We’ve been talking about the science of… stuff.

The big stuff and the little stuff. Stuff on the scale of galaxies and sub-atomic stuff and how it’s all connected. The dynamic mystery of life where our questions lead to discoveries, which lead to more questions. We get to see how we’re connected to all this stuff. Today we’re talking about how we’re connected to our neighbor.

For God so loved the world, that God sent Jesus so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. This can be a jerk-phrase. Jesus isn’t the jerk—he is  talking to Nicodemus, a member of the religious of his day who was so wrapped up in how his religion was expressed, the clothes, the location, the rituals… that he missed the relationship all that was supposed to point to. Religious folk of our day can be jerks and miss the true impact of these words.

One guy was upset I was welcoming and working with Syrian Refugees in Toledo. He asked by what authority I was doing this? Just like the temple folk asked Jesus last week after Jesus overturned the tables. So I quoted, “For God so loved the world.”

“Keep reading,” he said, as if that solved anything. I was focused on the love. He was focused on the “whoever believes in him.” That’s a jerk move. A phrase that can be so misused, wielded like a weapon for those “not in our tribe.”

Let me put it like this.

I love music. Music is like magic. It’s like Tom Waites once said, “Songs are really just interesting things to be doing with the air.”[1] Music is just counting and changing air pressure, and look at all the emotion and memory and thoughts that are linked to good music. Music is soundwaves that affect our particles on a deep level.

There are several categories of music. Classical. And subcategories of that: Baroque, Chamber, Choral, Avant-Garde, High Classical, etc. I’m not really into that, I go more rock and roll. And there’s subgenres of that. Pop rock, soft rock, alternative rock, punk rock, classic rock, metal, thrash, and more.

Some of these labels are helpful. Like musical genealogists we can trace the evolution of our favorite band’s sound and their influences and descendants. But living things don’t belong in boxes. We can transcend categories and labels in dynamic and surprising ways.

It’s a temptation. It’s always around in every group. I remember having big debates which almost devolved into fists about such eternal questions like “Is the band Green Day really punk?” Purists seek to reinforce the categories, and in doing so, suck all the life out of the music and art. Poisons it. We have to get that poison out. Like how Moses lifted a bronze snake, so Jesus has been lifted up so that we can live a different way.

We see this poisonous thinking in the religious realm. You’re either saved or not. You’re either faithful or not. You’re either Christian or going to hell. And this passage has been used by religious jerks to do just that.

“Those who believe are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already.” Yet there’s a tension here. The whole thing starts with love. And “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world.”

It starts in love. The gift of Christ is given in love. For salvation. Here’s what’s going on here… “they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” That phrase, “only Son of God” was already in use and it didn’t refer to Jesus. Or the Messiah. It referred to Caesar. [2]

Caesar who was “Lord and Savior of the world” was saving the world through the Roman way. Caesar’s image along with “Lord and Savior” was printed on coins that needed to be changed out at the temple because they bore an image and had a message that didn’t jive with Jewish theology. Only God can save the world. Yet here’s Caesar saying that he was the Son of God, Lord and Savior of the world. You’re either Roman, or you’re a loser. You either adopt the Roman way, or you die. Rome is saving the world and waging peace through the business end of the sword.

Do you hear it now? Jesus came to offer something else. “My ways are not the world’s ways… I do not give as the world does.” Yet there are those with the Roman mentality that latch onto these verses and make the Good News sound like the worst thing ever.

Conventional thinking cannot be applied here. Jesus is not talking about “follow me or die.” He’s talking about our resistance to love. How we like what we like and we get into fights about where the boundaries are. Living things don’t belong in categories. Jesus comes to turn those tables over and show how it’s all connected!

Yet it’s often those in the church who are so resistant to this message. I was visiting another church this past fall and talking to a man about my frustration with the online offering for the middle school. I was talking about how I think Eve would do better with a real teacher because middle schoolers need a teacher to help them out. This guy starts talking about content: “Yeah, and they’re teaching my daughter that we’re made of stardust.” He scoffed.

“Wait. What? How is that bad?”

I couldn’t even hear his response. I’ll let his pastor worry about that. Of course we’re made of star dust! “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” It’s LENT for God’s sake. That’s the whole thing. We are formed by nature, evolved over the eons, until God’s image came to us. We are the marriage of the physical and the divine. Our faith is embodied. We care for creation for this is our home.  We love the world… meaning the Natural world. Our home.

We resist “the world” meaning the conventional wisdom, the tit-for-tat, violence obsessed habits as shown in Caesar’s actions.

War is easy. Peace is hard. Fighting is easy. Forgiveness is hard. Living in your category is easy. Getting outside those categories is hard… at first. But let me tell you the secret to everything. These things like peace, forgiveness, and such are hard… at first. They get easier with three simple secrets.
Practice.
Practice.
Practice.

