Scot McKnight: January 2006 Archives

A question for you and I hope a brisk, informed conversation. But first a brief explanation. I have been hearing of late, from a variety of quarters, that more and more churches are starting "satellite campuses" and, in effect, "satelliting" their church to another location. Thus, a big, local church DVDs its service on Saturday night and then that service is played the next morning in a variety of other local settings. What do you think of this practice? What are its effects -- on other local churches? on spiritual formation? Does anyone have local experience with another church doing this in your area?

How can you tell if a prophet is true or false? Jesus has a very simple solution: "By their fruits you can recognize them" (Matthew 7:15-20). False prophets deceive in appearance but inwardly are ferocious wolves. Fruit, Jesus says, is what enables us to discern them. And fruit has to do with behaviors.

Thornbushes don't produce grapes; thistles don't produce figs. Bad people don't produce good works -- so Jesus is saying. Good trees produce good fruit; bad trees produce bad fruit. So says Jesus. There is a correlation between heart and behavior.

Jesus is speaking here about folks who claim to be his followers, who are known for prophetic gifts and behaviors, but are frauds. And the way to know the fraud from the follower is by fruit. Plain and simple (and not that this solves everything), how one behaves tells alot.

Jesus' point is that we are to recognize when leaders are not genuine and when they are "ferocious wolves" -- that is, leaders who are intent on devouring others, using others, consuming others for their own advantage, for their own benefit -- the picture seems clear to me. And Jesus is dealing here with clear stereotypes. Just wait, he says, the ravenous will soon be eating and devouring other folk.

It may take time; and we may find ourselves committed to them and listening to them and learning them but, eventually so it seems, character will win out and we will see them for who they are by the way they behave. As Dale Allison says, "False face cannot hide false heart forever."

The text encourages two things: first, it exhorts to inspect ourselves and, second, it exhorts to watch and discern the ravenous from the shepherd who feeds his or her flock with God's embracing grace.

This, our second post on Jesus and homosexuality, begins our survey of the central themes of Jesus' ethical/moral teachings, and asks how such a theme might shed light on our discussion. I think we can agree that there is no need for, to use the words of Charles Dickens when he surveyed London churches in 1860, "the unventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges Boiler." But, if we can agree on that, can we agree on what Jesus would say? I think we can agree that Jesus would have summoned anyone who cared to sit at table with him to follow him. Here we are in touch with an absolutely central, in fact the central, feature of Jesus' ethical teaching. What might that mean for how Jesus would address homosexuality?

A couple of passages make what Jesus meant clear. First, let's look at Mark 1:16-20:

16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

To follow Jesus means to drop what you are doing; to suspend a previous activity; and to enter into a life of attachment, adherence, and following of Jesus. It is a shift of allegiance; it is an alteration of priorities; it is a suspension of our will to Jesus' will. I don't think anyone can question that these are the implications of answering the call to follow Jesus.

Here are the words from Luke 9:57-62:

Luke 9:57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 60 But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Once again, the same point: those who follow Jesus are summoned to drop anything, everything, anyone, whatever is in the way, in order to be with Jesus, in order to follow Jesus. Shelter, physical security, sacred duties that may delay the response, even parental affections. These are stiff demands by Jesus who is Lord for his followers.

But, let's back up one moment to clarify: these comments from Jesus are in the contexts of (1) God's covenant with Israel, (2) humans as cracked Eikons and who remain so throughout the entire life but who are being transformed by God's embracing grace, and (3) a personal relationship with Jesus. Jesus isn't giving "laws" for the Land; he is striking up relationships with cracked Eikons in order to invite them, with him, to establish the Kingdom of God. This is the context for what it means to call Jesus "Lord." It is about being with Jesus, the New Covenant in Person, as cracked Eikons in process of repair.

My friend, the OT scholar at Oxford, Hugh Williamson, has a marvelous little book called The Lord is King (I can't locate my copy just now) in which he addresses the question of what the NT means when it says "Jesus is Lord." Does it mean "Lord of all or not Lord at all?" He thinks not. My memory serves me like this: Hugh contends that Lord means more "Lord for" than "Lord over."

I want to emphasize something here: Jesus' attitude is not "take me or leave me." Instead, it is a here-I-am, come follow me. I am with you; will you be with me? The difference is dramatic. It is not an in-your-face or ball-you-out but a gracious embrace of grace that has the power to transform. He is the "Lord for" us because he is the "Lord with" us.

