Eternal Life Is for After We Die, and other Ridiculous Things Preachers Say

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston

October 13, 2024
Proper 23, B
Amos 5:6-7,10-15
Psalm 90:12-17
Mark 10:17-31

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That’s what the man in today’s gospel story asked Jesus. Of course he buttered him up a bit first, calling him “good teacher.” Maybe he was just being polite, but he also seems a little bit smarmy to me, like he was trying to butter Jesus up a bit to prove that he really was worthy of eternal life, that he really would get the best of everything. It seems that this man’s only real interest was himself and getting into God’s good graces.

Notice that his initial question was totally selfish. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He wasn’t interested in helping bring about the Kingdom of God here on earth. He wasn’t interested in healing the wounds of the world. 

No, his only interest was himself. “How can I make sure things turn out as well as they possibly can for me…and only me?” He asked. “I’ve got enormous riches, I have no interest in helping others, and I want to make sure I have the best of everything after this life too.” Like I said, kinda smarmy. Selfish.

Of course, wanting to be worthy of God’s rewards and wanting to inherit goodness for himself, that probably went along with what he’d been taught. Keep God happy with you. Make sure to follow all the rules just right so you don’t make God angry. If others aren’t following God’s rules, make sure to stay away from them so you don’t get defiled by them. Look out for you and yours. Follow the laws, and God will reward you. Sound kinda familiar to some?

The trouble is, such a selfish way of life is completely misunderstanding scripture; misunderstanding the laws of God; and misunderstanding salvation, eternal life, and the kingdom of God.

Making sure things turn out well for me is not the way of the Kingdom of God. Making sure things turn out well for me is not inheriting eternal life. Making sure things turn out well for me is not, in fact, salvation.

Eternal life, the kingdom of God, and salvation itself are “Love God, and love people.” Anything that helps you do that is following the ways of God. Anything that helps you love God and love people is inheriting eternal life. See, eternal life is the life of God, and when we love God and love people, we are living the eternal life of God. If any want to inherit eternal life, love God and love people, and you’ll find that you are living the eternal life of God here and now.

For the man asking Jesus about what he needed to do to inherit eternal life, he seems to have been thinking about life later on, after life here on earth. He somehow had the life of God detached from this life. He seems to have had the ridiculous notion that life here on earth is just setting us up for something better or worse later on, as though the only point of this life is the next life. Does that also sound familiar to some? That’s insane. The point of this life is this life and how well we love God and love others in this life.

We were made to be people of love. We were made to be people who support one another and care for one another. We were made to care for the earth, this beautiful home God has given us.

You may have heard a song called, “Made to Worship,” with a chorus which begins with, “You and I were made to worship.” My response in hearing that chorus has always been, “No we weren’t,” because I thought the song was saying that we were made for the purpose of being in churches singing to God. That sounds to me like we were made to make God happy be stroking his ego. If I’m religious enough, God will be happy with me and will reward me. That’s insane. That’s not what we were made to do.

So, when I was preparing this sermon, I thought of the song “Made to Worship” as an example of religion gone crazy, and then I looked at the rest of the lyrics, and it’s actually talking about living the kingdom of God.  “You and I were made to worship; you and I are called to love; you and I are forgiven and free. You and I embrace surrender; you and I choose to believe, then you and I will see who we were meant to be.”

Loving others. Accepting and surrendering to God’s forgiveness and the freedom God gives, choosing to believe in God and in God’s ways, despite them not always making sense to us…by doing those things, the songs says, we will see who we were meant to be. We’ll see that we were meant to be people of love. Our worship is meant to help us understand that above all, God desires us to love one another, and then when we do, we find that love to be our true worship of God.

Now, when the man asked Jesus about inheriting eternal life, Jesus responded that the man’s wealth was getting in the way of him loving God and loving people.

“What are you talking about, Jesus, I can have as much wealth as I want. There ain’t no law against it.” True, there’s no specific law against having great wealth, but Jesus’ teaching asks us, “Does what you’re doing help you to love God and to love people, or does what you’re doing make loving God and loving people harder?”

For the man who asked Jesus about inheriting eternal life, his great wealth was making loving God and loving people harder for him. We know this because when Jesus suggested that he sell some of his stuff and give the proceeds to the poor, he walked away from Jesus. He loved his stuff more than he loved people in need. Love God and love people was eclipsed by, “But I really love my stuff.”

