Prayers for 2 a.m.

It’s the middle of the night, and you’re awake, and you don’t know why. Or maybe you do know why, but knowing why doesn’t help you get back to seep.

Maybe it’s worry – worry over the pandemic, over the health of a loved one, over politics, over work, or lack of work, over a difficult decision, or a difficult person. Maybe it’s frustration about something that’s gone wrong or something you did wrong or you are afraid of doing wrong.

Maybe it’s nothing that you can think of at all. Whatever it is, it’s 2 a.m., and you’re wide awake. What do you do now?

I suspect that you already know what I’m going to say. Pray or read the Bible. Yeah, reading Leviticus will put anybody to sleep. And some people can get really drowsy trying to pray for more than a few minutes at a time. Sometimes I’m one of them.

But I’m not suggesting prayer or Bible reading as a way to put yourself to sleep. I’m suggesting them as a way to move closer to God. If you’re awake, you might as well do something worthwhile, right? Who knows? Maybe God wants to talk to you about something. Maybe it was God who woke you, just to have this time together.

So think of this restless time as an opportunity to converse with God about life, love and anything else that comes to mind. Now is a good time to let your requests be few and your listening be sharp.

It’s often hard to hear the voice of God over the clamor of the day, so take advantage of this very quiet time to listen for a soft inner voice to assure you of God’s care, and possibly to poke you about something that you’ve neglected in your care for others.

To sleep soundly through the night, it always helps to set the stage properly.

Do you end your day with a prayer? It’s a good practice, and I highly recommend it. Most often I do a very simplified version of the Ignatian Daily Examen. What went well today? What didn’t go so well? Where was God in all this?

The idea is to pray with gratitude for what worked as well as for what you learned from what didn’t work. On really bad days, though, you may find that reviewing the bad stuff only refreshes it in your mind, and it doesn’t help you sleep at all.

I have always disliked the traditional version of the children’s prayer “Now I lay me down to sleep.” That talk about dying before you wake does not prepare a soul for sound slumber. Here’s a better version: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Watch and guard me through the night, and wake me with the morning light.”

I one spent a week at a Trappist monastery, where the monks pray the daily hours, meeting in the chapel for prayer six times a day. I was especially impressed by compline, the last service before bedtime. It brings the day to a close with a thankful remembrance of the day and prayers for forgiveness for failures to express your devotion to God through love for others.

It concludes with the monks singing the ancient song “Salve Regina,” or “Hail, Holy Queen.” As a Catholic priest who was one of my spiritual mentors once said, here we have a bunch of confirmed bachelors, and the last thing they do every night is sing a love song to the Virgin Mary. Then they close their eyes and sleep like babes.

The idea is to give yourself up to God’s keeping, confident that you will sleep well with the assurance of God’s grace. Psalm 4:8 says: “I will lie down and fall asleep in peace because you alone, Lord, let me live in safety” (CEB).

For some, it’s 2 a.m. For me, it’s more often 3 a.m. That’s when you find yourself awake, unable to make your body comfortable, unable to quiet your mind, unable to sleep. Psalm 91 calls it the “terror of the night.” Here’s part of it (Psalm 91:1-6, 9, 11 NRSV).

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.”

For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and buckler.

You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday.

Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.

Night terror should not threaten us, Psalm 77 says, but instead drive us to God, “You keep my eyelids from closing. I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I commune with my heart in the night. I meditate and search my spirit” (Psalm 77:4, 6 NRSV).

Psalm 116: “Return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you” (Psalm 116:7, NIV).

Psalm 63: “My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night, for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.” (Psalm 63:5-7 (NRSV).

You might find it helpful to rehearse some of the ways the Lord has been good to you – counting your blessings instead of counting sheep, as it were.

Or simply repeat again and again this short prayer: “Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.”

If you’re still awake, maybe it’s time to get out of bed, flip on a small light and open your Bible. As I’ve already hinted, the psalms are a great resource for prayer anytime, but maybe especially in the deep of the night. Psalm 23 is always comforting: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.”

Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, a help always near in times of great trouble. That’s why we won’t be afraid when the world falls apart, when the mountains crumble into the center of the sea, when its waters roar and rage, when the mountains shake because of its surging waves” (Psalm 46:1-3 CEB).

Psalm 96: “O sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples. For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised” (Psalm 96:1-4a NRSV).

See what you’ve done? You’ve turned a restless night into a time of praise!

