It's All in Your Head

Psalm 91; Romans 10:12-15; Luke 4:1-13
First Sunday of Lent: February 21, 2010


Lent begins with temptation and ends on the cross. It’s a sober reminder that life’s journey is not free from sorrow and that there are tempting forces in this world that bring destruction upon us and others.

Today, we start with temptation: Jesus in the desert. Here we have a text about Jesus and the devil engaged in a dialogue. Words like “evil” and “the devil”, or “Satan” are generally not things that roll easily off the tongue. Even when the word “devil” makes it into our conversations, it is usually in playful, lighthearted ways.

But the first Sunday of Lent asks us to take seriously those less-than-positive forces that pull and tug on us in so many ways. Regardless of what you call it, there is working in us and among us and beyond us an opposition to love, health, wholeness and peace. We know this both through experience and observation. Think first about yourself. Think about all your good intentions to be kinder or more patient or more loving to someone in your life who can sometimes be trying. Think about how regularly you do things that you ought not do and never get around to doing the things you know that you should.

These forces are present on a larger scale as well. I have been thinking lately about how often good people do bad things; in some cases really bad things. I have thought about, for example, young men who get caught up in war so much they no longer have any sense of right and wrong. They rape and terrorize. In places Darfur, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, we’ve seen atrocities we can barely stomach talking about.

This seems extreme, and surely – we want to tell ourselves – those are people who have bad tendencies to begin with – those are sociopaths. But the truth is, we see time and time again that given the right set of circumstances most of us – good people – will find ourselves caught up in evil. Now, that “right set of circumstances” usually doesn’t come along but once in a lifetime, if that. Because of this, we can pretend that we wouldn’t do such awful things…and maybe we wouldn’t. But good people do. At the very least, almost all of us find ourselves complacent in the face of evil from time to time.

This is what our passage is talking about. It’s about how we can resist these forces when they come along. We should not, when we read this passage, picture a red creature holding a pitchfork surrounded by flames. Here, the devil is the personification of all temptations – all destructive and alluring forces out there. When we hear “devil”, we should picture those forces that tempt good people to do bad things. Jesus himself knew these forces. If you think this little interchange between Jesus and the devil was a walk in the park for Jesus, then you’re forgetting that he was human just like us.

The temptations Jesus faces are particularly seductive to him. The devil is offering Jesus the chance to have incredible power, but it’s presented as the power to do good; power to feed others, to rule in place of corrupt emperors and priests, to live forever. Jesus resists each time knowing the kind of power being offered to him is corrupting power. It’s power over others, over nature and over the very rhythms of life and death. This kind of power, tempting though it is, never ends well.

If we are to learn from Jesus and his own confrontation with evil and temptation, we see that to combat evil forces, we must draw near to God – however we imagine or understand God. Cleaving to God, living in God, living in tune with God, however you want to say it, this is how to find our way through the evils of the world – both small and large. We have to be grounded in something solid, something trustworthy and something beyond corruption by the forces that tempt us if we are to keep our bearings in this world.

But, given the illusiveness of God – the mystery, the unknowability – it’s not always easy to know how to do this, how to draw near to God. And many times what we think we are supposed to do in order to be closer to God doesn’t always seem to work for us, and we’re left wondering one of two things: Am I not doing this right or well enough, or is there really no God to whom I can draw near.

I have seen so often, in my life and in others’, a lot of frustration over things like prayer, reading the bible, worship, because it seems like they’re “not working”. I know people who berate themselves for not going to worship, even though when they do go it is an uncomfortable, even painful experience. I know people who feel guilty because they think every good Christian should pray, but they have tried and God feels no closer after they pray than before. I know people who try to contort themselves and force themselves into the mold of some ideal spiritual person. But in this effort, they loose themselves – trying to be something they are not – and consequently they lessen their chance to be genuinely, authentically connected to God.

This year during Lent, we are going to look at what the scriptures tell us about different ways we might draw close to God. Moving closer to the cross each week – or rather having the cross move closer to us – will be a symbol for moving closer to God and what God wants for us and our lives. And hopefully, as we draw closer and closer to God, those temptations that would divert us from the sometimes difficult choices we must make in the life of faith will hold less and less power over us.

But as we talk about moving closer to God we will see that how that happens does not look the same for all of us. That may seem obvious and like it doesn’t even need to be said. But unfortunately, I think we forget to affirm this in the church, instead communicating either explicitly or implicitly that there are things we should do or need to do if we want to grow in our faith and relationship to the divine. It is a recipe for frustration.

