Sermon for North Hill, July 30, 2011
Texts: Genesis 3:15; 50:15-21, 2 Kings 5; 6:8-23; Revelation 5:13-14,
(Editors Note: Why waste your time fretting over petty conspiracies like the Illuminati, the U.N.'s plan for one-world government, the cabal of rich people, communists, socialists, Islamic World Domination Dreamers, European Sunday Promoters, right wing fundamentalists, etc. If we're going to talk conspiracy, let's talk about one that is actually going to succeed. Which is what this sermon does.)
I was in a meeting not long ago with several other ministers. We got to talking about an incident during campmeeting. A young man with severe psychological problems showed up. He was off his meds and became severely agitated and aggressive. I called the police who came and took him away. It was a scary few minutes but no one got hurt and the young man did not end up with any criminal charges on his record.
One of the preachers in the meeting said, “Isn't that just like the Devil. He'll do anything he can to block the special blessing God has for his people at campmeeting.”
I smiled inwardly at his naivete. I saw it exactly opposite. Here was a needy, damaged person. When he was off his medication, he was a risk to himself and others. God sent him to the one place where his edgy behavior would get him arrested before he hurt anyone – an arrest that would end with him in the care of mental health professionals instead of doing jail time.
I had even received a tip off about his problems before he arrived so I called the police much quicker than I would have otherwise. No one got hurt. (Several us were scared!) He got help. Campmeeting was not disrupted. God won.
So, if the Devil was involved, if the Devil had, in fact, sent this young man to “block the special blessing God had planned for campmeeting,” it was a miserable failure. God won. Again. Poor Devil. He's such a loser!
One of the most foundational, bedrock convictions of Adventism is something we call “The Great Controversy.” It's the way we tell the story of the universe. We insist it is the real story of what's happening. It is the secret knowledge of how the universe works. It is the story of a Grand Conspiracy. God is pulling strings, positioning secret agents and public forces, manipulating evil and empowering good so that in the end, love triumphs and evil dies.
There are a couple of reasons why the Adventist conviction about God's conspiracy to assure the triumph of love matters. First, it gives us hope if we have suffered from the machinations of the devil or evil people. We may suffer, but ultimately our suffering will be alleviated – no, I should say our suffering will be engulfed in joy, dissolved in joy. Joy is eternal. Suffering is terribly real, but it will prove to be ephemeral.
Second, this story matters because it gives us the wisdom we need to align our efforts, our energies with the flow of history. We can avoid the tragedy of giving our lives in service to a lost, misguided cause.
Imagine how Robert E. Lee must have felt after the Civil War. He had turned down President Lincoln's offer to lead the Union armies and cast his lot with his beloved Virginia. It was a dumb choice. It turns out he was fighting a tragically misguided war to defend the most monstrous institution in the history of the United States. You know where history was headed. Slavery lost. The South lost. Lee lost. If, instead, he had aligned himself with history, if he had placed his considerable abilities in the service of freedom for Black people, it is probable the Civil War would have been much shorter. Hundreds of thousands of lives might of have been spared. The South would have avoided horrific devastation. Lee could have been a champion instead of a loser.
Attempting to stop the unstoppable course of history is tragic and dumb. We know how the human story is going to turn out. We know where history is going. Since God is the one directing the conspiracy of love, it makes sense to join.
Over the past year we've watched history march forward in the Middle East. If President Mubarak had understood the story was going to go, he would not have foolishly stood in the way of his people's longing for freedom and opportunity. But he did not understand where the story was going. He did not know the plot.
Adventists believe that eventually the human hunger for freedom and truth, for justice and the triumph of love will be satisfied. God is conspiring to make it so. He will not be forever thwarted. Since God is going to win. It makes since to join the conspiracy now.
China's communist party is doomed. The Wahabism of Saudi Arabia is doomed.
Love will win. Freedom will win. Tyrants can delay the progress. Tradition can stall the forward march of history. But neither tyrants nor tradition can forever delay the triumph of love. God will win. Love will win. That's the way the story goes.
To be sure, the Bible acknowledges the activity of the Devil. There are disastrous failures of goodness. There are heartbreaking victories by the forces of evil. But these are merely twists in the plot. They do not alter the end of the story.
God wins. Love wins. No matter how many times the Devil springs surprise attacks. No matter how many suicide bombers he commissions. No matter how inept or weary the agents of God, the eventual end of the story is guaranteed. God guarantees it.
God's victory will be so complete, so total, that the entire universe will celebrate it. Even the Devil will eventually bow and admit God is right. The conspiracy of love will prove so successful, eventually every force of evil, even humans who have appeared utterly captivated by wickedness – all will finally pay obeisance to God and love.
This is the direction of history. This is the climax of the plot. This is where the conspiracy is headed.
So we live in hope. The oppression of Islam will vanish. Communism will collapse. The tyranny of right wing zealots will disappear. The suppression of women and marriage by the papal system will evaporate. The swagger of capitalism will collapse.
Love will triumph. Community, harmonious relationships, altruism, mutual care and respect, righteousness and peace will fill the earth.
Allow me a couple of applications:
1. God is more clever and powerful and determined than the Devil. In light of this, it is silly to obsess over the putative conspiracies of the left or right. The Illuminati, the papal system, socialists, communists, Muslims, the U.N., the Aryan Brotherhood – pick your favorite bogey man – each of these and all of them together are no more consequential than Hosni Mubarak. They will fall. They will fail. They do not run the world. They will not rule the world. So don't freak out. Refuse to feed your worry. Instead feed your faith. Don't listen to people like Rush Limbaugh or Walter Veith. These men are most eloquent when talking about stuff they fear or hate, a profoundly misplaced eloquence.
2. Devote yourself to doing what you can to further the conspiracy of goodness. Enlist in the winning movement. Practice generosity. Give yourself to the cultivation of affection and intimacy with family and friends. Spend less than you earn and build savings regularly. Exercise regularly. Eat wisely. Spend time every day watering the plant of faith through reading, prayer, meditation, music, art, acts of service. In case I've not been clear enough: Read (books, internet sites, magazines) stuff that celebrates goodness. DO NOT READ stuff that outlines the methods or supposed accomplishments of the forces of evil. If everything the fear-mongers say is true, what should you do? The things I've listed above in this paragraph. If nothing the fear-mongers say is true, what should you do? The things I've listed above in this paragraph. The fear-mongers give no guidance for life. They offer no wisdom, no help. So leave them alone. Give your attention to the winning conspiracy, not to the ones guaranteed to fail. Do things you'll be happy to talk about at the victory feast of the conspiracy of heaven.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Love and Health Nuts
Sermon for North Hill, July 23, 2011
When Karin was being treated for cancer, women from this church brought food and cleaned our house. That was love.
When the women of this church put on a church dinner to feed a huge number of guests – with only a few days notice – that is love.
When the men of this church spent nearly every Sunday for a year or two, working in mud and cold and rain to construct our landscape. That was love.
When you help one another move – that is back-breaking love.
Loving well takes muscle. Cleaning a house, mowing a lawn, polishing shoes – all require some level of physical strength.
One of the most famous stories Jesus ever told featured a strong man.
A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. Somewhere on the road he was ambushed by bandits who robbed him, beat him and left him for dead. A priest came along, noticed the victim lying in the road, and kept going, hugging the opposite side of the road. A Levite came along. He, too, kept going. Then a Samaritan came along.
He stopped, bound up the victim's wounds, then lifted the man onto his donkey and transported him to an inn. The Samaritan nursed the robbery victim through the night. In the morning, he paid the inn keeper for the night and paid extra to have the inn-keeper look after the man until he was back on his feet (Luke 10).
Jesus told this story in response to a question about just what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves.
When we ask, “What is God's will for our lives?” the answer is: Love. Love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. Because loving others takes strength we have an inescapable moral duty to cultivate strength, to safeguard our physical health.
Adventists have long taught that taking care of our health is a moral obligation. God wants us to be lovers. And loving requires strength. It takes muscles to put somebody on a donkey. It takes muscles to clean toilets, hold babies, shovel snow, drive a car, give a massage. Our bodies are the essential tools in acts of love and so taking care of our bodies is clearly a moral obligation.
Another story. This not a story told BY Jesus, but a story told ABOUT Jesus. Jesus was teaching in a synagogue one Sabbath. He noticed a woman there who was crippled and bent over. She had suffered from this condition for 18 years. Jesus called the woman forward. “Woman,” he said, “you are set free from your infirmity.” He placed his hands on her and immediately she straightened up and praised God (Luke 13).
It is the quintessential picture of the ministry of Jesus. When he comes into contact with human suffering he immediately takes action. He heals. He restores.
Christians are followers of Jesus, disciples, students of Jesus. We order our lives in harmony with the example and teaching of Jesus.
As God send Jesus, so Jesus sent his disciples (John 17:18). In Matthew, Jesus sent his disciples on mission saying, “Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8))
Jesus was a healer. We are to be healers. This is the foundation of the Adventist hospital system and the the reason the Adventist church established a medical school in Loma Linda a hundred years ago (and more recently (1975) another in Montemorelos, Mexico and in 1994 another at Universidad Adventista del Plata in Argentina).
