Prove It

Mark 1:21-28
New International Version (NIV)
21 They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. 22 The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. 23 Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, 24 “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”
25 “Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. “Come out of him!” 26 The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.
27 The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.” 28 News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.

Integrity. It’s one of those words that Ward Cleaver might have used in a heartfelt lecture to Wally and the Beaver. Or maybe a word you might see featured in an investment ad during a televised golf event. Most of us seem to think we have some sense of its meaning but we are ultimately hard-pressed to point to many examples. Integrity has become one of those high-minded ideals that most of us don’t really believe is still possible.

Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied and even disgusted by those who govern. The president, the congress… across the board the disapproval ratings seem to stay at - or near - historic highs. And the disappointment does not seem to be closely tied to party or ideology or even to positions on the “hot button” issues. I think our disapproval has grown out of a realization that there seems to be so little integrity among those who govern. We watch them debate or make speeches and we slowly begin to suspect that they don’t really believe most of what they are saying. We watch again and again, cycle after cycle as presidential candidates lean hard right or hard left to gain their party’s nomination and then move quickly to the center during the general election. We see this, we recognize it, and perhaps most tragically, we have more or less made peace with it… until recently.

So; if we do not find the standard of integrity met within government, then what about the church? The scandals make the headlines and certainly tell a damning story to those want to find fault with the church. But those are mostly easy targets and are really not fairly used as evidence of an integrity problem in the church. But… what about the rest of the church? And if we are going to really examine the church – and ourselves – we need to look hard at the questions we are asking and how we apply the standard of integrity.

In today’s passage, Jesus showed up at church on the Sabbath and he spoke, he taught them. And because of his words, only his words, the people were amazed “because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.”

“NOT as the teachers of the law”

It could not have been his seminary degree or his education. The teachers of the law had this and more. It could not have been his title, the teachers of the law had titles (and it was Jesus’ title that would eventually get him executed). It wasn’t his money or the impressive men that made up his entourage. So what was it?

They say that the best salesperson is a man (or woman) who uses the product they promote. I think this is true whether the potential customer knows it or not. We are able to sense it… to feel the passion and authenticity. This is the reason that although virtually everyone in Hollywood is an exclusive Mac user, Apple has never had a more effective spokesman than Steve Jobs. Jobs was not an actor, not a trained public communicator, not a gifted orator. What Jobs was, and maybe what Apple misses most with his death, was a true believer. No one believed more in Apple products and innovations than the man who ran the company. Jobs was not necessarily the smartest or most technologically gifted individual at Apple… he simply believed harder and more completely – and it showed. Job’s authority and integrity came, not because he was right about Apple’s marketplace superiority, but because he completely and fully believed he was right and then acted boldly on that belief. True belief leads to vision and vision… to action.

Jesus spoke, not in dry religious recitation, not in slavery to his culture or traditions. Jesus spoke - He read the scripture, as the man among all humanity who most truly and deeply believed every word. He spoke not as an academic master of exegesis but as the author who understood the deep and mysterious meaning of the words. Not as a high-school American Lit teacher trying to explain the structure of “The Sound and the Fury” (and pretending to understand it) but as Faulkner himself explaining not only what the story means but why he wrote it in the first place what he was saying beneath the story. Jesus spoke, not as an educated observer of creation, but as creator!

And the people heard it… they saw it… they knew that he was different. They knew he had authority. And then…

A man with a demon walks into the room and challenges this authority… authority already established simply by Jesus’ teaching. Jesus speaks firmly to the demon and orders it to leave its host. The man shakes violently and the demon leaves prompting a second astonished response from the gathered crowd:

“What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.”

Even with the demonstration of power… the focus remains on the authority of his teaching. Jesus’ actions point back to his words… to his teaching.

There is little point in debating the fact that much of our society has lost faith in the words of the church… they no longer believe our message. I wonder if they doubt us because they are no longer convinced that WE believe our message. I suggested earlier that we need to look hard at the questions we are asking and how we apply the standard of integrity. Are we asking the right questions? Are we setting the standard where it needs to be set?