We’re going to look at six spiritual “types” – one each week of Lent. We will look at head spirituality, pilgrim spirituality, servant spirituality, heart spirituality, mystic spirituality, and reformer spirituality. We are all complicated individuals. None of these will fit us perfectly, and more likely than not we fit multiple spiritual types. But my hope is you might find something you connect to in at least one of these ways of being spiritual that gives you ideas for what you might do to move closer to God. I also think you might find some freedom and grace in knowing it’s okay to let go of some of the “shoulds” that intrude on your spiritual life.

Today, Jesus gives us a great example of head spirituality. I think the “head” gets short shrift these days when it comes to spirituality. I often hear people – colleagues especially – complain that we speak too much to the head and not enough to the heart in our worship services and churches. Our faith is too “heady”, they say; the implication being a heady faith is not as good as spiritual faith, as if the two are mutually exclusive. But some people truly do learn best through study and debate and reflection and reading.

Notice how Jesus responds to the devil: The exchange between them is almost an intellectual battle. Three times the devil offers Jesus an opportunity to seize power, and in each case, the response Jesus gives when faced with the temptation begins with three words: “It is written.” He quotes scripture. Now, some of us rightly have a bit of a knee jerk reaction when we start talking about quoting scripture to each other. We tire of people yanking verses out of context in order to make their point. Memorization of scripture becomes a weapon and such recitations seem far less about God than about personal agendas and hatreds.

But there’s something deeper going on here with Jesus and the devil than just a back-and-forth war of words and texts. Jesus is drawing on his relationship to God formed in part through study of his scriptures, and teachings in the synagogues and conversations with other Jews. In short, he was raised Jewish. Judaism has always had a very strong “head” component when it comes to knowing God and living as God intends. In fact, for many Jews both then and now, studying the torah is seen as the most holy thing you can do.

Often temptations come in the form of seductive ideas, philosophies and ideologies. Often we are presented with information in this world meant to convince us of something or influence us in certain ways. Sometimes people, in order to manipulate us, depend on our inability or unwillingness to think about what we’re being told or sold. Sometimes advertisers and charismatic leaders seeking power over us depend on the public not being critical thinkers.

These are times we need to have a way to articulate our faith and theology in order to counter competing truths. The practice of thinking about and talking about what we believe, even on an abstract level, can give us the tools we need when things get confusing and the temptations are subtle yet powerful.

During the rise and rule of Nazism, many good people went along with Hitler’s worldview and ideology, which did not, at first, seem so extreme. But once caught up in it and believing in it, it seems people stopped thinking about what that ideology implied and in fact brought about. In fact, many were able to participate in – either actively or through complacency – the killing of the Jews because they just went along with the dominant thinking of their day. These were not, by and large, bad people. They were people like you and me. In fact, many of those folks were religious. The problem was their faith was not grounded enough in something outside the political, social systems of the day, and so they were left impotent in the face of evil.

On the other hand, we know many people of many different faiths and traditions did resist the evil. One example were some Christians who were, by and large, academics – they taught in seminaries, studied, wrote large books about theology. When they saw what was going on, when faced, you might say, with the devil, their response was much like Jesus’. Among other things, they produced a document called the Barman Declaration. Essentially it was a series of statements that began, “it is written.” They affirmed the theological truths they had spent years constructing and studying, and it was clear to those paying attention that their theology was a direct threat to the German government. At least one person, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was imprisoned and killed for it. Obviously, writing this declaration was not just an academic exercise.

We need the theologians. We need those who put into words the divine intent and do so in a way that speaks clearly against the seductive forces of our day. Jesus had studied the scriptures enough to have them embedded in his very being. His knowledge and understandings kept him grounded in the face of very compelling alternatives. God was with him in the form of ideas and words that could speak to the complex issues of the moment.

Maybe you are a “head” type. If so, it should be clear that the spiritual disciplines and practices that make sense for you are study, reading, reflection, writing, critical thinking. These are practices that have the potential to prepare those with a head spirituality for their own encounters with the devil.

Of course what we will see each week in Lent is, because not everyone fits into every category, we need each other. Each of us does our part to grow spiritually, and then shares our journey and learnings about God with others. We need theologians, but we also need the pilgrims, the servants and the intuitive types. We need the mystics and the reformers. When we seriously engage in the spiritual practices that work best for us, we come to know God from one or maybe two angles. That’s not enough – God is too big.

