Galatians 2.15-21
Russ Dean, February 26, 2012

It is probably a common refrain in times of war. It almost makes you a little bit uneasy, though, so often it has been spoken in the last few years: “they did not die in vain.” Is the anxious need to so assure the American public a subtle hint that maybe we are not quite so sure of that? With the uncertain terms of the beginning of our current wars… the shifting justifications… the vagueness of the enemy… the difficulty in defining a proper and necessary ending… Did they die in vain?

We can understand the need of a Commander in Chief to be able to affirm – they did not. We can certainly sympathize with parents of fallen comrades, those whose own flesh and blood give life and limb for a cause. The loss is too great – and every life too intrinsically valuable – for any death to be deemed “for nothing.” Vain means “having no real value,” and surely we all want of our lives to be marked as of value. Surely we all want it to be said that we lived for something. Accomplished something. That we were something. Henry David Thoreau, in speaking of his famous venture into the woods at Walden Pond, said:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Thoreau did not want his life to be in vain. For nothing. And the first Christian – the Apostle Paul, whose interpretation of the Jesus event was essential to the religion that evolved from that event – Paul did not want Jesus to have died for nothing.

No one wants to live for nothing – but what does it really mean to die in vain? Or, put another way, how could death – any death, regardless whom you were or how you died – how could your death “have real value”? Isn’t value measured empirically? By what we do? What we accomplish? Something gained or earned or promoted or learned? While it is easy to understand our lives being attributed a value… it is much more difficult to assign such a value to the cessation of being – the end of our living.

You probably know the poem. Linda Ellis has now made a cottage industry from the success of the simple message of her rhyming lines. The poem begins and ends this way…

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning to the end
He noted, that first came the date of her birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years…

So, when your eulogy is being read
With your life’s actions to rehash
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?

It’s about how you “live your dash,” right? What’s important isn’t the day we were born, or the day we die, what matters is all those days in between. It’s how we live. Linda Ellis is right to remind us of that, and it is that same “what matters is how you live” recognition that causes many thoughtful Christians to stumble over the words of the Apostles’ Creed, which seem to give no place at all to the “dash” of Jesus’ life.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead…

Where’s the dash? Where’s the value of his life? His teaching? His healing? His example? His charismatic, grab-life-by-the-horns-and-hang-on-for-the-ride passion? It is perhaps a Christianity that seems not to esteem Jesus’ living with any actual value that sends many cynics running away from it as fast as they can. If his life was of no value, how can it speak to mine? That under-estimation, coupled with a bloody theology of Jesus’ death, are a double-whammy that make Christian faith completely irredeemable for many in a 21st century world. That theology makes God out to be a tyrant, demanding his pound of flesh for satisfaction. They make of Christian salvation some kind of fear-filled blood sport. We ought to understand why those who did not grow up in southern evangelical religion would wince, or maybe feel sick, to hear Christians singing, “are you washed in the blood, in the soul-cleansing blood of the lamb?”

I understand those concerns. I share those concerns. But the Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, says of the doctrine of the atonement that it is “the Christian religion itself; it is the main point; it is not something alongside of the center; it is the substance and the kernel, not the husk.” While sophisticated 21st century critical-thinking Christians may look with contempt on such an opinion, this is just empirical fact. From the beginning, Jesus’ death has been the lynch pin of the faith called by his name. As powerful as it was, it was not Jesus’ life that created a movement, so much as it was his death, and its surprising aftermath. The followers of the living Jesus were Jews. Paul was the earliest disciple, whose critical-thinking training as a Pharisee caused him to begin wrestling with Jesus’ death – asking if it actually had any meaning – and in a stunning, offensive, heretical break with his Jewish teaching, he soon pronounced that Jesus’ death was not a curse, as the Law claimed in the book of Deuteronomy (21.23), but the death of Jesus was, itself, the very path to life.

