Shocking, isn't it?

I think we all may be familiar with that sinking feeling that comes when we invite a friend to church for the very first time and of course that just happens to be the Sunday when our lectionary readings throw out some of the violent or otherwise dismaying stories that can be found in the Bible.

Some years ago, we unusually celebrated a wedding during our Sunday morning service, and of course we had a number of guests in our pews for that occasion. Rather excruciatingly, the scheduled lectionary readings described King David’s wife, Michal, as "despising David in her heart," and the gospel went into the gory details of Herod’s wife tricking him into ordering the beheading of John the Baptist. Thinking back to my sermon that morning, I remember coming to the ambo and jokingly asking the wedding guests, "Well, how do you like us so far?"

But, over these last number of weeks our lectionary readings have been a pretty safe bet. We have listened to James tell us that God expects the truly religious to care for orphans and widows, we have heard in Proverbs that those who share their bread with the poor will be blessed, and we have been cautioned against destructive gossip and unkind words. Today James says to us that we should live according to a wisdom that is "peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy." Jesus describes the duty of servant leadership, and tells us that righteousness comes from welcoming a child, not bickering about who gets to ride shotgun at God’s right hand.

This is all safely in step with modern sensibilities. We recognize and honour these values, even if or, too often, when we fall short of displaying them. An oft-used expression that has become commonplace is that a society can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members. So yes, we can be pretty sure that scripture verses like these will not raise a visitor’s eyebrows, and they might even get an approving nod.

So it is kind of ironic that when they were first expressed and lived out, compassionate Christian sentiments like these did not earn an approving nod from the surrounding Greco-Roman culture, but in fact threw a huge spoke into its gears. The thought leaders and decision makers of that time, quite comfortable with institutionalized violence against other people’s lives and against human dignity in general,  believed Christians to be out of step and off the wall. I heartily recommend to you Glen Scrivner’s book, The Air We Breathe, in which we learn or are reminded just how radical it was give one’s life and one’s heart to a religion based on a God of compassion.

"These were incredibly strange ideas to Roman ears," Scrivner writes, "We might be familiar with the idea that God loves the world (whether or not we believe in God or his love), but the historian Larry Hurtado calls the notion "utterly strange, even ridiculous… in the Roman era."

To the Romans, Caesar was the Son of God. The fact that Caesar boasted of killing a million Gauls gave, apparently, proof of his greatness. And into this came the Christians who claimed that in fact the true God is the one who was himself put to death by Roman crucifixion. In this as in so much else, Christians challenged and up-ended the accepted conduct and beliefs of Greco-Roman society. Scrivner writes:

In the 1st century some remarkable values were injected into a brutal world - values that continue to shape us today. These values had been prefigured in the Hebrew [scriptures,] but something happened to make compassion burst the banks of Israel and begin to flood the world.

In his book he goes on to illustrate the remarkable shifts in society occasioned by the spread of Christian ideals. Eventually it was outlawed to leave infants on a mountainside to face death by exposure, because Christians had searched out and sheltered them. Christians shunned blood sports and refused to attend the gladiatorial games. These so-called games were banned by a Christian emperor in 410 AD and one historian has remarked "There is scarcely any reform so important in the moral history of mankind as the suppression of the Gladiatorial games, a feat that almost exclusively must be ascribed to the Christian church."

In Roman times, sex was very much an expression of power. Whether you were a child, an unmarried woman, or a male servant, you were considered fair game for a male Roman citizen. Prostitutes were used as a matter of course. In pointing to lifelong, monogamous marriage as the ideal, Jesus was inviting all people into the unprecedented shelter of a loving, respectful relationship with their own bodies and with each other’s. Paul’s discussion of the need for mutual sexual consent within marriage, giving a voice to women as well as men, was further revolutionary. And what the ancient world called pederasty - "the love of children" - Christians called paidophthoros - the destruction of children. The sexual abuse of children was finally outlawed in the reign of the Christian emperor Justinian and is now what Scrivner calls a "moral certainty" through much of the world.

So, flash forward to today. The early Christian teachings that prioritize compassion, protection of the vulnerable, and love of neighbour no longer have the power to shock - quite the opposite. They are assumed. And while that may sound like a victory (and is), it’s also a problem. These values may now be the water we swim in, largely invisible to our notice. But if we take them for granted and forget that, in fact, humans have not always organized themselves around these basic moral agreements, we risk a complacency that can have grave consequences for our societies and for our souls.

So it is up to us to keep the spark of radical Christianity alive. In what way can we bring new eyes and a fresh commitment to embodying the Christian walk? I recently learned that the word "Christian," which I assumed meant "follower of Christ," is in fact the Greek diminutive form of Christ. So, just like we might call our wee child a "kidlet," the Greeks called the first followers of the Way Christianoi - little Christs. They may have meant it sneeringly, but it stuck. Now it can remind us that our job isn’t just to point to Jesus as a good moral example - it is to embody Jesus in the way we interact with our colleagues, choose our careers, and care for those around us.

How does this land with you, I wonder? Perhaps you can’t imagine matching the fervour and commitment of these early Christians. I get that. I, too, have no desire to get stoned to death like Stephen or hung upside down on a cross like Peter, or thrown overboard and drowned like our own St. Clement. But I wonder if we can build our confidence about what is in our power to offer as people of faith.

Our readings today began with a passage from Proverbs, in which we hear about the traits of a capable wife. Yes, she sets a rather a high bar for the rest of us. And yes, we might be indignant on her behalf when we look at the text with 21st century eyes and worry about the division of household labour. But we can also admire how she anticipates and shapes the future by working hard today. She knows that there will be cold, snowy days, and prepares her family for them. Night may come, but she has oil for her lamp. Her efforts are not just to benefit her family; she shares with the poor and she teaches kindness. She is not rocked off course by darkness or by stormy weather, real or figurative.

Like the capable wife, we all have the power to act for good in our own sphere of influence, and that influence can spread farther than we might at first imagine. (As I said in the children’s talk, when we have a firm grip on our "grab bar" of faith, we can step out further than we would ever have thought!)

As news headlines from around the world darken, and the anxieties in our own hearts and communities increase, we might sometimes feel discouraged and question if we have any power to turn things around.

But history shows us that Christians did, and that Christians do.

Here’s another little bit of Bible trivia for you - though it is really not trivial. In the Anglican Church of Canada, we typically use the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. As I learned in a course I am taking on the Book of Acts, however, I learned that this otherwise well-thought-of version stands alone in the way it translates the first verse of Acts, the book that tells the history of the early Christian church.

Chapter One, verse one, reads "In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven…." All other versions, however, do not talk about what Jesus did before his death, but what Jesus began before his death and it is this word, began, that is in fact accurate to the original Greek. The author of Acts made it clear that Jesus’s work is not finished; that it is work that Jesus began and then on passed to us.

The gospel values of the early Christian church are no longer shocking to the world around us. What can still be shocking, however, is how well - or how poorly - we embody them. So I’m going to challenge us to try something this week. How about we take home today’s bulletin, and have a read through the lessons again. Pick one or more of the virtues or values mentioned and see if you can live it out in a way that happily surprises someone - even if that someone is you.

Perhaps, like the capable wife, you decide to get up while everyone else is still sleeping, and bring a hot breakfast to a friend who is having a hard time facing her days. Perhaps you will take inspiration from James, and make peace with a friend or colleague with whom you’re at odds. Or maybe Jesus is your model, and you will go out of your way to make a child feel seen, heard, and loved. Let’s hang onto our grab bar and pray to accomplish more than we can ask or imagine - because God is good, and always has the power to shock us.