It doesn’t make sense for each of us to force ourselves to do all of the different spiritual practices. But neither does it make sense to think we don’t need each other in order to truly resist all of the temptations out there. So, if you are a head type – go study! But please, share what you learn with the rest of us. Amen.

This is My Story

Exodus ; 1 Kings 19:9b; 11-13a; Luke
Transfiguration Sunday: February 14, 2010

We cannot make the mistake of reading the transfiguration passage in the gospel as an account of “something that happened one day.” To begin with, I’m confident the author of Luke would turn in his grave wondering why in the world he went to so much trouble to write something so intentionally symbolic only to have it read like an entry in someone’s diary.

The transfiguration calls us to a different kind of reading – it is a different kind of story. It is different because it is one of those passages in the bible that tells the whole story all at once. And when I say the whole story, I mean the story with a capital “S” – the story of God and God’s relationship with human beings throughout history.

The author wants us to know it’s a passage that captures the whole of Jesus’ life, with allusions to his baptism, his death and his resurrection. But we are also to see that the transfiguration points us to the story of the Israelites before and during the exile, with the presence of Elijah. Moses pulls us back even farther, adding in the foundational story of the Hebrew people…the exodus and giving of the commandments. And what about all the shining? The brightness takes us back to the purity of creation and points us forward to when we will see the world restored to what God intends for all of humanity.

This passage tells the meta-story of our faith – the grand narrative that deeply touches us, shapes us and offers us a worldview to guide us in life. All stories like this, the meta-stories of faith and life, seek to answer the “big” questions. Theologian N. T. Wright says there are four basic questions about existence that meta-stories attempt to answer. Who are we? Where are we? What is wrong? and What is the solution?

So if this transfiguration is meant to remind us of, and connect us to, our meta-story of the whole bible, what is that story and how does it answer these basic questions?

The story is found in the connections between the lives of the prophets up on the mountain that day. These are the major prophets of our faith…the big three. First we have Moses, the prophet who acted on behalf of God first to free the Hebrew people living in slavery in Egypt. Then Moses was the one to bring God’s word of how to order their new lives as the nation of Israel in the form of the ten commandments. In the book of Kings we hear of Elijah, a prophet living during the times of the Israelite kings whose oppressive reigns led to the exile of the Jewish people from the Holy land.

And we are shown again and again that Elijah is the new Moses. The similarities between their lives – and these two passages especially – are obvious. They are meant to be obvious. Elijah, like Moses, is at Mount Horeb. Elijah, like Moses, is there forty days and forty nights. Elijah, like Moses, experiences an overpowering, forceful coming of Yahweh marked by a massive event of nature.

And as we should already be realizing, these themes are all picked up again in Jesus’ life. Here they are on the mountain, the voice of God comes in nature, Jesus had been tempted for 40 days and 40 nights. Notice even the connection between Jesus and the foundational story of the Hebrew people the exodus. We are told the three are talking about Jesus’ departure that will be accomplished in Jerusalem. The Greek word translated as departure here is Exodus. Jesus brings the new exodus. Now he is the new Moses.

Each of these prophets, each a replica of the one who went before, meet God who breaks into the world with a word – a word to carry to the people. And when we listen to what they say and pay attention to their lives, we realize that the word they bring is actually an entire worldview. They provide the way we are to look at our lives, our purpose and the world’s condition. And this new worldview – this new way of seeing things, is dazzling…almost too dazzling to behold. Faces must be covered, booths must be built.

But we need these prophets and their worldviews because there are so many other worldviews out there. These are the worldviews supplied by the dominant culture. These world view tell us lies and call it truth. They tell us how to find meaning in life, only to leave us high and dry in the end.

But in Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, we see a worldview that competes with and challenges the dominant world view of their day. God speaks to Moses at a time when slavery was the accepted way of life. Pharaoh saw people in two distinct categories: those who were human and those who were subhuman. This worldview justifies the slavery and oppression of the Hebrew people. Moses comes and speaks a new way – a way that directly challenged how Pharaoh saw things: He comes with the news of Exodus, of liberation for all those who suffer under this dominant culture. He reminds both those in power and those who had lost their sense of identity after generations of slavery that there is no such thing as subhuman. There is no place in God’s creation for categories of people. And after the people had been freed, Moses then comes with his face shining to deliver God’s commandments – the new worldview that will replace the worldview of slavery.

