The Nature of God and the Nature of Prophecy

The gospel lesson for this week is Luke 3.1-6, which is Luke's account of the ministry of John the Baptist.  Luke associates John the Baptist's call to repentance with a familiar text from the Prophet Isaiah: "prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight; every valley and hill shall be made low and the rough places smooth."

The fact that the author of Luke's gospel saw the ministry of John the Baptist reflected in Isaiah's vision tells us a lot about the nature of biblical prophecy, and undermines our conventional understandings of prophecy.  We normally interpret biblical prophecy in a literal manner, and also associate it with violence that God will bring upon human beings.  Here, Luke saw Isaiah's vision as being brought about symbolically and figuratively.  John the Baptist's ministry did not include, literally, mountains and hills being made law or rough places being made smooth.  Instead, by calling people to repentance, he was figuratively facilitating a way for God to enter into his listener's minds and hearts.

A God who has the power to transform our hearts and minds and to make us holy is a God of greater power than a God whose primary concern is physical manifestations and violence.  In fact, through human technology we now have the power and the capacity to literally make rough places smooth and to level hills and valleys.  We even have the power to destroy our planet.  If God's power is primarily revealed through physical manifestations, then God's demonstration of power is no greater than human technology.  Only through God can the rough places of our hearts and minds be made level.  Human technology cannot do that and will never be able to do that.

Contrary to traditional understandings, the value of texts like Isaiah's vision of hills and valleys is not about predicting future events, but in revealing the nature of the God who was, is, and is to come.  God is concerned with transforming people from children of darkness to children of light, and to make this world a place free of violence and darkness.  Isaiah saw the nature of this God in his own time in his own prophetic vision.  This God was present in the time of John the Baptist, calling people to repentance.  This God is present in our own time calling us to turn away from darkness and live as children of light.

The Irony of the Church's Reading of the Story of the Widow's Mite

In Mark's gospel Jesus tells the story of a widow who gives her life savings to the temple treasury.  The widow is contrasted with those who are rich who give significantly more money out of their abundance, but proportionately, much less than the widow.  This has become known as the story of the widow's mite.  This story is typically used as a text for Sundays when stewardship is emphasized.  The typical reading of the story is that God wants us to give significantly out of our abundance, like the widow.

This is not a story about the virtue of giving money to religious institutions.  In fact, it is an illustration of the corruption of religious institutions and the danger of giving of our resources to religious institutions.  If we take a careful look at the story, we see that it is preceded by Jesus' condemnation of the religious authorities of his day for wearing long robes and building expensive temples with expensive chairs for the religious authorities to sit in.  Significantly, Jesus says that such religious authorities devour widow's houses.  The story of the widow giving all her money to the temple follows immediately after.

The widow in the story is a tragic figure.  As a widow, she has no means to support herself other than her life savings.  And she has given her life savings to the temple, thinking, reasonably, that her amazing sacrifice will be used for God's purposes.  Instead, her sacrifice does nothing but perpetuate the lavish lifestyles of the religious authorities and bolster their narcissism.

There is corruption in religious institutions today just like in ancient Israel.  Not just the obvious examples of clergy flying around in Lear jets, wearing $2,000 suits, and otherwise flagrantly wasting the money that is tithed to their religious institutions.  Churches are human run and human driven institutions that can, at times, do nothing but perpetuate the same narcissism and gluttony that Jesus preached against.  Sometimes Churches fail to imitate Christ.  Given the fact that this text is a warning about the corruption of religious institutions, the fact that Churches today use this text to compel their constituents to give large sums of money is both revealing and disturbing.

As representatives of the Church, its all about perpetual and incessant self examination and perpetual and incessant internal reform.  We have to remember our humanity, be aware of our humanity, and get over ourselves.  And we cannot give our money and resources to religious institutions blindly, naively assuming that our resources will be used for God's purposes.  Before giving her life savings, the widow should have been more calculating and discerning about what she was giving her money to.  So should we.

