The Piety That Isn't
Sermon
CHANNELING GRACE
SERMONS FOR LENT AND EASTER
The well-known San Francisco newspaper columnist, Herb Caen, recently made a provocative observation when he wrote: "The miracle of Christmas is that it survives those who believe in it too loudly." The Christmas/Epiphany season is now over, and it might be good for us to ponder the significance of Mr. Caen's observation.
Lent is traditionally a time for self-examination. The most common form of such self-examination focuses on our failure to live up to "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." We assume that we know what this calling is all about and that our only problem is failing to follow through on the obvious implications of our faith.
I think Herb Caen's comment should move us to undertake in this series of sermons an unusual, perhaps, but nonetheless valid form of lenten self-examination. Taking a warning cue from Matthew's line "Beware of practicing your piety," we are going to consider the possible errors and sins we commit precisely as the result of misguided efforts to live out our piety. To put it another way, we are going to examine some of our fundamental assumptions about the nature of the Christian Good News, the Gospel. Maybe the Gospel is less obvious than we tend to think it is.
We are going to ask whether some forms of "Christian commitment" might actually be a denial of the Gospel and a misrepresentation of what Christian evangelism is really supposed to be. Some would even go so far as to say that the word "evangelical" has been spoiled by those whose style of being Christian promotes the wrong kind of narrowness. They would say that the Christian faith is embarrassed when God is identified with a particular candidate or party, embarrassed by the stark polarization between "liberal" and "conservative" churches over the issues of (1) church doctrine and practice, (2) abortion, (3) church and state issues, (4) interpretation of the Bible, (5) life-styles, and (6) views on morality. In this video age of images, where the outward image is so strong that Michael J. Fox, Tina Turner and Michael Jackson don't even have to say the name Pepsi to sell the product in a commercial, must not we too pay attention to the Gospel's image?
Can we ignore these issues and simply practice our piety, simply focus on that which is spiritually uplifting and let the rest slide? Not if we heed the words of Matthew's Gospel! Practicing true piety, true spirituality, is a tricky, challenging thing, and Lent is not a time to look for an easy way out.
It could well be that polarizing or otherwise faulty expressions of our Christian piety have actually worked to drive people away from Christianity. It is likely that much of the popularity of psychics, astrology, certain "cult" phenomena, trance channeling and the like, is the result of mistakes that we Christians have made in the attempt to express our faith. To use a big word, some of our efforts to attract people may be sadly counterproductive. Was Shirley MacLaine pushed out on a limb because the Christianity she had known was too dogmatic, too arrogant, too intellectualized or formal - not paying enough attention to her hunger for religious experience? By virtually ignoring the other world religions do Christians unintentionally exaggerate the appeal of those religions?
This day, Ash Wednesday, is a day on which some mark their foreheads with ashes - symbolizing repentance, symbolizing the Cross, symbolizing our mortality (often with the words: "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return"). No doubt some people do not follow this custom because they have noticed that it seems to conflict with Matthew's words in the text for this day, his words about not making a show of your piety in public. It could be argued that since this form of piety emphasizes humility, it can't possibly be interpreted as "showing off." But in this sermon, Jesus is referring precisely to those who disfigure their faces as a way of showing how humble they are. Now most of us don't stand on street corners and many of us do not mark our foreheads with ashes, but in a variety of subtle ways we may well be guilty of "practicing our piety before men," contrary to the Spirit of Jesus.
We Christians have been given a difficult challenge. We have been challenged to witness to our faith without being "triumphalistic," without being boastful about our beliefs, our convictions, our morality. It's a tough challenge and it is not going to be easy to talk about it. But this is Lent. Let us really examine ourselves.
"Amazing Grace ... that saved a wretch like me." (John Newton)
The point is not that we aren't to practice any piety at all. The point is that we need to be careful how we go about being pious. To say, for example that "God helps those who help themselves" may express an important truth about self-reliance; but if the phrase is quoted as an excuse for not helping those in need, then it is not a good thought. Likewise, the insight suggested by the question "Whoever said life is fair?" can help us face the hard realities of life; but if the same question is used as an excuse for not getting involved in the struggle to create social justice in the world, then the truth is being mishandled. The mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux, said that "only one who is poor should praise poverty." Economic poverty may help us keep our priorities straight - may make us more aware of the real treasures of life - but for an affluent person to praise poverty could be, again, to make an excuse for not being concerned about the plight of the poor.
Those who have experienced the "Amazing Grace" of God can reflect on how, without that grace, they felt like lost wretches: but they should not go around labeling other people as lost and wretched. It is one thing to say that I was lost or spiritually blind, but it is quite another thing, quite inappropriate, for me to call others lost, blind or wretched. To do so would be not evangelistic, but arrogant. Watching the "Church Lady" on Saturday Night Live reminds, us that the line between true evangelism and holier-than-thou self-righteousness is extremely thin, but oh so important. It may be easier to confess other people's sins, but we can only confess our own. (It's easier, but wrong, to confess the sins to which we are not tempted.) Just as a joke can be funny or offensive depending on the spirit in which it is told and taken, so an expression of our piety (like confession) can be true and lovely, or false and ugly, depending on the spirit in which it is conveyed. Ironically, to be preoccupied with other people's sins is itself the basic sin of self-righteous self-centeredness!
Christians are given the difficult challenge of expressing a piety that isn't pious in a self-righteous, self-important way! As we move through this lenten season we will be using the image of "channeling grace" to describe what a truly "evangelical mentality" is all about. As channels of God's grace we will learn how to have convictions without being bigoted or closed-minded, how to be angry at injustice without being self-righteous, how to share faith without "practicing our piety before men." This lenten season of penitence calls us not to wallow in sin-consciousness but to make a commitment to renewal and reform. The Greek word for repentance means "to change one's mind." Let us do some truly radical mind-changing. Let us rethink what it means to be evangelical!
We began by quoting Herb Caen's comment about "those who believe in Christmas too loudly." The great preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick similarly gave us a witty nudge toward the piety that isn't, when he said that vital faith is a treasure like good music ... "It needs no defense, only rendition. A wrangling controversy in support of religion," said Fosdick, "is as if the members of the orchestra should beat folks over the head with their violins to prove that the music is beautiful."
The amazing truth is that by going easy on the piety, by not beating folks over the head with the Bible, we become much more effective channels of God's grace. The piety that isn't pious is the true piety! Let us celebrate and, in the weeks to come, contemplate this amazing paradox of God's grace!
Luke 4:1-13
Lent 1
What Does It Mean to
Believe in Jesus?