Loving people means participating in their healing, giving them aid. Acting as healers takes strength and health on the part of the healers. Helping people enjoy optimal health means far more than offering aid to the sick, it means teaching people how to avoid disease.
Medical and miraculous healings are wonderful ways to touch other people with love. Even more effective in the long run is helping people embrace healthy practices. Healthy habits are far more effective than miracles. Miracles, by definition are rare. The laws of health, by definition, are common. They work most of the time. (Not all the time.)
Teaching people to exercise, eat less and eat better is a far more productive way to deal with obesity than praying about it.
Lung cancer is far more reliably prevented by not smoking than it is cured by miracles or operations.
So both in obedience to the command to love and as an act homage as disciples of Jesus, we practice and teach healthy living.
You can find all sorts of lists of rules for healthy living. And once you go beyond the basics, sometimes the lists disagree with one another. But there are some basics that are incontrovertible.
First. Number one. Numero uno: Move. Walk. Bike. Jiggle. Dance. Do pushups. Lift weights. Swim. Do crunches. Stretch. Bend. Run. Healthy bodies move. And moving promotes health. So move. Park farther from the door of the store.
Number two. Eat better. Eat smarter. Eat less stuff that comes in fancy packaging. Beware of crinkly bags. Pretty much anything that comes in a crinkly bag is suspect – chips, Cheetos. Eat more veggies. Eat less sugar, less cheese, less meat.
Number three. Drink water. Beware of beverages other than water. Orange juice is not a health food. It is a desert. (The same is true of any fruit juice.) Soda is dangerous. Never use it to quench thirst.
Number four. Sleep.
The goal of all this healthy living is not to live forever. No degree of rigor in the pursuit of health will give us perpetual youth, much less eternal life. We all get sick. We will all die. We do not practice healthy living under the illusion that somehow it will keep us from experiencing pain and sickness and death.
Instead, we practice healthy living because we want to be strong enough to love well. We want to minimize down time when we are unavailable to serve others. We practice healthy living because we are lovers. Like God is.
(And we keep much humor and grace on hand. Part of being healthy is not fretting—about our own habits or the behavior of others. Do what you can right now, in the moment, to foster health, and laugh at your own failures and the failures of others. You'll get another chance tomorrow to get it right. Or not.)
When Karin was being treated for cancer, women from this church brought food and cleaned our house. That was love.
When the women of this church put on a church dinner to feed a huge number of guests – with only a few days notice – that is love.
When the men of this church spent nearly every Sunday for a year or two, working in mud and cold and rain to construct our landscape. That was love.
When you help one another move – that is back-breaking love.
Loving well takes muscle. Cleaning a house, mowing a lawn, polishing shoes – all require some level of physical strength.
One of the most famous stories Jesus ever told featured a strong man.
A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. Somewhere on the road he was ambushed by bandits who robbed him, beat him and left him for dead. A priest came along, noticed the victim lying in the road, and kept going, hugging the opposite side of the road. A Levite came along. He, too, kept going. Then a Samaritan came along.
He stopped, bound up the victim's wounds, then lifted the man onto his donkey and transported him to an inn. The Samaritan nursed the robbery victim through the night. In the morning, he paid the inn keeper for the night and paid extra to have the inn-keeper look after the man until he was back on his feet (Luke 10).
Jesus told this story in response to a question about just what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves.
When we ask, “What is God's will for our lives?” the answer is: Love. Love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. Because loving others takes strength we have an inescapable moral duty to cultivate strength, to safeguard our physical health.
Adventists have long taught that taking care of our health is a moral obligation. God wants us to be lovers. And loving requires strength. It takes muscles to put somebody on a donkey. It takes muscles to clean toilets, hold babies, shovel snow, drive a car, give a massage. Our bodies are the essential tools in acts of love and so taking care of our bodies is clearly a moral obligation.
Another story. This not a story told BY Jesus, but a story told ABOUT Jesus. Jesus was teaching in a synagogue one Sabbath. He noticed a woman there who was crippled and bent over. She had suffered from this condition for 18 years. Jesus called the woman forward. “Woman,” he said, “you are set free from your infirmity.” He placed his hands on her and immediately she straightened up and praised God (Luke 13).
It is the quintessential picture of the ministry of Jesus. When he comes into contact with human suffering he immediately takes action. He heals. He restores.
Christians are followers of Jesus, disciples, students of Jesus. We order our lives in harmony with the example and teaching of Jesus.
As God send Jesus, so Jesus sent his disciples (John 17:18). In Matthew, Jesus sent his disciples on mission saying, “Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8))
Jesus was a healer. We are to be healers. This is the foundation of the Adventist hospital system and the the reason the Adventist church established a medical school in Loma Linda a hundred years ago (and more recently (1975) another in Montemorelos, Mexico and in 1994 another at Universidad Adventista del Plata in Argentina).
Loving people means participating in their healing, giving them aid. Acting as healers takes strength and health on the part of the healers. Helping people enjoy optimal health means far more than offering aid to the sick, it means teaching people how to avoid disease.
Medical and miraculous healings are wonderful ways to touch other people with love. Even more effective in the long run is helping people embrace healthy practices. Healthy habits are far more effective than miracles. Miracles, by definition are rare. The laws of health, by definition, are common. They work most of the time. (Not all the time.)
Teaching people to exercise, eat less and eat better is a far more productive way to deal with obesity than praying about it.
Lung cancer is far more reliably prevented by not smoking than it is cured by miracles or operations.
So both in obedience to the command to love and as an act homage as disciples of Jesus, we practice and teach healthy living.
You can find all sorts of lists of rules for healthy living. And once you go beyond the basics, sometimes the lists disagree with one another. But there are some basics that are incontrovertible.
First. Number one. Numero uno: Move. Walk. Bike. Jiggle. Dance. Do pushups. Lift weights. Swim. Do crunches. Stretch. Bend. Run. Healthy bodies move. And moving promotes health. So move. Park farther from the door of the store.
Number two. Eat better. Eat smarter. Eat less stuff that comes in fancy packaging. Beware of crinkly bags. Pretty much anything that comes in a crinkly bag is suspect – chips, Cheetos. Eat more veggies. Eat less sugar, less cheese, less meat.
Number three. Drink water. Beware of beverages other than water. Orange juice is not a health food. It is a desert. (The same is true of any fruit juice.) Soda is dangerous. Never use it to quench thirst.
Number four. Sleep.
The goal of all this healthy living is not to live forever. No degree of rigor in the pursuit of health will give us perpetual youth, much less eternal life. We all get sick. We will all die. We do not practice healthy living under the illusion that somehow it will keep us from experiencing pain and sickness and death.
Instead, we practice healthy living because we want to be strong enough to love well. We want to minimize down time when we are unavailable to serve others. We practice healthy living because we are lovers. Like God is.
(And we keep much humor and grace on hand. Part of being healthy is not fretting—about our own habits or the behavior of others. Do what you can right now, in the moment, to foster health, and laugh at your own failures and the failures of others. You'll get another chance tomorrow to get it right. Or not.)
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Death and Hope and Hell
First draft of my sermon for North Hill, July 16, 2011. Critical comments welcome. I will be making changes and will replace this post before 9:00 a.m. Sabbath morning.
When I first met Jim, he hobbled around his apartment in Huntington, NY, with the aid of a crutch. Still, he exuded great confidence. In contrast to the billions of humans who had died over the ages of human existence, Jim was going to be one of the special ones who never experienced death. He was going to go straight from “life here” to “life there.” It was a sweet hope. Jesus was coming again. Jim was going to be one of the 144,000 who would actually see Jesus come in the clouds of heaven. He would never taste the night of death.
A couple of years later instead of a crutch, Jim needed a wheel chair to get around. He was frustrated with his decreasing mobility. Disappointed that his body was letting him down.
Another year or so and Jim was bed fast. He needed help just to get out of bed. With great embarrassment and disappointment he began to say out loud that he didn't think he was going to make it to the Second Coming. He didn't see how he could make it through the Time of Trouble. He realized he was going to die without seeing the Second Coming. This realization was a daunting challenge to his faith.
Turns out he was not the first person to experience this crisis of faith. He was not the first Christian who had thought the Second Coming was so close he didn't need to even think about death.
Almost two thousand years earlier, the Christians in the city of Thessalonika faced the same dilemma. They had become Christians through the preaching of the Apostle Paul. Paul had talked about the Second Coming of Jesus with such enthusiasm and conviction that the new believers figured they would all experience the Second Coming together. Death was something that happened to other people, not to Christians. They weren't going to have time to die. Jesus was coming too soon for that.
Then some people in their congregation died. It was a crisis. Death was not supposed to happen to Christians – not to people in the church! They were all going to welcome Jesus together at the Second Coming. Now their friends had died. Did that mean they were going to miss out?
Paul wrote them a letter to reassure them.
Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. Thessalonians 4:13-15
Don't worry about the believers who have died, Paul says. They are not going to miss out. Death has not foiled Jesus' plans for his friends. They will be ever bit as present and included in the Grand Climax as those who remain alive straight through until the Second Coming.
