What Does It Mean to be a Christian?

The Rev. Sara Warfield

Scripture: Luke 6:27-38

What does it mean to be a Christian? Does it mean to believe in an omnipotent God who wills everything that happens in this world, the beautiful and the horrible? Does it mean to prepare for the End Times, wait for the signs that a new Zion is about to descend from the clouds once God has culled the goats from the sheep—the believers from the unbelievers? Does it mean to follow every scripture in the Bible to the letter? Does it mean to believe that we are in a spiritual war for the supremacy of our God in this world, as the New Apostolic Reformation believes? They’re the group largely behind Project 2025 that this administration is now trying to implement in our country.

Does it mean to believe in Jesus? But what does that even mean? Does it mean to follow the example of his self-sacrifice, as the early Christian martyrs thought? Does it mean to believe that every time we sin, we drive the nails deeper into Jesus’ skin as he hangs on the cross, as I was taught as a child? Or does it mean to believe that his resurrection after death lets us all off the hook for any suffering that we allow to happen in this life? That’s what theologian and antifascist activist Deitrich Bonhoeffer accused German Christians of believing as Hitler rose to power.

There are as many ways to answer what it means to be a Christian as there are verses in the Bible.

The real defining act of our faith is making a decision about what it means to be a Christian. What is the core belief that anchors us to our faith. So the real defining act of our faith usually happens unconsciously. Because a lot of us didn’t get to decide. At least not at first. Maybe your parents took you to church when you were a kid, and of course you believed that that Baptist or Roman Catholic or Assemblies of God church was all of what Christianity is. How would you have known otherwise?

Or maybe you were raised by fairly nonreligious parents, but a friend invited you to church during high school or college. Or maybe you had a crisis: a near overdose or a death that shook you to your core, and you reached out to God for comfort at whatever church was closest to where you lived. Or maybe you thought that whatever you heard Christians advocating for in the news was what Christianity is.

Unless we’ve done the difficult work of deconstructing what we were originally taught our faith is, which I know many of us here have, we take for granted, may indeed be utterly unaware of the very foundation we claim to stand on.

But in this moment of our history I think it’s absolutely critical that we actively and intentionally decide for ourselves what it means to be a Christian. For a few reasons.

First of all, right now, a very loud and very organized group is dominating the national conversation about what it means to be Christian. And if I’m being really honest, I don’t think what they’re saying is in line with what the gospel tells us, with what Jesus teaches, through his words and through his life, death, and resurrection. I don’t think they’re ushering in the kingdom of God Jesus had in mind. Right now, I think we’re not only fighting for the soul of our country, we’re fighting for the heart of our faith.

And the second reason is because right now, we all need an anchor. We all need something that grounds us as the world storms around us and tries to blow us off course, a touchstone to hold onto in the midst of the chaos to remind us what our values are, and how to live, move, and have our being according to those values.

I think Jesus very clearly and very concisely tells us what that anchor is. If you’ve been at St. Luke’s for more than a few weeks, you already know what I’m going to say:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

The gospel of Matthew, chapter 22, verses 37 through 40.

Jesus is telling us that all the scriptures, all the law and all the prophets, all the Bible that he himself studied and followed hang on one thing: love. And if we really claim that Jesus is our savior, that Jesus is the center of our faith, then I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that all the scriptures that came after Jesus, what we call our New Testament, also hang on that one thing: love.

And in today’s gospel, he goes even deeper into what that love means.

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Let me be clear: Jesus is not telling us to roll over meekly when we are mistreated. He’s not telling us to cower in submission. He’s calling us into a different way of being. Into a moral practice: creating a habit that moves us from shallow reaction to intentional response, from quick retaliation to considered thoughtfulness.

Jesus is teaching us to slow down, even in the midst of the hottest emotions, and ask ourselves: What does love look like in this situation?

But what exactly is love? Well I think spiritually love is looking at another person, no matter who they are, and seeing someone who is created in God’s image. It is recognizing that they have deep fears and struggles, just like you; that they crave to be known and to belong, just like you.

And the container for love is relationship.

The opposite of love is seeing another person as an object, a stepping stone, a means to an end. Someone you can abuse, slap, or steal from in order to get what you want. The opposite of love is seeing another person as a transaction.

