To Hell and Back

Even before it was an Audie Murphy war movie or a Maven Morris country song, the phrase “to hell and back” had a certain meaning: “I’ve been to hell and back, and I survived, so don’t mess with me.”

Well, I’ve been to the gates of hell, not to mention the battlefield at end of the world, and I’ve lived to tell the story. My story is part travelogue, part history, part geography, and all gospel, though maybe not the distorted gospel that you may be used to hearing.

Before we go to hell, let’s go to the site of what some people think is the battle at the end of the world. It’s mentioned once by name in the book of Revelation (16:16). It’s Armageddon. In Hebrew, that’s Har-Megeddon. It means Mount of Megiddo.

Trouble is, there is no mount at Megiddo. There are several mountains visible in the distance, but the ancient city of Megiddo is on a large flat plain. The only mountain here is a tell, a pile of ruined cities 20 or more deep. Why would anyone think that a decisive battle would be fought here?

This is where geography comes in. Here’s a map of the ancient Near East showing the Fertile Crescent. This is where human civilization begins because here the conditions are right for large-scale agriculture.

The fertile crescent stretches from the Nile Valley in Egypt to the fertile lands around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia. At both ends of the crescent, great kingdoms flourish – Egypt to the south and to the east Sumer and Babylon and Assyria and Persia.

As they grow larger and jostle with their neighbors, these kingdoms often clash. They have no common border, only some space in between that’s occupied by a small kingdom called Israel. When they come to Israel to fight each other, they follow a road along the Mediterranean Sea called the Via Maris, the Way of the Sea.

The road is guarded by the fortress city of Megiddo, shown here by a red dot. Given its location, Megiddo is of great strategic value to any superpower in the Mideast.

Thutmose III and The Battle of Megiddo – Battle of Megiddo Facts

It is said that more battles have been fought here than at any other place in the world – 34 battles, by one estimate. The earliest recorded major battle in history took place here. About 1,500 years before the time of Christ, Pharaoh Thutmose III of Egypt led 1,000 chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers to a decisive victory over a coalition of Canaanite armies.

That was just the beginning. Joshua attacked Megiddo during the Israelite conquest of the Holy Land. Israelite heroes Gideon and Barak and Deborah fought major battles here. Israelite kings Solomon and Ahab built up the city’s fortifications. Israelite kings Ahaziah and Josiah died in battles here. Napoleon fought here in 1799, and remarked that it was a splendid place for a battle. British Gen. Edmund Allenby defeated the Turks here in 1917. Israelis used it as a base during the war of 1948.

Twenty times the city was built, and 20 times it was destroyed and rebuilt, one city on top of another. One day people said, “Enough. It’s just not safe to live here.” By the time of Jesus, Megiddo was a ghost town. But it was a symbol of great battles – a symbol like the Alamo, like Waterloo, like the beaches of Dunkirk and Normandy.

Today it’s a popular tourist destination. Here are a few photos from my trips there. The tell is an oval covering about 15 acres at the top. It rises 70 feet from ground level. The ruins of 20 cities are compacted into that 70 feet. You begin your ascent along an ancient stairway.

From the top you can see the vast plain of the Jezreel Valley and the mountains beyond. Jezreel means “God sows.” The Jezreel Valley is a vast and bountiful cropland. The road at the base of the photo here follows the route of the ancient Via Maris, the Way of the Sea.

You can see the ruins of the stables where a thousand or more horses could be kept, and some of their stone feeding boxes.

If you’re sure of foot and don’t mind enclosed spaces, you also take a stairway 120 feet down to a long horizontal tunnel leading to a spring. This secure water source is the reason Megiddo is where it is, and it was carefully protected from enemies who might try to block it during a siege.

Looking out over the Jezreel Valley where God sows, you can see why it was such a storied place, and perhaps understand why it’s favored as the site of a final epic battle in the book of Revelation.

Though the name is mentioned only once, the battle itself is mentioned several times in Revelation. That’s because Revelation is not, as is so often thought, a straightforward, continuous, narrative. It’s a narrative that circles back on itself several times to tell the same story over and over again from different viewpoints.

And the reference to a final battle is not necessarily to be taken literally. In fact, very little in Revelation should be taken at face value. It’s all symbolic. That’s what John of Patmos announces in the very first verse of his account. He says that God made everything known to him through symbols. God “signified” the message to him, the best translation says – that is, relayed it through signs and symbols.

If you read Revelation carefully, you’ll notice how carefully John says that what he sees in his visions are “like” this or that. Not that they are this or that, but that they are like them. They are symbols of reality, but not literally that reality.

Though Revelation mentions it by name in chapter 16, the battle at Armageddon isn’t narrated until chapter 19. The armies of evil line up against the armies of good led by Jesus on a white horse – but there is no battle. Jesus simply declares victory. There’s evidence of a great slaughter, but no battle. Jesus conquers by the sword of his mouth, the sword of his word.