The Book of Hebrews addresses this same issue from the opposite direction. Some people imagined that all the good people of God who died through the ages have been rejoicing in the presence of God. They are the lucky ones. We are here, facing all the hardships of life on earth, struggling against the forces of evil – it hardly seems fair.
In answer, the author goes through a list of great heroes in Bible history – Moses, Abraham, Rahab, prophets, warriors, mothers, martyrs. Then referring to this list, he writes, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”
Paul writes that there was nothing to worry about for people who died before the Second Coming. The writer of Hebrews writes there is nothing to worry about if you are still involved in the struggles of this present life.
The Grand Heavenly Feast, the Great Holy Party, will surely happen. And it will happen when all of God's people – those who have died through the ages and those who live at the very end of time – are gathered in God's presence.
For believers, life and death point in the same direction: forward. Toward God. Toward the Second Coming.
Here's some further input from the Apostle Paul:
For the Lord himself will come down from haven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we how are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thessalonians 4:16-17
Notice how Paul puts it. The very first “event” of the Second Coming is the resurrection of God's people who have died. Those who have already died experience the Second Coming along with those who never died.
Jim hasn't missed out. He is not going live through eternity wishing he had “made it” to the Second Coming. His death was an interruption of his plans. His death brought grief to his son. But his death did not interrupt God's plans.
Paul ends this section about the second coming this way:
And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.” 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
A few paragraphs later, Paul writes,
“Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:10-11.
What does all this mean for us?
God has plans for us and death cannot cancel those plans. Our great hope is resurrection—the grand reunion that happens at the Second Coming.
One obvious implication of this hope in the resurrection is our belief about what happens when a person dies: When people die, they do not go to heaven or to hell. They go to sleep. No one goes to the heavenly party until everyone goes.
When a person dies, our grief – our pain at their absence – is a mirror of the very pain of God. The person who dies is not longer immediately present with God. God himself is eagerly awaiting the resurrection. The great hope of both believers and God himself is the resurrection. Death is an interruption of life. It interrupts earthly life. It interrupts heavenly life. The remedy for death is the resurrection which happens at the Second Coming.
The threat announced against those who reject God and practice evil is also future. People do not go to hell when they die. Even if you "bought a ticket to hell," you can't get there from here. The train does not go there, because there is no hell to go to.
Hell is the opposite of the Grand Party. And just as the Grand Party cannot get started until everyone is there. So Hell cannot happen until all the people who signed up have arrived. So it must be future. Hell cannot exist now. It cannot happen now.
For the person who dies, death is almost a non-event. It is like going to sleep. Twice I've received general anesthesia for something called cardioversion. My heart was not working properly. The procedure involved electrocuting me and stopping my heart and then restarting it.
Both times somebody came in and started explaining to me what was going to happen. As they were talking, they gave me an injection. An instant later, I opened my eyes. My heart was working properly. I was feeling great.
Death is like that. One instant someone is explaining to us what is going to happen, the next instant it has happened. A thousand years has passed. Or a day. We don't know. We close our eyes. We open them. Death has happened. Death is over. The Heavenly Party is beginning.
For those of us who do not die, the experience of death is like the experience of the cardiologist and nurses and anesthesiologist. They are busy. There may be some tension. If the heart doesn't snap back to the proper rhythm . . . if it doesn't restart . . . I suppose there are all sorts of complications that could arise, all sorts of tensions that might be experienced in the operating room.
For the living, death is long and drawn out. The pain of loss, the blasting of hope, the interruption of loving and sharing eats at our hearts. Death can be a crushing and prolonged misery. Because for us, the living, resurrection is a long way off. The procedure of death – for those who remain alive – is not instantaneous. We feel the slowness of the clock. But those who are asleep, for those who die, death is an instant, a moment between going to sleep and awaking.
Our grief does not come from the pain of dying. Rather, it is the pain of living fully aware of our loss.
God invites us to comfort one another with his promise that the separation of death is not eternal. Resurrection is coming. Life and the power of God will ultimately triumph over the darkness of death. God guarantees it.
Note on Hell: The notion of eternal hell is based on the idea that humans are inherently immortal, that we have “immortal souls.” According to this view, all people are immortal—believers and unbelievers, good people and bad people, saints and sinners. A person does not need faith to have eternal life, faith only changes the quality of eternal life from miserable to happy.
Adventists believe (based on the Bible) that humans are naturally mortal—that is, when our bodies die, we die. A human being is a living body. A dead body is not properly a human being, it's like a fossil—evidence of a life that was, not a life that is.
A dead person cannot experience hell (or anything else). In order to experience hell, a person would have to be resurrected. Adventists hold a variety of views on the exact nature of hell. Some focus on the nature of justice and thus teach hell as a punishment that God owes to the victims of evil. Others focus the coherence of moral and natural law and thus teach hell as the natural consequence of alienation from God and creation. A tiny minority focuses on the nature of God as father/mother/parent and imagine that hell is ultimately superseded by redemption. What all Adventist agree on is that it is inconceivable that God would resurrect people for the express purpose of torturing them for billions of years. Hell, as Adventists understand it, is an event that at worst is a punishment commensurate with the evil committed by the condemned. It is nothing like eternal. Even the eternal “effects” may be ultimately altered by the universe-suffusing grace of God.
Death does not have the last word. God does.
Death is not eternal. God is.
In grief, God and humans are united in painful separation from those we love.
In resurrection, God, the living and the dead will be reunited in a grand, holy, ecstatic festival of love.
Therefore, comfort one another with these words.
When I first met Jim, he hobbled around his apartment in Huntington, NY, with the aid of a crutch. Still, he exuded great confidence. In contrast to the billions of humans who had died over the ages of human existence, Jim was going to be one of the special ones who never experienced death. He was going to go straight from “life here” to “life there.” It was a sweet hope. Jesus was coming again. Jim was going to be one of the 144,000 who would actually see Jesus come in the clouds of heaven. He would never taste the night of death.
A couple of years later instead of a crutch, Jim needed a wheel chair to get around. He was frustrated with his decreasing mobility. Disappointed that his body was letting him down.
Another year or so and Jim was bed fast. He needed help just to get out of bed. With great embarrassment and disappointment he began to say out loud that he didn't think he was going to make it to the Second Coming. He didn't see how he could make it through the Time of Trouble. He realized he was going to die without seeing the Second Coming. This realization was a daunting challenge to his faith.
Turns out he was not the first person to experience this crisis of faith. He was not the first Christian who had thought the Second Coming was so close he didn't need to even think about death.
Almost two thousand years earlier, the Christians in the city of Thessalonika faced the same dilemma. They had become Christians through the preaching of the Apostle Paul. Paul had talked about the Second Coming of Jesus with such enthusiasm and conviction that the new believers figured they would all experience the Second Coming together. Death was something that happened to other people, not to Christians. They weren't going to have time to die. Jesus was coming too soon for that.
Then some people in their congregation died. It was a crisis. Death was not supposed to happen to Christians – not to people in the church! They were all going to welcome Jesus together at the Second Coming. Now their friends had died. Did that mean they were going to miss out?
Paul wrote them a letter to reassure them.
Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. Thessalonians 4:13-15
Don't worry about the believers who have died, Paul says. They are not going to miss out. Death has not foiled Jesus' plans for his friends. They will be ever bit as present and included in the Grand Climax as those who remain alive straight through until the Second Coming.
The Book of Hebrews addresses this same issue from the opposite direction. Some people imagined that all the good people of God who died through the ages have been rejoicing in the presence of God. They are the lucky ones. We are here, facing all the hardships of life on earth, struggling against the forces of evil – it hardly seems fair.
In answer, the author goes through a list of great heroes in Bible history – Moses, Abraham, Rahab, prophets, warriors, mothers, martyrs. Then referring to this list, he writes, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”
Paul writes that there was nothing to worry about for people who died before the Second Coming. The writer of Hebrews writes there is nothing to worry about if you are still involved in the struggles of this present life.
The Grand Heavenly Feast, the Great Holy Party, will surely happen. And it will happen when all of God's people – those who have died through the ages and those who live at the very end of time – are gathered in God's presence.
For believers, life and death point in the same direction: forward. Toward God. Toward the Second Coming.
Here's some further input from the Apostle Paul:
For the Lord himself will come down from haven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we how are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thessalonians 4:16-17
Notice how Paul puts it. The very first “event” of the Second Coming is the resurrection of God's people who have died. Those who have already died experience the Second Coming along with those who never died.
Jim hasn't missed out. He is not going live through eternity wishing he had “made it” to the Second Coming. His death was an interruption of his plans. His death brought grief to his son. But his death did not interrupt God's plans.
Paul ends this section about the second coming this way:
And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.” 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
A few paragraphs later, Paul writes,
“Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:10-11.
What does all this mean for us?
God has plans for us and death cannot cancel those plans. Our great hope is resurrection—the grand reunion that happens at the Second Coming.
One obvious implication of this hope in the resurrection is our belief about what happens when a person dies: When people die, they do not go to heaven or to hell. They go to sleep. No one goes to the heavenly party until everyone goes.
