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Born again
| O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
Mild he lays his glory by, born that men no more may die; Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth. |
Last week, my laptop went on strike. I started getting messages that I was not allowed to open documents, that I needed permission from who knows who. I didn’t know what to do. I was ready to buy new software. Maybe a new laptop. A new career. A friend gave me the number of a tech guy who asked if I had tried restarting. I did. The problem went away. My laptop just needed a new start. Sometimes I need that too.
A friend, a clergyman, found his seat on the plane. Wearing his clerical collar, the passenger next to him dove into conversation about religion. As the flight continued, my friend was held captive, subject to inquisition. When the passenger found out he was Episcopalian, it was time to check bona fides. So my friend was asked: "Have you been born again?" My friend answered: “I have been born again. And again. And again.” He made the point that renewal is something that happens repeatedly.
Theologian Karl Barth had a similar exchange with an American evangelical. He was challenged to name the exact time and place when he had been born again. The questioner was quite sure the eminent theologian couldn’t do it, which would indicate that Dr. Barth was not really a Christian after all. Dr. Barth answered: “I was born again. At three o’clock on the first Good Friday on a hill outside of Jerusalem.” He made the point that being re-born is God’s work, not our own.
Carols of Christmas make the same point. Two examples are found above.
Admittedly, the notion of being born again carries baggage in our culture. It can be loaded language. For some, it has become a litmus test. The phrase ‘born again” originates in Jesus’ late night conversation with Nicodemus in the Gospel of John, chapter 3 (a.k.a., Nick at Nite). Jesus tells this religious leader, someone on in years, that he must be born again or born from above or born anew. Nicodemus doesn’t get it. His systematic theology did not leave room for this idea that we need to start again, that the Holy One needs to be born in each one of us, again and again and again.
Christmas comes as a season of new life. As carols indicate, it’s all about the moment in time when one particular child was born in Bethlehem. But as the collect printed in the intro indicates, it’s also about the moment in time when we can be born again, or born anew, or born from above. As my friend indicated, that can happen again and again.
As we move through this Christmas season (It’s more than just one day!), what new thing might be born in you? How might you be open to new life, to God’s gracious and creative work? Once we recognize that that work has been done, how will we live into it, growing and deepening a life with God? O holy child of Bethlehem…be born in us today.
-Jay Sidebotham
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Making room
Lord, let not our souls be busy inns that have no room for thee or thine, but quiet homes of prayer and praise, where thou mayest find fit company, where the needful cares of life are wisely ordered and put away, and wide, sweet spaces kept for thee; where holy thoughts pass up and down and fervent longings watch and wait thy coming.
-Julian of Norwich
This Advent season, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to prepare the way of the Lord. Hymns and scripture and liturgy tell us it’s the reason for the season. But what does that actually look like in life? The prayer we heard yesterday in church, and the prayer from Julian of Norwich printed above tell us it’s about making room for Jesus. Again, what does that look like?
Does it call for a spiritual bulldozer? A teardown? Do I need to park a dumpster in my spiritual driveway to get rid of junk? How can I envision my life as a mansion prepared to welcome Christ, when my life often feels like a small studio apartment with no closet space?
One of the ways we might begin to create that space is to enter into the counter-cultural, contemplative call of the season. During Advent, the church invites us to slow down and be quiet when almost every other message we get tells us to hurry up, take in all the noise and do a lot of stuff, fueling the anxiety that we maybe did not do enough. Even in the church, we don’t always get that message right. A friend who worked in a big church used to sport a button around this time of year. The button read: Jesus is coming. Look busy. It got a chuckle but I think it’s the exact opposite of what we’re called to do.
Centuries ago, mystic Julian of Norwich crafted the prayer which helps us think about what it means to get that mansion ready. She recognized that the inner life can be very much like a busy inn, a “No Vacancy” sign prominently displayed. Lots of coming and going. Nothing settled. Does your life ever feel like that? Do you enjoy that feeling?
