of their cause. Underneath is totalitarianism and the ugliest abuses of political power in history.
In America today, the work is done through entertainment media—movies, TV, and the internet. Worst of all: advertising. Doctors who recommend cigarettes in ads from the 50s and 60s now seem humorous. Today we see the American pieties-du-jour plastered on movie screens and featured in Super Bowl commercials. They scream at us: EQUALITY! FEMINISM! RACISM! GAY LIFE! RECYCLING! TRANS RIGHTS! SAVE THE PLANET! GENDER NEUTRALITY! and, ironically, DON’T SMOKE!
Goodness can be used to support evil. Today’s guardians of public morality are today’s Pharisees. In hearing them out we must take pains to sift out all that is false about them—the outward observances that substitute for real moral substance. The racism that pretends it is traditional Americanism, the neglect of the poor and the truly oppressed at home and around the world vaunted as good ol’ suburban living, the portrayal of one’s political bubble—be it left or right—as the only true seat of righteousness—all are whitewashed sepulchres to be avoided.
We all have a Pharisee inside and must take care with our judgments. We all walk over the whitewashed graves every day. We are all defiled and defiling.
Jesus calls us to live a simple life of love and humble service. We can do no good without God. We must beware not to think of our good causes and righteous indignation as a form of holiness, but rather part of our flaws, our sins, and our inescapable pharisaism. We too easily raise Hell by seeking what seems just or righteous on the surface. Many would do well to—literally—shut the Hell up. †