Reimagining the Ten Commandments

Many of you have heard of Judge Roy Moore, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He was reelected to that position in 2012 after having been removed from that same position nearly a decade before during the controversy about displaying the Ten Commandments in the Alabama State courthouse. That particular display of the Ten Commandments weighed 5,280 pounds, or just over 500 pounds per commandment.

When the monument was finally removed from the courthouse in 2004, Judge Moore would take it with him to rallies wherever he went, transporting the mammoth display on the back of a flatbed truck. Each time he removed the monument from the truck, he had to use a five-ton crane, and the crane would buckle visibly under the weight.

One preacher jokes that while it is true that Jesus once chided the Pharisees for neglecting the weightier matters of the law, surely, a two-and-a-half ton statue was overkill. (Thomas G. Long, “Dancing the Decalogue,” in The Christian Century, March 7, 2006, p. 17).

But the real problem with the monument was not its ostentatious size.

The real problem with the monument was that it did not include the most important part of the commandments. It omitted the part that says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” In Jewish tradition that part is so vital that it is actually considered the first commandment, while in our Reformed Protestant tradition, it is usually considered the preface. But calling it a preface does NOT make it an optional preface. Without that powerful affirmation that I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, the Ten Commandments is nothing but a list, or a prop for a Mel Brooks movie on the History of the World. 

Here's a popular illustration of the Ten Commandments. Alas, notice how this illustration also omits the most important part, the affirmation that "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery."

Preacher and writer Tom Long points out that many people think of the Ten Commandments as weighty burdens or encumbrances placed on our personal behavior. Most people cannot name all ten, but they are convinced that at the heart of each commandment is a finger-wagging “thou shalt not.”

For others, the commandments are heavy yokes to be placed on the necks of a rebellious society. As Tom Long points out, for such an understanding of the Decalogue, a two-and-a-half ton rock sitting on a flat bed truck is a perfect symbol. We forget that the prophet Isaiah once chided the Babylonians for hauling their heavy idols on the backs of weary animals. If Isaiah had seen Roy Moore’s truck, he’d no doubt be worried about the springs and shocks. (Long, “Dancing the Decalogue”).

The Ten Commandments are not meant to be heavy burdens. They are instead a breathtaking announcement of freedom. Instead of thinking of them as ten burdensome commandments, we can think of them as a description of a life that is truly free.

Because the Lord is your God, you are free not to need any other gods. That’s the first rule.

The second—you are free from dehumanizing idols, and you are free to worship and adore the God who can never be reduced to a manageable size!

#3—You are free from those who would try to use God’s name to manipulate you.

#4—You are free to rest on the 7th Day. Did you hear that? You are free to rest!

#5—You are free from the prison of self-centeredness and you are free to honor your parents and your ancestors in the faith.

#6—You are free from the murderous cycle of violence, and you are free to live in God’s shalom (peace).

#7—You are free from the destructive path of adultery and you are free to live a life of faithfulness in commitment.

#8—You are free from the constant worry that someone is trying to take your stuff, and you are free to live off what God provides you.

#9—You are free from gossip and lies about your character, and you, in turn, are free to speak the truth in love.

And finally, #10—You are free from the never-ending cycle of always wanting more.

Do we live up to these freedoms perfectly? No. But these are the freedoms we are called to embrace. The old slavery of the past—to cherished idols, to destructive patterns of gossip--may be familiar, but we are called instead to embrace the road to true freedom. The late Fred Craddock, who was a wonderful preacher and storyteller, told the story of an elderly man whose only close friend was his dog. The love between them had deepened through the years. Now both had begun to feel the pain and burden of age. The dog, 12 years old, could hardly walk and was covered with an irritating rash. The elderly man lifted the dog into his arms and carried it to the car where it lay on the seat beside him on the way to see the veterinarian. From the parking lot the old man carried the dog gently inside.

“Can I help you?” asked the veterinarian.

The old man, still holding his dog said, “First, I must ask you a question. Do you love animals above everything else?”

The veterinarian replied, “Well, I love God first. Jesus says in Mark 12:30, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ And of course a second command is to love thy neighbor as oneself. We must put these things first, and then we can think about the animals.”

“Then, I must go elsewhere,” said the old man as he moved to the door.

“Why? What is wrong” asked the vet.

“This dog is my friend,” explained the elderly man, “and I feel I can trust him only to the care of a veterinarian who practices what he preaches.” (Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001, pp. 16-17).