The alternative Julian presented was a quiet home of prayer and praise, with company fit for God’s presence. She envisions our cares put aside. Wide, sweet spaces are kept. (I love that phrase: Wide, sweet spaces. I want those spaces.)
We’re just a few days away from Christmas. How will you prepare to welcome Christ into your life in this holiday season, and in the coming new year? How can you create space for that to happen?
It might begin with asking God for help, adding to those prayers an attitude of gratitude, which can often give breathing room. It can also involve a rigorous look at the ways we spend our time. Can we carve out quiet time each day this week, even if it’s only a few minutes, to reflect on the miracle we’re about to celebrate?
It may involve rigorous choices about what we will do and what we decide we won’t do. Take a walk each day to think about all this. Jot down thoughts to clarify your thinking. The church, with its variety of worship opportunities, can help. And one of the key ways to make room for Jesus at any time of year, is to figure out how to be of service, to take a moment to look around at the needs that surround and ask: How can I help?
This week's prayers suggest that we have agency in all of this. We can choose to make room for the Christ child. What will that look like in your life in these days before Christmas?
-Jay Sidebotham
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Sorely hindered
Often when I meet with groups, I ask people to talk about their own spiritual journeys, specifically their experience of spiritual growth. I like to ask them to think of a time when they have experienced spiritual growth and follow up with a question about what it was that helped them grow. What were the catalysts? What would you say to those questions?
After we get through that, I ask them to think of a time when they were spiritually stuck or stalled. We all have those times. Automotive metaphors are useful, imagining a time when a person ran out of gas, had a flat tire, or ended up in a ditch, spiritually speaking. As follow-up, I ask them to think about what might have caused them to experience that kind of thing as well. How would you answer those questions?
In the language of the collect we heard yesterday (printed in the column on the left), this dynamic of being spiritually stalled may be a matter of being sorely hindered by our sins, by the ways in which we fall short of the mark. When I pose questions to groups about their spiritual journey, I get a lot of answers. Not all of them appear obviously connected to sins. There are all kinds of things that hinder us in our spiritual lives.
A common answer is crisis, some difficult experience. Those kinds of things come to all people. Interestingly enough, a crisis can also be the thing that helps us grow as we recognize our dependence on God. But we can definitely be hindered by such. For example, our collective experience with COVID in recent years has definitely been for some a spiritual hindrance.
I read a study that said that one great impediment to spiritual growth, something that sorely hinders us, is the busy schedules we maintain, the ways we equate busyness with value. Advent as a season can be a good antidote to all of that, with its counter-cultural call to slow down and be quiet.
Speaking specifically of sins, perhaps the root of sin is the disordering of love, loving self more than God or neighbor, imagining a self-centered universe. Our own egos can hinder spiritual growth, mindful that ego can be seen as an acronym: Edging God Out. When we put ourselves at the center of the universe, it makes spiritual growth, a relationship with God, harder to come by. The confession found in our prayer book helps me understand the ways in which I am caught in the power of sin. It reminds me that I have not loved God with my whole heart. I have not loved neighbor as self. That’s true for me, every day.
I suspect we all know those things that can sorely hinder us. The recognition of those things is a first step. (Advent, with its call to slow down and be quiet, can give space for that kind of self-awareness.) Once we recognize things that hinder us, we are then called to recognize that we need help to be liberated from those things. That’s where we get the cry for help captured in the phrase “Stir up your power.” The prayer affirms our belief in the “bountiful grace and mercy” of God. The power is there.
Just maybe the door opens to spiritual growth when we open ourselves to that grace and mercy, forgiving ourselves as much as we forgive others. How might you open that door, even just a crack, this week?
-Jay Sidebotham
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Messengers
| I am your message, God. Throw me like a blazing torch into the night, so that all may see and understand.
