I once had a conversation with a fellow church member about the
Sunday sermon we had both just heard. He told me that even though he usually
liked that preacher, he really disliked this particular sermon. He was offended
by her interpretation of the Noah story in Genesis – that maybe it didn’t
happen exactly that way. It seemed to him that she was saying the Noah’s Ark
story we teach our children in the nursery is a lie and did she really think it
was okay for us to tell our children lies?
I have learned over the years that people can get a little touchy
about the word of God. Sometimes, of course, they love it. But other times they
react differently. They are afraid. They find it offensive. And when I say
“they” I mean me too. I am not exempt from this. I still have my old high
school Bible in which I scratched out a verse I didn’t like. I found the
teaching too hard; I simply didn’t know what to do with it. So I removed it
with a ball-point pen.
I haven’t tried to remove any verses with a pen in many years. But
I have other ways of rejecting things in the scriptures that I do not like.
Dealing with this passage from John’s gospel has made me very aware of this.
The people who were listening to Jesus that day were uncomfortable
with his words, and Jesus took note of it. He heard their complaints. He felt
their reaction in his own body, and he turned to them and asked, “Does this
offend you?”
I’m glad he asked that question, because it showed a healthy
amount of self-awareness. Honestly, the things he was saying about eating flesh
and drinking blood? Yes, they were offensive, and I wish he wouldn’t talk like
that.
But he does talk like that. He has actually been going on like
this for a little while now. Several weeks in our lectionary, portions of this
conversation have been showing up and, frankly, I have been ignoring them. I
did not want to talk to you about this stuff.
So I ignored it. And I checked to see what was going on in the Old
Testament and in the Epistles. Or the Psalms. The Psalms are usually a safe
bet; they can be counted on not to give offense to anyone, except on those very
few occasions when they are extremely offensive to everyone.
I will tell you the truth: the scriptures are sometimes offensive,
for any number of reasons. They offend our sense of reason, or they offend our
sense of what is good and acceptable. They offend our assessment of our own intelligence,
or they offend the very foundations of our beliefs. And just as much, when we
start talking about them, grappling with these words that are strange or
offensive or cringy, trying to reconcile the word of God with our hearts and
minds and spirits and experience of life, when we voice our thoughts and
feelings we risk offending one another.
Once I began an adult class by reading a passage from the Gospel
of John where the resurrected Jesus stands on the shore and calls to his
disciples who are out fishing. Peter, who was apparently overcome with
excitement, put on his clothes and jumped in the lake and swam to shore. I said
to the group, “Peter put on his clothes and jumped in? Does that seem weird to
you?” Most everyone laughed and agreed; yeah, it’s a weird image. But one
person quietly fumed. “No, it is not weird,” she said, “and maybe if you knew
the scriptures as well as I do you wouldn’t think that.”
Part of me felt sorry to have offended her. But I wasn’t really.
Because this was a little thing, and if something this little offended her what
in the world was she doing with the big things? And there are a lot of big
things – we are talking about Jesus, and Jesus has been offending people for
two thousand years. This will probably not change.
I am trying to get used to this. Trying to pay attention to how I
might cringe a little when I come across an offensive passage. Because, sooner
or later, the Spirit will help me recognize that it offends me because it is
hard for me. Not necessarily because it is wrong, but because it is hard. Like
his followers said to him in this story from John, these teachings are
difficult.
So many of them are.
It was difficult when he said to a potential disciple, “Let the
dead bury the dead.” It was difficult when he said to a rich young man, “You
must sell everything that you own,” and it was difficult when he said to us,
“Be perfect.”
It is difficult here when he says whoever eats me will live.
Who can accept such teachings as these? Not many.
I know this because people are beginning to drift away from him. The
massive crowds that have been stalking him for a while now? They’ve started thinning
out, because the going is getting hard. Because miraculous healings are one
thing, but difficult teachings are something else altogether. To be healed, all
we have to do is show up, but to be taught, we have to be open to learning
something new.
In moments like these I go back to something I learned many years
ago about the church’s two essential roles – it is, first, a hospital for
sinners; and second, a school for saints. It is where we come to be healed of
our sin-sick souls; and, when we are ready, it is the place that will begin to
teach us how to follow Jesus, how to be like Jesus.
Both of these roles can be offensive. In so many ways.
When we want to use the powers that we have to draw lines that
determine who is acceptable and who is not, Jesus comes along and steps right
over those lines. And he says to the people on the other side of the line, “Do
you want to be made well?” Jesus built this hospital for sinners and tried to
make it very clear to us that it is open to everyone. It was never an easy
message because the world he lived in had very clear ideas about who was in and
who was out.
The woman with a hemorrhage – out. The man with a skin disease –
out. Eunuchs – out. People of other religious traditions – out. The rules were
clear. Everyone knew where the lines were, and Jesus was always crossing those
lines.
He was always crossing lines that separated the good people from
the rest, crossing the lines that separated the sinners from the sanctified, crossing
the lines that separated the flawed from the perfect. In all these things he
was saying, God did not set these lines. People did, and God will erase these
lines.
And he said to us, “Go and do likewise.”
So he created a movement of crossing lines and loving people –
even those outside the lines. A hospital for healing sinners, outsiders,
untouchables, the broken ones. A movement for schooling up saints, training all
of us to grow in love, grow in forgiveness, grow in acceptance of all the
others. What Jesus created is a movement to wipe out the lines. Something that
was – and still is – offensive.
Because when he says, you should love one another, even your
enemies, people are offended. When he says, you should love your neighbor, and
everyone is your neighbor – even the Samaritans, and the Palestinians, and the
Israelis, and the Iranians, and the Russians and the Ukrainians, and the
Democrats and the Republicans, because they are all humans. That offends people.
Sometimes, love offends people.
If you love someone you are not supposed to love – love between
two men or two women, love between two ethnicities or races or religions.
People are offended – we hold tight to the lines. Because there is
something in us that likes the lines that separate the good people from the bad
people. There is something in us that is offended when people start crossing
the lines. Any of the lines. Yet, in all these matters, Jesus wipes away the
lines.
Rachel Held Evans put it well when she said, “What makes the
gospel offensive isn't who it keeps out, but who it lets in.” Rachel was
brought up in a church where there was a lot of attention on the lines and
keeping people on their side of the lines. But her love for Jesus eventually
led her to see things differently. And when she started saying it out loud…then
people thought she was being offensive.
Offensive like Jesus. Offensive like the gospel.
When we are so busy tending the lines and getting offended by
people who want to mess with the lines, we are probably forgetting something
important: all of us are on the wrong side of the line.
But then Jesus steps in our direction. He stretches his foot out
and wipes away the line in the sand and he says to us, “Never mind that. Come
and be on my side.”
Jesus came for all of us who were born on the wrong side of the
line. He came so that we may have life, that we may abide in him, and he may
abide in us. And when he says, anyone who eats me will live, this is what it
means: take Jesus into your body, your heart, your mind, and your soul. Devour
all of him. Absorb everything about him that is good and true.
And when we do this, we may join the company of those who wipe
away the lines, those who forgive extravagantly and love abundantly. When we
take Jesus into ourselves, we may become the ones who welcome radically and
heal deeply and teach wisely.
I just remembered another thing that Jesus said: “Blessed is
anyone that takes no offense at me.”
May it be so. Amen.
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