If you’re still feeling lost or down, turn to Psalm 77, a Psalm of lament that I quoted from briefly before. Here’s more of it: (Psalm 77: 1-3, 7-9, 11-13)

I cry aloud to God, out loud to God, that he may hear me.

In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord. In the night my hand is stretched out without wearying. My soul refuses to be comforted.

Will the Lord spurn me forever, and never again be favorable?

Has his steadfast love ceased forever? Are his promises at an end for all time?

Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?”

Yet even in his desolation, the Psalmist does not forget God’s graciousness, and he uses this memory to help pull himself out the pit of despair.

I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord. I will remember your wonders of old.

I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds.

Your way, O God, is holy. What god is so great as our God?

Still awake? Try the Gradual Psalms, also called the Psalms of Ascent. There are 15 of them, Psalms 120 to 134. When the Temple stood in Jerusalem, pilgrims recited these psalms one by one as they ascended the steep road to the Temple Mount, or as they ascended the last 15 steps from the lower level of the Temple to the main level. Here are snippets from some of them.

120: I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me (Psalm 120:1 NIV).

121: I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth (Psalm 121:1-2 NRSV).

122: I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” (Psalm 122:1 NRSV).

125: Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever (Psalm 125:1 NRSV)

126: The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy (Psalm 126:3 NIV).

128: Happy are those who honor the Lord and walk in God’s ways (Psalm 128:1 CEB adapted).

The Psalms of Ascent take you higher and higher. Think of them as climbing the rungs of Jacob’s Ladder from earth to heaven. In fact, you might softly sing the song or hum the tune to yourself between psalms.

If you’re up for a real marathon, turn to Psalm 119. It is the longest of the psalms, 176 verses. It’s an acrostic, meaning that it follows the alphabet from start to finish. It has 22 stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and eight verses in each stanza. You can’t see it in English, but within each stanza, each verse begins with the same letter.

The psalm begins: Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the way of the Lord (Psalm 119:1 NRSV adapted).

We live in difficult times. It’s hard to stay focused on anything. It’s hard to get anything done. It’s easy to feel guilty about lots of things over which we actually have little control. It’s easy to wake up in the middle of the night with a vague feeling of being worthless and not knowing what to do about it.

Here’s one thing you can do. Remember these words from Psalm 42:8: Through each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me, and through each night I sing his songs, praying to the God who gives me life (Psalm 42: 8 NLT)

May you sleep well in coming days, but if not, may you view the time as an opportunity to reconnect with the God who loves you and gives you life. Amen.

This message was delivered July 19, 2020, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, in Edgerton, Kansas, on the Seventh Sunday After Pentecost.

More Imagining Required

I really wanted to like this book. That’s a terrible way to begin a book review, isn’t it? Yet, that’s how I must start talking about Reclaiming Our Political Roots: Rethinking Church in Nationalist Times, by Yohan Hwang (Wipf & Stock, 2020).

I really did want to like it. I had just finished Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians,” by Lee C. Camp. That book raised a lot of good questions about the nature of Christian witness and the relation of Christ and culture.

Curiously, it never mentioned a book that I thought loomed over every page. That’s the classic Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon.

I was hoping Hwang’s book would bridge the gap and bring the prickly Hauerwas-Willimon vision closer to reality. Alas, Hwang doesn’t pull it off. He is prone to overstatement of the problem and understatement of a solution.

He begins strongly enough with the assertion that “the church is and should be our true body politic, not the nation-state.” He says it’s deplorable that “we live as Americans first and Christians second.”

You can excuse the exaggeration when he claims: “Overall, the real problem is that the church has ceded all political and economic matters to the state” and “has basically been relegated to providing a social club for like-minded people.”

What’s needed, he says, is “a reimagination and restructuring of society in which the church is politically involved in all facets of our lives.” Super. But he doesn’t do nearly enough reimagining to convince me that his ideas of restructuring have a snowball’s chance of becoming reality.

I am sorry to say that his book is tedious, repetitious and overly simplistic. It relies too much on questionably broad generalizations, caricature and circular, sometimes elliptical, arguments. Far too many times he says, “Like I said” and “I do not want to be misunderstood.”

It was hard for me not to misunderstand. He says: “There was a time in which the church was truly a political body that integrated every aspect of life under itself.” He is not clear when that time was, though he seems to point to the Middle Ages. At least then, he says, the church knew what it was supposed to be about.