The commandments are not meant to be burdensome constrictions, as in, first we love God, then we love neighbor, and then we can think about the animals. A true love of God and neighbor would have freed the veterinarian to reach out to the man and his dog with empathy and compassion. That’s what true freedom looks like.

Who are the saints? Who are the ones we commemorate on this All Saints’ Sunday? They are the ones who walked the road before us, who walk this road beside us,and who will walk this road, each of them, all of them, showing us, by their example, what it means to live in true freedom.

All glory and praise be to our God. Amen.

Questions: In our discussion of Brian McLaren's book We Make the Road by Walking, we've seen how the Ten Commandments are truly intended to be liberating pronouncements. Is this a new way of thinking about the Ten Commandments for you?

How important would you say that the pronouncement--I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery--is to understanding the Ten Commandments as a whole.

If God is all-loving and all-powerful, then why is there evil in the world?

From a sermon by Jack Cabaness preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Katonah on Sunday, August 2nd, 2015:

This morning we continue our sermon series entitled Questions from the Floor. This morning’s question is: If God is all-loving and all-powerful, then why is there evil in the world?

As the writer Frederick Buechner once pointed out, if we break down that question into three statements—(1) God is all-loving; (2) God is all-powerful; and (3) terrible things happen--then we can easily reconcile any two of those statements with each other, but we have a very hard time reconciling all three statements. Maybe God really is all-powerful but not all-loving, and that’s why terrible things happen. Or surely God is all-loving, but maybe God isn’t all-powerful, and that’s why terrible things happen, which is in essence the conclusion of Rabbi Harold Kushner, who wrote the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. But if we try to hold onto the notion that God is all-loving and all-powerful, and we acknowledge that terrible things happen, it’s difficult to reconcile all three statements.

One of my favorite preachers, Thomas G. Long, published a book a few years ago on the Problem of Evil, and he used the Parable of the Weeds among the Wheat to explore what Christians can say about evil in the world as well as what we cannot yet say. I want to acknowledge at the outset that my meditation this morning draws heavily from his insights.

Tom Long's book is an extended meditation on the Book of Job.
The concluding chapter explores the Parable of the Weeds among the Wheat.

The first audience for the Gospel of Matthew may have well have been a young, struggling Christian community in present-day Syria. They were trying to be and do what Jesus had taught them to be and do, and the results were frankly, mixed and discouraging. The culture around them was morally conflicted, and the church itself was turning out to be not so pure. Matthew’s community looked at a hopelessly conflicted world and church and wondered, “What’s the use?” Evil and good are all mixed together, seemingly intractably. How were they to understand this? How were they to understand the trustworthiness of God in such an environment? (Thomas G. Long, What Shall We Say?: Evil, Suffering, and the Crisis of Faith, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman’s, 2011, p. 124).

            

The Gospel writer Matthew took a parable from Jesus, this parable about the weeds among the wheat, in an attempt to answer these questions. In the Parable the servants go directly to the Master of the Estate and exclaim, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?”

Thus, the first thing we learn about the problem of evil is that we have every right to go to God and ask for an explanation! Evil and suffering are wounds in creation, and a deeply Christian response is to turn to God in pain and protest. In the words of John Claypool, “There is more honest faith in an act of questioning than in the act of silent submission, for implicit in the very asking is the faith that some light can be given.” (John R. Claypool, Tracks of a Fellow Struggler, as quoted by Long, p. 127).

The late John Claypool, a Baptist preacher turned Episcopalian priest, whose book Tracks of a Fellow Struggler is a beautiful and poignant meditation on the grief he experienced when his young daughter died of leukemia.

So, the first thing we learn is that we have every right to make our protest to God about the presence of evil in our world. In doing so, we refuse to legitimate evil, and we appeal to the honor of God by asking that God do something about it.

When the servants went to the Master demanding to know what happened with the weeds in the field, the Master replied, “An Enemy has done this.” It’s not the worker’s fault. It’s not the landowner’s fault, either.

The answer “An Enemy has done this” raises new questions, but it tells us that a Christian theodicy insists that God is not the author of evil. It is NOT God’s will that the innocent suffer, not even for some larger good.

Years ago, a young woman graduated from Princeton Seminary and received a call to serve a small church. Since the church was small, she vowed to visit everyone in the membership within the first six months. Near the end of that time, she had visited every family in the church except one. Some of the elders advised her, “Oooh, be careful there. They haven’t been here in a couple of years, and they probably aren’t coming back.”