Whatever it may mean for the future, this story has a personal meaning for all of us. Armageddon is symbolic of all battles between good and evil that we all fight every day. Armageddon isn’t just a battle at the end of time. It’s an everyday battle of everyday people. God wins when we recognize that Jesus is on our side, and any victory belongs to him.

Now it’s time for us to go to hell. I’ve been there, too. Well, to the outskirts of it, anyway – the gates of it, you might say.

The word “hell” does not appear in the Bible. It may appear in your Bible, and if it does, it’s because of a serious mistranslation. I don’t care how many sermons you’ve heard about hell from fire-breathing preachers, the word “hell” was invented long after the Bible was written.

Jesus never said a word about hell – not one word. What Jesus refers to several times is Gehenna. That’s a way of saying the Valley of Hinnom. It’s one of the many valleys in and around Jerusalem.

Here’s a photo of what it looks like today – a rather pleasant place, don’t you think? This is as close as I’ve gotten, and as close as most tourist guides will take you. But there’s a small part of the valley that has been cursed for thousands of years.

On a narrow ledge above a rock cliff is the Convent of Onuphrious. It was built in 1892 on the site of the Akeldama, the Field of Blood. It’s called that because it was purchased with the blood money paid to Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus.

Judas hanged himself here. Originally a field where potters dug for clay, it became the burial ground for those who had no one to bury them.

The place was cursed a long time before that. Down in the valley below was Topheth, where children were burned to death as a sacrifice to pagan deities.

How do you remember a thing like that without honoring the memory of it? It’s a question we ask ourselves today when we think about the horrors of slavery in this country and statues honoring those who fought to maintain slavery.

The great reformer King Josiah knew how to mark the memory of murderous idolatry. Before he got himself killed in a battle at Megiddo, Josiah turned this place into a garbage dump. This is, as Jesus later said, the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, where “the worm never dies and the fire never goes out” (Matthew 8:12, Mark 9:48).

Got some refuse that you need to dispose of? Haul it to the ledge over the Valley of Hinnom. Over it goes! Got some sewage you don’t want to pour out in the street? Take it to Gehenna, and over it goes! Got a corpse you don’t want to bury? Off to Gehenna, and over it goes!

That’s probably what happened to the bodies of the two criminals who were executed with Jesus. It’s probably what would have happened to Jesus’ body as well, if Joseph of Arimathea hadn’t sought permission to bury it. This is also where the bodies of thousands of residents of Jerusalem were thrown after the Romans destroyed the city 40 years later.

Gehenna was a horrible place with a horrible reputation. I have some friends who were stationed in Japan while in the military. They say Tokyo once had – may still have, for all I know – a burning dump like Gehenna, and when the wind is in the wrong direction, life us, uh, hell.

The fire has gone out, but Gehenna is still a nasty place today – almost impossible to get to, guarded by a tall chain-link fence, and a depository for filth from the cliff above.

This is where you’re bound, Jesus says, if you call someone a fool. This is where you’re bound if you don’t rid yourself of a hand or a foot or an eye that causes you to sin. Don’t fear those who can merely kill your body, he says. Rather, fear God, who can toss your body and your spirit into fiery Gehenna. (Matthew 5.22, Mark 9:43-47, Matthew 10:28.)

Jesus often speaks in colorful, exaggerated metaphors, and sometimes it’s hard to know how literally to take him. One thing’s for sure. Whether it happens in this life or the next, you don’t want to go to Gehenna.

Sometime a few hundred years after Jesus, the idea of Gehenna got mixed up with pagan notions of Hades and Tartarus, and we wound up with the notion that when you die you either go to heaven or to a place of everlasting torment that’s called hell.

As I said, hell isn’t in the Bible. If you’ve ever heard a sermon about hell, probably very little of it came from the Bible. Probably most of it came from The Inferno. That’s a vivid and perverse 14th-century epic poem by Dante Alighieri. Many pastors preach Dante thinking it’s the Bible. It’s not. Many pastors use the notion of hell to scare people into faith. That’s theological and pastoral malpractice.

Like Armageddon, Gehenna is a metaphor for a spiritual reality. We condemn ourselves to Gehenna and live in outer darkness when we fail to love as we were made to love.

We could talk about that a lot more, and maybe will somebody, but now it’s time to bring to a close this travelogue that’s a lesson in history, geography and gospel.

Have you heard the gospel in it?

Don’t you know that the armies of good and evil march with you every day, and the place where you struggle is called Armageddon? Don’t you know that bad decisions can

And don’t you know that the key to victory is keeping your eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:1)?

Well, now you know. Don’t say you haven’t been told.

This message was delivered November 15, 2020 at Edgerton United Methodist Church in Edgerton, Kansas. After four months of in-person worship, the church now closes until at last the end of the year because of a surge in coronavirus infection in our area.