The Church Misses the Point Again Again

In the gospel of Mark, there is a story where Jesus is walking with the disciples, and the disciples are arguing about who is the greatest among them.  In particular, the disciples are arguing about who will sit on Jesus' right hand and his left.  Jesus rebukes the disciples by saying that the one who wants to be the greatest among them must become the servant of all people.  Jesus then reminds them that as the Son of Man, his calling is to give his life as a ransom for many

One of the central doctrines of the Christian tradition is the atonement--the fact that in Jesus, God died for our sins and through death, restored our life.  In its engagement with this doctrine, the Church has, once again, completely missed the point.  Christian theology, then it comes to the atonement, has focused on the question of "how"--how did Jesus' death reconcile us to God and bring us salvation.  The atonement theories throughout the centuries propose different answers to this question; some are just plain awful, some are pretty good.  But by focusing on the question of "how" they miss the point.

The point of the atonement is not the "how" but the "why"--why did God sacrifice Himself for us and bring us salvation.  The answer to the why is found in Jesus' response to the disciples along the road; God's entire existence is based upon self giving love.  God sacrificed Himself for us because that is God's nature.  God wouldn't think of doing something else.  And because this is God's nature, God wants us to do likewise and sacrifice ourselves for others and to live as the servant of all people.  The one who is greatest in God's eyes will be the one who sacrifices themselves the most for others.

In the Christian tradition, there has often been a grudging acceptance of serving others.  Christians are vaguely aware that they are supposed to serve others, but the significance of service is typically pushed to the back of the Church's agenda.  Serving others has its foundation and is grounded in mirroring what God has accomplished in Jesus--we serve others because Jesus did, and Jesus did because that is what God does.

Children as a Metaphor Again

In Mark's gospel, Jesus says that in order to receive the Kingdom of God, we must become like little children.

This is my vote for one of the most misinterpreted sayings of Jesus.  Understanding the text requires an understanding of the rift between our understanding of children and the understanding of children in ancient cultures.  We have a largely positive understanding of children and associate qualities like purity, faithfulness, trust, and honesty with children.  Consequently, we read the text to mean that in order to enter the Kingdom of God, we must cultivate purity, faithfulness trust, and honesty.  Specifically, we say that today, it is difficult to believe in things like the resurrection, since it is inconsistent with our scientific understandings of the world, and in order to be God's people, we have to simply believe in what seems unbelievable to us--to do so, we have to be simple and trusting in God, like a child trusts a parent.

In the ancient world, children were not perceived like this.  Instead, children were seen in a very negative light.  Children were not perceived as pure, faithful, trusting, and honest.  Children were largely seen as having no value.  They were, in fact, largely invisible and ignored.

It also bears mentioning that the association of religiosity with simple faith and trust in what seems unbelievable would have also been largely incomprehensible to an ancient audience.  Ancient cultures believed in things like resurrection and healing.  These were part of the worldview of ancient people.  To say that the task of being religious was to believe in something that contradicted what was largely understood to be plausible would have seemed strange.

With the understanding that children were seen as having no value, let's consider Jesus' statement again: in order to receive the Kingdom of God, we must become like little children.  Jesus is not telling us the qualities that we need to cultivate in order to earn a place in God's Kingdom.  Instead, we are being reminded that in order to have a place in God's Kingdom, we have to know and understand that we are being given that place not through our own merit, but solely through the grace of the one who extends the invitation.  More than anyone else, children were constantly told that they had no worth.  If they were invited into an exclusive club, they would know and understand that it didn't have anything to do with their worth.

In order to be part of God's Kingdom of grace; in order to understand what it is and our place in it, we have to begin with the understanding that God perceives us as his sons and daughters who have infinite worth.  And that means we perceive ourselves as having infinite worth and others as having infinite worth.  If we perceive ourselves with this duality--of our unworthiness in entering the Kingdom of God and our infinite worth as God's children, we will naturally treat others with grace and mercy.  This is the world that God is excited about creating.

Seeing Through the Eyes of the Excluded

In Mark's Gospel, the disciples are arguing about who among them is the greatest.  In response, Jesus places before them a little child, and tells them that in order to be first, we must seek to be the last, and the servant of all.