-Mother Maria Skobtsova, Eastern Orthodox monastic As you reflect on your own spiritual journey, who were the people who guided you along the way? Who informed that journey, shining light on your path? Asked another way, who have been God’s messengers in your life? The prayer we heard yesterday in church, printed in the column on the left, speaks of the ministry of messengers. It makes the point that God uses people (like us) to speak the truth, to hold folks accountable, to share good news. In the same way that St. Francis prayed to be an instrument or a channel of God’s peace, the prophets were used by God to help people think about the direction in which they were headed. In this season, we hear a lot about John the Baptist, whose whole ministry was summed up in the call to prepare the way. He brings new meaning to the word eccentric. If he walked into one of our churches, we’d probably call security before we paid any attention to his message. But he is remembered as one who pointed beyond himself to Christ, bringing the message of a new day. In Advent, we also hear from the prophet Isaiah who centuries earlier brought words of challenge and possibility. There are a whole bunch of other messengers in the Bible that prepare the way for Jesus. But those prophets, those messengers, are not just a thing of the past. Throughout the history of the church, up until our present time, we’ve been blessed by those we call prophets. We’re not talking about people who gaze into crystal balls and predict the future, as intriguing as they may be. We have in mind those people who fulfill a prophetic function, a ministry of analyzing the present. The word propheteia in Greek means the interpreting of the will of the gods. That’s something we all could use, in all seasons. Last Friday night, I had the privilege of hearing a contemporary prophet, Sister Joan Chittister, who reminded the congregation that religion is not a spiritual jacuzzi. In her timely book, THE TIME IS NOW, she asks these good questions: What does the prophetic tradition, the prophetic dimension of the spiritual life, have to do with us? How will it affect our lives? What will it mean to our own development and spiritual authenticity? What are the gifts that come to those who hold the Word of God up to the injustice of our own time? To those questions, I’d add: What’s the message? Like many other prophets of the scriptures, John the Baptist called on people to repent. That word suggests both direction and movement. As Pope Francis said, there’s no such thing as a stationary Christian. The prophets come to us to tell us when we might wittingly or unwittingly be headed in the wrong direction. It is no act of kindness to let someone keep doing that. When John the Baptist called people to repent, he was really telling them to turn around, to head towards that place where they could find grace. His harsh rhetoric may have been the ultimate kindness. Advent is a season to think about where we might need course correction. Ask yourself in the quiet of this season: “In what direction am I headed? Are the things that I value helping me get there?” Give thanks for the messengers in your life who help you take a look at such things. And then consider the possibility that God might be calling you to be a messenger, to help others think about the direction they are headed, and maybe to point them in the direction of Jesus, who comes to us full of grace and truth. (We need both those things.) We can be that messenger by what we say and what we do, with our lips and with our lives, as we offer ourselves to God’s work in the world. How might you do that this week? -Jay Sidebotham |
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Turn to the Light
| Happy new year!
We begin with grace, not a bad place to start. The prayer offered yesterday for the first Sunday of Advent (printed above) launches a new year in the church calendar. It says right up front that our dependence on grace is the heart of the matter. We rely on God’s free gifts, on love from which we can’t be separated. If we can remember that each day of this coming year, I suspect we’ll be in pretty good spiritual shape. And that gift of grace is just the start, as I channel the wisdom of Anne Lamott who described the mystery of grace as meeting us where we are but refusing to leave us there. Truth be told, I often almost instinctively resist the foundational nature of grace. I often default to my own teeth-gritting Christianity, the belief that I’m going to arrive at spiritual health the old-fashioned way: I’ll earn it, thank you very much. For too much of the time, I’m not entirely certain that I need to rely solely on grace. After all, God is kind of lucky to have me on the team. So why do we need to ask for grace? The rest of yesterday’s prayer helps us find an answer. It asks for the grace to cast away works of darkness. We need grace to say no to those things that are drawing us from the love of God. They come at us all the time, from all directions. One of the great