And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, "To you I will give all this authority and their glory ..." (Luke 4:5-6a)
This text may well be the most shocking passage in the entire New Testament! Why? Because it pictures the devil as believing that Jesus should have "the power and the glory for ever and ever!" The book of James echoes this theme by saying that "even the demons believe - and shudder." (James 2:19b) As Christians we usually assume that our mission is to get people to believe in Jesus. But more and more I think we must face the issue of what kind of belief in Jesus! What does it mean to believe in Jesus? In this story, the devil "believes" in Jesus. But it is the wrong kind of belief!
A major church periodical recently printed this quotation from Vittorio Messori: "Christianity in no way sees itself as one of the religions; it sees itself as the sufficient and definitive revelation of God in history. At the heart of Christian faith there is not just another religious theory; there is the Good News about Jesus." In 1986 the vice president of the American Lutheran Church, Dr. Lloyd Svendsbye, was asked to respond to a charge that Lutheran publications had published writings which "denied that Jesus was the only way to salvation." His answer was that those who deny faith in Christ as the only way to salvation should be disciplined. That same year the cover of a major seminary's Christmas mailing emblazoned the prayer "Savior of the Nations, Come!" Do we have here examples of believing in Jesus too loudly? I think we have to ask what it means to believe that "Jesus is the only way to salvation." Could we be trying to give Jesus the very kind of authority and glory that Jesus himself rejects in this story of his temptation?
In 1982, James Burtness, a professor at Luther Northwestern Theological Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota, wrote a provocative article entitled "Does Anyone Out There Care Anymore Whether People Believe in Jesus?" In that article he complained about a post-Auschwitz refusal on the part of some Christians "to state clearly to Jewish people the claim of Jesus to be the Messiah ..." and he accused such Christians of making belief in Jesus "optional." While professor Burtness did recognize the arrogance of equating Christianity with Western values and culture, he apparently does not believe that it is arrogant to ask all people of all religions to "accept Jesus."
Dr. Burtness does conclude, however, that "from time to time we need to ask whether our perspective requires some adjustment. No one should claim to be entirely right about Jesus," he warns. I take this to mean that we must continually be asking ourselves what it means to believe in Jesus. The hard question we are asking ourselves is whether some have stopped caring about believing in Jesus precisely because others have believed in Jesus in the wrong ways.
"How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds ... Filled with Boundless Stores of Grace." (John Newton)
At this point you may want to protest that it is impossible to believe in Jesus "too much." After all, doesn't the New Testament say that "there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" besides the name of Jesus? (Acts 4:12) If Jesus is "the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow" (Philippians 2:9-10), why and how can it be a temptation from the devil for Jesus to want authority and glory over all nations?
The answer to these questions is to be found by focusing on the meaning of this name Jesus itself! The name Jesus is the same as the name Joshua. The name means "God will deliver," "God will heal," "God will save." Therefore, to believe in Jesus means, simply, to believe that salvation is God's doing! We may be a long way from fully understanding what salvation means, but what we do know is that salvation is God's business, God's prerogative, and not ours! It is not up to us to save people, to win people, to judge people. To say that the only way to be saved is through the name of Jesus is to say that only God has the answers to questions about who is saved. To proclaim that this is the only way to be saved sounds narrow and exclusive. But, in fact, it is as broad and open as all outdoors! If the only way to be saved is by God (that is, in the name Jesus), then who are we to put limits on who God can save? It is not up to us to say whether Jews or Hindus or, for that matter, atheists, can be saved - because God alone is in charge of salvation. The Christian is called to contemplate and share the mystery of God's saving grace. Our calling is not so much "to get everyone to believe in Jesus" as it is to engage the world in dialogue about what it means to believe that God alone is totally in charge of our "salvation," indeed, that God alone knows what salvation itself really means! John Newton expresses beautifully the true meaning of Jesus' name in his hymn: "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer's ear! ... Dear Name! ... filled with boundless stores of grace."
According to the story of our text, the devil's belief in Jesus is inadequate because it puts the wrong kind of emphasis on the personal glory of Jesus. The New Testament as a whole pictures a Jesus who is humble, giving, self-emptying! Jesus, according to an early Christian hymn, "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself ... humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow ..." (Philippians 2) Jesus is not a Christ who makes great claims, but a Christ, a Messiah, an "anointed one," who is absolutely humble and self-giving. The entire Gospel of Luke is an ode to humility. The Christmas story in Luke 2 virtually says that we should worship humility! Jesus is the kind of Messiah who empties himself and relates first and foremost to the poor and the outcasts. Jesus is not concerned with his own status. He is content to be an open channel of God's grace. His specialness is his utterly down-to-earth rejection of any self-glorification. Our "witness" to this Jesus must be equally humble! Such humility is not easy.
Do you remember the satirical ditty that kids used to sing? - "I don't care if it rains or freezes, 'long as I have my plastic Jesus fastened to the dashboard of my car." We are sorely tempted to make Jesus into an all-too-human idol or lucky charm. This story of Jesus' temptation tells us that for Jesus to have claimed all power and glory in such crass, human terms would have been demonic. The classical theology of our Christian tradition has concluded that Jesus is "divine" only in the paradoxical sense that he points away from himself to God, away from himself to that which transcends human notions of divinity! When we read in 2 Corinthians 5:16 that we are not to regard Christ from a human point of view, we are being told that "Jesus" is as much a symbol as he is a person that we must resist the temptation to assume that we know everything there is to know about "Jesus." The book of Genesis says that human beings are made in the image of God. But at the same time it also immediately tells us that to want to be "like God" (Genesis 3:5) is a temptation from the devil. Clearly, if being "in the image of God" and being "like God" are not the same thing, equally fine distinctions are in order when we talk about "the divinity of Jesus." Jesus resisted the temptation to claim divinity!
Many critics down through the ages have complained that Saint Paul (Saul of Tarsus) took the simple religion of Jesus and turned it into a complicated and idolatrous religion about Jesus. They would be right, perhaps, if Paul had pictured Jesus as the kind of Lord who is a glorious idol that serves us like a lucky charm. But Paul says that he wants to know nothing "except Jesus Christ and him crucified." (1 Corinthians 2:2) In other words, his theology of Jesus is a theology of the utter simplicity and humility of Jesus. Paul's writing may become complex and abstract, but his emphasis on trust in God's grace is fundamentally simple and never arrogant. The message of Jesus as the Messiah always meant for Paul an emphasis on what God is doing in the world, not on our efforts or works. There is absolutely no place for Christian "boasting" of any kind! We are not to believe "too loudly."
