Faith for Life - Tough but Tender

Preached on Sunday, March 5, 2017

Scripture readings: Isaiah 42:1-9; John 7:51-8:11

One day, Jesus came across an angry crowd which had caught an adulteress and they were backing her into a corner so that they could stone her to death. Jesus shouted at them to stop, and he yelled, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Lake Lenice, Crab Creek
North of Mattawa/Desert Aire
February 2017

All of a sudden, a woman from the back of the crowd fired off a big rock that barely missed hitting the adulteress. Jesus recognized the rock-thrower at a glance and he shouted, “Come on, Mother! Will you please mind your own business!”

The spiritual leaders of God’s people dragged a woman into the presence of Jesus and told him that they had caught her in the act of adultery. John, the writer of the gospel, doesn’t tell us how these spiritual people caught her in the act, but it’s clear that they neglected a very important fact. In the case of adultery, it takes two to tango, and they neglected to bring the man whom they also must have caught. The Old Testament law for the punishment of adultery clearly says that both partners were to be killed together. (Leviticus 20:10)

These spiritual people staged this trial in order to trap Jesus, as John tells us. I wonder if these spiritual people were looking around for likely acts of adultery, and how they tracked this case down? Some people wonder if one of the spiritual leaders was one of the partners; but that couldn’t be, because these were spiritual people.

But that’s exactly the issue. That’s the problem. Maybe something like this would have happened without Jesus and, yet, these spiritual people did this horrible thing because of Jesus.

It makes me see, once again, that Jesus often brings out the worst in people. It happened over and over again in the gospels. It still happens, so they say.

Of course, the opposite is also true: that Jesus does bring out the best in people. But does that knack for bringing out the best happen as often as bringing out the worst?

It’s one of the clearest lessons in the New Testament, and none of any of the lessons of Jesus have stopped being important. These lessons continue to be true, and we need them, and so this is a very scary lesson, if it applies to the spiritual, religious people of today.

Are there any spiritual or religious people here today? Then you better watch out!

The other crazy thing about this story is that Jesus really was taking sides. It’s clear whose side he takes. He took the woman’s side.

Wasn’t Jesus being awfully irresponsible? Wasn’t he setting a terrible example for us?

Adultery is a terrible thing. At very least, it’s a betrayal of trust, and Jesus took the sinner’s side against the people who stood up for traditional values. He sided against those who upheld the value of the holiness of trust.

Except for the fact that they didn’t. They didn’t stand for trust. They were on the side of entrapment, and trickery. They were willing to hurt Jesus through the hurting of others. There’s no trust in that. And they hated Jesus.

Well, what they hated most about Jesus was that he clearly didn’t believe in their integrity. He didn’t believe that they were what they claimed to be. Over and over, Jesus called their goodness and their virtue into question; and so, well, they decided that they would show him a thing or two. And, once again, they chose to show Jesus, and everyone else, what they were at their worst.

Jesus no longer makes himself seen and heard the way he once did, when he walked this earth. Of course, he’s still here, and we can see and hear Jesus in different ways. So, what if Jesus arranges our lives so that, sometimes, it becomes clear that we aren’t what we claim to be, and that we aren’t even what we like to think ourselves to be in our most private moments? What if Jesus arranges our lives so that others can see and tell us that we aren’t what we claim to be, and that we aren’t even what we like to think ourselves to be?

I find that this very thing does happen to me. I also find that (when it does happen) it doesn’t bring out the best in me. When this happens, I’m tempted to blame those who catch me; spiritual, religious person that I am. This also brings out the worst in me.

It’s just one the many reasons why I need Jesus.

When the story is over, it was easier for the woman to know why she needed Jesus than it was for the spiritual people. It was harder for them, but they needed to know it too. They needed to know why they needed Jesus, and how much they needed Jesus.

The woman knew that Jesus could see through her and, knowing what Jesus knew about her, she could know that Jesus cared. She knew that Jesus was opening the door to a new life; a life of freedom, and love, and acceptance, and change.

The spiritual people needed to know what Jesus knew about them, and so he showed them. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” The older ones, who knew themselves better, were the first to put down their stones and go off to think, and to pray.

I think that’s what at least some of them went off to do. I hope so.

Jesus used a determined quietness and gentleness to awaken them to their true and needy selves. They either saw the patterns of their lives, or they saw some particular action that they refused to face that was so revealing of those patterns, or else they saw the present moment.

What could they see in the present moment? They could see their current plotting and scheming. They could see their angers and hatreds. They could feel the stones in their hands. They could see the cringing figure of the woman they were willing to kill in order to get back at the one who dared to show them their true selves.

The person at their feet, whom they accused as a sinner, represented something else that they would not see or admit. She was someone the prophet Isaiah spoke about. She was a bruised reed. She was a smoldering wick. They meant to break her and snuff her out.

Jesus took her side in order to keep her from being broken and snuffed out. It’s possible that some of the spiritual people in the mob didn’t go home to think and pray, unless they went to think and pray about how to do a better job at breaking Jesus and snuffing him out.