Jesus taught that even though there ain’t no law against having as much money as you want, the reason one would have all that wealth is to care for other people, to love God by loving people. Jesus told a parable of a wealthy landowner, who paid everyone who worked for him a full, living wage. Even folks who were only able to work for an hour got a full living wage.

The man in Jesus’ parable had more than enough, and he had love in his heart so that what he did with his stuff was to make sure others had enough as well, not just enough to barely scrape by, but truly enough. Using his wealth to make sure that even those who could only work an hour had a living wage, that was his worship. That was inheriting and living eternal life, not in some after-we’re-dead future, but right then and there, because his life wasn’t bound up in his money, his stuff, for his sake. His life was bound up in the love and care he had for others.

The man who asked Jesus about inheriting eternal life was primarily focused on himself, and any salvation this is primarily focused on things turning out well for me is ultimately not salvation but just more love of stuff. In such a false salvation the stuff we love is just ourselves, and a salvation centered on self is not eternal life; it’s just selfishness.

Jesus showed us in his life and ministry what salvation truly is, what eternal life truly is, and what the Kingdom of God truly is. “Love God and love people.” Whatever helps us love God and love people is true worship of God, and a life lived by loving God through loving people, that is eternal life.

God Makes Things so that People Won’t Feel Lonely, and the People Love Their Things, and God Is Happy.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston

October 6, 2024
Proper 22, B
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29
Psalm 19:7-14
Mark 9:38-50

All too often in life, God finds that people are fearful and terrible to one another, so God helps keep them apart. God gives them anger and resentment so they won’t come near one another. God gives them enemies and reasons to hate so they’ll be against one another and stay separated even more.

Then, God finds that people are sad and alone, and it is not good that people are alone, so God helps people deal with their loneliness. God makes all sorts of things to comfort people and help them feel less alone.

-          God makes cell phones with apps, and shows, and social media to keep people company, and the people loves their phones, and God is happy.

-          God makes cars so people can drive from one place to another, and God makes the cars fun and sexy and customizable, and the people love their cars, and God is happy.

-          God makes drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes so people will feel better about being alone, and the people love their drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, and God is happy.

-          God makes guns and knives for people to feel safe and protected, and the people love their guns and knives, and God is happy.

God makes all sorts of things so that people won’t feel so alone, and the people love their things, and God is happy.

That’s not exactly how the story goes in the beginning of Genesis, is it? We are often fearful and terrible towards one another, and we often do stay away from others. We do have anger and resentment, and we have enemies who we end up hating. We are often sad and alone, and we do often turn to things to help us feel better. We end up loving our stuff which helps us feal less lonely.

The problem is, none of that is how God actually wants things to be.

In the beginning, it wasn’t good that the human was alone, and to fix that problem, God made another human so that the human wasn’t alone. God didn’t make a bunch of things for the human to love to make the human feel better.

God’s desire is for people to be together with one another in honor and love. As the 14^th Dalai
Lama said, “People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used.”

Yup. We make things to cure our loneliness, and then we often end up trusting in and loving those things, and just as often, we end up using people to get what we want out of them, treating people as things and things as people.

That’s part of what was happening when the Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce, folks were treating people as things. Specifically, husbands were treating their wives as things. See, women couldn’t ask for a divorce; only men could, and the reasons why men could ask for a divorce could have been just about anything. We argue too much. She doesn’t obey me as I’d like. Her cooking isn’t very good. Eh, she just ain’t doing it for me like she used to.

When men divorced their wives, they could just get another wife, trade up for a more desirable model. When women were divorced by their husbands, however, they were treated more like second class citizens. If this woman couldn’t please her husband, something must be wrong with her. She’d have a hard time finding another husband. Also, in that society, women weren’t all that free to enter the workforce, so many divorced women had to go live with family, or if they didn’t have any, they would often have to turn to prostitution to make a living.

So, men who divorced their wives tended to leave them with few options, prostitution being one of the only options. This same society, however, looked down on women who were prostitutes. See the problem here?

Why can’t we divorce our wives, Jesus? The Pharisees wanted to know. Because you are treating your wives like things, was Jesus’ reply, and women are not things to be used and then discarded when they are no longer desirable.