When a person dies, our grief – our pain at their absence – is a mirror of the very pain of God. The person who dies is not longer immediately present with God. God himself is eagerly awaiting the resurrection. The great hope of both believers and God himself is the resurrection. Death is an interruption of life. It interrupts earthly life. It interrupts heavenly life. The remedy for death is the resurrection which happens at the Second Coming.
The threat announced against those who reject God and practice evil is also future. People do not go to hell when they die. Even if you "bought a ticket to hell," you can't get there from here. The train does not go there, because there is no hell to go to.
Hell is the opposite of the Grand Party. And just as the Grand Party cannot get started until everyone is there. So Hell cannot happen until all the people who signed up have arrived. So it must be future. Hell cannot exist now. It cannot happen now.
For the person who dies, death is almost a non-event. It is like going to sleep. Twice I've received general anesthesia for something called cardioversion. My heart was not working properly. The procedure involved electrocuting me and stopping my heart and then restarting it.
Both times somebody came in and started explaining to me what was going to happen. As they were talking, they gave me an injection. An instant later, I opened my eyes. My heart was working properly. I was feeling great.
Death is like that. One instant someone is explaining to us what is going to happen, the next instant it has happened. A thousand years has passed. Or a day. We don't know. We close our eyes. We open them. Death has happened. Death is over. The Heavenly Party is beginning.
For those of us who do not die, the experience of death is like the experience of the cardiologist and nurses and anesthesiologist. They are busy. There may be some tension. If the heart doesn't snap back to the proper rhythm . . . if it doesn't restart . . . I suppose there are all sorts of complications that could arise, all sorts of tensions that might be experienced in the operating room.
For the living, death is long and drawn out. The pain of loss, the blasting of hope, the interruption of loving and sharing eats at our hearts. Death can be a crushing and prolonged misery. Because for us, the living, resurrection is a long way off. The procedure of death – for those who remain alive – is not instantaneous. We feel the slowness of the clock. But those who are asleep, for those who die, death is an instant, a moment between going to sleep and awaking.
Our grief does not come from the pain of dying. Rather, it is the pain of living fully aware of our loss.
God invites us to comfort one another with his promise that the separation of death is not eternal. Resurrection is coming. Life and the power of God will ultimately triumph over the darkness of death. God guarantees it.
Note on Hell: The notion of eternal hell is based on the idea that humans are inherently immortal, that we have “immortal souls.” According to this view, all people are immortal—believers and unbelievers, good people and bad people, saints and sinners. A person does not need faith to have eternal life, faith only changes the quality of eternal life from miserable to happy.
Adventists believe (based on the Bible) that humans are naturally mortal—that is, when our bodies die, we die. A human being is a living body. A dead body is not properly a human being, it's like a fossil—evidence of a life that was, not a life that is.
A dead person cannot experience hell (or anything else). In order to experience hell, a person would have to be resurrected. Adventists hold a variety of views on the exact nature of hell. Some focus on the nature of justice and thus teach hell as a punishment that God owes to the victims of evil. Others focus the coherence of moral and natural law and thus teach hell as the natural consequence of alienation from God and creation. A tiny minority focuses on the nature of God as father/mother/parent and imagine that hell is ultimately superseded by redemption. What all Adventist agree on is that it is inconceivable that God would resurrect people for the express purpose of torturing them for billions of years. Hell, as Adventists understand it, is an event that at worst is a punishment commensurate with the evil committed by the condemned. It is nothing like eternal. Even the eternal “effects” may be ultimately altered by the universe-suffusing grace of God.
Death does not have the last word. God does.
Death is not eternal. God is.
In grief, God and humans are united in painful separation from those we love.
In resurrection, God, the living and the dead will be reunited in a grand, holy, ecstatic festival of love.
Therefore, comfort one another with these words.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Happy Church
Commentary. This is not a sermon.
Nancy visited our church a couple of times before she came to our house for Sabbath lunch. Over lunch, she explained why she would not attend our church again. First, there were drums. The mere sight of them up in the front gave deep offense to her. And the sound! – it was a devilish seduction. (Not surprising, given the extraordinary finesse and musicality of our drummer. Thanks, Kent.) Second, she told us, she could tell ours was a liberal church just from the way people interacted with each other and with visitors. It reminded her of a church she used to attend in a small town back east. One of the most noticeable characteristics of liberal churches was the way people were all friendly and happy.
Conservative churches are not like that, she said. People in conservative churches were not so cheerful and outgoing. Conservative churches were not so welcoming and nice. Liberal churches were friendly and the people had fun. Conservative churches had the truth. They had the Three Angels. And since, in our area, there was more than one Adventist church to choose from, she was letting me know she would not be back to our church. She enjoyed friendly people as much as the next person, but her commitment to truth required her to go where there were no drums and where the preaching gave a straight testimony.
I wished her bon voyage!
I understood her concern. If “finishing the work” were up to us and if creating a “perfect final generation” were our obligation, then perpetual gloom would be understandable. The notions of "finishing the work" and "a perfect, final generation" are counsels of despair. Numerically speaking, the first assignment is steadily receding from us. The second assignment requires us to do something which 100 generations of Christians have been unable to accomplish. If these were truly our assignments, then the critical, watchful spirit Nancy observed in conservative churches made perfect sense. Wouldn't you just hate it to see other people delaying the Second Coming by their laziness in witnessing? Wouldn't it make you angry, the way Adventists were careless in diet, dress and speech and by their carelessness interfered with God's ability to see his image perfectly reflected. And since God could not see his image perfectly reflected the Second Coming could not happen. No wonder conservative churches are gloomy and critical.
Liberal churches, on the other hand, believe that God makes himself responsible for finishing his work. To be sure, he calls us to participate in the work with him, but he does not turn over responsibility for finishing the work to humans. Liberal churches believe that humans were created in God's image and still bear that image. Human love and faithfulness are still beautiful mirrors of God. We do not believe Adventists can keep Jesus from coming back by their predictable failure to live flawless lives. We do believe that God is working with Adventists as they are to accomplish his purposes. We believe it is enough to devote ourselves here and now to the work outlined in Micah 6:8 and Matthew 28. There is no need to distract ourselves from present faithfulness by speculations about some fictional cadre of “Super Saints” who will finally accomplish what 100 generations of Christians before us have failed to do – in spite of God's best efforts.
What makes liberal churches happy is their confidence in God. Our confidence in God gives us confidence in one another. So we are happy. We believe that above and beyond human failures, natural disasters, and even grievous evil, God is active. God will win. He assures we will triumph with him.
So we clang our are cymbals. We lift our hands. We shout hallelujah. We sing. We play our drums (well, other people do. I lack the rhythm necessary for the noise I make to be joyful in the ears of others). We are happy. And if you're tired of a spirituality characterized by hand-wringing and fearfulness, we invite you to join us in the happy church. Come find encouragement to continue in faithfulness. Come celebrate with us the goodness and competence of God.
Really, there is no law against happy.
Nancy visited our church a couple of times before she came to our house for Sabbath lunch. Over lunch, she explained why she would not attend our church again. First, there were drums. The mere sight of them up in the front gave deep offense to her. And the sound! – it was a devilish seduction. (Not surprising, given the extraordinary finesse and musicality of our drummer. Thanks, Kent.) Second, she told us, she could tell ours was a liberal church just from the way people interacted with each other and with visitors. It reminded her of a church she used to attend in a small town back east. One of the most noticeable characteristics of liberal churches was the way people were all friendly and happy.
Conservative churches are not like that, she said. People in conservative churches were not so cheerful and outgoing. Conservative churches were not so welcoming and nice. Liberal churches were friendly and the people had fun. Conservative churches had the truth. They had the Three Angels. And since, in our area, there was more than one Adventist church to choose from, she was letting me know she would not be back to our church. She enjoyed friendly people as much as the next person, but her commitment to truth required her to go where there were no drums and where the preaching gave a straight testimony.
I wished her bon voyage!
I understood her concern. If “finishing the work” were up to us and if creating a “perfect final generation” were our obligation, then perpetual gloom would be understandable. The notions of "finishing the work" and "a perfect, final generation" are counsels of despair. Numerically speaking, the first assignment is steadily receding from us. The second assignment requires us to do something which 100 generations of Christians have been unable to accomplish. If these were truly our assignments, then the critical, watchful spirit Nancy observed in conservative churches made perfect sense. Wouldn't you just hate it to see other people delaying the Second Coming by their laziness in witnessing? Wouldn't it make you angry, the way Adventists were careless in diet, dress and speech and by their carelessness interfered with God's ability to see his image perfectly reflected. And since God could not see his image perfectly reflected the Second Coming could not happen. No wonder conservative churches are gloomy and critical.
Liberal churches, on the other hand, believe that God makes himself responsible for finishing his work. To be sure, he calls us to participate in the work with him, but he does not turn over responsibility for finishing the work to humans. Liberal churches believe that humans were created in God's image and still bear that image. Human love and faithfulness are still beautiful mirrors of God. We do not believe Adventists can keep Jesus from coming back by their predictable failure to live flawless lives. We do believe that God is working with Adventists as they are to accomplish his purposes. We believe it is enough to devote ourselves here and now to the work outlined in Micah 6:8 and Matthew 28. There is no need to distract ourselves from present faithfulness by speculations about some fictional cadre of “Super Saints” who will finally accomplish what 100 generations of Christians before us have failed to do – in spite of God's best efforts.