It certainly came down to that in the end; except that Jesus refused to stay broken and snuffed out. The truth is that Jesus died on the cross to keep any of us who are bruised reeds and smoldering wicks from being lost, and broken, and put out.

Jesus came to carry all of that on the cross. Jesus came to call us to a new life in which we can stand tall and shine. That is, if we will let Jesus show us who we truly are, and if we will let Jesus tell us why we need him, and how much we need him.

Then we will find his faithfulness and his unique brand of justice. Christians often speak of this strange justice as Jesus saving us; and we can see what this saving is really like in this story of Jesus, and the woman, and the mob.

We know that Jesus went to the cross, not to excuse us, because his strange justice has the purpose of making things right; making things as they should be. Excuses don’t create this justice.

Jesus came to create justice by taking our side against everything in our life that accuses us and shows our inner shame. On the cross he takes our side in order to give us a new life. This is what defeats our accusers.

The story of the woman caught in adultery is really another way of seeing ourselves. In future days, she would be able to tell others about the day when Jesus saved her and tried to save the spiritual people who needed Jesus without admitting it. We can look at that day’s story and see what our own salvation needs to be and how it needs to come to us.

Jesus arranges our lives not only to help our blind eyes to see ourselves but, also, he arranges our lives to hear him tell us about his love. “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

Another surprise is how easy it is to hear Jesus’ words to the woman as a warning, and not as an invitation and a promise. Why would anyone want her to be warned, instead of wanting her to be invited to a new life? Why would anyone want these words of Jesus to be a warning when they could be the life-changing promise of Jesus?

This also tells us something about ourselves that we need to hear. Jesus invites us to receive the new life that his cross and his resurrection are designed to give us. And we want to turn his invitation to us into a warning to the world. Why do we do this?

We are called to imitate the determined quietness and gentleness of Jesus so that we can be his gift to the bruised and the smoldering. We are called to imitate the quietness and toughness that Jesus showed to the accusing world: the judging, blaming world.

I am choosing to take the side of the invitation and the promise. I want to share that with my neighbors and with the world.

That’s what Jesus offers to you: to become the people who don’t condemn but share the invitation and promise of Jesus to others. That is the calling of Jesus to all of us who claim to be his people.

Pushing Boundaries - The Authentic Life

Preached on Sunday, July 24, 2016

Scripture reading: Acts 4:32-5:11

South Coast Orange County California
June 2015 and June 2016

An Irishman proposed to his girlfriend on St. Patrick’s Day. He gave her a ring. It looked like a diamond ring, but the stone was a synthetic diamond. When the girl realized it was fake she was furious. How could the man she loved trick her like that? She told him what she thought of him, but he told her this. “It was in honor of St. Patrick’s Day! I gave you a sham-rock!”

Ananias and Sapphira wanted to shine like diamonds in the church, but they didn’t want to pay the price for that. They paid another price instead. They paid for what they wanted with a lie. They wanted to be thought of as something they were not. And then they paid another price for that.

It was all a sham. They wanted to base their life as followers of Jesus on a lie. They wanted to be loved and valued as God’s people based on a lie.

This is a deadly desire. It kills the soul.

The New Testament calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth (John 16:13 and the Spirit of Life (Romans 8:2). The Holy Spirit is God. Peter said it: “You have lied to the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 5:3) “You have lied to God.” (Acts 5:4)

To go outside of the truth is truly to go outside of life. In this case, someone has written, “There are some things you cannot do and live.” (Theodore P. Ferris, International Bible Commentary; vol. 9, p. 76)

Some people truly die of broken hearts and grief. Some people think that they will die of shame, although I’m not sure if that happens.

Ananias and Sapphira plotted a lie about themselves, and what they had done for God, and for God’s people, and it killed them. When they went outside the Spirit of Truth, they also went outside the Spirit of Life.

The old courtroom oath goes like this: “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.” Sometimes I don’t tell the whole truth. I hold some of the truth back. OK. Let me come right out and say it. I have lied. That’s the truth.

What can I say? I love the truth, but I don’t love it enough. I hate lies, but I don’t hate them enough. I know, to some extent what this means.

I am not surprised that lying killed Ananias and Sapphira. I am surprised that it doesn’t happen more often. Most of all, what surprises me is that it hasn’t killed me. I still live. Why?

I would say that this story tells us about the mercy of God just as much as it tells us about the holiness of God. It tells us that God gives us chance, after chance, after chance, to live into the truth and to live into the life of Christ.

It isn’t out of place to say that the sin behind the lie was hypocrisy. The story tells us that hypocrisy is deadly. It’s deadly to the soul. It’s deadly to the church. It’s deadly to the message of Jesus. It gives people much too good an excuse to reject both the church and the Lord whom the church represents.

It’s deadly, I say. We don’t feel this enough. We play the part of Ananias and Sapphira.