“…from the beginning of creation,” Jesus reminded them, “‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.”

Your wives, Jesus reminded them, are not your property. Your wives, Jesus reminded them, are nor less than or beneath you. Your wives, Jesus reminded them, are equals with you, one flesh with you, because in the beginning, when the human was alone, God created another human to be an equal partner and companion.

So, Jesus told them they could not divorce their wives unless their wives had been unfaithful. They were not to treat their wives as things to be used. Once again, things are meant to be used, not loved. People are meant to be loved, not used.

Now, in addition to Jesus talking about divorce and teaching people not to use others as things, Jesus then said to receive the kingdom of God like little children, saying, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs”? It's a wonderful teaching, but what in the world does it have to do with anything that came before?

Well, just after Jesus taught the Pharisees to treat their wives well, and not use them like things, Jesus’ disciples saw people trying to bring some children to Jesus, and they tried to stop them. It was as though Jesus’ disciples were looking down on the children and saying, “Stay away, lesser people. Jesus is too important for you.” Jesus recognized their behavior for what it was, once again treating people like things.

Once again, wasn’t going to have that. Children, women, men, transgender, exalted, lowly, we were all made as beloved human beings, and we were all made to be partners and companions for one another. Whether in marriage or friendship, or in any relationship, we were made to love and cherish one another.

Using one another as though we were things fights against our very nature. Treating one another as things to be used and discarded, that puts us as though we were in God’s place, thinking we are so much better than another human being that we get to treat them as less than human. Not even God treats us that way. Who are we to treat each other that way? No wonder we’re lonely when we treat each other like that. Our cure for loneliness is one another, not our stuff.

So, Jesus tells us to receive the kingdom of God as a little child. Receive the kingdom of God as those who are dependent upon God. Receive each day as those who trusts in God’s love. Receive each moment as those who place their love in one another finding our truest selves in the people we love. When we do, we may just find that we’re not as lonely. When we place our love in one another, we may just find exactly what we’re looking for, the peace and unity of the Kingdom of God.

The Most Powerful Force In the World

Brad Sullivan

Proper 25, Year A

October 29, 2017

Emmanuel, Houston

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Matthew 22:34-46

The Most Powerful Force In the World

Becca Stevens is an Episcopal priest and the founder and president of Thistle Farms which she stared 20 years ago with five women who needed healing, survivors of abuse, trafficking, and prostitution.  She started with five women in a house called Magdalene, and there these five women found the healing power of love as they lived together, cared for each other, and loved their way back to wholeness.  After four years, Becca and the women of Magdalene House realized they also needed women to become economically independent to fully get their lives back, and so they stared making candles, oils, and other healing products.  Thistle Farms began, and the women who were survivors of the worst that humanity has to offer began operating this business, Thistle Farms, learning about running a business, while being healed themselves, and while generating revenue so that more women survivors could come and live in one of the houses for the two year program and also be healed. 

In the twenty years that Thistle Farms has been healing women and sustaining itself through the healing products they make and sell, Becca Stevens has found that “Love is the most powerful force for change in the world.”

That sounds a bit like what Jesus taught, doesn’t it.  Love God, and love people.  That is the only religion Jesus is really interested in us having.  When Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God and the close second is to love people, he was talking to the uber religious Pharisees.  They were like the extreme high church people of our day.  If there was a law, a rule, a rubric about their religious practice, they followed it absolutely to the t.  There was nothing particularly wrong about that except for what was in their hearts and the reasons why they were following the law absolutely to the t. 

See they were following all of their religious practice rules because they thought doing so made them righteous in God’s eyes.  They really wanted God to be pleased with them and they wanted to look good before God and others.  In other words, their extreme religious observance was mostly selfish and done with a misunderstanding of who God is and what God desires for us.  For a timely example, they’d basically turned God into Jobu. 

For those of you unfamiliar with Jobu, he was a small voodoo idol statue guy who made his cinematic debut in film Major League.  In the movie, the Cleveland Indians baseball team were dead last in Major League Baseball and they had a rather rag tag group of players, plenty of talent, but a little rough around the edges.  Pedro Cerano was their big heavy hitter and could hit a home run off of a fastball just about every time, but he couldn’t hit a curve ball.  So, he kept this little statue named Jobu in his locker, and he prayed to Jobu to help him hit the curve ball.  Not only that, he tried to please Jobu by leaving him offerings of cigars and rum, and as he told his teammates, “It’s very bad to drink Jobu’s rum; it’s very bad.”  Of course Jobu didn’t actually help him hit the curveball and in the end, he decided he would just hit the curveball himself.

