Didache 3
We’re reading the Didache together, a training manual for first century folk who wanted to become followers of Jesus and join a community of followers. This first part of the manual is about how to act like a follower so you can BE a follower. Last week we read long lists of things not to do. Today’s reading expands on those lists. There are general headings (anger, lust, diviner, liar) and then more sub-lists of actions that fall in those undesirable categories. It would have been a lot to remember.
I want us to understand, though, that mastering the Jesus-life isn’t about doing everything right and not doing everything wrong. There are simply too many options in human life to make a complete list. It’s not intended to be exhaustive – if it’s not on the list I can do it! Remember that before these lists were the “meta-commands.” Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you. The lists that follow are examples. Being hot-headed leads to murder. Seeking glory leads to taking what doesn’t belong to you. The people using this manual had mentors who vouched for their behavior, and they needed to do enough right to qualify as a community member. But it wasn’t about checking each day’s actions against the list. It was about becoming the kind of person who made the community better and protected the other members in a dangerous world.
I want to suggest that Jesus wasn’t about doing everything right, believing all the right things and earning a reward. Jesus was a mentor about how to live, loving God and neighbor. He said things like feed the hungry, care for those who are hurting, love one another. The Didache teaches these behaviors because Jesus lived by them and advocated for them as a better way of life. Jesus was teaching people how to live in community and care for each other by inviting them to do it with him. The Didache repeats what the first followers learned from Jesus so the next followers can join in.
And it’s not the specific behaviors that are the goal: it’s becoming a new kind of person. How you act impacts who you are. Most of us have lived long enough to have experienced change. For example – before I was privileged to give away our community funds, I was less empathetic about poverty. I wondered why people didn’t work harder and get ahead. Now I hear stories almost every day about how getting ahead isn’t just about hard work. Poverty is a system that makes life hard. Giving away money has changed me – I hope for the better. There are those habits that most of us have tried to break over time. The specifics will vary, but the process is the same – give up smoking or drinking to excess or eating all the cookies. Give up holding grudges or complaining about the neighbors or watching violent movies. When we change the way we act, over time we change the way we think and then we change the way we are. The Didache is about helping people become loving, kind, just, helpful in community. Our community is about the same. We work together, pray together, think together and become better for it. We’re becoming people who follow Jesus, who know ourselves to be children of God.
Part Two…
“You will accept the experiences befalling you as good things, knowing that apart from God, nothing happens.” There’s a long history among people of faith of naming life’s hard experiences as good gifts from God. The Psalms are full of references (The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want) (Happy is everyone who fears the Lord…you shall be happy and it shall go well with you), There are so many references to this idea that there must be something to it. But at the same time, I want to acknowledge that it’s not true – at least not at face value.
Nothing frustrates me more than attending the funeral of a child and hearing people say, “God must have wanted the child more than the parents.” There’s no way that can be true. There are good things in life and there are crushingly hard things in life and they are not all good. I venture to say they are not all God’s will. God isn’t deciding whether this day will go well or crash around us.
In your lives I know you can tell us stories of amazing wonderful things that have happened. And I know you can talk about hard things that took your breath away. Things that took months or years to get over, if then. When people tell us all those things – good and bad – are God’s will, I doubt it. If God is love, and I believe God is love, then God doesn’t wish ill upon us.
In his book about the holocaust Night, author Elie Wiesel tells the story of a young man in a concentration camp whom everyone loves – prisoners and guards alike. Yet circumstances lead to this young man being hanged in front of the entire camp. Someone asks, “Where is God?” How could God allow so much suffering, such terrible acts? The answer Wiesel suggests is this: God is hanging alongside the boy, suffering as he suffers, sharing the world’s sorrow.
In Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift told of a variety of lands, one of which was a place where nothing bad ever happened. On the surface, we would expect that to be the happiest of places, but it was not. People were not joyous living without challenges, obstacles to overcome, reasons to grieve and recover. Real life is full of good times and hard times, challenges and successes, beginnings and endings, doing well and messing up. Life happens to all of us. We welcome some of it, and we recover from other parts. God doesn’t save us from hardship. If God did, there’d be no wars, no illness, to injustice.
But in all of life, God, Love, is present in all things. Scripture affirms “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” In brutal executions, in broken relationships, in political chaos, in terrifying illness, in ALL things God is close beside us. No matter what hardship comes, LOVE persists.
Just as it’s true that God doesn’t send hardship to us, God lives through every hardship with us. When we tell the stories of our struggles, we tell of how people supported us, how we found strength, how we learned hard lessons, how miraculous things happened when we had given up. Good comes into the midst of hardship because good comes through the people who care about us, from our own resilience, from places we least expect it.
For centuries followers of Jesus have affirmed “All things work together for good for those who love God.” They say it because they’ve found it to be true. It’s true because God is love and God’s rule for our living is this: Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself.
God isn’t causing evil. God isn’t preventing evil. God is love through every good and every evil. And through Jesus, God is teaching us to create communities to have our backs. To practice loving behaviors until we become loving people. Loving people who listen to those who need to talk, who feel the hungry, who heal the sick to the best of our present ability, who stand for justice, who vote for compassion, who make love visible and available even in the hardest times.
This week people in this country came together and said they wanted to care about each other. We want to stand for good, for solutions, for unity. Saying it once isn’t going to make it true, but it’s a start. I’ve been listening to a lot of victory speeches filled with words of hope and the conviction that we can work together for the good of everyone. It’s a vision of community that echoes Jesus’ call. Love God. Love your neighbor. Let love shape us into the people we want to be.