starting points in church life is baptism, when the person being baptized renounces those things, says no to them. The person being baptized is asked to renounce the spiritual forces at work in the universe, a recognition that we contend with powers greater than ourselves. We need grace for that contest. We’re also asked to renounce evil forces in the world, which we witness every day in every news outlet. Then here’s the kicker. Those forces aren’t just out there somewhere. They take up residence in each of our hearts. When G.K.Chesterton was asked to name the source of the problems in the world, he simply said: "I am." We’re asked to renounce those powers inside of us. It’s a lot to contend with. We are invited to shed those works of darkness, just as in the early days of the church, a baptismal candidate took off his or her old clothing, went into the water buck naked and came out to be clothed in new, clean white garments. But it’s not just about that to which we say “no." It’s also about what we affirm. That’s described in yesterday's collect as taking on the armor of light, again implying a contest with forces that would threaten to undo us, to steal a phrase from Martin Luther. In baptism, taking on the armor of light can be described in three affirmations. We’re asked to turn to Jesus, to put our whole trust in God’s grace and love, to follow Jesus as Lord and Savior. Turn. Trust. Follow. Not a bad program for the new year. We ask for the grace to set out on that new path. And a new year, a new church year is an excellent time to launch out in that way. Use the quiet of the contemplative season of Advent to do some spiritual inventory, asking for the grace to take that inventory. It can be challenging work. Think about what you need to cast off. What you need to say no to. And think about what you might take on, as you try that armor of light on for size. I lost a good friend last year, a spiritual advisor with sharp wit, deep faith, and a keen sense of the power of grace. When I’d get all wound up about what was wrong with the world or with the church or with my soul, he would calmly say: Turn to the light. That's what we all get to do in this beautiful season of Advent. -Jay Sidebotham |
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Summing up the Sermon on the Mount
Now when Jesus had finished saying these words, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as their scribes.
-Matthew 7:28-29
The two verses printed above show how the gospel writer sums up the Sermon on the Mount, a sermon which has been the focus of these Monday reflections in recent days. There are two things I notice about this summation.
First, I notice that the gospel says that there were crowds that had been listening to Jesus’ astounding teaching. When the sermon was introduced (Matthew 5:1), it seems that Jesus had left those crowds to go to the mountaintop. It was just the disciples that he was teaching in this sermon. By the end of the sermon, the crowds were listening too. Does this matter? Maybe it’s not all that significant, but I take it to mean that the good news has a way of spreading to an ever growing audience. In fact, that is what it’s supposed to do.
I think of the great effect this sermon has had on the world in the time since Jesus first spoke on that mountain. Just one more indication that scripture has transformative power in helping people grow spiritually. Case in point: Leo Tolstoy read the sermon and it changed his life, causing him to take on a life of poverty. Mahatma Gandhi read what Tolstoy had said about the sermon, and it became a key part of his strategy of non-violence, which had liberating impact on the Indian sub-continent. Martin Luther King noted the ways that Gandhi had incorporated the sermon into his political strategy and applied those insights to the non-violent civil rights movement in this country. Again, transformation.
All of that points to the widening influence of this sermon, as it moved from the small audience of 12 disciples on the top of a middle-eastern mountain to change our world. My intent in spending recent months reflecting on this sermon is to see how that sermon can continue to shape our world, shape our individual lives, shape our church. My hope and prayer is that attention paid to each verse in these three chapters (Matthew 5-7) can help us grow, can help us share the good news of God’s love known to us in Jesus, our teacher.
The second thing I notice is the amazement of the crowd, their surprise at the authority Jesus exhibits (much more powerful than the clergy of the day). In many places in the gospels, people listen to Jesus, scratch their heads and say: “Where did he get all this? Where did he come from? How does he speak with such authority?” It raises the question of what we regard as authoritative. These days, we hear a lot about a rise in authoritarianism in our world. But as we note that rise, we may be facing a decline in an appreciation for authority. All kinds of authorities are faced with questioning.