As a starting point, since Jesus is using a little child as an illustration, we first must understand the perception and role of children in the ancient Near East.  Here, we encounter an enormous disconnect with our own cultural understanding of children.  We place a high value upon children and have a largely positive understanding of children.  We associate positive values like innocence, faith, and purity with children.

The ancient Near East had a very different understanding of children.  Children were seen in a very negative light.  In particular, children were kept out of significant public and private events.  Children were seen as the outcast, who was, at best, excluded, and at worst, used as a scapegoat when things went wrong.  The only time, in fact, that children were noticed was when they were punished publicly for doing something wrong. 
We can think of lots of contemporary equivalents to this ancient perception of children; those who are excluded as outcasts and scapegoated for anything that goes wrong. 

The disciples would have been shocked when Jesus brought a child into the conversation about who was the greatest.  They would have been even more shocked when Jesus told them that whoever welcomes a child welcomes him, and the One who sent him.  Jesus is, literally, telling his listeners that the greatest among them will see the presence of God in the excluded and the outcast.  Accordingly, the excluded and outcast can no longer be excluded and outcast if we perceive the presence of God within them.  Jesus' statements have enormous implications for how we must reorder not only our cultural understandings of the excluded and outcasts, but our collective political and social relationships.

The Church, at best, gives the outcast a bag of groceries and wishes them well.  The Church is called to do much more than that.  The Church is called to stand in the place of the outcast, and to see the very presence of God in the outcast.

Considering Society's Correlation of Wealth and Virtue

The author of the Letter of James says that we shouldn't show partiality or favoritism based upon wealth, inside the Church or outside of it.  The author's statement cuts against the prevailing wisdom and ethos of our own society, as well as James' own

I would like to raise the simple question about whether or not the author is correct.  We begin by asking about why partiality has been shown in the first place.  Today, I believe, we show partiality to the wealthy because we believe that there is a correlation between wealth and virtue--the wealthier that a person is, the more virtuous that they must be.

If we are going to correlate wealth and virtue, we first would need to be informed about the true net worth of an individual that we are evaluating, so that the individual's virtue could thereby be measured.  But in our society today, there is often a difference between reality and perception when it comes to wealth.  Particularly before the financial crisis a few years ago, there was an explosion of the use of unsecured credit.  Someone who did not have the trappings of wealth could easily obtain tens of thousands of dollars of credit to obtain it.  That individual, with little actual net worth, could parade about with designer suits, shoes, and a fancy car.  For those that correlate wealth and virtue, this individual would appear to be virtuous, when they are actually in debt up to their figurative eyeballs.  In comparison, studies have demonstrated that a large number of millionaires actually live frugal lives and don't show the trappings of wealth.  In a fancy suburban church in Nashville, who would get the preferential treatment by the ushers at the front door?

When we are measuring someone's wealth in order to evaluate their virtue, we have to acknowledge, therefore, that what we are actually measuring is not the person's actual wealth, but our perception of their wealth, which might be drastically incorrect.  But let's assume that we can make an accurate measurement someone--let's imagine that an individual's worth is transparent and known to everyone.  If wealth were correlated to virtue, this raises the inference, for example, that public school teachers are not as virtuous as private school teachers who make more money.  Doctors who choose to work in the developing world or in clinics for the poor have less virtue than specialists in large hospitals.  Persons who do not have wealth but who suddenly inherit money or win the lottery suddenly obtain virtue.  Business executives who fraudulently obtain large sums of money are virtuous.

James is right.  When we really think through it, it makes no sense to show partiality based upon wealth.  There are virtuous rich.  There are virtuous poor.  There are rich who lack virtue.  There are poor who lack virtue.  Basing our opinion about someone upon our perception of their wealth is irrational.

But let's assume for a moment that virtue was a function of wealth and that those without wealth truly lack virtue.  If that were true, then this is all the greater reason to show partiality to those without wealth in Church.  The Church is, after all, a place where those who are lost can find salvation and redemption.  By analogy, a hospital gives its greatest resources to those who are in the most critical condition.  The best doctors are in the emergency room.  Patients are given the most care when they are in critical condition.  The more that we perceive someone to be lost, the more hospitable and welcoming we should be, because we are called to be a place where those who are lost can find their way home.

