Keene’s Kwikies

  the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

This is great:

It’s not exactly a subtle grab for power and prestige, is it?  I guess that’s why the Zebedee brothers got nick-named ’Sons of Thunder.’  ‘Gimme the power!  Gimme the honor—the prestige of being your right-hand man!  For thine—and mine—is the glory forever, amen.’

Going Through the Needle
10/11/09
Mark 10.17-31

The story’s about material things—and money, too!—as noted by the “many possessions” that blocked this guy’s ability to get what he wanted: eternal life. That thing that we all want: eternal life; certainty with God; certainty and meaning about our life. He wanted this, too.

And he was used to getting what he wanted, and didn’t mind paying the price of it: he was in fact willing to pay that price. That’s the point being made with the talk about the commandments: he’s a decent fellow; even, we might say, civic-minded.

I have to point out that the religious commandments—“You shall have no other gods,” “You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain,” “Remember the Sabbath,” and even, “You shall not covet” are not listed. All you have here are civil rules. So it’s no brag for him to say he’s kept them all his life: he’s simply acknowledging that he’s been a decent guy.

Who’s used to getting what he wants. That makes him incredibly contemporary with us: we, too, are used to getting what we want.

Now there is one more “thing” he wants, one more possession: eternal life. Something to stash away in his accumulation of security.

But his question is weird: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” I mean, an inheritance is something you are given, not something you earn. I can’t help but to remember the whole Anna Nicole Smith business; it seemed so scummy to me: everybody fighting over who has earned the inheritance of J. Howard Marshall. An inheritance is a gift, not a right, not a payoff. So this guy’s question is bizarre.

But it betrays his attitude. He thinks he should have whatever he wants, so long as he is willing to pay for it. Like I say, he’s real contemporary. We tend to think that folks have a right to eternal life so long as we follow the rules. For you and me, of course, who have so much, it’s pretty easy to follow the rules. Especially when we are in the majority who makes them

It is absolutely no different than the guy’s question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

So Jesus rattles him: “Get rid of it all, and come follow me.” It’s the thing which the guy most definitely cannot do. I guess he’s really too comfortable with his life to want to give it up. He comes to Jesus in that lonely quest for eternal life, for certainty and security, and all Jesus has to offer him is his community of disciples: “Come, follow me.”

And when you think about it, that’s the only thing we take with us through the grave: the community of those with whom we’ve lived. That’s the only certainty. For eternal life Jesus offers him the Body of Christ; his disciples.

Nothing more substantial than this; no rules, no finances, no possessions. These are the tangibles that he’s used to, these are the security he knows. And they are the very things that keep him isolated in his gated community, and he can’t walk away from that. Ultimately, you see, living only in the trust that grace demands was not a thing he could do.

So after the guy leaves—and note that Jesus does let him go his own way—after this Jesus comments, I think, sadly to his disciples: “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”

The story is about material things, as I said. But it’s deeper than that: it’s also about attitude. The disciples draw that picture. They are in a quandary about what Jesus has just done and said.

Because you’ve got a guy here who really has it made both materially and socially—you’ve got a “good pagan”; the paradigm, we might say, of the middle class dream, that status of life all of us pursue. So the disciples can’t quite believe, let alone understand, what they’ve just heard: that that which they and the whole society admires and which is set up as the ideal isn’t going to cut it: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Then who can be saved?

“For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Which has led to one of my favorite quips over the years: God can get that camel through the eye of the needle, but I guarantee you, that camel won’t ever be the same again. You get tangled up in the gospel of Jesus Christ; you start doing the gospel of Jesus Christ, and before long you’ll be a different person.

Money is a good example—and appropriate, too. Because in those days personal honor was the major social value; you used money to purchase honor from others. That’s why the guy couldn’t go with Jesus: because he would have lost his place of honor in the society.

In our day, money is the major social value. So you start giving your money to the work of Jesus through the church, and you give it in a substantial amount, you’ll be squeezed and stretched financially like a camel going through a needle, and your material life won’t be the same as it was before, or as it might have been otherwise.