Paradoxically, precisely because Paul recognized that the life story of Jesus was a symbol for the radical, amazing, saving grace of God, he had to take the person of Jesus very seriously. It was clear to him that Jesus was not merely an abstract symbol for some nebulous concept of "grace." Regarding Jesus from more than a human point of view did not mean regarding him from less than a human point of view. One thing the Christian faith clearly points to is an ultimate, mysterious synthesis of spiritual and physical. Belief in the resurrection is one form of this faith. Speaking of Jesus as both human and yet more than human is another form of this faith. Jesus has a physical and historical dimension, but is also more than, and other than, a merely physical and historical person. Jesus is spiritual, but more than, and other than, merely spiritual. When we speak of "Jesus," or for that matter, on the other hand, of the "devil," we are referring to a greater reality than we can understand. But we know enough when we know that to believe in the sweet name of Jesus is to acknowledge the absolutely unlimited, amazing, saving Grace of God which is stronger than any form of evil! Such faith gives no one any grounds for religious arrogance, theological pride or spiritual holier-than-thou-ism.
True belief in the name of Jesus gives us a wonderful freedom from the burden of feeling that our faith is superior, freedom from the burden of pretending to be humble when we are actually being theologically arrogant. Put more positively, true belief in the meaning of the name "Jesus" frees us for honest and open dialogue with people of all religious faiths and with people who are skeptical of religion. Evangelists whose misguided faith in Jesus makes them unwilling and/or unable to listen to the insights of other belief systems do not turn out to be effective witnesses to the name of Jesus. They will be trying to control the grace of God rather than acting as open channels of God's grace as revealed in Jesus.
The grace of God as shown to us in Luke's stories of Jesus is not interested in power, authority and glory. It's message is that a seed cannot grow unless it falls in the ground and "dies." A diamond isn't beautiful until it is cut. As the channel of God's grace, Jesus reminds us of an insight captured beautifully also in a Rodgers and Hammerstein song from The Sound of Music. "Love isn't love, 'til you give it away."
Jesus was tempted to hoard love and power for himself. But, instead, he gave it - and gives it - away!
Luke 9:28-36 (L)
Luke 13:31-35 (C, RC)
Lent 2
Winning
Isn't the Only Thing
... It's Irrelevant
Moses and Elijah ... appeared in glory and spoke of his departure which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. (Luke 9:31) "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" (Luke 13:34)
The Green Bay Packer football coach, Vince Lombardi, is credited with the declaration: "Winning isn't everything ... It's the only thing!" Now from the very limited perspective of a professional football coach there may be an element of truth in this statement. But in the broader arenas of life, winning is not the only thing. Winning is often irrelevant! The Gospel stories of Jesus are not stories about winning! Another pithy statement of questionable taste but containing a valid insight has dubbed Jesus "a flop at 33." Jesus is not pictured as one who wants to win at any cost. When the rich ruler walks away from the invitation to follow him (Luke 18:18-27), Jesus does not run after the man. Lamenting the plight of the wealthy, the winners, Jesus let's him go.
Life is more about love than it is about winning, and love often means letting go. Newspaper advice columns remind the romantically inclined not to pursue the object of their affections too ardently. More than one writer has quoted the axiom which says that "indifference is the greatest aphrodisiac." World literature is full of stories of parents who lost the love and affection of their children by holding on too tightly, by stubbornly attempting to win the argument about their child's choice of career, lifestyle, marriage partner. The story of Romeo and Juliet, of course, is the classic example of families wanting to hold their own and win at all costs, only to end up losing what is most precious to them.
While the story of the transfiguration of Jesus has its element of glory, its hint of the resurrection of Jesus, it is also a story about the disciples' failure to understand the true nature of what it was that Jesus "was to accomplish at Jerusalem." The Gospels are full of incidents in which people mistakenly expect Jesus to "be a winner."
We are in the process of looking at ways in which our efforts at evangelism may be similarly mistaken. I do not mean to pick on any one group, but sometimes it takes a specific example to highlight the problem we are addressing. The Gideon society provides a wonderful service by making Bibles available in jails, motels, nursing homes - all over the world. But when Gideons and others say that it is their basic goal to "win others for Christ," it could well mean that we are continuing to misunderstand Jesus, that we continue to "not know what we say." (Luke 9:33) We need to be more careful in the words we use to witness. Careless terminology can corrupt our message. Suppose we alter a phrase: "Sticks and stones may break one's bones, but words can wound the spirit."
In the paragraph just before the transfiguration story, Luke has Jesus tell his disciples that the Gospel is not about winning but about losing! Traditional incarnational theology says that Jesus gave away everything in order to become human. The story of Jesus is the story of God taking the risk of getting involved, of God letting go of the power and the glory in favor of love and giving!
Perhaps the most careless and misleading terminology we slip into, next to the language of "winning," is the rhetoric that emphasizes the "claims of Christ!" During the Easter season we will discuss the problems with this "claims" terminology at greater length, but for now it is enough to remind ourselves that the New Testament is a complex reflection of the long process whereby Jesus comes to be understood as a unique version of "the Christ," the anointed one, the Messiah. To some degree the Gospels all seem to assume that Jesus knows from the outset that he is "the Christ," but it is also clear that the Gospels themselves are the result of considerable after-the-fact interpretation of the meaning of the life of Jesus. Christianity was a complex movement and was not based simply on a few direct "claims" made by or about Jesus. To the degree that Jesus or the New Testament writers "claimed" the title of "Christ," they rather consistently did so in a most reluctant manner! In Mark's Gospel, for example, there is the "Messianic Secret" - Jesus is pictured over and over again as cautioning his disciples against noising it abroad that he is the Christ. As we mentioned in the previous sermon, one of the reasons for this is clearly the desire of the Christian movement to give an entirely new and humble slant to the concept of the Messiah. There was a great deal of religious/theological ferment at this period in history, and the Christian idea of a Messiah, a Christ, who suffers and gives, and lets go, had to compete with many more glamorous forms of religious belief.
Evangelists who say that the choice people have is between accepting the claims of Christ or calling Jesus a liar, are really just bragging that their particular interpretation of Jesus is beyond question. To put it in classical terms, they are claiming that their "Christology" is the only valid way of understanding the New Testament - quite a grandiose claim when we realize that the New Testament itself presents a variety of Christologies. So it is both arrogant and naive to say that either Jesus was right or he was crazy.