To an outsider looking in, it may rightly appear that the church no longer even HAS a message to those beyond our walls. It might appear that we have stopped trying to share the message of Christ with those who have not experienced his love and mercy. Instead, our energy, our money, our passions are spent shouting at one another… shouting messages and words, not for others, but for those within our larger family who we deem HERETICS. We shout over heaven and hell, over competing atonement theories, over whether or not women should be allowed in ministry or even have paying jobs! We have stopped trying to convince the guy with the Dell PC that Mac makes a better computer… we are, instead, expending our energies by arguing over whether or not the black iPhone is cooler than the white one. And in the process, we miss the simple genius that caused Steve Jobs to offer the iPhone in two colors.

We have a message… a message that we must believe and live if we are to speak it with authority. A simple and yet profound message:

“Jesus loves you”

“GOD loves you”

True belief leads to vision and vision… to action. The first step to integrity, to the authority that Jesus carried, is to believe these words – to believe them fully and deeply and to allow the words to reveal our path forward. And then… we must act. If we believe, we must act. And if we believe, the opportunity to act will follow.

When we speak of God’s love, we should expect to be interrupted by demonic voices daring us to “prove it!” The demons of poverty and hunger… The demon of lonliness… The demons of prejudice and bigotry. Homelessness. Addiction. Abuse. All of these demons will step into our line of sight when we speak of His love and they will say “prove it”. And then… we act. Or; we step around the unclean spirit and move forward, with Jesus’ words still warm in our mouths. Words slowly turning from hope into a type of toxin. And the demons mock us. The demons mock us because we have proven that we do not believe in the love of God; because we have shown that they are only words – spoken with no authority.

“Jesus loves you…”

If we believe this – if we truly and deeply embrace the magic and the mystery of these words… then THIS community can become all that He has called us to be. If we live, and breath, and move, and have our being within this truth, then we will become who we say we are. People of Deep Community – of Generous Mission – of unlimited Inclusion – and of worship born in spirit and in truth.

May we believe deeply and fully in the love of Christ.

May we speak of his love with integrity and authority.

May we prove our words by the work of our hands.

And may we cast out every evil voice that would distract us from our mission to share his love with one another… and with the world.

His kingdom come.

into the great wide open

“Into the great wide open
Under them skies of blue
Out in the great wide open
A rebel without a clue” ~Tom Petty

Most folks assume that reckless, foolish behavior is something we grow out of – something that subsides with maturity. In many ways it is probably true. I am finding, however, a new kind of recklessness as I near the half century mark. The recklessness of youth assumes success; that our endeavors cannot fail. When we are young we are invincible. So, really, it is not reckless at all.

Real recklessness – true foolishness – fully accepts the possibility, hell, probability of failure… and acts anyway. The reckless spirit I am discovering peers over the edge, knows it is too high for survival, and jumps!

Butch Cassidy: Alright. I'll jump first.

Sundance Kid: No.

Butch Cassidy: Then you jump first.

Sundance Kid: No, I said.

Butch Cassidy: What's the matter with you?

Sundance Kid: I can't swim.

Butch Cassidy: Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you.

Sundance Kid: Oh, shit...

This week the tribe I lead peered over the edge and jumped. We shook off the last bit of safety and stepped into the great wide open. And we jumped together. None of us are certain where we will land or even if we will survive. We only know that to stay, to stand still, is worse than the risk of the rocks below. We jump because, for all our doubt – all our questions, we believe in a “dangerous love” that calls us into a wild adventure; a call that leads us over the edge and into a new story. And we carry the old story with us…

Who we are and where we are going is the cliffhanger of our old story. It ended with a bunch of scared and tired outlaws trying to decide between the river gorge ahead and the posse at our backs. The new story finds us in mid-air, terrified and exhilarated, as we speed toward the rushing currents below. And at least one of us has never felt more alive…  

the love you make...

“for God so loved the world the he gave his one and only son” ~john 3:16

Advent is a season of waiting and so it is natural that we would look back and try to place ourselves in the middle of the world that awaited Jesus’ birth.

