On Tuesday a middle school math teacher named David Benke was walking through
the school parking lot of Deer Creek Middle School in Littleton Colorado when he
heard something that sounded like a firecracker.
When he looked around to see where the noise was coming from, he noticed
terrified students running away from a young man like they were in a stampede.
Then he noticed the young man was holding a rifle and realized that something
terrible was going on.
Keep in mind that this school is about three miles down the road from Columbine
High School, the scene of a tragic school rampage where twelve students and a
teacher were killed in 1999. So you can imagine when went through Benke’s mind
as he saw this guy lift the rifle to take another shot.
Benke, a 6’5” former basketball player ran as quickly as he could and confronted
the shooter, a guy by the name of Bruco Strongeagle Eastwood. Benke pinned him
down and, with the help of another teacher was able to hold him until the police
arrived.
Fortunately all of the injured students survived the shootings. Bruco was found
to have a history of mental disease and a criminal record to go along with his
condition.
Now when you read a story like this on the internet, one of the things you can
do is read the comments of other folks who have responded to the story. You can
see exactly what people are thinking about this incident.
The responses to this incident generally fell within a couple of categories. Of
course everyone was happy to see that Benke had stopped this guy from killing
anyone else. Beyond that, there were a group of people who saw this incident as
an unfortunate act by a troubled young man who needed to be brought to justice.
They figured this shooter was angry and was making a misguided attempt to take
his anger at someone else out on defenseless teenagers who had nothing to do
with his situation. Obviously violence is not a way to deal with things you
don’t think you can control.
There was another group of responses, as you might expect. This group felt that
the only way to deal with violence that you don’t think you can control is with
more violence. These folks felt that if more people carried concealed firearms,
this guy could have been shot before he was able to take another shot at the
students.
They feel teachers should have the ability to shoot their students and anyone
else if they feel their lives are in danger. They lament the fact that this guy
is going to get a fair trial and probably be treated for mental disease. They
clearly stated their desire to see this shooter killed on the scene, thus saving
taxpayer dollars in prison and court costs.
On the basis of this preliminary news report they feel that a proper legal
execution is better than this guy deserves, and that a lynching is really in
order here. Now what’s really the difference between these two groups? Why such
divergent views on the same news story?
I think both of them would claim that they believe in the rule of law. Both
claim that their respect for human life leads them to their point of view. Both
believe that a person has a right to defend him or herself when attacked.
But the parties diverge when it comes to talking about their philosophy of what
it means to be an individual in a society, and how people are to be responsible
to one another. The first group believes that all people have dignity simply
because they are human beings.
That human dignity cannot be done away with, regardless of what someone does.
They have value and worth just because of who they are, not because of what they
do or say or believe. No group on earth can claim that because of certain
choices they have made in their lives, they have more dignity or worth or value
than another group who make different choices. Everyone is as good as the next
person.
The other group takes a different approach. For them, human dignity and worth
are not tied to a person’s humanity, but to their choices in life. People’s
choices in life can have either very good effects on themselves and other
people, or they can have very devastating effects on others.
This group tends to decide whether or not a particular choice is good or bad on
the basis of an external set of values, unquestionable values that have been
given to humanity by God and passed on from generation to generation.
To the extent that one of us makes a choice which is consistent with that set of
values, we are good, valuable people who have a place in society. When one of us
makes a choice which is not in keeping with those values, then we have chosen to
divest ourselves of our God given dignity and worth.
If so, then those of us who do so do not really deserve to be treated with any
respect or value. As the respondents said in this story, it would have been
better for this guy to have been shot and killed because this story shows he is
no longer of any value to humanity.
You’re probably wondering why I’m speaking about this when I’m supposed to be
talking about this story in Luke 13. The reason is because this news story and
the responses to it really show the moral dilemma Jesus faced as he is
confronted with the fact that he appears to be headed down a collision course
with either a local king or Roman authorities in Jerusalem,
Jesus’ work up to this point in the gospel has been described as announcing
God’s reign on earth. And in some ways the things he did were aimed at making
God’s reign on earth a reality in the lives of certain people.