To believe in Jesus is precisely to renounce the style and the substance of arrogant claims. When we are down and out we may like to think of the Gospel as a way of gaining control, certainty and security in our lives. But the Gospel of Jesus is not a "gospel of having" - of having all the answers and all the ready-made spiritual resources. Jesus teaches us, rather, not to be afraid of our neediness! The good news is that, in Jesus, we see how, in our own lives, we can combine the ultimate in spiritual humility on the one hand with a confident, hopeful openness to the future on the other.
As Christians we are not called to sell people on the claims of Christ, are not commissioned to create a narrow in-group that divides the world into "us and them." Recently, a representative of Christian charismatics suggested that it would be a great gift for the 2000th birthday of Jesus if we would strive to make half the world Christian by the turn of the century. I seriously wonder if such a numbers-conscious "wave of evangelism" would be in keeping with the spirit of Jesus. It would be more likely to come off as an insensitive hard-sell in a world full of "sales people" of many kinds who don't really care about the well-being of the "customer."
The perhaps startling realization that should be dawning on us at this point is that we must not do "mission work" because we think people are lost unless we "win" them! Evangelism in this spirit is both arrogant and negative. We do evangelism, rather, simply because we sense the overwhelming importance of God's grace! Our mission is not to control and dispense grace but to channel it. The sacraments likewise are channels of God's grace. The church is indeed well-described not so much as an organization but as a movement, like a permeating salt or leaven, which channels God's free and unconditional grace to a world that can never have too much of that grace.
"To tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love." (Katherine Hankey)
But you may want to ask again, why trudge off to the ends of the earth doing mission work if you don't believe in the universal claims of Christ as Savior and Messiah - if you think that Jesus was just another great man or prophet with no unique claim on the hearts of humankind?
The answer is that the point of this sermon is not to deny that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. The point is that Jesus represents precisely a new interpretation - a new understanding - of what it means to be the Christ, the Savior! The Christ is not a glorious maker of arrogant claims, but a humble channel of the free grace of God. We do not go to the ends of the earth to tell the story of Jesus as the Messiah because we believe everyone who doesn't accept our version of Christianity is lost, but because we believe simply that the message of God's love and grace is worth telling! Our motivation is basically positive rather than negative - not to save the lost, but to tell Good News. Stories about a messenger whose name means "God will save" are indeed a priceless treasure. We spoil the story if we overlay it with heavyhanded, arrogant claims. Jesus as Savior saves us precisely from believing that it is up to us to save ourselves and the world, from believing that we must be winners in order to have worth.
It does seem to be flying in the face of tradition if we reject the language of "winning" or "claiming" the world for Christ, but Jesus cried over Jerusalem precisely because it held its traditions too tightly, because it refused to listen to him as he criticized their usual ways of thinking - their traditional theology. He cried because he recognized that the few hosannas they would sing would be hollow praise. I'm sure that Jesus cries also over some traditional forms of
arrogant witnessing that go on in his name yet today. When the Gospel that calls us to be self-giving and self-emptying channels of God's grace is converted into a Gospel that makes arrogant claims, then we have ceased to tell the true, original, old, old story of Jesus and his love. There is a huge difference between proclaiming the grace of God as seen in the stories of Jesus and claiming that anyone who doesn't accept a particular theology about Jesus is lost and damned. As the authors of Bible and Mission (Augsburg, 1986) point out: Mission is not "roping and branding" but loving, serving, learning, and forgiving.
Does all this talk of grace water down the Gospel to a message of cheap grace rather than free grace? Does it destroy the notion of the "saving work" of Christ? Of course not! Clearly there is nothing dainty or cheap about the grace shown to us on the Cross at Calvary. Hemmingway once defined courage as "grace under pressure" and theologian Paul Tillich saw Jesus as the embodiment of "the courage to be." To borrow Marshall McLuhan's expression, Jesus is both the medium and the message; his work and his message - his story - are one and the same thing.
So, to reject the image of soldiers in battle winning souls for the Lord is not to deny the importance of sharing the story of Jesus. A more gracious approach simply accents the positive and universal and inclusive message of the Gospel as over against the negative attitude expressed by the bumper sticker that says: "Read your Bible. It'll scare the hell out of you!"
Has the Christian message been watered down when a young Lutheran writes in a nationally published church journal of how he became "fired up" over a mission program to provide schools and classrooms in Africa? Not at all! Rather than cavalierly dismissing other faiths and cultures, we need to carry on an open dialogue with them in the name of Christian mission. Schools and classrooms are one good place to engage in such dialogue. Our appreciation of the scope of God's grace grows wonderfully when we look deeply into the insights of other religious traditions, when we encounter the Hindu concept of "salvation by the cat-hold" (the mother cat picking up the kitten by the nape of the neck is a symbol for unconditional acceptance), the Sikh veneration of the "True Name" as a way of showing that God is not limited by our particular names and ideas, the Zen "discovery" that enlightenment really comes only when we relax from our efforts and let it "happen to us!" Rather than rejecting dialogue or any form of worship with people who, as one Lutheran pronouncement recently said, "do not believe Christian faith-claims," let us welcome opportunities to better understand our religious/theological similarities and differences.
And let us enter into dialogue with good humor. The humility of humor, of not taking ourselves too seriously, is a much better model for Christian evangelism than the "winning" or "success" model! Martin Luther himself wrote that humor "is the true antidote to the sin of pride." Criticized for converting a tavern song into the hymn "A Mighty Fortress" Luther quipped: "Why should the devil have all the good tunes?" While preaching on the birth of Jesus, Luther questioned why the angels were flying around and singing instead of changing the baby's diapers. And, asked where God was before creation, Luther responded, "Making hell for the inquisitive."
The word "evangelical" is in grave danger of coming to mean simply "right wing" - in danger of becoming a political term. We must not let this happen. Better we should heed the words of Professor Timothy F. Lull, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia: "The mission God has entrusted to us is a deep mystery. The question of how the church best may ... perform that mission never can be finally or satisfactorily settled." (Lutheran Standard, March 20, 1987) The gospel is not about winners or losers or "final solutions." It is about being open channels of God's grace. It is about creativity, faith, hope and love.
Woody Hayes, the feisty Ohio State football coach, was eulogized by Richard Nixon as a man who "was never satisfied with success, and never discouraged by failure." Hayes himself made no apologies for his intensely competitive spirit. If never being satisfied with success, never being discouraged by failure, never apologizing for being competitive means that we hold values which go beyond winning, means that we always can see where there is room for improvement, then competition and success take their appropriate, limited place in our lives. We can even say that the Gospel story of Jesus is about love and goodness "winning out" over selfishness and evil. But an unbridled success/winner mentality is by definition selfish. In his olympics training, Brian Boitano was frequently reminded that being prepared to lose is just as important as training to win. All the world may love a gracious and giving winner. But no one loves a selfish winner. That is why the old, old story of Jesus constantly reminds us that abundant living is not about winning but is about loving, giving, and sharing.
