The Mission of the Church: The Open Table

Luke 14:1,7-14
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
(1st in a series of 5)

“Why does the church need to concentrate more on mission?” an interviewer recently asked Reggie McNeal, the author of a new book titled Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church. McNeal’s answer to the question suggests that the church has gotten the question of mission the wrong way round. McNeal said, “We have thought. . . . that the church had a mission. The truth is that God's mission has a church. It's [God’s] Mission, not ours. The work of the church comes out of God's redemptive mission in the world.” “God’s mission has a church,” Reggie McNeal says. God’s redemptive mission in the world is the reason the church exists, not the other way around.

The mission of the church was already decided when God called Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 12:1-13: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” The mission of the church was already decided when God called the people of God in Isaiah 49:6: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I Will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” The mission of the church was already decided when “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).

When it comes to mission, we sometimes forget that we are not the home office; we are merely franchisees. We don’t decide the mission, we only choose to accept it or not. God’s mission is that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed”; God’s mission is that God’s “salvation may reach to the end of the earth”; God’s mission is that “everyone who believes may not perish but have eternal life.” Again and again Scripture reminds us of God’s redemptive mission in the world. And that mission has a church.

This morning, I am beginning a five-sermon series on the redemptive mission of God in the world through the church based on the gospel lessons in the Revised Common Lectionary. The five passages in which we will be listening for a word from God about God’s church are not the standard “mission-of-the-church” passages. For this series, I’m not “cherry-picking” the typical church-mission passages such as “On this rock, I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). Or “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Matthew 4:19). Or “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Instead, we are going to be listening in on the gospel of Luke as Jesus teaches and preaches along the way from the Galilee in the north to Jerusalem in the south.

In chapter 9 of Luke’s gospel, there is a single verse that turns the story of Jesus’ teaching and preaching and ministering and healing in a new and ominous direction: “When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). For the next ten chapters, the largest part of the gospel of Luke, Jesus will teach and preach and minister and heal his way toward Jerusalem. This section of Luke’s gospel from chapter 9 through chapter 19 is sometimes called the “travel narrative” because over and over again in these chapters the text reminds the reader that Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem” right after he clued the disciples in to what is ahead for the very first time in Luke’s gospel: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22). For a reader who has eyes to see and ears to hear, there is a foreboding drumbeat in these chapters: “to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem.”

Commentators on the travel narrative point out that in his teaching and preaching and ministering and healing in these chapters, Jesus is preparing his followers to carry on his mission after his earthly ministry is over. So, as we listen in on Jesus’ teaching in these five passages, it is as though we are overhearing directives from the home office about what kind of franchise we are engaged in at First Baptist Greenville.

Before we focus on the content of the teaching of Jesus in this morning’s gospel passage, we would do well to take note of the narrative context. It’s mealtime. Whenever I come to one of these meal-time passages in the gospels like the one in front of us this morning from Luke 14, I am reminded of something my brother’s pastor said years ago about the calling to be a minister of the gospel. He told his congregation that he had the best job in the world, because after all, as a pastor called to follow in the way of Jesus that meant that he was to spend his life “eating and drinking with sinners.” What could be any better than that? I have discovered, however, that the gospels also call ministers to eat and drink with Pharisees too, and that’s not nearly as entertaining.

For a time, we are told in Luke 14, the journey to Jerusalem pauses for the Sabbath and for a meal (verses 1-24). They are eating and drinking together. It’s remarkable, really, how often the gospels illustrate God’s redemptive mission in the world as sharing a meal together, as feeding the hungry, as breaking bread with friends and with strangers. It turns out that God’s redemptive mission in the world is as basic and earthy and material as our common human need for physical sustenance. The church has always made a grievous error when it has forgotten or ignored the gospel picture that God’s redemptive mission in the world is every bit as much about biology as it about theology. It is true that we “do not live by bread alone” (Deuteronomy 8:3; Luke 4:4), but it is just as true that down through the centuries people have starved to death while the church fiddled with doctrine. We must never forget that “daily bread” is every bit as important a petition in prayer as “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Breaking bread together and providing others with bread to break are both literal and symbolic expressions of the mission of the church which is God’s redemptive mission in the world.

Luke 14:1 tells us that at this meal in the house of a leader of the Pharisees, they were watching Jesus closely. But it turns out that Jesus was watching them as well. Verse 7 tells us that he noticed how the guests chose their seats at the table. He noticed their maneuvering and elbowing and jockeying for position. We all have preferences of one sort or another about where we sit and with whom. Some of them are as trivial as the answer to the inquiry, “Would you like a table or a booth?” Some of them are more serious. Those of us who occasionally eat lunch or dinner with a law enforcement officer in our congregation know not to bother choosing a seat until he has chosen his because there are certain parts of an establishment that he will not sit with his back toward.

Jesus uses the occasion of table-time jockeying for position to remind everyone of a familiar Jewish proverb. It’s Proverbs 25:6-7: “Do not put yourself forward in the king's presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.” But Jesus goes on to interpret that proverb as more than self-protective table etiquette. The larger issue when it comes to God’s redemptive mission in the world, is the spiritual discipline of humility, because among the franchisees of the gospel of Jesus Christ, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 14:11), Jesus says.

But even more importantly, Jesus didn’t just say that; Jesus did it. Listen to what the apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 2:3-9: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.” The mission of the church—the mission of each of us individually and all of us collectively—is to reflect God’s redemptive mission in the world as it is reflected in the life and ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in which Christ humbled Christ’s self. Living out that mission begins and ends with humility in our every encounter and every transaction.

After speaking of the guests at the meal, Jesus turns to speak of the host. Jesus is one of those folks at the party who can be an equal opportunity offender. God’s redemptive mission in the world is every bit as much about the guest list as it is about guest behavior. You have to understand that what Jesus said about the guest list at this dinner party would have offended the sensibilities of his listeners. Everyone there would have smiled and nodded along as he repeated the familiar proverb about choosing a seat at the table, even if they didn’t live by it. But what he said about the guest list would have elicited a change in their body language and their facial expressions. In antiquity, you see, poverty and physical and mental disabilities were misunderstood as indications of the judgment of God. Remember the passage in John’s gospel, where Jesus and his disciples are walking in Jerusalem when they see a blind man by the side of the road, and Jesus’ own disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Jesus answered immediately, “Neither!” Jesus broke the misguided link between disability and the judgment of God.

God’s mission in the world is a redemptive mission, a mission “to bring good news to the poor. . . . to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor” (Luke 4:18-19). And so Jesus says, invite to the table exactly the people whom you and others in society would not think to invite or might choose not to invite: “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” (Luke 14:13). Insofar as the mission of the church is God’s redemptive mission in the world, then it always and everywhere to invite and welcome those persons whom others ignore, to invite and welcome those persons who make others uncomfortable, to invite and welcome those persons whom others believe are outside the blessing of God. According to Jesus, God’s table is an open table, open to those whom others exclude, ignore, neglect, abandon. God’s church is an open church, open to all who respond to the invitation to come and to eat and to drink and share in the fellowship of the grace of God and of one another.