As we said last week, the old testament ends some 400 years prior to the birth of Christ. We do, however have Apocryphal writings that fill in those missing years; at least historically. We know that Israel, after exile and eventual return, was conquered and ruled by a variety of powerful nations and that the enemy was no longer across their border but among them.

We know that Greek Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes came to control Israel and that he was violently intolerant of religious diversity. He is said to have killed and sacrificed a pig on the altar of the temple in Jerusalem. He was known to have executed Jews for practicing circumcision. 2 Maccabees 7 relates the story of a woman and her 7 children who were tortured to death by the emperor for refusing to eat pork.

It was out of this climate that figures such as Judas Maccabeus arose. He was the last great hero of Israel and led his small army to a number of victories over the Greek occupational forces. While the writer of the texts mourn that Israel no longer has a prophet to speak for God, heroes such as Judas Maccabeus become the standard template for the type of deliverer awaited by Israel.

Eventually the Greek empire is conquered and replaced by Rome and the occasional violent still uprising occurs as the people wait for the messiah who would sit on David’s throne and restore Israel.

I wonder if that Israel would take comfort in these words:

“For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great
God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who
executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the
strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the
stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
~ Deuteronomy 10:17-19

Israel was overrun by strangers. Not widows and orphans but certainly strangers. In the midst of this they clung with white knuckles to their law, their tradition, their identity. And they awaited action; not from a God who “loved the world” but from a God who hated their enemies.

Love is a tricky thing to define because we mostly do not understand it. Our popular culture – songs, movies, literature – paint a picture of love as a feeling. Something we feel or experience. I don’t mean to say that love is NOT a feeling but rather that it is more. It is deeper. It is both practical and mystery. It is emotion and action. Love is feeling but it is also doing.

But most of us use love in a distorted way or have experienced love in a distorted way. Love is a tool used to manipulate; a reward for good behavior that can be withheld for bad behavior. We mess it up; we fail to understand it; but we cling tightly to the idea. We live in a culture that values love even if our understanding of love is often way off the mark.

But imagine… Imagine a people who had forgotten love. Who no longer believed in love; a people who had exchanged love for despair, or even hatred; a people who feared that God had forgotten them and so could not imagine that God loved them. And imagine that, in that world, you were told that God was about to act because he loved, not just you, but your oppressor, your enemy. Imagine if the Hero came, not with a sword, but with love… love for you but also for those you hate; those who had hurt you.

“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” ~john 1: 9-11

In advent we wait… and today we specifically talk of waiting for Love. But do we… really? In the time leading up to Jesus’ birth, over those years of waiting… were these people of God waiting for Love or simply relief?

One of the reasons faith is so difficult for us is because the things we need so desperately often require from us the things we are most reluctant to give.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ”
~matthew 5: 3-12

To be comforted we must mourn. To gain victory we must be meek. To receive mercy we must give mercy.

If we want to be loved… we must love.

“and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make” ~lennon & mccartney

Our prayer, if we pray for love at all, has been “God! love me and hate my enemy!”

His answer should send us back to our knees.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” ~matthew 5: 43-44

And so… maybe Christmas is either rejected by the Grinches among us… or, ironically, given over completely to the generic “merry” Christmas of twinkling lights and shiny paper. Maybe in an effort to avoid what true love requires, we create a false and shallow version of love that speaks to our feelings but seldom if ever requires action or pain or loss. Christmas came, not to make us merry… not to make us happy. Christmas came as a single flicker of flame on a tiny candle, lit in a darkened room.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”

If any of you have witnessed the birth of a child you know that there is probably no more amazing thing that happens on earth. It is a process so filled with every emotion, every type of extreme. After the silence of hope and waiting, comes the pain and the struggle of labor. Sweat and blood and agony and exhaustion… (it’s hard on the moms too!) Sometimes hours of excruciating work. Sometimes it is dangerous. Sometimes it is fatal. But then… a child comes. This ugly,screaming, misshapen creature… who is, to at least one in the room, the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. If you are not certain you know what love is… this is the only place I know I have seen it… the only place I am sure I have seen it. In the aftermath of struggle and pain and exhaustion and labor… comes complete and pure love; a love for the new and fragile life in her arms but also a love for the world; for life; for the simple act of being. When, if for only a moment, we experience true love for one, we begin to touch the kind of love that could love all.