So good old Peter speaks for the church: “Look, we’ve left everything and followed you.” The unspoken word is, “What are we going to get?” “What’s in it for us?”

“Ah, well, I’ll tell you: You’re going to get it all back a hundred times over, right now, at this time. Along with persecutions.”

It’s an honest promise. But what sense are we to make of it?

In our country we really are not much at risk to experience physical persecution because we claim to be Christians. That isn’t true, of course, in other countries: people are arrested and tortured and killed simply because they are Christian all the time. Or because they are Christian and are working to do what Christ has called them to.

It’s this latter that begins to brush up to our lives. Because sooner or later, if you’re doing the work of the kingdom—if you’re caring for the last, the lost, the little, the least—you’re going to run into conflict. Maybe not physical violence, but a conflict of values with society or friends, or even an internal conflict that puts you at odds with yourself or your family.

Jesus is straightforward about that.

But he also speaks the promises: “You’re going to get it all back, a hundred times over, right now, at this time.”

I am always amazed when I’ve talked with folks about their experience of giving. Invariably the story comes back, “I was terrified when I started giving to God first. But then I discovered that money always seemed to come in when I needed it—some unexpected refund or something like that.” And some have told me, “And now I discover that I have more money than I ever thought I would.”

That’s been true in my case, as well, by the way. It has to do with the fact that God has always taken care of me, not only in terms of material life, but in terms of values: I just discover that my values have changed. I can be content with less. So it is, I believe, that God does not miss that which we offer; and that God, out of infinite generosity returns it to us and—dare I mention it?—even says “Thank you, my child.”

But there’s a trick here: it’s attitudinal, because it’s real tempting to try to use God superstitiously, like the guy at the beginning of the story: “I’ll pay my way and get what I want.” Peter almost reflects that attitude when he asks, “What’s in it for us?”

And Jesus indirectly corrects him: “I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news. . . .”

See? If you’re doing it for yourself, for your own personal gain in whatever it is you’re trying to achieve, it can’t happen. Because we can’t see past of those things anymore than the rich guy could see past his possessions. We can’t see past our own our wealth—whether it be possessions or accomplishments or good behavior—anymore than he could.

But when we keep our eye on the kingdom, when we keep looking at Jesus, God at least has a chance of getting through to us. So that when you’re engaged in the work of Christ and it’s getting tough and you feel like you’re being pulled this way and that and stretched and squeezed and strung out, take heart, your salvation is happening: God is pulling the camel through the eye of the needle. You’ll never be the same again, of course—you’ll be shaped for eternal life.

Being Great
Mark 9.30-37  (James 3-4)
9/20/09

It’s no wonder why the disciples wouldn’t answer Jesus’ question.  They knew their debate was unworthy of him.  He had, after all, talked about the Son of Man being betrayed and killed (and resurrected).  Mark says they didn’t understand it, didn’t even bother to ask him about it, and instead got into an argument over who was the greatest.

At first glance it reads like a story of dad gasping out his dying breaths while the children in the next room argue over the inheritance.  Or a similar pattern:  the leader of an organization—it doesn’t matter what kind:  corporate or volunteer or church or family—dies or leaves, and people start jockeying for position.  We’ve seen those situations, and they’re terrible:  loveless self-centeredness brutalizing everyone.

If this is what was going on, Jesus’ response was far too mild for the depth of the sin; for its disfigurement of simple human decency.  James’ words are much more appropriate here:  “Where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.” Jesus’ response to the disciples should have been harsher in order to stop the evil.

But what if the disciples were not jockeying for position at all?  Were not, in fact, even trying to put themselves forward as the greatest?  What if, instead, they were arguing like a bunch of guys do in a sports bar about who is the greatest , say, football player?  Like they do on the radio call in shows?  Then it’s a different deal altogether.