Christianity – even in its very best form – is inseparable from the death of Jesus. And Jesus’ horrifying death, properly understood, was not in vain, was not for nothing, because it opens to us a breathtaking view into the heart of God. This is a view that is not accessible, it is a view that could not be known only in looking at Jesus’ life. There is an irony here. The God revealed through such a wounded healer, a dying savior is one which should appeal to a more progressive understanding, a more liberal approach – yet liberal Christians often denounce the death of Jesus in such a way as to preclude that revelation. Maybe this is a case of throwing the baby out with the (bloody) bathwater! And as I’ve said to you, I understand that reflex. But I want to invite you, especially you who want to roll your eyes at such theology, who feel like slamming your hymnal shut every time you see the word “blood,” who want to put your fingers in your ears when you hear the preacher even hint at atonement. I want to invite you to listen. After all, you are our most open-minded thinkers! (Right!?)

Donald Baillie says, “There is an atonement, an expiation, in the [very] heart of God… and out of this comes the forgiveness of our sins.” His statement needs careful thought before you scoff and discard it. The Christian God is not a demanding, blood-thirsty tyrant. Jesus did not save us from God by dying on a Roman Cross. God did not send Jesus to the earth for the express purpose of dying. And the Christian God is not a distant, foreboding, fearful, allpowerful deity who throws his power around manipulating things and events at his divine whim. Quite on the contrary. Scripture makes the simple, but audacious claim that “God is love” (1 John 4.7). And any love that will not expose itself to the vulnerability of suffering… any love that is not ultimately self-giving… any love that would simply refuse to lay down its life for its friends… (John 15.13) is not really love. As you surely have known by your lived experience, true love is always hard… it is always costly… sometimes it is even bloody. And, regardless your Christology, if Jesus represents God for us – then Jesus’ death becomes the clearest prism into the heart of the Divine. God is… self-sacrificial love.

Jesus’ life had been life-changing for his disciples. His death crushed them. Their dreams all died that day. But after that event they called resurrection, the developing Church, beginning with Paul, began trying to make sense of a senseless and truly gruesome death. How did this fit with his beautiful life? In this search, the early Church looked into its own culture and mostly Jewish experience, reaching for all kinds of analogies: Oh… it’s like someone who bought the slave – but then turned around and gave him his freedom… Oh… it’s like the warrior who won the great battle, but died in the warfare… Oh… it’s like the scapegoat, that Moses sent off into the wilderness… Oh… it’s like someone who gave his life for his friends… Yes, it’s like all of those. And God’s love is like none of those. The value of the varying images in scripture is that we can learn from each. We can find truth in each – and yet when we recognize that there are many images, we should be able to see that each is just one perspective of a kaleidoscope that is just a wonderful painting – an attempt to show us God.

There is no theology of atonement. There are many theologies of atonement. The Church has also suggested, using scripture, that God’s grace, if it be grace at all, means no atonement is necessary. This Lenten season we will look at the theologies and the non-theology of atonement present in the images of scripture. We will sing their words, some from the old, 1956 Baptist hymnal. I hope you will sing with joy – even if you disagree with the words that are coming out of your mouth! This is our history, our heritage, and at its core, a deep, and deeply true theology. And if we have an open mind, we will be able to learn from all of them. Despite the way they can be, and have been abused, these images all paint for us the picture of a very different kind of God. A God whose love is true, whose love is redemptive and sacrificial and victorious and life giving and whose love is “mercy within mercy within mercy.”

The value of such a theology, ultimately, is not what it means about Jesus. It is what it means for us. Jesus death is salvation only if it teaches us how to live and how to die – and that is, by living and dying for one another. If Jesus can teach us that… He Did Not Die for Nothing.

May it be so!

Note: We are still in the process of uploading our Sermon Archives. If you would like a specific sermon that is not currently on the web site, please e-mail Russ.

John 2.13-25
Russ Dean, February 19, 2012

When Jesus said the words “Destroy this temple,” some of those standing by did not hear the rest of his sentence. Anger sends blood rushing into your ears – the greater the offense, the faster the flow and the more complete the deafening rage. That’s how I imagine it sounding: “Destroy this temple…” [mouth the words – “and I will rebuild it”]. You think a conversation about changing this room was difficult, or that choosing carpet and upholstery colors for a chapel renovation can raise your blood pressure – oh, you can’t even imagine!

