Up and Down religion

You know what the most common theological problem among Christians is?  It’s that, without realizing it, we all tend to twist our religion into something about us, that despite its trappings has very little to do with our lord and savior Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

We are slaves to sin.  This is not something we want to admit to anyone, least of all ourselves.  We want to believe that we are fundamentally in control of our own lives and our own destinies.  We want to believe that we can get into heaven on our own merit.  This is “up religion” because We want to believe we can climb up to heaven by ourselves.  Even if we can’t control everything, we want to control what we can–there’s an old slogan, “Do your best and let God do the rest.”  In other words, most of it rests on us–God just fills in the gaps between what we can do and what we can’t.  To make ourselves feel better about our failures, we look around us for people who fail more often than we do, so that we can say “Well, at least I’m better than them.”  It leads to works righteousness, the belief that we can create a right relationship with God and with the world around us (be righteous) by doing good works to make up for any sin we might do.  It also leads us to turn our focus into our self, a kind of theological navel-gazing.  It’s about what we want, not about what God wants.

The problem with “up religion” is that however much we might like the idea, it doesn’t fit what we know of God.  God’s deepest and most fundamental relationship with humanity is through Christ Jesus–who did not stay up in heaven and invite us up, but came down to meet us and promised to be with us always down here on Earth in our daily life.  Christ Jesus became an ordinary human, and he took our sins on himself through crucifixion–the messiest, most painful, most shameful death imaginable to the time and place he lived.  We are sinners and we can’t do enough good to balance out our sin, but God loves us anyway.  We cannot climb up to heaven–and if we do, all we will find is a distorted mirror of our own desires, a god made in our image.  Instead, God comes down to us and claims us as we are.  We cannot go out to find God, but God does come to find us.  We can shut God out of our lives, but we cannot bring him in by our own efforts.

So how do we keep from slipping into an “up” religion?  First, be aware of the difference.  When you think about anything related to God or religion, ask yourself if you’re thinking about it in an “up” way or a “down” way.  Is it about you, or is it about God?  Are you leaving space for God to work in you and in your life?  Do you accept the fact that you are not the one in control of your life?  You won’t be perfectly open to this all the time; all have sinned, remember, and “up” religion is one of the most natural heresies to slip into.  But that’s okay.  God loves you anyway.

Mary and Martha: what really matters

Luke 10:38 – 11:1 ³⁸ Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. ³⁹ She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” ⁴¹ But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; ⁴² there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

I’m sure you’re all familiar with this Bible story. Jesus comes to teach, and one sister stays to listen while the other sister takes care of the hospitality. The sister who works is jealous of the sister who doesn’t, and tries to get Jesus to come in on her side and make her sister help. This passage has been used many times over the centuries to argue that study and contemplation are holier and more worthy than working; more troublingly, this passage has been used to dismiss the contributions women make to the church and to society at large. After all, the argument goes, the traditional main role of women is to support and care for people—just as Martha says—and Jesus says that the role of religious study and contemplation is more worthy.

But let’s take a closer look at this passage. Jesus does not condemn Martha’s actions, but the way in which she carries them out. Martha is worried and distracted by many things. Martha is more worried about the work to be done than she is in why it needs to be done.

Let’s be realistic. There’s a lot of support work out there that needs to be done, whether it falls under the realm of “women’s work” or not. No church, family, or community can long survive without it. But all too often, when we do the support work that everything else depends on, we get so caught up in the details that we forget why we’re doing it. We can’t see the forest for the trees. We get worried and distracted by many things, just like Martha.  Here in the church office, it’s easy to get so caught up in finding a new coordinator for the food pantry, dealing with building renovations, scheduling visits with shut-ins, and such, that we forget why we as Christians need food pantries, buildings and people who can’t come to church.

We need to remember that the details that distract us are not the big picture. No matter how important they may be to daily life, they are not the ultimate goal of life. As Christians, our focus is in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are freed from sin and death to become children of God, and are called to spread the Good News of God’s redeeming love to all the world. When life’s distractions get overwhelming and we find ourselves worried by many things and many responsibilities, we need to take a page out of Mary’s book and take the time to remember what our true center and focus is.  We run food pantries because of God’s saving call for justice and healing for all including (especially!) the poor.  We need buildings to provide a base for our worship of God and our spread of the Gospel.  We need to care for shut-ins because they are still our brothers and sisters in Christ, members of the body of Christ.  What distractions do you have in your life?  How do they keep you from remembering the “big picture”?

If you have any questions about God, Christianity, or the Christian faith, please comment and I will address them next week.