It’s not about self-centeredness (except, of course, for the lout who loves to hear himself talk, and so drones on and on).  It’s more like a quest for understanding, for truth:  if you’re going to argue about who the greatest football player is, you have to figure out what it means to be the greatest football player.  Okay, “quest for truth” might be a bit of a stretch for a bunch of beered-up guys in a bar, but you get the point:  you can’t separate the who from the what.  As they say, “You gotta define the terms.”

This being the case, then Jesus’ response makes more sense.
It’s interesting to me that he doesn’t rebuke them for discussing greatness; or even, for that matter, for desiring greatness.  He doesn’t give them some “Kung Fu” triteness, “Ah, Grasshopper, greatness is not a thing to be sought.”  In fact, he does the opposite:  “If you want to be first; if you want to be great. . . .” He affirms this about them.

Because there is within us the innate—I think, God-created—desire to be great; to be noble; to make a real difference in the world.  Or at least there was, once upon a time, when, as children, we pretended to be our heroes;  or as adolescents we discovered the thrill and the joy of caring for others; or as college-age folks who first see the real misery of the human situation, criticize it, and talk about improving it.  Remember that in your life?

But then something happens.  Perhaps it is frightened out of us, the concerns of making a living and fear for the security of our families  turning our days into a defensive posture:  we live in order to keep from dying.

Or perhaps it is the seduction of affluence:  we end up living, as James says, “in order to spend what we get on our pleasures.”

Or perhaps it is “educated” out of us.  Some years ago Deborah and I were reading the books of her college classes in History and in Government.  We read a chapter on the Reconstruction after the Civil War.  The whole thing was described in terms of the self-interests (including revenge) of different groups.  Then a chapter on the birth of the Constitution.  Again, it was all done by way of the self-interest of various parties.  There was no discussion of great ideas about humanity or ideals of living together as a nation.  There was no nobility presented; simply people exerting pressure to get what they want for themselves.  No wonder she despised those classes; they were robbing her life of any meaning beyond self-interest.

So the nobility gets lost.  But the desire for greatness remains.  Only, without the nobility, the desire is distorted and disfigured.  Jesus acknowledges this God-given desire.  And then redeems it with nobility:  “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. . . .  Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
What, though, do they mean?

Well, obviously they’re a hedge against getting too caught up in the world’s definition of greatness, both in the pursuit of getting it and by the paralysis of lacking it.

A lot of us chase the greatness.  I knew a guy who was in many ways the perfect churchman:  dignified, well-heeled, cool-headed, committed, big giver, and smooth as oil with people.  I wanted him on church council, even congregational president.  But he wouldn’t do it.  Because he believed he should be part of a group of elite people who would make decisions in some back room which the council and congregation would then carry out.  I kept doing business by way of the constitution, which established the council as our elected leadership, and not some hidden power group.  So he quit, and went to a church more to his liking.

He wasn’t a bad man at all; in fact, he really was a fine fellow whom I admired.  He just got caught up in the world’s notion of greatness.  He thought greatness was defined by who you can afford to exclude.  And don’t think there was any great wisdom or principle on my part:  I was simply too naïve to know what was going on; otherwise I would probably have bought into it just as much as he did.  We’re all subject to it, whether it be played out in power or money or social status or whatever.  The world’s greatness is alluring.

Or else we believe we have no greatness, or ought not dare to be great, and so do nothing but seek our own comfort under the guise of humility.

But Jesus rejects both as distortions of God’s intent in our creation:  “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Whoever welcomes a child welcomes God.

Wow.  What kind of power is it to welcome God?  What kind of greatness would it be to know that God has come calling on you today?  Calling upon your efforts, your ability, your personality to be of care toward him?  What kind of God is this who keeps getting himself presented in the faces of children, from the babe in the manger, to the child held up as an image of the kingdom, to a child as the measure of greatness, to the infant presented at the baptismal font, to the child standing and receiving at the Lord’s table?  What kind of God is this who justifies the saying, “No man stands so tall as when he stoops to be with a child?”

