Sermons
“The Basis of Community"
Paul the missionary preferred to be a pioneer. He preferred starting new projects to second or third-stage development of a project. Paul was a church planter and did not like to plant where someone else had already planted. His calling was to plant new churches among the Gentiles, and at this he excelled extraordinarily. Throughout this study of Romans, we have read how Paul put the good news of Jesus into perspective. He truly is the first Christian theologian, and he powerfully expounded through the Old Testament Scripture the full revelation of Christ.
At Rome, Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians resided together—one Lord, one faith, one baptism—one people. Paul was the first to energetically tear down any wall separating Christians from Christians based on ethnicity or religious background. Because Christ is all in all, there is no legitimate justification for separation. Christ has born in His own flesh those former differences. Because of the cross, we are one in the Spirit and one in the Lord.
ROMANS 15: 1-7
1 We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. 2 Each of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor. 3 For Christ did not please Himself; but, as it is written, “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” 4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. 5 May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, 6 so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 7 Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.†
“Sooooorrryyy!”
French existentialist philosophers of the last century—guys like Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre—grieved that only other academics read their papers, so they began to write stories and plays as a means to agitate the masses. One of Sarte’s plays is called “No Exit.” It is a picture of Hell in which three people share a hotel room. That’s it—three people, because they are all so utterly broken and distant from God, create Hell for one another.
This same point is made with most excellent humor by one of the great comic sketches of our time: the “Sorry” sketch by Carol Burnett, in which a couple and her mother attempt to spend a pleasant eventing playing the boardgame “Sorry.” Of course, like Sartre’s characters, these three are so competitive and filled with deep-seated hostilities that their pleasant game is undermined by fierce competition.
With such over-the-top spite and gloating, they ring the bell at each other and exult in saying, “Sooooorrryy!” It is comic gold, up there with Abbot and Costello and Monty Python.
It’s just a game, but the over competitive spirit sucks away all the joy and skews everyone’s perspective.
Lombardi is Wrong
We Netflixed a short series on Donald Trump’s earlier career—we needed a good follow-up to “Tiger Man”—and a couple of his comments really caught my ear. This younger Donald Trump said he believed there were two kinds of people in this world: predators and prey. He believed the path to success requires a killer instinct. As he observes the world, there are the competitors and the non-competitors, and in every contest, it is the competitors who come out on top.
I imagine he would have agreed with Coach Vince Lombardi’s famous quote: “Winning isn’t everything; it is the only thing.”
One of the ideas that has shaped the modern world is Charles Darwin’s Natural Selection. Boiled down to a formula, it is the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, and has blossomed into the western idea of rugged individualism and self-reliance that has put America on top of the world.
Now I’m not knocking the President here. The role of any president is to help the nation preserve itself and to persevere in its mission and values. Remembering Romans 13 from a few weeks ago, even Nero rebuilt Rome and God has these people in place as secondary agents of His providence and order. Our presidents are not spiritual leaders; they are competitors (or have you never seen a party debate?), and we expect our nation’s leaders to serve our national interests.
Competitiveness still defines excellence in our society. Our education system is designed to foster self-reliance and competition. Colleges are still ranked by how competitive they are—the more competitive, the harder to get in and the higher prestige of the degrees. (Let me be clear: this is not all bad! We raise children to become independent so they, in time, can build nests of their own).
Even so, the human value of competitiveness has clear downsides. For one, it fosters a view of humanity that categorizes people as winners or losers without much in between, and that is an extremely immature spiritual worldview.
The gospel runs directly against this worldview—let’s be clear. Jesus is the last person the world looks to for “winning”(spoken like Charlie Sheen). Ted Turner, the CNN mogul, said it plainly: “Christianity is a religion for losers.” And he is right. Jesus is the ultimate loser, in the worldly sense. Think of it: he did no wrong, only good, and yet he got crucified for the sins of the world. It is impossible to imagine a more extreme “patsy” in the sense of a poor loser who takes the guilt rap for someone else’s crimes.
