Scripture: Luke 10:25-37; Amos 7:14-17; Acts 15:1-21
The true sign of a Christian is not a symbol, structure, or denomination but active mercy toward the neighbor, calling each person to take their next faithful step toward who God created them to be.
Illustrations: cross-vs-fish-symbols, christians-accused-atheists, amos-plumb-line, priesthood-roughneck-rotation, rulers-abuse-gospel-for-power, jesus-teleportation, council-of-jerusalem-james, denominations-in-heaven, amos-awkward-dinner-party
July 13, 2025
Ask Me Anything
Amos 7:14-17
Luke 10:25-37
Question 1
I read that a Roman emperor chose the cross as the sign of Christianity instead of the fish that was used by early Christians. This evokes the real question, how did the early Romans try to influence Christianity to meet their needs, to control the masses or promote other vices?
Okay, this is good. This is a very normal Sunday morning kind of conversation. So we think about early, early Christians. And one of the great things about our scriptures is that we have an example of what early Christians did in the book of Acts and the letters of Paul. And so we see what happened after this great event of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We also see in that space, early on, people trying to use this event for their own advantage. So much of the early church is people trying to either use Christians or to send them away when they find they can’t use them. One of the earliest accusations against Christians was that they were atheists. A lot of Romans would accuse Christians of being atheists because they didn’t believe in the Roman gods and they wouldn’t bring. They wouldn’t bring sacrifices to the Roman gods. That’s what Theos was, the language in Greek for pagans. And it wasn’t until about the 230s that any Christian would ever call themselves a theologian, because that word itself was so invested in pagan culture.
So to try and get to some of this question, to connect it here, we have these two symbols of Christianity, of the ichthus, of the fish and Jesus the fisherman, and the other symbol of the cross. Both of these symbols are found sporadically within the early church. There’s not a universal symbol that every single church that was discovered or dug up has this kind of symbol, because there really wasn’t an authority over all of the early churches. And communication wasn’t that great around the ancient world.
It really was these individual churches that were started and planted by these people like Paul, like Barnabas, like Apollos, who were going around and sharing this message, this good news, that there was a carpenter in Roman Palestine who was the son of God, and he shared love and he taught love, and the Romans killed him for it. But he rose again and death did not defeat him. And death does not have to defeat you, and you can live a new life right where you are.
It was a message for not just the elites, but for Roman women and Jewish women around the region. One of the most amazing aspects of the New Testament is all the women that Paul mentions, that the book of Acts mentions who were leaders in the Christian church. The church was not simply for those already in power.
If we go back in time to the age of the prophets, Amos is one of the earliest prophets. He spoke in the time before the exile. He tried to tell Israel, you’re going in the wrong direction. Over and over, throughout the book of Amos, it’s Amos the prophet saying, I have a word of God to you. Bad things are gonna happen if you keep on doing this. Earlier in chapter seven, he has this great image of the plumb line. It’s an ancient architectural device. You have a weight on a string. You hang it down and you know if something is square or not. If you build a building and you hang a plumb line off one end, and if there’s a gap of a foot, you know, you need to rebuild it in a straight way. Or if you drop the plumb line and it just hits the wall immediately, you know, you didn’t build it straight. You need to rebuild it and put it upright.
This language of upright and building it straight is the language that was used in the Old Testament and especially used in the New Testament for what’s translated as justification and righteousness. Diakosuné is this Greek word that means justice but also standing upright. And this is what Jesus shares and what the early church was trying to live out, what does it mean to be just?
And there were Roman emperors who were like, this is great, let’s use this. We can control masses with this stuff. This abuse continued throughout history. Whether it was Constantine in the 300s or all the leaders during the Reformation who thought, okay, if we become Protestant, that we don’t have to listen to the Pope, that’s great. I don’t know if that was God’s name, but I love having power. Throughout all of history, there’s always been people who are trying to abuse the good news of Jesus Christ. Just like in the Old Testament, there were people trying to abuse the good word of Torah, of God’s word for Israel. Yet throughout, there is a consistent witness of faithfulness. And I think that is for us, what we see in this parable of the Good Samaritan: faithfulness is not found in the most ostentatious places at all.
