Heights, Sandals, Belief, and Eternal Life

John 3.16-21  ‘For 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.

¹⁷ ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. ¹⁹And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. ²¹But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’ (NRSV)

I am not a big fan of heights.  It is not necessarily all heights, but some heights.  For example, I had no problem going to the top floor of the Sears Tower (or whatever it is called now) and looking out over the city and Lake Michigan.  On a clear day the view is almost limitless.  Or walking across the glass floor in the CN Tower in Toronto and where you can look straight down 1,100 ft. But take me to the Grand Canyon or Black Canyon and I will admire the view from hundreds of feet from the edge.  Heck I don’t even like to climb the ladder to get to the loft in the back of the church (10-15 ft off the ground).  And I have yet to figure out that TV credit card commercial where the woman is climbing on top of a tall rock spire, barely wide enough for her to walk on.  The inconsistency in my dislike of heights has led me to think that it is not so much a fear of heights, as it is a trust in gravity. 

I know enough physics to know how gravity works, and enough experience to know what happens when you fail to properly trust gravity.  My trust in gravity changes how I live.  I have never looked for a job that involved ascending to great heights, while on vacation I don’t go climbing or get close to the edge of a cliff, and I would probably pass on a call that required me to climb up a pulpit that stands 10 or 15 ft off the ground, the kind seen occasionally in old churches out East or in England.  My trust in gravity changes how I live my life.  It is this understanding of trust that underlies the Greek word commonly translated as belief. 

When we talk about belief or believing, we often think of doctrine or dogma.  I believe this or that about God.  Doctrine and dogma are the things the church has been fighting over for 2,000 years or so.  It is the reason we have so many denominations, with more popping up every day.  But this is not what John is talking about when he says “everyone who believes in [Jesus].”  For John, belief is more about trust than doctrine.  Whether you believe Jesus to be a tall, fair skinned, blue eyed man or a short, stout, dark skinned, brown eyed man doesn’t matter to John.  That is not what John means by belief, but trust is.  To trust in Jesus means to trust in the way that Jesus lived.  This trust changes how we live.  To trust that Jesus’ way is also the way for our lives as well means to change how we live.  Now I am not talking about taking Jesus’ life directly over into ours, as though 2,000 years haven’t passed between us and him.  It doesn’t mean to start wearing sandals, although sandals are a very comfortable footwear, winter or summer.  It does mean to begin to look at how Jesus lived in his time and place, how he healed the sick and lame, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, restored people to the fullness of their humanity and spoke out against injustice.  In living the way he did, he brought eternal life to all those whose life he touched. 

For John, eternal life isn’t something that just begins after our current life is over, but is something that was begun with Jesus, himself.  People, through being healed, fed, clothed, and restored, experience eternal life.  Our trust in Jesus calls us to continue to live in the way of Jesus, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, restoring people to the fullness of their humanity, and speaking out against injustice.  We forget that eternal life is not just a gift for us alone, but is a gift for the entirety of creation. 

Rather than thinking of eternal life as the next life, think of it as God’s way (or desire) for the world, a way that means the eradication of hunger, illness, homelessness, and injustice.  It is a gift that is meant to be received in this life, as well as for eternity. 

Cleansing of the Temple... er Church?

John 2.13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ (NRSV)

There is an old saying about love, a saying that forms the refrain of the Social Distortion song “Writing on the Wall.”  “They say if you love someone you gotta let them go….”   Whether or not you are completely convinced by this saying or not, I think it is fair to say there is some truth to it.  The truth of this saying goes beyond just human relationships, it can apply to anything that we love or like. While there is truth in the idea of letting go it is not easy to let go, as the writer of the song acknowledges with the line “but I can’t let go.”  But as hard as it is to let go that is often times exactly what we need to do.  As much for the person or thing we love as for ourselves.

It is not uncommon for us to want the people whom we fall in love with to remain the same as when we fell in love with them.  How many times has one spouse said to the other “You are a dork…you weren’t a dork when I married you” (please feel free change the wording to match your own context).  We fall in love with the person we were dating or engaged to, and that is the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with.  That is the person we want to hold onto. 

