May you speak the language of silence today,
May you hear the sounds between words,
May you embrace the quiet hours of the night,
May you seek empty stillness before sunsets,
May your faith in listening be stronger than your desire to speak,
May the rhythm of our breathing reflect the hopeful phrasing of our words.
May the silence nourish your soul and feed forgiveness.
–Richard Bryant
The week’s lectionary passage takes us to the familiar home of John 3:1-17. It’s hard to resist the homiletical allure of preaching John 3:16, yet like the perennial texts we face at Christmas and Easter, is there anything new to be said about these most well-known verses of the four gospels?
If there’s anything about this passage that I find unavoidable, it’s the emphasis on God’s love. “For God so loved the world,” Jesus says to Nicodemus. Unfortunately, we often gloss over those words and read them as a prologue to the more important, “that he gave us his only begotten son.” They are the key to understanding verses 16 and 17, perhaps the whole pericope.
I don’t want to move on so quickly because we might miss something about the relationship between love and creation. Secondly, with this gift of love and creation comes a great responsibility that goes far beyond “belief” in the son who was sent “to us.” To understand our role in our relationship with God, we need verse 17. If we believe in the son who was gifted to us, we are accepting the terms of the gift, that the gift came not to condemn and further the same love of humanity that prompted the gift in the first place. That’s why the pericope doesn’t stop with verse 16.
Other religious traditions, particularly in the ancient world, show God (or gods) engaging in brutal and violent creation stories. In the ancient Sumerian religion, the goddess Tiamat was ripped in half to create sea and sky. We know of the traditional tales of the Greco-Roman pantheon that showed the gods’ contempt for each other and human beings. Gods in the ancient world hated people. Yet, in Genesis, we’re told humans were created as a little less than angels. In these familiar words from John, the early Christian community is reminded that the God of Israel loves the world. God does not hate humanity. We are not God’s playthings. God does not treat us like chess pieces on a board, moving us around according to a plan only God knows. God loves us. We are God’s partners and friends. Isn’t it wonderful to be loved by God?
God loves us. God gives us a son because he loves us. Because God loves us and gives us a son, he says it’s out of a desire not to condemn humanity but to love humanity. What is keeping us from getting the point? God loves us. Why can’t we love others unconditionally as God does? Why can’t we love others without condemning and judging? Doesn’t believing in God’s son make this kind of unconditional love possible? I believe it does. God created us out of love, not hate. Shouldn’t this free us from hate? How can we claim to love God’s son if we have hate in our hearts? If hate is in our hearts, the John 3:16 process stops, and the love God first shared in giving us Jesus stops with us. If love is there, we keep passing John 3:16 on, and that creative “For God so loved the world” process never ends.
–Richard Bryant
Every year, the first Sunday of Lent centers on one story: the temptation of Jesus, by the devil, over forty days in the desert immediately following his baptism. Matthew and Luke are the only two gospels that retell this head-to-head story. Mark and John don’t include it at all. For some reason, they left it on the cutting room floor. Of the two versions, my favorite is Matthew’s. Matthew gives us greater detail, dialogue, and imagery. I have always had an affinity for the Matthew passage. When I was in seminary, I was assigned this text. But instead of preaching it from the traditional perspective, the way most churches and preachers do it every year, I was given the more challenging task of retelling the story from the devil’s perspective. How would this story look and sound if you told it from the other character’s eyes? That exercise made me a better preacher and is one reason I look forward to the first Sunday of Lent every year.
The main thing I learned about the devil (specifically Matthew’s perspective on the devil) in preparing that original sermon was this: if the devil was going to tempt Jesus or us, he wasn’t going to be anything like the caricatures of evil or Satan we’ve become accustomed to seeing; images that were invented in the Middle Ages and became popular in renaissance art. You know the ones I’m talking about, the pointed horns, the red leathery skin, the pitchfork, the wispy tail. Whoever heard of a red devil anyway? This was back in the dark ages, before Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton, the greatest minds in history, discovered all devils were blue.
To be genuinely tempting, the devil would need to be quite ordinary, a little charming, unassuming, friendly, a little witty, someone you’d like to go to dinner with, maybe that neighbor with the big TV who’ll invite you over to watch the NCAA tournament, someone with whom you can relax. That’s who the devil is. The devil is cool, calm, and collected. You never see the devil coming, and when the devil asks you to make a moral choice or by the time temptation is placed before you, it doesn’t seem like temptation. It will seem like the right, normal, even natural thing to do. After all, this is your friend, that guy, your buddy; why would your regular next-door neighbor friend with all the same interests, kids in the same school, and a nice two-car garage lead you astray? The devil couldn’t look like one of us, could he? Could the devil be a mirror image of us? The devil is a narcissist whose greatest desire is to be loved and adored, but ultimately, he wants to fit in: seem typical, like us, and even ordinary. The devil seeks to seem normal; blending in and appearing average is his grand goal. Who is afraid of the average? Average flies under the radar. The average is undetected. This is what makes the devil so diabolical. The devil is in the details.
What are the details of Jesus’ temptations? You just heard them: turn stones into bread, throw yourself off the temple and let the angels catch you, and worship me to gain all the power in the world. The specifics may be different, but the temptations are essentially the same: when it comes down to it, the only person you can depend on is yourself. You can’t rely on God, others, your faith, or anything other than yourself.