In this era, Priests and the Levites were known as the holiest people in their society. They were going down from Jerusalem and so in to Jericho. And that’s such an important part of that passage. Jerusalem is built on these hills high up, elevation wise. And so when you leave, you’re going downhill. And if a priest and a Levite are leaving Jerusalem, that means they’re leaving their time of work in the temple and they’re going back home. That work in the temple was kind of like being a roughneck. You could go like two weeks on, two weeks off. So they stayed in Jerusalem and worked at the temple. And working in the temple was this bloody business of sacrifices and all these kinds of things.
Now they are leaving. They’re not even rushing to work. The priest and the Levite go and they see a man beaten on the side of the road and they pass him by. But the Samaritan doesn’t follow their lead. The Samaritan doesn’t look like the others. The Samaritan doesn’t look like a person of importance, but he is the one who shows the ultimate sign of justice and righteousness and power: mercy.
Whether the sign is the cross, whether the sign is the fish, the ultimate sign throughout Scripture, throughout the tradition of the Church, the sign of being a Christian is mercy. The sign of following Jesus is putting it into practice. Go and do likewise. When even the first the lawyer recited the love commandments. Jesus says, go and do likewise. That, for us, is what matters; that is the heart of faith. It’s not just being in the right place. It’s not just having the right clothes on or having the right symbol on our car. All of that falls away. But who are you following? What are you doing for others?
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Okay, question number two. All right, question number two. Is organized religion how Jesus envisioned the church? How do we get to the next tier of spirituality as accommodation? Okay, so what kind of church did Jesus envision? That is a great, great question. So church in Greek is ekklesia, which we translate to church just means assembly. It’s a gathering. And over time, this gathering that was kind of like ad hoc, we see throughout the New Testament of people, you know, Jesus started talking crowds coming, and it just grew and grew. It was not this super logistically complicated structure. Right? And Jesus doesn’t even want it to be. A few times I call these, like, the teleportation narratives, that Jesus is in a place and a lot of people come to him, and then he’s like, I’m out and leaves, and he just disappears. And suddenly he’s on the other side of the lake. But Jesus doesn’t. He doesn’t exhibit this need to hear everyone, to fix everything all the time. I think that’s an important aspect of what Jesus vision of the church is. But there wasn’t this organized structure. This happens over time. We see it in the Book of Acts in a few different places as it builds in. We see it in Acts 15, the Council of Jerusalem. So in Acts chapter 15, if you have your Bible, you can turn to it. It’s a wonderful little passage about what does it mean to be the church? Because all the main leaders of the church have gathered together in Jerusalem and they’re trying to figure out what should they do for Gentiles, how should they treat Gentiles? And it’s a really pointed question, especially for men, because the question is, do you need to become Jewish before you become a Christian? And for men, that means, do you need to be circumcised before you can be baptized? Which is, again, would be a very compelling question for many people about what do I actually have to do? And they take it very seriously. And so in Acts chapter 15, we have this question, this challenge brought together. The elders and the apostles come together to discern what direction they should go. And kind of James is in this kind of leadership position, and he thinks the church needs to just kind of focus on Jews, that people should become Jewish. But this is an amazing thing. I think this might have been one of two Places in the history of the church where a church leader changes their mind, they discern that the Spirit is moving in a different way than their own conception, preconception of the way things should be. And he’s humble enough to let it happen. And it’s this powerful moment, but we’re already in this space building the structures of organized religion, of organizing around. Okay, so I’m sticking. The question is still in the back of my mind. And I think it doesn’t matter. What is the church that Jesus envisions and what does it mean for us today? And how are we. How can we get more to a place like that? Because this continues through time, this structure that is being built in the book of Acts, that is being further built in the letters of Paul and in the early church, in the early church as an underground religion again, like a church that’s persecuted in more places than it is lifted up. And then it becomes the official religion of the Roman empire in the 4th century. And then it kind of spreads around the world. And then