The Task of the Church

At the tail end of Jesus' Bread of Life Discourse in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his Jewish listeners that if they are to follow him, they must symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood.  The word that Jesus uses to describe "eating" is the Greek trogein, which is rarely used in the New Testament.  This was a word that is the rough equivalent of "gnawing."  Instead, the New Testament more commonly uses the more polite word phagein, which was the general word used to describe polite and socially appropriate dining.

Jesus was clearly throwing down the gauntlet, figuratively speaking, with his listeners.  Notice that at the conclusion of his discourse, many of his listeners stopped following Jesus.  What offended them was his reference to eating flesh and ingesting blood.  Even when used as a symbol, this was a notion that would have been shocking and offensive to his Jewish listeners--in Jewish culture, ingesting flesh and drinking blood is an anathema.  By using blunt, even extreme terminology, Jesus made it clear to the crowds that in order to be his followers, they had to be willing to abandon their own cherished cultural practices when those practices conflicted with being a follower of Jesus.


As Christianity spread into the Roman Empire, Gentile Christians had to make the same choice.  Paul and Christian leaders in later generations made it clear that the Church stood separate and apart from culture--when following Jesus conflicted with Roman culture, the Church had to follow Jesus.  Sometimes Roman practices were consistent with following Jesus; sometimes they were not.  The Church was willing to face persecution and even death when necessary.

This is the task of the Church.  Its complicated.  Its somewhere between the extreme of being the mirror and the voice of culture, and setting itself against culture.  Its learning to be, in New Testament terms, in the world but not of it.  Too often the Church today tries to appease the casual disciples who follow Jesus into the desert to get bread and to be entertained.  Jesus was willing to let these casual disciples go in order to get down to the real business of the Church--forming a community that would follow in the way of Christ without compromise or limitation.

In ancient Israel and in our own generation, life was about seeking security and fostering our own survival.  This was so basic to the cultural makeup of ancient Israel, and to us, that it is an assumption about life that goes unquestioned and even unrecognized.

In ancient Israel, security and survival was all about creating bread.  Bread was the staple of the ancient Middle Eastern and European diet.  It remained so until modern times.  For Jesus' listeners, life centered around the cultivation of wheat, the harvest, and the baking of bread.

Today we continue to be preoccupied with our own security and survival, but bread no longer is closely connected to security and survival.  We are no longer an agricultural society where most of us harvest wheat.  Bread is no longer the centerpiece of our diet.  We don't spend our days harvesting and baking bread.  Today, our central preoccupation for security and survival is tied to the creation and cultivation of money and property.

In John's gospel, Jesus creates bread to feed the multitudes.  Those who are fed follow Jesus to get more.  Jesus responds to the crowd's desire for more bread by challenging their fundamental assumption that life was about making sure that there was enough bread.  Jesus says that the purpose of life is not about creating and cultivating bread (i.e. our own security and survival), but in seeking to imitate God.  In Jesus, God was not preoccupied with his own security and survival, but lived as a servant who sacrificed his life for the sins of the world.

If we follow Jesus only to facilitate our own safety and security, we are just like the multitudes who followed Jesus to get bread because we share their basic assumption about what the purpose of life is.  We will never be able to satisfy our cravings, and we will remain hungry.  In order for us to be God's people, we have to reorient our understanding about what life is about.  If we let go of our preoccupation with our own safety and security and live our lives for others, we will never be hungry.

The Mustard Seed Parable as Satire and Parody

The parable of the mustard seed is one of the most well known of Jesus' parables of the Kingdom of God.  Simply put, Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed, which Jesus says, is the tiniest of seeds, but when fully grown, becomes a mighty tree that provides shelter for birds

This parable is a parody of a very well known and well worn motif that was used in speeches by Jewish politicians and rabbis in Jesus' day.  The motif compared Israel to a tiny seed, and went on to say that one day Israel would grow to become like the cedars of Lebanon, which was a species of tree in ancient Israel that was huge and majestic.  The cedars of Lebanon were commonly exported, often without Israel's consent, by foreign kings to build temples.

