Religion that Adds Value

Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; I Peter 2:2-10

            Are you familiar with the Law of Addition?  It’s not about math; it’s about leadership.    The Law of Addition says leaders either add value to or subtract value from those who follow them.  The most effective leaders encourage, promote, affirm, empower—add value to—those who surround them.  They promote the success of their team over their own success. 

            Let me give you an example.  This comes from one of my daughters.  She had a part-time job in high school.  She loved the work and her co-workers, but she couldn’t stand to be around her supervisor.  The other part-time workers felt the same way.  The supervisor complained constantly about their work.  They never did anything right.  Nothing was enough to satisfy this supervisor.  They never got a pat on the back.  Never a, “Job well done.”  This supervisor’s style was constant negativity and tearing down. So, my daughter and her co-workers went out of their way to avoid this supervisor. When there was a mandatory meeting, they all groaned and rolled their eyes.  Here’s why.  That supervisor subtracted value from them.  Not only did they feel badly about their work; they felt badly about themselves.

            When my daughter got out of college and took her first “real” job, she had a supervisor who understood the Law of Addition.  I don’t know this to be true, but I suspect he had had leadership training.  My daughter loved to be around him, and he appeared to love being around her and her colleagues.  He was positive and encouraging.  He knew how to give feedback without tearing them down.  He was their supervisor, but he promoted their success, not his own. They felt good about their work, and they felt good about themselves.  He added value to them.  Now, leadership people say that 90 percent of leaders who add value to others do so intentionally.  They are aware of their power and use it to add value to others rather than subtract value from them.  And they say the converse of that is true too.  Those who subtract value from others do so unintentionally because they are unaware of the power of their words and behavior. 

            Here’s something I’ve learned about religion: religion can either add value to us or subtract value from us.  Religious faith can add value to us, making us a better person, helping us feel good about ourself, freeing us from negativity, fear, guilt, and shame.  It can give us a purpose, a mission that drives our life.  Or religion can subtract value from us, tearing us down, making us feel horrible, filled with fear, guilt, and shame.  It can enslave us to legalism and steal our joy.

            Back in the days of the Bible, the Gentiles understood how harsh religion could be.  The Gentiles were religious outcasts, treated like dogs, things. Rejection, shame, and guilt hovered above them daily, like a dark, ever-present cloud. The Hebrew language, the language of the Old Testament, has a word, actually we would call it a racial slur today, to describe Gentiles: goyim.  The singular is goy; the plural is goyim.  If you wanted to insult someone, humiliate, degrade him or her, you called that person goy.   The Gentiles were believed to be dirty, spiritually unclean.  Contact with goyim made you unclean. It was actually against the law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile.  The Gentiles lived in a religious culture that constantly subtracted value from them.

           So imagine the struggle in the early church when Gentiles, the goyim, began to join the church.  In the beginning, the church was mainly Jews who came to believe in the message of Jesus.  Most attended the synagogue on the Sabbath and a church gathering on the Lord’s Day.  They were good Jews who were also good Christians.  And then the floodgates opened, and the goyim began flooding into the church.  It was the first great challenge of the early church, and they struggled with how to address it.  We’ve been looking at this struggle in our study of the book of Acts on Wednesday evenings.  It was the Apostle Peter who first understood.  He had a vision where he saw a sheet descending from the heavens.  It was filled all kinds of unclean animals.  Today we would call them non-kosher.  Peter heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.”  But Peter wouldn’t do it.  Peter was a good Jew, and he had never eaten anything non-kosher.  It happened three times: “Get up, Peter.  Kill and eat.”  A man named Cornelius, a goy, helped Peter understand the meaning of the vision.  Here’s what Peter said,

    You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. 

             Peter, the good Jew, then delivered a sermon to a group of goyim.  Listen to these radical words:   I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.   Powerful words!   Even in 2023.

           Many scholars believe the letter of First Peter was originally a sermon by Peter, probably a baptismal sermon.  It was delivered not to a Jewish congregation but to a congregation of goyim.  In this sermon, we see the heart of the young, blossoming Christian movement.  We see that Christian faith refused to become a religion that humiliated and degraded people because of their race.  Instead, it chose to become a religion that lifted, built up, a religion that elevated people.  Rather than subtracting value from them, it added value, even to the goyim.

           Listen to what Peter told them in this sermon.  “Once you were not a people,” Peter preached.  They were nothing, nobodys.  That’s the way they looked upon the goyim.  They were “not a people.”  Then Peter said, “But now you are God’s people.”  That is a religion that adds value!  “Once you had not received mercy,” Peter reminded them.  “But now you have received mercy.”  That’s a religion that lifts people.  It builds up.  It elevates. It adds value. 

         Peter then used four very powerful images to describe his Gentile listeners.  One person calls these four images piled atop one another an “identity collage.”  (Richard Vinson, 1 & 2 Peter, Jude, p. 100)

       You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

      They had never been called a chosen race.  They’d been called a lot of things, but not that.  It’s the word genos in the Greek language, from which we get the word genealogy.  It had to do with family.  The Gentiles were a bundle of many different ethnic groups.  Here Peter was saying to the Gentiles, “You’re a part of the family now.”

     They had never been called a royal priesthood.  A king had an imperial priesthood that served specifically the king and his family.  To be named to the royal priesthood meant that you were a person of high status and in good favor with the king.  Here Peter was saying to the Gentiles, “You are called to serve the Great King.”

    They had never been called a holy nation.  They were from this land and that land.  The only thing they shared in common was that they were unclean, unacceptable to God.  Here Peter was saying, “You are a people set apart for God.”

They had never been called God’s own people.  We could read this phrase this way: “a people for God’s own possession.”  Peter was saying, “God specifically wants you.”

            It was a powerful affirmation of the goyim.  They encountered in Christianity a religion that elevated.  They encountered a religion that affirmed their worth as human beings, saw their potential as servants of God, and challenged them to live for Christ.  They found religion that added value to them.  No wonder they flooded in!

           That was the first great challenge of Christian faith, and it remains a challenge to this day.  We belong to a religion that adds value.  We don’t use racial slurs or demeaning language to speak about others.  That’s not who we are. We don’t discriminate because of gender.  That’s not who we are.  We don’t shame and exclude people who are in the LGBTQ community.  That’s not who we are.  I fear history is going to look back with harsh judgment of the evangelical church’s treatment of our gay, lesbian, and transgender neighbors and family members.  No wonder, when we try to tell them we’re different, they groan and roll their eyes.  We have a lot of work to do to prove to the world that we don’t reject.  We don’t humiliate.  We don’t degrade.  We lift.  We empower.  We build up.  We are a religion that adds value.

Closing Prayer 

Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in your sight.  Lord, help us love all the little children of the world.   Amen.