When the gospel says that people thought Jesus was speaking with authority, I imagine them thinking: “This guy knows what he’s talking about.” I imagine them perceiving that Jesus is someone they could trust, someone worth following. I mean, what was it about Jesus that he could walk up to busy fishermen or tax collectors and say “Follow me” and they would get up and do it?
As I reflect on the Sermon on the Mount, there are a number of things that surprise me. Some things strike me as mysterious, border-line baffling. But as I read these words, I pick up on the authority with which Jesus teaches. It makes me inclined to say that the way of Jesus is the way I want to go. As the old hymn goes, I may not know what the future holds but I know who holds the future.
It’s been a gift to spend time reflecting on the Sermon on the Mount, bit by bit. I hope that there have been edifying moments. Truth be told, a main reason for doing it was for my own edification, to see how I can draw closer to understanding what Jesus has to say to me today. I’m not entirely sure what comes next for Monday Matters. I’m thinking I’m going to take a few weeks off to think about that. But I trust that we can all continue to see how the way of love, the Jesus movement, intersects with our daily lives.
-Jay Sidebotham
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Foundation
George Burns, comic from a few years back, put it this way: The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible. As a preacher, I take his point. And I have often had that point made to me as I stand at the door and greet congregants at the end of the service.
As we come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, we note a good beginning (the Beatitudes) and a good ending (today’s passage about foundations). But contrary to what Mr. Burns has to say, there was plenty of good stuff in between. Life changing, history shaping material. At its conclusion, the Sermon on the Mount winds up with a challenge to think about our lives. On what are we building those lives? How would you describe the foundation on which you are building your life?
A priest I admire often tells his congregation that suffering is the promise that life always keeps. Maybe that’s a slightly more dire variation of the saying that into each life some rain must fall. The premise of Jesus’ counsel is that the rain and floods and wind will inevitably happen. That’s not in question. The question is how we will be sustained in those moments.
Are we founded on rock or sand? What would a foundation on rock look like? What does a foundation of sand represent? The great hymn, Christ is Made the Sure Foundation, speaks of a life that finds its stability, its strength in Christ. St. Paul spoke about the importance of being rooted and grounded in love. That stands in contrast to a life built on a foundation that can’t handle the storm and ultimately proves itself insufficient to meet the crisis. We don’t have to look far to find lives built on ever-shifting ground, offering perilous illusion of permanence and stability.
Take some time this week to re-read the whole Sermon on the Mount in one sitting. It’s three chapters (Matthew 5-7). The sermon starts strong, by saying “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” which has been translated “Blessed are those who know their need of God.” In the guidance that unfolds before the conclusion is reached, there are all kinds of ways to find a solid foundation. Despite what George Burns had to say, focus on the riches of those verses. Which of those ways speak out to you?
Years ago, when our family was going through a crisis, my mother sat us four kids down and made us begin to memorize the text of the hymn printed above. I thought it was kind of a dumb idea. But she was smarter than I am. Needless to say that was a few years ago. But over the years, the words of that hymn have sustained me, in everything from drizzling rain to torrential downpour to hurricane-force winds. May you find grace to discover a firm foundation, one upon which you can build a life, for this life and the next.
-Jay Sidebotham
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Lord, Lord
If a preacher like me is not made a little nervous by this passage, maybe enough attention is not being paid. We tend to talk a lot. We work hard at getting the words right. We say “Lord, Lord” in all kinds of ways. In all that chatter, are we doing the will of the Father in heaven?
Evangelicals often say that the key to salvation rests on saying the right thing, articulating just the right statement of faith. Other traditions place hope on words of liturgy said just the right way. I’ve run across preachers and teachers who talk about grace till they’re blue in the face, but practice a religion marked by judgment, ministry that is anything but graceful. Politicians promote religious values and then shape policy that contradicts it. It’s not hard to come up with a list of ways that people say “Lord, Lord” while living lives that say something else.
Perhaps the greater challenge is to think about what it means to do the will of the Father. It’s easy, fun, and often delicious, to point out the hypocrisy in other people (although I find it totally annoying when folks point it out in me). But the more pressing question, and the best way I know to battle hypocrisy is to ask: What do I know of what God wills? Am I focused on that?