Elijah comes at the time of Kings. The deal when the Hebrew people reached the promised land was that they were supposed to live together under God’s rule and commandments. They were supposed to care first and foremost for the widow, the orphan, the vulnerable and the stranger. But by the time of Elijah, the king represents the entire self-serving royal enterprise. These kings were wealth seekers, living extravagantly off the backs of the poor. They had forgotten all that Moses had said. They had abandoned the worldview he brought from God. They saw things in terms of material goods and conquest of other nations and peoples. That was the goal. They believed if they had much wealth and much land, they would be fulfilled/happy. Elijah brought back the way of the Torah and reminded people of how the world would look if they lived by God’s commands.

And Jesus comes in the midst of a world that was dominated by rulers and leaders who had no time for God and God’s ways. Jesus brought again the possibility of the kingdom of God – announcing that it is here if we choose that kingdom over the way of the Empire.

When we put this all together, we realize that these three prophets point to the whole biblical story. The story that begins with Creation, moves to Slavery, proclaims the Exodus, tells of Exile, and promises New Life in God. This is the story told time and again throughout human history, punctuated with God’s prophets who come with their worldview that frees and restores.

So, how does this great story answer those four basic questions; Who are we? Where are we? What is wrong? What is the solution?

First, who are we? We are God’s. We are a part of Creation. We were created and called good, stamped with God’s image. Yet we are also free to turn away from this identity of our and take on others. We are free to choose another worldview.

And where are we? I think we occupy many places within the larger biblical story all at the same time. On one end of the biblical story, we can feel like we are in Pharaoh’s Egypt, enslaved to economies and political systems that depend on the virtual slavery and oppression of the poor to serve the accumulation of wealth for those with power. At times we are the slaves and other times we are Pharaoh. Sometimes we really feel powerless to change such powerful forces. We’re trapped and we can’t figure out how to rescue ourselves and others from things we know cause suffering. At the same time, we do have more power than so many others in the world. We sometimes choose to live in and benefit from those systems of slavery and oppression – not challenging them and not listening to prophets who beg us to let the people go.

Then, there are times when we live in Babylon. We feel like outsiders, we feel lost and not at home. The world seems to go on around us, but we don’t know how to be a part of it. We yearn for something different and we wait for God to show us the way home. In exile, we can feel like God has abandoned us, left us alone in the wilderness.

And finally, in the United States, I think we are in some ways living in first century Palestine, and we are the Roman Empire. We seek control over all others because we believe we can impose our way of life which we genuinely believe will lead to peace and goodness. But the price of seeking such a goal is war, violence, suppression of all other views and understandings, a heavy hand brought down on so many in the meantime…the price, in other words, is we loose the possibility to ever reach the goal we seek.

Given who we are and where we are, what then is wrong? I think so often what is wrong is that we feel like there is no hope for change. The dominant stories always seem to win. It seems the king almost always defeats the prophet. The powers of the dominant systems always appear to be stronger and more durable than those prophets who speak for humanity. I think what’s wrong is that too often we give up because it all seems so hopeless. The prophets comes and we turn away – their truth too painful to look at.

The solution to this, I believe, is the meta-story itself. Too often our perspective is limited and we forget that we are a part of a much larger story. We are connected all the way back to the story of creation, and as far forward as the stories about the reign of God coming in full. And what the bible tells us, what this story tells us, is that this massive span of time is dotted by prophets – by God breaking in and speaking to us.

And prophetic speech is an act of relentless hope that refuses to despair, that refuses to believe that the world is closed off in patterns of exploitation and oppression. You can’t silence the prophets…their insistent voice will always rise up and will have the ability to bring the powerful to their knees, and remind us all – powerful and weak alike – that we have turned away and can now, because of God’s grace – turn back.

It’s Black History Month. Each year we remember the history – the story – of Black Americans, a history that tells of slavery and exodus, exile from their homeland to a new place of freedom after oppression. A story of new life, of resurrection. And at the end of our worship, we will sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”; a hymn that invites us to remember this particular story. On one level, it is clear that this is not the story of all of us. Most of us are not African American. It is particular to one time in history, and to one people.

Yet this hymn deliberately points to the larger story of our faith. The civil rights movement was an example of great prophets – modern day prophets – coming with a word of liberation, of homecoming and of reconciliation. But remember, these prophets are just another generation of the prophets Moses, Elijah and Jesus. When we get to the third verse, listen carefully to how the writer moves from the particular story to the story of God’s presence and action throughout all of history.

Consider one last thing our three great prophets have in common…look at how the stories tell us of the end of their lives. In all three, there is no body. Moses dies, but it is Yahweh who buries him and we are told his body can never be found. Elijah is swept up into heaven…he doesn’t even die. And Jesus is resurrected. There’s a reason for this. The story does not end. God does not stop working through prophets and sages to bring us the dazzling word of hope. There is no death of the prophetic movement and message.