This is the promise of Advent. That love has come and that through the love of one, all will receive love.

“and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”

His kingdom come…

song of hope - 1st sunday of advent

These are the final words of the Hebrew scripture:

Malachi 4:5-6

5 “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. 6He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”

Israel had survived exile, returned to Jerusalem, rebuilt the temple, and reestablished worship in the holy city. But, by the time of Malachi, they had grown, not wicked or rebellious, but apathetic and hopeless. In this short book (only 4 chapters) we read God’s final words to his people. We read his final prophetic utterance of the old covenant. God speaks and is then silent for 400 years. Like most of the Old Testament books of prophecy, there are warnings and correction. There is a call to change. But, Malachi ends with hope. Malachi ends with a promise. God makes a promise… and then God is silent.

400 years later, Israel is occupied, as is much of the known world, by Rome. There was an old Jewish priest named Zechariah who was descended directly from Aaron, the brother of Moses. Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth, were devout and devoted to God and the Gospel of Luke tells us that they were “upright in the sight of God”. Luke also tells us that this old couple had no children as Elizabeth had never been able to conceive a child.

In those days, temple duties rotated by family and Zechariah was charged with burning incense inside the temple as the gathered worshippers prayed outside. While performing his tasks, the Angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah (which scared Zechariah Spitless!) and said:

“Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth…

… He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

If you know this story you know that Zechariah expressed what would have seemed a healthy dose of skepticism and asked, simply, “How can I know this is true?” He also reminded Gabriel that both he and Elizabeth were not getting any younger and that the whole story seemed a bit tough to swallow.

Gabriel’s answer to Zechariah’s “how can I know?” is exactly what I would have said… you know… if I were an Arc Angel… Gabriel essentially says “Duh… I am Gabriel… I stand in the presence of God…”

Oh… right… ok… sorry…

Then Gabriel tells Zechariah that he will be unable to speak, not a word, until the child is born.

Zechariah completes his temple rotation (in silence) and Goes home to Elizabeth who, soon after, discovers that she is pregnant. Over the coming months, Elizabeth remained in seclusion and is later visited by her cousin Mary who, as it happens, is also pregnant.

Finally the time comes for Elizabeth to give birth. The baby boy is born and their friends and neighbors shared their good wishes with the family. On the eighth day it was time to circumcise the boy and publically name him. Most everyone assumed that he would be named after his father, Zechariah but Elizabeth protests. To settle the issue, Zechariah is given a writing tablet upon which he writes: HIS NAME IS JOHN.

And then Zechariah’s voice returned… and he sang!

68 “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
69 He has raised up a horn[c] of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David
70 (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
71 salvation from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us—
72 to show mercy to our ancestors
and to remember his holy covenant,
73 the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
74 to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

76 And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
78 because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
79 to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

At the end of Malachi, God speaks a promise and is then silent for 400 years. And then, 400 years later, he speaks the promise again, the same promise, to a humble and devout priest… and the priest is silent.

Hope is not found in our speaking, in our singing, in our words. Hope is found in silence; in listening for a voice that does not speak and then trusting in the silence. God spoke and then he ceased speaking but He was not absent; he was not idle. In his silence he began the work of preparation, of gestation, of preparing creation for the birth of hope.

Conception begins in passion, it is drama and life and excitement and fireworks. But then, the mystery takes over. The silence begins. The miracle of life that is set in action with such passion becomes a silent time of waiting; a time of anticipation; of hope. And life grows and becomes and is made ready… in silence.