I’m starting a list based on what I find in scripture. You may want to add your own ideas.
God wills unity. With divisions in so many parts of society, including those who might say “Lord, Lord,” the gospel of John reveals God’s intention. Jesus prays to his Father and asks that they (his followers) may be one “as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” (John 17:21) Jesus doesn’t pray for uniformity or agreement. He prays for something more profound.
God wills healing and reconciliation. With brokenness of relationship on full display in families, neighborhoods, nations and even churches where people rattle off “Lord, Lord,” one of the key themes in the Lord’s Prayer is forgiveness. Many who say “Lord, Lord” can’t seem to let go of resentment (author included). I sense that the intention of the Holy One is that we move on, look forward, look up.
God wills thanksgiving. With widespread deficit of an attitude of gratitude, people who mindlessly repeat “Lord, Lord” often act as if God owes them something, as if God is lucky to have them on the team. I love the verse from the psalm that tells us what God intends: Whoever offers me the sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me (Psalm 50:24).
God wills inclusion of those on the edges. With migrants now heartlessly shipped around the country as chattel, often by folks who say “Lord, Lord”, a word from the book of Deuteronomy indicates the divine will: 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)
God wills love of God and neighbor. Jesus called it the summary of the law. We express the love of God in worship (with our lips and with our lives). We have opportunity to express love of neighbor all the time, using Jesus’ expansive vision of neighborliness found in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). The prophet Micah presented it as a three-point plan: What does the Lord require but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8) Not a bad mission statement for my life.
God will trust, perhaps the ultimate expression of love of God. Too often, religious folks (the "Lord, Lord" crowd) act as functional atheists, relying on their own resources, their own righteousness. Proverbs 3:5 issues a different call: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."
For me, that’s a gracious plenty to work on. While recognizing my own hypocritical behavior, I commit to focus on these holy intentions. How would you describe the will of the Father? How might you focus on that this week, and in the weeks to come?
-Jay Sidebotham
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Fruits and roots
James Forbes, former Senior Pastor at Riverside Church, one of the best preachers I ever encountered, put it this way in a sermon (as best I recollect): It’s about the fruits not the roots.
His point was that what matters is how a life is lived, whether the love of God is brought to fruition in that life. As we come to today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had just finished warning about false prophets, calling for discernment between what is true and what is false. That discernment, he seems to say, will come by looking at the fruits, not the roots. In a few verses, he will continue the theme by saying: “Not everyone who says 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom.”
Too often, we want to focus on the roots. We do it in relationship to religion: What’s your theology? What’s your denomination? To what creed do you subscribe? We do it in other areas of life: Where did you go to school? What’s your zip code? What political party do you belong to? What news programs do you watch? Who are your people?
But our faith indicates that maybe the more important bit of info is not the roots but the fruits. St. Francis of Assisi famously told disciples: Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. In so saying, he echoed Jesus’ teaching that people would know his followers by the way they showed love to one another. Fruits.
St. Paul wrote a letter to the Galatians, a church that had gotten him hopping mad. In that letter, he sets up a contrast between works of the flesh and fruits of the spirit. Note that he doesn’t talk about works of the spirit. He describes them as fruit. (You can see the list above.) Those fruits grow effortlessly, not the result of works, or what one person described as teeth-gritting Christianity. The fruits are an extension, a reflection, a natural expression of who that person is, someone who has come to know grace in such a deep way that they effortlessly show grace.
They may do so unconsciously. I think of the parable Jesus told later in the gospel of Matthew (25:31-46) about the contrast between sheep and goats brought before the king, who is the judge. The sheep are commended by the judge, because they fed the poor, visited the prisoner, clothed the naked. In so doing, they are told that they had offered those life-giving, loving, liberating ministries to the king himself. The amazing thing is, the sheep did so unconsciously. They ask: Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry, sick, imprisoned?
