Can Lent be Relevant?

Good Morning!  Grace and peace to all of you this 5^th Sunday in the Lenten Season.  Now, I don’t know about all of you but 5 weeks into anything I tend to get pretty philosophical.  Whether its five weeks into a diet or 5 weeks into an exercise routine, we all begin to ask those really deep, introspective questions like  “My God, what did I get myself into?,” and, “Why in heaven’s name am I even doing this?”  Lent, it seems, isn’t really all that different. 

                We all know the rules for Lent, right?  It is a season within the church year that we are supposed to give something up for God, or if we’re feeling particularly medieval we end up lining our Friday meals with fish, but Lent just isn’t something we Protestants tend to do very well.  I think we don’t do it very well because we don’t really understand it.  As a people who tried like the dickens to get away from Roman Catholic tradition, I think Lent ends up being treated like crazy uncle Lew at those family holiday dinners – we all knows he’s there, he only shows up once a year, and we figure if we just ignore him long enough maybe he’ll finally go away.

                As far as church seasons go, I’ll admit it doesn’t have the rock star appeal of either Christmas or Easter, but that doesn’t mean Lent doesn’t have something very meaningful to bestow on now.  Traditionally, Lent is meant to represent the 40 days that Jesus was in the wilderness.  It is a time meant for reflection, of looking deeply inward, and learning to do without so we learn to rely on God.  But you may still ask me, “All that’s fine, Keven, but as you pointed out at the beginning I don’t know why I am doing this and quite frankly year after year, Lent has had no bearing on my life at all, save to make church services more depressing for about a month.  What is Lent’s relevancy for today?

The answer to that, oddly enough, is found within our gospel story.  John tells us that six days before the Jewish Passover Jesus has returned to the house of Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead.  Now that event was of special Jewish significance.  As modern readers of the ancient text we often miss the more subtle hints…no, not subtle, because they aren’t - The more silent hints at Jesus’ Divinity.  In the first century, it was believed that Leprosy was so terrible, so thoroughly deplorable a disease that only God could remove it.  So when our gospel writers have Jesus heal lepers, what are they saying?  When our gospel writers show that Jesus has complete mastery over nature, calming its chaos with but a word – what are they saying?  In the same manner, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead had special Jewish significance because God alone had that power, and now He was coming over for dinner.

Can you imagine?  I mean what do you do?  What food do you put on?  What serving wear do you set out?  Not only is God coming over for an extended brunch, but He’s coming after giving you a gift that literally no ever gets.  After getting your brother back from being four days dead, do you bring out your finest grilled cheese?  I mean, what do you do?  The reality is we would all do exactly what they did – pretend it’s normal.  I love how true to life this story is.  There’s Lazarus just hanging at the table with guys, pretending like nothing’s happened.  Martha’s in the kitchen as she always is, drowning out the awkwardness of the situation with the dishes, but Mary…Mary doesn’t.  Overwhelmed by everything that has gone on, overwhelmed by the gift of her brother back, overwhelmed by the radical forgiveness and love involved in giving that gift to a thoroughly unworthy and sinful family, Mary is the only one who reacts properly.  She brings out the most expensive thing in their house and she takes on the role of a servant, wiping Jesus’ feet with her own hair.  She opens the bottle of perfume and pours it on Jesus’ feet; wiping off the grime, the dirt, the many miles of Judean countryside in this one shocking act of humility.  With every pass over his feet, as her hair becomes caked with the dust of every mile that Jesus walked she is saying, I know who you are, and the dirt of this world does not belong on you.  I am the dirty one, thoroughly unworthy of the tremendous gift that you are given.  I am grateful. 

Yes, out of love, out of tremendous gratitude for having her brother returned to her, Mary shocks everyone in the house and breaks every … possible… Jewish taboo.  A lady of the house acting like a servant, doing the very worst of servant jobs, using expensive perfume rather than olive oil, and daring to even touch a man in a culture that did everything to keep them separate.  But out of the entire family, Mary is the only one who believes that God is to be valued more than custom.  Like any other shocking act, however, it tends to bring out people’s very worst.  When something happens that is sudden and, yes, even offensive, we aren’t given the opportunity to think, to keep up our normal appearance.  All we can do is react and so we see a window into everyone’s soul.  What lurks hidden beneath the surface becomes seen, and a person’s true character is revealed.  

