Saints & Suicide Bombers

Romans12

August 26, 2012

There is a phenomenon increasing in frequency in recent years – that of the suicide martyr. We see it mostly in Islam in the form of suicide bombers – young men and increasingly young women blowing themselves up in order to kill as many of their enemies as possible. It became famous in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 but it has become a standard weapon in radical Islam’s arsenal. Recently I watched an interview with a Muslim woman on television whose son had recently blown himself up in Afghanistan. She was praising her son for his action. She said that she had three other sons and that she was praying to Allah that they would also become suicide bombers. I just can’t understand a mother saying this or thinking this – wishing that her children would kill themselves! Moderate Islamic scholars say that it is wrong – that neither suicide nor the taking of innocent lives are permitted by the Quran. But obviously there is a powerful school of thought in Islam that teaches otherwise and a lot of people are buying into it. Suicide martyrs are not just in Islam. Tibetan Buddhists have been immolating themselves recently – committing suicide by setting themselves on fire. The Dalai Lama has been urged to speak out against this practice in order to save these human lives, but he refuses to do so, thereby tacitly encouraging this behavior. Religion seems to have the power to cause people to do drastic things like this. It is encouraged by the promise of heavenly rewards in the afterlife in both of these religions.

Thankfully Christianity has not followed in the footsteps of this type of practice. But to be honest there is in Christianity the idea of self-sacrifice. Our Christian religion is based on the idea that Jesus willingly sacrificed his life for us. He did not commit suicide; he was executed by the Roman government. Also he was not trying to maim or kill others through his death, but to save others. So there is a big difference. But the idea of sacrificing one’s life is at the heart of Christianity. It is at the heart of Christian discipleship. We are to give ourselves to Christ. I think that the Islamic and Buddhist suicide practices are a bizarre distortion of the spiritual urge people have to sacrifice their lives to God or to a cause greater than themselves. I think we see it in a more acceptable form in war when a soldier is willing to sacrifice his or her life for country, comrades, and for certain values. We rightly understand that a soldier’s death is a noble sacrifice. We know that some things are worth dying for.

Today I want to talk about a noble Christian form of self-sacrifice to be practiced by all Christians, which are called “saints” in the New Testament. Not suicide bombing or self-immolation, but giving one’s life to God spiritually. I am using as my text Romans 12. I read the whole chapter earlier, but I am going to focus on the first two verses. The rest of the chapter is an exposition of these two verses. This, by the way is also a Summer Sermon Suggestion. Someone asked me to preach on this passage. The words I am going to focus on are these: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. ² And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”  I am breaking this passage down into three points.

I. First this is a call to Sacrificial Living. Verse 1 says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” Here is the idea of sacrifice that is at the heart of Biblical religion, but it is not a dead sacrifice. It doesn’t involve killing. It is the presentation of a living sacrifice. That is the big difference between the bizarre religious behavior that we see in suicide martyrs and Christian practice. We are urged by our God to present our bodies as a living sacrifice.

There are a couple of things that need to be mentioned immediately. First this is a presentation of our bodies as a living sacrifice. This is physical, practical and down to earth. It is not theoretical and purely spiritual. We aren’t just supposed to present our souls or spirits to God. Christians talk about giving their hearts to Jesus. That is all well and good, but what he wants is our body. What good is your heart if your body doesn’t follow. He wants all of us – heart, mind, body and soul. Christianity is a very physical religion. We don’t just talk about  ideas taught by Christ; we talk about God becoming enfleshed in a physical man - Jesus Christ. Christianity is a very down-to-earth religion in this way.

Another thing that needs to be mentioned immediately is the motivation for sacrificial living. Paul says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice…” The motivation for sacrificial living is the mercy of God. Specifically it is the mercy of God as demonstrated in the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ. Jesus is our example for sacrificial living. Jesus Christ gave his body as a living sacrifice for thirty years of his life. That is what made it possible for him to give his body as a sacrifice on the Cross. It is all the mercy of God.

It says “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” Other translations say, “This is your spiritual worship.” Sacrifices in the Old Testament temple had to meet certain standards. People could not give unworthy gifts to God when they went to the temple. They could not offer crippled or diseased sacrifices. They had to give the best of their flocks and herds and the best of the fields. That is how we are to give ourselves to God. Whenever the Olympic Games come around the world is focused on these young people and how they have developed their bodies as these wonderful perfect instruments for their sport. They and their families have given up so much to compete and hopefully to win the prize. The apostle Paul elsewhere in writing to a church in Greece compares the Christian life to the Olympics.