The Pharisees had turned God into Jobu.  “Yea for us,” they thought, “We’re offering to God all of our proverbial cigars and rum; we’re following every religious practice, every single one, so that God will be pleased with us.”  They were even instructing others and even scaring them into trying to do the same so that God would not be angry with them.  In other words, “it’s very bad to drink Jobu’s rum.”  The Pharisees had forgotten that the point of the law, the point of all of their religious practices was not to please God, but rather to help heal their own hearts so that they might be better able to love others.

God doesn’t care about our religious practices.  As much as the law of Moses said that people had to sacrifice animals to atone for their sins, the prophets said over and over again, “Would you stop with that animal sacrifice stuff?  God doesn’t want it.  God doesn’t care.  He just wants you to treat each other well, to take care of each other, and to live lives of love.”  That’s like the new ultra-revised standard international version, but that was the message.  “I don’t care about this stuff.  I don’t care about these religious practices.  Just love each other.”

Love God, and love people.  If at any time, obeying a rule of the law forces you to act in a way that is not loving toward God or people, then break the law.  If at any time heeding the words of the prophets forces you to act in a way that is not loving toward God or people, then do not heed the words of the prophets.

So, if God really isn’t all that into religion, why do we have religion?  Why do we have these rituals and routines and ways of life?  Well, again I’ll turn to Becca Stevens with Thistle Farms.  The point of the ritual and the religion is to help us love God and love people.  In her book, Love Heals, Becca writes about the healing power of ritual.  She writes about her morning ritual including prayer which took years to work out what truly helped heal her heart each day.  She wrote that keeping this morning ritual got her ready for the day and helped heal her heart each day so that she could be more loving toward her family and everyone else she saw during the day.  She wrote that “[Keeping these rituals] might mean dinners are simpler, clothes don’t get folded as often, and you miss out on other activities, but for folks like me who can spin out and lose focus, morning rituals are grounding and essential.”  “We need some good old-time religious practices,” she wrote, “to infuse our lives so we can use the most powerful force - love - to heal our communities.”

Personally, I’ve found healing in old time religious practices, particularly in the last month or so by praying morning prayer each morning.  For years, my practice was to pray morning prayer by myself with a cup of coffee, and before having kids, this daily practice worked out pretty well, and there were a couple of years that I found healing every morning through these prayers.  Enter children, and I just couldn’t do it for a while. Still, that was my practice, morning prayer every morning, and I rarely followed that practice. 

Then there was Harvey and praying Compline each night via Facebook life, and those prayers and rituals and the community praying together.  One of our vestry members asked if we could do Morning Prayer as well, so the next morning I began praying Morning Prayer Monday through Saturday at about 6:00 each morning and inviting others to join via Facebook Live.  There has been a change in my life with this newly rediscovered ritual, especially because I’m getting to pray with others, even if they aren’t present at the time and they join in by watching later.  If that particular routine isn’t going to work for you, and it’s not going to be healing for everyone, then find another routine, some other old-time religious practice that does heal your heart.  Time to breathe, time to center in prayer, letting all that is pass by and simply be in the moment.  Look at the beauty of the earth, the trees, the sky, the beauty of the people around, giving thanks, feeling our connectedness, noticing the daily gift of the sunrise and sunset.  Breathe, be still, light a candle to cast out the darkness, pray through scripture and the words of Jesus.  Join with others in prayer.

Having routine and practices, religious rituals is a wonderful, healing way to live, not because God cares one whit if we pray morning prayer, but because these rituals help to heal our hearts, to reconnect us to the source of all life and love, the God who created all that is.  Then, with our hearts healed, we can live out that love toward others.  God cares about our healing and our love for one another quite a lot.  That’s why God would be pleased with our religious practices, that these rituals may heal us so that we will be better able to love.  

If we don’t follow religious practices, God’s not offended.  God is not Jobu upset that we didn’t offer him rum.  Rather, God offers us religious practices and rituals because God knows we’ll find healing by connecting to him each day, because God is love, and “love is the most powerful force for [healing and] change in the world.”