Event Horizon

Unsure of the outcome of the election and unsure of what to say in any case, I turned to the lectionary for guidance on what to preach about today. The lectionary is a list of carefully chosen texts that guides many preachers week after week. I find its chief value is that it keeps you on track with the progress of the Christian year.

The start of the season of Advent is still several weeks away, but this is very much an Advent text because it speaks of the coming, or advent, of Jesus. Specifically, it speaks of the Parousia of Jesus, what we often call the Second Coming of Jesus.

It’s significant that this is one of the earliest writings in the New Testament. Paul first writes to the church at Thessalonica somewhere around the year 50, or only about 20 years after the death of Jesus. Expectation is high that Jesus will return any day, and believers in this Greek port city have a concern.

Some of their loved ones have died since giving their hearts to Jesus. Does this mean they’ll miss out when Jesus returns? Because they have died before Jesus returns, will they miss the benefits of resurrection life that he brings with him on his return?

Paul writes to reassure them about their hope for eternal life. He doesn’t want them to grieve like those who have no hope. You have great hope, he says. You need to understand that when Jesus returns, he’ll bring with him all who have died trusting in him.

I’m not just making this up, Paul is quick to say. This is an authoritative teaching. This is “a message from the Lord.” How Paul received this message, he doesn’t say. But he’s confident to say that it comes from Jesus.

He’s also confident that he’ll be around to see it. He speaks of “we who are alive and still around at the Lord’s coming.” Paul is sure he’ll be alive to witness this Second Coming.

This is how it will happen, he says. The Lord will descend from heaven with a shout from God’s top-ranking angel and a blast from God’s trumpet. Those who have died in Christ will rise from the dead. We who are living will be taken up with them into the clouds to meet with the Lord in the air. Thereafter we will always be with him.

Knowing that this Advent is truly coming, we should not only feel encouraged as individuals, Paul says, but we should actively encourage one another. These are encouraging words, but they are easily misinterpreted, and they have been frequently and greatly misinterpreted, especially in the last 200 years.

Note, first, that this passage is not about anybody going to heaven. This is about heaven coming down to us on earth. This is about Jesus returning to earth and bringing heaven with him.

In other words, this is no Rapture. The Rapture is a purely fictional event in which believers are secretly zapped up to heaven so they’ll escape some coming tribulation. Note that Paul speaks of no coming tribulation and no zapping up to heaven. What he says is that when Jesus comes down from heaven, we will meet him and be with him forever.

That’s why we call it the Second Coming. It’s the second time he comes to earth. But he doesn’t take people back to heaven with him. He stays on earth, as Emmanuel, God with us, forever.

The Rapture, the notion that we’re zapped up to heaven secretly, is a story that was cut from the whole cloth in 1830 by a one-time Anglican priest named John Nelson Darby. His teachings are followed today in Dispensationalist, or “Left Behind” teachings. Sadly, those teachings have infected a lot of otherwise sound minds.

Funny thing about this “secret” Rapture. If there’s a shout from God’s top-ranking angel and a blast from God’s trumpet, how can anyone miss that? How can anyone sleep through all that noise? There can be no bumper sticker saying, “In case of Rapture, wake me up.” The noise of Jesus’ return will be tremendous. You won’t be sleeping throuogh it.

This passage offers no notion of anyone leaving or anyone being left behind. What we have here is a very loud and hard-to-miss event that Paul describes as a Parousia. What’s a Parousia? In first-century thinking, it’s the celebration that happens when the emperor or a king or some other high authority comes to town.

The king arrives in a colorful parade, with an impressive entourage. He rides a magnificent white horse or maybe a chariot pulled by four magnificent white horses. Trumpets blare and soldiers march in precision formation. The whole city goes out to view the spectacle and to cheer and welcome the king, then follow him into the heart of the city for a big party.

That’s the kind of thing Paul envisions, only he stages it in the clouds. When Jesus returns, he says, we’ll all go out to meet him and welcome him home to stay. You don’t have to take Paul’s imagery literally to understand or accept what he’s saying. It will be a celebration like no other.

Talk of meeting Jesus “in the clouds” is familiar picture language. Throughout the Old Testament, when God makes a spectacular appearance similar to what happens in this scene, God does not ride a two-wheeled chariot pulled by horses, or anything like it. God rides the clouds.

During his mock “trial” before the religious authorities, when the high priest asks Jesus if he is the Messiah, Jesus answers, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62-62).

Again, it’s stereotyped language not meant to be taken literally. It’s unlikely that the high priest ever did see Jesus seated at the right hand of God or coming with the clouds. But he understands perfectly well what Jesus means by saying that he will, and he is outraged. God rides the clouds. Here humans don’t.