²⁴ Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. ²⁵ And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. ²⁶ Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. ²⁷ But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified. (I Cor)

The Christian life is a physical life in which we serve God not just with our minds or thoughts or ideas or hearts, but with our bodies. Therefore we are to treat our bodies, as Paul says elsewhere as temples of God. We are to give to God the best of our strength, the best of our time, the best of our days, the best of talents and resources – just like the Olympic athletes give their best. As the old hymn says (which unfortunately is not in our hymnal) : Give of your best to the Master; Give of the strength of your youth. Clad in salvation’s full armor, Join in the battle for truth.”

II. Second, this passage is a Call to Nonconformity.  Verse 2 says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” I will talk about renewing of our minds in a moment, but in this point I want to focus on “Do not be conformed to this world.” The spiritual life is a call to nonconformity. This is so badly needed in American society. Many American think of themselves as nonconformists, but it is not true. They think that nonconformity has to do with clothing or hairstyles or something superficial like that. There is this mystique of the rugged American individualist – the cowboy, the Marlboro man. Well the Marlboro man died of lung cancer because of this conformity to a macho advertised image. As much as we like to think of ourselves as individualists, we are a nation of conformists. We conform to the world.

And it is true of religion. For one thing it is cool these days not to be religious. People think of themselves as spiritual, but not religious, and they think that makes them nonconforming.  Nonsense. They are conforming to the secular culture. Even in Christianity there is massive conformity to cultural values. Most of the megachurches in our country proclaim a hybrid form of Christianity that mixes the gospel with the culture and calls it innovative, different, new and fresh. It is not new. It is the old conformity to the world in a different form. And the apostle pleads with us, “Do not be conformed to this world.” There are all sorts of interesting translations of this verse. Phillips says, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould.” The Message says, “Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.” I like that. We want to be well-adjusted people, but maybe a Christian is by definition not a well-adjusted person. To be well-adjusted to God means to be mal-adjusted to this world. AS another old hymn says, “This world is not my home I'm just a passing through …. And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.”

Christians by their spiritual nature are nonconformists. Some groups have tried to embody this by their dress or customs, like the Amish freezing time – dressing differently with different hairstyles from another era. Other groups have tried similar ways to demonstrate nonconformity. But that is not what the apostle has in mind. He is speaking of a more fundamental nonconformity. If our heart is conformed to God and his will, then it will naturally not be conformed to the world.

III. This leads into the third point of this passage which is the Renewal of Your mind. The spiritual life is a call to transformation. “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”  And the rest of chapter 12 unpacks what it means to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

It means humility. Verse 3 “For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.” In verse 16 he says, “Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.”

It means community. Verse 4 “⁴ For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, ⁵ so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.” We are not meant to be the rugged individualists. We are meant to members of a body. He is talking about a community of faith. People think they can be spiritual people and have nothing to do with a church. That is the world’s way of thinking. The nonconformist way is to live for others and not for ourselves.

It means love. People pay a lot of lip service to love. But the love that the Scripture speaks of is not the fuzzy wuzzy sentimentality of the world. It is radical love. Verse 9 says, “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. ¹⁰ Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another.” This is true communal love. It is supposed to be the sign of the church – that people see the church and are impressed saying, “See how they love one another.” Jesus says, “Everyone will know that you are my disciples because of your love for each other." Paul says here: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. ¹⁶ Be of the same mind toward one another.” They will know we are Christians by our love – or at least they ought to.

Verse 14ff continues describing this radical love: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. … ¹⁷ Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. ¹⁸ If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. ¹⁹ Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.²⁰ Therefore “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.” ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

That is radical love. That is nonconformity.  Only God can create that kind of love and grace in our hearts and minds. This can only happen when we have received and experienced God’s love and grace into our lives through living in Christ. The Christian life is a self-sacrificial life. It is giving ourselves heart, soul, and body and strength to God. And God receives us as an offering. And he uses us as his instruments in this world – as instruments of his love and grace. This is nonconformist in any age and place. This is the true Christian life. This is what it means to be a saint in biblical terms. This is the life of sacrifice. 

The Gift of Anger

Mark 3:1-6; James 1:16-21

I was asked to preach on anger this summer by a member of our congregation. I immediately thought of my pastoral care professor in seminary who was – and is – the expert in the field of Christians and anger. His name is Andrew Lester, and he is presently a professor of pastoral theology and pastoral counseling at Texas Christian University's Brite Divinity School. He has written several books on the topic including The Angry Christian: A Theology for Care and Counseling; Anger: Discovering Your Spiritual Ally; and Coping With Your Anger: A Christian Guide. I owe a lot of my understanding of what the scriptures say about anger to him.