Doing the Right Thing: Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 2008

Lectionary 22 / Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)

Sunday, August 31

Jeremiah 15:15-21

Psalm 26:1-8
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

Sermon podcast

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is a banner that hangs over the door to the gym in Talmadge Middle School in Independence, Oregon. It’s one of many inspirational quotes and slogans that decorate the halls of that school. It says: “What is right is not always popular; what is popular is not always right.” The banner was there every day of the three years I went to school there, but few of the students ever bothered to read it, or apply it to their lives if they did. I know I read it, decided it was true, and promptly forgot about it.

Doing the right thing is hard, when it’s not the popular thing. It’s much easier, not to mention a lot more fun, to go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing. It’s safer, too—no danger of looking stupid or preachy or offending people. And let’s face it: most of the choices we have to make every day, most of the things we do, aren’t exactly life-shattering choices. Nobody lives or dies, nobody gets rich or poor, nobody’s soul is saved or lost. We may not always do things that are exactly right, but they’re not exactly wrong, either. The banner above the gym door is true, but it’s not what we want to hear.

Jeremiah lived by that truth. He’d been called by God to be a prophet, to bring God’s word to the people of Israel. It’s been said that a prophet’s job is to speak truth to power, even when that’s not what the power wants to hear. Jeremiah went one better: he spoke the truth to everyone. And no one wanted to hear it. Our first lesson today comes from one of Jeremiah’s laments. He complains that people are persecuting him because he’s speaking the words God has told him to speak. Jeremiah was attacked and accused of treason for doing what God wanted him to. But in today’s lesson, God tells him that this persecution isn’t going to last forever; in the end, God’s will will be done, and Jeremiah will be saved. More than that, eventually the people of Israel will heed Isaiah’s words and return to doing the right thing, to behaving like the people of God, and not just paying lip service to their faith while doing the easy thing, the popular thing.

It must have seemed an incredible, almost unbelievable, idea. Israel had been doing the popular thing for a long time. They’d demanded that God give them a king so they could be “like their neighbors,” and although David and Solomon and a few others had been good rulers, most had been utter disasters. Israel had focused on trade and their economy, and they’d produced an upper class that could rival the neighboring countries in wealth, but at the cost of trampling on the poor and oppressed. They’d learned to play power-politics, staking their safety and freedom on military alliances and power blocs, playing one neighboring nation off against another. Some of them had even adopted the gods of the nations around them. Most people worshipped as God had commanded, gave lip service to God’s laws, and went on with their daily lives as if it made no difference. Their minds were set on human things. God had brought them out of Egypt and freed them from slavery to be a chosen people, holy, a royal priesthood, but they behaved no differently than anybody else.

It’s no wonder they didn’t like Jeremiah; he called them on everything they were doing wrong, and told them that this time, they weren’t going to escape the consequences of their actions. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear, and it wasn’t what they wanted to believe. Most of the Israelites weren’t bad people, after all, and most of them worshipped God according to Israel’s traditions. Surely they hadn’t done anything bad enough to warrant conquest. Surely something would happen to turn the tide and restore Israel to safety and prominence. It’s true, the northern kingdom of Judah had already been conquered, and the Babylonians were right outside their gates; there was still a good chance they might be bribed, or perhaps an alliance with Egypt would provide the military might to drive the invaders from their lands.

I’m sure the people of Israel felt they had many good reasons to disregard Jeremiah’s warnings. What good would repentance and changing their way of life, their way of thinking, do against an invading army? They went about their business as usual, ignored the word of God in their midst, and hoped for the best. But in the end, all their power politics and riches couldn’t save them. They were conquered by Babylon and taken into exile. Many fled to Egypt to escape; Jeremiah wanted to stay in Israel but was forced to leave his homeland for Egypt. God’s assurances that all would be well in the end must have been even more unbelievable then than they had been when they were made.

Like the Israelites of Jeremiah’s day, Peter, too, had his mind set on human things. You may recall from last week’s Gospel that Peter has just confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God. It’s a profound insight; it’s the first time in Matthew’s gospel that anyone but the narrator has called Jesus that. You’d think that the person who is spiritually-minded enough to realize that just a few verses earlier would get what Jesus is trying to say now, but Peter is still too focused on human things. According to the beliefs of the time, the Messiah was supposed to be a political figure, a king just like his ancestor David who would drive out the Romans and their puppet-kings and restore Israel to its former glory as a nation. True, there would be some religious changes, but in support of the political restoration, not in place of it. Suffering? Death? What kind of revolutionary goes in predicting that ahead of time? What kind of revolutionary counts that as success? And even if you ignore the political aspects of the Messiah’s coming, how could suffering and death possibly be according to the will of God?