The God who would restore the dignity of our nobility by saying, “You welcome these little ones among you.  These who have no power, these who have no influence, these who are overlooked by the great; you receive them among you—the little, the least, the lost, the last.  You receive them among you, not with patronizing toleration, but with the welcome you would accord a brother and sister.  You work with them, that they may grow to know their own nobility and greatness.  For in lifting others, you yourself will be lifted.”

Cool.  I want to be the big church of the little; the first church of the last.

It is our work.  It is our dignity.  You want to be great, this is how you do it.  For Jesus’ words are not a warning, but an incredible promise.  The new world will be found in the little, the least, the lost, the last.  And the greatest among them will be those who lifted them up, who, as did the Son of Man, gave their lives for this kingdom.

Good Vibrations
Mark 8.27-38
9/13/09

A few weeks back somebody out there told that story about the woman returning from her shopping trip trying to explain to her financially flabbergasted husband the hugely expensive dress she bought.  “I knew it was too expensive, but the devil was there and made me do it.”  Her husband says, “Why didn’t you just tell him, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’?”  She pleads, “I did!  And he said ‘It looks great from back here, too.’”

So today we hear the story of that encounter between Jesus and Peter  that gives birth to that saying:  ‘Get behind me, Satan.’

Back around 1966 in New York City three men broke into the apartment of a young Cuban painter named Tomas Fundora.  He’d painted a very simple piece called “The Back of Christ”, which was just that:  we see the head and torso of Jesus from the back; he’s wearing a white robe with a magenta sash.  It was, to his mind, simply a view of what following Jesus would look like—Jesus in the front of the line.

The three intruders thought otherwise.  They thought Fundora’s painting showed Jesus turning his back against them.  They thought it was blasphemous.  So they took a little bronze bust of J. S. Bach Fundora had and smashed his hands almost beyond repair.  It took him 7 years to be able to paint again.

Satan, it appears, doesn’t like it when he’s told to fall in line.  And that is the exact meaning of Jesus’ words.  The Greek word which is translated as “Get behind me” is the same word Jesus uses later “Follow me.”  Thus Jesus rebukes Peter, “Yo!  Get in line here.  Follow me—not your own inclinations.  Get behind me.”

That’s what it means—for us, as well as for Peter—to claim Jesus as our Christ; as God’s Messiah.  That’s what it means to make the confession “Jesus is my Lord.”  It means that “I will follow him,” as the old song has it, “follow him wherever he may go.”
Of course, anyone who takes their faith seriously knows just as well as I do that this means struggling with your own will against where Jesus is going, just like Peter.  “You might be going there, Jesus, but that sure ain’t no place I wanna go.”

Well, I’ll leave that to your ruminations, because I’m more interested in the last line of the story:  Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

A few days ago I got to asking myself, ‘what in the heck does this mean?’  So for the next few minutes I want to noodle around in that, mostly by way of my own reflections.  The words again are:  Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

Here’s my first thought:  we hear those words as pointing to the final judgment.  ‘For those of you who are ashamed of Jesus, there’s gonna come a day. . . ‘  There’s gonna come this moment when you get what you earned.  “God,” says St. Paul, “will not be mocked.” This is most certainly true, as we good Lutherans would say.

But it is not limited to the end time.  That’s where we miss the boat so often.  We tend to get the idea that nothing really happens until the final books are balanced.  But when we think only in those terms, we miss the daily reality of it.

And the daily reality of it is this:  “what goes around comes around.”

There’s a spiritual truth in there somewhere that says something like how we behave, how we treat others, the attitudes we cop have an energy of their own that goes out into the universe and does its work and then returns home to us.  It’s a bit of a mystery.  Some people call it ‘karma’, but I’m not sure what they mean by it.  I tend to associate it more with the old Beach Boys tune, “Good Vibrations”.  Or Donald Southerland in the movie “Kelly’s Heroes”—‘always with the negative waves, Moriarty.’

