Jude

24 June 2007

“Certain Intruders”

            From time to time, Banu has told me that I should write more—even that I should write a book.  My response is usually that I need to have an occasion to write.  It’s difficult for me to just sit down and start writing.  (I’ll admit:  that may be in part due to laziness!)  But when I have a particular reason, a particular motivation— for example, sermon preparation or writing a letter—then I find myself much more able to get the job done.

            We just read the words of someone who possibly may have had similar feelings.  “Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (v. 3).  I don’t think I’m alone in “eagerly preparing” to do something, and then, continuing to eagerly prepare to do it!  Some call that “procrastination.”

            The translation in the Anchor Bible brings this out a little more clearly.  “Beloved, while I had every desire to write you about our common salvation, I have now got a compelling reason to write and urge you to contend for the faith which was once entrusted to the saints.”[1]

            This is the last of three sermons in which I’m not using the lectionary readings.  Instead, I have focused on the one-chapter letters near the end of the New Testament.  During the last two Sundays, I preached on 2 and 3 John.  This week, it’s the Epistle of Jude.  And I don’t mind telling you—maybe you had similar thoughts as we were reading it—this is a weird letter!

            There’s all that stuff about “eternal chains in deepest darkness,” the archangel Michael and the devil fighting about the body of Moses, “blemishes on your love-feasts”:  and that’s just scratching the surface!  There’s one thing this letter cannot be accused of—and that’s being boring.  It has plenty of colorful language!  We’ll get to some of it in a few moments.

            First, a little background.  This letter seems to have been written at roughly the same time as 2 and 3 John, at the end of the 1st century.  Verse 17 appears to put it after the lifetime of the apostles, so it’s unlikely that the apostle Jude himself wrote it.  I should add this:  the names “Jude,” “Judas,” and “Judah” all come from a single Greek word (iouda", ioudas), which means “Jew.”  So the apostle Jude I mentioned would be the one who was “Judas (not Iscariot)” (Jn 14:22)!

            Anyway, it’s likely that a student of the apostle—or of Judas, the brother of Jesus—is the author.  But, as I’ve grown fond of saying, for the sake of simplicity, I’ll just call him “Jude.”

            Another quirky thing about the letter is that, in many ways, it parallels the second chapter of 2 Peter.  I noticed that myself the first time I read both of them.  Some say Jude borrows from 2 Peter; others say 2 Peter borrows from Jude.  Still others claim that both letters borrow from a third document, which no longer exists.  No one really knows!

            One big difference in them is that Jude has quotes from books that aren’t in the Bible.  That argument between Michael and the devil is in the Assumption of Moses.  The quote of Enoch in verses 14 and 15 appears in a book called First Enoch.  These and many other books were written and read by early Christians, but they weren’t given the authority of scripture.

            So, what is it that basically lights a fire under Jude and gets him writing some of the strange stuff we see?  What is it that he finds “necessary”?  What is it that he finds “compelling”?  We get our answer in verse 4.  His reason for writing the letter is that “certain intruders have stolen in among you.”  This sounds like something from a spy movie!  The church has been infiltrated.  Imposters are circulating within.

            Who are these nefarious characters?  According to Jude, they’re “people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

            While it’s important to avoid paranoia, it’s also important to hear what Jude is saying.  Still, it’s been difficult to figure out exactly while false teachings he’s describing.  As I’ve already suggested, his letter tends to be both colorful and weird—not terribly precise.

            For example, consider verse 11.  After pronouncing, “Woe to them!” he says, “they go the way of Cain [they commit murder, literally or symbolically], and abandon themselves to Balaam’s error for the sake of gain [flattery for the sake of profit], and perish in Korah’s rebellion.”  In Numbers 16, Korah and his friends lead the revolt against Moses.  They defy the authority that God has set up.

            When we take these comments and combine them with some of the other interesting descriptions throughout the letter, Jude seems to be presenting us with a rogue’s gallery.  As I said, it’s been hard to pin down exactly who he’s talking about.

            Part of the problem is that Jude doesn’t address any one community or any one person.  He addresses “those who are called, who are beloved in God the Father and kept safe for Jesus Christ” (v. 1).  In other words, he’s directing this to all Christians, everywhere.  That’s what you call casting a wide net!  (Other letters with the same approach are James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 1 John.)

            Even though he takes a scattershot approach, Jude is dead on with his diagnosis.  He speaks of those “who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness.”  I don’t suppose that, for most of us, “licentiousness” is a word that appears in our daily vocabulary.  Coming from the word “license,” it speaks of a propensity to disregard law and restriction.  Some had falsely accused the apostle Paul of this.