What makes liberal churches happy is their confidence in God. Our confidence in God gives us confidence in one another. So we are happy. We believe that above and beyond human failures, natural disasters, and even grievous evil, God is active. God will win. He assures we will triumph with him.
So we clang our are cymbals. We lift our hands. We shout hallelujah. We sing. We play our drums (well, other people do. I lack the rhythm necessary for the noise I make to be joyful in the ears of others). We are happy. And if you're tired of a spirituality characterized by hand-wringing and fearfulness, we invite you to join us in the happy church. Come find encouragement to continue in faithfulness. Come celebrate with us the goodness and competence of God.
Really, there is no law against happy.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
The Community of Heaven
This is a third draft of my sermon for North Hill, July 9, 2011. The first two drafts were published here and have been erased. Also, at the requested of the person who posted them, I've erased some comments based on the earlier drafts.
John McLarty
The Heart of the Cosmos: God
Every morning I spend an hour in the pasture behind our house. The view east sweeps across the grass of the pasture then up to a line of alders, cottonwood trees and towering Doug firs. Behind them runs the ridge line of the south Cascades. On really good mornings, the ceiling over all this is a blue sky flecked with iridescent pink clouds. It's pure, wondrous beauty.
There is a dark story behind this landscape. My pasture is the surface of an ancient mud flow. Five thousand years ago it swept down from Mt. Rainier burying forests and riverbeds and villages. It left behind a desolate landscape of over 200 square miles of ragged mud, boulders and broken trunks.
The same place, two stories. Beauty and wonder versus ugliness and destruction.
In 1994, the nation of Rwanda erupted in a dumb-founding paroxysm of violence. 800,000 people were slaughtered in a gruesome genocide. The malignity of evil engulfed even ministers, some of whom betrayed their parishioners to the killers. It was an astonishing exhibition of evil.
In the capital city of Kigali, a hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina, managed to shelter 700 Tutsi's from the murderous hordes. Frequently putting his own life at risk, he used connections in the Rwandan military, bribes from the hotel's stores of alcohol and fine cheese and pure, and brazen courage to resist repeated moves to annihilate the refugees in his hotel. He prevailed. No one in his hotel was killed.
Again, one place, two stories. Murderous evil versus magnificent goodness.
Is there a grand, unified story? Is there a way to bring all these complicated realities into a cohesive whole? Is there an ultimate reality that offers illumination for how we can best order our own lives?
Yes. At the core of the variegated reality of history, biology and geology is a harmonious center: God.
God is the beginning of the story. God is certainly not the only actor in this drama, not the only player in this grand, crashing, sometimes discordant symphony. He is, however, the conductor. The drumbeat of the music began when he lowered his baton. And under his direction the discord, the jarring dissonances, will ultimately resolve in an eternal harmony.
What do we know about the conductor?
God is love. This is the central conviction of Adventist theology. It is, however, not a simple statement. Love includes passion and risk-taking. It means giving freedom and allowing contradiction and hatred. Still God is love is the bedrock of all our convictions, all our beliefs.
One way we make sense of “God is love” is through the doctrine of Trinity. At the heart of the universe, at the heart of reality, is a community called God. We do not imagine God as a single deity seated by himself on a throne. Rather, in line with the Bible writers, we imagine God as a community, as a family, as a union of friends.
The unity of God, the coherence of the heavenly community is so perfect, so intense, that for most practical purposes the Bible speaks of God as a singular being. This is especially important as a corrective to the dominant conception of the divine in the ancient world in which the Bible was written. In that world, by far the most common way people tried to make sense of the jarring collisions of beauty and ugliness, good and evil, love and animosity was to imagine this was the way ultimate reality was. People imagined gods fighting with one another. The famous Greek stories of the gods were a veritable soap opera. If the gods were bickering was it any wonder that the world itself was full of conflict and contradictions?
Against this vision of divine reality as a conflict-ridden, bickering, confused collection of egotistical individuals, the Bible described God as a harmonious, perfectly united and coherent, happy community. Reality originated from and is organized around a sweet, joyous relationship of Father, Son and Spirit. The heart of the cosmos is love not war.
This vision continues to offer a relevant message today. Radical materialism imagines the origin of the universe as a single point and the subsequent course of the universe as an undirected expansion of that single point.
In contrast to polytheism's clashing wills and materialism's absence of will, Adventism celebrates the beneficent, coherent will of God. The universe is neither capricious nor random. Rather, “In the beginning God created the heavens and air… And God said let us make humanity in our image.” God created humans as the overflow of divine love. And God promises to steer history in the direction of beauty and goodness. Evil is ultimately ephemeral. It is real and deadly, but ultimately transitory. Goodness and love are eternal. God guarantees it.
(Note: the doctrine of Trinity does not just contradict polytheism and materialism. It corrects them, for sure. It also affirms elements of truth included in these ideologies. The doctrine of Trinity agrees with the polytheists that humanity originated in divine will – but insists that will is unified, harmonious). The doctrine of Trinity agrees with materialism that the cosmos is coherent across time and space – but insists that coherence is an expression of purpose and will.)
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit loved one another rapturously, richly. Creation is seen as the happy outflow of divine love. Divine creation is analogous to a husband and wife taking pleasure in expanding their world through giving birth to children. In this idyllic picture birth/creation is the fruit of happy desire, not an expression of lack or dissatisfaction. Humans are the desired, loved, treasured children of God.
In the community of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are pictured as fulfilling distinct roles, though frequently Bible writers blur these distinctions. This is hardly surprising, given both the stereotypical role distinctions in the primary human community—the family—and the ease with which these distinctions are happily or of necessity blurred.
The stereotypical role distinctions of the Trinity: The Father is the leader. The Sun takes direction from the Father. The Holy Spirit is sent by the Father or by the Father and the Son and represents the Father and the Son to humanity.
The unity of the Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit are each explicitly mentioned as being active in creation and salvation. Father and Son both judge the world. They love humanity. They are pictured as existing at the center of heaven where they are worshiped because of their work of creating and saving.
SO WHAT?
The creative center of the universe is a community with a perfectly unified purpose: the creation, maintenance, restoration and nurture of an earthly community of loving, creative people. As an earthly reflection of the heavenly community of love, the highest calling of humans is the cultivation of community. Learning and practicing affection, warmth and intimacy is the highest purpose, the most noble goal of human life. When we experience these blessings of community, we are keeping company with God.
The cultivation of affection, warmth and intimacy, especially over years and decades and across generations requires order and law and enforcement. The proper goal of order, law and enforcement is the well-being of individuals and communities. Law and order and community authority are essential for rich, enduring, happy communities but they are not ends in themselves.
Law and authority are training wheels to be discarded once we learn to ride. They are temporary scaffolding to be removed once the arch can carry its own weight. They are the crutches and splints we rely on when there has been an accident, a tragic weakness.
Law and authority become unnecessary when trust is fully established. Perfect trust is modeled in the Trinity. Each delighted to see the other honored and worshiped. In building an earthly counterpart to the community of heaven, trust is one the highest developments in human relationships. We are called to trust and to be trustworthy. We are warned against doing things that erode trust: breaking faith with one another, gossiping, slandering, coveting.
Parents' highest calling is to create a safe environment for their children where they will naturally learn trust. In marriage one of the ways spouses can be most godly is be a safe haven for the other. Keeping one's word, practicing mercy, refusing to go for “the personal win” in disagreements and instead going for the “marital win.” (The goal in addressing conflict is to enhance the marriage, not to score points or to vanquish the other.) The sweetness of friendship comes from the deep knowledge that this person I can trust. Building trust. Practicing trust. Being trustworthy. These are some of the highest forms of human interaction.
Killing people – wounding, punishing, deriding, berating, scorning – brings us closer to the essence of the Devil than the heart of God. The three people most highly honored in the Bible – Abraham, Moses and Jesus – are all pictured as “correcting” God when he expresses his intention to severely punish. When God announces damnation or destruction, even when the intended targets richly deserve it, the proper response of holy people is to contradict God. Part of our proper role as friends of God is to insist that he elevates mercy over justice, creation over destruction, love over vengeance. This has implications for how we interpret Bible passages that call for the enslavement of people, the subjugation of women, the criminalization of homosexual love, the execution of criminals, rebellious sons, and Sabbath breakers.
The Bible describes people as members of the clan of heaven, members of the cosmic royalty. Because of our membership in the royal family, environmental stewardship is an inescapable element of our noblesse oblige. We are responsible not only for the well-being of humans but of the entire estate—the woods and marshes, oceans and deserts, the entire realm.
We believe that at the heart of the cosmos is the harmonious community of God.
We believe that we are related by family ties to this community.
We believe God will succeed in bringing the entire orchestra into a unimaginably grand harmony.