Peter’s not alone in thinking that, of course; how many people today assume that when something bad happens, it means God has abandoned us? How many people assume that if God loves you and you have the right faith, you’ll always be happy and healthy and rich? How many people assume that faith is nothing more than coming to church on Sunday, and ignoring it the rest of the week, as if God was a decoration you could take out on Sunday and store in a box the rest of the time? How many people who believe that are sitting in our pews right now?

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We tend to think of the cross sentimentally, today. We sing hymns about it, we create beautiful artwork, we wear it as jewelry. If we think about “bearing our crosses,” we tend to think about things like arthritis, having to deal with annoying people, the kinds of problems everyone deals with all the time. That’s not what the disciples were thinking about when they heard Jesus say those words.

This is what they were thinking about: crucifixion was the ugliest, most painful, most shameful death the Roman Empire could come up with—and remember that this is a people who considered fights to the death to be a form of public entertainment. Criminals condemned to crucifixion were dragged naked through town, carrying a part of the thing that was going to kill them on their back, mocked by everyone who saw them. Then they were nailed to their cross—heavy, iron spikes driven through their hands and feet—and hung up in the air by those wounds for hours in the hot sun. They didn’t die from blood loss or pain, they died when their bodies became too weak and tired to hold their chest up to breathe anymore and they suffocated. And it took a long time, while the whole city watched and jeered. Take up your cross? What kind of insanity is that? Who would follow a Messiah who promised that as the reward?

Someone who had their mind set, not on human things, but on divine. Paul gives us a brief outline of what this mindset looks like in our second lesson: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. … Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Paul’s words give us a pretty picture of what life as a Christian is supposed to be like. It’s not as easy as he makes it sound of course, particularly in days like our own when hate and fear and evil seem to be everywhere, from local crime to national politics to international terrorists and wars. But oh, God, think of what life could be like if we could all genuinely live the way Paul tells us to, lives full of love and compassion and joy and harmony, a peace of mind and spirit too deep to be explained, even in times of trouble. Think of what life could be like, if we truly put our trust and our faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, the true Messiah who comes not for political or military revolution, but to save us from our sins, make us children of God, and show us how to live lives of truth and justice and grace. Think of what we could be if we put our faith in God, instead of our money and our power and our politics. If we were ruled by hope instead of fear. If we did what was right, instead of what was popular.

Living that way means that you can’t always take the easy way out. It means you can’t hide behind the excuse that everyone else is doing it. It also means that people aren’t always going to like what you have to say, or what you do. Few people in America risk death or imprisonment on account of their faith as Jeremiah did, but ridicule and discrimination, both obvious and not, are certainly possible. Focusing on divine things instead of human things doesn’t mean everything in your life will go well, or that God will reward your faith with material prosperity. But it does mean that no matter where you go, no matter what happens to you, God will be with you, to guide and protect and care for you.

Jeremiah died in exile in Egypt. We don’t know how he died; we do know that he never stopped calling the people of God to repentance and new lives of faith, and that once the worst had happened, his words turned to comfort and hope for the future. Peter was crucified in Rome, after years of working tirelessly to spread the Gospel. Yet they were never alone, for God was with them, and when they died, God was waiting to welcome them into the rooms prepared for them. May we, like them and all the saints that came before us, learn to keep our minds on God’s will, instead of our own. Amen.

In the world but not of it: Christians and the World

Not long ago, I heard someone saying that the world was evil and sinful and that Christians should avoid and ignore the world, focusing instead on the coming reign of God. The role of Christians in the world around it has been debated since the very beginning, but I would disagree with the idea that the world is completely evil, and so does Lutheran theology. The devil can’t create anything; only God can create things. All the devil (or sin and evil, if you prefer not to believe in an actual “devil”) can do is warp things.

God created the whole world and all that is in it. He is present in all things, always beside us in the world. Nothing that God has created can ever be wholly evil. It can be twisted by the devil and used for evil purposes, but it is not by nature evil. Everything we have, everything in heaven and on Earth, is daily given, sustained, and protected by God. That includes the food we eat and the clothes we wear. Now, both can be used for bad purposes, but being fed and clothed is good, right? Some things are easier to misuse than others, but that doesn’t mean that that they are by nature evil. God provides for us through the things he has created, through the whole world we live in and all the creatures that inhabit it. Our daily needs are fulfilled as gifts from God, not evil things from the devil.

It is true that the world is broken and twisted by sin, and so is everyone who lives in it, including you and me. This is not because human nature is bad. God created human nature to be good, and recognizes it as his own work even as sinful as we are now. After the fall, we became corrupted by sin so deeply that nothing is left whole and pure and only God can separate the sin from our nature. Even when we try to do good, we don’t always succeed, and we’re not always as focused as we should be on doing good. Both goodness and sin are present at the same time and in the same place.