The conventional wisdom of our day and age seems to be saying that there are categories we are born into. Race, class, creed, nationality, sex, gender, orientation. I have categories that I can’t change and others that I choose. Furthermore, this conventional wisdom says that if I have a certain set of categories, I can never understand those with the opposite categories.

So me, a tall, white, heterosexual male can never understand a short, lesbian woman of color.

This is the way of the world. This is conventional thinking. It’s nonsense.

Can I completely understand her? No. Can I find something to connect to? Absolutely! I had better, because if there isn’t then there’s just conflict, and Rome is right and Jesus is wrong. If there’s no connection, no understanding possible, then I had better make sure I secure my rights, my stuff, my access to power, and leave out everyone outside my tribe.

There’s a better way. For God so loved the world… Jesus came not to condemn but to save. Scholar Miroslav Volf reminds us of the New Testament metaphor of salvation as reconciliation. In his book Exclusion and Embrace, he proposes the idea of embrace as the theological response to the problem of exclusion. Exclusion is a sin.[3] It skews our perception of reality and causes us to react out of fear and anger to those who are not within our (ever-narrowing) circle.

You like music? How about rock and roll. How about ’90s alternative rock? How about the Smashing Pumpkins? Which album is their best? WRONG! It’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. You’re going to hell! See how nuts that sounds when applied to music? Why do we let some people do that with religion?

You believe in Jesus? Catholic or Protestant? Which type of Protestant? Two types of Presbyterian, 4 types of Lutheran, 6 types of Methodist (soon to be 7), or about 50 styles of Baptist? How about UCC? Well, what historic tradition? Congregationalism is the only right answer here… C’MON. This is not love! This is no fun. It’s the same rigid thinking that hangs people on crosses and causes wars and fights and hurt feelings and violence and the complete opposite of the beloved community Jesus came to establish.

By encountering one another, we encounter God. We are different, yet we can listen to one another’s stories. Stories of intersection are holy stories. Stories must be lifted up in the life of the church, not to control the other or win advantage over; but to more fully enter into communion with one another and fulfill our baptismal vows. To more fully enter into the life of the Triune God, in whom we move and is the ground of our being.[4]

I am my own self. I have my own story that only I can understand for I’m the only one who has lived it. But I bet you can feel some connection to it. It’s amazing that in sharing my stories so many of you feel free to share yours. That’s community. That’s what it’s all about! And this extends from here in our church community, to Medina, to the ends of the earth! Or as Jesus put it, “From Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the earth!”

I’ve never been a refugee. Yet I have found so much in common in my work with the Syrian refugees back in Toledo. They loved the place they came from. They told stories of the traditions, sights, sounds, who had the best food, etc. They loved their children, wanted what was best. They wanted meaningful work.

I can never understand what it would take to get me to walk away from my house. I can’t understand the political or social pressure it would take for me to just up and leave. I can’t relate to that story of the refugee. But that’s my heritage. It’s back there, not too far in my ancestry. My Mahaffey Irish-side fleeing from the Potato Famine. My Slovak great-grandparents heading to work in the Pennsylvania brickyards and steel factories.

My friends, we can find connection anywhere. Because we’re all connected. To all this stuff! It’s baked right into the whole thing. I’ve been to Egypt. Made friends there. I’ve been to Europe. Made friends there. College and Seminary where I literally learned new categories of people! And music! And worship! And religion! And I’ve made friends and connected to people and concepts and ideas there.

I am an acquired taste. If I can do it. You can do it! It’s why I love the One Great Hour of Sharing that our denomination puts on. It is a fund that goes to help refugees and those displaced on a global scale. I mentioned the book, When Stars are Scattered before. An amazing story of a Somali refugee and his brother who now reside in Lancaster, PA. His story was so amazing to me. Funds given to One Great Hour of Sharing go to help people like him out. Who have been displaced. And it reaffirms what we believe….

You belong here. You’re at home on this planet. You were created in love, and where we are heading is to love in its fullness. Why wouldn’t we want to give our time, talent, and treasure to make our present reality love as well?

For God so loved the world. God loves the world. You and all your categories. Your neighbor, and their completely different set of categories. The stranger. The outcast. The orphan. The refugee. For God so loved the world. All of it. All the stuff. He came to save it. Not to condemn. Thanks be to God for those who actually believe this and aren’t jerks about it. Amen.

Works Cited

^[1][1] When he was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame: https://speakola.com/arts/tom-waits-hall-of-fame-2011

[2] Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A historical introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2000: page 25-26. Scholars like Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Walter Brueggemann talk a lot about Roman phrases used by Jesus and the early Christians and how they re-purposed them.

^[3][3] It’s an amazing read: Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A theological exploration of identity, otherness, and reconciliation. Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN; 1996.

^[4][4] This is theology from Paul Tillich and also echoed in Johnson’s book on pages 144, 148, 158, 162, and especially in Chapter 5 which can be summed up as such: Creation is not rooted in nothing, but inherently rooted in God.