So we confidently commit ourselves to pursuing harmonious relationships among people and with the natural world, knowing this harmony is the ultimate shape of the cosmos. It is the supreme dream and purpose of God.
John McLarty
The Heart of the Cosmos: God
Every morning I spend an hour in the pasture behind our house. The view east sweeps across the grass of the pasture then up to a line of alders, cottonwood trees and towering Doug firs. Behind them runs the ridge line of the south Cascades. On really good mornings, the ceiling over all this is a blue sky flecked with iridescent pink clouds. It's pure, wondrous beauty.
There is a dark story behind this landscape. My pasture is the surface of an ancient mud flow. Five thousand years ago it swept down from Mt. Rainier burying forests and riverbeds and villages. It left behind a desolate landscape of over 200 square miles of ragged mud, boulders and broken trunks.
The same place, two stories. Beauty and wonder versus ugliness and destruction.
In 1994, the nation of Rwanda erupted in a dumb-founding paroxysm of violence. 800,000 people were slaughtered in a gruesome genocide. The malignity of evil engulfed even ministers, some of whom betrayed their parishioners to the killers. It was an astonishing exhibition of evil.
In the capital city of Kigali, a hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina, managed to shelter 700 Tutsi's from the murderous hordes. Frequently putting his own life at risk, he used connections in the Rwandan military, bribes from the hotel's stores of alcohol and fine cheese and pure, and brazen courage to resist repeated moves to annihilate the refugees in his hotel. He prevailed. No one in his hotel was killed.
Again, one place, two stories. Murderous evil versus magnificent goodness.
Is there a grand, unified story? Is there a way to bring all these complicated realities into a cohesive whole? Is there an ultimate reality that offers illumination for how we can best order our own lives?
Yes. At the core of the variegated reality of history, biology and geology is a harmonious center: God.
God is the beginning of the story. God is certainly not the only actor in this drama, not the only player in this grand, crashing, sometimes discordant symphony. He is, however, the conductor. The drumbeat of the music began when he lowered his baton. And under his direction the discord, the jarring dissonances, will ultimately resolve in an eternal harmony.
What do we know about the conductor?
God is love. This is the central conviction of Adventist theology. It is, however, not a simple statement. Love includes passion and risk-taking. It means giving freedom and allowing contradiction and hatred. Still God is love is the bedrock of all our convictions, all our beliefs.
One way we make sense of “God is love” is through the doctrine of Trinity. At the heart of the universe, at the heart of reality, is a community called God. We do not imagine God as a single deity seated by himself on a throne. Rather, in line with the Bible writers, we imagine God as a community, as a family, as a union of friends.
The unity of God, the coherence of the heavenly community is so perfect, so intense, that for most practical purposes the Bible speaks of God as a singular being. This is especially important as a corrective to the dominant conception of the divine in the ancient world in which the Bible was written. In that world, by far the most common way people tried to make sense of the jarring collisions of beauty and ugliness, good and evil, love and animosity was to imagine this was the way ultimate reality was. People imagined gods fighting with one another. The famous Greek stories of the gods were a veritable soap opera. If the gods were bickering was it any wonder that the world itself was full of conflict and contradictions?
Against this vision of divine reality as a conflict-ridden, bickering, confused collection of egotistical individuals, the Bible described God as a harmonious, perfectly united and coherent, happy community. Reality originated from and is organized around a sweet, joyous relationship of Father, Son and Spirit. The heart of the cosmos is love not war.
This vision continues to offer a relevant message today. Radical materialism imagines the origin of the universe as a single point and the subsequent course of the universe as an undirected expansion of that single point.
In contrast to polytheism's clashing wills and materialism's absence of will, Adventism celebrates the beneficent, coherent will of God. The universe is neither capricious nor random. Rather, “In the beginning God created the heavens and air… And God said let us make humanity in our image.” God created humans as the overflow of divine love. And God promises to steer history in the direction of beauty and goodness. Evil is ultimately ephemeral. It is real and deadly, but ultimately transitory. Goodness and love are eternal. God guarantees it.
(Note: the doctrine of Trinity does not just contradict polytheism and materialism. It corrects them, for sure. It also affirms elements of truth included in these ideologies. The doctrine of Trinity agrees with the polytheists that humanity originated in divine will – but insists that will is unified, harmonious). The doctrine of Trinity agrees with materialism that the cosmos is coherent across time and space – but insists that coherence is an expression of purpose and will.)
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit loved one another rapturously, richly. Creation is seen as the happy outflow of divine love. Divine creation is analogous to a husband and wife taking pleasure in expanding their world through giving birth to children. In this idyllic picture birth/creation is the fruit of happy desire, not an expression of lack or dissatisfaction. Humans are the desired, loved, treasured children of God.
In the community of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are pictured as fulfilling distinct roles, though frequently Bible writers blur these distinctions. This is hardly surprising, given both the stereotypical role distinctions in the primary human community—the family—and the ease with which these distinctions are happily or of necessity blurred.
The stereotypical role distinctions of the Trinity: The Father is the leader. The Sun takes direction from the Father. The Holy Spirit is sent by the Father or by the Father and the Son and represents the Father and the Son to humanity.
The unity of the Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit are each explicitly mentioned as being active in creation and salvation. Father and Son both judge the world. They love humanity. They are pictured as existing at the center of heaven where they are worshiped because of their work of creating and saving.
SO WHAT?
The creative center of the universe is a community with a perfectly unified purpose: the creation, maintenance, restoration and nurture of an earthly community of loving, creative people. As an earthly reflection of the heavenly community of love, the highest calling of humans is the cultivation of community. Learning and practicing affection, warmth and intimacy is the highest purpose, the most noble goal of human life. When we experience these blessings of community, we are keeping company with God.
The cultivation of affection, warmth and intimacy, especially over years and decades and across generations requires order and law and enforcement. The proper goal of order, law and enforcement is the well-being of individuals and communities. Law and order and community authority are essential for rich, enduring, happy communities but they are not ends in themselves.
Law and authority are training wheels to be discarded once we learn to ride. They are temporary scaffolding to be removed once the arch can carry its own weight. They are the crutches and splints we rely on when there has been an accident, a tragic weakness.
Law and authority become unnecessary when trust is fully established. Perfect trust is modeled in the Trinity. Each delighted to see the other honored and worshiped. In building an earthly counterpart to the community of heaven, trust is one the highest developments in human relationships. We are called to trust and to be trustworthy. We are warned against doing things that erode trust: breaking faith with one another, gossiping, slandering, coveting.
Parents' highest calling is to create a safe environment for their children where they will naturally learn trust. In marriage one of the ways spouses can be most godly is be a safe haven for the other. Keeping one's word, practicing mercy, refusing to go for “the personal win” in disagreements and instead going for the “marital win.” (The goal in addressing conflict is to enhance the marriage, not to score points or to vanquish the other.) The sweetness of friendship comes from the deep knowledge that this person I can trust. Building trust. Practicing trust. Being trustworthy. These are some of the highest forms of human interaction.
Killing people – wounding, punishing, deriding, berating, scorning – brings us closer to the essence of the Devil than the heart of God. The three people most highly honored in the Bible – Abraham, Moses and Jesus – are all pictured as “correcting” God when he expresses his intention to severely punish. When God announces damnation or destruction, even when the intended targets richly deserve it, the proper response of holy people is to contradict God. Part of our proper role as friends of God is to insist that he elevates mercy over justice, creation over destruction, love over vengeance. This has implications for how we interpret Bible passages that call for the enslavement of people, the subjugation of women, the criminalization of homosexual love, the execution of criminals, rebellious sons, and Sabbath breakers.
The Bible describes people as members of the clan of heaven, members of the cosmic royalty. Because of our membership in the royal family, environmental stewardship is an inescapable element of our noblesse oblige. We are responsible not only for the well-being of humans but of the entire estate—the woods and marshes, oceans and deserts, the entire realm.
We believe that at the heart of the cosmos is the harmonious community of God.
We believe that we are related by family ties to this community.
We believe God will succeed in bringing the entire orchestra into a unimaginably grand harmony.
So we confidently commit ourselves to pursuing harmonious relationships among people and with the natural world, knowing this harmony is the ultimate shape of the cosmos. It is the supreme dream and purpose of God.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Holy Rebels
Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship, July 2, 2011
235 years ago, a group of wealthy men put their signatures to a document explaining why they were rejecting the authority of the British government, and especially the authority of their king. Here's what they said:
Which reminds me of some Bible stories.
In Genesis 18, spends some time visiting Abraham. At the end of their visit God tells Abraham about his plans to destroy Sodom. The way the story is told in Genesis, God says to Abraham that he has heard terrible stories about Sodom. It is a hopelessly wicked place. God is going to check it out, and if it's as wicked as he has heard, God is going to wipe it out.
Abraham is appalled. It sounds to him like God is failing to make any distinction between good people and bad people. “You can't do that.” Abraham protests. “You are the Judge of All the Earth. Surely you, in your position, must do right. You, of all beings, must act justly.”
Then Abraham begins bargaining. “What if there are 50 people? Will you spare the city, if you can find 50 good people in the city?”
God agrees. “For 50 people I will spare the entire city.”