But the young pastor had made herself a promise, and one day she knocked on the door of this couple’s house. Only the wife was home, but she invited the pastor in for a cup of coffee. They sat around the kitchen table and chatted. They talked about this, they talked about that, and then finally they talked about IT. And IT was the fact that more than two years before the couple’s young son had drowned in their backyard pool. “Our friends at church were very kind,” the woman said. “They told us it was God’s will.”

The pastor put her coffee cup down on the table. Should she touch that or not? She decided to touch it. The pastor said, “Your friends at church meant well, but they were wrong. It wasn’t God’s will. God doesn’t will the death of children.”

Surprisingly, the mother’s jaw clenched, her face reddened, and she said in anger, “Well, then, who do you blame? Are you blaming me? Are you blaming me for this? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, no—I’m not blaming you, the pastor replied, now on the defensive. I’m not blaming you, but I’m not blaming God, either. God was as grief-stricken by your son’s death as you are.” But the woman’s face remained frozen in rage, and it was clear that this conversation was over.

Driving back to the church, the young pastor kept saying to herself, I shouldn’t have touched it. Why did I go there?

But when she got back to the church office, there was a message already waiting for her on the answering machine. “I don’t know where this is going,” the trembling recorded voice said, “but my husband and I want you to come out and talk to us about this. For two years we’ve thought that God was angry at us, but now we wonder if it’s not the other way around.” (story told by Long, pp. 131-132).

Despite the obvious risk, the young pastor was right to affirm that it was NOT God’s will that this child die. If not God, then how do we understand the words “An Enemy Has Done This?” In Matthew’s Gospel, the enemy is the Devil.

As Tom Long writes, "perhaps the devil is best imagined not literally, as some demonic figure             lurking in the shadows, but as a symbol of a deep theological truth—namely, that the evil we experience in history is more than the sum of its parts and transcends logical explanation--the horror of the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, the massacre at My Lai—none of these forms of evil can be fully accounted for by political, anthropological, or psychological explanations . . .To say that the enemy is the devil is not to revert to pre-scientific fairytale images but to say through the ancient language of Scripture that evil has a cosmic, trans-human reality. Evil is not just a failing; it is a force. (Long, pp. 134-135).

With the knowledge that an enemy has sowed the seeds of evil in the field, the servants ask the Master, “Do you want us to gather the weeds?” In other words, do you want us to fix it? The landowner’s response is swift, “No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.”

Tom Long tells the story of a woman he grew up with in South Carolina in the early 1950s. She was stricken with polio as a child just a few years before Jonas Salk perfected his vaccine. She is in her sixties now, her body still twisted by the virus that attacked her in her childhood. She makes her way awkwardly on crutches. But the moment she enters a room, the level of grace is elevated greatly. She lights up with joy every place she touches. She is a college professor and an artist, an accomplished human being with profound gifts. Now, what about the evil she has endured?

Do we think that God gave her polio?

No, a thousand times no!

Did God put polio in her life do give her a beautiful soul?

No, a thousand times no!

Do we think that her soul has been formed by this? Yes.

Tom Long writes, "If someone handed me a magic wand now and gave me the power to change anything about her past, to pluck up the weeds from the wheat, I think I would want to wave it and banish the polio, make it so she never suffered from that disease. But to tell the truth, I really wouldn’t know where the limits of my wisdom were. She is a beautiful and radiant human being, and I wouldn’t know what to take away from the personal history that brought her to this place. In short, I might want to fix it, but I lack the discernment to do so. (Long, pp. 138-139).

If the servants in the parable are not allowed to gather the weeds, then what is the response to the problem of evil? Or to ask the deeper question, what is God doing about the problem of evil?

What the parable suggests about God is that God’s way in the world is not to go into the field and immediately start whacking away with a machete.

Right after this parable, Matthew includes two more short parables from Jesus. He tells a story about a tiny mustard seed that eventually grows into a giant bush that provides shelter for the birds. And he tells a story about a woman taking a little bit of leaven, or yeast, and how it leavens the entire lump of dough. Together, these two tiny parables suggest that God’s ways in the world are hidden, perhaps sometimes frustratingly slow, but nonetheless effective and ultimately victorious.

More and more, I am convinced that God’s way in the world is the way of non-coercive, persuasive love, persuading us to do the right thing in response to the evil we encounter, as best we understand that right thing, to carry on our ministries of compassion and caring as a witness to the final triumph over evil that God is bringing about.

