Blessed are you who bear the lightness. Endurance amid the unendurable, who bear witness to its persistence. Blessed are you in whom the light lives, in whom the brightness blazes your heart. Deepest night can be seen the fire that shines forth in you in unaccountable faith, in stubborn hope, in love that illumines every broken thing it finds.
[00:16:01]
I have this theory that when Christian folks are getting ready to share false fundamentals, they begin their sentences with something like, the Bible is clear about this and such and fill in the blank, right? And I would argue that the Bible is a lot of things, but clear it is not. It is rich and it is beautiful and complex and nuanced and poetic and even sometimes terrible. If you joined us for our texts of terror, behold service in March of 2023, you know what I'm talking about. And so when we look at our scripture for today, we have to be willing to dig in, to wonder, to be curious, to maybe use a new perspective or a different filter to turn the gem a little bit, to get to the beating heart of the passage underneath, to get to that true fundamental that underpins it all.
[00:36:48]
I have this theory that when Christian folks are getting ready to share false fundamentals, they begin their sentences with something like, the Bible is clear about this and such and fill in the blank, right? And I would argue that the Bible is a lot of things, but clear it is not. It is rich and it is beautiful and complex and nuanced and poetic and even sometimes terrible.
[00:36:48]
So this afternoon, let's do that together. Let's dig in. These verses in John that we heard a few minutes ago tell the story of a group of religious fundamentalists colluding with a political leader to solve a pesky problem known as Jesus.
[00:37:54]
As we know, in his ministry, Jesus pushed against the status quo. He pushed against religious rules. He noticed and listened and omg, ate food with folks on the margins. He touched the physically and emotionally wounded. And all of this made the powerful people of his day really, really uncomfortable and super mad.
[00:38:13]
But lately I have been learning that I can set down false fundamentals and set aside expectations and assumptions that Scripture is clear and instead approach the Bible with curiosity and wonder. So I like to ask, what if? What if Jesus isn't talking necessarily about the afterlife here? What if he is saying to Pilate that his kingdom isn't of this world because it's an upside down, unexpected fox, first shall be last, love your enemies kind of empire? What if the juxtaposition Jesus is drawing here isn't between heaven and earth, but between two wildly different ways of living in the world? What if he is talking about the difference between our kingdoms that are defined by the false fundamentals of power and greed and his kingdom that is based in the true fundamental of love? What if.
[00:40:23]
So while Pilate was in charge of one part of Judea, Rome also appointed and elevated local Jewish leaders to help govern other parts. The Herods that we read about in the Gospels were a father son duo of this latter category. When Jesus was born, Herod the Great was known as the King of the Jews. And he was a complicated figure, beloved for the renovation of the second Temple and reviled for trying to murder every baby boy in his kingdom.
[00:41:56]
His kingdom is not like Caesar's Rome or Pilate's Judea or Herod's Galilee, or dare I say it, our America. His kingdom is not based on the false fundamentals celebrated and embraced by the political rulers or the religious fundamentalists, then or now. So through our digging we can see that Jesus is telling us a lot in this story about what his kingdom is not. And I believe he is also telling us a lot about what it is.
[00:43:29]
In answer to Pontius Pilate's questions, Jesus says his sole purpose, his one job, was to reveal and bear witness to the truth. Pilate asks, truth, what is truth? It's actually a good question, Pilate, and maybe you meant it rhetorically, who knows what you meant. But I think trying to answer this question provides a great opportunity to do a little thought exercise, to do a little wondering. Because if Jesus says that his life reveals fundamental truth, maybe if we spend some time looking at Jesus's life, we can gather some answers.
[00:44:08]
If Jesus says that his life reveals fundamental truth, maybe if we spend some time looking at Jesus's life, we can gather some answers. So let's have a look, starting at the beginning. Pretty soon, if you can believe it, we will once again be celebrating adventure and we will remember Jesus birth story and how he was welcomed by the powerful and the strong and the noble and adored by the religious elite, right? No, no. We will commemorate Jesus birth to an unmarried teenage girl in a cave tended by animals and shepherds and eventually visited by astrologers from Asia. So what is truth? Here's truth. Humility, Vulnerability.