If Jesus is Lord in the sense of "for us" -- he rules for us, etc., then to answer the summons to follow Jesus is to give him who we are, what we have done, and to entrust ourselves -- our whole selves -- to Jesus. Anything less than full surrender is incomplete following. Now, let's be careful right here: not one of us gives up everything and all we are. We try; we reach out; but we are never fully surrendered. Regardless, Jesus is Lord "for" in helping us -- he is there "for us" to give us strength, to empower us, to ennoble us and to direct us. (Of course, he is Lord "over" but that may not be the implication of his Lordship.)

But, the implication of following Jesus and wanting to return home to bury father, or turning back, or saying good-bye, or not dropping our nets, is that Jesus the Lord "us with" and "for" continues to beckon us to follow and to follow more and more. People resist; Jesus doesn't turn his back on them; his arm is stretched out still.

Here is where a line has to be drawn: if it can be shown, and I think it can and I will try to do that in the posts ahead, that homosexual relations are contrary to God's will, then when Jesus summons others to follow him, he is the Lord both "with" and "for" them in the sense that he is an adequate, even more than adequate, replacement for the relations they may be drawn to. They are summoned to follow him with everything they have and all they are. This is a love relationship: love takes place in the context of giving who we are to the other person. All of who we are.

Pastorally, I think we can assume that not all will "drop their nets" right now and on the spot; few do. But because some don't does not mean the summons is altered. The summons of Jesus, plain and simple, and no one can contest it, is this: to follow Jesus. Anything less than that is not following Jesus; it can become a source of what the Bible often calls "idolatry."

But, following Jesus is a process: it takes time; some surge forward quickly while others hang back and struggle. That's part of what it means to respond to following Jesus. We do not expect anyone to "get perfected" all at once, so we need to admit right up front in the discipleship summons of Jesus that the call to "go and sin no more" is not followed perfectly by anyone -- and Jesus knows this. He offers his hand to help, he offers his hand to point the way, but the hand that guides is next to the hand that helps when we fall. It takes time. The community of faith knows this and permits growth to happen (which means it knows that obedience is long).

We must get this right: Jesus invites us to table. At the table he summons us to follow him. Following Jesus is all that matters. An individual's conscience or opinion is not the issue with Jesus: following him is the issue, the only issue.

For me, we have to begin with Jesus at table summoning anyone and everyone, whoever they might be and whatever their issues, to follow him. Nothing else.

The following story is from Becky. She sent this in on a previous post and I've asked her permission to re-use her story of God's embracing grace that has the power and force to help each of us with our own "crackedness." One of Becky's major points is that she learned, as she confesses, through the Spirit to die with Christ. In fact, what we see in Becky's story is the power of God to help us overcome our own cracked weaknesses, regardless of what those might be. Her story is no one else's story; there is no reason to typify her story; there is no reason to impose her story on others. But, still, a wondrous story of God's gracious healing over a long, long time.

I first wondered if I had lesbian tendencies when I was in High School. I tried thing after thing to fix this, what I thought was wrong, for 30 yrs. Finally a couple years ago I was referred to a woman who helps those wanting freedom, as such can be in this life, from lesbian attraction.

At the same time I was in therapy, and realized my attraction was an idealized fantasy that I would get the mother love from another woman that I never got from my mom. Sex is about as close as you can get to another person, so that’s how it looked attractive to me. I was learning how to let go of trying to get mother substitutes in the many ways it comes out in me and I was learning that when a sexual thought about a woman starts up, I need not go there, stop, say no. Because I know I didn’t get that desired love from my mom and another person at this time can not make up for it. I can not get what I never got. I can not turn back time, I can not make my mom what I wanted. It would not have been enough just to learn how to say “no” to this attraction. I had to find out what the itch is, and figure out how reality lines up to it, and what way I can turn so the itch gets taken care of. Part of that is saying “sorry, you don’t have a mom, you can’t get a mom.”

30 yrs I struggled with this. And I was a sincere Christian, as much as anyone without this tendency. It wasn’t a matter of proper repentance and turning from this sin. God works with us all bit by bit. I got to where I could get a handle on this, with God’s help. As long as all of us sin, and we all do daily till we die, we cannot make a differentiation between our sin and the sin of homosexual attraction. We can not stop all our sinning today, no matter how sincere our desire and repentance. We all struggle with the split of wanting to see ourselves in the heart of God, but fleeing it by pursuing various distractions.