What goes around comes around.  There’s an energy out there in the universe which is determined by the way we live, does that work in the universe, and returns to roost with us.  Jesus says, “If you’re ashamed of me, that’s going to come right back on you.”

So, our vibrations matter.  Maybe we ought to sing with the Beach Boys, “I’m sending out good vibrations.”

And so the next question becomes, “What does it mean to be ashamed of Jesus?”

Well, it has to do with shame, doesn’t it?  To be ashamed of another has to do with my association with somebody who’s behavior is shameful in the eyes of the public, or even in your own eyes.  It really is to distance myself from this other; to be ashamed of him is to accord him no honor or authority.  To be ashamed of Jesus is to disown your association with him for fear of the cost of publicly acknowledging him; for fear of where he’s leading for you to follow.  To be ashamed of Jesus means more than simply hiding the fact that you’re a Christian.  It means dishonoring Jesus by giving him no account in your daily life among people.

And I believe that Jesus is either honored or dishonored by how we treat—and speak of—the most dishonored among us.  Think, for example, about how our society dishonors poor people, not only by the way we treat them, but especially by the way we talk about them as lazy and undeserving.  Anybody’s who’s ever bothered looking at statistics and hearing the stories of the poor know it isn’t true, but still we say it, we think it, and we continue to dishonor them by passing the myth on.  See?  When, in the name of our Lord who was himself poor, do we offer a challenge in those conversations?

I was sitting in the cockpit of Party Bill’s boat one Friday night, joining in happy hour with anybody who came by.  The conversation got around to ‘illegal aliens’ coming up here.  A couple of ‘em got loud and boisterous about ‘those people coming up here and stealing good American jobs’ and such as that—the usual stuff.  The problem with being me is that even in good times I’m thinking about Jesus, so finally say something:  ‘I can’t think in terms of governmental policy.  All I can see is a father trying to feed his family; or a family trying to survive.  I don’t much care about illegality; I care about those people.  I don’t mind sharing what I have with them.’  I of course, should have kept my mouth shut, and was roundly shouted down.  But there you go.  It seemed to me like I could not not say anything without denying my Lord.  The question for me was would I be too ashamed by the crowd’s reaction to speak out against their dishonoring of one of the ‘least of these’ among whom Jesus is present?

That’s why the author of the Letter of James goes off about the use of the tongue in today’s reading.  Because beyond everything else, is it our mouth which most powerfully shames or honors Jesus.  Matter of fact, if you‘ve been following the readings from James the last several weeks, this honoring or shaming of Jesus by how we treat others—especially the socially dishonored and shamed—is exactly what he’s talking about.

So we get this:  how you treat and speak about those who are the least, the last, the little, the lost—how you treat and speak about them is an energy that goes forth in the universe and does its work beyond this minute, and in some similar form or fashion is returned to you.  In some strange way, what you give is what you get.  If you treat others with dishonor, that’s coming back on your head.  If you’re ashamed of Jesus, guess what?  That’s coming back on you too.

But there’s another side to that, as well.  Because just like the ‘negative waves, Moriarty’ the good vibrations return to settle with you as well.  At least, that’s what I think, because what goes around comes around.  I don’t know how, but I believe it.  Oh, and Jesus says that’s the way it is.

And besides, I figure that when I stand in that final judgment before my God, given all the times that I have dishonored Christ, I’m gonna need all the friends I can muster interceding for me.  Calling out to the back of Jesus as he moves down the road, “Hey Lord, Keene’s been following you though he staggers and lurches and falls out of line like a drunk.  But he has treated us with dignity and respect.  He has honored us.”  And for an instant Jesus turns and throws a wink and says, ‘then you have honored me.’  And turns back to continue down the road.

Flesh and Spirit
John 6.56-69
8/23/09

It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.