As for the church again becoming a true politic, Hwang offers three examples, only one of which I found relevant, and that is the place where he teaches, Chicago Hope Academy, a Christian high school. Even then, he is not clear how this example can be applied by a church that is fractured by theological squabbling and political infighting.

Hwang credits Hauerwas and William Cavanaugh for fueling his exploration of Christianity as a true alternative reality. Hauerwas even writes a positive blurb for the back cover. But Hwang never convincingly shows how the church can be an outpost, a colony that shows the world what life was mean to be like.

Through Speakeasy, I was provided a copy of the book in exchange for a fair review.

White Jesus

There is a ferment in America today over monuments, especially statues – what they mean, who they should depict, where they should be placed, and so on. It’s a highly contentious time.

A couple of weeks ago, Shaun King, a Black Rights Matter activist, made this post on Twitter in response to a post by a right-wing blogger.

King said: “Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been. … Tear them down.” In later posts, he added that statues of a white Virgin Mary and white disciples also need to go.

What I want to tell you today is that King is both absolutely right and absolutely wrong.

Mind you, I’m not arguing for a compromise, a position in between, some of this and some of that. Nor am I saying that this is a paradox, an apparent contradiction that somehow really isn’t a contradiction.

No, I am telling you that he is 100 percent correct. The images we have of white Jesus are a form of white supremacy and should come down. At the same time, he is 100 percent wrong. Properly understood, these images could be valuable to our understanding of who Jesus was and who Jesus is for us today.

Those are two dimensions of the truth that make King both right and wrong at the same time. Those two dimensions are historical accuracy and inculturation of the gospel.

First, historical accuracy. I hope I am not shattering any illusions by telling you that Jesus was not white.

The Bible tells us nothing of what Jesus looked like.

The prophet Isaiah says this of the Suffering Servant, the one who personifies Israel and suffers for the world: “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2 NRSV).

The New Testament hints that there is nothing distinctive about the way Jesus looks. When soldiers come to arrest him in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas has to identify him, so the soldiers know who to arrest. He doesn’t stand out among the 11 others who are with him. No halo, no obvious signs of holiness or anything else different about him. (Matthew 26:48, Mark 14:44, John 18:4, 5)

So he must have looked like most any other Middle Eastern male Jew of the time: dark brown or black hair, brown eyes, olive skin. He wouldn’t have been tall, maybe five foot five. He probably was bearded. If we correctly interpret a remark by the Apostle Paul, his hair would have been relatively short (1 Corinthians 11.14) – except maybe for those long forelocks required by Leviticus 19:27.

A modern Hasidic Jew might wear his long forelocks curled or perhaps braided. Let me compare him with a modern depiction of Jesus. This is from a movie version of the gospels called the Lumo Project. Jesus is portrayed by British actor Selva Rasalingham. He is half white and half Tamil. I mention that because the Tamil people in India trace their ancestry through many races. Park that thought to one side – a Jesus of many races. We’ll return to it.

I like Rasalingham as the face of Jesus. But I see three problems. One, hair too long, not to mention artfully umcombed. Two, no forelocks. Three, he was about 50 in this photo, making him 20 years too old.

Still, I hope, you get the idea. Jesus was not white. So where do we get the idea that he was? Remember Tevya’s refrain from the musical “Fiddler on the Roof”? Tradition!

Put it this way. Every image of Jesus is colored by the culture that portrays him.

One image that’s especially important comes from Byzantine art. Starting about A.D. 500, it’s the dominant image of Jesus for a thousand years. It shows Jesus as the Pantocrator, the ruler of all creation. He’s very stern looking, somebody you don’t want to mess with. And, oh yes, he’s white.

As Christianity spreads throughout Europe, the image of white Jesus goes everywhere, and he gets whiter the farther north goes. In America, a new tradition takes root. It begins in 1924 on the cover of a youth magazine published by the Swedish Covenant Church. In 1940, artist Warner Sallman turns his simple charcoal drawing into a painting that has been reproduced around the world literally a billion times.

It doesn’t hurt that Sallman portrays a Nordic Jesus about the time that Nazis and the KKK are working the lie that Jesus was Nordic, not Jewish.

Warner Sallman’s white Jesus and hundreds of others like it foster the illusion of white supremacy. After all, if Jesus is white, and Jesus is God, then God is white, and all authority is white, and – as they say on “Star Trek,” resistance is futile.