Have you ever been on a customer service call, and you can tell that the person on the other end is so bored, barely paying attention, and doing as little as possible to help, but they still have to talk to you because that’s what they’re paid to do? That’s transactional. And it’s dehumanizing.

I might also mention that those customer service reps are themselves likely caught in a dehumanizing transaction, their employers treating them like machines that must speak on script and meet certain quotas. This transactional way of being is built into so many of our systems.

So when Jesus says, “do good to those who hate you, pray for those who abuse you, turn the other cheek,” he’s saying, “You will not goad me into a transactional response. I refuse to dehumanize you, and I won’t let you dehumanize me.”

Or to reframe it in the positive, “I will continue to love you and treat you as a fellow child of God, because that love is what makes me a child of God.”

Now that doesn’t mean staying in harmful situations. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do on an individual level is walk away from a person who only seeks to use us, to hurt us.

But this happens on larger and larger scales. What we see the “Department of Government Efficiency” doing is treating everything like a transaction: our health, our safety, our National Parks, our privacy, our support for others abroad, and so much more. Their fundamental question is, and I admit I’m being generous in assuming this is the fundamental question: “Is this service worth the money we spend on it?” Not, “Who does this serve?” Not, “Who will be harmed if this department goes away?” Not even, despite their name, “How can we make these existing services more efficient?”

I think we can all agree that our government agencies and departments could most certainly use an overhaul that makes services and care more affordable and accessible. But that sounds to me a lot like improving relational processes.

But what’s happening now is the wholesale sacrifice of relationship, of love, of people’s very lives for the sake of transaction.

To turn the other cheek right now is not to let the harm go on unchecked. It’s to respond to this dehumanizing transactional way of being with relationship. With finding our people, gathering, and calling for change. I go to protests, yes, to advocate for my values, but I mostly go because it builds me up to be in community, it gives me strength to continue on in joy and love, and it connects me with people who share my values. That’s relational.

And have I cultivated a relationship with Steve at Senator Merkley’s DC office? And with Kennedy at Congresswoman Dexter’s Portland office because I’ve been calling them so much? I sure have. And they’re wonderful. They engage me with care every time I talk to them.

And why are each of you here at church today? Of course, I can’t answer that for you, but I’d guess, I’d hope that it’s because you feel care and belonging here. Because you experience the love that Jesus calls us to here. That you feel in deep relationship with both God and your neighbor here.

Gathering in this community and building up God’s love in yourself so that you can take that love out into the world is a way of loving your enemy, a way of turning the other cheek.

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So I want to get back to that anchor. I want to get back to deciding for ourselves what it means to be a Christian.

So much of popular Christianity teaches us that we need to check these certain boxes to go to heaven and if you don’t, you’ll endure an eternity of suffering in hell. Or that to be Christian is to gain political power so that you can impose your beliefs on everyone. Those are very transactional ways of practicing faith.

But Jesus never sought political power, even though he could have easily had it. Instead, he healed people without asking if they deserved it. He fed people without requiring them to work for it. He let a Syrophoenician woman, a foreigner, an outsider change his mind about who is worthy of his miracles.

Yes, Jesus warned us about the unquenchable fires of hell, and I preached about that a few weeks ago. What hell means for us and how we live our lives. And we could decide to believe that Christianity is all about avoiding hell and getting into heaven. That theology can certainly be read into our scriptures. Indeed, you could even read that theology into today’s gospel.

And we all choose how we read and interpret our scriptures. We all choose what we allow to shape our faith. If we want to read violence and retribution into our faith, we’ll find it in the scriptures. If we want indications in our scriptures of signs and prophecies coming to pass in our own time, we’ll find them. If we’re looking for religious dominance at any cost, we’ll find it.

I choose to read every scripture of the Bible through the lens of what Jesus said all the law and all the prophets hang on: love. Seeing the image of God in all our neighbors—and everyone is our neighbor—and figuring out how to help them feel known, to feel belonging.

And, when my neighbor mistreats or harms me, to refuse to allow them to goad me into a transactional response. To refuse to dehumanize them, and to refuse to let them dehumanize me. To be anchored in love, to be anchored in relationship.

Amen.