In America there is a Christian culture that insinuates that anger is somehow unchristian, and probably sinful. I call it “the gospel of nice.” Christians think they are always supposed to be nice. That means to many people that Christians are not supposed to get angry. This “be happy always” attitude used to be personified by Robert Schuller, the smiling Crystal Cathedral minister. But he is retired now, and the Crystal Cathedral has hit hard times. It is bankrupt and sold the building to the Roman Catholic Church. Today the gospel of nice is represented by Joel Osteen, the pastor of the largest church in America in Houston, Texas, averaging more than 43,500 in attendance per week. He is always smiling, happy and perpetually nice. I can hardly stand it! Christians don’t know how to think or feel about their anger. So that is what I want to address this morning. I have three points today.

I. First, anger is HUMAN. Let me quote Andy Lester in his book, The Angry Christian. “Anger has its origins in creation, not our sinfulness … Anger is connected to embodiment and is a basic ingredient in the imago Dei, actually a gift from God." This is where I get the title for my message this morning. Anger is part of the human condition. It is not sinful in and of itself. It is neither demonic nor disobedient. It is natural. It is physiological. When you get angry, pay attention to what you are actually feeling. Before you start judging yourself for how you are feeling, just notice what anger is. It is energy – physiological energy. It is tenseness in the body – perhaps different parts of the body. That is why we have expressions like “burning with rage” or “white hot anger.” For me anger is energy in my chest, neck, shoulders and gut, but it consumes your whole body pretty quickly. It is part of what it means to be a human animal, like when an animal gets angry – when a dog barks or growls. I remember Andy Lester drawing a diagram on the blackboard demonstrating his theory that all anger is a response to a real or perceived threat. It is fight part of the “fight or flight” response that is natural to all mammals. It is physiological energy designed for our physical survival as a human species.

Anger is also psychological. It is more than just our body reacting to physical danger. Our minds get ahold of it, and that is where the problem begins. Rather than just letting anger come and go we hold onto it, dwelling on the reason for the anger. Anger as physiological energy is neutral – neither good nor evil. But when our minds get ahold of it, it can be used for good or evil. It is a very powerful emotion, and therefore a potentially dangerous emotion. This is why so many Christians are afraid of their anger. Anger can get out of control, and we can do things in the heat of anger that we would never do in our normal state of mind. We use the word mad for anger for a reason; it can make us temporarily insane in the sense of crazy. The Roman poet Horace said, “Anger is a short madness.”

Jude and I saw the movie Bernie a couple of months ago at the Red River Theatre in Concord. It is the true story of a gentle lovable man named Bernie Tiede, (played by Jack Black) an assistant funeral director in the small town of Carthage, Texas. He was the epitome of niceness, and everyone in the town loved him. But he got into an unhealthy relationship with an elderly widow named Marjorie Nugent, (played by Shirley McLaine) who was the most hateful character you can imagine. No one liked this woman, but Bernie befriended her out of kindness. But after being verbally and emotionally abused by her for years, in a moment of uncharacteristic rage he killed her. The film stars a lot of the real life residents of that town who defended Bernie’s action. Even though the evidence was irrefutable that he murdered her, they did not want to charge him with a crime or punish him. In fact the District Attorney had to move the trial out of the county just to get an unbiased jury. He was convicted  of murder, by the way, and is serving a life sentence.

Bernie was momentarily consumed by his anger, and it caused him to do something completely out of character. That is the danger of anger. It can be used for bad. We know that and have seen that in our own lives and in other’s lives, and in churches. Churches can be angry places when Christians do not understand own their own anger or know how to control it and use it for good.  It can get the better of us.

II. This brings me to my second point: Anger can be SINFUL. It is not inherently sinful. It is just an emotion. But what we do with the emotion can be sinful. This is why we find biblical warnings about anger. The apostle Paul says in Ephesians, “Be angry, but do not sin”; and do not let the sun go down on your wrath.” He is telling us that it is alright to be angry, but do not let the anger fester and turn into sin. Anger becomes sin when it is extended beyond its natural lifespan. It is natural for anger to rise up in us. We can’t keep anger from happening. It is not healthy to suppress anger. That is what Bernie did and it eventually exploded in a murderous rage that destroyed a woman’s life and his own life. And Bernie was a respected member of the Methodist Church in town and sang solos in worship. But his anger turned into sin because he let it build up for months and years.

This is why forgiveness is so important and plays such a central role in the Christian gospel. Our faith is all about forgiveness. Forgiveness is the defusing of anger. It is about us being forgiven by God and using that experience and divine power of forgiveness to forgive others. Forgiveness is letting go of anger. It is forgetting the reason for the anger. Anger is like trash. If anger is not properly disposed of in a timely manner it begins to stink. It rots and stinks, and everyone in the vicinity can smell it. We have all known perpetually angry people, and it is terrible. That is why it is so important to cultivate an attitude of forgiveness.