Fred Craddock tells the story of the first church he served as pastor in the hills of east Tennesse, not far from a sleepy little hamlet called Oak Ridge. In the 1940s when Craddock was pastor there, Oak Ridge became one of the leading centers of work on the Manhattan Project, the now famous code name for the U.S. government’s operation to develop the atomic bomb. Overnight, says Craddock, “that little bitty town became a booming city. Every hill and every valley and every shady grove had recreational vehicles and trucks and things like that. People came in from everywhere and pitched tents, lived in wagons. Hard hats from everywhere, with their families and children paddling around in the mud in those trailer parks, lived in everything temporary to work.”

The church Craddock pastored met in a beautiful little white frame building over a hundred years old. “It had beautifully decorated chimneys, kerosene lamps all around the walls, and every pew in this little church was hand hewn from a giant poplar tree.” After church one Sunday morning, Craddock asked the leaders of the congregation to stay, and he said to them, “We need to launch a calling campaign and an invitational campaign in all those trailer parks to invite those people to church.” “Oh, I don’t know,” one leader said. “I don’t think they’d fit in here.” Another said, “They’re just here temporarily, just construction people. They’ll be leaving pretty soon.” “Well, we ought to invite them, make them feel at home,” Craddock said. They debated the matter, he says, and time ran out. They said they’d come and vote the next Sunday. The next Sunday, they all sat down after the service. “I move,” said one of them, “that in order to be a member of this church, you must own property in this county.” Someone else said, “I second that.” It passed. I voted against it, Craddock says, but they reminded me that I was just a kid preacher and I didn’t have a vote. It passed.

Decades later, after Craddock and his wife Nettie retired to north Georgia, they took a ride one morning north to Tennessee to see if they could find that little church for which Craddock still held such fond and painful memories. The roads had changed, so he had a hard time finding it, but he finally did. He found the state road, the county road, and the little gravel road. Then there, back among the pines, was that building shining white. The parking lot was full—motorcycles and trucks and cars packed in there. And out front, there was a great big sign: Barbecue, all you can eat. It was a restaurant, so they went inside. The pews were pushed against a wall. They had electric lights, and the old pump organ was pushed over into the corner. There were aluminum and plastic tables, and people sitting there eating barbecued pork and chicken and ribs—all kinds of people, lots of different people from lots of different walks of life and lots of different places. In the course of the meal together, he said to his wife Nettie, “It’s a good thing this is not still a church, otherwise these people couldn’t be in here.”

So why is it, exactly, that the restaurant industry is more welcoming and inclusive and invitational than the church? Why is it, exactly, that the church promotes doctrines and policies intended to exclude and discriminate, to marginalize and sometimes even demonize persons, in order to keep them away from the table—or to keep them from sitting at the head of the table? If the teaching of Jesus on the way from Galilee to Jerusalem is any indication, God’s table is an open table, and if the church is to share in God’s redemptive mission in the world, then the church must be an open church, open to all and to everyone who responds to the invitation to share in the life and death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Mission Statement of this congregation reflects the fact that First Baptist Greenville is committed to being just such a church, a “whosoever-will” kind of congregation, a “just-as-I-am” kind of place. Our invitation hymn this morning invites us all to participate in God’s redemptive mission in the world through this church. The invitation of Christ and this church is very, very open as we stand and sing together our invitation hymn, #311.

Diverse in culture, nation, race, we come together by your grace.
God, let us be a meeting ground where hope and healing love are found.

God, let us be a bridge of care connecting people everywhere.
Help us confront all fear and hate and lust for pow’r that separate.

When chasms widen, storms arise, O Holy Spirit, make us wise.
Let our resolve, like steel, be strong to stand with those who suffer wrong.

God, let us be a table spread with gifts of love and broken bread,
where all find welcome, grace attends, and enemies arise as friends.
Ruth Duck, 1991
Words © 1992 G.I.A. Publications

The Fred Craddock story is a mix of paraphase and direct quotations from Craddock Stories, by Fred B. Craddock, et al (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2001).

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Next Week: "The Mission of the Church: Beyond the Ties That Bind"

The Judas Files 1: The Trouble with Judas

Matthew 26:47-56
This sermon was delivered in 2006, soon after the release of "The Gospel of Judas" by the National Geographic Society.

Few characters in the Bible have been subjected to any more scathing criticism than the disciple of Jesus whose name was “Judas, the one called Judas Iscariot” (Matt 26:14). “He was a thief,” says the gospel of John. John 12:6 says that he was the treasurer of the disciples—“he kept the common purse,” and he would “steal what was put into it.” But most of us don’t remember Judas as a simple thief, an embezzler, a perpetrator of white-collar crime. Instead, we remember him for being “the betrayer” as Matthew 26:48 is translated, the disciple who handed Jesus over to the authorities who arrested him in the garden of Gethsemane.

The gospel of Luke says that while Jesus and the disciples were together in Jerusalem just before the Passover, “Satan entered into Judas” who then “went away” from Jesus to confer with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray him to them.”(22:3-4). To explain how in the world one from Jesus’ own hand-picked inner circle could have turned on his teacher and turned him over to those who “were looking for a way to put him to death” (v 2), the gospel of Luke gives us the old “the devil made him do it” explanation. The gospel of John appeals to the devil also, but with a very different take. “Did I not choose you, the twelve?” Jesus asks in John 6:70, “Yet one of you is a devil.” From accusation—“he was a thief”—to demonization—“one of you is a devil,” few characters in the Bible come off any worse than Judas in Scripture and in tradition alike.

But one of the fascinating things about Scripture and tradition alike is that this prevailing opinion of Judas is not unanimous. Carefully timed and orchestrated to coincide with Holy Week and Easter in 2006, the National Geographic Society announced the release of a long-lost early Christian document referred to as “The Gospel of Judas.” The society brought this long-lost gospel to light with a television special on the National Geographic channel, with a feature article in the May 2006 issue of the National Geographic magazine, two books about it, and a website on which you can view photographs of it as well as a Coptic transcription and English translation. This “Gospel of Judas” is a third-century copy of a document that has been known about since the second century when Irenaus, the bishop of Lyon, mentioned it and described some of its content in about the year 180. The copy in the news, the only known surviving copy of the Gospel of Judas, was discovered in the 1970s in Egypt and finally came into scholars’ hands through the black market in antiquities five years ago.

In this gospel, Judas, instead of being vilified as a thief and demonized as a betrayer is the only one of the twelve apostles who gets it. “I know who you are and where you have come from,” says Judas to Jesus, in response to which Jesus draws Judas aside with the invitation, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom.” Jesus says to Judas, “[Come], that I may teach you about [secrets] that no person [has] ever seen.” And so Jesus instructs his intrepid follower concerning a great invisible spirit, the angelic Self-generated, about the divine luminaries, first 72 of them and then 360, about the cosmos, chaos, and the underworld and about the creation and destiny of humanity. Judas’ destiny is this, according to the Jesus of the gospel of Judas: “You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” And with that commission from Jesus, Judas went out and “handed him over.” And so ends the gospel of Judas.

