Response to Laura Mayo

I have lots of questions about Laura Mayo's article What if white Christians had a more realistic image of Jesus, a dark-skinned, religious-minority refugee?

• How does Natifa know that the man who attacked her is a Christian?  Or is Natifa making the mistake common among people who come from a non-Christian country of assuming all Americans are Christians and judging Christianity accordingly?  If the man is a Christian, what church does he go to?  Is he representative of that church's membership as a whole?
• How many Christians does Natifa encounter in a day?  How many mistreat her?  We are told to not judge Islam by the actions of its extremists (such as those who flew the airplanes into the twin towers and those who routinely persecute and kill Christians in many countries).  Is the author willing to extend the same courtesy to conservative Christians (who appear to be the target of her displeasure) and refrain from judging them by the actions of extremists who call themselves Christian?
• If Natifa were a young white woman wearing a MAGA hat who was attacked by a member of Antifa who claimed to be Christian, would the author feel the same shame on her behalf and the same need to apologize to her?  Would she want her to be safe and feel welcome?
• The author appears to think that people react against Muslims exclusively because of their skin color.  Does she think that there are no other rational grounds for criticizing their beliefs and lifestyle?  Can one criticize Islam (say by pointing out that sharia law is strongly anti-woman, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and anti-LGBTQ) and not be accused of Islamophobia?
• If the Byzantines (who had similar features to the Jews of Jesus' day) were the first to depict Jesus as white, should we not assume that their reason for doing so had nothing to do with race?  Would it not be more plausible to believe that Jesus' whiteness was a way of portraying his sinlessness (per the Psalms and other passages)?  If so, are European Christians to be blamed for adopting it as a standard in their own portrayals of Jesus?
• The author criticizes "the dominant Christian" culture for twisting the story of Jesus to justify their beliefs and lifestyle.  Is she not also doing the same kind of twisting when she declares that Jesus was persecuted for his religion and gender?  Jesus' family was forced to flee to Egypt not because he was a male Jew, but because Jesus was born King of the Jews.  The man who restored the Jewish temple to magnificence would scarcely have persecuted Jesus for his Jewishness or maleness; he persecuted Jesus because he saw him as a competitor for the throne.
• What sort of "unfair and cruel treatment of LGBTQ persons" does the author have in mind?  Does this include opposition to gay marriage?  Or resistance to having biological males use women's restrooms or compete in women's sports?  Is it unfair and cruel to not want our children to have drag queens read to them in public libraries?  Is it permissible to oppose having children be given sex change operations?
• Is Paul marginalizing and oppressing LGBTQ persons when he says in 1 Corinthians 6:
• 9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive, and swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God. 11 Some of you once lived this way. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
• What if the saving grace of Jesus is meant to deliver us from slavery to these kinds of behaviors; washing us clean of them rather than affirming us in them?
• Is it not hateful to tell people that they are free to persist in lifestyles that God has clearly said disqualify them from heaven?  Are we not consigning them to hell by doing so?
• Is it OK to see Jesus' race as largely irrelevant, as this song encourages us to do?  Some Children See Him by James Taylor

