Confrontation

Confrontation – that is what is at the heart of our gospel lesson today and there is possibly no more difficult skill to master than to confront others well and to be confronted in turn.  As human beings we rather despise confrontation, indeed, psychologists have discovered that confrontation can activate the same portions of the brain as actual physical pain.  If someone has ever confronted you and you suddenly feel as if you’ve been physically hit, it is because our brains interpret having our beliefs or our actions confronted in the same way it interprets a physical assault.  First there is shock and then there is the fight or flight reflex.  The adrenaline begins to pump, the senses heighten, and the heart begins to beat hard and fast so all the cells in your body will have the oxygen they need to either do battle or to runaway quickly to safety.  If after being confronted you felt yourself falling away into anger or tremendous fear, this is why.  It is your fight or flight reflex.  You see, your body considers your psychological health just as important as your physical health and so when you are being confronted; when your upbringing, your politics, all the ideas that you have absorbed into your identity, when they are being called into question your body reacts to them in the exact same manner as it would a physical threat.  It is a phenomenon called Identity Protective Cognition.

The problem is, of course, that as sinful and broken human beings we often need to be confronted.  We need to have our understandings questioned and our behaviors challenged.  Left to our own devices, human beings are an incredibly dangerous species.  We are the only creature on the planet that acts as our own population control, and as such we pose a danger not only to ourselves but even the very world around us.  Now, I don’t personally have a problem with evolution, but in my forty years of life I have never understood how professors and doctors of biology can look at such a willfully ignorant and wantonly selfish organism as humanity and dare to call it “evolved”.  If survival of the fittest was the only rule, if it was the only force acting on creation’s behalf and not Divine Grace, then quite frankly a naked ape that can’t run, isn’t very strong, and doesn’t climb trees well should have been first on the evolutionary chopping block. 

But that is the nature of the human species.  Lazy, undisciplined and blissfully stupid is in fact our preferred state most of the time.  The only time when we aren’t that way is when the situation forces us to be otherwise.  When was the last time any of us learned something when we didn’t want to?  When something came up that we really wanted and nobody was around to see us, what happened?  We did what we wanted!  Right or wrong!  That is who we are.  If we don’t have to learn something we often won’t, and unless our actions will net us punishment we will often do as we please regardless of the consequences.  We all inherently know that we are this way; it is why most parents don’t have to be told to discipline their children.  They know quite well the public consequences of unleashing a human being with no discipline, no empathy, and no understanding of consequences upon the world.  We inherently know that the human creature is not rational by its own volition; its only hope is to be raised and constantly confronted with the understanding that it has the power of choice, but that power must be used wisely and to the benefit of more than just the self.  

None of this, however, makes confrontation any easier; indeed, confrontation is such a stress that societies often develop unwritten rules of confrontation, little informal statutes about who may confront whom and when.  Most of the time these rules are benign.  If Mom does something wrong, for instance, you just live with it.  That’s the unwritten rule.  Not only should you respect the fact that you aren’t perfect either, but on a practical level the stress that the confrontation causes just isn’t worth it – and so the confrontation is avoided.  Most of the time these unwritten rules are benign, but there are plenty of instances when they most certainly are not.  Our culture can very much use things like shame to control the kinds of confrontation its willing to deal with.  1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime in our country, and a third of those women will be victimized before they even reach adulthood.  And yet for both the men and the women our culture has much the same response: what’s wrong with you?  What were you wearing, how were you acting, would he have thought you were being flirty. These are questions our appointed justice system asks of our assault victims, and for the men it can be worse.  The men can be laughed right out of court because it was obvious he wasn’t manly enough to defend himself.  This is just one way that our culture uses control and shame to say who may be confronted and who not.

This is who we are:  A people that desperately hate confrontation, are in dire need of it nonetheless,  but at the same time exist in a culture that will deeply control who will get confronted and who won’t.  All of these things you will find very much a part of our gospel lesson today – except, of course, when it comes to Jesus.

