Transformed Hearts

As you may be aware, Pope Francis and President Donald Trump are at odds with each other. Their rather contentious relationship began ten years ago, when the Pope, speaking of President Trump’s plan to keep Mexicans out of the United States, said this, “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel.”

A predictably angry Donald Trump fired back: “No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man's religion or faith. If and when, the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President.”

As you might imagine, things have not settled down since then. In January, the Pope called Mr. Trump’s plan to conduct mass deportations of undocumented migrants “a disgrace. They should not be treated as criminals,” he said.

In response, Border Czar - Tom Homan – shot back, “I’ve got harsh words for the Pope, stick to the Catholic Church and fix that, and leave border enforcement to us!”

Now this makes for some entertaining news, and there are journalists who speculate on whether this will hurt or help Trump amongst his MAGA supporters. But whatever your political opinion or whatever side you come down on … I think we can all see that President Trump, whether consciously or unconsciously, is playing a particular game … he is latching onto human fear – fear of the stranger, fear of those who are brown, fear of those who are not native-born Americans.

A lot of politicians do this, and they do it because it works! If you can get a strong “gut reaction” of fear out of people, it can make them easier to manipulate.

Think about it …

The Crime rate’s high and criminals are reoffending! Vote for me and I’ll build more prisons and keep people in jail longer.

The terrorists are coming! Vote for me and I’ll increase military spending and bring in legislation to counter terrorism.

We’re losing jobs to foreign countries and immigrants! Vote for me and I’ll make sure Canadian jobs are protected.

It’s the politics of fear. Find something that scares people and build your campaign around it, “I will protect you, and my opponent will leave you vulnerable.”

It works! It works, because we all have fear and worry, and those are very powerful emotions.

I think in the Western World we’ve been so privileged – we have so much … and we’re afraid we might lose it! … our wealth, our jobs, our homes, our way of life, our spending power, our freedoms, our rights, our culture, our religion!

It’s easy to hook into fear.

I have fears … fear of the future …

Will I have enough money to last through my retirement?

What health issues will I face as I grow older?

Will my children and grandchildren be okay?

We all have fears. It’s normal … it’s even healthy. If we didn’t have any fear we might end up doing some exceptionally dangerous and stupid things. Fear acts like a warning signal:

Don’t do that!

Be prepared for the future!

Stay away from dangerous places!

However, it’s one thing to have healthy, natural fear … and quite another to let fear be the dominant emotion driving your life.

So what do we do when we’re afraid? To whom do we turn? Where do we go?

…Donald Trump, Prime Minister Mark Carney, Pierre Poilievre the Bank, your Mom, the Police, the army? Who or what can meet our needs?

This is a good question, and our Christian faith has some answers … only they don’t look or sound like so many of the answers we normally hear about … in fact, they are often counter-intuitive. The safety blankets we turn to, or call upon … the things we want … according to our Christian scripture, they may not fix our problems or take away our fears.

In the words of the prophet Isaiah we read today, “Why do you spend all your money and work so hard for that which does not satisfy?”

What do we work hard for?

A house or a home, or to retire the mortgage … a new car or SUV. We work hard so we can get away from winter – to spend a few short weeks in the sunshine.

We work hard for Financial Freedom and a comfortable retirement.

We work hard to look after our children and grandchildren and help with their education, their needs – to help them get a good financial start in life.

We work hard so we can have nice clothes, the latest technology … so we can pretty much buy anything we want, when we want!

We work hard to improve our quality of life … but the prophet Isaiah asks this question: Are we working so hard, “for that which does not satisfy?” For, no matter how much we have … we may still find … we are afraid?

Now, Isaiah wrote these words not really for poor Jews living in Israel, but for relatively well-off Jews living in Babylon, later called Persia. What we call today, Iran.

When Jerusalem fell in 587 BC some 20 to 30 thousand Israelites were taken into captivity as slaves to Babylon.

And the Babylonians took the educated, the wealthy, the elite…

And so, over the years, many of these talented slaves earned their freedom. They earned good jobs, settled down in Babylon and performed the delicate balancing act of trying to be good Babylonian citizens, and yet good Jewish people of faith.

Isaiah calls them to come back to God - to come back to their faith, and to the generosity and abundance of their God – he calls them to trust God.

Isaiah believes, they’ve bought into Babylonian culture and into a Babylonian way of thinking … so now what drives their lives is not God, and God’s way of mercy, love and grace; but how to make a buck, how to get ahead, how to buy nice things, how to fit into society – how to look good.

And Isaiah, he’s saying, “It’s not government that gives you life. It isn’t things that give you life. It isn’t wealth that gives you life. It isn’t power that gives you life! It is God who gives you life!

What gives your life purpose and meaning is relationships of love… and since God is love … satisfy your hunger for love with the free gift of God’s love … unconditionally accepted, with no strings attached …

Then you won’t ever have to fear being alone or abandoned. You don’t have to be afraid you’ll run out of love, or there won’t be enough love to go around …

But we have trouble believing this, don’t we?