throughout. In the early modern period, in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, it becomes even more invested in the nation. And then we come to, you know, the founding of the United States, and it’s founded as explicitly as a place where there is no official state, state religion again. In some ways, religion becomes more organized once it leaves the state, and it becomes this kind of other entity that’s lifting around. Because one of the issues, and this is even of running a church today, is you got to deal with ability, you got to deal with a budget, you have to deal with all of these organizational things that what do we do to cover the costs of existing in the modern world? And this is one of those ways that I think, you know, I don’t think Jesus was envisioning church council meetings or leadership board meetings, talking about, you know, the interest rate on the mortgage. That. That wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. That just wasn’t a conceptual aspect. And usually when we talk about organized religion, it’s more about, like, the strictures of it, the spiritual, the ways that sometimes spirituality can be suppressed by the organizational mentality of a lot of structures. But I do think it is important to lift up that we’re organized in a way to survive at a time such as this. And of course, there are other things that we can do. If money were no object, we would have a different focus in those conversations. We would have a different idea. If the building didn’t flood or lights didn’t go out those kinds of things. What does it mean to be stewards of our resources? There’d be different conversations. I think for us, it’s like, how are we? It’s more a question not of how the church is organized in Jesus vision, but how are we organized in our own spiritual vocation as individuals within the church, because God calls us both to come together, but also to lay out our nests with Apollo. And the call oftentimes, all the time, the call is oftentimes easier to make to tell organizations to change than to tell our own parts, to change, than to convert. And I think for, you know, this is the same thing with the story of the Good Samaritan, the hero of the Good Samaritan. Like what the power that Jesus is trying to convey is that the lawyer who comes up to Jesus asks what he must do. Jesus said, you must do is not just what you believe. It’s how you act. It’s how you give mercy. And for us today, the point is not to build the ideal ecclesial structure that is going to solve all our problems, because then we’re going to be looking for that structure instead of looking to Jesus. The point is not to make the purest denomination that has the fewest problems, because then we’d be worshiping that denomination and not worshiping Jesus, but instead to see that these structures we have are really limitations. There’s not going to be denominations in the life eternal. We’re not going to have like, okay, this is the Methodist sweater, and here’s the Episcopalian section over here. And this kind of. It all drips away and loses relevance. It’s all a sign of the brokenness already of this world. Instead, it’s what are we doing with what God has offered for us? Where are we finding space to connect with the risen Lord in Jesus Christ? I think that is always the most interesting and challenging question. It’s a challenging question not just of when will we as a denomination get to a different spiritual plane, but when will I take my next step towards who God created me to be? When will you take your next step towards who God created you to be? And sometimes in order to take that step, we need to hear harsh words, like from the prophet Amos. I bet Amos didn’t get called back to a lot of parties when he gave his prophecies. It’s like, oh, no, Amos is coming. I think I’m sick. I think I just can’t make it tonight. It’s going to be an awkward dinner party. He’s going to speak the truth about the direction our nation is going. There are amuses too. Sometimes God speaks to us as individuals like that in the direction our life is going. We need to change direction in that as well. So my encouragement with that is that for all of us. How are we stepping forward in our faith? How are we stepping forward to being the type of Christian that Jesus Christ envisions? The type of person filled with neighbor love so much that we can’t help but stop to care for the person on the side of them. Okay. Whoa. It’s 17 minutes. Okay, I think we’re good. If you have more questions, please, please send them to Brenda. I’ll try to address more than two next week, but we’re going to be doing this the next three weeks. And so I hope you will join us in seeing what God will reveal through this time. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time to come to you and to discern your word. We thank you for those who have asked questions, those who still have questions, and all the ways that we seek you. Bless us all in your space in Christ’s Lord. Amen. And now, as you’re able, can you stand and join me as we say the words?