It is here that Judas, the disciple who was about to betray Jesus, speaks.  And of course, of all the things that he would complain about it is about the money.  He does not protest Mary’s actions because she is taking on a task unworthy of her station; he is not objecting that Mary, a woman, is touching a man who is not her husband.  A person’s obsessions are often their undoing, and Judas’ eyes are on the very expensive bottle of perfume…watching as Mary first brings it out and reacting as its seal is broken and its contents wasted when olive oil would have sufficed.  It is this that Judas disputes, it is over this that his ire is raised – a glimpse into his true character that only now, years later, does our gospel writer mourn that he did not see.

John remembers how Judas objected that this expensive object wasn’t sold and given to the poor, but John, as he so often does in his gospel, tells his audience the truth in hindsight.  John says that in the end Judas did not really care about the poor.  He was a thief, obsessed with monetary gain, and  he used to steal from the common purse.  Judas, the namesake of Judah, not only the name born by the faithful kingdom of Israel but also the name of the honest brother amongst Jacob’s sons.  Judas learned that because of his namesake people would trust him.  He knew how to hide behind it, cover up his sin, and John speaks bitterly as a man who fell for it for years.

Now it must be remembered the risk that Mary is taking in doing this; that cannot be overlooked.  Their households are not ours, and it cannot be ignored that Mary has placed herself substantially in harm’s way by doing this.  Judas has rebuked Mary, and in that time and place when a male guest rebukes a female it is the man of houses duty to discipline her.  Women who performed such acts were regularly beaten for doing such things.  Hospitality was a matter of great importance in those days, and if it took punishing a servant or a sister to satisfy a guest, especially a deeply honored one like Jesus and his disciples, the men of the house did not hesitate to do it.  But before anybody can act, Jesus speaks.  Rather than address Mary’s behavior in any way, he calls out his own disciple for his lack of compassion.  “Leave her alone,” Jesus says, “she bought this perfume for the day of my burial, a practice that women regularly participate in.  You have the poor always Judas, but you do not always have me.”  In one swift stroke Jesus not only rebukes Judas but he also saves Mary, showing Lazarus he is not offended by her actions.  But there is something else going on here, something a reader needs to pay special attention to notice.  Whereas the other gospels have Jesus speaking in the future tense when describing this scene, John has Jesus speaking in the present.  Notice that Jesus does not say, “You will always have the poor”, “you will not always have me”, but rather Jesus says that right now you have the poor, Judas, but right now you do not have me.  You have chosen your obsession over me, my disciple; you have willingly chosen that which chains you down over your own Salvation.  Many claim that Jesus is foreshadowing his upcoming death, but that is not all that Jesus is doing here.  He is also giving Judas a dire warning.  Do not think your motives are hidden from me, Judas.  The others here are fooled by you, but I am not.  Everyone here has their sin, but the difference is you love yours and it is going to get you into dire, dire trouble.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason for Lent.  That is why the Church sets aside 40 days every year and asks us to take a hard look at ourselves, to take real and practical steps to not just see our sin but to show our Savior that we want to be free of them.  The Church does this because in her ancient wisdom she realizes any one of us can be the next Judas.  Any one of us can learn to hide our true selves from our brothers and sisters; to nurture our obsessions and learn to love our chains more than we love the God who wants to set us free. 

Sin has been described as spiritual insanity, a state of the human heart that desires the cancer more than the chemo, the love of the sickness to the point that we reject being well.  The Church knows we all suffer from this condition, and it knows it is difficult, but to prevent us from being the next Judas and suffering his terrible fate it recommends we do everything the disciples didn’t – that we enter a time of ugly reflection and that give up the things that chain us down.  Most people think Lent is about misguided notions of purity. I think if the Hebrew Scriptures teach us anything it is that chasing after purity is a fool’s errand - it is God who makes us pure.  Lent is not about getting to Easter as a purified human being.  Lent is about showing my God upon the day of His Resurrection that I have shed the chains that He died to rid me of.  Just like Mary’s Perfume, Lent is my paltry gift to God in response to all that God has done for me.  It is a chance to show the Divine that I do not value my obsessions more than I value Him.

And so now I must ask you, as the elected parish minister of this congregation, what are your obsessions?  What are the things that chain you down that you don’t want to be rid of?  Are you like Judas, do you obsess over money?  Are you afraid of not having enough or do you feel shame at not being able to pay your bills?  Turn those fears over to God, money will never make those fears go away.  Are you like Martha?  Do you obsess over your work?  Do you find that you can avoid awkward social situations by just going off and doing something?  Turn those anxieties over to God, turn them over before all you have is your work and no one to share them with.  Are you like Lazarus?  Do you obsess over propriety?  Do you value acting normal so you don’t feel embarrassed, pretending like nothing has happened so you don’t have to feel you owe somebody something?  Turn them over to God, turn them over before your obsession with propriety turns you into an ingrate, demeaning each and every gift you are given.  Don’t be like those people, don’t be chained down by obsession and fears.  Be like Mary, turn your worries, your fears, and your brokenness over to God.   Be like Mary, Be free.