Now, let’s be very clear about the value of this copy of the Gospel of Judas. It’s priceless. It once was lost, but now it’s found. But this gospel tells us nothing about the historical Judas or the historical Jesus either one. What it transmits is the way of thinking and believing of a stream of the Christian tradition that thrived in the second and third centuries that is commonly known as Gnosticism, from the Greek word gnosis, knowledge, because of the gnostics’ emphasis on the secret knowledge, “the mysteries of the kingdom,” “the secrets that no person has ever seen”—except them, of course. Like Judas in this second-century gospel, they got it, and everyone else has missed it. That doesn’t tell us a thing about Judas or Jesus either one, but it reinforces what we already know about second and third century Christian Gnosticism. And it also reminds us that in Scripture and tradition alike, not everyone has vilified or demonized Judas. In contrast to the gospel of John in which Jesus says, “one of you is a devil,” in the gospel of Matthew, when Jesus speaks to Judas, even as he is being handed over to the authorities, Jesus says, “Friend, do what you are here to do” (26:50). Do you hear that? “Friend.” “Do what you are here to do.”

Let me very candid with you. This Jesus in Matthew 26:50 is the Jesus to whom I have given my life over. This Jesus who said to Judas, “Friend,” is the Jesus I have chosen to trust with my very life both now and forever. “Friend,” he said. Matthew 26:50 is the best illustration in Scripture that no truer words have ever been spoken of Jesus than those in Matthew 11:19, where he is disparagingly described as “a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” I don’t need the Jesus of the Gospel of Judas, who will be my friend when I get it right. The Jesus I need is the one in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who stands by even those who fail to stand by him. That’s a Jesus worth following; that’s a Jesus you can trust with your life—and with your death as well. The one who says in the gospel of John, “one of you is a devil”; and then when that very one behaved his most devilishly, Jesus looked him right in the eye and called him his friend. A friend of tax collectors and sinners—and devils.

As far as I’m concerned, you can have the Gnostic Jesus who befriends those who get it right. Perhaps you are good enough and wise enough and blessed enough that you get it and that Jesus has pulled you aside from all the rest of us and revealed to you the mysteries of the kingdom, the secrets that no person has ever seen. But as for me—who is not that good and not that wise and not that blessed—I have no choice but to trust in a Jesus who stands by those who fail to stand by him, a Jesus whom I can count on to say “friend” to me even when I am at my most devilish worst.

The saddest thing about Judas is not that he handed Jesus over to the authorities. The Jesus of Matthew’s gospel suggests that it could not have happened any other way. In Matthew 26:53-54, Jesus says, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen this way?” That’s why Jesus says to Judas, “Do what you must do.” “The time has come,” Jesus says. “This is no longer in my hands or your hands, Judas, but in the hands of God.”

What Judas did was in the hands of God. Did you know that the very same verb that our Bibles in English translate as “betray” when it is used of Judas is used of God in Romans 8:32, when Paul writes, God “who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us”? You wouldn’t say, “God betrayed his own Son,” now would you? But God "handed him over," "gave him up," as Judas did. The very same verb that our English translations so often render as “betray” when it is used of Judas is used of Jesus himself in Galatians 2:20, when Paul writes, “I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” You wouldn’t say, “Jesus betrayed himself,” now would you? But Jesus "gave himself over," "gave himself up," as Judas did. That’s why Jesus said to Judas, “Friend, do what you must do, and I will do what I must do.”

Jesus did not play the blame game with Judas or with anyone else. Later layers of Scripture and tradition alike will blame, vilify and demonize Judas. If blame is your game, then have at Judas with all the self-righteous indignation you can muster. Because the funny thing is, the worse that you and all the others for centuries before you make Judas out to be, all the more amazing is the love of God in Jesus Christ who in the middle of it all looked Judas in the eye and called him “Friend.”

And that’s the part that in the end Judas didn’t get. That’s the saddest thing about Judas. Overcome by remorse, eaten up by guilt, undone by his inability to trust Jesus at his word—“Friend”—Judas went out and hanged himself, the gospel of Matthew tells us. But it didn’t have to end that way. It never does. Judas was not alone in his failure. The last sentence of this morning’s gospel lesson makes that very clear. Matthew 26:56 says, “Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.” They all failed to stand by Jesus that night, not just Judas. And yet, on resurrection morning, according Matthew 28:10, the Risen Lord said to the two Mary’s “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Had Judas but trusted Jesus at his word—“Friend”—it would not have been eleven but a band of twelve brothers who “went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.” The trouble with Judas is not that he “betrayed” Jesus. The trouble with Judas is that he just could not bring himself to trust Jesus enough to believe that Jesus would still call him “friend” and “brother” after they both had done what they both must do. There would have been twelve, not eleven, if Judas would have but trusted Jesus at his word: “Friend.”

Brian Wren is professor of worship at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA. In one of his most frequently sung hymns he wrote, “In ev’ry insult, rift, and war, where color, scorn or wealth divide, Christ suffers still, yet loves the more, and lives, where even hope has died.” That’s the gift that Jesus gives to everyone who will receive it, the gift that, sadly, Judas could not accept. Even in our every desertion and betrayal, even when we are sinners at our devilish worst, “Christ suffers still, yet loves the more, and lives, where even hope has died.” That’s the Jesus you can trust with your life both now and forever.


This material is Copyrighted © 2006 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

The Mission of Teaching and Learning

Matthew 28:16-20

Click on the seal
for GWU website.

Gardner-Webb University Faculty Worship

Boiling Springs, N.C., August 18, 2010

Before I begin, I want to say two personal words. The first is a “thank you” to Doug Bryan and Carolyn Billings for the invitation. Doug can tell you that it took me no time at all to say yes, so fond are my memories of our days together at Ridgecrest several years ago. I also want to say “thank you” to Gayle Price and Frank Bonner, both of whom know enough about me to have brought forward grounds for rescinding the invitation; but they did not, and for that I am grateful as well. The second personal word is this. When I arrive at the crux of this sermon, I will lay claim to a storied Jewish (and occasionally Christian) mode of biblical interpretation. And as I do, I cannot help but remember our mutual colleagues and friends, the late Dan Goodman and Jack Partain. May our every remembrance of them be a reminder to us all to live and love and learn and teach so wisely and so well in the time we are given.