When I was growing up in El Paso, Texas, our next-door neighbor Mrs. Vaughn, a first grade teacher, would spend the late afternoons on her hands and knees in her front yard, uprooting little tiny weeds, before they had a chance to get very big. In El Paso, we didn’t just have dandelions, we also had these tough, prickly desert weeds that were meant to discourage thirsty critters from taking a bite, and they definitely discouraged me from ever touching those things with my bare hands.

Sandbur, a notoriously prickly desert weed

 Mrs. Vaughn would uproot the prickly weeds when they were no more than an inch high. She would painstakingly go over her entire yard on her hands and knees, painstakingly combing through the Bermuda grass with her hands, uprooting all the infant weeds she could find. The whole process was so laborious that she could never weed more than a tiny square section of her yard each day, but the next afternoon she would be at it again.

Mrs. Vaughn is now in her mid-90s. She lives with her son in San Antonio, Texas. Through the years she did her best to nurture her husband through the deep depression he could never shake, and she did what she could to support a daughter-in-law who lived with breast cancer for over a decade before passing away a few years ago.

In deep faith, she patiently prays and waits as God’s own loving hands comb through the grasses of her long life and ours, ultimately uprooting every cause of evil and suffering, in anticipation of a great harvest and homecoming meal.

And we will see that the fire fueled by the weeds is excellent, and the flour that the wheat makes is excellent, and when the harvest finally comes, the owner of the field will call us all together—farmhands, reapers, neighbors, and break bread with us, bread that is the final distillation of that whole, messy field, and we will all agree that it is like no other bread we have ever tasted before, and that it is very, very good. (This imagery is suggested in a sermon by Barbara Brown Taylor, “Learning to Live with the Weeds” in The Seeds of Heaven, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990, 2004, pp. 36-37).

May our communion bread this morning be a foretaste of the good things to come.

All glory and praise be to our God. Amen.

How do we understand Jesus' teaching to "turn the other cheek" in light of ISIS and other examples of extreme violence and terror?

Many of us are aware that Fred Rogers, in addition to being the star of a children’s television show, was also an ordained Presbyterian Minister.

But according to a new book by Michael G. Long, Mister Rogers was also a prolific peace activist.

In his book Peaceful Neighbor Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers, the author describes how the very first episode of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood aired in February 1968, which was just three weeks after the Tet Offensive, when 84,000 VietCong staged surprise attacks throughout South Vietnam.

While South Vietnamese and U.S. forces quickly regained any lost ground, the sheer shock of the Tet Offensive led to a growing public disapproval of the Vietnam War.

Three weeks later, television viewers made their very first visit to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. The ever-mischievous puppet,

Lady Elaine Fairchilde, has used her magical boomerang to rearrange the landscape, even moving the Eiffel Tower to the other side of the castle. The mischief so angers King Friday XIII—the dogmatic and often bumbling ruler of Make Believe—that he establishes border guards so that no other changes can come in.

When Mister Rogers shares this news with neighbor Betty Aberlin back at his television house, she exclaims, “That sounds like a war!” Distressed and concerned, she dons a burlap cape and leaves to find out what’s going on in the normally peaceful Make-Believe.

Once there (she’s now Lady Aberlin, the niece of King Friday),

she discovers King Friday and Edgar Cooke, the singing castle cook, dressed in full military regalia and prepared to use force to turn back anyone seeking to make further changes.

Sporting a helmet with thirteen stars, King Friday then instructs Lady Aberlin to check the north gate while Edgar checks the castle gardens.

When Lady Aberlin protests, saying she was not planning to stay, the king angrily retorts, “You have come during a state of emergency, and I have drafted you.”

Both the draft and draft resistance have come to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Meanwhile Lady Aberlin and Daniel Striped Tiger come up with a plan to send peace balloons to the castle so that King Friday will know that the whole neighborhood wants peace. The balloons will have signs tied to them such as love, peaceful existence, tenderness, and the word peace by itself.

Back in Mr. Rogers’s TV house, Mr. Rogers is not sure the plan will work because the king is in such a fighting mood. But then he smiles and says I think this can work.

On the day of the balloon launching, King Friday mistakes the balloons for paratroopers and shouts out, “Fire the cannons!”

But Lady Aberlin pleads with King Friday and the soldiers to read the messages before they start firing. One of the king’s soldiers reads the messages aloud and, lo and behold, the surprised king immediately says, “Stop all fighting!” even though no fighting had technically begun.