I don’t know if anybody’s noticed, but I’ve lost about 40 pounds since I started working with you.  That probably seems odd, given how you’ve fed me in these trips.  It’s also odd from my side, ‘cause I never set out to do it.  As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even aware of it until it happened.  I just happened to step on the scale one day and—wowee—I’d fallen to a svelte 195; and since then another ten pounds.

I’ve been wondering about that.  What happened?

Well, first I became indifferent to food: I just had no preferences as to what I ate anymore.  Then it dawned on me that not only have I always had enough to eat, but I’ve also almost always had my choice of food, even that year while in seminary when Sue and I needed food stamps to help pay the bills.  It’s not that I don’t have preferences, of course.  But that those preferences have been so fully satisfied throughout my life that I don’t need to treat every meal as if it’s my last.  Like Jesus says, what goes in the mouth today gets flushed into the sewer tomorrow.

So my appetite became indifferent.  Somebody will also claim that it has to do with the metabolism change in the body as you age, but I’m not there, yet, right?

The other thing that I became aware of is that when you’re alone, eating is a nuisance.  At least it is for me; and when Sue’s at work I’m alone 5 days a week.  So I end up nibbling throughout the day—just enough to shut up the stomach screamers who are interfering with what I really want to do.  I find no enjoyment in eating alone.

But on the other side of that, I really cannot think of times when friends and family—and church—get together that we don’t eat; that we don’t ‘break bread’ together in some form or fashion.
So here’s my Big Revelation for the week:  when eaten alone, food is nothing more than meeting a physical necessity, like the 10 pills I take every night.  But when eaten together, the meal becomes a profound and spiritual human communion.  I am nurtured in my whole being beyond the mere physical.  The food around which we gather is not merely the physical necessity, but it points beyond itself to the greater—though more often hidden—activity of emotional and spiritual nurture as well.

The family meal, for example, is not merely for the purpose of gobbling up food as fast as you can—though if you have teenagers, that’s sure what it looks like.  But the meal is also the event where we learn to be a family together; we learn how we fit in and all these other things that have little to do with the food itself.  Indeed, from over the years I can remember family meal scenes, but not the food we were eating.  The food itself was only one part—and perhaps not even the most important part—of something greater going on.

It’s that thing beyond the food, that mysterious, almost hidden realm that I think Jesus is pointing to when he says, It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.

Let’s think about that for a minute, starting with the flesh is useless.  It’s important to note that Jesus doesn’t say the flesh is evil.  John’s gospel is all about the enfleshment of God in Jesus, and the enjoyment of the physical life:  “the word became flesh and lived among us”.  God took on the human flesh that was created by God in the image of God, if you remember the Genesis story.  And in Jesus God reveals what that looks like.  And the first thing Jesus does is change water into wine at a wedding reception, so the party could go on.

The deal is, though, that while ‘the flesh’ is an expression of our life, it is not the source of it:  It is the spirit that gives life.

Throughout this chapter the crowds have been chasing Jesus all over the countryside because he fed 5000 men and their families with two fish and five loaves of bread.  They come back the next day to see him do it again and he tells them, “You’re missing the point.  It ain’t about the dinner rolls, but about the spirit of the one providing them.  It ain’t about the menu, but about the people gathered around the hunger feast.”

I was invited to Sunday lunch with a family that lived out on a ranch.  The mom and two kids attended our church; the dad didn’t.  It was a chance to meet him.  Within about half an hour—before we even sat down to eat—I became aware of a fear that was so thick you could cut it with a knife.  It was there beneath the politeness; and I began to suspect what it was about when the 14-year-old boy would jump up and literally run to fulfill whatever command his father gave him.  Even before my boys turned 14 I knew that wasn’t normal behavior.

Of course it turned out that the father was bullying the whole family with his physical violence.  He went into rages and beat them all, though especially his wife.  So I’m asking the question:  what kind of spirit is at work around that food they eat?  Is it a source of life?  Or is the real meal terror and humiliation?