Remember what I said about the devil fitting in and looking like us, even being the mirror image of ourselves? We are our own worst enemies. Ladies and gentlemen, we have met the enemy, which is us. Each of these three temptations is the same. You don’t need God. You only need you. When you get to the heart of the matter, is that not the essence of every temptation we face as human beings? We can do it ourselves. Why trust God? Why listen to God? Why have faith in anything beyond ourselves? Why not take matters into our hands? After all, we have no idea what the future may hold, and we’re hungry now! The scriptures say the angels will catch us now, put God to the test now! We want to control our destiny now! Give into the devil’s offers of power and control now! Jesus can fill his stomach.
Jesus knows the scriptures say what they say. He knows he can rule the world. But here’s the dirty little secret about Christianity: self-reliance may be the American way, but it’s not the Christian way. The secret to passing these temptations, Jesus teaches us, is that even though we can, and doesn’t mean that we should. Even though we can turn stone into bread, test God’s promises in scripture, or take the devil up on his offer to run our affairs, it doesn’t mean we should. Even though we can do many things, it doesn’t mean we should.
That’s the greatest trick the devil is always trying to pull; he makes what you think you ought to do sound reasonable, regular, logical, and the right thing to do. But, of course, you’re hungry, so why not feed yourself? He even cherry-picks scripture to make his point. Of course, the Bible says God will send his angels; it’s right there in the Bible, so why not put God to the test and show the world that the Bible is the true word of God. Throw yourself from the temple, and his angels will lift you; it will testify to the veracity of God’s word. Of course, you have the right to rule the world; you’re Jesus Christ; what could be wrong with that, worship me, and you’d still be in charge and calling the shots. He makes it all sound normal, natural, logical, and even scripturally sound. That’s how you know you’re being tempted when the wrong thing feels like the righteous, holy, Biblical, and normal thing to do.
The real temptations aren’t drinking, gambling, or looking at porn online. No, the essence of temptation has always been buying into the devil’s big lie that we can do everything ourselves; we don’t need God (or each other) in our lives. Have we bought into that lie? Do we believe the devil is telling the truth? Do we believe his lies that we can depend on our self-sufficiency? I can’t answer that question for us (or you). Only you know whom you’re listening to and whom you believe. Do you trust the man from Nazareth or this person asking you to make what sounds like a perfectly reasonable choice but compromises your morality on every possible level?
The devil wants us to sing a variation of his favorite song: “My Way/Your Way.”
–Richard Bryant
What does it mean to be transfigured? That’s part of being human. We want to describe the indescribable. It is the word Matthew chooses for double duty: to describe an indescribable experience and to capture the importance of this theological moment on the mountain. Transfiguration is a two-way process, especially in this text. Jesus is transformed, and the disciples are transformed by what they witness. Everyone is changed by what happens on the mountain in one way or another. No one will ever be the same. Jesus is different; his purpose is set wholly toward the events that will lead to his death. The three disciples now see Jesus, no pun intended, in a different light. It’s more than they comprehend. They can’t grasp the whole picture but realize there is so much more to Jesus than they ever thought possible. They can’t put it into words. As the passage says, Jesus doesn’t even want them to try. Keep this quiet, he says. It’s more than most people can bear on a good day. Jesus indicates that the meaning of the transfiguration (what occurred on that mountain) won’t be fully understood until after the events of Easter.
So where do we plug in? Are we playing a semantics game? If we return to my first question, what’s the difference between transfiguration and transformation? Why does the Bible use the word transfiguration? How do we, on one end of the transfiguration process, understand what happens when we come to terms with who Jesus is, what he’s all about, and what’s expected of us when we’re let in on the big plan? How does that change us and our level of commitment to the team?
First of all, transformation is transfiguration light. Transformation is more of a surface-level change. You can transform by simply getting a haircut and changing clothes. Transformation is ephemeral. Transformation might involve learning a new language. Finally, transformations are more temporary or can be undone. Transformations, in short, are not permanent.
Transfigurations, on the other hand, indicate systemic change. When you alter something at a root level, you are transfigured. If you’ve been transfigured, it is not easily undone, redone, or able to return to whatever status quo you inhabited before the transfiguration. Transfiguration is not surface-level change. Instead of a haircut and a shoe shine, you are working on your heart and soul. Fundamentally, your perspective and identity are altered, and you come away looking at the world in a different light. So this is not an exercise in semantic hair-splitting. Transfiguration is a big deal for all involved. Jesus wants us with him to see what he sees, to be on the same page that he’s on, as up to speed as he is, and understand as much as we can know about God’s plan for humanity. In short, Jesus wants us to be transfigured by his actions.
Jesus places us in the most critical place and time of our lives. We’re not aware of it, but this is it. This is the most important moment in our lives. Up to this point in our lives (what happens in Holy Week will be more important, but up until now, this is it), nothing we’ve done matches this moment. This is the highlight of our lives. Jesus has placed us in a position and place to have our lives transfigured by God in a way we’ve never thought possible. Short of being resurrected from the dead like Lazarus (or Jesus), we’re about to be a part of the next best thing. We don’t know this, of course. We’re blindly following Jesus up the mountain and doing what he says. Here’s where the rubber meets the road:
Do we trust Jesus enough to follow him up the mountain? (Jesus, you want me to go up a mountain? I’m out of shape. Can’t you get transfigured somewhere accessible, where it’s flat and requires less physical exertion and spiritual commitment from me?)