We have trouble believing in a God of love, who freely gives out love, forgiveness, grace, acceptance, belonging, eternal life?

We tend to believe not in a God of unconditional love, but a God of reward and punishment…

And to be fair, you’ll find lots of talk of rewards and punishment in scripture … lots of it!

Because that’s how most biblical people thought about God … be good and get rewarded, or be bad and get punished.

And out of that way of thinking, they came up with a particular worldview: If you’re healthy, wealthy and wise, then God made you that way, because you’ve been good!

If you’re poor or sick or stupid, then God made you that way, because you or perhaps your parents must have been bad!

Only Jesus doesn’t seem to believe that. In fact, we actually find him trying to correct this mistaken view of God.

In today’s gospel reading, we hear about a hot topic of conversation that comes to the ears of Jesus, “Did you hear about Pontius Pilate? He killed some Galileans - mingled their blood with the blood of their sacrifices!”

Now a couple of things are implied here. First, that Pilate is some kind of monster, and the second, “Jesus, you and your disciples, better watch out … because aren’t you Galileans?”

And so, Jesus says to the crowd, “Do you think that these Galileans suffered because they were worse than other Galileans? Do you think these Galileans must have deserved God’s wrath, and that somehow Pilate was the instrument of God’s retribution?

And the answer is “YES! – that’s exactly what we’re thinking!”

And Jesus says “NO! Absolutely not. There is no connection between God and violence, no matter what people say or what stories you’ve read!”

But then Jesus goes on to confuse things even more …

He says, “But unless you repent, you will all perish like those Galileans.”

And then Jesus moves on to another story.

He says, “You heard about the Tower of Siloam and the 18 people killed when it fell? Was that an act of God? Do you think they were worse offenders than you?”

And of course they’re thinking “YES! That didn’t happen to us because we’re good. It happened to them because they’re bad!”

But Jesus says, “Wrong again! These are not acts of God.

Natural disasters are not acts of God … they are natural disasters, not supernatural punishments….

But then there’s that same line again. Jesus says, “But unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Now, what does Jesus mean when he says that: “Unless you repent you will perish.”

So here’s the thing, the Greek word for repentance is “metanoia” – well not exactly … and there’s the problem …

The most common translation of the Greek word metanoia is the English word “repentance,” but they actually have different meanings.

Repentance is feeling sorry for your sins and confessing them.

Metanoia is to change your mind, or a change of heart.

That mistake might be one of the worst mistranslations in all of scripture.

Let me repeat this correction:

Repentance is feeling sorry for your sins and confessing them.

Metanoia is to change your mind, or a change of heart.

In this passage, Jesus uses the word metanoia.

What he means is this: Unless we have a change of heart and stop thinking about who to punish, and who is bad, and who should be disciplined, and who’s God after … unless we change that kind of thinking, we will continue to walk along a deadly path of competition, hurting others, violating others, judging others, being afraid … unless we have a change of heart …our spiritual life will die! Not because God punishes us, but because we choose not to follow Christ’s way of love.

And Christ’s way of love, is to be nailed to the cross – crucified - showing us that no matter what hurt, what hate, what prejudice, what torture, what exclusion comes our way… that hurting back is not the answer.

This is the Politics of love … not fear.

Love is the answer. Forgiveness is the answer.

Healing is what we need … not condemnation.

Let me tell you a story … When I was starting a church in Unionville back in the 1990’s, I had a new family come out to church, and actually I thought it was a little strange that they came out to our church, because theologically there seemed to be a big gap between us and them. We seemed way more liberal and progressive than they did.

But here’s what they told me, “We come to your church, because of all the churches we’ve attended, this church preaches love … every week! Nearly every other church we’ve been to, the message was one of condemnation and judgement – what you should or shouldn’t do to get right with God. At your church, we hear about the love and forgiveness of God … about how Jesus reveals to us a God who loves us and invites us to love one another.”

Now, I cannot speak for you, but I can speak for myself. I need to repent, both in the English sense of the word, to be sorry for my sin … and in the Greek sense of the word… to have a change of heart.

I am sorry for the times my heart is not full of love towards every person, for the times I have been mean or unkind - refusing to understand … acting with a lack of compassion.

And so, I pray for a change of heart. That whoever comes through the doors of this church, and for everyone who never even darkens a church door – from whatever country, race or religion – whether here legally or illegally - that I would have within me, the same mind and heart of Jesus… who said, without one speck of fear, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

I know … I know fear is extremely effective when you want to manipulate people – to get them to do what you want them to do; when you want them to do it! The church has used exactly that strategy more times than I care to think about … “Do what we tell you … or burn forever in Hell !”

But, that’s no way to run a church, or a political campaign … or a country.

In the first letter of John, we find these words, “Perfect love casts out fear.” May those of us who trust the words of scripture, offer to the world, transformed hearts, and a way of compassion, generosity and love – a politics of faith, a politics of respect, a politics of love … because our witness and our courage, in the face of fear and terror, may be the last best hope our planet has …