“Blessed are the meek, the poor, the defeated,” says Jesus. What is He saying but “Blessed are the Losers of this world”? The Bible announces, from Genesis through Revelation, that the favor of God is not with the winners, but with the losers: the non-competitive, the also rans, and the prey rather than the predators.
How on Earth, then, did Christianity—when and how did The Church—ever come to adopt and give in to this thinking? Christianity is for winners? I’m sorry Joel Osteen and Fellowship of Christian Athletes—you’re dead wrong!
Certainly it is in our animal nature—our human nature—to self-serve and self-preserve. The “looking out for Number One” code is as natural to us as are the drives to eat, sleep, reproduce, and survive—but why and how did followers of Jesus and His teachings ever come to make a kind of virtue of it?
Psychologically, this hyper-competitive attitude is appropriate to adolescence, but not adulthood. We indulge this human instinct as sports fans—which is good, clean fun—but when it comes to how we live our lives and how we view other human beings, it quickly reveals itself to be heresy. Context matters. In shallow things—Super Bowl, game of Monopoly, tennis, golf, bridge—competitiveness is fine. We play to win, but we remember that it’s just a game (Sorry, Vince Lombardi). In deeper, serious matters of life, we adopt a different code, the gospel: agapé love, letting others win, looking out for number 100, number 2000, and number 7.8 billion.
Beyond Number One
As followers of Jesus, we have to get beyond the idea of “looking out for number one.” What does life after number one look like? It looks like true community, and it is exactly what God calls us to—and Paul addresses it in today’s text.
15:1 “We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.”
“Pleasing ourselves” translates to looking out for number one. True community demands that we get beyond that code.
Part of looking out for number one includes caring for our own—our family and friends—this, too, is part of self-preservation. It grows tiresome to my ears to hear popular churches drone on about being great “family churches,” as if loving your own children constituted some kind of Christian virtue. Be clear: it does not. Yes, we should love our spouses, love our children and raise them in wisdom, but this is not Christianity; it is just our nature. Most mammals do something similar out of instinct alone. Should we really think that if we act in line with our animal instincts it is Christian goodness? No.
Love of family is just self-love once-removed. Jesus reminds us that everyone loves those who love them back. Just as it is no particular accomplishment-of-love to love our friends, so it is nothing special to love our own children. Atheists do the same and do it every bit as well. It is collective self-preservation—a form of self-love.
Also instinctual is our drive to be in community at all. This, too, is just that—an instinct—the animal herd instinct by which the individual is less vulnerable to being preyed upon. The gathering instinct is, in part, a way of self-preservation by hiding out within the bigger crowd.
So just because you’re part of a church community doesn’t make you some kind of a saint. You may be just looking out for number one within the warmth of the herd. To love one’s church is not necessarily the same thing as loving the Lord of the Church.
Yet another element in natural selection is seen in the ways we group—the ways we form our cliques and support groups. We tend to gather like with like.
Decades ago, when I was a youth pastor in Oklahoma, we built up a small groups ministry. At one point, we had a demographic bubble—30 girls in the 8th-grade girls’ covenant group—which is not a covenant group, but a fellowship group. I did what had to be done and announced that there would be three girls’ covenant groups for 8th grade. Girls—and some of their parents—protested wildly. We held a big powwow with everyone gathered together. Girls were scared to death that they might get separated from their friends, so they let me know how they would like to divide the groups; namely, a cool girls’ group, a slightly-less cool girls’ group, and an uncool girls’ group (they used different terms, of course). I refused and had to fend off rotten tomatoes as I explained that we were going to let God’s providence decide who would be in which group by pulling names from a fishbowl. Everyone disapproved at first, but by the end of the meeting, all accepted that God was in control, and there would be a reason why the groups lined up as they did.
There were shrieks of joy and tears of outrage as I pulled the names creating the new groups. We prayed and asked God to lead us all to understand why the groups took the shapes they did. Ultimately, everyone was fine and no replacements were made. The girls were extraordinarily brave through this, and their parents were nearly as brave.
The truth is, we hate this kind of thing because is violates our nature to group with people according to our own whim. We like to be with people like us. This too is part of self-love and self-preservation.