The residents of Make Believe sigh a collective sigh of relief, and back in Mr. Rogers’s TV studio, Mr. Roger muses, “Isn’t Peace Wonderful?” (recounted by Michael G. Long in Peaceful Neighbor).

Peace is wonderful, but what if we’re talking about the real world and not the neighborhood of Make-Believe?

What if we’re not simply talking about puppets rearranging the furniture, but we are talking about terrorists determined to do us harm?

How do we understand Jesus’ teaching to turn the other cheek in light of ISIS and other examples of extreme violence and terror?

The phrase turn the other cheek comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In that section, in Matthew 5:38-42, Jesus expounds, “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you."

Is this meant to be taken literally?

Imagine someone taking the train from Katonah to New York City one morning and deciding to do everything Jesus says here: to turn the other cheek, to give to every beggar, and to respond to every lawsuit by settling out of court for double the amount.

One biblical scholar predicts that such a person would be broke, homeless, and in the emergency room of Bellevue Hospital before noon! (See Thomas G. Long, Matthew, p. 63).

So, how do we understand Jesus’ teaching to turn the other cheek?

Many faithful Christians have understood this saying as literally as possible, and the members of the traditional Peace Churches, Mennonite, Amish, Brethren, Quakers, base their theology of Christian Pacifism largely on Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.

Other Christians interpret Jesus’ words more broadly and abstractly. What Jesus is condemning is the tendency toward violence. In this interpretation Jesus is not saying never hit back, because there might be a need to use violence to restrain an evildoer. But Jesus is saying, that if there is to be peace, then eventually, one slap must not be answered by another slap.

During most of the first three centuries the earliest Christians were pacifists who lived as a  persecuted minority under the military dominance of the Roman Empire. If a would-be convert to Christianity was a Roman soldier, the soldier had to stop being a Roman soldier before beginning the three-year catechism to become a Christian. The reasoning was that the soldier could not say "Jesus is Lord" while still being obligated to obey the Emperor, especially when the emperors were persecuting Christians.

But the situation changed when the Emperor Constantine espoused Christianity and outlawed the persecution of Christians in 313.

Now that a Christian emperor wielded the power of the sword, a new theology was needed. This paved the way for St. Augustine (354-430) to draw upon Paul’s arguments in Romans 13 about the state having the right to use force to restrain evildoers. Thus, Augustine became one of the first Christian thinkers to articulate criteria for just war. Under certain circumstances, war is justifiable, especially to restrain evil.

Nearly nine hundred years later, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) refined Augustine’s criteria for a just war, and he held that for a war to be just:

It must be waged by a properly instituted authority such as the state.

Second, war must occur for a good and just purpose rather than for self-gain.

Third, peace must be a central motive even in the midst of violence.

These criteria for just war, with some additional modifications, are still part of the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church.

In our own Reformed Tradition, the early Reformers likewise embraced the doctrine of just war, in contrast to the Anabaptists, who later became Amish and Mennonites.

John Calvin advised the city leaders in Geneva. The early Reformers were in the seat of power, and they devised their theology accordingly. They believed that the magistrate did have the power to wage war.

The Second Helvetic Confession, written in 1566, and part of our Book of Confessions, advises that “if it is necessary to preserve the safety of the people by war, let him [the magistrate] wage war in the name of God; provided he has first sought peace by all means possible, and  cannot save his people in any other way except by war” (5.256). The confession explicitly condemns the pacifist “Anabaptists, who, when they deny that a Christian may hold the office of a magistrate, deny also that a man may be justly put to death by the magistrate, or that the magistrate may wage war” (5.257).

The 1647 Westminster Confession of Faith similarly adopts Just War criteria.

During the American Revolutionary War, Presbyterians were somewhat famous for their willingness to take up arms in support of the Revolution, while one of my own Quaker ancestors did not take up arms in support of the Revolution. (Alas, no DAR membership for me!, or for my genealogical line, rather).

In essence, we have two faithful responses to violence in our world—pacifism and just war. Both have longstanding support in the Christian tradition.

My own position is closer to the traditional just war theory, although as I get older I think that the threshold for justifying a particular war should be harder and harder to reach. Perhaps I’m inching towards pacifism, but I’m not there yet. Particularly when it comes to terrorism and extreme violence. And particularly in this community, where we knew and loved people who died in 9/11.

Where we know and love people who have faithfully served and continue to serve in the military.

This is not an abstract issue. We are doing our best to figure out how to live faithfully in a violent and unpredictable world.

