The Unauthorized Homily

By Bill Dunn

A commentary on the Scripture readings from the Sunday Lectionary

(Scripture readings for Sunday, April 13th: Acts 2:14, 36-41; 1 Peter 2:20-25; John 10:1-10)

Note: this is part of a talk I gave at my parish during Lent.

JESUS: THE MOST POLITICALLY INCORRECT PERSON IN HISTORY – PART 2

Let’s take a look at the words of Jesus. If Jesus really was Mr. PC, then he never offended anyone, he never judged anyone, and he certainly never expressed the idea that there really is absolute truth. Let’s review what Jesus said.

Did Jesus ever say anything offensive?

• Luke 12:49,51 – “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!….Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” (Whoa. That doesn’t sound very nice.)
• Mat 16:23 – Jesus said to Peter, “Out of my sight, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me.” (Do you think that was helpful for Peter’s fragile self-esteem?)
• Mat 23:13-33 – Jesus called the respected leaders of the community, the teachers of the law and Pharisees, “blind guides,” “fools,” “snakes,” “a brood of vipers,” and six different times, “hypocrites.” (Sounds like somebody needs some anger management classes.)
• John 8:44 – Jesus said to group of people, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning.”
• Mat 19:4-5 – Jesus quoted directly from the book of Genesis: “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”

This last quotation means two things: Jesus supported the traditional definition of marriage, one man and one woman. How intolerant! Also, the statement means that Jesus interpreted the Genesis creation account as real. Oh no, what is he, some kind of backwoods fundamentalist?!

Do you see how offensive all these words and actions truly are? It’s enough to make that church in Fairfield County rethink their whole view about Jesus.

Was Jesus ever judgmental? Did he ever speak about judgment?

• John 5:22 – “The Father…has entrusted all judgment to the Son.”
• John 8:26: “I have much to say in judgment of you.”
• John 9:39: “For judgment I have come into this world.”
• 13:24,28 – “Make every effort to enter thru the narrow door, because many will try to enter and will not be able to….There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see…all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.”
• Matt 7:21-23 – “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven….Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord…’ I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”

Wow, Jesus did talk about judgment! But I hope He never said anything about the ultimate in judgment: Hell. Let’s take a look. 

• Luke 12:5 – “I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who…has power to throw you into hell.”
• Matt 5:29 – “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”
• Matt 23:33 – “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”
• Matt 13:41-42 – “The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
• Mat 25:31,32,41,46 – “When the Son of Man comes in his glory…he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people….Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’….Then they will go away to eternal punishment.”

The fact of the matter is, if you go through the gospels, Jesus actually spoke more about Hell than Heaven. Not very politically correct.

Absolute truth. Did Jesus ever make claims about truth?

• John 3:19,20 – “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil….whoever lives by the TRUTH comes into the light.”
• John 4:23,24 – “A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and TRUTH…God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in TRUTH.”
• John 8:31-32 – “If you hold to my teachings, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH will set you free.”
• John 18:37 – (before Pontius Pilate) “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world, to testify to the TRUTH. Everyone on the side of TRUTH listens to me.”
• And finally, the biggie, John 14:6 – “I am the way and the TRUTH and the life. No one comes to the Father except thru me.”

Do you grasp how incredibly intolerant these statements are? Jesus was claiming that there is absolute truth. And part of that truth is the claim that the only way a person can get to Heaven is to go through Him.

This particular quotation often strikes people as being very offensive. I suspect if the folks at the Fairfield County church accidentally stumbled across this verse, they’d get the vapors and pass out. (Lucky for them, I’m pretty sure they don’t believe the Bible anymore and rarely read it.) When you think about it, it is very narrow and intolerant to claim there is only one way to get to Heaven: through Jesus.

But you know what? What if it is an accurate statement? We may not like it. We may wish there were many different ways to Heaven. (Ever hear that old saying, “All roads lead to the top of the mountain”? Oh really? Where does it say that in Scripture?)

Ultimately, who has the authority to make the rules here? Is it us, the created beings? Or is it God, the Creator? It’s His universe. He has the right to make the ground rules.

Think of it like this: It’s the middle of the night. You’re sound asleep. Suddenly, the smoke alarm wakes you up. You stumble out of bed and you can smell smoke. So you wake up your family and race down the stairs to the first floor to get out of the house.

You see that the front door is blocked by flames. You look around and see the back door is blocked by flames, too. Then you look toward the kitchen and see that the side door is clear. A way out!

Now, at that moment, what do you do? Do you grab your family and race out the side door to safety? Or do you stand there, indignantly, and say, “This is unacceptable. This is way too narrow. There is only one path to safety. That’s intolerant. I want many paths to safety. I want to go out whichever exit I feel like going out. And I’m not going to move from this spot until I get many paths to safety. Harrumph!”

Sometimes we don’t get what we want, but we do get what we need.

The Bible is really clear: Mankind is sinful, and we are separated from God. The Bible also is really clear that nothing sinful, nothing unclean, will ever enter into Heaven. If we really got what we deserved, we’d be in big trouble.

But Jesus came to fix that. He came to provide a path to Heaven—Himself. If that strikes some people as narrow and intolerant, well, I’m sorry. But it really should cause us to be joyful. We should be exclaiming, “Yes! There is a way!” Just like only one door is needed to escape from the burning house, only one path is needed to escape Hell!

So, the fact is, Jesus Christ was very politically incorrect. He said things that offended many people. He passed judgment on others…a lot. He believed certain things were always right, and other things were always wrong. And He believed in absolute truth. Now I consider Jesus to be THE most politically incorrect person in history because He not only believed in absolute truth, He claimed that He Himself IS absolute truth.

Another politically incorrect thing Jesus did—that drives people crazy today—is that He took religious faith seriously. Our modern culture today tells us, “OK, if you insist on having religious faith, fine, but just do it for an hour on Sunday morning, and don’t bring any of those religious values with you the rest of the week.”

Jesus didn’t say that. He said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose his soul?” Jesus took religious faith seriously every day of the week, in all situations. And that attitude drives the PC folks nuts.

Any way you slice it, Jesus simply was a very politically incorrect person. But is that a bad thing? No. Let me try to explain why.

(Next week, in part 3, we’ll examine why Jesus’ politically incorrect views—His offensive and judgmental claims of absolute truth—are actually the heart of the Good News of the Gospel.)

©2008