We human beings exhibit a curious capacity for learning, a capacity that derives especially from the operations of our cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain that controls higher-order functions such as information processing, problem solving, speech, language comprehension, and sensory integration. One of the distinctive physical features of the human cerebral cortex is how large and wrinkled it is. If our cerebral cortex “were flattened out, it would occupy four sheets of typing paper. A chimpanzee’s cortex would fit on one sheet, a monkey’s on a postcard, a rat’s on a stamp” (William Calvin, Scientific American 271.4: 101-107, October 1994). Our large and highly wrinkled cerebral cortex equips us especially well for learning.

As you are aware, however, there are people who take a “less is better” approach to the use of their cerebral cortex. A renowned American preacher and seminary professor was on a flight home from a conference. He was making good use of the time by editing a manuscript when the man sitting next to him asked him what his line of work was. He answered, “I’m a preacher and a seminary professor.” “I see,” said the man. “Well, in matters of religion, I think it is best to keep things simple: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ That’s what I always say.” “I see,” said the professor and preacher. “And what is your line of work?” “I’m an astronomer,” the man said. “Really?” said the preacher-professor. “Well, when it comes to astronomy, I think it’s best to keep things simple. ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star.”

As a faculty of an institution of higher education, you are in the business of teaching and learning the use of all four sheets of the cerebral cortex. Those of you who teach undergraduates have a particular challenge because your constituency is in a state of extended adolescence that makes them biblical jars of clay overflowing with decidedly unbiblical hormones. Still, it is a noble mission in which you are engaged at every level of the university. And in the tradition in which Gardner-Webb University was birthed, nurtured and has matured, the biblical locus of the greatest statement of mission of them all is in Matthew 28:16-20, “The Great Commission.” We have all learned that the Great Commission is for missionaries and preachers, but at the core of these five verses is the mission of teaching and learning. The evangelical scholar BenWitherington III points out in his recent commentary on the gospel of Matthew that the emphasis in the Great Commission is actually "on teaching rather than preaching" (Matthew [Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2006], p. 534). If these verses are any indication, "teaching and learning" is no less sacred a call and no less great a commission than evangelism and preaching.

Now, because there are among our company this morning the esteemed professors of the Department of Religion and Philosophy and the Divinity School, I am going to take the a moment to cover my exegetical flank by characterizing what I am about to do as an exercise in “homiletical midrash” (Gary Porton, “Midrash,” Anchor Bible Dictionary IV.818). Midrash seeks out meaning in a text beyond the “plain sense” or the pashat in Hebrew. In the rabbinic tradition, midrash attends with extraordinary care to every particularity and peculiarity of the text, to every turn of phrase, every choice of word, every “jot” and “tittle” (Matthew 5:18, KJV), on the assumption that there is something to be learned from every particularity and peculiarity of the text.

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Sandy Sasso's web page.

Sandy Sasso, a rabbi and a writer of remarkable midrash for children has called midrash “God’s Echo.” It is what happens when a word previously spoken returns, reverberates and resonates in a new time, in a new context, in a new way, for a new audience. Midrash operates on the basis of a conviction that “What Moses delivered amidst the thunder and lightning of [Mount] Sinai was not a final product but rather the beginning of conversation between God and the people of Israel. . . . subsequent generations were to see themselves, like their ancestors as also standing at the foot of Sinai receiving Torah” (Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, God’s Echo: Exploring Scripture with Midrash [Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2007], p. 11). Or in our case this morning, standing at the foot of an unnamed mountain in the Galilee, which brings us back to the Great Commission as the mission of teaching and learning for a university faculty.

A first particularity and peculiarity of the Great Commission is that although the imperative expression, “Go, therefore,” is a road well worn in Christian preaching and teaching, the Greek word translated “Go,” poreuthéntes, is not an imperative verb form at all. It’s a participle. If we attend carefully to this particular peculiarity of the text, poreuthéntes is a circumstantial participle preceding the main verb. There is a grammatical and syntactical road less travelled that would begin the Great Commission this way: “As you go.” In his “Cotton Patch Gospel” of Matthew, Clarence Jordan translated it “As you travel . . .” (Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch Gospel: Matthew and John [Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys, 2004], p. 71). The pashat, the simple reading, then, of the beginning of the Great Commission is “As you go. . . .”

And now the darash, the meaning beyond the plain sense. The mission of teaching and learning is at its heart a peripatetic experience. It is Moses instructing a motley crew of refugees on their journey to and from Mount Sinai. It is Aristotle walking the garden path in the Lycaeum in Athens. It is Jesus of Nazareth traversing the Galilee and traveling to Jerusalem. It is Mahatma Gandhi walking to the sea, and Martin Luther King, Jr., marching from Selma to Montgomery. The teacher is on a journey no less arduous than the student is. For example, at the very least, your mission of teaching and learning is carried out on the moving platform of your life, the trajectory of your living, the effect of which you must never underestimate in yourself or in your colleagues.

One August, some years into my tenure as a faculty member at Furman, I pulled out my lectures for Religion 11, “Introduction to the Bible,” in preparation for teaching it for the twenty-something-nth time. I was surprised that day to see how many of the pages were dog-eared, grayed and yellowed with age and use. “O my God,” I said to myself. “I’m becoming one of them.” You know “them”: those professors you had in college whose lecture notes were so old that they crumbled like Dead Sea Scrolls. “I can’t become one of them,” I said. So I carried all three folders down the hall to the copier, and I copied every single page so that when I began the fall term my lectures were as fresh and bright as they ever were. And then I promptly signed up for a faculty development program in which I learned how to use a computer-projection software that allowed me to incorporate images and videos and outlines and quotations and visual effects into my lectures so as to at least delay the inevitable, as I traveled the professorial road of teaching and learning from young buck on the make to mature bull in the herd to aging stag lurching toward retirement. The teacher is on a journey no less arduous than the student is.

But here’s the thing: poreuthéntes, “as you go,” is a plural participle. It’s not “as you-singular go.” It’s “as you-plural go.” It’s y’all, y’all. It’s bucks and bulls and stags, it’s fillies and mares and nags all together. I recognize that I’m moving now from midrash to banality, but there is no “I” in faculty; there is no “I” in department; and there is no “I” in school. We all know there are far too many “I”’s in administration, but that’s another sermon for another retreat. More than any other single factor, the community that you-plural—y’all—cultivate and negotiate together “as you go” determines the character and quality of your experience in your mission of teaching and learning. That’s the darash: Along the way, it’s ya’ll, ya’ll.

Now to the main verb and a second particularity and peculiarity of the Great Commission. There is one and only command in the entire passage. It’s mathēteúsate, “make disciples.” In the context of Matthew’s gospel, the pashat is clear. The responsibility for creating future followers of the way of thinking and living and being taught by the teacher par excellence, is now being handed on to the followers that teacher created. That’s the pashat.