Do we want to be transfigured? As I said a moment ago, that’s a serious, systemic, profound change. We probably like how we are and are comfortable with our lifestyles and expectations for the world around us. We are set in our ways and like things the way they are. Being transfigured sounds frightening. We heard one of the passages throw around the words “fear and trembling” a moment ago. Isn’t it our instinct to say, “No, thank you, Jesus, I’m cool just as I am? I’ll reserve the right to be transformed on my time and schedule. But I’ll treat being transfigured like I treat a colonoscopy. Something I would rather not do, and I’ll schedule later.”
Jesus is in no mood to negotiate. We didn’t even realize this was a negotiation. Jesus says, “You want to be transfigured. You need to be transfigured. You’re going up the mountain. Grab your climbing sandals; this isn’t optional.”
“But I need to go by the outdoor store and pick up hiking boots, a new Columbia jacket, a backpack, and a fancy sleeping bag,” we say. Jesus says, “Nope.” “We go as we are with our sandals and robes. Trust me.”
This is one of the reasons I remain optimistic about the future of the United Methodist Church. Transfiguration, change, hope, and everything being worked out, in the end, do not depend on us. So Jesus tells these three disciples. If Jesus makes a promise, Jesus keeps his word. Jesus will ensure you get home if he takes you on a trip. If Jesus takes you up the mountain, you will come back alive. We may be climbing up the mountain now, and I trust Jesus is changing us in ways I may not understand now, but he will bring us back down in one piece. Jesus has never let me down yet.
Everyone wants to take their mountain-top experience home. The three disciples wished to hold onto the experience. They knew it was special. If you’ve ever been that close to God, one of those thin moments where heaven and earth come so close you can feel the presence of God, you know how they felt.
What could they do? These were practical, hard-working men. Let’s build these guys a shelter. We’re up on a mountain, it’s the middle of the night, and we’re all going to need something to sleep in. It makes sense, right? You can see the logic of their thinking. However, God is not a noun (a person, place, or thing in the conventional sense.) You can’t hold onto God the way you grab your Bible. It works the other way around. God holds on to you. Our greatest spiritual frustrations come from trying to hold on to God, tame God, and make God fit into boxes (shelters) of our creations. Sometimes we do this out of the best intentions, and sometimes because we’re control freaks. But this is not how God works. God holds on to us. We can’t grab the intangible cosmic reality and the reality at the heart of the cosmos and start giving God orders. We are the ones who fall on our knees and pray, “Here I am, Lord, send me.”
When we understand this, we realize what it means to be transfigured by Jesus Christ.
–Richard Bryant
When no one can read (and by that, I mean that most people are functionally illiterate), the phrase “you have heard it said” takes on a whole new meaning. People had probably heard a lot about what the scriptures said and didn’t say when it came to the law. Some of it, no doubt, was made up. Other parts were interpreted to fit the respective agendas of whoever interpreted the scripture. If the rabbis or teachers looked and sounded convincing, the crowds were liable to believe anything they heard. People, then as they are now, were susceptible to misinformation, disinformation, and believing in anything that sounded vaguely religious, as long as it had a few “thees” and “thous” sprinkled in.
Then comes this upstart young Rabbi out of Galilee, preaching up a storm, calling into question how everyone has heard, understood, and interpreted everything that came before him. He’s setting up a new paradigm for how people in his faith tradition should understand the law, the commandments, and the rules that have guided their people for over a thousand years. Because, as Jesus points out, and later on down the road, one of his most important followers would emphasize even further, a man named Paul, the law (and those whose job it was to make sure people followed it) had become a burden to ordinary people. Instead of freeing them for the worship of God and love of neighbor, they did the exact opposite. Following the law became their God. The law became more important than the God who gave it to them. That’s a problem. So the Sermon on the Mount is about one big idea, how do you reconcile the law (what you find in the Old Testament (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) with Jesus’ views of love, community, and wholeness? In other words, how do we walk and chew gum at the same time?
The first thing we need to do is recognize that Jesus is on a tear here. He’s getting wound up; he will use metaphors, humor, and vivid illustrations. We see Jesus teaching at his Rabbinic finest. He’s going to make some outlandish examples that are not meant to be taken literally to illustrate these points: you cannot be literalists when it comes to the law, no one can live up to every fine point of the law, it’s impossible to do, even those who claim they can do so. We are all lawbreakers. God is the only law keeper. In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees and Sadducees taught that every law mattered to God and carried the same weight, no matter how trivial that law seemed. In the 18th and 19th chapters of the Book of Leviticus, God prohibits homosexuality, shellfish, and mixed fibers. God draws no distinction between homosexuality, enjoying shrimp, or wearing polyester. God doesn’t do 1st, second, or third-degree commandments. (Remember, there are 613 total commandments in the Old Testament.) In the eyes of those who compiled Leviticus, one sin is as bad as the next. None of us have a high horse to rest upon. Jesus is about to make these examples. Have you ever heard of a church splitting over seafood? It’s in the Bible, right there beside the verses about homosexuality. But we like our shrimp and scallops, and we’re comfortable with double standards, no matter how small. I think this is Jesus’ question this morning. How can we be people of faith and integrity?