In fact, Paul got the timing all wrong. He was sure Jesus would return in his lifetime. It didn’t happen, at least in the way Paul thought about. Jesus is with us today, not in physical form but in a form that Paul knew about, the form of the Holy Spirit. Read Acts chapter 2 for the story of the Spirit’s Parousia at Pentecost. There were plenty of wind and fire pyrotechnics on that day to announce the Lord’s coming.

In many ways, we are like those believers in the church at Thessalonica. We believe Jesus is coming someday. We are encouraged by Paul’s assurances that it will be a great event. But we have no clue as to when it will happen, and we’re really not too sure what will happen when it does.

Sure, lots of people say they know when it’s going to happen, and they’re mistaken. Lots of people also say they know precisely what’s coming next, and they’re most likely mistaken, too.

In physics there’s something called an event horizon. When you approach a black hole in space, you near a horizon that once you cross, there’s no going back. Beyond this horizon is nothing. There are no more events. Beyond this point, everything gets sucked into the black hole. Even light disappears.

Many people think that death is an event horizon, beyond which there is nothing. Believers in Christ, though, know that the horizon of death is like any other horizon we are familiar with.

When you watch a ship sail out to sea, it gets smaller and smaller and then, in an instant, it pops over the rim and disappears. It’s still there, but you can’t see it anymore. Same thing with a sharp corner in a forest or the mountains. When a car goes around the corner, you can’t see it anymore. It’s still there. It’s just gone around the corner. Same thing when a door closes, or you just can’t see beyond it for some reason. Death is not the end. There is an event beyond the horizon of death. We just can’t see it from here.

Heaven isn’t the end, either. Heaven is the abode of God. It’s where God “lives,” to use language that’s very misleading because God actually “lives” everywhere, not just in one place.

Heaven may be where we go immediately or shortly after death, but it’s not our final destination. Our final destination is resurrection life. That’s life after we are resurrected – after we are raised from our graves, as Paul describes in this passage.

After Jesus returns, we’ll be with him forever, here on earth – or, as the book of Revelation says, on a transformed earth. We can’t imagine what such life would be like, and I think that’s just fine. Our imaginations are often outrageous but altogether too limited when it comes to such things.

As Paul says in Ephesians 3:20, God is “able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” Whatever you can ask or imagine, it’s not good enough. Whatever you can ask or imagine, God can do better. Whatever you can ask or imagine, God will do better.

So don’t worry about when it’s going to happen. Jesus will return in God’s own good time, and God doesn’t need you to waste time and effort speculating on when it’s going to happen. Just know that it will happen. When you approach that horizon called death, know that there is something beyond. And one day Jesus will return across that horizon, riding the clouds in triumph. We will all hail his return, and we will be with him forever and ever.

Amen.

This message was delivered November 8, 2020, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.

Saints I Have Known

On All Saints Day, we celebrate the saints we have known – those followers of Jesus, living and dead, who have shown us by their example how to live a Christian life.

As I thought about what message I would bring to you today, I kept being nudged – no, not simply nudged but pushed, even compelled – to talk about some of the saints I have known.

These are people who have richly influenced my walk with Christ. I won’t tell you about all of them because I’m sure that some who are still alive would be deeply embarrassed if I named them in public. There are so many more I could name, but I have only so much time, and you have only so much patience.

Let’s start the name-dropping with a woman named Cam. Actually, her name was Mrs. Camden, but Cam was about all my younger brother could pronounce at the time she was our babysitter. Cam taught in the children’s Sunday School of her church. Knowing that my family did not go to church, she brought us leftover Sunday School materials every week.

I loved the handouts that told Bible stories in comic book format. In those comics, the Bible sprang to life for me. It’s one thing to hear Bible stories. It’s another to experience them in vivid color, comic book style. I sure wish I had kept some of them.

Also dear to me was my cousin Patti, who lived nearby. We would do summer ministry among neighborhood kids. I think she was the most enthusiastic Christ follower I’ve ever known. I think she would have made a great pastor, but her faith tradition doe not allow women to act in that role, so she became a great pastor’s wife. They continue their ministry even in retirement.

In the fundamentalist Baptist that church Patti and I attended teenagers, the youth group leader was Dave. For our junior year college exploration trip, Dave packed three of us into his VW Beetle and drove us to Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The trip itself was memorable because Dave drove according to different rules of the road than we were used to, especially on narrow mountain roads.

I was interested in Bob Jones because it had a film program, and I wanted to make movies. I quickly discovered that the film program was not what it was cracked up to be, and I could not live under the restrictions of this ultra-fundamentalist and ultra-racist “fortress of the faith,” as it called itself. It’s a fortress of something, all right.

Dave was sympathetic to my concerns. It was one of those things that made him a good youth leader, though I don’t think it endeared him to his bosses.

I wound up at the University of Illinois, which did not have a film program but did offer a major in radio and TV. I had moved away from church by now, but I got connected to InverVarsity Christian Fellowship. It offered a special theology class taught by John Warwick Montgomery of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago. He was a giant in conservative theology circles, and his teaching made a liberal out of me.