In order to get the satire of Jesus' parable, we would have to be familiar with what a mustard seed grows into in Israel.  A mustard seed grows into a weed.  The weed is, in fact, short, stocky, and sort of silly looking.  Jesus' parody of Israel's well known motif would have been highly shocking and offensive to his listeners.  Israel always dreamed of having a Kingdom of their own, where God would restore the glory of David and Solomon.  Now this Kingdom is being compared to a weed.

For Jesus, and other teachers' in Jesus time, the Kingdom of God represented a vision of God's vision for the world, and a reflection about how God wants us to treat one another.  The measure of our life, God says, is about whether we are living as servants of one another and showing mercy, compassion, and love of neighbor.  Notice that Jesus' perception of the mustard plant is a positive one.  The mustard plant is recognized for its propensity to provide shelter.  The mustard plant is not perceived negatively because it does appear to have the glory of the Cedars of Lebanon.

If we are truly God's people and living in God's reign, we will evaluate our own value based upon our propensity to serve the interests of our neighbor and to promote mercy, compassion, and love of neighbor.  To the outsider who does not know God, the way that we live might appear analogous to how a casual observer would see the mustard plant.  Similarly, to God's people, what would be notable to the world would only be notable to God's people to the extent that it demonstrates servant-hood.

As always, we remember the example of Jesus, who the world would have seen only as a Jewish Mediterranean peasant who lived as an itinerant.  To God's people, Jesus represented the full glory and majesty of God by living as a servant and ultimately giving his life for the salvation of the world.

God As A Singer-Songwriter

Middle Tennessee is full of songwriters.  Good ones, bad ones, mopey ones, upbeat ones.  Songwriting is about creating something new and then sharing it with the world.  You pour out your emotions, your hopes, and your dreams, into the music, and you share yourself with the world through your song.

God is like a songwriter.  God as creator creates every day, every moment, anew.  As creator, God pours Himself into the world that is continuing created and recreated.  Every sunset, every rainstorm, is a unique creation that is unlike any other.

The Psalmist invites us to sing a new song to the Lord and to the world.  This invitation is extended to us because as God's children, we are called to model ourselves after the One who sings a new song to us and to the world.  Every day, God invites us to write a new song, a new way of being God's child.  The details are left up to us, as a songwriter faces an empty page to fill up with music, or a painter faces a blank canvas.  God wants our lives to be a unique expression of love of God and love of our neighbor.  We are given the freedom to create any song that we want, to make our discipleship uniquely our own.

If we are faithful, our lives will be filled with joy and wonder at the beauty of God's handiwork.  And every day we will wake up like a singer songwriter, eager to write a new song and present the song at the open mike night at our local coffee house.  We will be continually searching for new ways to be disciples, and grateful that each new day presents a unique opportunity to live as God's people.  If we try to do things the same every day, we are fighting our own nature, and more importantly, the nature of the God who is the creator and redeemer of all that is.  We will always be creating and singing a new song.

Living According to the Example of the Lamb of God

The gospel lesson for this, the Fourth Sunday in the Season of Easter, is a well known text from John's gospel where Jesus calls himself the good shepherd, and disciples as sheep under his care.

To the casual contemporary observer, this metaphor suggests that disciples are dumb and passive.  This certainly matches our perception of sheep.  However, the real meaning of the shepherd/sheep metaphor goes much deeper than that.  The key to understanding the meaning of the metaphor lies in what sheep were cultivated for in the ancient world.  The primary purpose of raising sheep (and all livestock, for that matter) in ancient cultures was not for food, but for religious sacrifice.  Jewish culture was centered in religious ritual; virtually every significant decision required some sort of ritual.  Rituals were particularly used where an individual was estranged from God through some act or omission, and needed redemption and reconciliation.