Now for the darash. The Greek word “disciple” means “learner.” The main verb in your mission is not “teach.” It is “making learners”: mathēteúsate. “Teaching” is a much easier enterprise than “making learners.” “Teaching” is an action the subject of which is the teacher, while the students are mere objects—and indirect objects at that. “Making learners” requires engaging students as the subjects in whom you elicit a reframing and reforming of their ways of seeing and hearing and thinking and being. That’s a daunting task because it's not about you; it's about them. It's not about what you do but about what they become on account of their relationship with you. When I arrived as an ambitious freshman at UNC Chapel Hill, I intended to double major in music and psychology. But when I discovered in my introductory course in psychology that I would spend more time studying rats and pigeons than human beings, I quickly abandoned the field. The problem, of course, was that in my self-absorption and self-possession I was unwilling to become a disciple, a learner schooled in the systematic methods of the discipline of experimental psychology. I was a student equivalent of the rich young ruler who went sadly away because he was unwilling to subject his old assumptions and his old possessions to a new discipline, a new way of thinking and living and being.

There is a saying of Jesus in Matthew 13:52 that illustrates what a learner looks like when she or he “has been discipled,” the text says, mathēteutheìs. That person is like the manager of a household who brings out of their treasure “what is new and what is old.” It’s a fascinating saying. It reveals the literary and theological rationale of the gospel of Matthew; it illuminates the heart of midrash; and it highlights the creation of learners who have sufficient command of a discipline to understand the timely appropriation and application of “what is new and what is old.” The primary verb of your mission is to create learners of the great disciplines and to make them capable of the timely appropriation and application of the knowledge and wisdom those disciplines offer. That’s the darash of the main verb, the one and only imperative in the text: “make learners.”

A third particularity and peculiarity of the Great Commission is that two more verb forms follow the main verb, and both of them are participles, just as the first verb in the Great Commission was a participle. In their relation to the main verb they are clearly—even if rarely translated as—instrumental participles. An instrumental participle reveals “the means by which the action of the main verb is accomplished” (H.E. Dana and J. R. Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament [Toronto: Macmillan, 1955], p. 228). Create learners “by baptizing them” and "by teaching them.”

The pashat of baptism is obvious in its commendation of the entry ritual of the Christian community. And the darash for teaching and learning is no less obvious, I think. Learners are best created by immersion. Don’t just spritz or sprinkle them. Your task is to immerse them in the languages and literatures, the images, the formulas and notations, the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and tactile experiences of living and breathing in the various environments of your respective disciplines. It’s a cerebral cortex sort of thing that we human beings learn best when we are immersed. But one word to the wise from an experienced practitioner of immersion: the point is not to hold them under until they stop moving. That rather defeats the purpose. Create learners by immersing them, baptízontes autoùs.

And by “teaching them,” didáskontes autoùs. Most New Testament scholars agree that the widely promoted proposal that the writer of the gospel of Matthew intended to present Jesus as the new Moses who delivered five discourses that correspond to the five books of Moses has been overplayed (B. W. Bacon, Studies in Matthew [New York: Holt, Reinhart & Winston, 1930]). Perhaps it has. But the closing scene with Jesus standing on a mountain commending to his followers “all that I have commanded you” is so obvious an allusion to Moses as to border on the pashat, the plain sense, of the text. But something else is happening there as well in the literary context of Matthew's gospel, as the great New Testament form critic Norman Perrin has pointed out: "Only at the end of the gospel are the disciples instructed to teach. Up until then, only Jesus teaches" (N. Perrin and C. Dulling, The New Testament: An Introduction, 2nd ed. [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974], p. 269). Even in the pashat, the plain sense of the text, your mission of teaching in this place call you to stand in the long line of teachers par excellence, Moses and Jesus and Aristotle and Gandhi and King and Goodman and Partain and countless others who have gone before you.

Here is the darash. Earlier in Matthew’s gospel, in 23:3, Jesus instructs his followers to do what the Pharisees say but not to do what they do. If you read the NRSV, the verse goes like this: “Do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” NRSV’s rendering of Matthew 23:3 is one of the most egregious mistranslations I have ever seen. I cannot understand how an entire committee of superb scholars could be so tone-deaf as to miss the particularity and peculiarity of expression in that verse. The verb “teach,” didáskō is nowhere to be found in Matthew 23:3. The Pharisees do not “teach” in the Greek text. They “speak” (eípōsin) and they “say” (légousin), but they do not practice what they say. And that’s not teaching. Teaching requires that we not only profess but that we practice also. It’s a very simple equation: professing plus practicing equals teaching. Anything less is merely chatter, babble, the proverbial “tale told by an idiot . . . signifying nothing” (William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, scene 5). Do not be professors only; be practitioners also, living out with your students what you have learned in order to create learners in order to fulfill your mission of teaching and learning.

A final particularity and peculiarity of the Great Commission is that it closes with a promise of presence: “I am with you always.” Literarily speaking, this expression is an inclusio, a frame, a bookend. The one who in chapter 1 is named “Emmanuel, which means ‘God with us’” (1:23) promises in chapter 28 to be with them always. That pashat is clear enough.

One final darash. This one who will be present always is spoken of in Colossians 1 as the one in whom “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17). Now, we have learned from the Irish poet William Butler Yeats and from the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe what we have also learned from systems theory and from our own experience with our houses and our bodies: “things fall apart.” That may be the ultimate darash of that so-called “fall narrative” in Genesis 3: left to their own devices and to ours, even the very best systems collapse. But the Great Commission concludes with an assertion of the constant presence of the one in whom all things hold together. So while the way of the world is indeed entropy—the decline and dissolution of energy and order, there is just as surely the potential for negentropy, renewal, renovation, reenergizing and reordering. That potential comes from the constant presence of the one in whom all things hold together. But that potential is only realized by those who have learned the timely appropriation and application of “what is new and what is old.” And that’s your mission, your reason for being in a university. It's God's echo that I hope you can hear from the foot of the unnamed mountain in the Galilee.

As you go together, ya'll, create learners by immersing them and teaching them so that they will develop the capacity to renew and renovate, to reenergize and reorder themselves and the world by the timely appropriation and application of “what is new and what is old.” And as you go, may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, now and forever. Go together with God’s blessing, and go together with God’s peace. Amen.

Out-takes on Midrash (cut on account of constraints of time and structure):

Now, I acknowledge that some cynics among us might contend that "midrash" is what preacher with a Ph.D. in biblical studies calls a sermon that has no basis in the critical biblical methods ofhis or her doctoral training. To which I would respond, "You say 'tomayto'; I say 'tomahto.'" And that would be good enough for me, except for the fact that it was precisely during my doctoral work that the Jewish philosopher Michael Wyschogrod introduced me to the wonders of Rashi, the eleventh-century interpreter of Scripture who to this day has not been surpassed in the grace and clarity of his handling of midrash.

The result of such attention to the text is amazingly creative, imaginative, and occasionally fanciful interpretations of Scripture. Midrash has been called "a scholarly, holy game" played with Scripture (Gary Porton, "Midrash," Anchor Bible Dictionary IV.818). Lest you think, however, that characterization means it is somehow less than a serious endeavor, our colleagues in Psychology and Sociology and Education and Athletics can remind us that for us human beings with the large and highly wrinkled cerebral cortex, play is a very serious exercise that is indisipensible for learning and growing and developing cognitive and physical and social capacities.