The Disturbing Trouble of a Flawless Theology

Back in Seminary, one of my former classmates related a story of a mother who made the local news by killing herself and her three children.  A suicide note left at home detailed her reasoning quite explicitly.  The purpose of this tragic decision?  She did it to save her children’s souls.  Children below a certain age cannot sin, they lack the maturity and knowledge to fully comprehend their actions, so rather than risking her children losing their faith she killed them so they would never risk the eternal torment of hell.  Because it is a sin to murder however, and the Bible says all murderers should be put to death, but that murderers can be saved too if they repent, the answer to her was clear.  She would drown them all and she would repent in the waters of this new “baptism”.  As a loving mother it was the only right thing to do.

            Now, I have no idea what this woman suffered from.  Post-Partem could be a culprit, maybe she was abused by a religious person – on this side of the tragedy there is simply very little left to us to understand.  I will, however, mimic my esteemed classmates astonished reply, “Her evangelical theology was flawless”.  The truly scary thing about that story to any clergy-member of conscience is the fact she might not have had any mental illness at all.  That in the end she simply could have, honestly and faithfully, followed the tenets of her religion to their only logical conclusion is just as likely a possibility.

            When I read this article, “8 Steps to confront your wife’s sexual refusal,” (found here http://biblicalgenderroles.com/2015/05/23/8-steps-to-confront-your-wifes-sexual-refusal/), that is the exact thing I am reminded of.  After reading the article in its entirety, which I recommend the reader here to do the same before continuing, the first thing that came to my mind is that this man’s evangelical theology, a theology that says men have a “right” to sex from their women “even if she is grudging about giving it”, is similarly just as flawless.  From an Evangelical Biblically Inerrant point of view, God wrote Scripture and since God wrote Scripture to be plainly understood, any command within Scripture clearly included in the New Covenant needs to be understood as a command of God.  Context and qualifiers are to be avoided, as any variation from the Scripture’s “plain meaning” is sin trying to work its way into your interpretation of Scripture.  So, strictly speaking, he is absolutely correct.  The scripture plainly says that women should not deny their husband’s sex, going against Scripture is sin, and as “sin” the husband has a right, no, A DUTY to drag his  marital sex squabbles in front of the congregation and the congregation must in turn demand her repentance or expel her. – and that’s what horrifying.

              Now, as a trained and educated clergy person, I would point out that 99.999% of Evangelicals don’t bring their theology to this conclusion.  Technically the only medicine allowed in Scripture is to “stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses” (1 Timothy 5:23), and scripture is quite clear that the proper response to someone being ill is to call the church elders to pray over them (James 5:14).  With that said, very, very few see going to the Doctor or taking Pepto-Bismal as being unfaithful to God, even though strictly speaking those options aren’t found in the Bible.  They do this because, quite rightly, they understand that the author never intended those consequences.  When Paul wrote to Timothy he was expressing a loving concern for his protégé’s health and was not commanding everyone for all time to cure their stomach aches with fermented grape juice.  When James wrote that the faithful should pray over their sick there is no intimation that it should be done instead of medical help.  Indeed, in the ancient world as now, that if reasonable medical means exist to treat an affliction it was understood that they should be used – it’s why Paul feels free to tell Timothy to have wine for that stomach ache in the first place.

            

 Likewise for the Scripture the author uses for his argument. 

“Now in response to the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have relations with a woman.”² But because sexual immorality is so common, each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband. ³ A husband should fulfill his marital responsibility to his wife, and likewise a wife to her husband. ⁴ A wife does not have the right over her own body, but her husband does. In the same way, a husband does not have the right over his own body, but his wife does. ⁵ Do not deprive one another sexually—except when you agree for a time, to devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again; otherwise, Satan may tempt you because of your lack of self-control. ⁶ I say the following as a concession, not as a command. ⁷ I wish that all people were just like me. But each has his own gift from God, one person in this way and another in that way.” – I Corinthians 7:1-7(HCSB)(emphasis his)

            Any normal person would read this Scripture and see that Paul is acting as a pastor to his congregation and giving marital advice.  That he is not giving a command for all time and all people (or even Corinthian people) is obvious from the passage itself.  Indeed, Paul never calls such sexual denial sin, rather any congregation could see that if you deny your spouse sex you can expect a pretty miserable marriage and the problem will eventually fix itself, one way or another, without need of further congregational involvement. 

