April 20, 2008
Sermon: "Hot Emotions - Cool Faith"
Scripture: Acts 7: 55-60
Reverend Larry M. Gerber
Hot faith is the source of too much religious violence. It is time to focus on faith that is cool.
Consider the case of David Vitter, a father of four and a senator from Louisiana, who gets himself involved with a sleazy escort service.
Or Michael Vick, a talented quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, arrested for running a dog-fighting operation in rural Virginia.
Or Lisa Nowak, the married NASA astronaut who makes a marathon drive from Houston to Orlando to confront her romantic rival.
Or Bill Clinton - Rhodes scholar, six-time governor of Arkansas, and president of the United States - who has an affair with an intern in the Oval Office.
What were they thinking?
Were they out of their minds?
Taking crazy pills?
Well, yes - in fact, they probably were temporarily insane.
That might be considered as a judgment statement, but most of us would say that no one in their right mind would do what they did,....that is the same think as saying that they must have been temporarily insane.
According to The Washington Post (August 6, 2007), an enormous mental gulf separates "cold" emotional states from "hot" emotional states. When we're in cold emotional states - cool, calm and collected - we find it difficult to empathize with people who are taking actions based on hot emotional states.
If we're not hungry or thirsty or jealous or sexually tempted, we find it very hard to understand the power of these feelings.
"Those people are nuts," we say to ourselves. "I'd never go crazy like that."
But watch out - when your emotions get hot, you can go a little loco.
"We tend to exaggerate the importance of willpower," says George Loewenstein, a professor at Carnegie Mellon who has studied the power of cold and hot emotional states. Example: Most health resolutions are made when people are in a cold emotional state. Avoiding junk food and shedding a few pounds seem like reasonable and responsible things to do. But then, you know what happens - you get stressed or hungry, and suddenly a bag of potato chips becomes completely irresistible. You go temporarily insane and eat the whole thing. Many diets have been blown by people in a hot emotional state.
The Jewish leaders on the council in Jerusalem are burning hot in today's Scripture lesson from Acts. A Christian named Stephen has been brought before them on a charge of blasphemy, and he proceeds to lay out for them the history of God and his chosen people - emphasizing, in particular, the sad and sordid story of human disobedience. Stephen by accusing the council of being "stiff-necked people" who are "forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do" (Acts 7:51).
Through it all, Stephen's cool, he's calm and he's coherent. He's like an attorney with an airtight case; no need to go ballistic.
The council has been getting hotter and hotter throughout his speech, but now they reach the boiling point. Acts tells us that, "When they heard these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen" (v. 54).
Then Stephen gazes into heaven and sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. "Look," he says, "I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!" (vv. 55-56).
Suddenly the pot boils over - the members of the council cover their ears and with a loud shout all rush together against him. They drag him out of the city and begin to stone him (vv. 57-58). Stephen prays, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," and kneeling down he cries out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (vv. 59-60). He shows the cool faith of someone who can see God face to face, and then he prays that the Lord will show mercy toward the people who are killing him.
The members of the council are hot. The witnesses are hot. Even a young man named Saul, who will eventually convert to Christianity and become a champion of the church, is hot. And the result is the brutal murder of a cool Christian named Stephen, "a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit" (6:5).
Hot faith. You often hear people praising it, saying that it is good to be passionate about what you believe in. No one respects a person who is simply lukewarm about her faith. And it wouldn't be a compliment to say, "That guy is ice-cold for Jesus!"
But watch out: Hot faith can be a violent and deadly force in the world.
Look around: Sunnis are fighting with Shiites in Iraq. Hindus are battling Muslims in India. And here in the United States, pastor Fred Phelps and his followers picket high-profile political events with signs saying, "God hates fags" and "Thank God for 9/11."
Call them extremists, or call them crazy, but one thing is certain - their faith is hot.
A number of outspoken atheists have gone so far as to say that religion is the cause of most of the world's troubles. Christopher Hitchens, author of the book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, blames faith for genocide, sexism, suicide bombings, totalitarianism and every other problem in the history of the world.