But by holding on and not letting go, we hold back the person’s ability to grow, change and become the person God is calling them to be.  Make no mistake it is not easy to let go and there is always risk involved.  It is conceivable that people may grow apart, but in some sense love insists on letting go, allowing the person we love to become something more than our own desire for that person. 

I think it is fair to say the same goes for the church.  There are a great many of us who have come to love the church, or at least the congregation to which we belong.  At some point in the past we came to love the church, and just like in human relationships, that is how we want the church to remain.  We want it to continue to exist as it did in the past.  We may even come to believe that this past vision is what is best for the church, we want others to experience the same church we fell in love with. 

Unfortunately by not letting go, by only wanting the church to remain the same, we make it nearly impossible for new people to come to love the church.  Their experiences are not ours.  They, as much as we do, want to find a church that is relevant for them and their lives.  We “gotta…let go” so that church can grow, change, become relevant again, and become something more than just our desire for it.  

It is easy to see Jesus’ purging of the temple in terms of his dislike for the temple, the Jews and their religion.  But the Gospel according to John is not meant to be denunciation of the Jewish faith or Jews in general.  The whip, the overturning of the tables, and the shouting weren’t the products of his dislike of the temple, but were the product of his love for his own people and his own faith.  Jesus knew just how hard it is to let go, and tried to force the issue.  Unfortunately, this prophetic action didn’t really change anything and instead helped to seal his fate on the cross.  At some point in time, the temple had become the ‘property’ of a select few, who used it to their own benefit and were unwilling to allow it to change, to become relevant for the majority of the people in Jesus’ day. 

Let’s face it we have done a similar thing in our congregations and churches.  We have turned them into temples that serve our own desire.  No amount of cleansing even if it includes a whip, overturned tables, and shouting will change this reality, until we are willing to let go.  There is still a place for the church in the world, but it is a place that has to be more than just our own desires.  I am firmly convinced that God still is calling the church so that it can become what it is meant to be, a blessing to all the people of the world.  “They say if you love something you gotta let it go.”

Stories of Destruction?

Stories of destruction seem to be all around us these days.  No sooner do we get past Harold Camping’s prognostication for end of the world last May and then again in October, before talk turns to the Mayan calendar and the end of the world on December 21, 2012.  If reading the Bible is any indication, stories about the destruction of the world are almost as old human civilization itself.  A few short chapters after the beginning of Genesis, we get the story of Noah and the Flood. There are several things to note, however, about these stories of destruction. 

Most of the stories of the end of the world often serve a personal agenda.  Harold Camping made his fortune, and it is a substantial fortune, through his radio broadcasts.  While not wanting to question the sincerity of his Christianity, one has to wonder what has the greater influence in his broadcast money or faith.  When he began to predict the end of the world how many listeners began to send him even more money? 

When talk turns to the Mayan calendar the agenda becomes even more evident.  According to respectable Mayan Scholars the Mayan calendar doesn’t actually predict the end of the world.  Instead the Mayan Long calendar has a cycle 5,126 years.  If archaeologists have correctly identified the starting date of that cycle (there is at least some disagreement over the starting date) then the end of the cycle will be December 12, 2012.  But the calendar does not actually predict the end of the world on that day, but the beginning of a new cycle.  To finish a cycle and to begin a new cycle was actually seen as a day to be celebrated.  Unfortunately days of celebration seldom sell many books or result in block buster movies.  Stories of destruction, however, sell lots of books and generate attendance at movie theaters. 

Unlike these other stories of destruction, the story of the flood ends in remarkably different way.  After the waters recede, God shows remorse for what has happened.  God realizes that s/he has made a mistake.  And so God makes a covenant with Noah to never again to destroy the world.  As a reminder of this covenant both for Noah and God the bow is set in the clouds (Gen 9.12ff).  We may be able to explain scientifically why we see rainbows, but that does change the fact that for the writers of Genesis they came to symbolize God’s promise to Noah, and through him, all humanity to never again destroy the world.  It is symbol that is often forgotten because stories of destruction or much more profitable than stories of new creation. God’s promise is never one of destruction, but of renewed life for humanity and all of creation.