Romans 8 in rhyme

From condemnation, accusation

the truth of the gospel frees us

We're freed from the claw of death’s dead law

By the life-giving law of Jesus

What God has done through the Christ His Son

the law in the flesh can’t achieve

Vanquishing sin that corrupts within

Making righteous the ones who believe

Our minds will show where our bodies go

To the flesh or to the Spirit

But life in the flesh results in death

A terrible fate; we should fear it

The Spirit gives life that's free from strife

It’s the only peace we can know

God spurns the plans of the fleshly man

He who follows the world is God’s foe

If our hearts we give to Christ we'll live

For we have his Spirit within

Though in sin we're dead, we need not dread

In the Spirit we are saved from sin

The power that raised Christ from the grave

Will give life to our bodies too

The Spirit, God's breath, saves us from death

Those he dwells in he raises up new

So follow the One who raised the Son

The things of the flesh all decay

Kill every lust, place all your trust

In our God, let us walk in his way

The Spirit now leads the people God's freed

Adopted as His own children

Set free, we're not slaves, no more afraid

But sons of our Father in heaven

As sons we’re heirs, so the Spirit swears

Enjoying Christ’s inheritance

But first comes the cross, with all its loss

Then glory from God’s vast abundance

Life hurts a lot, but it’s just a dot

In the ocean of joy we’ll see

Creation waits for God’s promised date

Longing to finally be set free

Lord, set us free from futility,

Rescue us from corruption

Creation groans, and with it we moan

Impatient to have our adoption

The Spirit sprouts, there’s never a doubt

He’ll redeem our bodies someday

We can’t see it now, but still somehow

We’ll walk patiently along God’s way

We’re too weak to pray, no words to say

The Spirit breathes groans in our stead

But God knows his groans, they are his own

They’re exactly what He would have said

If we love the Lord, all things reward

We are called, and he’s not yet done

From the start he knew what he would do

To make us look like Jesus his Son

A great family is what we’ll be

With Jesus our king and our brother

He’s summoned us near, freed us from fear

And given us glory and splendor

There’s no more to say, God took away

All reasons to send us to hell

He gave us his Son and isn’t yet done

Ev’ry good thing He gives us as well

The people God chose, no more his foes

He washes them, they're clean indeed

Christ Jesus who died is by his side

To ask from God ev’rything they need

Though fear, pain and grief come like a thief

To steal from us the love of God

The powers will see our victory

Creation will rise up and applaud

Though they slay us now, we will somehow

Overcome by means of God’s love

The rulers will fail, Christ will prevail

And unite us with heaven above

Wedding message - Jared and Rachel

The following message contains references to Isaiah 40:6-8, Ephesians 5:22-33, and the hymn "I know that my Redeemer lives" that were read/sung during the service.  Their full text is at the bottom of this document.

In the Roman empire, when a general won a significant victory, a great parade would be staged in his honor.  The general would ride through the streets of Rome on an elaborately decked out chariot, wearing the finest of clothes and accompanied by the highest-ranking prisoners whom he took captive.  But to prevent him from getting too caught up in himself, a slave rode with him in his chariot and whispered in his ear “Remember, you are mortal” throughout the parade.

Jared and Rachel, when I saw the Bible verses that you had selected for your wedding, I was reminded of this slave.  Isaiah 40:6-8 is not a passage normally chosen for a wedding, and it sets a tone somewhat like the slave’s reminder: “Remember, you are mortal.”  In a day of celebration like that of a Roman general’s victory parade, you want us to hear a Bible passage that reminds us that we are mortal, that our lives are brief, and we wither quickly compared with the eternal glory of God.

What is the answer to this reminder of our frailty?  Do we seize the moment, grab every pleasure we can, and enjoy ourselves to the hilt because you only go around once?  Is the answer to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die?  Surely there will be food and merriment enough at the reception tonight; is that the answer to our mortality?

If that’s all there is, then why would anyone make the vows you are about to make to each other?  Why promise to be faithful to each other “for better, for worse” if the point of life is to maximize our pleasure?  Shouldn’t we do like so many people do these days, and preserve our freedom to jump from one relationship to another if that makes us happy?  A lot of bachelor/ bachelorette parties these days seem calculated to try to persuade the engaged couple that the singles life that they’re leaving is more fun and better than the married life that they’re embarking on; why not stay single if the point of life is to fill it with as much fun as possible before you die?

But most of us know in our hearts that this is not the best response to our mortality.  That’s why we celebrate weddings.  We know that a life of throw-away relationships and endless chasing after pleasure is not satisfying or sustainable.  We know that having someone in your life who has promised to hang with you in good times and in not-so-good times is a precious thing, and we may even realize that one of the most satisfying things we can do with the gifts and talents that God has given us is to invest them in another person.