I also believe that it is possible to die of fear. I wonder if Ananias and Sapphira died because Peter, and the Holy Spirit speaking through him, caused them to see what they had done. They saw the face of evil in their hypocrisy. They saw the face of evil in their lie. Maybe this was too much for them, and the fear of what they had done killed them.

In terms of the lie, this wasn’t the first lie ever told. It was the first recorded lie told in the family circle of the church in the heart of being the church, where we are told: “All the believers were one in heart and mind.” (Acts 4:32)

It would be like a wife or husband hearing their spouse tell a lie and they had never heard them do it before. Has that ever happened? It would be like a foul word used by a child in such a way that you realized that they were perfectly accustomed to using that word. It would be like a cigarette dangling from the lips of a twelve-year-old. And yet it happens.

We know in our heart that such things (and even worse things) should not exist, and yet they do exist.

The story about Ananias and Sapphira is shocking partly because we are so used to things being the way they are and, suddenly, we see that we have failed to see ourselves. And then we are blind because God’s goodness is so powerful that it allows us to hide from the truth of ourselves. Even in a fallen world, where everything is out of line and misses its point, or goes too far, or falls short of its mark…even in such a world, even in us, there is still so much that shows God’s glory and God’s image.

Any wrongdoing, or wrong in the heart, is like a blot on the face of God. Whether it’s adultery, or impurity, or a thirty-year feud, or a life dedicated to the manipulation of others, or cruelty, or something stolen from you, or a simple lie, all such things are acts of vandalism, or self-mutilation, of the image of God in us, in others, and in the cause of God.

In the church (whether it is the church of the time of Ananias and Sapphira, or the church here and now) the love of Jesus wraps around each person like a restored innocence. Sin is still there, but the innocence of Jesus is also there, because he died for each person, and for all of us together. He died and rose to give us a new life through which we are called to live into this new, offered innocence. Jesus died and rose from the dead to give us the power to make that goodness real and authentic.

We have been given a new life where our face, our words, and our actions become more and more like Jesus. Every day Jesus is to become more real in us. The cross of Jesus is meant to become who we are. The resurrection of Jesus is meant to become who we are: in real authentic life.

The gift of the Holy Spirit can enable you to see this new, real life becoming more and more real. Look around you. Look into the faces of others. Let’s start with these faces around us, as practice, and see Jesus. The people who have not learned see Jesus are meant, in the purpose of God, to be able to look at you, and see the Jesus they don’t know yet: and see the Jesus they could grow to love and grow into him.

Authenticity means being the real thing. Authenticity means you being who you really are and not pretending to be what you are not. I’ve known some people who have done this and the result was horrible. Christian authenticity has to go further.

For the Christian the boundary for being authentic has been pushed much farther out. Authenticity means really being Jesus, for a change. When Jesus is in you, to be anything else is to become a lie. It’s like lying to God, lying to Jesus, lying to the Holy Spirit.

Sin in us (sin in the church) is like another point of a thorn in a band-new crown of thorns. It’s like the point of a nail, or a spear, all over again on a new cross, or just on the old one. It’s like drawing a swastika on a portrait of Jesus or burning down a church.

And yet the lie and the hypocrisy of Ananias and Sapphira is so common it’s a fact of life.

Like so many things, once it was done, it became so easy to repeat. We don’t like it but we almost expect it. The world expects it of us, and sees it in us, even when it’s not there. Even Christians accept it as a fact of life. Yet it’s a destructive fact of life. It’s deadly.

Everything we do, everything we say, everything we think and feel, is done, and said, and thought, and felt in the presence of God. God hears. God sees.

The good news of Jesus is the news of a God who hears and sees this shocking world of ours, and even the shallowness and the hollowness of the supposedly holy people that we pretend to be. God hears and sees it all, along with all the vast centuries of this shocking world going on and on. God hears and sees it all, and comes and dies for this world, and for us. Then he rises from our death and gives us life.

Ananias and Sapphira were surrounded by people who knew this God, in Jesus, but they seem not to have authentically known him. Ananias and Sapphira didn’t know that God came in Jesus to buy them from their sins into a new life.

They were surrounded by the people who authentically met the love of the God who hears, and sees, and dies. They were surrounded by the people who couldn’t help doing anything but giving everything in return. They were surrounded by people who gave everything; not to buy Jesus, not to buy love and admiration, but in order to have nothing that could compete with being bought by Jesus.

Ananias and Sapphira wanted a new life among such people, but they didn’t want to give everything in return for that authentic life. What Jesus had done was not authentic for them. They had to construct a life in Christ out of lies.

They had not been bought by the cross and set free. The gospel, the good news of Jesus comes to take off the blinders, and break down the lies. The Christian life is very shallow and shaky until we get this freedom from what we pretend to be. Then we will have more than a sham to give to each other, and to God.

The gospel means good news because it is designed to make us free. We will only be free when we can accept God’s gifts the only way they can be given and received. God’s love is only given as a gracious, undeserved, cleansing love for sinners.

Only the people who know they need such a love can receive it. Christ can live in a person who is authentic enough to be thankful that a new life is offered to them at the price of a cross.