A few years later, I met this woman named Linda. She was a United Methodist, so it was inevitable that we would marry in a United Methodist Church. On our wedding day we discovered that the pastor, Bill Laughlin, had gone to high school with my mother, though they hadn’t seen each other in years.

A few years later, we moved to Traverse City, Michigan, where we met Bob and Ellen Brubaker. Bob was pastor of Central United Methodist in Traverse City. Ellen was pastor of the smaller Old Mission United Methodist Church on Old Mission Peninsula. Once a month they exchanged pulpits. It was no surprise to us that a few years later she was one of two women who became the first female district superintendents in Michigan history.

Our first child and five northern Michigan winters drove us closer to home. In Kansas City we became part of another Central United Methodist Church. The pastor was Elbert Cole. He was one of the most visionary and energetic church leaders I’ve ever encountered. We were saddened when his wife Virginia faded away before our eyes because of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Central had what it called a “bishop in residence.” That was retired Bishop Eugene Frank. I especially valued his support later, when I moved toward ordained ministry. At Central we also met a young associate pastor fresh out of seminary – Adam Hamilton. It was his first appointment before he founded Church of the Resurrection 30 years ago.

I won’t mention names here, but one of the greatest spiritual influences on us during this time was the Mariners Sunday School class. It was such a tight-knit group that though most of us are far apart physically, a half dozen of us still keep in touch.

A move to Kansas eventually meant a change of churches, and in Roeland Park we found a jewel in our own back yard. Wally Proctor was pastor of the Roeland Park church then. When he encouraged me to go into ministry, he became my mentor and later my boss when I joined the church staff as student intern.

Among the congregation,Larry Krueger was especially welcoming and accepting. Several years ago I had the privilege of presiding at the wedding of daughter, who had been in my youth group years before. Larry died shortly afterward from pancreatic cancer. That dread disease also claimed the life of another friend from Roeland Park, Denise Johnson.

Another saint from that church was Jane Lynch. She fought multiple sclerosis valiantly for several years until it finally wore her out. Jane’s spirit may be summed up in a statement of her philosophy on raising two teenage boys. She said, “I don’t want to be the meanest mom in the world. But I want to be a contender.”

Then there’s Jean Austin. She was the church’s “Amen corner.” At the end of the choir anthem or some other event, she would shout “Amen!” Then one day she announced that she was going to have to devote all her time to her ailing mother, so someone needed to replace her.

I had recently become a Lay Speaker, so when I first spoke in church, I said I would take Jean’s place. I was very shy and insecure in those days, but when the time came, I managed to croak my first “Amen!” and nobody thought it was weird, and I knew I’d found my calling.

Saint Paul School of Theology is thick with saints, so I’ll mention only a few.

First there’s Young Ho Chun. I was able to take only one class from him, but it was a foundational event. He was my academic adviser, and when I had to choose where to go for what’s called a contextual immersion experience, he told me I should spend a week at the Trappist monastery in Ava, Missouri.

He said it was just the kind of spiritual experience that I needed, and he was right. That week may be the most formational event of my life. Part of the reason for that was our instructor, Paul Jones. He was a United Methodist minister then. Now he’s a Catholic priest. He is simply one of the deepest spiritual advisors I’ve ever had.

Let me also mention three of my favorite seminary teachers: Tex Sample, Hal Knight and Warren Carter. Oh my, what these men taught me and what they conveyed to me simply by being who they are! Linda had Hal as a teacher, too, and we are part of a reading group he leads – lately by Zoom.

My first appointment after seminary was a two-point charge, Lansing and Fairmount. Lansing was a church in turmoil when I arrived, and we had some tense times over the years. Myrtle Parsons was part of the old guard defending the status quo. I remember the morning when she waved a skinny, arthritic finger in my face and said, “I won’t let you drive me out of my church!”

But we became friends and allies, and when she was close to death, she invited me back to her farmhouse to say goodbye, and she asked me to do her memorial service.

Let me tell you about Ernest and Nancy Jones. They lived down the street from us, and every Tuesday evening five or six families from the neighborhood would gather at their house for a potluck. It was our way of supporting Nancy in her role of caretaker for Ernie, who had Alzheimer’s.

He could still run through the preflight checklist of a B25 bomber, but most days he couldn’t remember his name. Nancy had to tell him that every morning when she went through a series of flashcards with him. When Ernest died, Nancy took up volunteering in earnest. (Pun intended.) She helps run a food pantry in Leavenworth and has been named volunteer of the year several times.

Ray and Gail Miller were stalwarts of that church. At about the same time, Gail had tests for lymphoma and I had colon surgery, and doctors were sure that the mass they removed was cancerous. I have always said that if these things were decided on merit, she would have gotten a pass here because she was a far better Christian than I was. But my tests came back negative, and hers were positive. After extensive treatment, she went into remission, for several years. But it came back, and five years ago she died. Some things are just not right in this world.