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

The Miracle of Forgiveness

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Jeremiah 31:31-34; Mark 2:1-12

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost 2010

Faith Memorial Chapel

Cedar Mountain, N.C.

Early on in Cassandra King’s enchanting and disturbing novel titled The Sunday Wife, the four central characters become engaged in a conversation about miracles. Ben Lynch, the pastor of the First Methodist Church of Crystal Springs, FL, arrives late on a Sunday evening at the Seaside beach house of his parishioners Maddox and Augusta Holderfield who have befriended the pastor’s wife Dean who spent the weekend with them while Rev. Lynch remained in Crystal Springs until after the Sunday evening service. Dean Lynch is the title character. She is the Sunday wife and the narrator of the novel.

Her character, both as a figure in fiction and as a moral quality, remind me of words spoken by the late Greenvillian Loulie Lattimore Owens Pettigru, herself a Sunday wife of small stature but legendary proportion. Loulie said, “More superior women marry men who enter the ministry than superior men enter the ministry.” Because I am a son and a spouse of superior women who married men who entered the ministry, all I can say is, “I resemble that remark.” Dean Lynch is a superior woman, as is, no doubt, Cassandra King. King is now married to novelist Pat Conroy, but she knows from her previous life as a Sunday wife far too much about what goes on in and around a parsonage. I don’t mind how much she knows; as I understand it, she paid a very high price for that knowledge. I only wish that she wouldn’t tell so much of what she knows in The Sunday Wife.

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That evening, out on the porch of the beach house in Seaside, Ben Lynch tells the vacationing trio about the sermons on miracles they missed that day, and he says, “‘Preaching about the miracles of the Bible can be like walking a tightwire.’ ‘How so?’ Maddox asked. Ben shrugged, ‘You know. Some folks are strict literalists when it comes to the Word of God. Others—like you two, I’m sure’—he nodded toward Augusta and Maddox—‘are uncomfortable with the idea of miracles.’ ‘Wait a minute, Dr. Lynch,’ Augusta said, ‘You’re making an assumption, aren’t you? I believe in the Virgin Birth. I believe Jesus turned water into wine, and I have no doubt that He walked on water and calmed the seas. And I certainly believe He arose from the dead.’ The only light was from the flickering candles, which cast shadows on Ben’s face. I saw him narrow his eyes as he tried to determine if Augusta was serious or not. ‘Oh,’ he said lamely, then chuckled. ‘Nowadays, it’s unusual for people to think that way. In this modern age . . .’ He shrugged, letting the idea drop, and looked to Maddox for help.’ Maddox leaned back in the rocker. ‘Miracles in our modern age. Fascinating subject, isn’t it? What do you think, Ben?’ ‘Me, well . . .’ He rubbed his hands together and frowned, as though deep in thought. ‘To tell you the truth Maddox, I have no problem with whatever theory my parishioners embrace. I can relate to both the literalists and the skeptics.’ Augusta gave a whistle. ‘If you ever give up preaching, you could go into politics’” (pp. 66-67).

As the conversation continues, it is the Sunday wife who emerges from the shadows as the superior theologian with an intellectual and spiritual integrity that far exceeds her patronizingly political and ecclesiastically ambitious husband. She says, ‘everything’s a miracle. What Jesus did, any of us could’ve done.’ ‘Whoa,’ Maddox laughed, startled. ‘Hold it a minute. . . . What he did, any of us could do?’ His eyes glinted in amusement. ‘That’s a pretty radical idea. . . . Are you saying that you could walk on water?’ ‘If I were as in tune with God as He was, of course I could.’ ‘Ah, I see what you’re getting at,’” Maddox said (pp. 67-68). Dean Lynch, the Sunday wife and the only honest theologian in the book says, “What Jesus did, Any of us could’ve done. . . . If I were as in tune with God as [Jesus] was, of course I could.”

This morning’s gospel lesson was one of the most memorable Sunday School lessons of my childhood. That business of cutting a hole in the roof grabbed my attention first. I thought that was cool. And then, they lowered this guy through the hole into a crowded room and landed him right in front of Jesus. Is that cool or what? And then, Jesus said to the man who could not walk, “Take up your mat and go home.” And he did. It was a miracle. There’s no other way to describe it. That’s a Sunday school lesson I still remember from childhood. But if you look more closely at this morning’s gospel lesson, you will see another story, a second miracle story embedded in the first. It’s a miracle story that teaches us exactly what Dean Lynch says: What Jesus did, any of us could do.

The miracle story within the miracle story is not about a man who is healed of physical paralysis. When the man is lowered from the ceiling, Jesus doesn’t say a word about his physical condition. Instead, Jesus speaks to the man’s spiritual and emotional well-being. “Son,” he says, “your sins are forgiven.” It’s a miracle of forgiveness that Jesus looks right past the obvious—the external, physical state of this person—to see on the inside a greater need for the forgiveness of sins than for the healing of the body. The scribes in Mark’s gospel, the authorities in religious law, go ballistic at the suggestion that anyone but God could forgive sins. But Jesus claims that authority for himself.

And not for himself alone. Imagine how those same scribes would have reacted had they been present at the scene late in John’s gospel, in chapter 20, after the death and resurrection of our Lord. “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the [Jewish authorities], Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so send I you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’” (John 20:19-23). Now, if you will listen very carefully, you can hear the rustling of those scribes rolling over in their graves. Not only does Jesus claim the authority to forgive sins, Jesus presumes to delegate that authority to his disciples, to his followers, to those who have received the Holy Spirit. In other words, what Jesus did, any of us could do. Jesus Christ vests in each of us in whom the Spirit lives a sacred responsibility to do as he did in that crowded room when he looked past the obvious, the external condition of a human being, to see on the inside a spiritual need even greater than the physical need of a paralyzed body.

Dare we take Jesus at his word and say to another person, “Your sins are forgiven”? Cassandra King’s The Sunday Wife contains a modern tragedy played out in the vortex of sin, ambition, power, and politics in the church. But one of the things that makes this novel a powerful reflection of the church in our time is that there is neither sin nor forgiveness to be found in it. Inside the church and inside the parsonage, there is only façade, farce, an intricate dance choreographed for the sake of external appearances. There would have been no hope for the paralyzed man in the gospel story if he had been lowered into a room in Crystal Springs. No one there would have recognized the opportunity presented to them, the providential occasion on which to effect a miracle by recognizing sin and forgiving it. No one there would have dared to take Jesus at his word to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” In Crystal Springs, sins are never forgiven; they are only retained. And even then, they are frequently mistaken for love or for duty or for piety or for patriotism.