Hoping is not wishing. We confuse the two fairly often but they are very different. A wish has a specific object. We create “wish lists” for Christmas. We make a wish when we blow out the candles on a birthday cake. When we make a wish, we wish for something. It can be noble or incredibly selfish but it is always specific. Hope is so much more; so much deeper. Hope is a thing that, when we most truly experience it, often has no tangible object; no thing we can name. While wishes often do not come true it is only lost hope that leads us to despair. A wish needs to be articulated or written down. Hope is often hidden… it is more fragile and more precious. And it is silent in the waiting.

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out” ~Vaclav Havel

‘The certainty of Christian hope lies beyond passion and beyond knowledge. Therefore we must sometimes expect our hope to come in conflict with darkness, desperation and ignorance. Therefore, too, we must remember that Christian optimism is not a perpetual sense of euphoria, an indefectible comfort in whose presence neither anguish nor tragedy can possibly exist. We must not strive to maintain a climate of optimism by the mere suppression of tragic realities. Christian optimism lies in a hope of victory that transcends all tragedy: a victory in which we pass beyond tragedy to glory with Christ crucified and risen’ ~thomas merton

God spoke and then God was silent. And creation hoped. Creation groaned. Creation waited.

In the early stages of pregnancy, there is not a lot of visible activity. Many of us wait months to even tell our friends or families that we are expecting. But, as the due date approaches, the signs become more clear, the change more dramatic. And hope grows stronger… more real… more visible. After 400 years of silent and un-noticed growth, the hope of God’s promise began to “show”. The signs of eminent birth became visible. And creation, who had carried this hope, began to feel the first subtle and then more pronounced kicking of hope, ready to be born.

Zechariah watched as his son grew inside his wife’s body. He watched in silence. He waited. And when the son came and he looked into his eyes, his silence turned to song and his waiting was over. So, within a matter of weeks, would God’s silence end as he looked into the eyes of his own son and sent his own song, in the voices of angels, to proclaim that hope had finally come.

smile! god hates you.

“There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.” ~Jonathan Edwards

Today’s scripture passages were, to say the least, challenging. In Malachi; God rebukes and curses the priests and vows to smear dung on their faces. I was understandably less than enthusiastic regarding this pronouncement. And so; I flip over to the new testament passage in Revelation to find horse; bridle deep in blood from the proverbial “Grapes of Wrath”.

OK. So God is angry. God is mad.

I guess I should not be surprised. Every natural disaster - every hurricane, tsunami, earthquake – is explained by various prophets and preachers as the natural and expected outpouring of God’s wrath. I am not surprised but I am confused.

God destroys most of Haiti because of a generations old “Pact with the Devil”. God allowed or possibly even caused New Orleans to be ravaged by hurricane Katrina in order to prepare or for another terror attack or possibly to prompt the confirmation of a particular Supreme Court nominee. And yet; No natural disaster has stopped genocide in Rwanda. No earthquake has swallowed the evil in Darfur. And the state of Pennsylvania, or at least Penn State University, remains safe and untouched.

So we struggle with the idea of an angry God. We struggle because, if he is angry, it seems that he is, at very least, somewhat arbitrary in the way he rations out his wrath.

Many of us learned very early that god was angry and that his anger was more than justified. I opened with an excerpt from Jonathan Edwards’ sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. The sermon was given on July 8, 1741. Let me read the quote again:

“There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.” ~Jonathan Edwards

Most of us look back at these words, spoken 270 years ago, and smile that we have risen above this view of God. That we have gained considerable ground in those almost 300 years and that, while historically important, Edwards’ sermon has not footing in 21st century mainstream Christendom.

I want to read another quote. A quote made more recently; within the last few months rather than the last few centuries.

“Some of you, God hates you. Some of you, God is sick of you. God is frustrated with you. God is wearied by you. God has suffered long enough with you. He doesn’t think you’re cute. He doesn’t think it’s funny. He doesn’t think your excuse is “meritous” (not an actual word). He doesn’t care if you compare yourself to someone worse than you, He hates them too. God hates, right now, personally, objectively hates some of you.”