Shaun King is right. White Jesus has gotta go.

But wait. Remember that every image of Jesus is colored by the culture that portrays him. If you visit the right museum or gift shop or go to the right website, you can find many other portrayals of Jesus – Jesus in many colors. In Japan, Jesus is Japanese. In China, he’s Chinese. To Native Americans from Alaska to the Southwest, Jesus looks just like them.

In the nations of Africa, Jesus is always black, but not generically so. In Nigeria, he’s Nigerian. In Liberia, he’s Liberian. In Kenya, he’s Kenyan – and so on. And in Ethiopia, he’s Ethiopian (right), as he has been for more than 1,500 years, since about the same time that he was declared white under the Byzantine empire.

It’s called inculturation, or contextualization of the gospel. It’s about how the gospel is represented to other cultures, respecting both the integrity of the gospel and the integrity of the culture. In other words, you don’t do as so many missionaries did for so many years. You don’t go into a black culture and show pictures of a white Jesus. You show pictures of a black Jesus. Because the people you’re trying to reach are rightly suspicious of a white Jesus, representative of a race that considers itself superior. But they would welcome, and might respond to, a black Jesus, who looks just like them.

Some immediately object: But Jesus wasn’t black! No. But he wasn’t white either. And the injustice of his death certainly mirrors the experience of many black people over the ages.

Jesus is not Black. Jesus is not white. And yet, he is Black and white. Jesus is many colors, all at the same time. Remember how the song goes? “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

When my wife Linda and her sister Jan were children, they were both very blond. One Christmas, their parents got an outdoor Nativity set with plastic figures about three feet high, lighted from within. Guess what color hair Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus had?

That Nativity set was eventually passed on to us, for our two blond girls. We had to retire it when the paint started to flake off and it looked like baby Jesus had leprosy. We replaced it with a slightly updated set. The holy family still looked white, but at least they all had dark brown hair.

That’s what contextualization is all about. Whatever the historical Jesus looked like, your personal Jesus looks just like you. Of course, he does. He has to. Here’s a short course in it.

Jesus is the spitting image of God – Colossians 1:15. Jesus brought the light of God into the world when he pitched tent among us. – John 1:14. To be our savior, he had to become just like us – Hebrews 2:17.

We were created in the image of God – Genesis 1:26. We have so debased that image by our sin that it is barely recognizable in us – Romans 3:23. Following Jesus means being transformed into his image through the power of the Holy Spirit – 2 Corinthians 3:18. In short, Jesus had to become just like us so that he could make us just like him.

Ever see a pile of rocks at the beach and wonder who made it and why?

The Israelites had a habit of piling up stones at memorable sites. When Jacob dreamed of a ladder reaching down from heaven, he built a rock shrine and named the place Bethel, meaning “house of God” (Genesis 28). When the Israelites crossed the Jordan River for the first time under Joshua, they erected a cairn of 12 big stones from the river (Joshua 4).

When we sing the song “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” we may puzzle at the second verse: “Here I raise mine Ebenezer.” An Ebenezer is a “stone of help.” 1 Samuel 7:12 says it’s a battle monument erected to declare, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”

Not all monuments are good. In the wilderness, Moses set up a bronze serpent to remind people of God’s providence. Hundreds of years later, people had turned it into an object of worship. It had to be destroyed. (Numbers 21, 2 Kings 18)

Sometimes monuments have to fall. Maybe this is why one of the 10 Commandments is, “Do not make an idol for yourself in any form” (Exodus 20:4, Deuteronomy 5:8). As someone has said, the point of taking down a monument is not to erase history. The point is to quit celebrating it.

Just because something happened doesn’t mean it deserves a monument. Remember that bit with the Israelites and the golden calf? When Moses started to destroy the idol, someone is bound to have objected, “Moses, wait, you’re destroying history!”

And Moses he kept hammering at it until he ground it to dust. Then he mixed the dust with water and made everyone drink it. The story is recorded in Exodus 32. The history is not erased. But there’s no longer a monument to it, lest someone get the wrong idea about it.

White Jesus needs to go. He doesn’t need to be obliterated, just put into context, and never, ever, lifted up as the only true image of Jesus. Your personal Jesus always looks just like you. If you’re white, Jesus is white. If you’re black, Jesus is black. But whatever color you are, Jesus wants to make you just like him – and he’ll do it if you let him.

This message was delivered July 12, 2020, at Edgerton United Methodist Church.