When I was serving a church in Kansas City I got to know a man named Bill Eckhardt. Bill is a  retired army colonel and military lawyer. In fact, he was one of the prosecuting attorneys during the trial of Lt. William Calley for the My Lai massacre. During a discussion of just war and violence, Bill turned to me and said, “Jack, never forget that no one desires peace more than the soldier.

No one desires peace more than the soldier longing to go home.

No one desires peace more than the soldier’s friends and family who long for reunion.” I’ve never forgotten that.

We all want peace. And one of the central convictions of our faith is that God desires peace. And one of the central challenges of our faith is to keep asking the hard questions about peacemaking in our world.

The late Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), in words printed on your bulletin covers, challenges us by reminding us that

"… you are Christians only so long as you look forward to a new world, so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you emphasize the need for conversion both for yourself and for the world, so long as you in no way let yourself become established in a situation of seeming calm, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come. You are Christians only when you believe that you have a role to play in the realization of this new kingdom, and when you urge everyone you meet with a holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian you keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life." (Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands)

Where pacifists and proponents of just war can find common ground is by doing peacemaking work together.

A few years ago, a group of Christian theologians and ethicists at Fuller Seminary came up with ten peacemaking practices that offer a model for Christians working for peace in our families, in our communities, in our nation, and in our world.

I’ll quickly list the ten practices here:

1. Support nonviolent direct action.

2. Take independent initiatives to reduce threat.

3. Use cooperative conflict resolution.

4. Acknowledge responsibility for conflict and injustice and seek repentance and forgiveness.

5. Advance democracy, human rights, and religious liberty.

6. Foster just and sustainable economic development.

7. Work with emerging cooperative forces in the international system.

8. Strengthen the United Nations and international efforts for cooperation and human rights.

9. Reduce offensive weapons and weapons trade.

10. Encourage grassroots peacemaking groups and voluntary associations. (Google Fuller Seminary and "Just Peacemaking" for the latest on the Just Peacemaking Initiative. This list of ten practices was quoted in a sermon by my friend and seminary classmate Mindy Douglas, preached at the Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church, Chapel Hill, NC, on September 21, 2008).

The late Glen Stassen, one of the authors of the “just peacemaking” initiative, wrote in an article in Sojourners magazine, that "the ethic we need for a viable future is not only an ethic of restraint in making war, but an ethic of just peacemaking initiatives for preventing war and building a future that is better than war after war, terrorism after terrorism.” (Glenn Stassen, "Winning the Peace," Sojourners, January 2005).

In essence, we are urged to imagine a better world.

At the end of the first visit to the Neighborhood of Make Believe, Mister Rogers debriefed their narrow escape from war.

He said, “You see people can imagine bad things, hurtful things, angry warlike things, but people can also imagine good things, helpful things, happy, peaceful things.”

And as Mister Rogers debriefed the successful plan to use the Peace Balloons to diffuse the warlike mood, he used the word “work” nearly two dozen times. Peacemaking is hard work.

But it’s necessary work. (Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor).

At the close of a 1983 episode of Mister Rogers’s Neighborhood, Mister Rogers encouraged us to make the world a better place and better place for people to live so that people won’t have to be scared of other people.”

And then Mister Rogers sang a song called Peace and Quiet, a simple song he had written for his father long ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL-wpqAyX_w

Mister Rogers smiled as he finished the song and he said, “I wish you peace.”

Why Did Jesus Have to Die for Our Sins?

This morning we continue our sermon series Questions from the Floor. All of our sermons this summer are based on questions that you submitted. Today’s question is "Why did Jesus have to die for our sins? Why didn’t God just love us enough to forgive us without Jesus having to die?"

At the beginning I need to acknowledge my reliance on two sources. The first is a chapter from a book by the late Shirley C. Guthrie, Jr., who taught theology at Columbia Seminary in Georgia and whose book Christian Doctrine generations of Presbyterian ministers have used to cram for their theology ordination exam.

The second source is a book by my college classmate Tony Jones, which is entitled Did God Kill Jesus? Searching for Love in History’s Most Famous Execution.

Imagine the Scene. 

A young boy goes to a revival meeting. He had grown up in a Christian home and in the church, but he heard something that night he had never heard before.

The preacher held up a dirty glass. “See this glass? That’s you. Filthy, stained with sin, inside and outside.” He picked up a hammer. “This hammer is the righteousness of God. It is the instrument of God’s wrath against sinners. God’s justice can be satisfied only by punishing and destroying people whose lives are filled with vileness and corruption.”