You might assume that this quote was taken from a fringe, outside-the-mainstream, preacher. Maybe the pastor in Florida who wanted to burn the Koran or the pastor in Oklahoma who protests at the funerals of veterans. The quote comes, in fact, from a very mainstream and very popular pastor; the pastor of a very young, hip church in a very hip city; a church of 10,000 plus members and several church plants; a bestselling Christian author and highly in demand speaker; the poster boy for young, hip, cool evangelicals.

The idea of an angry God is central to many, if not most of our teachings on salivation or atonement. Most of us were taught that there was this gulf between us and god – a gulf that burned with his anger toward his creation. Anger toward each and every one of us. And that we are saved, not so much because we were forgiven but because God decided to pour ALL of that anger out on his own son… on Jesus. (well… all except what he saved for Haiti and New Orleans).

My favorite theologian, N.T. Wright has written recently about the atonement and how our theology is a bit off point. Let me read from his response to a recent question on the topic of atonement and God’s anger.

“If you say Christ died in our place and took our penalty and our punishment, that’s fine. But if the narrative that you have in mind is of a malevolent, capricious, angry God who is determined to punish somebody for all this sin that’s going on, and, ah! here’s somebody who happens to be his own Son, right, he’ll do, we’ll punish him and then the rest of you can go free—that story radically distorts the beautiful biblical meaning of substitionary atonement.

Now I deliberately caricature to make the point. But substutionary atonement which is so central to justification means what it means within the biblical story, which is not that rather arbitrary angry God, determined to take it out on somebody, and it just happens to be an innocent victim. I’m not surprised that when people hear the story told like that, they often react against it”  ~N.T. Wright

You guys remember the old Saturday Night Live bit, “Deep Thoughts, by: Jack Handy”? One of my favorites was this pearl:

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is "Probably because of something you did."

It’s funny because we know two things about the statement. First; that it is so - very - wrong. And second; that it is pretty close to what most of us have and, maybe on some level, still believe.

Again, Tom Wright:

“This is what happens when people present over-simple stories… …with an angry God and a loving Jesus, with a God who demands blood and doesn’t much mind whose it is as long as it’s innocent. You’d have thought people would notice that this flies in the face of John’s and Paul’s deep-rooted theology of the love of the triune God: not ‘God was so angry with the world that he gave us his son’ but ‘God so loved the world that he gave us his son’.” ~N.T. Wright

I don’t pretend that scripture does not fully express God’s anger or His wrath. I would not suggest that these elements of his nature are false or that he has changed. I simply say this: that He is most fully and completely revealed in Jesus. In Christ we see Him fully for the first time. This is why Jesus said “if you have seen me, you have seen the father”. And so, all of God’s story, all of his character, all of what can be known of Him must be filtered through the gospels and through the person Jesus.

When we embrace and embolden ourselves with the angry God, we give ourselves license to be angry. When we embrace a God who hates, we are then able to justify our own hatred. We use this Anne Lamott quote a lot around here:

“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

A God who hates releases us to hate. To hate anything other – anything we do not understand, anyone who looks or behaves, or believes differently - Anyone not like us.

Kris Kristofferson wrote a song in the early 70s entitled “Jesus Was a Capricorn” 

Jesus was a Capricorn, he ate organic foods.
He believed in love and peace and never wore no shoes.
Long hair, beard and sandals and a funky bunch of friends.
Reckon they'd just nail him up if He come down again. 

'Cos everybody's got to have somebody to look down on.
Who they can feel better than at anytime they please.
Someone doin' somethin' dirty, decent folks can frown on.
If you can't find nobody else, then help yourself to me. 

Egg Head's cussin Red Neck's cussin' hippies for their hair.
Others laugh at straights who laugh at freaks who laugh at squares.
Some folks hate the whites who hate the blacks who hate the clan.
Most of us hate anything that we don't understand.

May we be a people who throw away hatred and embrace love. May we be a community where hate and anger find no ground fertile enough to grow. May we remember that Jesus came, not because God hated the world, but because he loved it… and because we are loved may we love the world, both inside and outside our own tribe. His Kingdom Come…