Freedom

There’s a lot of talk in America today about the meaning of freedom.

Some of this talk is thoughtful and wise, and some of it is thoughtless and irresponsible. This is the way it’s been for a long time – not only since the start of America, but maybe since the dawn of human history.

You might say that it comes down to two basic ideas of what freedom is: freedom from or freedom for. Those two are intimately connected, but you wouldn’t always know that from the talk you hear.

What’s driving a lot of this talk today is the squabble over wearing face masks. Most people agree that it’s a good idea. It protects others from your germs, and, to a lesser extent, it protects you from the germs of others. The question is whether you should be required to wear a mask in public areas.

Polls show that a clear majority of people support mask wearing. The rest, presumably, do not – and they are usually the loudest, so they’re the ones you hear from most often.

Some Kansans are outraged at the recent statewide mask order by Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has received death threats because of his mask order. Across the country, many public health officials have resigned after being threatened for doing their jobs.

But experts say it only takes a few people who don’t comply with public health orders to infect a large population – and the number of infections already is exploding throughout the country.

I suppose no one wants to wear a face mask, maybe especially those health care workers whose jobs require them to wear one almost all the time. Masks are hot, they’re uncomfortable, they’re itchy, and you can barely understand a word anyone is saying while wearing one.

But you wear one to protect others, and yourself, from infection. It’s a matter of safety. It’s a matter of caring.

Others consider individual freedom more important. It’s common to hear someone say, “I won’t wear a mask as a matter of principle. I don’t want the government telling me what I can and can’t do.”

What if a business says it won’t serve you unless you’re wearing a mask? “I don’t want anyone telling me what I can and can’t do.”

What about those signs that say, “No shirt, no shoes, no service”? Are you free to ignore them, too? What about the laws requiring you to wear a helmet while riding a bike, or a seat belt while riding in a car? Can’t a society make any laws to protect its citizens?

Wearing a masks is a “personal decision,” some say. One state governor said recently, “We’ve told people to focus on personal responsibility.” Translated from the political dog-whistle doublespeak, that means, “Do as you like; no one cares.”

It’s gotten strangely political. Donald Trump, who thinks everything is about him, suggests that some people wear masks as a way to “signal disproval of him.”

As the ostensible head of the country, Trump might set a good example for the rest of us by putting one on, but apparently he sees it as a sign of weakness. That’s a line you’ll hear a lot in some circles. People who wear masks are fraidy cats. They’re sheep. They’re blind followers of some vast conspiracy, choose your favorite from a long list of fictional plots and schemes.

Some churches have even gotten into it. They claim an absolute right to do anything they want under the protection of the First Amendment. But the courts have been pretty consistent in ruling that society has a right to protect its citizens from harmful behavior, even those that stem from religious piety.

Here’s what it comes down to, in the words of William Schweiker. He’s an ethicist at the University of Chicago, and a United Methodist elder. He wonders, “How did orders, whether federal, state, or local, meant to protect public health ever come to be seen as a restriction of rights or liberty?”

Then he answers his own question. “It happens when freedom becomes license unbounded by concern for others.” It happens when we define freedom as personal license.

Here’s an example from one of my favorite bad movies, John Wayne’s “The Alamo.” I use this as an example because John Wayne is typical of a certain attitude, and because I’m a longtime Alamo buff. I’ve been hooked on the story since 1955, when I was seven years old, and I first saw Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett series on a tiny round screen in my home in Nokomis, Illinois.

Wayne’s Alamo movie is typical of them all. Given a choice between fact and cheesy fiction, it chooses fiction just about every time. And for a big-budget Western with lots of action, there’s a lot of speechifyin’ goin’ on here.

For example, playing Crockett, Wayne makes this speech that has now become famous: “Republic: I like the sound of the word. It means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose.”

Really? Is that what it means to be free – being drunk or sober, however you choose? Can’t you be a drunk in Moscow? Can’t you be an opium addict in Beijing? Can you say that you are truly free in either place? Isn’t there more to freedom than this? Isn’t there much more?

Wayne, or his scriptwriter, has mistaken freedom for personal license. This is a randy teenager’s vision of freedom, the kind of thing you might expect in the comic strip “Zits.” Truth is, many of us do operate from a stunted notion of freedom. We live an adult version of the adolescent fantasy of staying up all night eating junk food and watching bad movies on TV.