When these prophets come, it might be hard to look at what they are saying – so different is their worldview than ours. But we can trust them. They are telling us how to turn the page in the story of humanity: to move from chapters of slavery to liberation; from chapters of oppression to justice; from chapters of hatred to love. Let us give thanks for these prophets, and let us give thanks to God that the story never ends. Amen.

Catching People

Luke 5:1-11
February 7, 2010

There is more than one miracle in this story if you ask me. Obviously we have the massive haul of fish. But I think Simon Peter’s succession of responses in this passage is nothing short of miraculous. Each time he speaks or acts he signals a massive shift in his understanding, beliefs and purpose in life. One right after the other, sometimes two dramatic transformations coming simultaneously! All in the span of 11 verses.

Peter’s behavior starts out reasonably enough. He knows Jesus, knows what he has been doing – healing and preaching – and he sees him as important in his own life. In fact, Jesus has just healed Peter’s mother-in-law. So when Jesus asks Peter to row him out in the boat so he can get some distance from the crowd, Peter does as he asks. And Jesus has earned the benefit of the doubt so that when he tells Peter to cast the nets again, even though they have caught nothing after a long night of fishing, Peter does, even if a bit skeptically.

But once the fish start pouring in, Peter experiences quite a rash of varied emotions, and makes huge decisions in what seems like a matter of minutes. Consider, for example, how Peter completely changes his understanding of who Jesus is. In verse five, as Peter is rowing Jesus out to sea, he calls Jesus “Master”. This is a term used for teachers and those you look to for guidance. Then, just three short verses later, after the boats are weighed down by fish, Peter calls Jesus “Lord,” or “Kurie!!” in Greek. We may think this a subtle distinction, but the majesty of the title “Kurie” cannot be overstated. It had religious, political, and economic implications on a large scale.

Lord was a divine title. It was reserved for the one who holds all the power in the religious, social and political institutions of the day – namely the king or emperor. Caesar was “Kurie” for anyone living in the Roman Empire. Prior to this moment, Peter’s life was defined by submitting to other lords and masters. So it is a pretty major event when Peter goes from seeing Jesus as someone to follow and listen to, to placing Jesus as the only ruler of his life – to the exclusion of all others. Jesus as Lord becomes the religious, political and economic leader to whom Peter now will answer – Jesus alone.

This change, though dramatic, can still be seen as fairly reasonable given it was in reaction to a pretty dramatic miracle. But the reasonable behavior starts to fall apart, in my opinion, when at the same moment Peter moves from seeing Jesus as one among many authorities in his life to the only authority, we get an equally strong, equally dramatic, yet almost opposite reaction. “Get away from me!!! I am a sinful man!” He pledges his devotion to and desire for distance from Jesus simultaneously. But it seems the abundance of fish evokes an awareness in Peter that once you are answerable only to Jesus, your life in comparison to what it should be isn’t so easy to look at. Standing next to Jesus, Peter sees himself all too clearly and it’s not a sight he wishes to behold. So he begs Jesus to stand somewhere else. He begs Jesus to leave him alone because it’s too painful to see himself as he fears God sees him.

Peter’s final response in this passage is yet another complete reversal from what he has just said. In this about face, by any sane measure, surely Peter moves from the world of rational to ridiculous; from reasonable to nothing short of miraculous. After one sentence from Jesus – an enigmatic one at that – Peter moves from “Go away,” to “Wait for me! Wait for me!” and leaves everything behind to follow Jesus. Everything! Including this massive influx of wealth Jesus just provided in the form of abundant fish; all because of one sentence.

A sentence with that kind of effect certainly merits a closer look. But first, in order to understand the impact of what Jesus says, we have to understand a bit of what life was like for Peter and the other fishermen. Specifically, their lives were probably not great. Obviously, like any human life, I’m sure there were times of joy and peace. But peasant life was just not easy in Jesus’ day. And that’s what fishermen were…peasants. Peasants were on the edge all the time between subsistence living and abject poverty. It took very little to push people over that line – and those pushes usually came from forces far beyond their control.

Since the rise of Herod the Great as the Caesar-approved ruler over the Jews, which was shortly before Jesus was born, there had been increasing Roman incursion into the Sea of Galilee area. Before Herod, Galilee had been a largely isolated Jewish community focused primarily on fishing, farming, family and religion. Their economy was completely local. Families and small villages “got by” because everyone worked hard, they took care of each other, and they were pretty much off the radar screen of the Roman authorities and Jewish elites.