The preacher put the glass on the pulpit and slowly, deliberately drew back the hammer, took deadly aim, and with all his might let the blow fall.

 But a miracle happened!

            

At the last moment he covered the glass with a pan. The hammer struck with a crash that echoed through the hushed church. He held up the untouched glass with one hand and the mangled pan with the other.

Then the preacher said, “Jesus Christ died for your sins. He took the punishment that ought to have fallen on you. He satisfied the righteousness of God so that you might go free if you believe in him.”

When the boy went to bed that night, he could not sleep. Meditating on what he had seen and heard, he decided that he was terribly afraid of God. But could he love such a God? He could love Jesus who had sacrificed himself for him. But how could he love a God who wanted to “get” everyone and was only kept from doing it because Jesus got in the way? The thought crossed the boy’s mind that he could only hate such a hammer-swinging God who had to be bought off at such a terrible price. But he quickly dismissed the thought. That very God might read his mind and punish him. (Illustration from Shirley C. Guthrie, Jr., Christian Doctrine, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994, 250-251).

The question for us this morning is can we think about the atonement in such a way that helps us to love both God and Jesus? Can we think about what happened on Calvary long ago in a way that makes it clear that God is for us and not against us?

Listen again to the two scripture readings that were shared this morning. From Romans 5, “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” And from First John 4, “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”

It’s about Love. Love Wins. And God is the one who loves us, and God loves us every bit as much as Jesus loves us. Whatever theory best helps you understand the atonement, make sure that it enables you to sense and experience the love of God.

According to Shirley Guthrie there are at least four main perspectives that emerge from the New Testament to interpret the meaning of the death of Jesus.

The first is redemption. This is the financial image. Imagine a slave market. People have lost their freedom and are being sold into slavery. But someone steps forward and pays the ransom, the price for the purchase of all the slaves. The price is high. His life for ours. But Jesus on the cross pays the price of our redemption and sets us free.

The second perspective draws upon the imagery of war. Jesus is the liberator. A terrible cosmic battle is being waged between God and Satan. Satan has stolen humanity from the Kingdom of God and carried it to the kingdom of darkness. At the cross, the devil takes the prisoner, Jesus, captive and wins the battle of death for but a moment. But on Easter morning, Jesus the prisoner becomes Jesus the liberator and wins the final victory delivering humanity from death to life.

The third explanation of the cross has to do with sacrifice. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Humanity stands guilty before God, deserving of punishment. There is no hope except that the sins be assuaged. But a priest comes forward and serves as the mediator between heaven and earth. The priest makes a sacrifice to atone for the people’s sin. Blood is shed. The lamb is slain, reconciling humanity to God.

And the last of the perspectives comes from the language of the courtroom. God is a righteous judge, who sits behind the bench, with humanity standing in the dock as the accused. The facts are placed in evidence. The defendants are found guilty, and all receive the same sentence: death. 
But a righteous and good person comes forward and offers himself as a substitute for the guilty, taking their punishment to himself even though he has done nothing wrong.

Whichever perspective resonates with us the most, we should make sure that we interpret each of these images in a way that makes it clear that God loves us just as much as Jesus loves us and in a way that makes it clear that God is for us and not against us.

For example, the financial model does not mean that God is bought off by Jesus.

It means that we are purchased for God. God purchases for us the gift of a new life, much like the bishop in Les Miserables gives to Jean Valjean as a gift the very silver that Jean Valjean had tried to steal from the bishop. And the Bishop tells Jean Valjean to use the gift of the silver to make for himself a new life. “I have bought your life for God,” the bishop tells him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCvLfypVszI

Likewise, with the sacrificial image, we should interpret that image in such a way that God is for us and not against us. In the ancient world, many people believed that when the gods were angry at humanity, the gods had to appeased with sacrifice. But what if it’s not God that needs to be appeased, but it’s humanity that needs to see and understand that violence only begets violence and that violence is never redemptive?

René Girard studied and taught world religions and ancient myths. He later converted to Christianity largely because of the theology of the cross. My college classmate Tony Jones summarizes Girard’s view in this way: When we look at Jesus hanging on the cross, we are looking in a mirror. God is reflecting back to us the outcome of our systems of rivalry, sacrifice, and violence. Jesus’ death shows conclusively that these systems are bankrupt, that they do not assuage guilt, and that they do not minimize violence. Jesus, as the ultimate innocent victim, is the final sacrifice because he reveals the fiction behind the entire enterprise of sacrifice. (from Tony Jones, Did God Kill Jesus?Looking for Love in History’s Most Famous Execution, New York: HarperOne, 2015. See especially chapter 16.)