All of these are excellent reasons to get married, but they don’t necessarily make our mortality any easier to face; in fact they may make it harder.  We get married, we invest our lives in another person, we learn year by year how to live better with each other and how to love each other through thick and thin, then it ends.  Even if we do it all right and our marriage thrives and grows, there will come a time when the phrase “till death do us part” takes a real and painful meaning for us.

6 All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.

If our flesh is the whole of who we are, if our entire existence is bound up in these bodies, made up of frail skin and bones, muscles and organs, then we are nothing.  We fade like the California wildflower superbloom under the desert sun, an indistinguishable blip in the age of the universe, and we are gone.  But the Bible assures us that we are more than flesh, and our life is more than biochemistry.

We are also spiritual, and the spiritual life in us is more fundamental to who we are than the bodies in which it dwells.   In Genesis 2:7 we are told, “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”  We are bodies made of dust from the ground enlivened by a spirit breathed into us by God.  And the breath with which God breathed life into us is the same breath with which He speaks His word, which is eternal.

But if our spirit is eternal, why do we die?  We die because humanity has lost the immortality we once had.  Not long after they were created, Adam and Eve rebelled against God’s command to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Though God had warned it would kill them, they ate anyhow, and they died.  Their death was not biological; their bodies continued to live for many more years, but spiritual.  From the moment they ate the fruit, their connection to God’s Spirit was lost and they became spiritually dead.  And just as a mother can pass on a drug addiction to her child, Adam and Eve passed on their spiritual death to their children, so we are born spiritually dead.

This is a terrible place to be.  Spiritual death cuts us off from God and makes it impossible for us to live in true harmony with him, with each other, or even with ourselves.  The evils of this world are the result of spiritually dead people like ourselves rebelling against God and hurting other people.  And there’s nothing we can do on our own to fix it.  Dead people cannot resuscitate themselves.  We need a rescuer who can raise dead people to life.  That rescuer is Jesus Christ.

In his life on earth, Jesus Christ raised dead people back to life.  He himself was nailed to a cross and died a horrible death.  On the third day after he was laid in a tomb, he rose to a new and glorious eternal life which he still lives today, sitting on the throne of heaven with God his Father.

And he offers that life to us.  We, who are like wildflowers that bloom in a day then die, may participate now in the life that Jesus has, and, after we die, may be raised to the eternal life that we were made for, to live forever with Jesus in the glory and delight that he enjoys with God.  For this to happen, we must be united with Jesus, and the way we are united with Jesus is in a wedding.

In chapter 21 of the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, the author John gives us a hint of what this wedding will look like, where he writes:

21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

In the end, God makes everything new.  Jerusalem, the city of the people of God, is made new and glorious, and God brings it like a bride to her husband, who is Jesus Christ.  Other places in the Bible describe the church as the bride of Christ; here we see their wedding.

Jared and Rachel, this wedding ceremony is patterned in part after that great and glorious celebration on the day when heaven and earth are made new.  Rachel, you in your beauty are giving us a tiny glimpse of the beauty the people of God will have as the new Jerusalem, and your father was cast in the role of God as he brought you to Jared.  And Jared, you are playing the part of Jesus Christ, as you receive your bride from the hand of her father.  This tradition that we follow in conducting weddings is not merely a beautiful way of bringing people together in marriage, it is a profound illustration of how God unites himself with his people in Jesus Christ.

And the roles that you are playing here don’t end when you walk down the aisle.  Jared, you will still have the role of Christ to Rachel, and Rachel, you will still have the role of the church to Jared throughout your married life.  The passage from Ephesians 5 that was read earlier in this service shows us how this is to be done.

Jared, your part is to love Rachel as Christ loved the church.  Your model is Christ washing his disciples’ feet, Christ feeding them, Christ teaching them, Christ dying for them.  As Paul told us in Philippians chapter 2,

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Your goal in all of this is nourish her and cherish her; to help her to thrive, that she might be as beautiful as God intends for her to be.  This is what Christ did for his people, at great cost to himself, and this is what you are to do for Rachel, whatever it may cost you.