“What about 45?” Abraham asks. “Will you destroy the city for the lack of five people? You're short five people and you wipe out the entire population?”
“Okay,” God says. “If I find 45 I'll save the place.”
Abraham keeps bargaining. He gets God down to 10. If God can find ten good people, he'll spare the city.
God's agents cannot find even ten good people. So, under orders from God they evacuate the four decent people they can find before the place is destroyed.
Abraham was a rebel. He challenged God's stated plans. He held God to a “higher authority.” Being the Supreme Judge of All the Earth did not give God the freedom to do whatever he pleased. Instead, according to Abraham, it imposed on God higher obligations. He had to act in accord with the highest law. He had to do what was right and fair.
Abraham was a rebel, a holy rebel. The Bible describes him as a “Friend of God.” There is not the slightest hint anywhere in the Bible that Abraham was mistaken to challenge God to his face. In fact, the kind of challenge Abraham issued to God-- “Far be it from you! Shall not the judge of all the earth do right.” --appears to be a model for holy living and holy praying. When God condemns, when od threatens destruction, the appropriate role for us is to become holy rebels. We are to plead for, and even demand, mercy.
In Exodus, God gets fed up with the Israelites' hard-headedness and chronic complaining. He tells Moses, “Step aside. I'm going to wipe these people out. I'll get rid of all this riffraff and start over with you. I'll make a new nation based on your descendants. ” The implication is that surely Moses' family will get it right. They will be worthy progenitors of the Messiah. They will give birth to the Savior of the world.
Moses refuses to step out of the way. “You're have to go through me. You're going to have to take me out first if you want to get at my people.” Moses bluntly refuses God's direct command. If God had acted like a classic monarch, Moses would have lost his head. Quickly. Instead God acquiesces. He does not destroy the people. He does not make Moses' descendants the new Messianic line. He goes back to his agonizingly complicated relationship with the Israelites.
Moses was a holy rebel.
In the Old Testament, the one kind of rebellion that is blessed is this rebellion in favor of mercy. When God threatens punishment and disaster, it is wholly appropriate to protest God's action, to plead for him to change his mind, to oppose the divine word.
This is highlighted by the opposite kind of action on the part of the prophet Jonah. In his situation, God announces destruction for the heathen city of Nineveh. They king learns of the threat and calls his people to repentance. God observes this behavior and changes his mind. Jonah gets upset at God's softness. Jonah is a tough-on-sin conservative. God is not impressed. Unlike Abraham and Moses who are celebrated for their arguments with God, Jonah is scorned.
We see the same pattern in the New Testament. In the stories of Jesus, people are always arguing with him. And they always lose. Except when they are arguing for greater mercy, greater generosity.
Once Jesus left Judea and went north to the heathen city of Sidon to get away from the crowds so he can spend some quiet time with his disciples. Somehow a mother discovers Jesus is there. She starts hanging around. When Jesus and the disciples come out of their rented house, she's there and follows them down the street, shouting, “Lord, Son of David! Please! My daughter is suffering terribly from a demon.”
Jesus ignored her. The disciples picked up on his coldness and copying him tried ignoring her. But it didn't work. Exasperated, they begged Jesus to get rid of her. “Please, send her away!”
As we watch the scene, Jesus is confronted with two requests. One is in line with his expressed will. The other starkly contradicts the obvious intentions of Jesus.
According to Matthew, Jesus went to this town to get away. He was on retreat with his disciples, deliberately avoiding public attention, so he could do important personal work with his disciples. When the woman shows up, again Matthew is quite clear, Jesus ignores her. Then when she intrudes so emphatically she cannot be ignored, Jesus explains to his disciples, in front of the woman, that he has been sent to the lost sheep of Israel. In this statement Jesus explicitly states that helping someone like this Canaanite woman would be a deviation from his sacred calling.
The disciples get it and urge Jesus to get rid of the woman. “Send her away! She's driving us crazy with her begging cries.”
The woman refuses to get it. She rejects both the implied intention of Jesus and his explicit statement. She presses her request. “Pleeeease help me!”
Jesus makes one last attempt to get her to see helping her is not part of his plan. “Look here.” He says. “It would not be right to take the children's bread and give it to the dogs.”
She still doesn't get it. Instead of yielding to Jesus' stated intention, she turns Jesus words on their head. “So, you agree your ministry is like feeding children? Then, obviously you understand there will be crumbs. AND,” she goes on, “even the meanest father would not stop the puppies from licking up the crumbs under the table. I'm not taking anything from the children. But if you're feeding the kids, at least let me get at the crumbs.”
Jesus gives in. After three statements of rejection, Jesus looks at the woman and smiles and blesses her for her stubborn argument. “Great is your faith.” He tells her. “Go. Your daughter is healed.”
She is another holy rebel appealing to a higher law.
Abraham, Moses and this nameless pagan woman argue God into changing his mind—or at least acting contrary to his stated intentions. Notice that in every case the successful argument is in favor of greater mercy, a wider circle beneficence.
Abraham appeals to the law of fairness. You can't destroy the good with the bad. And God agrees.
Moses uses two arguments: first, God's own reputation—if you destroy the people that means you failed. You brought them out of Egypt but were unable to get them all the way to Palestine. Second, Moses used his own life as a bargaining chip.
(This second point raises huge questions about the traditional Christian view of the world: We're going to get ours, too bad about the rest. Don't waste emotional energy on the lost. Preach the gospel and move on. Don't get your heart all tied up with the losers. A stark contrast to Moses' emphatic rejection of destruction for the sinners in his neighborhood.)
The woman's argument is simple: My kid needs it. She's not a “tiger mom,” she's a grizzly mom. She will stop at nothing to get the help her kid needs. God, in the person of Jesus, bends to her will.
One of the central pillars of Adventist theology is our regard for God's law. Early on, Adventists paid a lot of attention to the ten commandments. There are TEN commandments, not nine. And all ten still apply. The special focus in our early days was on the Sabbath commandment. God said, Keep the Sabbath holy. Sabbath was the seventh-day of the week. Sunday was the first day of the week, so it was a no-brainer to figure out that going to church on Sunday was not the same thing as keeping Sabbath.
This is still one of our greatest contributions to Christianity. Our spiritual life, our family and civic life are all enriched when we practice Sabbath-keeping.
As Adventists continued to study what the Bible says about God's law we came to realize that God's law is much larger than the Ten Commandments. Jesus summarized God's law for humans in the twin commandments: Love God with your whole heart and your neighbor as yourself. The Ten Commandments are an elaboration of those two foundational principles. All the other rules for godly living are simply further explanations about how to love.
Taking it one step further, The twin rules, love God and your neighbor are not merely rules for humans, they are descriptions of how God himself operates. God loves—within the trinity and outward toward us. The link between God and the “law of love” is so powerful that the law itself can be appealed to in “arguing with God.”
The early American rebels contradicted millennia of belief about the absolute sovereignty of kings. King George was not right just because he was king. Pointing to the king's position was no argument in favor of the justice or rightness of his actions. The goodness of earthly government was measured by the quality of the service it provided to its people.
Adventists believe the same is true of heavenly government. God is not to be worshiped merely because he occupies the throne but because what God does and who he is aligns perfectly with the law of love. We are called to be holy rebels pleading with God to “have mercy.” We are to pray against destruction and condemnation. We are to join Abraham and Moses in resisting the sweep of disastrous judgment. We are to join the Canaanite woman in urging God to show mercy and favor to those who are tormented and enslaved by the Devil.
Some practical implications:
Classic Christian understanding of all three stories argues they were set-ups. Abraham, Moses and the Canaanite woman were actually doing the very thing God wanted. When they argue for mercy over against destruction and rejection they are, in fact, voicing the deeper will of God. The moral of the stories is clear: the job of humans is to push mercy not judgment.
Slavery, women as chattel, the execution of homosexuals, rebellious sons and Sabbath breakers are all presented as God's will. They are the law. Abraham, Moses and the Canaanite woman model a holy rebelliousness in the face of divine severity. It is a kind of rebelliousness we would do well to copy. Instead of gleefully joining other fundamentalists in condemning people and celebrating the wrath of God, we ought to join the holy rebels in reminding God that it makes him look bad in the world if he fails to save all his children. “Holy rebels” are indefatigable partisans of love, fighting not for their own rights and privileges, but for the well being of those who need a champion. This kind of holy rebellion will transform us and bring in deeper, richer friendship with God.
235 years ago, a group of wealthy men put their signatures to a document explaining why they were rejecting the authority of the British government, and especially the authority of their king. Here's what they said:
The Declaration of IndependenceThese men were rebels. They were rejecting the authority of a government that had existed for hundreds of years. More than that they were rebelling against the very idea of government that had been held by Christians for almost two thousand years. But notice their words. In rejecting the authority of the British crown, they appealed to higher laws, “the Laws of Nature and Nature's God.” They appealed above the king of England to “the Supreme Judge of the world.”
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
[The declaration then goes on to enumerate a long list of grievances they have against King George and the British parliament. It concludes with these words:]
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, . . . appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; . . . and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.
. . .
Which reminds me of some Bible stories.