He healed people who were sick. Health is obviously connected to God’s reign in
his mind. Jesus cast demons out of people. Obviously it’s hard for God to reign
in a person’s life if he or she is possessed by a demon. It’s hard for people in
a community to believe that God reigns if those they know are possessed.
Jesus teaches people how to behave in God’s kingdom. It’s very different from
the way people are to behave under the rule of Herod or the Romans. But both
Herod and the Romans should be treated with respect because they are human
beings with the same dignity that belongs to everyone else.
They may not act with that kind of dignity. They may not honor the dignity of
their subjects. They certainly don’t plan on treating Jesus with human dignity.
Jesus is told that Herod wants to kill him. And he’s convinced that when he goes
to Jerusalem the Romans will kill him at the request of his own people.
He is in a situation where his life work is centered on affirming the dignity
and value of the people whom he meets. He doesn’t decide who he’s going to help
based on the criteria of religious affiliation or ethnicity or political
persuasion or morality.
He looks at the people he sees and says, “This person is a human being, a
creation of God. Because of that, he or she deserves to live with as much of
that dignity as possible.” But Herod and the Romans took a very different
approach to the value of their subjects and the way that their authority was
received.
Herod Antipas, somewhat like his father Herod the Great, tended to value a
person under his reign on the basis of loyalty to Herod. Those who were loyal to
him and did what Herod wanted were generally treated well.
Herod considered those who were disloyal to him as a threat to be exterminated.
Their value as human beings was really not his concern. He even went as far as
to have John the Baptist executed for complaining about him having an affair
with his sister in law.
The Romans valued their subjects in a different way. Those who were Romans
citizens were considered to be of value because of their citizenship. People who
lived in lands conquered by the Romans were of less value.
One reason why the Romans conquered other places like Judea was because they
believed their religion was superior to local religions in the lands they
conquered. The Roman religion must be superior because their gods had allowed
them to defeat everyone else.
The Romans didn’t stamp out other religions like Judaism. They let people
practice their religions freely as long as no one started a riot or tried to
overthrow Roman authority. But in the back of their minds they believed that
their gods would be angry if anyone did something that went against the kind of
system and societal order that their gods demanded.
The question for the Romans wasn’t, “Do we respect the basic value every human
being has?” The question was, “How do we run our empire so that the gods will
continue to allow us to rule over all these uneducated people who still cling to
the superstitions of their primitive religions and cultures?”
It was more important to them to do what they thought they had to do to keep
their gods happy than to honor the humanity of the people they ruled. Do you see
the difference between them and Jesus?
Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not that Jesus didn’t have a set of religious ideas
to which he was committed. Of course he did. He followed the teachings of the
Old Testament like most God-fearing Jews did in his day.
But he didn’t think that the object of the game was simply to follow those laws
for their own sake. God’s purpose in giving people those laws was to honor and
uphold human dignity. And when people interpreted those laws in a way which
failed to honor human dignity, Jesus set out to correct them.
That’s the difference between the fox and the hen in this story. Jesus compared
Herod to a fox, an animal which was seen as a crafty, conniving, self-serving
menace. And he compared himself to a mother hen who nurtures and protects and
values her little chicks because they are her own.
It might be tempting to look at the world and say, “Well this person is like a
fox, but I’m more like a hen.” But if the truth be told, there’s probably a
little of both in all of us.
One of the challenges we find in this passage is for us to look at the way we
treat others, the way we deal with conflict, the way we operate at work, the way
we raise our kids, the way budget our time and money, the way we take care of
our bodies, look at all of those things and ask ourselves, “Is this choice I’m
making one which will affirm the God given dignity of another person or not?”
“Does this choice affirm the value of one person or one group at the expense of
dishonoring someone else? Does this choice honor my own value as a human being,
or am I dishonoring my own dignity for some other purpose?”