In Rome, Jewish Christians preferred other Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians preferred other Gentile Christians, and Paul seriously wants that kind of natural selection to end in Jesus’ name.
No Christian Elite
There can be no such thing as elite Christianity. We can have no elites, no “A Team”-ism in our grouping. The Church from day one has been patently anti-elitist.
The Church can never be a church of the intelligent, or the pious, or the highly-committed, or the woke, or the terribly sincere. The church cannot encourage social climbing, or gathering the strong with the strong, successful with successful, or mighty with mighty. There is no equivalent to the Billionaires’ Club in the Body of Christ—no country club-ism; the Church is the anti-country club.
It is a hospital for broken sinners. A Losers’ Club, not a winners’ club, as in Jesus’ -parable of the Great Banquet. The Church is a gathering of the gatherable.
Whenever we feel that human instinct that whispers to us, “Let’s gather like with like,” we need to recognize it, call it out, and pursue the other path.
Even so, the Church through the world has a lot of work to do on this, for we are exactly what I’ve said we should not be: gatherings of the successful, or the intelligent, or the especially pious, the especially sincere, the most committed, the most woke, the most popular. These are our denominations, and these gatherings—when taken seriously—violate the word and spirit of Christ. Look again at John 17 and read Christ’s heart for unity there. As Paul says:
“We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.” Romans 15:1
This is the code of love, the code of Christianity, the code of the basic community that lives beyond looking out for number one.
While our denominations do indeed fiddle around with Ecumenical movements and efforts, these remain deeply flawed, usually looking to some center other than simple faith in Christ—be it politics, economics, or some other inessential center.
Our best hope for unity has little-to-nothing to do with our denominations, except that we begin by taking none of them too seriously.
The best work begins with us—with you and me—in our pews, our small groups and gatherings.
When we abandon be right, being correct, being winners, and simply confess that we are losers for Christ’s sake.
And we are losers for Christ’s sake, for Jesus loves losers and gives himself for the lost, the also rans, and numbers 100, 2,000, and 7.8 billion.
May we lose to this world in order that we attain to Christ’s win on our behalf. And may we in our winning win for others just as Christ has won, is winning, and shall win for us. †
“True Authority"
EASTER: April 11 2020
TEXT: Romans 13: 1-7
1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; 4 for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. 6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. †
Frustrated by Division
In America, year of polarization and politicization, even the coronavirus reveals our divisions. The mainstream media immediately lay blame on the closest politician of the opposing party. Let’s remember: the days of nonpartisan journalism are long gone.
Do we dare entertain the thought that this present pandemic might have a silver lining of drawing us together into unity against a common threat? I expect people will lean toward the desire of their heart. If people want unity, we’ll have unity. If they prefer division, we’ll remain in division.
I prefer unity and long for America to come together in love and brotherhood. One of Jesus’ disciples felt the burden of a divided Israel—and he, too, was upset by the division—so I’m going to talk about Judas.
I’m takin a few liberties with my portrait, but they are not unreasonable liberties. In fact, I draw them from the text and from what we know about the world in Jesus’ time. I suggest we should think of Judas as a true believer--one who truly believed that Jesus was the Messiah sent from God to redeem and unite Israel—the one to usher in the kingdom of God.
It makes perfect sense that Judas was one who loved and believed in Jesus. The gospel writers never fail to remind us that Judas is Jesus’ betrayer, but before the betrayal, he was just one of the gang. A little bit of an outsider, perhaps, because he was the only one of the twelve who came from Judea—down south, unlike the rest of them from Galilee—Judas may have come out of Jerusalem itself. So it’s like having a New Yorker—a thorough-going urbanite—among the rest of the guys from Bozeman, Montana. Judas probably didn’t even know how to fish!
Where did he really go wrong? I propose his chief shortcoming was that he believed in the government, by which I mean the Jerusalem Temple Establishment, and the Sanhedrin, making up the center of the holy Jewish leadership, which had been idolatry-free for 400 years. I think Judas believed Jesus was the Messiah and didn’t doubt that Jesus would succeed in his messianic mission.