But there’s always a cost. I am free to stay up all night just because I want to, but if I do that, I may not be able to function as freely as I’d like the next day. I can eat all the junk food I can stuff down and watch all the junk TV I can stomach, but I may not feel very good afterward, and if I don’t, I have no one to blame but myself, though I am the last one I’ll blame, of course.

Freedom as license always has a cost, but it goes farther than you. When you interpret freedom in terms of your rights alone, you often trample on the rights of others. Usually the only people who can get away with this kind of radical individualism are from groups that are in power, economically and socially.

When you’re on top of the social heap, it’s easy to believe that your rights count more than the rights of others, and it’s easy to enforce, too.

John Stuart Mill, the great 19th-century English philosopher, wrote extensively about the limits of freedom. He defined liberty the way John Wayne defined a republic – living your own life in your own way. But he also said there were rightful boundaries to a person’s liberty. He called it the “harm principle.” Your liberty ends when it harms others. Or, as someone has put it: “Your freedom to swing your fist stops where my nose begins.”

The Apostle Paul sums up the Christian philosophy of freedom in his letter to the church at Galatia. Hear this carefully.

He says: “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters. Only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love. All the law has been fulfilled in a single statement: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5: 13-14 CEB).

In case you don’t hear that clearly enough, he amplifies the thought in his letter to the Philippians. You ought to have the same attitude as Jesus, he says. That is: “Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others” (Philippians 2:3-4 CEB).

The theme of freedom resonates throughout the Bible. The master story is the liberation of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, and the foundation of Israel as a foreshadowing of God’s kingdom. That’s followed by the sad story of Israel’s failure to live out its own ideals. Finally, we have the story that Paul tells of God bringing the whole world to freedom through the life and sacrifice of Jesus.

We are blessed to live in a land that guarantees our God-given freedom as human beings. But our government does not give us this freedom. It only recognizes our freedom and guards it.

Freedom is not something within the power of any government to give, only to deny. Freedom is a gift from God. God gives us freedom because God is free, and we are made in God’s image.

That image has become tarnished by sin, and in our sinful state we abuse our freedom more than we honor it. Jesus came to free us from slavery to sin and to restore us to true freedom so that as children of God and heirs of the freedom of God, we might lead lives that give glory and honor to God.

There’s a purpose to freedom, you see. Freedom is more than doing as you please. Freedom always implies responsibility for the other. Freedom means responsibility because there are two dimensions of freedom.

The first dimension is freedom from – freedom from tyranny, freedom from injustice, from want, from fear. All of these are conditions of oppression and domination. They call for liberation, for your freedom from these conditions.

But liberation from always leads to a new dimension of freedom: freedom to grow to your full potential, freedom to love, freedom to be and freedom to be for – freedom for a purpose greater than yourself, freedom for something – and most importantly, for someone besides yourself.

Freedom is not a competition in which I always get my way. Freedom is sharing life with others who also are free. Freedom is recognizing that my freedom can’t come at your expense, just as your freedom can’t come at my expense. We have to learn to get along as people whose freedoms are interconnected and interdependent.

I can’t be truly free unless others are free, and others can’t be truly free unless I am free, and all of us together are truly free only when we are free for one another. It’s a paradox but it’s true. We are free only when we bind ourselves to others in love. When we live only for ourselves, we are the most pitifully enslaved creatures on earth.

Jesus did not die so that you could live drunk or sober, however you choose. Jesus died to set you truly free.

Wave your “Don’t tread on me” banner as high as you want, but if you’re not living for others, if you’re living only for yourself, you are barely living at all, and the one thing you’re not is free.

Freedom is a gift from God to be used in service to others, not in service to self. If you don’t understand that, you are living outside God’s kingdom, not in it. God wants you in it, but you are free to stay outside. It’s your choice. Let me tell you, though. It’s better inside than out.

This message was delivered outdoors at Edgerton United Methodist Church on July 5, 2020, the Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, from Galatians 5: 13-14, and Philippians 2:3-4.

The Truth about God’s Wrath

God did it. That’s how some Christians explain the coronavirus pandemic. It’s God’s judgment on humans because of our sins.

Which sins? Well, what’s on your list of sins that other people commit but you don’t? Obviously those must be the sins God is punishing people for. You, of course, as pure as the wind-driven snow, would never think of committing those sins.