            Again, I find the Anchor Bible translation interesting:  “they pervert our God’s grace into brutality.”[2]  When we think that grace gives us license to ignore law and restraint, we put ourselves on a path to brutality.  It may seem like the greatest of freedom, but it leads to slavery.  As verse 8 suggests, we become “dreamers”; we become “hypnotized.”[3]

            This Tuesday is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.  I won’t belabor the point, but bad things happen when we lose our moral compass, so to speak.  When decisions are made to sidestep laws of common decency (not to mention the US Constitution and international law), good people descend into brutality.  They can even become torturers.

            The “certain intruders” Jude speaks of probably aren’t torturing people, but they have an effect just as alarming to him.  It’s important for the church to see that effect within itself.  It’s been noted that there’s an effect of undermining faith in Christ.  There’s a hardening of hearts, a developing of a heart of uncaring.  There’s a sense of spiritual laziness, an unwillingness to maintain the diligence to stay in the love of God.[4]

            Fortunately, Jude’s message isn’t all gloom and doom.  He does include a little bit of stuff about “the salvation we share,” which he mentioned at the beginning.  He doesn’t let his original idea for writing the letter be held hostage to the “compelling reason” that forced his hand.

            Jude provides ways, duties of love, which help unmask the certain intruders.  They help us to prevent ourselves from becoming certain intruders.

            That term, “certain intruders,” has more than one meaning.  There’s “certain” with the idea of “particular” intruders—“intruders that I happen to have in mind.”  Then there’s the sense of “inevitable” intruders.  That’s the word “certain” with the awareness that, yes, you can be sure there will be intruders.

            In verses 20 and 21, Jude couches his duties of love in trinitarian language.  “But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.”

            These duties of love—praying in the Spirit, keeping ourselves in the love of God—are deceptively simple.  The reason I say that is because we have false selves.  We have a true self, created and known by God.  And we have a false self, a corrupted self.

            The errors pictured by Jude give us a portrait of the false self.  Here’s a partial sketch.  The false self is self-indulgent (v. 7), self-deceived (v. 8), slanderous (v. 9), given to flattery to gain advantage (v. 16), and divisive (v. 19).  As I say, that’s only a partial sketch!

            Aside from these qualities, above all, the false self thinks it knows.  It thinks it knows.  The beginning of wisdom is to say, “I don’t know”!  And perhaps above that, the false self thinks it will never die.  Maybe that’s why Jesus felt the need to say that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (Jn 12:24-25).

            Each of us is profoundly self-oriented.  As Robert Mulholland says in his book, The Deeper Journey, “We are slow to accept the fact that our false self is who we are all the way to the core of our being.”[5]

            But it’s even trickier than that.  A component of our false self is our religious, our spiritual, false self.  “Our religious false self presumes,” Mulholland adds, “because we are religious, that everything is fine in our relationship with God…Our religious false self may be rigorous in religiosity, devoted in discipleship, and sacrificial in service—without being in loving union with God.”[6]

            We can be “busy being in the world for God” and fail “to be in God for the world.”  Do you see the difference?  “A religious false self will expend amazing amounts of energy and resources to be in the world for God.  But you see, we are called to be in God for the world, and this is costly.  It requires the abandonment of the whole self-referenced structure of our false self and, especially, the religious false self.”[7]

            We have to recognize the certain intruders within ourselves:  fear, possessiveness, manipulation, vindictiveness, self-promotion, to name a few!

            Jude counsels us to “have mercy on some who are wavering; save others by snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies” (vv. 22-23).

            That bit about “hating even the tunic,” the garment, is yet another of Jude’s colorful comments.  People have debated what that means.  Here’s my guess:  have mercy on those trapped in some kind of sin, but be sure you don’t fall into the trap yourself!

            The first part seems a little easier to understand.  Duties of love require us to help uphold the faith of “some who are wavering.”  And while saving “others by snatching them out of the fire” has spiritual implications, it surely has literal ones, as well—one of many being…speaking out against torture?

            In any event, Jude’s “compelling reason” for warning us about “certain intruders” is a key part of “[contending] for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”  This isn’t contending in a way that slanders or ridicules.  Rather, we build ourselves up—we build each other up—in the faith.  We look forward to—we count on—the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have eternal life.

            I can think of no better ending than the one Jude provides.  He closes with some of the most beautiful, powerful, and reassuring words of praise in the scriptures.  “Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever.  Amen” (vv. 24-25).

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