Girard draws upon the story of Joseph and his brothers in the Book of Genesis. Joseph’s brothers try to kill him but decide to sell him into slavery instead. Joseph eventually rises from a slave to being second in power only to the Pharaoh. Many years later, when Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt because there is famine in their land, Joseph does not seek revenge against his brothers. He does toy with them for several chapters, but he doesn’t seek revenge and he doesn’t try to have them killed. Tearfully, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and tells them who he is. And Joseph tells them, what you intended for evil, God intended for good.

Girard’s view of the crucifixion is similar. What humanity intended for evil in killing Jesus, God intended for good. We see an example of this in President Obama’s moving eulogy on Friday for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney. In that speech the President reflected on the shooter’s announced motive of hoping to start a race war. The President described that as …

"An act that [the shooter] imagined would incite fear and recrimination; violence and suspicion. An act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation's original sin.

Oh, but God works in mysterious ways. (Applause.) God has different ideas. (Applause.)

He didn't know he was being used by God. (Applause.) Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer could not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group -- the light of love that shone as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle. The             alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of the allen would respond when they saw him in court -- in the midst of unspeakable grief, with words of forgiveness. He couldn't imagine that. (Applause.)

The alleged killer could not imagine how the city of Charleston, how the state of South Carolina, how the United States of America would respond -- not merely with revulsion at his evil act, but with big-hearted generosity and, more importantly, with a thoughtful introspection and self-examination that we so rarely see in public life. (Transcript of President Obama’s Eulogy of Rev. Pinckney from Vox.com, retrieved June 27, 2015).

Truly, what the shooter intended for evil, God redirected for good.

Why did Jesus have to die? Why couldn’t God have just forgiven us without Jesus having to die? In the quote that is printed on the cover of your bulletin, Shirley Guthrie responds by saying that God loves us and cares for us too much to dismiss our sin and guilt with a flippant “It doesn’t matter.” God wanted to stand with us in the loneliness and alienation we bring on ourselves when we separate ourselves from God and other people. Because it is just when God comes to our side in our loneliness, alienation, and guilt that they are overcome. (Guthrie, 260).

In his book my college classmate Tony Jones takes this a step further and says that in the cross God identifies with us so completely that when Jesus cries out on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” that even God suddenly realizes what it is like to feel abandoned by God. (Jones, chapter 19)

[Pause]

And at the end of the day, contemplating the cross is more of a matter of the heart than of the head. And I’m not talking about the emotional manipulation of a preacher who points the finger and says that because of your sin Jesus died a horrific death. No. Instead, I’m talking about journeying to the cross in our hearts with honesty and authenticity. In the words of the old spiritual, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Sometimes it makes me want to tremble.” A theory of the atonement is not likely to make us tremble. A journey to the cross will.

I’ve had the good fortune to see the traditional site of the crucifixion in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, but in truth my real journey to the cross took place in a chapel service at Union Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. It was a year after my father had died of pancreatic cancer. My mother was facing her own significant health issues, and I was an only child in my mid-twenties and feeling lonely and more than a little overwhelmed. In the chapel service we sang

                        What Wondrous Love is this, o my soul, o my soul,

                        What wondrous love is this, o my soul

                        What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of Bliss

                        to bear the heavy cross for my soul.

And I had this sense that all the fear, loneliness, helplessness, hopelessness, brokenness, and all the other heavy things were being borne by Jesus on the cross. And the tears started flowing and they wouldn’t stop.

            --All of you who grieve.

            --All of you who mourn the loss of life or the end of a marriage.

            --All of you who mourn the loss of a dream.

            --All of you who are living with a terminal illness.

            --All of you who deeply regret something that you have done that you wish more                                     than anything that you could undo.

            --All of you who worry about an adult child making his or her way in the world.

Jesus on the cross identifies with you in all of your struggles and even knows what it’s like to cry in desperation, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

God experienced humanity fully in the Cross of Christ. And the hope is this:

that just as God experienced humanity fully in dying a real human death--even a brutal human death--so we, too, can experience new life with God in the resurrection.

As I stood there in the chapel service with tears streaming down my face, those around me sang the third stanza, even as my heart was too full to sing myself. Those around me sang

                        And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,

                        and when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on

                        And when from death I’m free I’ll sing and joyful be.

                        And through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,

                        and through eternity, I’ll sing on.