[00:44:44]
So what is truth? Here's truth. Humility, Vulnerability. Our scriptures don't tell us much about the years of Jesus life between his birth and the beginning of his ministry at 30 something. But we do have a couple of stories. For instance, in Matthew 2 we read of Jesus deep distrust of refugees and his oppression of strangers and immigrants, his support for forced deportation and separation of families. Right? No, no. These verses tell the story of Jesus, his own family forced to flee their home for fear of what their government might do and to live as refugees in Egypt. So what is truth? Here's more truth. Deep empathy for the stranger, the foreigner, the refugee.
[00:45:31]
Okay, so let's look at the story in Luke 2 where we read about 12 year old Jesus visit to the temple where he sought out the leadership and demanded to be recognized as the Son of God, right? No, no. These verses tell the story of young Jesus delighting in study and learning at the feet of the wise ones in Jerusalem's temple. All right, so there's a bit more truth, curiosity, wondering, listening.
[00:46:28]
In John 2, we have the story of Jesus first public miracle where he stops a party underway and makes everyone sit down and sober up and stop dancing for the love of God, right? No, actually this is the story of an anxious mother, a loving son and a request for help. It is so utterly human, this story. Ultimately, it is the story of Jesus responding to scarcity with abundance. So what is truth? Here's some compassion for the humanity and the humans and their desire for community, overflowing goodness.
[00:47:05]
Here's a good one. In Matthew 21, we see Jesus going into the temple and seeing how the fundamentalists have set up a system that completely oppresses the poor. He shrugs cynically and says, capitalism, Am I right? No. This is the story of Jesus moral outrage at seeing faithful folks tyrannized by false fundamentals in the name of religion. So here's a bit more truth. Righteous indignation in the face of inequity.
[00:47:53]
This is the sermon in which Jesus lays out what we've come to know as the Beatitudes, the fundamentals of Jesus Wild upside down truth infused kingdom. So what is truth? Here is beatitude. Truth. Blessings on the weary and the empty and the gentle and the merciful. Blessings on the ones who choose goodness and who choose peace and keep on working at making more of them. Blessings on those whose hearts are broken in grief and the ones who turn the fullness of their hearts toward love.
[00:48:46]
As Jesus neared the end of his own life, we read in Matthew 25:40 about how we realized it was time to really double down on his own importance, to celebrate himself for once and remind his followers that sick and hungry and imprisoned people only have themselves to blame. Right? No. Jesus, in a culmination of all of his upside down kingdom teaching as he prepares for his own death, tells his listeners that however they offer love to the most vulnerable among them is how they offer love to him. So what is truth Here is fundamental compassion and advocacy for the hurting, the voiceless, the marginalized. What is truth Here is fundamental truth. Love.
[00:49:29]
In her book Original Blessing, Danielle Schroyer writes, to be human is to be capable of both incredible good and terrifying evil. And if we deny either side of that potential, we are living unaware. You guys, I am convinced that right now we don't have the luxury of complacency on the one hand or cynicism on the other. We must be clear eyed and brave as we choose now more than ever to be followers of God in the way of Jesus true fundamental of love.
[00:50:32]
To be human is to be capable of both incredible good and terrifying evil. And if we deny either side of that potential, we are living unaware. You guys, I am convinced that right now we don't have the luxury of complacency on the one hand or cynicism on the other. We must be clear eyed and brave as we choose now more than ever to be followers of God in the way of Jesus true fundamental of love.
[00:50:36]
What if now more than ever we choose to align ourselves with the fundamental truth of Jesus? What if we choose compassion over cruelty? What if we choose openness over isolation? What if we choose humility and empathy and blessing? What if we choose above all love to live like this, to choose love as our fundamental? This is the hardest good work of living in Jesus upside down kingdom.
[00:51:15]
And let's face it, we will not do it perfectly. We will sometimes screw it up. We will grow discouraged and distracted and we will get weary and oh my goodness, will we get outraged. And in the midst of it all we might even find ourselves building altars to a new of set of false fundamentals. And when we do, when we lose our way, we can encourage one another, we can remind one another and we can wonder again, what if? What if today we try again the way of the fundamentals of compassion, of tenderness, of grace, of love?
[00:51:53]
My friends, let us lean into our incredible goodness. Let us choose again and again and again the fundamental of love. May it be so.
[00:52:45]