But Israel was divided, and I think Judas must have been frustrated by this division. On the one hand, you have Jerusalem—the capital and center of Jewish life and authority; on the other hand, you have the Jewish people, the population, common folk spread out across the middle-eastern world. Of course Judas—being a New Yorker—considered Manhattan the absolute center of the known world. But most of the Jewish people, while honoring the Temple and respecting the leadership, lived with a great deal of disconnect. They likely felt that their common life had just become far too expensive. They saw excesses in the lifestyles of the Sadducees and ruling class, and probably felt that they had been sold out to Rome. Taxes and Temple tithes were ruining them.
The people followed John the Baptist as a man of God, and now followed Jesus in enormous numbers. The division between the Temple Establishment and Jesus, the man of the people, couldn’t have been sharper. And I think it drove Judas nuts.
Judas trusted the government, believed they were godly and God-fearing. I imagine him wanting to do everything he could to bring everyone together on the page, but every time Jesus taught in the temple—with the people and the leaders listening together—it always seemed that the division just stayed set in stone.
Judas thinks: “If only we could broker a meeting, I know these Jerusalem leaders would see that Jesus is the Messiah, the right one, the Man of God we have all been waiting for!”
Every day in the temple, they have to save face. If only we could set up a private meeting—just Jesus and a few of the key Sanhedrin leaders—I know they too would see what I—what we—have seen: that Jesus is the promised one, the Messiah of God.
And so he does it. Judas arranges a meeting with the best of intentions and the highest of hopes. He envisions them coming together, and Israel being whole and united—at least with a few key leaders on board, the scales would begin to tip, and we wouldn’t have this angry division between the people and the government.
So Judas says, “Let’s meet in Gethsemane—late—it will be peaceful and there won’t be crowds around to agitate all this win/lose attitude.”
So Judas sets up the rendezvous, and during Passover Jesus tells him to go get the meeting done, so he goes to lead the group from the Temple. Rather than two or three leaders, there’s a small army. “Just our security force,” says one of the leaders, “We really can’t just go walking around in public without some protection.” Judas nods.
They come up Gethsemane in the night, and Judas’ heart is warmed by the possibilities. He sees his dream—the dream of all Jerusalem and Jews everywhere—about to come true. Here would be an historic meeting between Jesus—the true Messiah/anointed one of God—and the Jewish leadership. He’d be able to proudly say, “It all started right here!”
Imagine his excitement at the approach, at the historical introduction. Judas is so pleased with himself—so convinced that he is doing something great and historical for Israel—that he goes up to Jesus and greets him with a brotherly kiss.
I believe that kiss was genuine from Judas. I think he loved Jesus and held true hope in his heart for Jesus’ move into power. I’m sure he considered that God had put this idea in his head so that this crippling division could be overcome. You might say that Judas felt like he was needed to help complete the plan.
His kiss on Jesus’ cheek is full of loyalty and genuine affection, but Jesus says, “Judas, your kiss betrays me.”
And then, we see the shock and horror on Judas’ face as the Jewish leaders cry, “Seize him!” It now dawns on Judas that he’s been duped. Jesus is led off as a criminal. The government got their man, and Judas was made the greatest fool in history for having trusted in them. What Judas thought was to be a great beginning was in fact the end of him.
Zealots
I think Judas’ chief flaw was simply that of trying to force God’s hand. He wanted Jesus to be known and respected, but felt that God—and Jesus—needed a little push in the right direction. While nobody today wants to be thought of as being “Judas-like,” this same instinct is alive and well throughout Christianity. There are people who think—albeit subtly—that God needs a little help from us in order to get the job done.
In Jesus’ day, they were called Zealots. Zealots were those who sought to incite the common folks to revolution against the occupying powers of Rome. They were the radicals, the revolutionaries of their day. The word zealot derives from a word meaning jealous or envious, but figuratively applies to people who feel very strongly about something—people who are driven in the cause of their choice.
Zealots are political activists who feel their cause or perspective ought to replace the problematic status quo. They have a better way, and they will make no compromises in getting their agenda advanced and established. They are dedicated—very dedicated—to their way, and history is replete with stories of holy wars and revolutions waged by such zeal.