            The problem is the author answers this, too, and again his evangelical theology is flawless. 

His concession (or opinion) is about celibacy. He is prefacing the statement he is about to make as his opinion – that he wished everyone could be celibate like he was as there are many advantages to serving God as a single person. But he realizes that celibacy is a gift God has only given to a chosen few, while the rest of men and women ought to marry.

What he is stating in this passage is, if you don’t have the gift of celibacy and you do get married, you have a solemn obligation to have sex with your spouse, you cannot deny them unless it is mutually agreed by both of you for a short period of time.

Now I can disagree with this, and in fact I do, but the problem is I have to leave Evangelical Interpretation to do it.  As a man educated in the history and language of the Scriptures, I can tell you Corinth wasn’t exactly a den of chastity and self-control – so much so that the Corinthian Church had a member within it who was married to one of his father’s wives (1 Cor. 5:1) and the church was okay with it.  Sexual immorality was a problem within this church, which is why Paul touches on the subject not only in 7:2, but 5:1, 6:13, 6:18, and finally also in 10:8.  This rather loose environ is why he refers to sexual immorality “being so common” and also refers to their “lack of self-control” concerning it.  Because of its commonality, Paul reinforces the marital relationship as an appropriate outlet in his response to the Corinthian church’s questions, but Paul’s point is hardly that he wants people to be celibate - he wants his congregation to learn to keep it zipped!  Not only this, but it should also be added that the author is also picking and choosing his Bible translations.  Verse 7:6 in the Greek simply says, “but I say this as a concession, not a command.”  He is deliberately picking a translation that plays to his interpretation, which is why he picks from only one of the two possible English translations that includes the phrase “the following” or least its idea.

However, all this would mean very little to a number of those on the right.  You may choose whatever Bible you wish and it counts just as much as God’s Inerrant and Infallible Word as any other, no matter how it would disagree with other translations.  You can pick the Bible that plays to your own petty biases all you want.  Indeed, not only do you get to choose whatever you want to be “God’s Word”, you get to refer to anyone who calls you out on this fact as “liberal” and “Non-Bible-Believing.” So not only can we not refute him by showing him different Bible translations (or, heaven forbid, get him to actually learn Biblical Greek), but I can’t even do so by pointing out that his preferred translation is highly out of historical context.   I have to point to “flawed and sinful human knowledge” as opposed to his “Perfect Word” for that.    

            And this ultimately is what is the most disturbing.  This man’s Evangelical and Conservative Theology is so closed, so circular, so indelibly flawed (The Bible is God’s Word and must be obeyed, I have chosen the verse I prefer in the Bible I prefer, by obeying that verse I am obeying God) that it is literally impossible to show this man how wrong and how damaging he is being.  His theology has so disconnected him from reality he honestly can say in one sentence “A husband ought not to feel guilty for having sex with his wife when she is not in the mood if she yields, even grudgingly “ and say he does not condone rape in another.  He honestly thinks that dragging their sex lives in front of the church, doing no extra work on the house, and “removing her funding” doesn’t amount to passive-aggressive manipulation on the husband’s part, but that it is all inherently tied up to the duties of the male under the doctrine of “Biblical Headship.”  He has even gotten himself to the point where he can call people "haters" who point out that his advice violates domestic violence laws!

“For all of the “Rape Accusers” out there, especially the ones that are hurling applications of domestic violence laws at me – I have written a special post just for you.”(emphasis mine)

            Just like the woman who killed herself and her children, this man’s Religious Right Theology is incredibly harmful and destructive.  His advice, unlike Paul’s, is going to get a number of men nothing but a lost house and alimony garnishments at best;  prison and a lifetime of obeying sex offender reporting requirements at worst.  WE AS CHRISTIANS OF GOOD CONSCIENCE NEED TO OWN THIS.  We let Christian theology reach a point where literally any fool with a Bible translation gets to speak for God.  This man has no theological training, no understanding of human psychology, no time spent as a pastor and yet his beliefs not only allow him to wear those mantles but compel the vulnerable to trust him for no other reason that he sprinkles choice Bible verses throughout his website.  American Theology has created monsters and real people are going to be hurt by it.  It’s time we all sat down and had real honest conversation about the kinds of believers we are making, and the discussion needs to happen yesterday.