Lent is traditionally a time for self-examination. The most common form of such self-examination focuses on our failure to live up to "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." We assume that we know what this calling is all about and that our only problem is failing to follow through on the obvious implications of our faith.
I think Herb Caen's comment should move us to undertake in this series of sermons an unusual, perhaps, but nonetheless valid form of lenten self-examination. Taking a warning cue from Matthew's line "Beware of practicing your piety," we are going to consider the possible errors and sins we commit precisely as the result of misguided efforts to live out our piety. To put it another way, we are going to examine some of our fundamental assumptions about the nature of the Christian Good News, the Gospel. Maybe the Gospel is less obvious than we tend to think it is.
We are going to ask whether some forms of "Christian commitment" might actually be a denial of the Gospel and a misrepresentation of what Christian evangelism is really supposed to be. Some would even go so far as to say that the word "evangelical" has been spoiled by those whose style of being Christian promotes the wrong kind of narrowness. They would say that the Christian faith is embarrassed when God is identified with a particular candidate or party, embarrassed by the stark polarization between "liberal" and "conservative" churches over the issues of (1) church doctrine and practice, (2) abortion, (3) church and state issues, (4) interpretation of the Bible, (5) life-styles, and (6) views on morality. In this video age of images, where the outward image is so strong that Michael J. Fox, Tina Turner and Michael Jackson don't even have to say the name Pepsi to sell the product in a commercial, must not we too pay attention to the Gospel's image?
Can we ignore these issues and simply practice our piety, simply focus on that which is spiritually uplifting and let the rest slide? Not if we heed the words of Matthew's Gospel! Practicing true piety, true spirituality, is a tricky, challenging thing, and Lent is not a time to look for an easy way out.
It could well be that polarizing or otherwise faulty expressions of our Christian piety have actually worked to drive people away from Christianity. It is likely that much of the popularity of psychics, astrology, certain "cult" phenomena, trance channeling and the like, is the result of mistakes that we Christians have made in the attempt to express our faith. To use a big word, some of our efforts to attract people may be sadly counterproductive. Was Shirley MacLaine pushed out on a limb because the Christianity she had known was too dogmatic, too arrogant, too intellectualized or formal - not paying enough attention to her hunger for religious experience? By virtually ignoring the other world religions do Christians unintentionally exaggerate the appeal of those religions?
This day, Ash Wednesday, is a day on which some mark their foreheads with ashes - symbolizing repentance, symbolizing the Cross, symbolizing our mortality (often with the words: "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return"). No doubt some people do not follow this custom because they have noticed that it seems to conflict with Matthew's words in the text for this day, his words about not making a show of your piety in public. It could be argued that since this form of piety emphasizes humility, it can't possibly be interpreted as "showing off." But in this sermon, Jesus is referring precisely to those who disfigure their faces as a way of showing how humble they are. Now most of us don't stand on street corners and many of us do not mark our foreheads with ashes, but in a variety of subtle ways we may well be guilty of "practicing our piety before men," contrary to the Spirit of Jesus.
We Christians have been given a difficult challenge. We have been challenged to witness to our faith without being "triumphalistic," without being boastful about our beliefs, our convictions, our morality. It's a tough challenge and it is not going to be easy to talk about it. But this is Lent. Let us really examine ourselves.
"Amazing Grace ... that saved a wretch like me." (John Newton)
The point is not that we aren't to practice any piety at all. The point is that we need to be careful how we go about being pious. To say, for example that "God helps those who help themselves" may express an important truth about self-reliance; but if the phrase is quoted as an excuse for not helping those in need, then it is not a good thought. Likewise, the insight suggested by the question "Whoever said life is fair?" can help us face the hard realities of life; but if the same question is used as an excuse for not getting involved in the struggle to create social justice in the world, then the truth is being mishandled. The mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux, said that "only one who is poor should praise poverty." Economic poverty may help us keep our priorities straight - may make us more aware of the real treasures of life - but for an affluent person to praise poverty could be, again, to make an excuse for not being concerned about the plight of the poor.
Those who have experienced the "Amazing Grace" of God can reflect on how, without that grace, they felt like lost wretches: but they should not go around labeling other people as lost and wretched. It is one thing to say that I was lost or spiritually blind, but it is quite another thing, quite inappropriate, for me to call others lost, blind or wretched. To do so would be not evangelistic, but arrogant. Watching the "Church Lady" on Saturday Night Live reminds, us that the line between true evangelism and holier-than-thou self-righteousness is extremely thin, but oh so important. It may be easier to confess other people's sins, but we can only confess our own. (It's easier, but wrong, to confess the sins to which we are not tempted.) Just as a joke can be funny or offensive depending on the spirit in which it is told and taken, so an expression of our piety (like confession) can be true and lovely, or false and ugly, depending on the spirit in which it is conveyed. Ironically, to be preoccupied with other people's sins is itself the basic sin of self-righteous self-centeredness!
Christians are given the difficult challenge of expressing a piety that isn't pious in a self-righteous, self-important way! As we move through this lenten season we will be using the image of "channeling grace" to describe what a truly "evangelical mentality" is all about. As channels of God's grace we will learn how to have convictions without being bigoted or closed-minded, how to be angry at injustice without being self-righteous, how to share faith without "practicing our piety before men." This lenten season of penitence calls us not to wallow in sin-consciousness but to make a commitment to renewal and reform. The Greek word for repentance means "to change one's mind." Let us do some truly radical mind-changing. Let us rethink what it means to be evangelical!
We began by quoting Herb Caen's comment about "those who believe in Christmas too loudly." The great preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick similarly gave us a witty nudge toward the piety that isn't, when he said that vital faith is a treasure like good music ... "It needs no defense, only rendition. A wrangling controversy in support of religion," said Fosdick, "is as if the members of the orchestra should beat folks over the head with their violins to prove that the music is beautiful."
The amazing truth is that by going easy on the piety, by not beating folks over the head with the Bible, we become much more effective channels of God's grace. The piety that isn't pious is the true piety! Let us celebrate and, in the weeks to come, contemplate this amazing paradox of God's grace!
Luke 4:1-13
Lent 1
What Does It Mean to
Believe in Jesus?