The temple had a one thousand year history. The great King David had desired to build it, had designated the place, gathered iron for nails, and wood and bronze and gold. But because of all the blood he had shed, the house for God’s name would be built by his son, Solomon, instead (1 Chronicles 22). It was a “great house” worthy of its name, hekal. (The Hebrew word for temple actually means “great house”!) The City of David was in the valley to the south of Jerusalem. Solomon built his temple on the hill, just north. It was more than the eye could see.

To create a plaza on the top of a hill, Solomon’s engineers constructed large retaining walls and back-filled them with dirt from the surrounding hills – hauled in buckets and carts, which were powered by the sweat and toil of countless, nameless laborers. This plaza formed the Court of Gentiles, which was open to all – Jews and pagans, pious and curious, locals and
sojourners. An inner wall had seven gates which opened to an even more exclusive area. Two signs have been excavated that warn: entrance Jews only – trespassers will be executed!

As the Hebrew faithful passed through any of these gates, the platform rose the height of 15 steps, and when Jewish males left their wives and daughter behind, entering into the next inner circle, they rose another 12 steps. Within this high court the sacrificial animals were cleansed and priestly ablutions were made in one of 10 bronze basins, or in “the great sea” as it was called, a bowl 16-feet in diameter, which held 10,000 gallons of water. Sacrifices were performed on a bronze altar, but within the temple itself the altar was gold, and another golden table held the “bread of the presence,” which was illuminated by candles on a golden lamp stand.

This temple, proper, was about 100’ by 30’ and 50’ tall. (By comparison, the center pewsection of our sanctuary about 100’ by 30’, and our ceiling is 40’ tall. It was a dominating building, on the top of that platform, on the top of Mount Zion in Jerusalem.) It was constructed of stone, hand-hewn, of course, quarried miles away and hauled to the site. In the front of this structure were two hollow columns, cast in the Jordan valley by skilled bronze workers. The inner walls were made of the prized cedar of Lebanon, which was more precious even than marble, because wood was so rare in Israel.

The heart of the temple was called the Holy of Holies because it was the home of the Ark of the Covenant, which housed two stone tablets inscribed with ten commands, which had been given to Moses on Mount Sinai. The doors into this Holy of Holies were wood, overlaid in pure gold, as was the ark itself, and the two, winged “cherubim” which looked down to guard their invaluable contents. Do you begin to get the picture?

This structure, created without the use of a single mechanized tool, was awe-inspiring. It could be seen for miles as pilgrims came from every direction “up to Jerusalem.” Solomon’s temple stood as the geographic midpoint of Israel for 400 years, and in that time a religion matured around its cultic practice. The temple represented unspeakable holiness…unapproachable mystery… atoning sacrifice. In these four centuries a tradition of devotion rose to unparalleled heights, a tradition which mingled piety and superstition, faithful worship and fearful obeisance. This “great house” came to be understood as the location of the shekinah, God’s living presence – literally, there in the Ark of the Covenant. And that presence was so venerated and so feared that reverence gave way to absurdity. The single priest who was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, only once a year, was made to tie a rope around his waist so, should he die in that sacred room in those few sacred moments, his lifeless frame could be retrieved from a distance – safe from the avenging hands of a resentful god.

It was this structure that the hated Babylonian King, Nebuchanezzar destroyed 587 years before Christ. It was this façade which those Jews, deported into a foreign land, longed for, the two interminable generations of exile. It was this complex that Shesbazzar began to rebuild in 538 BCE, when Cyrus, the King of Persia, allowed the Jews to return home – though it was Zerabbabel, more than 20 years later who completed that second temple, in the springtime of 515 BCE. And it was this sacred sanctuary that a Roman tyrant named Herod refurbished to become one of the marvels of the ancient world. Herod did so not because he had any religious commitments – he did not – but because if any edifice in the ancient world stood larger than the
temple, it was Herod’s own ego.