He starts each illustration with these words, “You have heard it said.” He knows what gets around. He knows what people prioritize as major laws and minor laws. He knows a great deal of finger-pointing and “at least I’m not doing that, Lord” going on in the crowd. Jesus wants to level the playing field. He starts with a big one from the ten commandments: murder. We can all agree that murder is wrong. You can see their heads nodding in the crowd. Oh yeah, murder is horrible; we would never murder anyone for any reason at all. Then he comes around and hits them with the one-two punch. Well, do you know what’s as bad as murder? According to the law, if you insult and call them a fool, “You will be liable to the hell of fire.” Wow! That went from zero to a hundred in an instant. Then, like the train Kenny Rogers is traveling on with the Gambler, the train got deadly quiet. Wait one minute, Jesus; we’ve all called someone a fool. Driving home from work, down at the docks unloading fish, in an argument with a family or friend person, you’re telling me the punishment for that is hellfire damnation? Maybe I need to rethink my position in this law business because it looks like I’m going to hell from where I’m standing. Jesus says it’s a certainty.
A moment ago, I was good at casting judgment on murderers, but now, just being judgmental and calling someone a fool has landed me in Hell. Jesus has made his first point. If you’re going to enforce all of them and all of them equally, the law, that is, we’re all going to end up in Hell. So maybe we better be careful when we start throwing around terms like “God’s law says” because we might be condemning ourselves. He goes on to make the same argument about debts, but it’s the next one where he casts the net wide and where it ought to make some of us, including me, uncomfortable.
Jesus goes back to the ten commandments. “You have heard it said that you shall not commit adultery.” Again, I think we’re all on the same page that adultery is wrong. He defines lusting in your heart as adultery. Remember when Jimmy Carter talked about this one? Okay, we can accept that it’s probably not moral, but Jesus equates just thinking about another person in the wrong as bad as adultery itself. Then he takes it one step further. “Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” He’s got me there. I’m done, for I’ve committed adultery. I’m a ten commandment violator. Do you want my ordination credentials, or should I mail them in after the service? I’m betting we’ve got some other adultery committers, according to Jesus’ definition, here this morning as well. That’s one of the big ones, one of THE 10 commandments. According to Jesus, I’m living in a state of constant adultery. I’ve no plans to divorce Mary, and she tells me I’m stuck with her.
Is that what Jesus is saying? Does he deny the reality of divorce and broken marriages? Or is he saying no one can live up to the full measure of everything written in this book, and if you tried, it would result in total paralysis? And if you did, you’d be hypocritical by trying to call out the sins of others because you are breaking the ten commandments and consigning yourself to Hell just by getting out of bed in the morning! We’re all breaking the ten commandments in one way or another. So how can we get on our religious high horses and start condemning others for doing the same? This is what Jesus is saying. When you think you’re following God’s word and law, you realize you’re not and will never be able to.
Maybe, Jesus is saying we ought to find a better way to relate to the law rather than forcing (or ignoring that we are) ourselves to live as hypocrites and judge each other when not one of us can measure up to the rules outlined in the Old Testament. Do we want to pretend to be holy hypocrites or loving neighbors? This is the contrast Jesus is trying to make. How do we keep the law from becoming a burden, a means of exclusion, that if we had any integrity at all, we would kick all of us out of the church, shut ourselves down, because none of us are sacred enough to be members of the church if we say, “its God’s word all or nothing.” We’ve all broken God’s word; we will keep breaking God’s word, and Jesus says you don’t have to be held prisoners by the “You’ve heard it said to those of ancient times” way of life.
Jesus is saying remember what I told you a few verses ago, not in ancient times, but right now: blessed are those whom the law would seek to mow over, condemn, judge, forget, deny, exclude, and perpetually ignore. Those are the people I’m trying to reach, the very fools for Christ, those cut off by divorce, broken by grief, death, and loss, and who live in fear for their lives.
How do we live between these two guardrails? Jesus’ beatitudes and the excesses of the law, excesses that can cripple the spiritual life of believers if we let them. The answer, key, or clue, if you like, can be found in the last couple of verses. Jesus is trying to point us in the right direction to help us keep it on the road. Living this way, swearing by the law, and claiming falsely (like you could live by everything in the Old Testament) is just going to age you prematurely, turn your black hair white, or in my case, cause it to fall out.
The stress isn’t worth it; he’s ultimately saying. He does, however, add this, if you want to be right with God and your neighbor, just let your yes be yes, and your no mean no. When you combine that with loving your neighbor as you love yourself, everything else will fall into place. You will gain a sense of perspective that’s not possible if you’re trying to nitpick each other on who’s following every commandment in the Old Testament or realizing you’ll never measure up to each point in the law. Jesus wants us to see the bigger picture, his perspective, and that we’re all doomed without his grace. We need him, not the law, and certainly less of our interpretations of Old Testament laws written for illiterate people living in Israel over 2000 years ago.
If we can’t be happy with him, we won’t ever be satisfied, and there isn’t anything I can do about that.
–Richard Bryant
There is much for United Methodists to address in addition to the primary matter still occupying most of our Methodist time. What else must we discuss, with equal amounts of prophetic force, as we continue into the third decade of the 21st century? How, in an era of dissolution and disaffiliation, where these controversies mark an apparent dilution of our message, ministry, and purpose, do we continue to proclaim the revolutionary teachings of a 1st-century rabbi executed by the Romans (in the most brutal form of capital punishment possible), for speaking on behalf the poor, downtrodden, and oppressed? How do we share the rabbi’s life and teachings when many remain ignorant of Jesus’ life and death? How can we speak to the life-giving reality and hope he addressed when we find ourselves willingly mired in the same systems of death, power, and dominion which take life, oppress people, and stifle the light of the world? Yes, it’s time to step back, take a breath, take a knee, say we are sorry, find a breach, and begin repairing the world today. At the moment, this may be all we can do. This is the least we can do. It is something we must do. God is calling us to multi-task: end capital punishment, stop the normalization of mass gun violence, confront cycles of systemic poverty, upend a health care system that is bankrupting ordinary Americans, and call out racism whenever and wherever we see it.