Forgiveness happens by the power of God at work in our lives. When we feel forgiven by God we can forgive. In fact we can’t help but forgive others if we know that we have been forgiven our sins. I would go so far as to say that if we cannot forgive then we need to examine our lives to see if we have really experienced the forgiveness of God. That was Jesus point in his teaching of the Lord’s Prayer and the words that come immediately afterwards in the gospels where Jesus adds: “¹⁴ “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ¹⁵ But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

We should we quick to forgive, for our own sake and for others. Also we should be slow to anger in the first place. This quality of being “slow to anger” is often mentioned as an attribute of God in the OT as well, and it is good to cultivate it in our lives.The apostle James says in our Epistle Reading according to the NIV “¹⁹ My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, ²⁰ because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.” We cultivate this quality in our lives by being aware when we become angry. When anger arises we can either be conscious of it or unconscious. If we are unconscious of it, it can be dangerous. It can cause us to say and do all kinds of things that we may regret for years to come. The best thing we can do is by mindful of the arising of anger in our bodies. As soon as we begin to sense ourselves becoming angry, stop and notice it. That is all we have to do; that is enough. That puts just enough distance between us and our anger so that it does not carry us away. And it will likely subside of itself like a wave that comes and goes. If it doesn’t subside, then at least we have slowed it down. We have been slow to anger.

III. This brings me to my third point. Anger may be DIVINE. I have described how anger can be bad. The converse is also true; anger can be good. There is such a thing as righteous anger. Some things we ought to be angry at. I am angry when children are abused; I don’t feel guilty about being angry at that at all. In fat I think there would be something wrong with me if I were not angry at something like that. I think we ought to be angry at injustice. We ought to be angry that evil people can destroy the lives of innocent people. I am angry at violent crime that take the lives of innocent bystanders. I am angry at tyrants and dictators who oppress their citizens. Anger at things like this is a good thing.

God gets angry at such things. We see the wrath of God running as a theme throughout the OT and NT. That is a good thing. I know that some people have problems with the idea of a God who gets angry. We think that God ought to be the perpetually Nice Guy. Our discomfort with Godly anger comes out of the Greek idea of an immutable impassive Deity. Or it comes from our own discomfort with our own anger. We don’t want to taint God with such a strong emotion. But that is our problem, not God’s. By definition God does not sin. We don’t have to worry about God losing his temper and doing something he will regret. That is not going to happen. So we do not have to be afraid of the idea of an angry God.

Now along this line I have to give a warning when it comes to connecting God and anger. Some people have a very distorted view of God. Some people’s God is perpetually angry and inspires people to do terrible things. I think that Islamic terrorists and suicide bombers have a distorted view of God – a hateful, vengeful deity who inspires his followers to hate and kill in obedience to him. That is not the God of the Bible. Some people will take passages in the Bible out of context and try to make a case that the Biblical God is evil. There was a movement in the early Christian centuries called Marcionism that believed that the OT God was an hateful, evil, violent God and the NT God was a good, loving, forgiving God. There are Christians today who still hold that distinction between the two testaments. But that is not true. It is the same God in the OT and NT. God gets angry in both testaments and forgives in both Testaments.

Jesus gets angry. The example often given is when he takes a whip of cords and drives the moneychangers out of the temple. But there are other examples. In our Gospel lesson for today it says that he got angry at the Pharisees for criticizing  him for healing on the Sabbath. They did not care at all about people who were suffering. All they cared about were their religious rules. So our passage says in verse, “He looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts….” The hardened hearts of religious people made Jesus angry. This was not the only time he got angry at the Pharisees; he got angry at them on many occasions. He got angry at Peter and rebuked him. He got angry and cursed a fig tree on one occasion; but he wasn’t irrationally mad at a tree, it was a symbol. He was mad at the moral barrenness and fruitlessness of God’s people. Jesus got angry, yet it was not sin. It was righteous anger.

The question then becomes can we be righteously angry, and I think I have already answered that with the answer yes. We should be angry at the things that Jesus gets angry at and that God gets angry at. But we have to be careful because we are not Jesus, and we are not God. We can deceive ourselves. Our anger can easily be distorted by our sin, so it is very important that we be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and never let anger linger and settle into bitterness, resentment, or revenge.

In conclusion anger is part of what it means to be a human being made in the image of God. It is part of being human. To suppress it is to deny a part of our humanity. We get angry, and it is alright. It is natural to be angry. But human anger has been distorted by sin, so anger can also be sinful. So we need to be careful. Aristotle wrote: “Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.” I see anger like firearms. Guns can be good when used for good purposes – for protection of others, self-defense, sport, or to provide food. But guns can also be bad when used for bad purposes. In any case they are always dangerous. They can be discharged accidently and cause unintended harm. The same with our anger. Be careful how you use it. It is a gift and can be used to combat evil, and injustice. Or it can injure the innocent and backfire on ourselves. So be angry when appropriate, but be careful. As the apostle Paul says, “Be angry, but do not sin.”