Twenty years before the birth of Jesus Herod began his work, and though it was largely completed in 18 months, expansion continued for 84 years. This project, which was eventually culminated by Herod Agrippa just six years before the temple was completely destroyed by the Romans, once for all, mostly involved stone masonry. The perimeter of that grand plaza was
expanded, shifting the whole Kidron Valley to the East by several hundred feet. This was accomplished by hauling in more and larger stones for that retaining wall – the largest of those megaliths measuring 39’ long by 13’ wide and 3’ thick – and has been estimated to weigh more than 40 tons! The three sides of the temple mount bordered by these stone walls were 900 by 1000 by 1500 feet. (The church property at Park Road is well shy of 500 feet.) And these walls were topped with porticos, constructed of paired marble columns 41-feet in height. The highest point, the “pinnacle of the temple” (Matthew 4.5), rose 158 feet above the valley floor.

It was this magnificent architectural marvel which Jesus knew. It was on that massive temple mount, walking the sacred stones of that holy ground that Jesus encountered what my friend Bill Hull calls the “huckstering of piety for a profit.” Except for that one, 70-year period, the temple had stood for almost 1,000 years – an incomparable assemblage of stones, and though they formed Israel’s holiest symbol, intended to point people to God, on that day Jesus found them sadly godless. The Holy of Holies in Herod’s expanded temple lacked the Ark of the Covenant, which had been lost for more than 500 years. It contained, instead, only a stone marking that place. This image may serve as an appropriate metaphor for Jesus’ challenge that day – for that place which had once been filled with the presence of God, now contained only the cold stone of a superficial monument, the lifeless sediment of a superstitious relic.

I’ve given you these four pages of description because you need to understand how big it was, physically, and in the soul and spirit of Israel. And Jesus said, it needs to come down… All Of It! They heard that message loud and clear (as if he were speaking through a new sound system!)

In his commentary on the book of John, Bill Hull characterizes Jesus’ action with these words:

…in an act fraught with eschatological finality, he repudiated in principle an establishment where trade had usurped the place of worship and sacrifice had become a substitute for world-wide compassion… The Jews had accused Jesus of endangering the Jerusalem Temple, whereas he insisted that they were the ones whose practices were certain to reduce it to ruin… the Temple keepers chose a course that led to its utter ruin at the hands of the Romans within a generation. Stones do not a temple make…

You could not dream up a more offensive challenge, a more in-your-face repudiation of all that was deemed right and good and holy and true. It was like burning a whole case of American flags on the steps of the United States capital. It was like standing in a church pulpit shouting expletives and ripping pages from the red-letter edition of a King James Bible. It was like sitting through the seventh-inning stretch at Fenway Park because you can’t tear yourself away from the New York Yankee’s you’re cheering for on your portable TV! It was sacrilege.

Simply put, the temple was Israel, it represented the totality of all that God had called Judaism to be, and Jesus, in a word, had called it worthless. In the trial that cost Jesus his very life, this was one of the accusations against him: “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple…’” (Mark 14.58). But so many failed to understand him – then and now – for “stones do not a temple make.” What Jesus said is the edifice of religion is useless – all of the temples and cathedrals and spires are just monuments to someone’s ego – if they do not point beyond themselves to God. What Jesus said is the morality of religion is worse than useless – it is actually destructive, the rules and regulations, the religious requirements – if they do not lead you to show your love of God by loving your neighbor (who sometimes looks like an enemy!)

Jesus had the destruction of an edifice in mind, but it was not the temple of Jerusalem. The “temple” Jesus had marked for destruction was not made of stone – it was made of the stony hearts of fearful, if well-meaning people, who had so deeply ensconced their views of God in a system of interpreting God, that the interpretation became more important than God. Or, as N.T. Wright so eloquently says it, “…the coming of the kingdom, as Jesus announced it, put before his contemporaries a challenge…: give up your interpretation of your tradition, which is driving you toward ruin.”

Do you understand? What “temples” have we erected? Personal… political… pious temples? What traditions have become our gods? What interpretations have become so engrained, so etched in stone that we can no longer see the Living God through them – the Life and the Mystery and the Beauty to which they point?