The movement to free United Methodism from the downward spiral of cultural, social, and religious oblivion is not solely a battle to find space for our LGBTQ sisters and brothers in our pulpits and pews. As we begin black history month, we remember the need to work continuously and diligently for the rights of African-Americans, queer African-Americans, and all other persons of color to be heard and seen in congregations across the United States. Diversity, equality, and inclusion are not unachievable ideals, boxes to be checked, or Marxist talking points. They are the very hallmarks of the kingdom of God. It is what I call Critical Grace Theory. Without diversity, equality, and inclusion, there is no Grace, freely given and freely received. Suppose we cease to proclaim the gospel of Jesus, a message rooted in cultural diversity, human equality, and radical inclusion. In that case, we forgo the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ. We stop being Christians. We become spiritual nomads, willing to worship anyone or anything that uses the trappings of our former faith to provide us with the one thing we think we need more than anything else: security. In our frantic quest for safety, we’ve allowed ourselves to be scared of anyone who isn’t like us. Fear kills God. Fear kills religion. Fear kills the love of neighbor. Fear is killing us. Fear killed Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ, authentic Christianity, has never trafficked in fear. Jesus’ message is hope, joy, light, and love. You are not hearing the gospel if you do not hear these words in your church. When you encounter these teachings, you will see diversity, equality, and inclusion practiced on an unimaginable scale in most American congregations. I long for this long denominational winter to end.
I look forward to a spiritual spring, the coming kingdom of God, where God’s love is available to all who seek and desire a relationship with the church and Jesus without any preconditions. Why is this so much to ask?
In the meantime, we are not powerless! You have a voice. Now is the time to start with a conversation and coffee. Make some new friends. Contact your AME, AME Zion, CME, or other African American religious neighbors. Learn some Black history, especially the Black history of your community. Ask questions. Pray with your sisters and brothers in Christ. Remember Isaiah 58: repair the breach and restore the streets.
–Richard Bryant
You are the light of the world. That is a beautiful compliment. It’s the kind of thing you might expect to read when you open a get-well card. If someone had bought a card for me with that printed inside, I would have felt happy, moved emotionally, and encouraged.
Now imagine someone told you those words, face to face. That changes the entire dynamic. It’s one thing to read a sentiment; it’s another thing to hear the terms for the thought (or idea) to go from a dimensional idea to a three-dimensional reality. In short, it’s nice to hear a compliment, for someone to make a little gesture of thanks, or say a few words of appreciation. A person going the extra mile and showing that bit of grace is sometimes all it takes to change the course of your day. Who knows, if your day changes, your life might as well.
It’s extra nice when Jesus pays you a compliment. Sure, it would be great to go to the mailbox and get a thank you note from Jesus but imagine Jesus telling you in person, “You are the light of the world.” What if that someone giving you a face-to-face compliment is Jesus? What would that do to your day? How would that alter the rest of your life?
Given the state of the world and how dark things feel at the moment, being told you’re the light of anything by anyone is good to hear. These people, like us, aren’t used to getting compliments or encouragement. We feel lucky if no one rear-ends us on the way to Food Lion, or we don’t get into shouting matches with our family and friends over dumb little arguments. Compliments seem out of date and quaint, reserved for birthdays and other holidays, not something we’d do regularly or daily. We take each other and our families for granted, usually operating on the assumption that the people we live with and love know we love them and appreciate them; why do we need to tell them? Jesus is asking us to reconsider that mindset. People need to hear good things, especially when the world feels like it’s going to hell in a handbasket.
I’m sure this took Jesus’ audience by surprise. “I didn’t know I was a light!” I can hear them saying to Jesus. “I’m the light of the world!” Can you imagine hearing that affirmation for the first time? These crowds gathered on the hillside for the sermon of the mount didn’t come from a culture where they encountered a great deal of positive news about themselves or others. They lived in dark times; as occupied people, most couldn’t read the inspiring words of prophets like Isaiah, and if they could, they didn’t think they applied to them. Here Jesus says, you are the light, as an individual, are something good, light!
What does light do? What am I called to do as light? Light makes the world a safer, brighter, happier, warmer place. That’s what light does. You are called to do and be those things. Light changes everything. Nothing can hide from the light. Light makes the intangible tangible, the unsafe safe, the cold warm, the sad happy. It is there, everywhere, and all around. Light cannot be contained.
That’s you! You are more than you ever knew or thought you could be. You are the light. Part of being the light is giving your light away. Light is always available for sharing with people in darkness. Once you have the light, you are always available to share it without losing any of the original light that makes you, you!
You’d be surprised (well, maybe not) how many people are living in darkness. We forget how many people need, want, and are seeking the light of Christ, the light of the world, and to know that they also are the light of the world.
Light is much like empathy. The world needs it to survive. The church needs it. We can’t function without it. If you’ve ever lived in a world without electricity, you know that your entire rhythm of life is more challenging and brutal. Our world has a light deficit as much as an empathy shortage. We’ve grown comfortable living with this shortage, rationing of light, joy, and empathy in a world of darkness. We don’t have to live this way. You are the light of the world. Darkness is not the default setting for our lives and relationships. Light and all it brings, compassion and empathy are part and parcel of our souls whether we realize it or not. Jesus identifies this within us. Are we going to take the compliment from Jesus, pass it on to someone who needs to hear it, and share the blessing Jesus has given us with someone else?