In Genesis 18, spends some time visiting Abraham. At the end of their visit God tells Abraham about his plans to destroy Sodom. The way the story is told in Genesis, God says to Abraham that he has heard terrible stories about Sodom. It is a hopelessly wicked place. God is going to check it out, and if it's as wicked as he has heard, God is going to wipe it out.
Abraham is appalled. It sounds to him like God is failing to make any distinction between good people and bad people. “You can't do that.” Abraham protests. “You are the Judge of All the Earth. Surely you, in your position, must do right. You, of all beings, must act justly.”
Then Abraham begins bargaining. “What if there are 50 people? Will you spare the city, if you can find 50 good people in the city?”
God agrees. “For 50 people I will spare the entire city.”
“What about 45?” Abraham asks. “Will you destroy the city for the lack of five people? You're short five people and you wipe out the entire population?”
“Okay,” God says. “If I find 45 I'll save the place.”
Abraham keeps bargaining. He gets God down to 10. If God can find ten good people, he'll spare the city.
God's agents cannot find even ten good people. So, under orders from God they evacuate the four decent people they can find before the place is destroyed.
Abraham was a rebel. He challenged God's stated plans. He held God to a “higher authority.” Being the Supreme Judge of All the Earth did not give God the freedom to do whatever he pleased. Instead, according to Abraham, it imposed on God higher obligations. He had to act in accord with the highest law. He had to do what was right and fair.
Abraham was a rebel, a holy rebel. The Bible describes him as a “Friend of God.” There is not the slightest hint anywhere in the Bible that Abraham was mistaken to challenge God to his face. In fact, the kind of challenge Abraham issued to God-- “Far be it from you! Shall not the judge of all the earth do right.” --appears to be a model for holy living and holy praying. When God condemns, when od threatens destruction, the appropriate role for us is to become holy rebels. We are to plead for, and even demand, mercy.
In Exodus, God gets fed up with the Israelites' hard-headedness and chronic complaining. He tells Moses, “Step aside. I'm going to wipe these people out. I'll get rid of all this riffraff and start over with you. I'll make a new nation based on your descendants. ” The implication is that surely Moses' family will get it right. They will be worthy progenitors of the Messiah. They will give birth to the Savior of the world.
Moses refuses to step out of the way. “You're have to go through me. You're going to have to take me out first if you want to get at my people.” Moses bluntly refuses God's direct command. If God had acted like a classic monarch, Moses would have lost his head. Quickly. Instead God acquiesces. He does not destroy the people. He does not make Moses' descendants the new Messianic line. He goes back to his agonizingly complicated relationship with the Israelites.
Moses was a holy rebel.
In the Old Testament, the one kind of rebellion that is blessed is this rebellion in favor of mercy. When God threatens punishment and disaster, it is wholly appropriate to protest God's action, to plead for him to change his mind, to oppose the divine word.
This is highlighted by the opposite kind of action on the part of the prophet Jonah. In his situation, God announces destruction for the heathen city of Nineveh. They king learns of the threat and calls his people to repentance. God observes this behavior and changes his mind. Jonah gets upset at God's softness. Jonah is a tough-on-sin conservative. God is not impressed. Unlike Abraham and Moses who are celebrated for their arguments with God, Jonah is scorned.
We see the same pattern in the New Testament. In the stories of Jesus, people are always arguing with him. And they always lose. Except when they are arguing for greater mercy, greater generosity.
Once Jesus left Judea and went north to the heathen city of Sidon to get away from the crowds so he can spend some quiet time with his disciples. Somehow a mother discovers Jesus is there. She starts hanging around. When Jesus and the disciples come out of their rented house, she's there and follows them down the street, shouting, “Lord, Son of David! Please! My daughter is suffering terribly from a demon.”
Jesus ignored her. The disciples picked up on his coldness and copying him tried ignoring her. But it didn't work. Exasperated, they begged Jesus to get rid of her. “Please, send her away!”
As we watch the scene, Jesus is confronted with two requests. One is in line with his expressed will. The other starkly contradicts the obvious intentions of Jesus.
According to Matthew, Jesus went to this town to get away. He was on retreat with his disciples, deliberately avoiding public attention, so he could do important personal work with his disciples. When the woman shows up, again Matthew is quite clear, Jesus ignores her. Then when she intrudes so emphatically she cannot be ignored, Jesus explains to his disciples, in front of the woman, that he has been sent to the lost sheep of Israel. In this statement Jesus explicitly states that helping someone like this Canaanite woman would be a deviation from his sacred calling.
The disciples get it and urge Jesus to get rid of the woman. “Send her away! She's driving us crazy with her begging cries.”
The woman refuses to get it. She rejects both the implied intention of Jesus and his explicit statement. She presses her request. “Pleeeease help me!”
Jesus makes one last attempt to get her to see helping her is not part of his plan. “Look here.” He says. “It would not be right to take the children's bread and give it to the dogs.”
She still doesn't get it. Instead of yielding to Jesus' stated intention, she turns Jesus words on their head. “So, you agree your ministry is like feeding children? Then, obviously you understand there will be crumbs. AND,” she goes on, “even the meanest father would not stop the puppies from licking up the crumbs under the table. I'm not taking anything from the children. But if you're feeding the kids, at least let me get at the crumbs.”
Jesus gives in. After three statements of rejection, Jesus looks at the woman and smiles and blesses her for her stubborn argument. “Great is your faith.” He tells her. “Go. Your daughter is healed.”
She is another holy rebel appealing to a higher law.
Abraham, Moses and this nameless pagan woman argue God into changing his mind—or at least acting contrary to his stated intentions. Notice that in every case the successful argument is in favor of greater mercy, a wider circle beneficence.
Abraham appeals to the law of fairness. You can't destroy the good with the bad. And God agrees.
Moses uses two arguments: first, God's own reputation—if you destroy the people that means you failed. You brought them out of Egypt but were unable to get them all the way to Palestine. Second, Moses used his own life as a bargaining chip.
(This second point raises huge questions about the traditional Christian view of the world: We're going to get ours, too bad about the rest. Don't waste emotional energy on the lost. Preach the gospel and move on. Don't get your heart all tied up with the losers. A stark contrast to Moses' emphatic rejection of destruction for the sinners in his neighborhood.)
The woman's argument is simple: My kid needs it. She's not a “tiger mom,” she's a grizzly mom. She will stop at nothing to get the help her kid needs. God, in the person of Jesus, bends to her will.
One of the central pillars of Adventist theology is our regard for God's law. Early on, Adventists paid a lot of attention to the ten commandments. There are TEN commandments, not nine. And all ten still apply. The special focus in our early days was on the Sabbath commandment. God said, Keep the Sabbath holy. Sabbath was the seventh-day of the week. Sunday was the first day of the week, so it was a no-brainer to figure out that going to church on Sunday was not the same thing as keeping Sabbath.
This is still one of our greatest contributions to Christianity. Our spiritual life, our family and civic life are all enriched when we practice Sabbath-keeping.
As Adventists continued to study what the Bible says about God's law we came to realize that God's law is much larger than the Ten Commandments. Jesus summarized God's law for humans in the twin commandments: Love God with your whole heart and your neighbor as yourself. The Ten Commandments are an elaboration of those two foundational principles. All the other rules for godly living are simply further explanations about how to love.
Taking it one step further, The twin rules, love God and your neighbor are not merely rules for humans, they are descriptions of how God himself operates. God loves—within the trinity and outward toward us. The link between God and the “law of love” is so powerful that the law itself can be appealed to in “arguing with God.”
The early American rebels contradicted millennia of belief about the absolute sovereignty of kings. King George was not right just because he was king. Pointing to the king's position was no argument in favor of the justice or rightness of his actions. The goodness of earthly government was measured by the quality of the service it provided to its people.
Adventists believe the same is true of heavenly government. God is not to be worshiped merely because he occupies the throne but because what God does and who he is aligns perfectly with the law of love. We are called to be holy rebels pleading with God to “have mercy.” We are to pray against destruction and condemnation. We are to join Abraham and Moses in resisting the sweep of disastrous judgment. We are to join the Canaanite woman in urging God to show mercy and favor to those who are tormented and enslaved by the Devil.
Some practical implications:
Classic Christian understanding of all three stories argues they were set-ups. Abraham, Moses and the Canaanite woman were actually doing the very thing God wanted. When they argue for mercy over against destruction and rejection they are, in fact, voicing the deeper will of God. The moral of the stories is clear: the job of humans is to push mercy not judgment.
Slavery, women as chattel, the execution of homosexuals, rebellious sons and Sabbath breakers are all presented as God's will. They are the law. Abraham, Moses and the Canaanite woman model a holy rebelliousness in the face of divine severity. It is a kind of rebelliousness we would do well to copy. Instead of gleefully joining other fundamentalists in condemning people and celebrating the wrath of God, we ought to join the holy rebels in reminding God that it makes him look bad in the world if he fails to save all his children. “Holy rebels” are indefatigable partisans of love, fighting not for their own rights and privileges, but for the well being of those who need a champion. This kind of holy rebellion will transform us and bring in deeper, richer friendship with God.
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