Rachel, your part is to submit to Jared’s leadership.  The word “submit” has become so toxic these days that it is scarcely possible for some to hear it without clenching up inside.  It feels like being defeated, vanquished, abused, and even humiliated.  Though it should not be necessary to say this, this is not what Paul is asking of wives, nor what a husband who is loving his wife as Christ loves the church would ever think of doing to his wife.

It may help us to think of a really good swing dancing team.  When we watch two swing dancers on the floor, we see the man leading the woman, and she in turn following his lead, not because she has been defeated, abused or humiliated, but because she trusts the man to be leading in a way that will make her look good.  This is what Christ is doing for his church, seeking to “present the church to himself in splendor”, and it is what Jared will be seeking to do for you.  Your job is to follow his lead, and to use the service that he offers you to do beautiful things that would never be possible on your own.

But both of you will find that all of this is impossible on your strength alone.  We are not good enough, wise enough, strong enough or patient enough to love our wives as Christ loved the church or to submit to our husbands as unto the Lord.  It is only because “your Redeemer lives”, as we sang in that hymn, and he is working in your lives to make this kind of goodness possible that you have any hope of success in this endeavor.

So this is my charge to you, Jared and Rachel, as frail children of a mighty God who has taken you up into his life – find your strength in the Lord, and press on.  Excel still more.  Learn to love each other better, to serve each other better, to respect and cherish each other better.  Keep looking for reasons to be grateful for what the Lord is doing in your lives and what your spouse is doing for you, then say thanks for those good things.  Press on with the hope of the glory set before you, the glory of the wedding supper of Jesus Christ, in which His church, of which you are a part, will be united with Him forever in a joy that transcends even the joy that you feel today.   Do all of this to the glory of the God who saves you, and for the blessing of His people, who will see in you a hint of his love for us.

I Know That My Redeemer Lives

I know that my Redeemer lives
What comfort this sweet sentence gives
He lives, he lives Who once was dead
He lives, my ever living Head

He lives triumphant from the grave
He lives eternally to save
He lives, my mansion to prepare
He lives to lead me safely there

He lives and grants me daily breath
He lives and I shall conquer death
He lives, and while He lives I'll sing
He lives, my Prophet, Priest and King

He lives, all glory to His Name
He lives, my Jesus still the same
And oh, the sweet joy this sentence gives
I know that my Redeemer lives

Isaiah 40:6-8

40:6 A voice says, Cry!
And I said, What shall I cry?
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.

Ephesians 5:22-33

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Memorial service message

Welcome to the memorial service for R.  A memorial service is a time for remembering and reflecting.  We remember the life that R lived and reflect on the implications of his death for all of us.

R mattered to people.  His military service mattered to those he worked with.  His work as a mechanic mattered to those whose equipment he repaired and maintained.  His motorcycle racing made him a significant part of that community, and his love for being around people and helping them when he could made a difference in many people’s lives.  For these things we can be grateful.  It strengthens our community and enriches our lives to have people around who are willing to fix what’s broken, to give counsel where they can, and to invest a portion of their lives in military service to defend our country.

But R is dead.  No longer can he do the things that he did to contribute to people’s lives.  As his cancer was killing him, it was taking away his ability to make a difference in these ways.  This is a loss.  Some of you have felt this loss for a while, as the man who loved to help people, to fix things, to grill, to ride his motorcycle and to go to the movies gradually disappeared.  And the more you appreciated his contributions to your life, the more painful it will be to see that taken away.  When love is deep, grief will also be deep, for we must come to grips with the loss of much good that we had enjoyed in having a person in our lives who is no longer there.

x

There are other reasons for grief as well.  You may have wanted something from R that there is now no hope of ever receiving.  You may have wanted to give him something that he is now no longer able to receive.  Whatever the cause, grief is a natural and normal response to someone’s death, and it is important to acknowledge this.  And sometimes grief comes before the person dies, as we see the effects of the fatal disease taking its toll and suffer the loss of much of what made that person special to us before the person actually dies.  We may do our grieving ahead of time, and when the funeral comes, we may be largely done with grief.