–Richard Bryant
Quoting Leviticus seems to be all the rage these days, so I thought I’d give it a go. Leviticus 19:1-2 says something like the following, “The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.’” Now at the risk of sounding like a cross between a Methodist Andy Rooney and Jerry Seinfeld, “What’s the deal with our continued forced dichotomy between personal and social holiness?” Isn’t it time we stopped beating this dead horse? Is this not one of the reasons we’re in the mess we’re in, because we’ve lived in this under this bipolar, schizophrenic definition of holiness within the Wesleyan tradition for so long such that the two can no longer co-exist in the same body, the body of Christ, in the psyches of the people called Methodist. The quest to be holy in two different ways has literally (and figuratively) driven us insane and pushed us into some dissociative personality disorder-clinically speaking. As religious groups go, United Methodists are not the best example of a denomination with good mental health. Or, as my grandmother, who never went past the eighth grade, would have said, “we have lost our ever-loving minds.”
All through the Torah, especially Deuteronomy and Leviticus, we hear this same injunction repeated: you be holy because I (God) am holy. God doesn’t make the distinctions between social and personal holiness. A human being created these artificial divisions. Some of us feel more comfortable emphasizing one form of holiness over another. I think it’s clear from reading the text that God is a God of the community. We discover our personal and individual identities within the community and the society created by the larger community. Our communities, tribes, and clans tell us who we are. That’s what the Old Testament says. I am a United Methodist by accident of birth and geography and no other reason alone. My community and family determined my religious affiliation. Had I been born in Pakistan in March of 1974, I would be a Muslim. Society forms our beliefs long before we develop a sense of individual identity. Creating a sense of social holiness is the first step toward teaching and achieving personal holiness. We are defined and shaped by our cultures.
Ultimately, I am encouraged that the God of Israel shows no distinctions between personal and social holiness. God sets a goal and enables us to follow along, knowing we will fail at our tasks. We will never be as holy as God. It is impossible. We can never match God’s holiness. Does this mean we should stop trying? No. I think it means we should go about our quest for holiness with greater humility, kindness, and justice, realizing we will never figure it out. Just when we think we’ve got holiness locked down, we’re probably in as unholy a state as we’ve ever been. It’s time to hop off our high holy horses, find someone else, and tell them how sorry we are for getting our unholy cart before the Lord’s holy horse.
–Richard Bryant
What’s your favorite Bible story? If you’ve been to Sunday school and heard as many as I have, can you pick just one? I like them all. You might even say I love them all. Here are just a few of my favorites right off the top of my head:
I could go on and on. Those are just a few of the big ones. But my favorite story in the Bible, in all of these 66 books, is found in the first 12 verses of the fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel. Here’s how it goes. Jesus, he’s the main character, like a new Moses. He goes up to a mountain to deliver a sermon, a new oral version of the ten commandments. Now, please pay attention; here is where it gets exciting. At the point in the story where he finds a spot to stand where the acoustics are just right, and most of the people gathered around can hear him, he starts to talk. Jesus talks. It’s not the fact that he speaks that makes this story exciting and vital. It’s what he says that is so meaningful. He reinvents ethics, human society, values, and religion, and he does it in 12 verses. What Johnny Appleseed did for apple trees in one song, Jesus did for civilization in 12 verses. Jesus makes it seem so simple, easy to follow, and implement in your life. Do these things, you’ll hear him say, and the world will change.
You realize what he’s asked you to do only after hearing them. At the same time, they sound deceptively simple on the surface (like a 1st century Hallmark Card) but they may be the most demanding tasks ever asked of any person. These “be” statements, as easy as they appear, ask the listener to sacrifice themselves for others in ways they’re not used to doing. They rearrange the order of the universe. Sure, God stays on top, others go first, and our wants, needs, and desires go to the bottom. At first glance, it does look easy. We ask God for the simple paint-by-numbers version of Christianity. Then what happens?
Jesus goes up the hill and lays it out. Step 1, step 2, step 3, and so on. What do we do? We say, hold on! We asked for easy, not a spiritual commitment to the welfare of others, my community, peace, neighbors, and love. I wanted something that fit my needs, more in line with the Old Testament.
Jesus, telling his story from the acoustically precise perch atop the mount, says, “my friends, is the new, new thing.” God is expanding God’s horizons. The law is the law but are neighbors need neighbors. Our neighbors need love. Our wars need to end. Our hungry need food—our broken need healing. Our grief needs comforting. Who is ready to come with me and tell this story? People aren’t going to like it, but this has to and must be done. They’d rather talk about the old stuff. But this, this right here, Jesus tells them, is what God is all about.
Don’t the Beatitudes feel like common sense? I mean, really? These 12 verses have always appeared to me to be the most self-evident truths in the Bible. Perhaps that’s why they bear repeating so often. The things that ought to be common sense and self-evident, easy to do, and no-brainers are those that we so easily screw up day after day, month after month, and year after year. On the surface, we should have no problem accepting each of these statements at face value. No Christian in this or any church should argue with Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes or the implications of putting them into practice in your life. They are the central components of Jesus’ teachings, yet when push comes to shove, most people would easily give them lip service yet find themselves unable to realize the full impact of what they agree to when they sign on to, “Blessed are the peacemakers” or “Blessed are the merciful.” We can all agree that peace and mercy are fine qualities to exemplify and promote. But what does it mean to be a peacemaker? What does it mean to make peace and lead a peaceful life? What does it mean to show mercy? When you take the Beatitudes to the next logical step, the “I’m going to live them out” phase, they become the most challenging commitment a Christian can make.