Jesus, as the Lamb of God, sacrificed Himself willingly to bring about our reconciliation to God and our redemption.  As the Body of Christ, we are called to imitate Christ and similarly sacrifice ourselves and seek the interest of our neighbor.  This means that if we accept the calling of Christ, we are called not to seek our own self interest, but to seek the interest of our neighbors.  We are cultivated by the Good Shepherd so that we might willingly be God's instruments to bring about reconciliation between our neighbors and God, and reconciliation between God and the world.  In the Wesleyan tradition, Christ's work in us as the Good Shepherd is called sanctification.  Sanctification is the process where God's Spirit is active in us to transform us and mold us into the image and likeness of Christ.

To the world that does not know Christ, being God's people may be perceived as a sign of weakness, just as those who do not understand the sacrificial role of sheep might look at sheep and see only weakness.  God's people know otherwise.  They know that the One sitting on the throne who is the source of all power and glory and honor forever and ever is Jesus, the Lamb of God.  The nature of the God who has always been and always will be is Jesus, the Lamb of God who thinks of nothing but the reconciliation and redemption of the world. 

In God There Is No Darkness At All

The gospel reading for the Second Sunday in Easter is an encounter between the disciples and Jesus after his resurrection. The miracle that is normally focused on is the fact that Jesus was raised. Perhaps an even greater miracle is the fact that Jesus appeared to the disciples to invite them to continue God's work of salvation and redemption.

As you will recall, the disciples compiled a pretty dismal track record during their time with Jesus. They misunderstood Jesus' message again and again, and in the end, abandoned Jesus when he needed them the most. Peter denied knowing Jesus three times in Jesus' final hours, and now the disciples are huddled in a room, terrified that they will meet the same fate as Jesus. If the tables were turned and Jesus had abandoned the disciples, it is highly likely that the disciples would have been searching for a new master. Instead, Jesus is concerned, as always, only with furthering redemption and reconciliation. Rather than the disciples seeking out Jesus to beg for forgiveness, Jesus actually meets the disciples where they are to continue to carry out God's plan.

Jesus' willingness to be in relationship with the disciples and to use them as God's instruments raises the issue about why Jesus did not seek out new disciples, given the disciples repeated failures. Perhaps the answer lies in the notion of grace and justification by faith alone. The disciples were cognizant of their failures and shortcomings, and were aware that they were still in relationship with Jesus not out of their own merit, but because of Jesus' willingness to forgive and seek reconciliation. The disciples could proclaim a message of justification by faith alone because they themselves experienced it and knew it. If Jesus chose disciples from the courageous, the wise, or the educated, those who were chosen would have assumed that they were chosen from their own merit; such persons could proclaim justification by faith, but they wouldn't be able to really, really know it because they had not experienced the wonder of being forgiven when they had not merited forgiveness.

God calls out to us in our weakness and calls us into relationship with Him solely out of love for us and a desire for reconciliation. Ironically, what makes us able and willing to be Christ for others is our own cognizance of our weaknesses and failures. When we are sitting alone in a room, preoccupied with our failures and mistakes, remember that God simply wants our relationship with Him to continue. And, the more that we need to seek forgiveness for, the more that God will use us in God's plan of reconciliation.

The author of the First Epistle of John puts it this way: in God there is no darkness at all, only light. If Jesus had come to the disciples seeking revenge, or if Jesus had abandoned the disciples because the disciples abandoned them, that would represent some kind of darkness in God. There is no darkness in God; there is only light. There is only forgiveness and reconciliation.

The Simplicity of God's Redemptive Work

I have dabbled in music in the past. Something that I find remarkable about many forms of contemporary music is its simplicity. Blues, rock and roll, country, and gospel songs often have no more than four chords. In fact, some of the greatest songs written in the modern world have no more than four chords. All Along the Watchtower has three. So does the Old Rugged Cross. You could say that the power and the beauty of much contemporary music lies in its simplicity, and that nothing takes away the power and beauty of blues, rock and roll, country, and gospel as trying to throw in too many chords and make things too complicated.

The same is true of the most basic message of the Christian faith. In this weeks Revised Common Lectionary readings, we find this message summarized in the first ten verses of Paul's Letter to the Ephesians: God loves the world, and because of his love for the world, God has redeemed us and reconciled us to God in the saving work of Christ.