In what might be the saddest, most ironic parody in 2,000 years of Christian history, the church as we know it is building a temple every bit as imposing – and every bit as empty – as the one Jesus condemned 2,000 years ago. Stone upon stone upon stone. This is true at least in terms of public opinion – and while we might try to claim the “moral high ground” of not worrying what other people think, the Church needs to take quite seriously the lack of trust and the loss of integrity which is the result. If there is no trust and no faith in our integrity, all of our building will be in vain (Psalm 127.1). We might as well pull down these stones, as well (the bricks in this sanctuary). And the building block of this construction program is not the devil! It’s not Islamic extremists! It’s not even those bleeding-heart liberal, god-forsaken Democrats! (That was supposed to be a joke!)

It’s the Bible.

In every major denomination, and all around the world, the Bible is creating walls that divide us. Or, more precisely, interpretation of the Bible has become an idolatrous temple. If Jesus were again walking among us, he would stand before us, he would open our beloved book, and once again he would point beyond the words of the book, to the truth of its benevolent spirit. And he would say, again… “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you…” (Matthew 5.21). Here it is in black and white, but we’ve got to look beyond. We have made of the words of the Bible stony, intractable relics of superstition, fearful, bludgeoning words of oppression. We use the Bible to beat down foreigners – instead of hearing the Truth that we are all foreigners, whom God has welcomed. We use the Bible to condemn the homosexual – instead of hearing the Truth that we are all made in the image of God (Genesis 1.27) … that nothing God has made shall be called unclean (Acts 10.15). We use the Bible to claim our way as the only way – instead of hearing the Truth that it is not God’s will that any should perish… (See 2 Peter 3.9 and Matthew 18.14. And, if it is not God’s will… how will any perish!?) We arrogantly proclaim a monopoly on God, whom we have boxed into our little temples, instead of hearing Jesus’ challenge to those who thought they, too, had all the truth: “You will say to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and I will say to you, ‘Depart from me… I never knew you!’” (Matthew 7.23)

The Bible has become a building block for dissention and destruction and division. The edifice needs to come down – and even if it takes the destruction of the Christian church as we know it, it will. For Jesus’ challenge to the authorities that day was a reminder that no “temple” will stand forever. No temple except the temple which is God. In the beautiful picture of eternal life, painted for John in his strange and wonderful Revelation, he says, “I saw no temple in the [heavenly] city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (Revelation 21.22).

If you have not been confronted by Jesus, you have not been listening! He is an equalopportunity offender! If he has not challenged you to the core – what you hold as authoritative, all that you believe, you probably have not let him walk the holy ground of your own heart, either.

The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate reminder that destruction is never the last word. There is new life and new hope, always. Destroy this temple that hearts of stone can beat fleshly free!

May it be so!

Note: We are still in the process of uploading our Sermon Archives. If you would like a specific sermon that is not currently on the web site, please e-mail Russ.

Isaiah 56.6-8; Jeremiah 7.8-11; Mark 11..15-19
Russ Dean, February 4, 2012

I’d love to have one of those magic wands, like in Harry Potter, made out of some twisted limb of an ancient tree, maybe with a strand of hair from the tail of a unicorn intertwining the grain. That gives the wand more power. And I’d love to have a wizard’s magic, so I could just wave that wand, speak an incantation, and watch the magic explode out of the end of that splinter of wood. Wouldn’t that be so cool?

The students of the Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry studied these spells; they memorized their names; they learned their origins and studied who had used them, on whom, and to what effect. There were 138 spells in all, each with its own incantation, its own magic charm. There was the expulso spell, which caused objects to explode. Wouldn’t that be fun? The evanesco, vanishing spell, made its targets simply disappear. The next time you’re at the Lincoln Memorial, on the mall in Washington, DC, wouldn’t it be nice to pronounce, glisseo,and just watch those dozens of stone steps flatten out into a long, slick slide? With February 14th just around the corner, all the boyfriends in the crowd could certainly use the orchideous
incantation for your favorite girl. Just like that… you could make that bouquet of flowers (which you forgot to buy for Valentine’s Day!), just appear out of the caster’s wand.