But Herod the Great, and later his son Herod Antipas who ruled during Jesus’ adult life, wanted to build up their own mini-kingdoms in Galilee, increasing the commercial activity and thus increasing revenue for them – wealth that would trickle up and endear them to the Roman Emperor. This brought a whole new layer of oppression to those living and working in that area. The more commercialized the lake became, the more the fisherman were forced to live by the Roman rules and were subject not to one another but to the tax collectors and increased fees and tolls. They were drafted into a system that had a very different vision of their role in the local and imperial economy than what they were used to.

When Jesus shows up in Galilee preaching his good news to the poor, those living there are not only poor peasants, they are also trapped in a system always bent on exploiting them and their labor in order to increase the wealth of the elite of the Empire.

It is with this context in mind that we can now look at this one sentence that Jesus uttered that had such a powerful effect on Peter. “Do not be afraid,” Jesus says, “from now on you will be catching people.” Or as Mark and Matthew both put it in their gospels, and as most of us remember it, “I will make you fishers of people.” And that’s it – that’s what it takes for Peter and the others to leave everything to follow this man who fishes for people.

When I was growing up, I loved to sing Sunday school songs. I really did. I was a geek extraordinaire. I liked “We are climbing Jacob’s latter”, “Zaccheaus was a wee little man”, “Wade in the Water,” and all the others. Except one. There was one I never really liked, and we sang it all the time. “I will make you fishers of men.” That was really all there was to the song: “I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men. I will make you fishers of men, if you follow me.” I’m sorry, but the image just didn’t work for me. It still doesn’t. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I don’t like fishing. I have tried to like fishing…I have friends who like fishing, who find it peaceful and beautiful. I have tried to like the sport, but I just can’t, because in the end, you have a live, floppy thing with a hook in it’s mouth hanging from your line. Yuck.

So, fishing for people is not appealing to me. To be fair, the fishing we read about in the gospel of Luke is fishing with nets, not hooks and reels. But that’s only marginally better. It still seems like we’re talking about ensnaring, catching, baiting, tricking, capturing and hauling in. I assume fish don’t like being caught. Is this really the analogy we want for Christian discipleship. Personally, I don’t want to do that with people.

But when we look at what happens in Jesus’ ministry with the disciples in the rest of the gospel story, we know Jesus wasn’t talking about ensnaring people in a net, or hooking them in the mouth with the hook of the gospel message, reeling them into the synagogues against their will, converting them by whatever means necessary. As one Lutheran minister writes: “The calling is not to hook people and drag them in. It is rather to cast the net of God's love all around--open to all the world--and then wait with patience for the Spirit's work and to see if any are caught by God's vision and grace."

This promise that if they left their current lives to follow Jesus they would become “catchers of people” was a promise that their lives would be changed forever. In this one sentence, their lives were given meaning and purpose – lives that probably plodded along in much the same way every day. As peasant fishermen, they had very little to offer others. They were controlled by others to a great degree. Some scholars have even described their lives as approaching slave labor. Serving the empire was oppressive, not meaningful. Jesus, on the other hand, calls them to serve others; not the powerful but the poor and the hurting. The abundance Jesus shows them in the miracle that day would be theirs, but more than that they would get to offer such abundance to others.

Jesus was offering nothing short of an entirely different kingdom in which they could live right then. This new kingdom is the perfect – maybe only – antidote to the difficult, unjust life people lived in Caesar’s kingdom. And it had implications on every level. Come with me and you will no longer be a part of this unjust economic system of fishing only for the good of Caesar. Instead we will care for each other and the poor by encouraging a return to community oriented economics based on God’s vision. Jesus could provide meaning and purpose of life in a way the emperor could or would not. They were leaving everything behind for a completely new life, and for them that was good news!

An editorial in a newspaper this week told the story of a woman who left everything to go work in the Congo. She heard about the atrocities happening there – especially to women. And so she began to raise money here in the states, and eventually went to the Congo to work with women. She has become a part of their lives – “sisters” she and the other women call each other. But she did leave things behind – important things. She left behind a fiance who would eventually break off the engagement. She left behind a job and financial security. She left behind comforts in the United States. Yet here is what she said of her decision:

“Technically, I had a good life before, but I wasn’t very happy. Now I feel I have much more of a sense of meaning.”