This is not to say that roots don’t matter. A prayer found in the letter to the Ephesians (also above), speaks about the importance of being rooted and grounded in love. Out of that will come fruits that reflect God’s presence and power.
If we are rooted in a mindset that it is all up to us, that we have to prove our worth through our actions, intelligence, income, resume, religious practice, theological or political correctness, those kinds of roots produce fruits that set us apart from one another. Those kinds of roots diminish or even dismiss the power of grace in our lives.
If we are rooted in the love of God, we find our worth, our value, our dignity grounded in the amazing fact that we are made in the image of God and that Christ is present in each one of us and that we are sealed by the Holy Spirit, marked as Christ’s own forever. Those roots will then bear a whole different kind of fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control
Think this week about roots and fruits. Where are you grounded? How is that being expressed in your life? What kind of fruit are you bearing?
-Jay Sidebotham
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False prophets
One of my seminary professors, a mentor (and hero) named Christopher Morse wrote a book entitled “Not Every Spirit.” The title takes its cue from a New Testament passage (I John 4:1: Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.). In that book, he made the point that part of the journey of faith, part of the responsibility of Christians, part of the work of discipleship is to evaluate the spirits at work in the world. It presumes that some spirits work counter to God’s purposes, purposes of love. Those spirits can look innocent, wrapped in sheep’s clothing. Underneath there can be danger. Ravenous wolves.
Dr. Morse also talked about the Christian responsibility to commit not only to what we believe but also to what we refuse to believe. As an example, he noted how the theology of apartheid needed its spirit tested. Followers of Jesus needed to reject it. We can apply those principles to our own time. We need to test the spirits, when so much of current public discourse seeks to wrap itself in Christian cloak, or perhaps more precisely, in Christian costume.
It's tricky stuff. As I think about who I consider to be false prophets, in my experience, it’s usually folks who differ from me on theological, political or social issues. With that in mind, I need to mention again the wisdom of Anne Lamott who said: 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. So what might be the way to tell the difference between true or false prophet? Perhaps more to the point, in a culture that increasingly distrusts institutions and often speaks of fake news and alternative facts, what is the truth? Would we know a false prophet if we met one?
The Gospel of John provides interesting answers. One of the most riveting moments in that gospel for me is the private exchange between Jesus and Pilate, right before the crucifixion. The conversation ends with Pilate’s question to Jesus: What is truth? Jesus seems like he lets the question hang out there, but he’s said a lot about truth already.
Earlier in that gospel, Jesus said you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. History shows that the message of false prophets often has the opposite effect. Curtailment of freedom stifles the abundant life Jesus promised in John 10:10.
In John 10, Jesus talks a lot about sheep, and who they follow. He contrasts himself, the good shepherd, to thieves and hired hands (a.k.a., false prophets). He invites followers into relationship with him, describing himself as the way, the truth and the life. He provides a guide to discernment. He said: By this will all people know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. I was at a gathering recently where we sang: “They will know we are Christians by our love.” I got the idea of making a video, playing that song, showing images of Christians (and other religious folks) in our world who preach and practice anything but the love of God. You don’t have to look hard to find them. (For my part, a look in my mirror might well reveal one of those.). Want to help me make that video?
In the prologue to John’s gospel, Jesus the word is described as being full of grace and truth. We need both. The true prophet can provide both.
In my years in the church, I’ve met wonderful prophets. Some, for all their wonderfulness, have disappointed. Some have done harm, revealed to be ravenous. Which for me is all the more reason to do my level best to just hang out with Jesus, to savor his teaching, to follow his example, to celebrate and imitate his grace, to be in relationship with him (whatever that looks like). In my own journey, the eucharist taken regularly is a way to stick close. Rhythms of prayer and reflection on scripture do that. Service to those on the margin does that. What are the ways you do that? Let this week, the start of a new season, be a time to explore that question, to do that tricky and wonderful work of discernment.
-Jay Sidebotham