He scores some points - no one would argue that a great deal of evil has been done in the name of God. It's hard to defend the hot faith of the members of the council in Jerusalem, who let their emotions take control of them as they stone Stephen to death. It's difficult to make a case for suicide bombings.
But the alternative to hot faith is not no faith. It's cool faith.
Yes, faith that is way cool.
So what does this kind of faith feel like?
Cool faith is trust in God. It's trust in a God who "does not dwell in houses made with human hands" (v. 48). So often we worship a god of our own making, instead of the Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. If we're Sunnis in Iraq, we assume that God despises the Shiites. If we're Hindus in India, we believe that God opposes the Muslims. If we're Fred Phelps, we are convinced that God hates homosexuals.
But God is above all and in all, working through all that God has made.
Stephen is right to say that "the Most High does not dwell in houses made with human hands." God does not live in the moral-theological-social houses that we've built for ourselves.
Instead, God's throne is God's, not ours. It's heaven, and God's footstool is the earth (v. 49). A cool faith realizes that nothing in our finite world can contain an infinite Lord - not our nations, not our political parties, not our religions, not our churches, not our personal agendas. God's a perfect God, and we'll always be flawed and imperfect compared to God's flawlessness and perfection. It's a really cool vision when Stephen gazes into heaven and sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God (v. 56). This vision tells us that God and Jesus are in the coolness of heaven - not in the wrath of the hot Jerusalem crowd.
Cool faith is also a sacrificial faith. Stephen's determined to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, so he doesn't fight back when the crowd attacks him. As the rocks begin to fly, Stephen simply prays, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (v. 59) - he wants to be in complete and eternal relationship with the One who is his Savior.
Sacrifice is a tough one for us, because we're taught to fight for what we want. But:
- to be a good parent, you have to sacrifice time at work to be with your children;
- to be a good spouse, you have to give up some of your own desires to satisfy the needs of your partner, and remember, it works both ways. Your spouse must share in the compromise;
- to be a good Christian in the world, you have to sacrifice some of your popularity to live the life that God desires for you;
- to be a good church member, you have to offer time and talent and money to advance the mission of the congregation.
None of this is easy, and some of it can be painful, but it is part of what it means to be a follower of the One who gave his life on the cross.
The benefit of sacrifice is that it leads to significant and surprising outcomes. Acts tells us that the witnesses to Stephen's trial and stoning "laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul ? And Saul approved of their killing him" (7:58; 8:1). This is the very same Saul who would convert, become a follower of Christ, and eventually spread the gospel as an apostle named Paul. The sacrifice of Stephen made a powerful impression on him, one that stayed with him throughout his ministry (Acts 22:20).
Finally, cool faith is a forgiving faith. Stephen's very last words are, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (v. 60). Like Jesus himself, Stephen forgives his killers, knowing that they're acting out of hot faith - overcome by rage and passion. His final words echo the prayer Jesus said on the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).
This may be the biggest challenge of cool faith, but it's at the heart of being a follower of Christ. As Christians, we're forgiven people, so our job is to forgive - forgive our friends, our family members, our brothers and sisters. Our job is to forgive our bosses, our coworkers, our opponents, our enemies ... even ourselves. When we offer true forgiveness, we let go of the anger that we feel toward those who have hurt us so badly. We also ask for God to show them mercy, for in so many cases they did not know what they were doing.
In a world being ripped apart by anger and violence, it's hard to believe that a hotter faith is going to bring us all closer together. A call for more passion is not going to lead to peace. We need a calm and cool faith. One that will not waiver or give in to others weaknesses or others power over us. We need to keep cool and confident as followers of Jesus, even when others have hot emotions. Our cool faith will win out if we keep focused on the cross and mission of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray...
Source:
Vedantam, Shankar. "Hot and cold emotions make us poor judges." The Washington Post, August 6, 2007, A3.