And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, "To you I will give all this authority and their glory ..." (Luke 4:5-6a)
This text may well be the most shocking passage in the entire New Testament! Why? Because it pictures the devil as believing that Jesus should have "the power and the glory for ever and ever!" The book of James echoes this theme by saying that "even the demons believe - and shudder." (James 2:19b) As Christians we usually assume that our mission is to get people to believe in Jesus. But more and more I think we must face the issue of what kind of belief in Jesus! What does it mean to believe in Jesus? In this story, the devil "believes" in Jesus. But it is the wrong kind of belief!
A major church periodical recently printed this quotation from Vittorio Messori: "Christianity in no way sees itself as one of the religions; it sees itself as the sufficient and definitive revelation of God in history. At the heart of Christian faith there is not just another religious theory; there is the Good News about Jesus." In 1986 the vice president of the American Lutheran Church, Dr. Lloyd Svendsbye, was asked to respond to a charge that Lutheran publications had published writings which "denied that Jesus was the only way to salvation." His answer was that those who deny faith in Christ as the only way to salvation should be disciplined. That same year the cover of a major seminary's Christmas mailing emblazoned the prayer "Savior of the Nations, Come!" Do we have here examples of believing in Jesus too loudly? I think we have to ask what it means to believe that "Jesus is the only way to salvation." Could we be trying to give Jesus the very kind of authority and glory that Jesus himself rejects in this story of his temptation?
In 1982, James Burtness, a professor at Luther Northwestern Theological Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota, wrote a provocative article entitled "Does Anyone Out There Care Anymore Whether People Believe in Jesus?" In that article he complained about a post-Auschwitz refusal on the part of some Christians "to state clearly to Jewish people the claim of Jesus to be the Messiah ..." and he accused such Christians of making belief in Jesus "optional." While professor Burtness did recognize the arrogance of equating Christianity with Western values and culture, he apparently does not believe that it is arrogant to ask all people of all religions to "accept Jesus."
Dr. Burtness does conclude, however, that "from time to time we need to ask whether our perspective requires some adjustment. No one should claim to be entirely right about Jesus," he warns. I take this to mean that we must continually be asking ourselves what it means to believe in Jesus. The hard question we are asking ourselves is whether some have stopped caring about believing in Jesus precisely because others have believed in Jesus in the wrong ways.
"How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds ... Filled with Boundless Stores of Grace." (John Newton)
At this point you may want to protest that it is impossible to believe in Jesus "too much." After all, doesn't the New Testament say that "there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" besides the name of Jesus? (Acts 4:12) If Jesus is "the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow" (Philippians 2:9-10), why and how can it be a temptation from the devil for Jesus to want authority and glory over all nations?
The answer to these questions is to be found by focusing on the meaning of this name Jesus itself! The name Jesus is the same as the name Joshua. The name means "God will deliver," "God will heal," "God will save." Therefore, to believe in Jesus means, simply, to believe that salvation is God's doing! We may be a long way from fully understanding what salvation means, but what we do know is that salvation is God's business, God's prerogative, and not ours! It is not up to us to save people, to win people, to judge people. To say that the only way to be saved is through the name of Jesus is to say that only God has the answers to questions about who is saved. To proclaim that this is the only way to be saved sounds narrow and exclusive. But, in fact, it is as broad and open as all outdoors! If the only way to be saved is by God (that is, in the name Jesus), then who are we to put limits on who God can save? It is not up to us to say whether Jews or Hindus or, for that matter, atheists, can be saved - because God alone is in charge of salvation. The Christian is called to contemplate and share the mystery of God's saving grace. Our calling is not so much "to get everyone to believe in Jesus" as it is to engage the world in dialogue about what it means to believe that God alone is totally in charge of our "salvation," indeed, that God alone knows what salvation itself really means! John Newton expresses beautifully the true meaning of Jesus' name in his hymn: "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer's ear! ... Dear Name! ... filled with boundless stores of grace."
According to the story of our text, the devil's belief in Jesus is inadequate because it puts the wrong kind of emphasis on the personal glory of Jesus. The New Testament as a whole pictures a Jesus who is humble, giving, self-emptying! Jesus, according to an early Christian hymn, "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself ... humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow ..." (Philippians 2) Jesus is not a Christ who makes great claims, but a Christ, a Messiah, an "anointed one," who is absolutely humble and self-giving. The entire Gospel of Luke is an ode to humility. The Christmas story in Luke 2 virtually says that we should worship humility! Jesus is the kind of Messiah who empties himself and relates first and foremost to the poor and the outcasts. Jesus is not concerned with his own status. He is content to be an open channel of God's grace. His specialness is his utterly down-to-earth rejection of any self-glorification. Our "witness" to this Jesus must be equally humble! Such humility is not easy.
Do you remember the satirical ditty that kids used to sing? - "I don't care if it rains or freezes, 'long as I have my plastic Jesus fastened to the dashboard of my car." We are sorely tempted to make Jesus into an all-too-human idol or lucky charm. This story of Jesus' temptation tells us that for Jesus to have claimed all power and glory in such crass, human terms would have been demonic. The classical theology of our Christian tradition has concluded that Jesus is "divine" only in the paradoxical sense that he points away from himself to God, away from himself to that which transcends human notions of divinity! When we read in 2 Corinthians 5:16 that we are not to regard Christ from a human point of view, we are being told that "Jesus" is as much a symbol as he is a person that we must resist the temptation to assume that we know everything there is to know about "Jesus." The book of Genesis says that human beings are made in the image of God. But at the same time it also immediately tells us that to want to be "like God" (Genesis 3:5) is a temptation from the devil. Clearly, if being "in the image of God" and being "like God" are not the same thing, equally fine distinctions are in order when we talk about "the divinity of Jesus." Jesus resisted the temptation to claim divinity!
Many critics down through the ages have complained that Saint Paul (Saul of Tarsus) took the simple religion of Jesus and turned it into a complicated and idolatrous religion about Jesus. They would be right, perhaps, if Paul had pictured Jesus as the kind of Lord who is a glorious idol that serves us like a lucky charm. But Paul says that he wants to know nothing "except Jesus Christ and him crucified." (1 Corinthians 2:2) In other words, his theology of Jesus is a theology of the utter simplicity and humility of Jesus. Paul's writing may become complex and abstract, but his emphasis on trust in God's grace is fundamentally simple and never arrogant. The message of Jesus as the Messiah always meant for Paul an emphasis on what God is doing in the world, not on our efforts or works. There is absolutely no place for Christian "boasting" of any kind! We are not to believe "too loudly."