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In another memorable book, Peter J. Gomes, of Harvard University, writes in The Good Life: Truths That Last in Times of Need, “Forgiveness is like a five-act play. Act One is the acknowledgement of guilt. Act Two is the asking of forgiveness. Act Three is the giving of forgiveness. Act Four is the reception of forgiveness, or the experience of the forgiven. Act Five is the reconciliation that results. To this formula one adds acts of contrition, the expression of sincere sorrow, and acts of penance, penalties that must be done as a sign of one’s sorrow. What is meant to naturally follow all of this is what the Book of Common Prayer calls the ‘amendment of life,’ the fundamental change for the better” (p. 335). That’s how forgiveness is customarily thought of, taught and preached in the church.

But you know what will knock your socks off if you look back at the miracle story within the miracle story in Mark 2? This morning’s gospel lesson doesn’t talk about forgiveness the way it is customarily thought of, taught and preached in the church. Forgiveness in this morning’s gospel lesson is not a five-act play at all. It’s a one-act play. The only act in this morning’s gospel narrative is the act of giving forgiveness. Not a word is said of either an acknowledgement of guilt or a request for forgiveness on the part of the paralyzed man. Jesus gives him something he doesn’t even know to ask for, but something he needs even more than he knows. Nothing is said in Mark’s gospel about his reception or his experience of forgiveness, and we are given no clue in the narrative as to whether or not he “amended” his life. All we are given in the gospel story is the giving of forgiveness: “Your sins are forgiven.” What Jesus understood, what Jesus lived out, died out, and rose-from-the-dead out that you and I have not yet fully figured out is that forgiveness is the only way to overcome the paralysis of the human condition.

On the next to the last page of The Sunday Wife, Dean Lynch says, “My whole life . . . I’ve been paralyzed, trying to be someone who isn’t me” (p. 388). Society will do that to you sometimes. Your workplace will do that to you sometimes. Your family will do that to you sometimes. The church will do that to you sometimes. Sin will do that to you all the time. But I want you to remember two positively scandalous things from these two stories about paralysis, the one in Mark 2 and the other in Cassandra King’s novel.

First, you must never forget that there’s a miracle out there just waiting to happen to you if you will take Jesus at his word, “Your sins are forgiven.” You are forgiven. The price has already been paid, the deal has already been sealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God is already and always waiting and ready for each one of us to come to our senses like the prodigal in the far country and to return home, where before we can even carry out our plan to ask for forgiveness (Luke 15:18-19), God runs to us like a loving parent to embrace us and welcome us home (verse 20). The return of the prodigal in Luke 15 does not set off a truth and reconciliation process to get to the bottom of the matter. Instead, it sets off a celebration: “Let us eat and celebrate; for this [child] of mine was dead, and is alive again . . . was lost and is found!” (verses 23-24). Of course, you are the prodigal child; every one of us is. Welcome home: “Your sins are forgiven.”

But if you think you are not the prodigal child, then you are the older sibling in the parable who resents the celebration and the welcome and the love the prodigal receives, because for all these years you have been working diligently and loyally and you have never disobeyed, but nobody threw a party for you (verse 29). Guess what? Even you are forgiven. Your anger and your resentment are forgiven, too. “All that is mine is yours,” the loving parent says to you (verse 31). Take a break from your work and your diligence and loyalty and obedience and indignation and resentment and anger and come celebrate forgiveness and love. In the famous “new covenant” passage in Jeremiah 31, God says, “I will forgive their iniquity, and will remember their sin no more” (verse 34). Those are God’s terms for the new covenant. Those are the terms of the gospel: “Your sins are forgiven.” Experience the miracle, for once. It’s just waiting to happen to you.

A second scandalous thing to remember from these two stories is that there’s another miracle out there just waiting to happen. The first miracle is the miracle of experiencing forgiveness: “Your sins are forgiven.” The second miracle is the miracle of forgiveness that you can give, the miracle that you can perform. If you are man enough, if you are woman enough, if you are child or youth enough, if you are Christ-like enough, you have the power and the authority to forgive. If it has ever occurred to you that you might like to lead a life that is touched by miracles, then let me suggest to you that you take up forgiveness as a way of life. Don’t get bogged down and lost in a complicated five-act play. Cut to the chase and give it away. Forgive yourself for all the times you have tried to be somebody who isn’t you. Forgive yourself for whatever it is that has you paralyzed. Forgive your family member. Forgive your coworker. Forgive one another.

I’m not talking about ignoring sin or condoning sin or enabling sin. I’m talking about recognizing sin for what it is in yourself and in others and then forgiving it. Letting it go. Putting it down. Quit lugging it around with you. If you haven’t forgiven it, that other person’s sin is eating you up and wearing you down. Their sin is destroying your quality of life every bit as much as it is destroying their quality of life. Their sin is paralyzing you. Stop! Let it go! Put it down! Forgive! And move on.

I know very well that some people will say, “That’s premature! Forgiveness cannot occur until there is an acknowledgement of guilt and an asking for forgiveness, and giving forgiveness is of no use if there is not a reception of forgiveness and reconciliation and amendment of life and acts of contrition, expressions of sincere sorrow and acts of penance, penalties that must be done as a sign of sorrow on the part of the one who has been forgiven. The whole five-act play has to be acted out,” someone will say. To which I would say, “Fine. Live that way if you must.”

Just understand that as you do, that’s not the gospel way. That’s not the Jesus way. That’s not the miracle way. Jesus told the story of the parent who ran to the child and embraced and kissed the child and welcomed the child home without a word said about the child’s sin. Jesus said to the man who did not even ask, “Your sins are forgiven.” Jesus said to his followers, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Dean Lynch said, “What Jesus did, any of us could’ve done. . . . If I were as in tune with God as [Jesus] was, of course I could.” Try it sometime. The effect in your life and in the lives of others around you will be nothing short of a miracle.

Thanks be to God for the miracle of forgiveness! Amen.

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

July 4 sermon noted in Report from the Capital

The July 4th sermon, "A Free Church in a Free State," was noted on p. 7 of the July/August 2010 issue of Report from the Capital, the magazine of the Baptist Joint Commitee for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C.

The Thirty Commandments

Romans 12:9-21

When I first started preaching, my father, who was himself a preacher, told me that when it comes to preaching, the greatest commandment is KISS. That's right. KISS is the greatest commandment. As most of you already know, the letters K-I-S-S stand for "Keep It Simple, Stupid." That's the greatest commandment in preaching, he said. And he was right. Hardly a week goes by that I do not think of him and his commandment to KISS. Those of you who are here on a regular basis can probably identify those weeks when I failed to think of him and failed to keep the greatest commandment.