Jesus has pulled us out of our lives of drudgery into a life full of purpose: spreading the net of God’s grace and love. That may mean leaving things behind – or it may just mean we experience life differently because we work first and foremost for God. We are ultimately answerable only to God. That might seem scary at first, but we are catchers of people – we cast the net of God’s love far and deep. Sometimes we see how that affects people, and other times we leave it to God to know how the seeds we plant grow over time. But this is where our lives derive their meaning and purpose. This is more important than any other work we do, any other people we serve and answer to, any other system of which we are a part. We are catchers of people…following Jesus with our whole lives. That is our purpose – and that is amazingly good news. Amen.

Love Without Knowledge

Jeremiah 1:4-10; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
January 31, 2010


It is an age old debate – even if we’re largely settled on the answer, it comes up again and again: Is there such a thing as altruism? Can we ever feel love that is not tainted by our own self interest? Can we ever do something that is purely about the good of others?

There is another, related conundrum when it comes to love. Can we always figure out what the loving thing to do is? Can we know? Even things that seem so obviously loving can be problematic. So often, when we try to do something for another person, we make our own assumptions about what would be good for them, which may or may not be true. And then there is the problem of unintended consequences – what’s good for one person may mean pain for another – and we certainly can’t know that in advance.

Well, Paul never said, “love is perfect.” Actually, that’s not quite true – he talked about perfect love, but only in reference to Christ and what it will be like in the realm of God. He knew, most likely first and foremost from his own experience, that we humans can try all we want, but our love will never be perfect.

I think that’s why Paul embeds in this beautiful passage about love all the talk about knowledge – or rather lack of knowledge. We don’t really pay attention to those verses much, largely because we love the love part. We read it at weddings, and you certainly don’t want to talk about the fact that we know things only in part at weddings. Couples want to feel confident that they know for sure that the person they stand facing at the altar is the right one for them. And they know this for sure because they so clearly love them.

But for Paul, knowledge doesn’t come from feeling love. And we don’t love because we know something for sure. Paul says we love in spite of our lack of knowledge, and that we will lack perfect knowledge no matter how much we try to love. We are left with this uncomfortable reality as we try to love others as best we can – as God commanded. And we’re left wondering, “can we ever trust ourselves to love in the right way with the right motives?”

This famous passage is about what it means to love when we don’t have full knowledge. Loving without knowing. We want to believe our actions grow out of wisdom – and the more wise a decision is, the more loving it is. But Paul knows the pursuit of knowledge will always fall short. But make no mistake about it – we need to love anyway. We need to learn to love while in the end giving up on the need to know what the outcome will be.

I was reading an article this week that was extremely critical of some of the ways people have responded to the suffering Haiti. The author exposed some responses as being more about racism and classism than altruism. He showed how some actions were about the savior complex of the helper and not the true needs of those they try to help. And he was very clear that some are acting out of complete ignorance and so they end up doing far more harm than good. And let me say his criticism is an important, necessary voice in the public debate and private decisions regarding Haiti. But to bring his point home, he writes:

“I don’t think a completely pure love is truly possible on this earth, because love needs knowledge, and pure knowledge is impossible. We try, but we don’t know fully what’s best for the other person, so we make guesses, and our guesses are based on imperfect knowledge. And so exploitation creeps in.”

The purpose of writing this within the context of the larger article was to say that even when we think we are being loving, we are usually imposing our own understandings of right and wrong onto others, and more often than not, our actions that we think are loving are having unintended, destructive consequences. This person was saying we shouldn’t trust love. When he says this, I think the author moves from important critique to outright cynicism.

Paul, on the other hand, was acknowledging the same truths but drawing a completely different conclusion. We have imperfect knowledge…that’s a given, Paul says. Yet we can say something about love that helps rightly love in spite not knowing. Paul knows we must love – that is not optional. But what Paul also knows is love is not only, or even primarily, a feeling. Love is not a subjective emotion, meaning different things to different people. It has criteria – and those criteria help us in making decisions.

When we think we are being loving, we need to evaluate that against what Paul says love is. It is patient, kind, humble, gentle, about others more than about ourselves. This passage does not romanticize love, it offers us a tool for discernment for our actions, helping us to be more loving, even as we will never be perfect. Because Paul refuses cynicism as the logical conclusion to imperfect knowledge, we are assured that there is a way forward and a way to love in this world that is both necessary and good.

His way of talking about love and imperfect knowledge together also helps us avoid two major mistakes we might make in our efforts to act in a loving manner. The first mistake is acting rashly and unwisely because we trust so much in our gut reactions and feelings that we call love that we never subject those feelings to a process of discernment. These actions can sometimes wreak real havoc on others and the world.