Paradoxically, precisely because Paul recognized that the life story of Jesus was a symbol for the radical, amazing, saving grace of God, he had to take the person of Jesus very seriously. It was clear to him that Jesus was not merely an abstract symbol for some nebulous concept of "grace." Regarding Jesus from more than a human point of view did not mean regarding him from less than a human point of view. One thing the Christian faith clearly points to is an ultimate, mysterious synthesis of spiritual and physical. Belief in the resurrection is one form of this faith. Speaking of Jesus as both human and yet more than human is another form of this faith. Jesus has a physical and historical dimension, but is also more than, and other than, a merely physical and historical person. Jesus is spiritual, but more than, and other than, merely spiritual. When we speak of "Jesus," or for that matter, on the other hand, of the "devil," we are referring to a greater reality than we can understand. But we know enough when we know that to believe in the sweet name of Jesus is to acknowledge the absolutely unlimited, amazing, saving Grace of God which is stronger than any form of evil! Such faith gives no one any grounds for religious arrogance, theological pride or spiritual holier-than-thou-ism.
True belief in the name of Jesus gives us a wonderful freedom from the burden of feeling that our faith is superior, freedom from the burden of pretending to be humble when we are actually being theologically arrogant. Put more positively, true belief in the meaning of the name "Jesus" frees us for honest and open dialogue with people of all religious faiths and with people who are skeptical of religion. Evangelists whose misguided faith in Jesus makes them unwilling and/or unable to listen to the insights of other belief systems do not turn out to be effective witnesses to the name of Jesus. They will be trying to control the grace of God rather than acting as open channels of God's grace as revealed in Jesus.
The grace of God as shown to us in Luke's stories of Jesus is not interested in power, authority and glory. It's message is that a seed cannot grow unless it falls in the ground and "dies." A diamond isn't beautiful until it is cut. As the channel of God's grace, Jesus reminds us of an insight captured beautifully also in a Rodgers and Hammerstein song from The Sound of Music. "Love isn't love, 'til you give it away."
Jesus was tempted to hoard love and power for himself. But, instead, he gave it - and gives it - away!
Luke 9:28-36 (L)
Luke 13:31-35 (C, RC)
Lent 2
Winning
Isn't the Only Thing
... It's Irrelevant
Moses and Elijah ... appeared in glory and spoke of his departure which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. (Luke 9:31) "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" (Luke 13:34)
The Green Bay Packer football coach, Vince Lombardi, is credited with the declaration: "Winning isn't everything ... It's the only thing!" Now from the very limited perspective of a professional football coach there may be an element of truth in this statement. But in the broader arenas of life, winning is not the only thing. Winning is often irrelevant! The Gospel stories of Jesus are not stories about winning! Another pithy statement of questionable taste but containing a valid insight has dubbed Jesus "a flop at 33." Jesus is not pictured as one who wants to win at any cost. When the rich ruler walks away from the invitation to follow him (Luke 18:18-27), Jesus does not run after the man. Lamenting the plight of the wealthy, the winners, Jesus let's him go.
Life is more about love than it is about winning, and love often means letting go. Newspaper advice columns remind the romantically inclined not to pursue the object of their affections too ardently. More than one writer has quoted the axiom which says that "indifference is the greatest aphrodisiac." World literature is full of stories of parents who lost the love and affection of their children by holding on too tightly, by stubbornly attempting to win the argument about their child's choice of career, lifestyle, marriage partner. The story of Romeo and Juliet, of course, is the classic example of families wanting to hold their own and win at all costs, only to end up losing what is most precious to them.
While the story of the transfiguration of Jesus has its element of glory, its hint of the resurrection of Jesus, it is also a story about the disciples' failure to understand the true nature of what it was that Jesus "was to accomplish at Jerusalem." The Gospels are full of incidents in which people mistakenly expect Jesus to "be a winner."
We are in the process of looking at ways in which our efforts at evangelism may be similarly mistaken. I do not mean to pick on any one group, but sometimes it takes a specific example to highlight the problem we are addressing. The Gideon society provides a wonderful service by making Bibles available in jails, motels, nursing homes - all over the world. But when Gideons and others say that it is their basic goal to "win others for Christ," it could well mean that we are continuing to misunderstand Jesus, that we continue to "not know what we say." (Luke 9:33) We need to be more careful in the words we use to witness. Careless terminology can corrupt our message. Suppose we alter a phrase: "Sticks and stones may break one's bones, but words can wound the spirit."
In the paragraph just before the transfiguration story, Luke has Jesus tell his disciples that the Gospel is not about winning but about losing! Traditional incarnational theology says that Jesus gave away everything in order to become human. The story of Jesus is the story of God taking the risk of getting involved, of God letting go of the power and the glory in favor of love and giving!
Perhaps the most careless and misleading terminology we slip into, next to the language of "winning," is the rhetoric that emphasizes the "claims of Christ!" During the Easter season we will discuss the problems with this "claims" terminology at greater length, but for now it is enough to remind ourselves that the New Testament is a complex reflection of the long process whereby Jesus comes to be understood as a unique version of "the Christ," the anointed one, the Messiah. To some degree the Gospels all seem to assume that Jesus knows from the outset that he is "the Christ," but it is also clear that the Gospels themselves are the result of considerable after-the-fact interpretation of the meaning of the life of Jesus. Christianity was a complex movement and was not based simply on a few direct "claims" made by or about Jesus. To the degree that Jesus or the New Testament writers "claimed" the title of "Christ," they rather consistently did so in a most reluctant manner! In Mark's Gospel, for example, there is the "Messianic Secret" - Jesus is pictured over and over again as cautioning his disciples against noising it abroad that he is the Christ. As we mentioned in the previous sermon, one of the reasons for this is clearly the desire of the Christian movement to give an entirely new and humble slant to the concept of the Messiah. There was a great deal of religious/theological ferment at this period in history, and the Christian idea of a Messiah, a Christ, who suffers and gives, and lets go, had to compete with many more glamorous forms of religious belief.
Evangelists who say that the choice people have is between accepting the claims of Christ or calling Jesus a liar, are really just bragging that their particular interpretation of Jesus is beyond question. To put it in classical terms, they are claiming that their "Christology" is the only valid way of understanding the New Testament - quite a grandiose claim when we realize that the New Testament itself presents a variety of Christologies. So it is both arrogant and naive to say that either Jesus was right or he was crazy.
To believe in Jesus is precisely to renounce the style and the substance of arrogant claims. When we are down and out we may like to think of the Gospel as a way of gaining control, certainty and security in our lives. But the Gospel of Jesus is not a "gospel of having" - of having all the answers and all the ready-made spiritual resources. Jesus teaches us, rather, not to be afraid of our neediness! The good news is that, in Jesus, we see how, in our own lives, we can combine the ultimate in spiritual humility on the one hand with a confident, hopeful openness to the future on the other.