The Barna Group—the world’s most sophisticated, Christian pollster—found that 52% of American Christians believe that the phrase, “God helps them who help themselves,” appears in the Bible. Well, guess what? Not only does it not appear in Scripture, but the very idea is antithetical to what Scripture consistently teaches and preaches.
“Helping ourselves,” to what we want, or what we think is right, is more often the cause of catastrophe than righteousness. The road to Hell is well-paved with such good intentions. The problem with zealots and zealotry is the same thing that was wrong with Judas: people trust themselves and their own action more than the action of God. Patience, temperance, and humility are condemned as weakness or inaction, rather than touted as eternal virtues worthy of all people of faith.
Roman Dogs
It’s not like the Roman Christians didn’t have an easy target. Nero was not a good human being, let alone a half-decent leader. Here’s a short list:
1. He poisoned Britannicus, son of Emperor Claudius and rightful heir to the throne.
2. He had his mother killed. She was the ultimate “stage mother” and pushed Nero up the ladder into power until he could stand it no more and offed her.
3. He set a fire because he wanted to build his own palace on a certain hill in Rome. He fiddled while Rome burned, and later blamed the Christians for the fire.
4. In John’s Revelation, the mark of the beast spells out his name (616, not 666).
Remember also that the Jews referred to the Gentiles as dogs. Not the good kind—like mine—but low, base creatures with no more morals than animals. How easy it would have been to justify organizing the people of faith—Jews and Christians together—against this horrible emperor! But Paul says no.
Paul allows no revolutionary spirit and discourages any attempts to overthrow the government—even an evil government—because Paul knows that God is provident and in charge of all things.
We are wrong to think of governments and leaders as completely Godless, for all who live and move in God’s world are under His watch and care. That includes Nero, Paul reminds us, and even tells us that God uses Nero to keep Rome well-ordered.
“Instituted by God” says Paul.
Zealots refuse to play with a whole deck. Most of us know that a deck is made up of 52 cards. That makes for a lot of complexity. The odds of shuffling a random deck of cards into order—like when they’re first pulled from the box—is estimated at 1 in 1068. There are zealots today who seem to have no more than 3 or 4 cards in their entire deck: Racism! Sexism! Homophobia! Xenophobia! They are on both sides, both extremes, of the political spectrum, but their m.o. is the same: oversimplification. Rather than acknowledge the essential complexity of the world, they dumb it down to a manageable level and then stay very upset about it.
But the real trouble with zealots is that they may actually enjoy hating the powers that be. Now, we all may have a tough time being good sports when our preferred political party is out of power, but there is no Christian justification for hating those whom God has allowed to lead. No, God demands the opposite tack. We are to love our enemies and make love our way of life. We are to seek humility, patience, and service—and not to think of these as weakness, but strength.
Bottom line: we have to trust in God and His triumphs must be sufficient for us. Even Nero did some good things. As bad as he was, he also has a list of wins:
•He reduced the people’s taxes
•He brought fun: regular public games, contests, and feasts
•He increased powers for the senate
•He won the war against the Parthians
•He rebuilt—and largely paid for—Rome’s rebuilding.
Lordship is Christ’s
I want us to be clear on Paul’s teaching. While he makes clear that the rebellious and revolutionary spirit is out of bounds for Christians, he in no way encourages what we can call legitimism—the idea that the present government is either good or godly. There is no truly legitimate government other than the Lordship of Christ in His coming kingdom. All earthly governments are fallen. So legitimism, like revolt, is out.
We do not have to trust the government, but we do have to cooperate.
The reason is that all authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the triumph of Easter. Jesus is raised from death, proving that death is not the final word in the cosmos. Authority belongs to our God, and so we can endure and tolerate the lesser authorities of this world without taking them too terribly seriously.
Jesus is risen, and that throws the world on its ear and everything in it into a new perspective. Christ matters. Christ matters so much that the biggest things in our world are small by comparison.
Easter is the triumph of God over death, decay, and Hell. Praise God; He is risen! †