I want to end with a story I read about a man who faced this very question at a
time when human dignity was debated very openly in this country. Charles Phinney
lived in the 1820s when the nation and churches were divided due to slavery.
Half of the Christians owned slaves and half didn’t.
Within the church, there was no consensus, no unanimity, no agreement about the
morality or immorality of owning slaves. Nor was their any agreement how to
interpret those Scriptures about slavery. There was great division in the church
in the 1820s.
Young Charles Phinney, a bright young lawyer, went to a religious revival one
night, and was converted. His heart was changed, right on the spot. The next
day, he walked into his law office and resigned, telling the law office that he
had a new retainer and that he was now going to plead the cause of Jesus Christ.
Phinney became a famous evangelist and also a professor at Oberlin College. His
favorite and famous word was “revival.” His purpose was not to be an evangelist
or missionary and reach to people outside the church. His purpose was to be used
by God to revive the spirits and souls of Christians who were inside the church
and whose hearts and minds had become complacent.
Complacent Christians were all wrapped up in their daily lives and affairs and
Phinney was pressing for genuine renewal from these individual Christian and
their relationship with Jesus Christ. He was pushing for revival of the
Christian spirit, for a renewal of commitment from individual members of
churches.
God made Phinney good at it. … At the same time he talked about the need for
personal revival, Phinney was pressing for reform of the nation and its
institutions. He was preaching, not only for revival but for reform of the
culture. It was called, “reformism.” That is, at his revivals he also spoke
clearly against slavery and owning slaves.
He made it clear at his revivals that no Christian was to own a slave. He was
the kind of man who could even refuse Holy Communion to people who owned slaves.
Although he knew about the passages in the Bible which regulate the institution
of slavery, he realized that owning another person completely contradicted the
human dignity God gives to every person.
Phinney realized that the purpose of the revival is not to get people to start
following someone’s interpretation of what a good Christian should be. For
whatever reason, lots of God-fearing people still don’t see things the way he
did.
I can’t tell you how many times someone has come to me wanting to talk about the
Bible and morality and shaking his or her head about this group ort hat group
doing something that he or she believes is against what Bible teaches.
And invariably I’ll say to this person, “Now, you’re serious about following the
Bible and doing what it says, right?” Of course they are. And I say, “Do you
think we should follow the Bible’s teaching on slavery? Paul says slaves should
be submissive to their masters. Is that something we should emphasize in the
church? Is that a matter of morality?”
And as you might imagine, they try to wiggle out of this conundrum by making
some excuse about why those passages don’t apply, but I never let them off the
hook. And if you press them long enough, in my experience, most of these folks
will tell end up saying that they don’t think slavery is wrong.
Their way of approaching the mystery of God is so tied to this external set of
beliefs which they call Christianity that they are willing to countenance
slavery and sacrifice every shred of human dignity rather than to go against
what they think is God’s will.
Now it would be easy to point my finger at some other group of folks and
highlight what I see as their unwillingness to honor human dignity. But if the
truth were told, every day you and I face that same question in any variety of
situations.
We don’t always see our lives in those terms. And sometimes we get into habit
and ruts and we stop asking ourselves about the values behind some of our
choices.
If what we do isn’t about honoring the dignity God has given to each person, and
honoring all people equally, then it isn’t consistent with our faith. Honoring
human dignity isn’t about being on top and it isn’t always about making sure you
get the honor you deserve.
It’s about living in a way that reflects the love God has for all people, not
just some people. It’s about treating people in a way which reminds them that
they have dignity because they are children of God.
It’s about treating yourself like a child of God who deserves to be whole and
happy and healthy instead of cutting corners and making unhealthy choices and
choosing convenience over wellness.
God still wants to gather us like a hen gathering her chicks. God still wants to
work towards our goodness and happiness and godliness, as well as the wellbeing
of everyone else.
Sometimes we’re not willing. But as we go through this period of self reflection
we call Lent, I want you to think about staying under God’s wing, and maybe
extending your wing to someone else who seems to have fallen out of the nest.