First, remember none of the Beatitudes are quid pro quo. Let’s go back to mercy for a moment. Jesus says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” If you are merciful to others, you will receive mercy. If you do this, you get something in return. We don’t do good things because we want good things in return. Jesus is trying to teach that you do the right things in life because it’s essential to do the right things regardless of the outcomes. In the end, doing the right thing is a blessing in and of itself. The mercy we show comes back to us as mercy. This peace we make comes back to us as peace. We’re not hoping for a return. We’re doing the right thing, period.
To whom do we show mercy? Jesus wants us to show mercy to everyone, friend and foe alike. Our mercy isn’t something we disburse in drips and drabs. It’s easy to show mercy to those we love and are related to and those who look like us, worship, talk, and believe like us. The Beatitudes (and Jesus) challenge us to comfort, feed, bring peace, and show mercy to those who we don’t love, dislike, aren’t related to, look nothing like us, don’t worship like us (or at all), don’t talk like us, or believe like us. If you “Beatitude” like the first group, it’s easy; it’s a typical Sunday morning. Christianity is no longer a challenge; we never grow in our faith. We are static, and we will die as a congregation and denomination. That’s what will kill us, not who we ordain or marry. Ultimately, it will be that we stopped taking the Beatitudes seriously, living them out, and regarding them as our mission statement as a congregation. If we lose these, we’ve lost everything.
I wish those who felt so strongly about using the term “God’s Word” as a weapon and carried Deuteronomy and Leviticus locked and loaded in the chamber of their scriptural AR-15’s, ready to fire, would put down their guns. We have an epidemic of gun violence in this country. We also have an epidemic of weaponized Biblical violence, where we use the words of the Bible like high capacity rounds to kill, maim, and wound those with whom we think God disapproves. The spiritual corpses litter congregations from one side of this country to another. We can’t pick up the bodies fast enough before another verbal massacre occurs. As with the shootings in our streets, we’ve got to stop using God’s word’s, modified for lethality, so that more people’s faith are not left to bleed out on the altar of “scriptural authority.”
The Beatitudes are God’s words about mercy, peace, and righteousness. They weren’t meant to be fired at anyone. Put the gun down. Declare a truce. Be a peacemaker. Be a child of God.
–Richard Bryant
I never get tired of talking about the Andy Griffith Show. It was one of the most important shows in the history of American television. Think about all the issues Andy addressed in Mayberry in the early 1960s. Andy dealt with alcoholism, addiction, greed, fair housing, poverty, women’s rights, single parenting, fair play, and how to handle small-town gossip. He didn’t judge people no matter how uncultured or far back up in the woods they came from. And he did it all without a gun. And that’s when the show first aired when Eisenhower was in the White House. Andy was cutting-edge! That was, Andy might say, a fair piece of years ago!
There’s an episode where Opie and his friends sell something called “Miracle Salve.” One of Opie’s buddies, Trey, has been threatened with being “blacklisted” for not selling enough of this worthless salve. The boys don’t know what it means to be blacklisted. Opie guesses his dad will know, so they run off to the sheriff’s office to ask Andy. Andy is out on a call, but they find Barney asleep at his desk.
After waking Barney from a dead slumber, they ask him, “What’s a blacklist?” As he always does, Barney tries to sound more intelligent than he is: “It’s when the party of the first part does something to keep the party of the second part from being able to get a job.” Now the boys are confused. Trey needs this job. Who’s the party of the first part? Some fly-by-night salesmen are taking advantage of the kids, who need summer jobs, to get them to sell their salve.
Barney comes up with this bright idea. He’ll write a letter to the salespeople in Mount Pilot, pretending to be a lawyer, telling them to cease and desist from threatening his clients Opie and Trey. Why is Barney going to do this? He’ll meet one official letter with another. Barney poses his strategy in the form of a question: How do you fight fire? The boys answer with a hose! No! Barney exclaims, “with fire!” Andy eventually returns, and they run the whole plan by him. Barney asks him the same question. How do you fight fire? Andy, too says,” with a hose!” Barney, even more frustrated, says, “with fire.”
That’s where we are this morning. Are we like Andy and Barney having a debate? How do you fish for people? Do we do it with a hose or with fire? Those are not exactly our options, but you get the point. There is the practical answer, which is time-tested, genuine, and makes sense. There’s also the idiomatic, colloquial expression that sounds good when you’re sitting on a bench whittling with your buddies. We want to find those two answers, specifically those regarding being a follower of Jesus.
Last week we talked about being and becoming excited about Jesus. How long has it been since you were eager to tell someone else about Jesus? What would it take for you to invite someone to church to say, “Come and see Jesus with me.” Have you ever been as excited about Jesus as you’ve ever been about the things that most excite you in your life? That was last week.
This week we’re taking that one step further. What does it mean to be called to be a disciple? And what are the best ways to reach more disciples? Do we fish for people the same way we fish for fish (i.e., fight fire with fire or with a hose)? Those are the two big questions raised by Matthew’s retelling of Jesus’ calling of his first four disciples along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Embedded in those questions, others ought to come to mind as we look for more profound answers. What does Matthew mean when he says, “immediately?” I know what I mean when I think of “immediate” or “Immediately.” Does Matthew mean the same thing? Did these guys literally drop their tools, abandon their families, and walk away like zombies to follow Jesus without so much of a goodbye to their families and friends?