But as important as KISS is, it is equally important to remember that the syntax of that sentence does not permit us to turn the words around and end up witht the same meaning. My father said, "Keep it simple, stupid." He did not say, "Keep it stupid-simple." Stupid-simple theology and dumbed-down Christianity are all the rage right now. It is all around us; it is sometimes among us; and it is sometimes in us. Now let me be very clear. This is not a "liberal" and a "conservative" thing. Liberal Christians are not the "smart ones" and conservative Chrisitians are not the "dumb ones." Neither are conservative Christians the "smart ones" and liberal Christians the "dumb ones." Conservatives and liberals alike can be guilty of dumbing down the Christian faith. Liberals tend to dumb Christianity down into social action. The church becomes little more than a social-service agency with religious trappings. Conservatives tend to dumb the faith down to doctrinal and ideological and political purity. The church becomes little more than a religiously oriented special-interest group. Liberals and conservatives alike can fall into the trap of stupid-simple theology and dumbing down. Occasionally, they fall into that trap on the same issue.

Consider, for example, the controversy that breaks out periodically in one place or another over over posting the Ten Commandments in public places. The way some people are waging it, the battle over the Ten Commandments or "the Decalogue" as it is also known is a war of dumbing-down on both sides of the argument. People who support posting the Ten Commandments imply that if we just had these words from the Bible on display in public places, American society would be cured of the evils and ills that currently infect it. But in this stupid-simple way of thinking, the Ten Commandments are reduced to a magical object, a talisman, the equivalent of an Amish hex sign on a barn or a medicine man's bundle of feathers and herbs to ward off evil spirits. Stupid-simple Christianity says we can change the world for the better by displaying the Ten Commandments. I wish it were that easy.

On the other side of the battle line, there are those who argue that posting the Decalogue would establish Christianity as the official religion of the state, a clear violation of the United States Constitution. Now, I dare say, there are religiously oriented special-interest groups that would like very much to establish Christianity as the official religion of the United States. If they had their way, the United States would become a kind of Christian Iran, a Presbyterian Saudi Arabia, or a Baptist Israel, a nation in which the orthodox clergy would have the clout to make the laws or to make or break the people who make the laws. But let's stop to consider whether public display of the Ten Commandments would actually "establish Christianity."

Have you ever thought about the fact that there is not a single distinctively "Christian" word in the entire Ten Comandments? There is absolutely nothing "Christian" about the Ten Commandments. They are, after all, products of Jewish faith and practice centuries before the Christian faith was born in western Asia. The Bible tells us that they are words of Moses, not words of Jesus. As a first-century Jew, Jesus lived by them; but so did the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Samaritans and the Essenes and the Zealots and the Karaites. It was not the Ten Commandments that made the first Christians Christian. It took a whole lot more than that.

In fact, it took a whole lot more than the Ten Commandments to make a Jew a Jew, according to the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Samaritans and the Essenes and the Zealots and the Karaites. They knew you couldn't dumb down Judaism into those ten rules and it still be Judaism. Taken individually, the Ten Commandments as Christians number them are only barely distinctively Jewish. Apart from the prohibition against images, the injunction on the right use of the divine name, and command to observe the sabbath, these ten commandments commend behaviors that are nearly universally endorsed in the world's great religious traditions. Moses was not the first person to think that honoring one's father and mother is a good thing, stealing is a bad thing, adultery is destructive, and so on. Even the practice of honoring one god in particular among others is attested in the ancient world outside the Bible. Taken individually, the Ten Commandments are only barely distinctively Jewish.

It's a fascinating thing to see that both those who support posting the Ten Commandments and those who oppose posting the Ten Commandments have fallen into the same trap of dumbed-down assumptions about Christianity and Judaism and an authentically religious and moral life. You can be for posting the commandments or against posting the commandments, but don't make the mistake of thinking that this debate has anything to do with the quality and integrity of the Christian faith and the Christian life. It doesn't. Would that the essential qualities of Christian living could be summed up in three Jewish injunctions and seven largely universal instructions. But it's just not that simple.

The apostle Paul's letter to the church in Rome shows us how very wrong the "keep it stupid-simple" approach to the Christian life is. In Romans 12, Paul characterizes the Christian life with 30 commandments, not 10. That's right, 30. Count along, in Romans 12:9-21.

1. Let love be genuine
2. Hate what is evil
3. Hold fast to what is good
4. Love one another with mutual affection
5. Outdo one another in showing honor
6. Do not lag in zeal
7. Be ardent in spirit
8. Serve the Lord
9. Rejoice in hope
10. Be patient in suffering
11. Persevere in prayer
12. Contribute to the needs of the saints
13. Extend hospitality to strangers
14. Bless those who persecute you
15. Do not curse them
16. Rejoice with those who rejoice
17. Weep with those who weep
18. Live in harmony with one another
19. Do not be haughty
20. Associate with the lowly
21. Do not claim to be wiser than you are
22. Do not repay anyone evil for evil
23. Take thought of what is noble in the sight of all
24. Live peaceably with all
25. Never avenge yourselves
26. Leave room for the vengeance of God
27. If your enemies are hungry, feed them
28. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink
29. Do not be overcome by evil
30. Overcome evil with good

Living the Christian life, according to Paul, is at least three-times-ten the commandments.

And as though the number of them alone is not challenging enough, I want you to see how many of these commandments move at a level that is far deeper than observable and quantifiable behavior. One of the reasons the Ten Commandments are so popular with so many people is that you can pretty much "check them off" as you go: I did, I didn't, I did, I didn't, I did, I didn't (although the way most people use the Ten Commandments, it's usually about other people: he didn't, she did, she didn't, he did!). But when the apostle Paul characterizes the Christian life with this long string of imperatives in Romans 12:9-21, his list emphasizes attitudes and motivations at least as much as it emphasizes specific actions and behaviors.

Not surprisingly, that's exactly the perspective that Jesus exhibits in the gospels when it comes to commandments. Do remember Jesus' hard words in the sermon on the mount in Matthew's gospel when he talks about the commandment about murder. "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not murder.' . . . But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment" (Matthew 5:21-22). Jesus takes a commandment about an observable behavior and extends it into the realm of attitude and motivation that lie beneath observable behavior. Jesus also said, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (5:27-28). Adultery is observable; lust in the heart on the part of men and women moves at a level far deeper than the observable and quantifiable, and that's the level that Jesus demands that our Christian lives be lived. If these teachings of Jesus are any indication, we have it from no less an authority than Jesus Christ that the Ten Commandments are an entirely inadequate framework for understanding--and living--a distinctively Christian existence in the world. For Jesus and Paul alike, the Christian life is constructed in the region of attitudes and motivations that inform and impel behavior, not merely in the realm of behaviors that can be observed and quantified and checked off: I did, I didn't, I did, I didn't, I did, I didn't. Would that it were so simple.

"Keep it simple, stupid," is good advice. But keeping it stupid-simple is an egregious error. It's probably just a coincidence that the apostle Paul listed exactly 3-times-10 imperatives in Romans 12:9-21, a veritable trinity of decalogues, but the message comes through loud and clear: it takes much more than ten commandments to live a Christian life. So let's agree to keep it simple, but let's also agree not to keep it stupid. Amen.

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.