It’s all because of other people that God is punishing all of us, so we – poor martyrs! – must endure punishment with them. Beam me up, Scottie. Where’s the Rapture when you need it? Where’s my magic escape hatch from this vale of toil and tears?

God caused the coronavirus to punish sinful people – that’s the blasphemy you’ll hear in many churches today. This morning I want to tell you the truth about God’s wrath, what it is and what it isn’t. This is the biblical truth, not the fantasy truth you may have heard over the years. This is the biblical truth, not the counterfeit you’ve heard proclaimed from many a church pulpit.

Does the name Zeus mean anything to you? How many of you remember Zeus from your childhood studies of ancient mythology, or from movies made from Marvel comic books?

Zeus is king of the Greek gods, the god of sky and thunder and lightning. The Romans called him Jupiter. In Norse legends, he’s called Thor. He’s usually portrayed as a big strong guy with a shock of white hair and a bushy white beard.

If fact, he could be a stand-in for God in Michelangelo’s famous painting of God creating Adam. In fact, a lot of Christians have Zeus and God confused. They think God is like Zeus, and one of the ways God is like Zeus is that God likes to throw thunderbolts at people who displease him.

Pinch a Snickers bar at the candy store and God’s gonna get you the moment you step out the door! Zap! Sizzle! One more sinner fried. Think an impure thought, steal a paper clip from the office, vote for anybody but a Republican and – Zap! You’re done for, brother. You’re toast, sister. That’s how God punishes people for sin!.

Except, it’s not. God is not Zeus, or Jupiter or Thor. God is God, and God doesn’t work the way those clowns from other ancient religions work. “The wrath of God” is a phrase you’ll see frequently in the Bible, but it does not mean divine retribution. It does not mean divine punishment. It means something else entirely.

It doesn’t mean that God is soft on sin. It means that God has other ways of dealing with sin than zapping people with thunderbolts – or floods or tornados or pandemics or any of the other awful things some people like to blame on God.

Let me show you what I mean using a passage from Psalm 7. Start with verses 11, 12 and 13:

God is a righteous judge, a God who is angry at evil every single day. If someone doesn’t change their ways, God will sharpen his sword, will bend his bow, will string an arrow. God has deadly weapons in store for those who won’t change; he gets his flaming arrows ready!

Wow. It looks like God prefers flaming arrows rather than thunderbolts. But either way, sinners are thoroughly cooked, right?

Hang on. Let’s read verses 14, 15, and 16.

But look how the wicked hatch evil, conceive trouble, give birth to lies! They make a pit, dig it all out, and then fall right into the hole they’ve made! The trouble they cause will come back on their own heads; the violence they commit will come down on their own skulls.

Evildoers dig a pit to trap someone else but they end up falling in it themselves. The trouble they try to cause for others comes right back at them.

God is indeed a righteous judge. What does God do as a righteous judge of our conduct? God evaluates our faithfulness. What is the judgment that God pronounces? It’s that we receive a just return for our actions. God does not enforce this personally. God never says, “I’ll get you for that!” But we don’t walk away unscathed either.

“Do not be deceived,” the Apostle Paul tells the Galatians. “God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow.” (Galatians 6:7)

Do you hear that? You reap what you sow. You are punished by your sins, not for them.

Paul stands firmly in the biblical tradition. Proverbs 22:8 : “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity.” Job 4:8: “Those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.” Proverbs 1:31: those who reject the wisdom of the Lord “will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.”

Multiple times in both Old and Testaments it’s said that when people rebel against God, God gives “them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels.” That is, God gives “them over to the penalty of their sin” (Psalm 81:11-12, Job 8:4 Judges 2:14, Nehemiah 9:27-28).

Paul tells the church in Rome that “the wrath of God” is revealed in the life of sinners when God “gives us up” to the wages of our sin (1:18, 1:24, 26, 28). But Paul says that God’s “kindness and forbearance and patience” always leaves room for – and always hopes for – our repentance (2:4-5).

Never “repay anyone evil for evil,” Paul says, but “leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord’ ” (Romans 12:17-19).

That’s a loose quotation from Deuteronomy. Here’s the full thing: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip. Their day of disaster is near, and their doom rushes upon them” (Deuteronomy 32:35 NIV).

God’s “anger” at sin is metaphorical. It’s a metaphor, not a literal reality. God does not “lose his temper,” “fly off the handle,” “come unglued” or “get bent out of shape” over sin or sinners. Rather, God acts to save us from the long-term consequences of our actions by allowing us to experience some shorter-term consequences of our actions, thus nudging us to turn our lives around in repentance.