So what is going on in our gospel lesson, exactly?  You may not know it, but these passages are almost a perfect example of the religious politics of Jesus’ day.  You see, both Jesus and John the Baptist would have been very controversial.  John was not only offering repentance away from the Temple and its sacrifices, but he was specifically offering it through baptism in the river Jordan – something that only gentiles converting to Judaism would have had to do.  The religious leaders of John’s day did not appreciate that, and if John rubbed them the wrong way then Jesus would have had them screaming at the very top of their lungs.  Teaching people that there were more important concerns than keeping the Sabbath; telling people that all foods are clean; freely touching lepers and hanging out with tax collectors and sinners, all while calling yourself a rabbi: the fact is all this would have upset more than a few people.  Jesus’ ministry was very confrontational.  Indeed, while in his youth he was understood as Joseph’s biological son, in his adulthood and ministry it was understood that Jesus was fatherless, born out of wedlock but got lucky.  The writings and sayings of the Pharisees that have been preserved universally call Mary a harlot and no small amount of time and effort was spent trying to find Jesus’ real father.  Not only was Jesus’ ministry inviting of confrontation, his very life was an affront to polite society.

So when the chief priests and the elders approach Jesus, asking him by what authority he is doing these things, teaching at the temple, this is not a random question – it is a direct, political attack. In this context, “by what authority are you doing these things,” is a demand of not only of diploma but also pedigree – both of which they know Jesus does not have.  “By what authority are you doing these things? How are you not the uneducated son of harlot posing as a rabbi that these people should listen to you on holy ground?  Show us where you graduated, introduce us to your human father – O right, you can’t”

It was berating, it was shaming, and it was a direct attempt to control the confrontational message that was the heart of Jesus’ ministry - that love is more important than the law.  Jesus was confronted in the most public and humiliating way possible.  Any one of us at this point would have our blood pumping, our muscles growing tight, but not Jesus.  Jesus does not do that.  Indeed, his response is nothing short of brilliant.  Jesus confronts also, but he does not confront to attack.  He confronts to reveal, and so he poses a question of his own.  “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.  Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”

And so the elders and the chief priests then immediately reveal their mindset, the very motivation for asking Jesus their question.  They could have answered Jesus honestly, they could have even answered individually, but what do they do?  They huddle together and try to cook up an answer.  Now if you are in the crowd and you see politicians make a jab and then huddle together to discuss, you know this is not going to be about truth, you know this isn’t going to be an honest attempt to understand, it’s gonna be about what – POLITICS.  Posing the question that he does, he not only deflects his opponents attempt to control his ministry but He also reveals their own selfish and political motivations for even asking it.  “We don’t know” they all say in unison.  And Jesus said unto them, neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.  A dishonest question does not warrant an honest answer.

Do you see what Jesus did there?  He didn’t fight, he didn’t flee, he didn’t pose the berating question that attacked his opponent’s identities but rather he posed the revelatory question, the question that instead unveiled motives and brought the listener to the very heart of the matter at hand.  That was Jesus’ method of confrontation, and unfortunately we don’t have a lot of experience with it, do we? 

But we were confronted with something else this week, weren’t we?  Indeed, this kind of confrontation we have all too much experience with.  Not only we as a congregation but all of America was confronted with it last Sunday night, in Las Vegas, when a white retired millionaire name Stephen Paddock opened fire upon an unsuspecting crowd at a country music concert from his room on the 32^nd floor of the Mandalay Bay resort and casino, killing 50 and wounding almost 500.  And just like the thousands of times before it, the various factions in our country will lobby for their own political ends, confronting the issue and each other after the ways of fallen human beings, berating each other and using dead mothers, fathers, and children as an excuse to attack people they don’t like.  Both sides will do this.  But we’re not going to do that today, not in here.  Today we are going to confront the issue at hand, but we are going to do so after the way of Jesus, by asking the revelatory question. 

And we’ll start with this one: How long can this pulpit avoid the issue of gun violence and maintain its integrity?  How many dead bodies DO we need before its okay to talk about it? Is the issue of Gun Violence and Gun Control so divisive, that members of a church cannot discuss it without ruining friendships or breaking fellowship?  Is political party more important than Jesus?  Is the wish to own a firearm for home defense irrational?  For poor families that need to hunt in order to eat, does owning a firearm make them evil?  With that said, is it unreasonable to screen people mentally, morally, and physically before they are allowed to purchase a firearm?  Is the 2^nd Amendment of the American Constitution Divinely Inspired Scripture?  Were Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin Apostles?  Every Amendment to the constitution has never been seen as absolute.  If someone yells fire in a movie theatre, their freedom of speech will not protect them.  If a Classic-Satanist ritually sacrifices a human being, their freedom of religion will not protect them.  Why is the Second Amendment suddenly any different?           

I can’t tell you how to answer these questions, and indeed I never will.  But as Christians, don’t we owe it to our present and future dead to at least have asked them?