I might name a few live saints in Paola, where I served next, but I’ll mention only two who have passed on. One is Dick Gilman, a KU grad who still holds passing and pitching records from his days playing football and baseball. Dick was Lay Leader at Paola for many years. He was as quiet and unassuming and generous a man as I’ve ever met.

Another Paola saint was Herb Fickel. He was proud to say that he was a Marine, but he never said much about the fight for Iwo Jima. A one-time furniture salesman, Herb never met a person whose ear he couldn’t talk off, and he told a lot of people about his love for Jesus.

Next comes Central church in Lawrence, the third Central church in my life. Most of the saints there are still alive, so I’ll not put them on the spot by naming them. But I must mention Dottie Knetsch, wife of Piet Knetsch, my copastor at Central. She was a United Methodist pastor forced into retirement by the disease that eventually killed her.

The only saint I’ll mention from here is Ted Jones. Ted was well known for the cards she made for people on special occasions. It was her gentle way of reminding them that they mattered to her and to God.

Until she died nearly three years ago, my mother sent store-bought cards to relatives and friends. That’s how one of my distant cousins learned of her death. He missed getting a card on his birthday, and he couldn’t reach her by phone, so he found my number on the internet and called me.

I haven’t gone into a lot of detail here, and I’ve skipped a lot of people, but I hope you get the idea I’m trying to convey. You are surrounded by saints. They are everywhere. They are woven into the fabric of your life, and they have helped shape your life. They had a role in making you who you are today.

Please pause to remember them today. If you sit down and make a list, as I did, you’ll be amazed at some of the names you come up with, and the more you think about it, the more names you’ll recall.

We are surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses. It’s not the kind of cloud that obscures your vision. No, it’s the kind of cloud that makes everything clear. It’s the kind of cloud that makes the love of God working in your life so crystal clear.

This message was delivered November 1, 2020, All Saints Day, at Edgerton United Methodist Church in Edgerton, Kansas, from Hebrews 12:1-2 and 1 Peter 1:3-5.

The Politics of Jesus

One of the biggest lies ever told about Jesus is that he was not political. Of course, he was political.

If he wasn’t political, he’d be as irrelevant today as he would have been in his own lifetime. If he wasn’t political, he would have died of natural crosses rather than dying on a cross. If he hadn’t been political, we would never have heard of him.

But, of course, if he hadn’t been political, he wouldn’t be God incarnate, would he? He wouldn’t have bothered to enter into human life, becoming human himself. He could have stayed in heaven at his Father’s side and occasionally nudged his old man and said, “Hey, look at those crazy people.”

But because both Father and Son love crazy people like you and me, Jesus became one of us. We murdered him not because he was a swell guy but because he challenged us. He pushed us. He got in our faces. He told us our politics was wrong, and his politics was right.

Jesus was political, all right.

But he was never partisan. Today he would not be a Democrat. He would not be a Republican. He was so independent that he probably wouldn’t even register as an Independent.

Maybe that’s why some people think he wasn’t political. He refused to participate in our broken political system. But don’t tell me he didn’t care about politics. That’s a lie. To know it’s a lie, all you have to do is read the gospels without partisan blinders and earplugs. Jesus was political through and through. How do we know? Because he cared about people. And politics is about caring for people – or at least, in God’s world, it’s supposed to be.

This is my third and last message concerning the powers and principalities. In my first message, I defined the Powers That Be, those invisible forces that shape our world and our thinking. Last week I talked about the armor of God that we can wear to protect ourselves from the powers. Today I want to talk about how Jesus battled the powers. Today we’re talking about the politics of Jesus.

You think Jesus wasn’t political? What was his message to Israel, right out of the starting gate? Mark’s gospel, chapter 1, verse 15, Jesus announces: “The time is at hand. The kingdom of God is here. Change your way of thinking and believe the good news.”

Notice he doesn’t say the “family of God,” or the “community of God” or even – as some would prefer to hear it today – the “kindom of God.” No, he says, “The kingdom of God is here.”

Tell me the word “king” is not political. Even more, convince the Romans of that. Caesar accepts no rivals. The only kings he allows are puppet princes. What does the sign over Jesus’ cross say? It says, Luke 23:38, “This is the king of the Jews.” The cross is what happens to Caesar’s rivals.

Oh, you say, he was misunderstood. He wasn’t political at all. After all, didn’t he tell Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world”? (John 18:36)

In his first sermon in his hometown of Nazareth, what does Jesus say? He says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

Good news for the poor. Captives go free. The Lord’s Anointed One. The Lord’s favor. Nothing political there, right?

Jesus comes by his politics naturally. His mom was well-known radical. Hear the words of Mary’s Song, what we call the Magnificat.

