Belly God

The reading from Philippians that we had for Sunday was about how 'their gods are in their bellies.'  This is a bit of a conundrum, a bit of an issue, and we have to ask ourselves what on earth it is all about?  How are we to understand the idea that the god of human beings is in our bellies?

Well, as usual, this isn't a literal thing, that is to say that any of us believes that there is a real, legitimate divine being, and it is our tummies.  That doesn't make any sense.  But what it might mean for us, is that our god, the thing we worship, the thing we hold to high standard, the thing by which we measure everything else, that god is at the core of us.  And we become the measure of all things.

The Vitruvian man.  Man as the measure of all things.

Don't believe me?  You should.  You should believe me because there is something inside all of us that views our own vantage point as the final arbiter of right and wrong.  The Old Testament is full of this sort of activity, by the way.  It's full of the people of Israel who did what was right in their own eyes, which is almost always the barometer that we still use today.  The Old Testament reading from Sunday was all about the prophecy of Jeremiah, and the subsequent reception of that prophecy.  Now, the reading on Sunday didn't get into it, but what was it that Jeremiah said?  He said to the people who were coming to listen to him: 'Thus says the Lord: If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law that I have set before you, and to heed the words of my servants the prophets whom I send to you urgently - though you have not heeded - then I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth.' 

It's a stark warning from Jeremiah, to change thy ways or perish.  To move from the way that you have been going, and to turn aside from your evil or to face the cup of God's wrath and everlasting condemnation.  But the people who were listening to Jeremiah had a different opinion of how things were supposed to be going.  The people who were listening to Jeremiah had a different idea of what the world was all about, and what the word of God was all about.  Their perception was that they were doing fine, they were doing a great job, and that Jeremiah should stop talking about how they weren't, thank you very much.  Their perception was that they were right, and any criticism of that should be met with extreme anger and potential bloodshed.  After Jeremiah speaks out against them, the people in the temple seize him, and say to him 'You shall die! Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying "this house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate without inhabitant?'"  The sentence of death is going to fall against Jeremiah just for speaking God's word ostensibly to God's people.

Not much changed after that.  The Gospel reading deals with Herod seeking Jesus' life once again, with Herod seeking to have Jesus put to death, for Jesus' view and activity.  This should be no surprise either, given that Herod, that fox, had John locked up in prison for the crime of daring to speak out against Herod's relationship.  This chaining up of God's prophets is nothing new, whether it be among the people of God or not; nobody wants to hear the word of God's judgment against their many and various sins. Jesus is quite plain about what is at stake, too, agonizing about Jerusalem, saying that he had wanted to gather Jerusalem together as a chicken gathers her brood under her wings, but they were not willing.

This is one of those many things that is in the Bible because it is, and continues to be true.  In fact, perhaps it has never been more true.  Think for a second about something that happens later in the book of Jeremiah, where king Jehoiakim has a scroll read to him that contains words of God's judgment against Israel and Judah.  and every time they read through a few columns , Jehoiakim would take a penknife, and cut off the part that was just read, and casually toss it into the fire.  And neither the king, nor any of his servants who heard all these words, was alarmed, nor did they tear their garments.  Ho-hum, because when push comes to shove, we don't really care too terribly much about the word of God if it disagrees with what we have already decided is right.  If we are already doing what is right in our own eyes, then prophecy from God is not going to change that.

Today, the word of God is treated much the way Jehoiakim treated it.  Though it exists, though it is distributed, though it is read, it is largely ignored when it does not agree with what we have already decided.  It's not as though this is a problem for the outside nations, no no no, it's a problem within the church.  Many of us, good, Bible Believing Christians, will have to run up against this, where the word of God will speak out against our relationships, or our activity, or our inactivity, or our sloth or opulence, and at that point, we have a choice.  We can treat it like Jeremiah's peers, launching into a tirade against the messenger for daring to share the message.  We can treat it like Herod, locking it away so it can no longer speak.  Or we can treat it like the disciples.

In John 6, Jesus tells the massive crowd who has followed him up until now 'For this reason, I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.'  At that, many of his disciples turned back, and no longer followed him.  And in a heartbreaking, poignant moment, Jesus turns to look upon the twelve, and asks them 'And you?  Do you wish to leave too?  Peter's response is beautiful.

Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.

A moment so beautiful that it is part of our liturgy.  In that moment, Peter encapsulates the way we need to feel and behave about the word of God.  We aren't going to agree with it all the time, we aren't going to like it all the time.  It isn't always going to sound good to our ears, or wonderful in our minds.  It isn't going to be the sort of thing that we are delighted by, but none of that matters if it's true.

The Christian faith is worth nothing if it is false.  If the notion of the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting is a big lie, then the Christian faith promises nothing, and we of all people are most to be pitied.  But if it is true, if Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, then it doesn't matter how palatable his words, how easy they are to hear.  What matters is that they are true.  And if they are, then they are of paramount importance.   

So what are you, average Christian schlub, supposed to do with the words that you hate.  The words

you disagree with?  What are you supposed to do when you run up against the scroll full of words you don't want to hear, what are you to do with the prophets who speak out against you?  Do you want to shut the book and continue believing the comfortable lie that can and will lead to destruction?  Or do you want to embrace the truth, as painful and hurtful as it is?  Do you want to hold fast to the bare honesty of who you are, and why you are in the situation you are in?  Do you want to observe and look at the true portrait of yourself, not matter how ghastly it is, and upon seeing it, fall wholly and completely on the work of Christ to save you from it.

Ultimately, there are only two paths forward. The first is to double down on the lie, to assert as much as you can, no matter what else happens, that you've been right the first time, and you'd rather be dead than wrong.  Or, you can embrace the truth, hold fast to the words of Christ that, like a surgeon's scalpel, slice through us with precision, but also remove our sickness.

It's interesting that even though the Pharisees tried to silence Jesus, to put an end to his meddlesome preaching (given that a lot of it was agaisnt them) by having him killed.  Surely, that would put a stop to his pestering.  But in doing so, in having him killed, they ironically gave him his greatest pulpit of all, giving him a platform from which to speak his greatest sermon.  The words of Christ spoken from the cross accompany the work that he does, fulfilling his entire minstry at the mount of Calvary, where he spoke to anyone who would listen that it is finished.   All the sin, all the shame, all the disgrace of a vile, unbelieving people, slow to listen, quick to ignore and run, all that sin was taken upon Jesus, at the cross, and died with him there.  

Your job as an individual Christian, then, is to let the word of God speak in its fullness.  You don't have to agree with all of it, nobody does or ever will.  But you need to know and to be well aware that it is right, and you, when you disagree with it, are wrong.  And when that happens, realize that it was for those moments where you want to close the book, to kill the prophets, to run out from under the wings of the father hen, it is for those things that Jesus died.