This is the message that binds us together as the Body of Christ. This is why we are the Church. And this is the message that we are called to proclaim.

We need to hear the message proclaimed again and again, because we remain in denial of the simplicity of the message. On some level, we simply can't believe that the message is this simple, and that God simply loves us unconditionally and was willing to do anything to bring about our redemption. We remember the bad things that we have done, individually and collectively, and we think that God certainly could not love us and redeem us with all our imperfections. So like bad contemporary music, we clutter up the message and complicate the message.

I used to think that it was not necessary to preach sermons that lead to justification (a term of Methodist theology that refers to our acceptance of the saving grace that is offered to us in Christ). I was wrong. The message of justification needs to be heard over and over again. I need to hear it over and over again. We need to hear it and proclaim it until we finally believe it.

Waiting and Waiting for the World to Change

We live our lives with the idea that our joy and peace requires something happening that changes the world out there. We tell ourselves that we will be joyful once we get that promotion; once our 401K hits a certain threshold; once we retire. But then invariably we reach these goals and these external things happen and we still have not found joy and peace.

Israel was the same way in the ancient world. Israel knew that it was a people set apart through its covenant with God. Israel expected that God would change the nature of the world "out there" to bring joy and peace to Israel. Israel expected joy and peace when it had a king; once it had a temple; once it was a sovereign nation. But these things happened and Israel was still not at peace.

Jesus told Israel, and us, that everything we need to experience joy and peace is already right here. The Kingdom of God, Jesus tells us, is already in our midst. It was in Israel's midst when Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God. It was in Israel's midst in the days of Abraham. The Kingdom of God has always been present with us, in us, and among us. That means that God is already here, and this is already God's world. All we have to do is recognize it and see it. Once we do, we will see that we already have everything that we need to have peace and joy here and now.

An Unexpected Image of Discipleship

Paul tells the ancient Church in Corinth that discipleship is like running a marathon. This is an unexpected image of discipleship, but one that is useful for the contemporary Church, and I think particularly for the United Methodist Church. There are several important things that we can take from Paul's image. First, the notion that there is an objective winning and losing, of right and wrong, correct and false when it comes to discipleship. In a marathon, there is literally one winner, and the runners can objectively rank themselves from first to last. In discipleship, there are different paths that we take to become holy, but holiness is holiness. We are either sanctified or we are not. We are either living as God's people or we are not.

The correlation of discipleship with being an elite athlete also reminds us of the demands of discipleship. Too often our discipleship is put on the figurative back burner and given less priority than our employment, our finances, our extracurricular activities; pretty much everything. This is all, of course, unstated and implicit--we would never admit this to ourselves or to others. Imagine a marathon runner trying to win a marathon without giving his or her training the highest priority and being constantly preoccupied with training and preparation. Discipleship has to be like that.

Perhaps the most important point of Paul's text, however, is to remember that God has a definition of winning that is different than the world's definition of winning. What it means to win in God's eyes is to be holy. Winning in the world's eyes is defined in terms of status, physical appearance, financial resources, and vocation. God wants us to be holy. This is what it means to win in God's eyes. If we are holy, we win. If we are not, we lose.

As always, we look to Jesus as our model for what it means to win in God's eyes. Like an elite athlete focused upon the prize of winning a race, Jesus lived life focused upon fulfilling God's will. In the eyes of the world, he lost. In God's eyes, he won.

Lessons from Paul's Experience in Corinth

The early Church community in Corinth had lots and lots of questions and problems. Paul stayed in Corinth for several years and then he left to start other Churches. The First Letter to the Corinthians is written by Paul from Ephesus to address some of the myriad issues that the early disciples faced.

1 Corinthians 8.1-13 is a discussion of one of these issues. To set this problem in context, in the ancient world, both in Greek culture and in other cultures, you had a ritual for everything. Not only big events like the coming of age of a young person or a funeral, but for little things too. You literally couldn't do anything without having some sort of ritual. Most of these rituals involved the sacrifice or other use of food. In many religious acts, you couldn't eat the food after the ritual, or the ritual would be invalidated. So the food was sold to markets, which resold the food to customers.