“The Mighty One has done great things for me, holy is his name. He shows mercy to all who love him from generation to generation. With his mighty arm he scatters the proud, flings the powerful down from their thrones, and elevates the lowly in their place. He fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty” (Luke 1.49-53).

He fills the hungry with good things. Once he feeds more than 5,000 people in some remote place. They’re about ready to seize him to make him their king, but he hightails it before that can happen (John 6:15). He may have a kingdom, but he won’t be crowned by anyone but God.

But he will be crowned. Consider that name: Jesus Christ. Christ is not a last name, of course. It’s a title. Jesus the Christ, meaning Jesus the Messiah, meaning Jesus God’s Anointed One, meaning Jesus the King. Every time we say the word Christ, we honor Jesus as king.

When he tells Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world, he’s not saying that his kingdom is in outer space or heaven, or anyplace otherworldly like that. He’s saying that his kingdom is right here and now, but it isn’t at all like other kingdoms in this world. It runs by different rules altogether.

In worldly kingdoms, he once tells his disciples, “their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you. Among you, whoever wishes to become great must be your servant. Whoever wishes to be first must be servant to all.” (Mark 10:42-45)

Talk about turning the world upside down!

In fact, Jesus challenges the basic social system prevailing throughout the Roman empire. Patronage was the basis of Roman society, economics, law and family. In Roman mythology, it was the patriarch Romulus who established the class system of upper and lower classes and slaves. It was run on a system of reciprocal benefit and mutual obligation.

Say you’re a social climber who wants to expand your influence. You throw an expensive dinner party to which you invite all the movers and shakers in your community. By attending, they accept an obligation to you. They “owe you one,” as the saying as it. They have an obligation – call it an “ob” – with your name on it. They can pay off this “ob” by reciprocating with a party invitation to you, or by paying you an equivalent amount in goods or services or some form of social favor.

Every time you pass somebody on the street, just a nod of the head is enough to acknowledge, “Yeah, I owe you,” or “Don’t forget, you owe me.” Everybody keeps the books in their heads. Nobody forgets.

Now you know why Jesus tells so many parables about feasts and dinner parties. For example, in Luke 14:12-14, he says, “When you give a dinner, don’t invite your friends or relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return and you would be repaid. Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, because they cannot repay you.”

Historian Diana Butler Bass says we often misinterpret this story today because we don’t understand the context. We say, “Isn’t it nice of Jesus to invite the poor to dinner.” Jesus isn’t being nice. Nice people don’t get nailed to a cross. Jesus is challenging the economic system. He’s encouraging a quiet revolution against the Powers That Be.

Read the parable in Matthew 25. Jesus says that when comes in his glory, nations will be divided the way a shepherd separates sheep from goats. Who will be rewarded? Only those who are mindful of the least in society – the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned

We have managed to tame most of Jesus’ parables so that they don’t say what they are intended to say, but a couple of them refuse to be tamed. Take the one in Matthew 20 about the landowner who needs workers for his vineyard – and no matter how long they work, he pays them all the same. The ones who worked the longest are not happy. Why weren’t the ones who came later paid less? The landowner says, “Can’t I be generous?”

Jesus’ own generosity offends the powers. Everywhere he goes, he heals people, and he never charges them a penny for it. No, no, Jesus. You can’t go around giving people free health care!

Or free forgiveness. The religious authorities are scandalized when Jesus claims authority to forgive sins. No, they say, only God can forgive sins, and only through sacrifices made in the temple. Jesus is dispensing forgiveness without a license. He’s subverting the temple system.

He makes his intent clear when he charges into the temple and attacks the merchants who are selling animals for sacrifice. He says, “You’ve turned God’s house into a den of robbers!” (Mark 11:17). It is no coincidence that he is dead less than a week later.

He’s not averse, though, to paying the half-shekel temple tax levied on all Jewish men. Pushed to pay it, he tells Peter to throw out a line and hook a fish – and inside Peter finds a one-shekel coin, enough to pay the tax for both of them (Matthew 17:24-27).

What about paying taxes to the dreaded Romans? You remember the episode where he’s put on the spot with that question. If he says yes, he’ll be damned as a collaborator. If he says no, he’s guilty of sedition. Many commentators see his answer as a clever non-answer, showing that he won’t be drawn into a political matter.

Not so at all. Pointing to a Roman coin, he says: “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God” (Mark 12:17). He’s not making some phony division of the world into secular and sacred realms. He’s asking, what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God? To whom is your highest allegiance due?

Is there even any question? “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6.4-5). Toss some coins Caesar’s way, but give your heart to God.

If you still doubt, look at Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the event we celebrate on Palm and Passion Sunday. We have stereotyped it as a children’s parade, but if children were present, they were not the focus of it. The people shout, “Hosanna!” which means, “Save us!”