Popular movies about the Bible like to leave people with that impression. However, suppose you read a little further in the text. In that case, you see Matthew’s definition of immediacy means something closer to this: Peter, Andrew, James, and John started a lifelong conversation on that day, at that time and that place, with their families and friends, that led to their becoming full-time followers (who asked others to come and see) of Jesus Christ. Read four more chapters and you see that Jesus’ definition of immediate doesn’t mean what you think it means.
The essential words Jesus utters in this passage involve Peter’s (and the other’s) transition from fishermen to disciples. We have to understand the nature of that transition to understand Matthew’s definition of immediacy and how Jesus will immediately (pun intended) show them his fishing methods can yield large catches of people.
Let’s talk about fishing methods on the Sea of Galilee for just a moment. I know a little about this because the fishermen on Ocracoke also used net fishing methods like Peter, James, and John. The fisherman who lived directly across from our church on the island would string his nets across his front yard and mend them, just as Matthew described Peter mending his nets in this passage. I’d walk out my office door and see the Bible happening right before my eyes. I’ve been to the Sea of Galilee, and these methods came alive when we lived on the Outer Banks. Nets require constant mending and upkeep. It takes skill and stamina to stay up all night, throw them out, and bring them back into rickety boats.
I’m going to do an Andy/Barney thing for a moment. What’s the goal of the fishing net? It’s to capture and ensnare as many dumb and unsuspecting fish as possible in your net and hoist them onto the deck of your boat, so deprived of oxygen that they quickly die. Once dead, they can be sold to fish merchants, and people can buy the fish and eat them. This is what net fishermen do. They aren’t like Bill Dance in a bass boat with a depth finder. 1st century fishing methods are still in use in many places around the world today. Throw out the net and hope to God it lands over a school of fish or shrimp dumb enough to swim into your net. Peter, Andrew, James, and John were fishermen. Being a good fishermen is not something that happens to you because of good luck, weather, and years of experience. Fishing is arbitrary. Use your common sense here: When Jesus said to them, from now on, you will stop being fishers of fish and be fishers of people do you think Jesus wanted them to substitute what they usually did in their quest for fish except literally do that now for people?
Was Jesus asking them (and by extension us) to use nets to capture unsuspecting people, lure them into our communities, suck the life from them, throw them onto our decks, gut them of their hearts and souls, and tell them not to be whom God created to be? Once in our net, you’re not a fish; you’re money, a number, and anything other than whom God created you to be. Do you honestly think that’s what Jesus meant when he said you’ll be fishing for people, as it was when you were fishing for fish? Because if you do that, you are going to run everybody off. That’s like saying you fight fire with more fire, not a hose!
You fish for people by bringing people together and not by cutting people off from their families but by bringing their families in. Here’s how I know Peter, Andrew, James, and John, didn’t drop their tools and walk off like zombies. The Bible tells me so. I keep reading—just four chapters over in Matthew 8. Peter had a Jewish mother-in-law. You don’t just leave your wife to follow a charismatic even if his Jesus of Nazareth. He’s got a mother-in-law. That means he’s got a wife and a reasonable guess that a married Jewish man in the first century will probably have a couple of kids. Is Jesus of Nazareth, the most remarkable man in the world, going to ask a married man to abandon his wife, kids, and sick mother-in-law? Is that the kind of thing Jesus would do? Or, as in Matthew 8, he would heal Peter’s mother-in-law and invite the whole family to the Jesus movement.
Suddenly, now stay with me, he’s caught Peter, Peter’s wife, Peter’s Mother-in-Law, and Peter’s children. If the same pattern is repeated for Andrew, James, and John, Jesus has caught approximately 20 people. Talk about fishing for people. He’s gone from one person (himself) to, most likely, 20 or more, by healing and being gracious to Peter’s mother-in-law. He wanted to meet Peter’s entire family. It wasn’t a one and done operation. When Jesus opens up a space for conversation, the idea of immediacy takes on a whole new dimension. It’s more like, “Let’s immediately go home for dinner.”
No one is captured in a net and forcibly brought into the fishermen’s boat. We don’t have any nets. I didn’t see any when we were putting out or putting away the Christmas decorations. We have a few fishermen in the church, and they use poles. There aren’t any net fishermen, as on Ocracoke, regularly mending nets, going out each night to catch shrimp to sell to local restaurants.
Though shame, guilt, and the church can cast modern-day nets, we must be careful. We can quickly revert to fishing for fish instead of people. We want to grow through warmth, charm, love, and invitation. So often, though, churches find it easier to get people on the boat through shame and guilt. You know what I mean: you better get here, get in the net, or you’re going to hell. Change your ways or else. You’re a dirty rotten, low-down sinner; God hates you, you don’t come to church, and you’re bound for damnation. Do you know why you got COVID, cancer, or other diseases? It’s because you don’t come to church or didn’t pray hard enough. The list could go on and on. People say those things. Let’s try not to. That’s not how you fish for people. People aren’t fish. People deserve our best. Jesus gave us his best. He gave us his life. Let us expand by reaching out to anyone and everyone who wants to be in our boat. We don’t have to capture people. Evangelism isn’t warfare. As the Love Boat theme song says, “Come Aboard, we’ve been expecting you.”
–Richard Bryant
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