Once I led a group study on the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This was a good group to work with – they were mature in their faith and devoted to studying the scriptures. We were moving right along at a good clip, but they knocked me right off my rhythm when one of them said, “I don’t like this parable. It’s not right.” and everyone in the room agreed. They resented this wayward son and rejected the notion that he should be given such lavish forgiveness. It’s not fair, they told me. It’s not right. It offended their sense of justice.
I once had a conversation with a fellow church member about the Sunday sermon we had both just heard. He told me that even though he usually liked that preacher, he really disliked this particular sermon. He was offended by her interpretation of the Noah story in Genesis – that maybe it didn’t happen exactly that way. It seemed to him that she was saying the Noah’s Ark story we teach our children in the nursery is a lie and did she really think it was okay for us to tell our children lies?
I have learned over the years that people can get a little touchy about the word of God. Sometimes, of course, they love it. But other times they react differently. They are afraid. They find it offensive. And when I say “they” I mean me too. I am not exempt from this. I still have my old high school Bible in which I scratched out a verse I didn’t like. I found the teaching too hard; I simply didn’t know what to do with it. So I removed it with a ball-point pen.
I haven’t tried to remove any verses with a pen in many years. But I have other ways of rejecting things in the scriptures that I do not like. Dealing with this passage from John’s gospel has made me very aware of this.
The people who were listening to Jesus that day were uncomfortable with his words, and Jesus took note of it. He heard their complaints. He felt their reaction in his own body, and he turned to them and asked, “Does this offend you?”
I’m glad he asked that question, because it showed a healthy amount of self-awareness. Honestly, the things he was saying about eating flesh and drinking blood? Yes, they were offensive, and I wish he wouldn’t talk like that.
But he does talk like that. He has actually been going on like this for a little while now. Several weeks in our lectionary, portions of this conversation have been showing up and, frankly, I have been ignoring them. I did not want to talk to you about this stuff.
So I ignored it. And I checked to see what was going on in the Old Testament and in the Epistles. Or the Psalms. The Psalms are usually a safe bet; they can be counted on not to give offense to anyone, except on those very few occasions when they are extremely offensive to everyone.
I will tell you the truth: the scriptures are sometimes offensive, for any number of reasons. They offend our sense of reason, or they offend our sense of what is good and acceptable. They offend our assessment of our own intelligence, or they offend the very foundations of our beliefs. And just as much, when we start talking about them, grappling with these words that are strange or offensive or cringy, trying to reconcile the word of God with our hearts and minds and spirits and experience of life, when we voice our thoughts and feelings we risk offending one another.
Once I began an adult class by reading a passage from the Gospel of John where the resurrected Jesus stands on the shore and calls to his disciples who are out fishing. Peter, who was apparently overcome with excitement, put on his clothes and jumped in the lake and swam to shore. I said to the group, “Peter put on his clothes and jumped in? Does that seem weird to you?” Most everyone laughed and agreed; yeah, it’s a weird image. But one person quietly fumed. “No, it is not weird,” she said, “and maybe if you knew the scriptures as well as I do you wouldn’t think that.”
Part of me felt sorry to have offended her. But I wasn’t really. Because this was a little thing, and if something this little offended her what in the world was she doing with the big things? And there are a lot of big things – we are talking about Jesus, and Jesus has been offending people for two thousand years. This will probably not change.
I am trying to get used to this. Trying to pay attention to how I might cringe a little when I come across an offensive passage. Because, sooner or later, the Spirit will help me recognize that it offends me because it is hard for me. Not necessarily because it is wrong, but because it is hard. Like his followers said to him in this story from John, these teachings are difficult.
So many of them are.
It was difficult when he said to a potential disciple, “Let the dead bury the dead.” It was difficult when he said to a rich young man, “You must sell everything that you own,” and it was difficult when he said to us, “Be perfect.”
It is difficult here when he says whoever eats me will live.
Who can accept such teachings as these? Not many.
I know this because people are beginning to drift away from him. The massive crowds that have been stalking him for a while now? They’ve started thinning out, because the going is getting hard. Because miraculous healings are one thing, but difficult teachings are something else altogether. To be healed, all we have to do is show up, but to be taught, we have to be open to learning something new.
In moments like these I go back to something I learned many years ago about the church’s two essential roles – it is, first, a hospital for sinners; and second, a school for saints. It is where we come to be healed of our sin-sick souls; and, when we are ready, it is the place that will begin to teach us how to follow Jesus, how to be like Jesus.
Both of these roles can be offensive. In so many ways.
When we want to use the powers that we have to draw lines that determine who is acceptable and who is not, Jesus comes along and steps right over those lines. And he says to the people on the other side of the line, “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus built this hospital for sinners and tried to make it very clear to us that it is open to everyone. It was never an easy message because the world he lived in had very clear ideas about who was in and who was out.
The woman with a hemorrhage – out. The man with a skin disease – out. Eunuchs – out. People of other religious traditions – out. The rules were clear. Everyone knew where the lines were, and Jesus was always crossing those lines.
He was always crossing lines that separated the good people from the rest, crossing the lines that separated the sinners from the sanctified, crossing the lines that separated the flawed from the perfect. In all these things he was saying, God did not set these lines. People did, and God will erase these lines.
And he said to us, “Go and do likewise.”
So he created a movement of crossing lines and loving people – even those outside the lines. A hospital for healing sinners, outsiders, untouchables, the broken ones. A movement for schooling up saints, training all of us to grow in love, grow in forgiveness, grow in acceptance of all the others. What Jesus created is a movement to wipe out the lines. Something that was – and still is – offensive.
Because when he says, you should love one another, even your enemies, people are offended. When he says, you should love your neighbor, and everyone is your neighbor – even the Samaritans, and the Palestinians, and the Israelis, and the Iranians, and the Russians and the Ukrainians, and the Democrats and the Republicans, because they are all humans. That offends people.
Sometimes, love offends people.
If you love someone you are not supposed to love – love between two men or two women, love between two ethnicities or races or religions.
People are offended – we hold tight to the lines. Because there is something in us that likes the lines that separate the good people from the bad people. There is something in us that is offended when people start crossing the lines. Any of the lines. Yet, in all these matters, Jesus wipes away the lines.
Rachel Held Evans put it well when she said, “What makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in.” Rachel was brought up in a church where there was a lot of attention on the lines and keeping people on their side of the lines. But her love for Jesus eventually led her to see things differently. And when she started saying it out loud…then people thought she was being offensive.
Offensive like Jesus. Offensive like the gospel.
When we are so busy tending the lines and getting offended by people who want to mess with the lines, we are probably forgetting something important: all of us are on the wrong side of the line.
But then Jesus steps in our direction. He stretches his foot out and wipes away the line in the sand and he says to us, “Never mind that. Come and be on my side.”
Jesus came for all of us who were born on the wrong side of the line. He came so that we may have life, that we may abide in him, and he may abide in us. And when he says, anyone who eats me will live, this is what it means: take Jesus into your body, your heart, your mind, and your soul. Devour all of him. Absorb everything about him that is good and true.
And when we do this, we may join the company of those who wipe away the lines, those who forgive extravagantly and love abundantly. When we take Jesus into ourselves, we may become the ones who welcome radically and heal deeply and teach wisely.
I just remembered another thing that Jesus said: “Blessed is anyone that takes no offense at me.”
May it be so. Amen.