We find this when people rush to intervene before understanding the situation or thinking about how one’s actions might feel to the recipient of our perceived benevolence. We aren’t carefully scrutinizing our actions and motives to see if they are racist or create relationships that just give us power over someone. We don’t think about unintended consequences. And often we don’t listen to people to find out what’s truly helpful; instead, when we love without discernment, we assume we know what’s best for others.

Paul helps us avoid this by reminding us that love is so much more than feelings and gut reactions. That’s why he gives us the list of what love is – apart from what we might feel as love. While we will only know imperfectly whether we have done the right thing for the right reasons, that doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility to spend time in discernment. Love requires both heart and head – both emotion and rational thought.

On almost the opposite end of the spectrum, we sometimes fall into the trap of complete inaction because we realize we can’t ever know what the right, loving thing is to do in any moment. This is the trap into which the author I mentioned fell when he concluded that imperfect knowledge inevitably leads to exploitation. The ability to see both/all sides of everything, or the awareness that tells us there will always be unintended consequences that we can’t know about ahead of time become barriers to action. We become paralyzed in the face of a complicated and broken world and we feel helpless in light of our imperfect humanness.

I can tell you I struggle more with this end of the spectrum. I’m great at seeing flaws in solutions. I can find both sides of almost anything. A long time ago, I was talking about this with a pastor I knew and trusted. After talking for a while about this struggle that leads to paralysis, I finally asked, “How can you ever do something and be assured you did something good?” In what was a grace filling and faithful response, he shared with me his own way of making peace with this – and it has really stuck with me.

He said, first when you know action is required – when you know that we are never relieved of the obligation to love neighbors and enemies alike – as you try to figure out what the most loving thing to do is, spend time in discernment – deep discernment that includes reading scripture, prayer, talking to others, paying attention to your own emotions and intuitions. The second step is to make your best guess at what the faithful response is in that particular circumstance in light of your discernment. It will always be a guess – not the perfect answer. “At some point,” he said, “you have to come to some sort of conviction and act from that place.” In other words, you have to finally believe as best you can in what you are doing, and then actually do it, but always knowing there is yet one more step: trust in God’s grace and forgiveness.

God’s grace and forgiveness do not let us off the hook for the consequences of our decisions. Paul was big on responsibility. But he also affirms we only see through the glass dimly, we only know in part, we can only feebly predict outcomes and consequences. In that way, Paul frees us from the weight of needing to be perfect. He reminds us that we always act as imperfect human beings. But trust in God’s grace and forgiveness is the way forward through that imperfection.

God calls us to love even though we don’t know what we’re doing and that we will make mistakes. Jeremiah is a great example of this. When he feels the call to live a faithful life in obedience to God, he immediately feels the pain of imperfection. “I don’t know how to speak,” he says. “I don’t know how to do the very thing you are asking me to do. And if I don’t know how to do it, how can I ever be faithful?”

But God’s response to all this is to say….”I know.” And this knowledge of God’s – the divine knowledge – is knowledge that both transcends and permeates our world. “Before you were even conceived,” God says to Jeremiah, “I knew you.” This is divine knowledge, and it’s not like what we think knowledge is. It’s not only knowing people and facts and the future. Instead it is a deep knowledge that is built into the fabric of creation. Creation knows, within itself, how to restore brokenness. And the image of God – the divine knowledge – at work in each of us is always drawing us closer to loving in the right way with the right motives.

If we trust in that – that divine knowledge is built into our own beings and all of creation, we can take steps, and through discernment, we will be more likely than not to tap into that divine knowledge. Our lives will resonate with the pull and direction of creation – and we will move with creation toward wholeness, reconciliation and love. “I don’t know how,” Jeremiah says. “But I do,” the divine one responds. “And my presence, my knowing, existence will be with you as you move through this world.”

And so it is with us as it was with Jeremiah. We don’t know, but divine knowledge exists and is with us if we seek God. And seeking God, seeking this knowledge, means we don’t act rashly – we use Paul’s criteria of love to help evaluate decisions. But it also means we aren’t paralyzed by our imperfections and a complicated world where nothing is ever completely right or completely wrong.

We need to come to a place of conviction and act. Then we can let go of the outcome, which we can only partially predict anyway. We need to love without knowing. Except, as God tells Jeremiah, there is one thing we can know for sure – God goes with us and grace surrounds us. Amen.