I want to add that in the context of looking for another person to fill a hole in me: the sin I was experiencing is idolatry. It is not what genitals do with another set of genitals. When talk about those with same sex attraction comes up, what seems focused is the sex content. That isn’t it, it’s idolatry. I had turned, so I learned from this woman helper, to the golden calf because it looks like it fills the deep emotional need faster. Thus the sameness with all of us, as I wrote above in my last line: "We all struggle with the split of wanting to see ourselves in the heart of God, but flee it too, with various distractions." In my 30 yrs of dealing with this, my experience is that those with same sex attraction are looking to another person to fill a psychological-spiritual hole. And I ran those 2 words together intentionally, cuz in real life they can not be split into 2 areas, they are intertwined in who we are, one affecting the other, wed.

I am in a small church. I think there are 20 of us now. Some of us have known each other 28 yrs. Someone who has been there 5 yrs or so, we found out last week that she’s had an affair for 9 months, and is leaving her hubby and her kids to deal with it. She’s going to a man who has had 3 marriages and multiple affairs. Her current husband isn’t abusive in any way, doesn’t do drugs or alcohol. She is an adult child of alcoholics. This is such typical behavior of an unhealed acoa. Wanting and fearing closeness, trying through this new man, to get what she wanted from her daddy. From her childhood, she has complex issues to work through, issues that touch her in ways she doesn’t know yet. But she can work through them to the point that she doesn’t make such stupid choices spurred by her pain. She feels a dissatisfaction and is looking for stuff outside herself to fix the dissatisfaction. It is not enough that I would just tell her leaving her hubby and kids is wrong, having the affair is wrong.

My word to her is to take care of her wounds, to stop blaming dissatisfaction on stuff outside herself. In this, she is making those people she thinks will quench her thirst, scratch her itch, she is making them the golden calf, an idol. “I am afraid and so I will turn to this fix in front of my face that looks mighty inviting.” Go to person after person - fix me, fill me, cure my dissatisfaction. So, idolatry runs in us all when we flee the heart of God and run to other things to distract. So, yes, she has this complex psyche from the alcoholic home she grew up in. But, she has a choice. When someone says to her to go into counseling and deal with this and that. Then she has a choice. And healing is available. Even woundedness from our parents doesn’t make us who we ‘have’ to be. And so with all. Never complete healing in this life, but sufficient.

See, there isn’t this category over here, homosexual, to discourse over “their” sin and what we do with “their” sin. We are them. How are we them ? We all turn from the heart of God to look for the fixes closer to our faces, that look like they will be the drug that soothes. We want to see ourselves in the heart of God and we fear it at the same time. So we turn to things that distract temporarily, looking for the balm. Our golden calves we make. And when we dance around our golden calves, we are the whores who have left our Lover/God.

There are, the famous opening lines of the Didache state, "two paths: one of life and one of death, and the difference between the two is great." These were some of the lines I was asked to translate when I entered seminary, and we were slotted into an Exegesis class on the basis of such testing. Jokes abound about "there are two kinds of...". Jesus absorbed the same way of discerning humans, and he sees two sorts of humans: the few who enter the narrow gate and the many who enter the wide gate.

Probably no text is more directly offensive to the postmodern (or modern) pluralistic sensibility. One path, so Jesus states, leads to destruction; the other path leads to life. You can monkey with these words, but their implication is clear: a choice needs to be made to follow Jesus or not.

And let this be observed before we get to quick to announce that is we, and not the others, who have entered the narrow gate: the narrow gate is entered by those who hear the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and do them; the wide gate by those who hear those words and do not do them. So there, each of us, we need to hear that. This isn't about a simple "I accepted Jesus at five and I've lived the devil's life every since but I'm safe and secure." There is no reason to talk of the gate or the narrow way without thinking of the Sermon on the Mount.

So what is the "gate"? For a long time I've taught that the gate is Jesus himself, or Jesus as he is known through his teachings. To enter that gate is to answer the summons to follow Jesus (you can see why I think the Sermon on the Mount is an evangelistic sermon).

A summary is in order: to enter the narrow gate involves being with the blessed ones (poor, peacemakers, persecuted, etc), being salt and light consistently, following Jesus' radical way about murder/anger, adultery/lust, divorce, truth-telling, mercy over revenge, loving enemies. And it involves doing good deeds for the right reasons; it involves pursuing the kingdom and God's justice instead of fortunes and fame; and it involves not damning the others and trusting that God is good.

That's the narrow gate about which Jesus teaches.

What about numbers here? Is this a calculation of how many will make it and how many won't? Maybe. It is more likely, as Allison and others have argued, that it is Semitic over-statement in a potent exhortation.

The point is clear: there are severe alternatives when we hear the words of Jesus. To do them or not to do them -- and that makes all the difference.