Jesus rides into the city on a donkey. It may look non-threatening to us, but the donkey is the royal animal of Israel. Its significance is clear in Zechariah 9:9: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Look, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey…”

For these and other acts, Jesus has to die. He does not die between two thieves. That’s a grievous mistranslation. The two men who are executed with him are rebels, insurrectionists, and it’s assumed he’s just like them. Well, he is a revolutionary, only no one knows just how revolutionary he really is.

How does he survive as long as he does? By living off the grid, constantly moving, always dodging the authorities. “Foxes have dens, and birds have nests,” he says, “but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20).

Some people contend that Jesus left no platform, no political pattern for life. Really? What do you call the Beatitudes? It’s no accident that so many people want to erect idols to the Ten Commandments – and they are idols – but no one wants to post the Beatitudes in schools and courthouses and other public places.

That’s because Jesus’ politics is too radical for us. What’s all this stuff about, “Blessed are the poor” and “Blessed are the merciful” and “Blessed are the peacemakers”? No, no. Our political platform is, “Blessed are the rich,” “Blessed are those who crush their enemies,” “Blessed are those who bully their way to the top.”

Jesus called his political platform the Kingdom of God. No human kingdom and no human politics has the power or authority to shape human life the way God wants human life to be shaped. Only the coming of God’s Kingdom can save us. Only the politics of Jesus can confront the powers and principalities and say, “No more! God demands better than this!” Only the politics of Jesus can save us.

Your life is the ballot box where you cast your vote for the politics of Jesus. You either strive to live like Jesus, or you serve another master. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!

This message was delivered October 25, 2020 at Edgerton United Methodist Church in Edgerton, Kansas, from Matthew 10:34-39.

Book Review: Nowhere to Go But Up

In Nowhere to Go But Up, retired Lutheran pastor Kevin Ruffcorn challenges traditional ways of thinking about hell, atonement, salvation and the nature of God’s love.

After more than 40 years in the trenches of local parish ministry, Ruffcorn surely knows that raising his head on these issues is going to draw a lot of hostile fire, but he does it anyway.

It was during his parish years, he says, that he “became increasingly convinced that the focus of Jesus’ teachings was not on the avoidance of hell in the life to come but rather the ability to live in the reality of God’s kingdom in our everyday lives.”

Ruffcorn’s basic contention is that where Jesus proclaims a God of love, “the doctrine of hell portrays God as a judgmental and wrathful being.” Why, he wonders, would the love of Jesus that was so unconditional during his lifetime become totally conditional upon his death? If Jesus was forgiving, why isn’t his Heavenly Father? If Jesus told us to forgive 70 times 7 times, how can God so easily condemn people to eternal torment?

“Hell is not a biblical concept,” Ruffcorn argues, but “a piece of pagan mythology and philosophy” that was “transplanted into the Bible” and made a doctrine of the church. Most of what we think we know about hell comes from Dante’s Divine Comedy, not from the Bible.

Jesus does speak of Gehenna, but he never refers to “hell” (because the word Gehenna is usually mistranslated). Rather, he refers to the valley of Gehenna outside Jerusalem where refuse was burned. Gehenna is a dump where the worm never dies and the fire never goes out. It’s a real place that serves as a powerful metaphor for what happens when your life goes off the rails, but it’s not a place where nonbelievers are tortured for eternity.

As the early church moved into the pagan world, it didn’t take long for Jesus’ emphasis on love to erode. Heaven became a reward for the righteous and hell a place of punishment for the sinful. This carrot and stick approach relies on fear, Ruffcorn says, and its purpose is to control people.

Similarly, the purpose of the cross and Jesus’ act of atonement moved from the victory of God over death to a way to appease a wrathful God who wants to incinerate sinners. Divine punishment no longer has the purpose of correcting sinners to bring them back into relationship with God. Its purpose moves from restoration to retribution.

Ruffcorn weaves some real-life stories into his discussions of theology, showing just how destructive some of our traditional ideas can be. Seeing the world in a new light transforms our lives and our relationships, he argues. When gloom and doom are replaced by a positive attitude, we have nowhere to go but up.

It’s a fairly quick read that doesn’t get bogged down in unnecessary detail. It probably won’t convince those who have heard hellfire and brimstone sermons all their life and still imagine that it’s all biblical. But those who are willing to read with open minds and hearts may indeed fine their attitudes transformed.

My only criticism is a factual flub. In his brief discussion of the origin of Christmas, Ruffcorn follows the now discredited notion that Christians chose December 25 to compete with pagan winter festivals. As I point out in my book, Keeping Christmas (coincidentally also published by Resource Publications), Christians had good reason to believe that December 25 was the birthday of Jesus.

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In exchange for a copy of the book, I agreed to write a review of it for Speakeasy.

Find a copy on Kevin Ruffcorn’s website: http://asanefaith.com/or on Amazon.