But if God’s “anger” is metaphorical, that doesn’t mean that we sinners don’t feel it as real. Besides the physical consequences of our misdeeds, we feel our separation from God as increasing spiritual misery.

Saint Augustine calls this a “darkening of the mind.” You know what it feels like. So do unbelievers. But they will never understand the cause of their misery as separation from God unless we help them come to that understanding. That’s why we who have seen the light are obligated to show it to others.

We also have an obligation to speak out against perverted notions of who God is. Some people imagine that God hurts people to punish them for wrongdoing. If God actually did that, none of us would survive long, would we? God does not punish us. God lets us punish ourselves. God allows us to experience the folly of our actions.

If that sounds a bit like the Hindu concept of karma, so be it. “What goes around comes around.” Sooner or later, you get what you deserve, more or less.

It’s usually not so simple. You may suffer not only for your own sins, but also for the sins of others. You may not pollute the river, but if somebody upstream pollutes the river, you are going to suffer the consequences of that person’s actions.

You also suffer when someone sins directly against you. Being persecuted for doing the right thing totally violates the “fairness code” of the universe. Injustice is just not right.

Scripture offers many laments from those who suffer injustice, especially when the perpetrators appear to get off without consequence. It’s especially galling when somebody more powerful than you decides that you are worshipping the wrong deity, or worshipping the right deity the wrong way, and thrashes you for it. Then you are justly outraged that you are punished for doing what you think is right, and your tormentor is apparently rewarded for wronging you.

Children have a well refined fairness meter, and they are quick to object, “That’s not fair!” I think fairness is why some people find comfort in the idea that God punishes people directly for sins. But I find it very sad that people think God uses tornadoes and forest fires and hurricanes and pandemics and other “natural disasters” to punish us.

Insurance companies call these things “acts of God.” By that, they mean only that these aren’t acts of people. These are natural events – part of the way the world works. But they may be influenced by human actions. Where we build and the way we build; where we farm and how we farm; where we dam rivers and where we don’t – all of these actions influence natural events such as floods and windstorms.

I believe God can use such events to change our hearts, but I don’t believe God causes floods and windstorms to punish us or force us to repent. If you believe that God acts that way, you must also believe that God has terrible aim and doesn’t care about collateral damage. What does it matter if innocents suffer as long as a few sinners get what’s coming to them?

Here’s the gospel truth. God is not mad at you – or anyone else. God loves you – and everyone else. We’re all created in God’s image, and loved by God. God is saddened that sin controls the lives of so many people, but God “desires everyone to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4).

Through the Holy Spirit, God is working in everyone to bring everyone to repentance. But as long as there is sin, everyone will experience the “wrath” of God that is born of love, and some may experience injustice as well.

This message is condensed from a chapter in a book I’ve written about the book of Revelation. Revelation is focused on Jesus, whom we know as “the lamb of God.” Though Revelation mentions “the wrath of God” about a dozen times, it once actually speaks of “the wrath of the Lamb” (Revelation 16:16).

I would like you to try to picture in your mind a wrathful lamb. Does it snort? Does it stomp its little hooves? Isn’t what is most obvious, as well as most endearing, about a lamb is that it is so helpless?

Our first encounter with the Lamb in Revelation is an astonishing moment. “Behold the lion of Judah!” a voice says. And when John of Patmos looks, he doesn’t see a lion standing by the throne of heaven. He sees a lamb that has been slaughtered (6.5).

We’re never told how John knows that it has been slaughtered. Is the gash in its neck still open? Does it have a red “bib” in front from where the blood spewed out?

The Lamb of God carries the scars of crucifixion on his hands and feet and in his side. They are eternal signs of God’s love for all.

This is a true vision of the wrath of God. This is the Lamb of God, “who takes away the sin of the world” (John 2:29). This is the Lamb of God, who “gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:6). This is how God conquers sin. This is how God punishes sinners. God takes the pain of the world upon God’s very self, and the blood of the Lamb cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

God is not out to get you, but you may get yourself. The next time you think of digging a pit for an enemy to fall into, remember that God allows you to suffer the consequences of your folly. Do not ask for whom the pit waits. It waits for you.

Amen.

This message was delivered outdoors at Edgerton United Methodist Church on June 27, 2020, the Fourth Sunday After Pentecost.