Also in that long list there’s the babbling curse and the cheering charm, the jelly-legs jinx and the anti-cheating spell. And there’s one that I wish someone would cast on me – with my calendar-challenged muggle self. There are wizards, if you’re not familiar, and muggles (the non-magical rest of us), and I could use some powerful wizard to point a wand my way and pronounce a strong dose of Repello Muggletum, which is used to keep muggles away from wizarding places by causing us to suddenly remember an important meeting we were supposed to be attending – like that one I missed on Friday morning, with our Endowments Committee. For the third time. (On second thought, maybe the last thing Bob Clare really needs is a magic wand to wave over his pastor!)

I was fascinated this week, reading the list of Harry Potter’s spells and incantations. One that I didn’t see, though, might actually be the one I’d choose among all of them if I were a wizard. In keeping with JK Rowling’s practice of naming her spells by twisting around some real Latin phrase, I’d give an ecclesiastical twist and use a bit of biblical Greek, and I’d call my spell the parapalegio homileticus. With that spell I’d wave a wand across a crowd of people, who would suddenly become incapacitated from the waist down, and find themselves sitting, mezmerized, for as long as I spoke to them. They would sit, unable to move because they would find themselves enthralled, bewitched, fascinated, entranced, charmed, captivated… by words of homiletical brilliance. In a word, I would speak, and they would be Spellbound.

I spent some time this week with the “Red Letter Edition” of the Holy Bible. It’s the King James, of course, and it sits on my shelf with a dozen of its siblings, the Youth Bible, the OneYear Bible, the Hebrew Bible, the interlinear Greek New Testament, Santa Biblia – for our trips to Cuba, and Granny Dean’s old Scofield Reference Bible (in case I need to know the precise date of the rapture and the detail of the tribulation which will follow!) My Red Letter King James is in “Giant Print” – which seems appropriate. Not only does every statement Jesus made jump off the pages because it’s printed in the color of his blood, but those words are big enough to virtually scream, “Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not?” (Mark 8.18)

The Red Letter Edition of the King James Bible is the only Bible for many people. Not only is it translated out of those obscure foreign languages into the King’s English which Jesus actually spoke (I hope you understand that I’m kidding about that!), but it calls our attention to the most important language ever recorded – let us listen now for the words of our Lord! With every red lettered word, it’s as if Jesus has just stared through your eyes down into your soul screaming, in an intense whisper, “Listen to me, boy. I’m talkin’ to you!”

While it is the only Bible some people will ever read, it has been frowned-upon by the scholarly community, because since the middle of the 1800’s the world’s best and brightest biblical book worms, those Greek-geeks who know every “jot and tittle,” have been insisting that we cannot read the Gospels as if they are just newspaper reports, eye-witness events of history. They insist that some of the words of Jesus may actually be the words of Matthew, Mark or Luke, or those red letters may be, in point of fact, the affirmations of a developing church, statements of faith, theological convictions placed onto the lips of Jesus by an evangelist named John. So they shouldn’t be red, because we can’t know which ones he actually said, which words Jesus really, literally spoke.

But they all agree, the common folk and the scholars alike, that all of Jesus’ words should be read. (R-E-A-D!) No one in the history of the world has had a greater impact. Earthquakes have changed the flow of rivers. Armies have changed the shape of nations. Revolutionaries have changed systems of government. Medical research has transformed the outlook of today and visionary inventions are altering the shape of tomorrow. But Jesus changes hearts. Millions upon millions – one at a time. Jesus changes our hearts – with the power of his words.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3.3)

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you… That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5.44-45)

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.… (Matthew 7.1)

I say not unto thee, Until seven times [shall ye forgive your brother], but, Until seventy times seven. (Matthew 18.22)

As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. (Luke 6.31)

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25.40)

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. (John 14.27)