We know that we are held captive by sin and cannot free ourselves. We depend on God’s grace and love to free us from the dominion of sin. It isn’t just individuals who are captive to sin, either—all of creation is. Theologians like to talk about “systemic sins”—that’s a fancy way of saying that everything is affected by sin, and it’s not always traceable to single people or causes. Things like poverty, war, hunger, homelessness, inability to afford medical care—those things are sins that are not the result of any one person’s action or inaction. They just are. As Christians, it is our job to bring Christ’s redeeming presence into the world, in both word and deed, to individuals and communities. Sometimes that means rejecting parts of the world that are most twisted by sin. Sometimes that means going out into the world as God’s hands and feet, to bring good news and healing through word and deed. It always means shining a light in darkness and treating others with the same love and forgiveness God has granted us.

As Christians, we are in the world but not of it. Our true home is the kingdom of God, and yet we live here in this flawed and fallen world. Although the world is God’s good creation, it is also twisted by sin. We love the goodness while hating the sin. It can be difficult to balance the two perspectives. Being God’s children means we can’t just withdraw and write off everything as evil and bad. God called us and loves us despite our own sins, and renews us every day. As God’s children, we are sent out into the world to bring that healing where we can. We can’t fix everything; only God can do that when he comes in glory. But we can, with God’s help, make a difference in the lives of those around us, through prayer and action.

If you have any questions about Christianity, Christian life, or Christian theology, please leave a comment and I will address it next week.

Bearing fruit: good works, not works righteousness

Some people believe that if you do enough good deeds, if you follow God’s word perfectly enough, you can earn God’s forgiveness (and that if you don’t do enough good works, you’ll go to Hell). This is called “works righteousness” because it is based on a belief that our righteousness comes from the good works we do, instead of God’s grace. The problem with this belief is that “all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). The grace of God is that even though we are all sinners, God still loves us and sent God’s only son, Jesus, to pay the price for our sin so that we could be saved. There is nothing we can do that would make God love us less, and nothing we can do on our own to earn the love and forgiveness God has already given us; works righteousness doesn’t work. But just because good works can’t “earn” us salvation doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do good things.

God loves us no matter what we do. Our works cannot reconcile us with God or obtain grace. (See Ephesians 2:8-9.) Our sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake through faith, and that faith is a gift of God that we call grace. When our sins are forgiven, our relationship with God is made right. The technical term for this is “justification.” That’s what Lutherans mean when we say we are justified by grace through faith. This is intended to be a comfort; we never have to worry that we have done enough good things to make God happy with us.  Good works have nothing to do with salvation. HOWEVER, you can’t just stop there.

We are saved by God’s grace when he justifies us, but there’s more to the Christian life than just coming into a right relationship with God. Once you are justified, then it becomes a question of living out your faith. We have been given a new life through Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit working in us and through us. There’s an old saying: “if being Christian were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Living as a Christian is called “sanctification.” And part of living as a Christian—being sanctified—is doing good works. We don’t do good works out of fear of going to Hell; we know that God will always love us and redeem us whether we do good works or not. We do good works because we love God and God loves us; he wants us to do good things, and we want to make him happy. Doing good works is a form of praise to God, just as surely as singing hymns or praise songs is.

I’m sure you can all remember Bible passages that talk about bearing good fruit or having the fruit of the Spirit. (For example, the parable of the sower in Mark 4, John 15:4-9, Ephesians 5:8-20, Colossians 1:9-14, Matthew 3:8, Romans 7:4, and many others.) As Christians, the Holy Spirit works within us, and inspires us to do things that are pleasing to God.  This is what it means to bear good fruit: to have the Spirit working within us, helping us to do good things. God loves us no matter what we do, but he wants us to live fruitful lives. God wants us to help others who need help. God wants us to do the right thing, not because we are afraid, but because we love God and we love our fellow human beings, and doing good works is a way of showing that love.

Christ died to forgive our sins and through that forgiveness the Holy Spirit comes to us. Forgiveness of sins is Justification, and giving the Holy Spirit is Sanctification. They’re not the same thing, though they are closely related.  When Christ saves us, he calls us to live as Christians, and to live out our faith in our daily lives. Each day we are renewed in faith and love by the Holy Spirit. Doing good works is our way of responding to that call. Good works are not necessary for salvation, period. But they are necessary for living according to God’s call. We do them not out of fear, but out of love and respect.

We should also remember that even though good works won’t save us, they do give us other rewards. Here on Earth they make others happy, and they do store up treasures for us in heaven. They don’t grant us salvation, but they do give bonuses once we have been saved.

If you have any questions about the Christian faith, Christian life, or theology, please leave a comment.