So, as we remember R, and we reflect on the implications of his death for us, we may experience both gratitude for what his life meant for us and grief for the lost possibilities resulting from his death.  Beyond that, we are forced to come to grips once more with the fact that this story is repeated in every one of our lives.  We are born, we have a chance to enjoy life for a while and make whatever contribution we can to the lives of others, then we die and all contributions we make by our life are over.  The great prophet Moses, who lived over three thousand years ago, described it this way in in the Bible in Psalm 90:

The days of our lives add up to seventy years,

or eighty if one is especially strong.

But even one’s best years are marred by trouble and oppression.

Yes, they pass quickly and we fly away.

…

So teach us to consider our mortality,

So that we might live wisely.

Three thousand years later, our life expectancy hasn’t changed much at all; we get seventy or eighty years on this earth, and then it’s over.

But it isn’t over when it’s over.  The upcoming Easter holiday teaches this, for it is not so much about eggs and bunnies as it is about the commemoration of Jesus Christ, who, after being crucified and buried in a grave, rose from the grave in a new and transformed life which he makes available to his people.  This short, troublesome life that Moses describes is only prologue, a first small step of our vast existence which will continue forever in the life to come.  When we fly away from this world, we are entering a deeper reality, for we are flying into the presence of the creator of the universe, God himself, and his son Jesus Christ.

Even now, R is having this encounter.  We don’t know much about what this experience will be like, but we do know that it will be awesome; far more awesome than meeting Oprah, or Mark Zuckerberg, or LeBron James, or the president or the pope.  There’s no meeting we could have with anyone in this life that would be nearly as awesome as meeting God.  The last book of the Bible, Revelation, tells of one such meeting in which John, the author, describes Jesus this way:

14 His head and hair were as white as wool, even as white as snow, and his eyes were like a fiery flame. 15 His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.

John was blown away, and we would be too by such an encounter.

How do we approach such a God as this?  We can’t even approach the powerful people in this life so easily; they live in gated communities with walls around their homes and body guards keeping little people like us away.  How then do we approach God?

Even with the powerful people of this world, there are little people who can approach them, namely their children.  President Trump’s children have ready access to him. So do Mark Zuckerberg’s.  If you’re part of the family, you belong, and you can have access that no one else gets.

So it is with God; if you’re part of His family you get access to him.  Jesus Christ, God’s Son, gets complete access to God.  What’s more, Jesus makes it possible for us to be adopted into God’s family so we can be God’s children too and get the same access he does.

But how are we adopted into God’s family?  It can’t be by paying our way in.  If a child on the street came up to me and said, “Here’s $50, I want to be adopted into your family,” I’d say, “No way – go home to your own family.”  And that’s what God will say to us if we tell him, “Here’s all the good stuff I did, now adopt me into your family.”  But if we become friends with God’s son Jesus Christ, and he goes to his Father and tells him, “this person is a friend of mine and I want him to be adopted into our family,” then God listens to him and will adopt us into his family.

A thief who was crucified along with Jesus shows us how this is done, for he could say to another criminal being crucified, “We are getting what we deserve for what we have done, but this man [he’s talking about Jesus] has done nothing wrong.”  Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And Jesus said to him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

He told Jesus that he deserved punishment for the bad things he had done and asked Him to remember him.  This was how the thief became friends with Jesus, and it will be how we do it too.  And if we are friends of Jesus, and through Jesus are adopted into God’s family, then God will welcome us into his household when this life is over, and we will enjoy his company and the company of his family forever.  And it will be wonderful.  Nothing in this life can be compared with the joy of that experience.  If you combine the joy of a wedding, the Super Bowl celebration, the victory day parade after WWII and a super graduation party and then multiply it all times a thousand, you might get a hint of what heaven’s joy will be like.  It will be filled with love and beauty, God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and all the sorrow and heartache we have ever felt will be swallowed up in an endless celebration of the goodness and magnificence of God.

So in this memorial service for R, not only do we remember the life that R lived and reflect on its significance for us, but we look forward with hope to a glorious celebration to which all who are invited who are friends of Jesus.  Let us pray.