Jesus changes hearts with his words. But they are not easy words. Every time we think we have him figure out, he catches us off guard. He is called the Prince of Peace, but he also says, “I came not to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10.34). He knew the commandment to honor father and mother, but he asks, so “Who is my mother and my father?”(Mark 3.31) Jesus repeatedly chastises the rich and then honors a woman who wastes a whole year’s worth of wages by pouring an expensive ointment on his feet. He says anyone who’s not against him is for him (Luke 9.50), opening the door to a radical inclusiveness – and then slams the door shut by saying just the opposite: he who is not with me is against me (Matthew 12.30). Once someone offered to follow him but asked if he could first bury his father, and Jesus said, callously, Let the dead bury their own dead (Matthew 8.22). He spoke simply, directly to his disciples, so they might “know the secrets of the kingdom of God,” but to everyone else, he said he spoke in parables, “so that ‘looking they many not perceive, and listening they may not understand’” (Luke 8.9-10).

Jesus brings peace with his teaching – but only if we are willing to listen carefully, to take the Long Way Around, to understand that there are no short cuts to a “truth that is always a becoming.” When Jesus drove out the “moneychangers” in the temple, turned over their tables and shouted his disapproval, the text says he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. In saying this he was just repeating the teaching of the rabbis. This instruction was later written in the Mishnah, a book of Jewish rabbinic instruction which codified in writing the oral traditions of the Pharisees. The Temple mount was located at the top of Mount Zion, which was at the very heart of Jerusalem, so it became a convenient cut-through for passersby, Jewish
and Gentile, going from one side of the city to another. As they would make this shortcut, they would have with them the belongings they were carrying for their daily work – so the Temple mount began to become a gathering place, a meeting place, a place to exchange greetings and conduct personal affairs and to execute business deals. It began to look like a marketplace, and it reminded Jesus of Jeremiah’s challenge to the people 500 years before – you are making this place a den of robbers… it is a house of prayer! (Jeremiah 7.11)

So Jesus said, if you are going to come here, you are going to come here empty-handed. You’re going to come here to listen. You’re going to come here and leave the urgent affairs of a busy, but superficial world behind. For my teaching will take all the concentration you can give it. And with many other voices vying for their attention, amazingly, they sat. And they listened. From the time he was twelve years old, talking to those men in the temple, until the day he spoke dying words from a Roman cross, his words have cast a spell on his hearers – it is a spell that
gives life.

Jesus calls us, still, to come to him empty-handed – that we may be ready to receive from the master teacher. To come to listen – that we may have ears to hear. To come, leaving behind urgent affairs that are not always important – to hear lessons that are never superficial, lessons which always call us to dig one more layer down, to find a new depth of insight and hope.

Jesus didn’t need a magic wand or a parapalegio homileticus incantation to cast a magic spell on his hearers. His words were spellbinding not because they were new ideas (they were not) and not because he had an orator’s voice (though he might have). His words were spellbinding because they are true. And they are true because the teacher proved them with his life.

One of three unforgivable curses in JK Rowling’s lexicon of magical spells is called the Avada Kedavra, the killing curse. The Aramaic word “abracadabra” means “let the thing be destroyed,” and refers to an ancient curse in which the “thing” to be destroyed was an illness. A witch doctor of sorts would create a potion and speak “abracadabra” – let the thing that is killing you, be destroyed. JK Rowlings twists the meaning here so the avada kedavra curse becomes one in which the object of the spell is himself or herself the thing to be killed. Instant, painless death. “There is no counter-curse or method of blocking this spell – [unless] someone sacrifices their life for someone else. [If so] the person who was saved will not encounter any adverse effects of any curses by the specific attacker…” Harry’s mother had sacrificed her life to save her son – and this sacrifice was the key to his power.

The key to the spellbinding power that Jesus’ words have always had over his disciples is that those words come to life by the poignancy and the power of Jesus’death. He believed what he said enough to prove it with all he was. And he calls us to follow. No shortcuts, no easy answers, no simple teaching – only the long way around:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. (Luke 9.23-24)

The power of Jesus’ words is that they are not just words. They are a Way of life. And when we follow, the long way around, dying to ourselves and giving ourselves to one another, they become the Way to abundant life (John 14.9 and 10.10).

May it be so!

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