As Christians we are not called to sell people on the claims of Christ, are not commissioned to create a narrow in-group that divides the world into "us and them." Recently, a representative of Christian charismatics suggested that it would be a great gift for the 2000th birthday of Jesus if we would strive to make half the world Christian by the turn of the century. I seriously wonder if such a numbers-conscious "wave of evangelism" would be in keeping with the spirit of Jesus. It would be more likely to come off as an insensitive hard-sell in a world full of "sales people" of many kinds who don't really care about the well-being of the "customer."
The perhaps startling realization that should be dawning on us at this point is that we must not do "mission work" because we think people are lost unless we "win" them! Evangelism in this spirit is both arrogant and negative. We do evangelism, rather, simply because we sense the overwhelming importance of God's grace! Our mission is not to control and dispense grace but to channel it. The sacraments likewise are channels of God's grace. The church is indeed well-described not so much as an organization but as a movement, like a permeating salt or leaven, which channels God's free and unconditional grace to a world that can never have too much of that grace.
"To tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love." (Katherine Hankey)
But you may want to ask again, why trudge off to the ends of the earth doing mission work if you don't believe in the universal claims of Christ as Savior and Messiah - if you think that Jesus was just another great man or prophet with no unique claim on the hearts of humankind?
The answer is that the point of this sermon is not to deny that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. The point is that Jesus represents precisely a new interpretation - a new understanding - of what it means to be the Christ, the Savior! The Christ is not a glorious maker of arrogant claims, but a humble channel of the free grace of God. We do not go to the ends of the earth to tell the story of Jesus as the Messiah because we believe everyone who doesn't accept our version of Christianity is lost, but because we believe simply that the message of God's love and grace is worth telling! Our motivation is basically positive rather than negative - not to save the lost, but to tell Good News. Stories about a messenger whose name means "God will save" are indeed a priceless treasure. We spoil the story if we overlay it with heavyhanded, arrogant claims. Jesus as Savior saves us precisely from believing that it is up to us to save ourselves and the world, from believing that we must be winners in order to have worth.
It does seem to be flying in the face of tradition if we reject the language of "winning" or "claiming" the world for Christ, but Jesus cried over Jerusalem precisely because it held its traditions too tightly, because it refused to listen to him as he criticized their usual ways of thinking - their traditional theology. He cried because he recognized that the few hosannas they would sing would be hollow praise. I'm sure that Jesus cries also over some traditional forms of
arrogant witnessing that go on in his name yet today. When the Gospel that calls us to be self-giving and self-emptying channels of God's grace is converted into a Gospel that makes arrogant claims, then we have ceased to tell the true, original, old, old story of Jesus and his love. There is a huge difference between proclaiming the grace of God as seen in the stories of Jesus and claiming that anyone who doesn't accept a particular theology about Jesus is lost and damned. As the authors of Bible and Mission (Augsburg, 1986) point out: Mission is not "roping and branding" but loving, serving, learning, and forgiving.
Does all this talk of grace water down the Gospel to a message of cheap grace rather than free grace? Does it destroy the notion of the "saving work" of Christ? Of course not! Clearly there is nothing dainty or cheap about the grace shown to us on the Cross at Calvary. Hemmingway once defined courage as "grace under pressure" and theologian Paul Tillich saw Jesus as the embodiment of "the courage to be." To borrow Marshall McLuhan's expression, Jesus is both the medium and the message; his work and his message - his story - are one and the same thing.
So, to reject the image of soldiers in battle winning souls for the Lord is not to deny the importance of sharing the story of Jesus. A more gracious approach simply accents the positive and universal and inclusive message of the Gospel as over against the negative attitude expressed by the bumper sticker that says: "Read your Bible. It'll scare the hell out of you!"
Has the Christian message been watered down when a young Lutheran writes in a nationally published church journal of how he became "fired up" over a mission program to provide schools and classrooms in Africa? Not at all! Rather than cavalierly dismissing other faiths and cultures, we need to carry on an open dialogue with them in the name of Christian mission. Schools and classrooms are one good place to engage in such dialogue. Our appreciation of the scope of God's grace grows wonderfully when we look deeply into the insights of other religious traditions, when we encounter the Hindu concept of "salvation by the cat-hold" (the mother cat picking up the kitten by the nape of the neck is a symbol for unconditional acceptance), the Sikh veneration of the "True Name" as a way of showing that God is not limited by our particular names and ideas, the Zen "discovery" that enlightenment really comes only when we relax from our efforts and let it "happen to us!" Rather than rejecting dialogue or any form of worship with people who, as one Lutheran pronouncement recently said, "do not believe Christian faith-claims," let us welcome opportunities to better understand our religious/theological similarities and differences.
And let us enter into dialogue with good humor. The humility of humor, of not taking ourselves too seriously, is a much better model for Christian evangelism than the "winning" or "success" model! Martin Luther himself wrote that humor "is the true antidote to the sin of pride." Criticized for converting a tavern song into the hymn "A Mighty Fortress" Luther quipped: "Why should the devil have all the good tunes?" While preaching on the birth of Jesus, Luther questioned why the angels were flying around and singing instead of changing the baby's diapers. And, asked where God was before creation, Luther responded, "Making hell for the inquisitive."
The word "evangelical" is in grave danger of coming to mean simply "right wing" - in danger of becoming a political term. We must not let this happen. Better we should heed the words of Professor Timothy F. Lull, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia: "The mission God has entrusted to us is a deep mystery. The question of how the church best may ... perform that mission never can be finally or satisfactorily settled." (Lutheran Standard, March 20, 1987) The gospel is not about winners or losers or "final solutions." It is about being open channels of God's grace. It is about creativity, faith, hope and love.
Woody Hayes, the feisty Ohio State football coach, was eulogized by Richard Nixon as a man who "was never satisfied with success, and never discouraged by failure." Hayes himself made no apologies for his intensely competitive spirit. If never being satisfied with success, never being discouraged by failure, never apologizing for being competitive means that we hold values which go beyond winning, means that we always can see where there is room for improvement, then competition and success take their appropriate, limited place in our lives. We can even say that the Gospel story of Jesus is about love and goodness "winning out" over selfishness and evil. But an unbridled success/winner mentality is by definition selfish. In his olympics training, Brian Boitano was frequently reminded that being prepared to lose is just as important as training to win. All the world may love a gracious and giving winner. But no one loves a selfish winner. That is why the old, old story of Jesus constantly reminds us that abundant living is not about winning but is about loving, giving, and sharing.