Here is the problem for the early Church: was it idolatry to eat the food in the markets that had been used in sacrifice to idols? Did the eating of this food someone make the early disciples participants in these rituals, and thereby participants in idolatry?

Paul's answer is simple: eating such food is not a problem, because the idols are not real. There is only one God; the God of salvation who has created all things and redeemed us in Jesus. The other idols who are worshiped do not exist. They are just wood and metal objects and are figments of the adherent's imagination. You literally cannot worship the other gods of Greek culture because they do not exist. So go ahead and eat the food that had been sacrificed to idols if you want.

We don't literally worship metal and stone objects anymore, but we still have "idols" in our culture today that we spend lots of time preoccupied with. We don't worship status, materialism, power, and security, but these things have power over us, and we spend an inordinate amount of time focused upon these things. By analogy, Paul's advice for us is not to be preoccupied with these things because they have no power over us. They are illusions. Any time we spend focusing on these illusions is time wasted, because they are not real.

Paul makes another good point in 1 Corinthians 8.1-13. Although mature disciples will have no problem eating food in the marketplace that had been sacrificed to idols once they get the point that the idols are not real, Paul also advised the early disciples not to do anything that would disrupt the growth of other disciples who were not as mature in their faith yet. Many of the early disciples had grown up worshiping idols and participating in the rituals--although, as indicated above, this did not technically constitute idolatry, it was a waste of time and kept disciples from focusing upon what was most important. So Paul suggested to the early community that if eating food in the marketplace that had been sacrificed to idols continued to be a problem after his advice was read to the community, it was better for everyone to just stop eating such food.

Paul's advice about concern for other disciples is good. Sometimes in the Church we forget that we are a community, and in our discipleship, we need to be concerned not only for our own development, but the growth in grace of those who are in our community. We live in a culture that is all about the rights of the individual. We have forgotten that in the Church, we are called to be a community that is concerned for others, both inside and outside the walls of the Church. Discipleship is not an individual process, but a collective process. If the Church is engaging in a practice that might be detrimental to some, the Church should take this into consideration in how it goes about being the Church.

A Revolution in Galilee

In ancient Israel, only the chief priest could utter the name of God, and the chief priest could only utter the name of God on one day. And on that one day the one person who could utter the name of God could only use the name of God using the respectful and appropriate designation, "Jehovah."

Jesus, a Jewish Mediterranean peasant uttered God's name frequently while teaching in the hills of Galilee. Jesus spoke the name of God frequently--more importantly, rather than using the conventional and formal "Jehovah," Jesus referred to God using the term "Abba." The word "Abba" is the rough equivalent of "Daddy."

Jesus began a revolution in the hills of Galilee. The revolution was all about how we perceive ourselves and perceive those around us. We are all the adopted daughters and sons of the God of eternal power and glory. So naturally, we can call God "Abba." God is not some distant and estranged from us. God has come near to us and has offered to enter into a familial relationship with us. That means that we are all of infinite worth, and we should perceive ourselves and others as persons of infinite worth.

The churches that Paul founded brought this message into the Greek and Roman world. Like Israelite culture, the value that Greek and Roman cultures gave to people was a function of their family heritage. Those born of royalty were given a high status. Those born of servants were given a low status. Children of royalty were considered to be of infinite worth. Children of those born to servants were considered to be of little value.

Jesus' message that Paul proclaimed disrupted this cultural system. As the early Christians reasoned, correctly, if we are all adopted children of God, then we should all be considered to be of infinite worth; not just those who were born into royalty. That means, that there is no longer male or female, Jew or Greek, free or servant. As you might expect, Jesus' message threatened to disrupt the entire social order in the Greek and Roman world.

Jesus' message remains revolutionary. We are all God's children. That means that when we see anyone in this world, we must see them for who God has revealed them to be; his daughters and sons. And we must treat them that way. If taken seriously, Jesus' message can turn our world upside down, for the better.