Because as ‘Paul’ notes in Ephesians, there are more than one spirit hanging around out there:  our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. We know—and often have to live with—the forces out there which work diametrically opposed to the ‘gospel of peace’ Paul proclaims and we long for.  There are spirits of death.

Just as there is a spirit who gives life, who is the source of life.

The Greek word for ‘spirit’ is the same as for breath, or air, or wind (also:  Hebrew:  ruach).  In the creation story in Genesis, Adam was just a lump of clay until God leaned down and breathed into him like a guy giving cpr.  Then, it says, Adam became a living being.    We don’t live ‘til we breathe, huh?  The breath of life.  And God the spirit, the breath of life has continued to breathe it into us each day of our lives.  This is the ‘God in whom we live and move and have our being,’ according to Paul.  And if you think of the God who has breathed you into being and continues your breath each day you have lived through joys and sorrows and sins and growth and change, why then you begin to think about the faithfulness of God’s love.  And then you look at Jesus and discover it’s not about the dinner rolls but about the people gathered together in the feast.

And I start thinking about what it might be like for an orphan—who has never known a family dinner—who suddenly finds a place at the table.

Okay, enough of the spirit talk; let’s do a couple of minutes in reality.  As I mentioned last week, the ELCA churchwide assembly was held in Minneapolis over the week.  A lot of business was done, but the part with the most publicity will be the sexuality statement and policy changes.  The assembly decided to adopt the recommended sexuality statement, and as well to change policies to allow the rostering of partnered homosexual pastors to be left to the discretion of the local synod and congregations.

Now I mention this fully aware of the painful fight you guys had a few years back over it, and, oh yeah, the fight about the same thing I had that put me on disability.  So it’s probably a tender spot.  But what you’re afraid to talk about holds you under its power, which is fear.  So let me ‘boldly go where no man has gone before.’

I’m pleased with how the decision came out.  I think it’s the right thing to do, and I’ve taken a part in trying to make it happen.  I imagine the gay friends I spent four years with over at Grace are having a huge celebration today.  I’m thinking like orphans finally admitted to the table.

So I’m happy about that.  But more importantly, I’m in awe of what we’ve accomplished as the ELCA in handling the issue.  As you know, the other denominations are being ravaged by the same questions, and generally the arguments have developed into power plays of winners/losers.  The stuff is rooted in the convictions of my rightness:  I’m right, you’re wrong.

As a church, we took a different path, what I think is a path of humility:  we are not of one mind about this, and neither ‘side’ can claim the absolute will of God.  The question is, can we continue to live together in Christ in spite of the profound differences between us?  That was the first decision made by the assembly as they moved into the sexuality discussions:  can we still gather at the table together when one side believes that what the other side believes is in fact immoral?  And are we committed to learning how to do that?  That was the first vote taken, and it passed by 75%.

But this humility is the way of the cross.  And it’s a strange thing to our eyes.  When Jesus talks about the son of man ascending, he is talking about his crucifixion, not the glorious conquering Christ, but the humble servant.

So I’m thinking that you might feel one way about dinner rolls, and I might feel another way about them, but that doesn’t keep us from enjoying the meal together, and welcoming others to join us.

Chewing on Jesus
John 6.51-58
8/16/09

Things got dicey at the pastors’ lectionary study this week when it came around to discussing the gospel lesson.  First, there was all this scholarly harumphing over whether or not it’s a eucharistic text—a communion text.  Not being a liturgical guy myself, I found the discussion boring, so tossed in my own harrumph, ‘Who cares?  When people hear the text that’s what comes to mind.”

More interesting was the conversation around how offensive Jesus’s words are:  “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood.”  I offered an excursus on how the author of John is always poking fun at the literalists, from Nicodemus wondering about climbing back into womb to be born again to all the other encounters like that.  Jesus just takes their thinking to its logical extreme.  And I think he’s laughing when he does it.

Then somebody spent way too long recalling the history and meaning of eating sacrifices, that is that they were ‘ingesting the divinity.’  So I went and got a donut.  Then I opined that animal sacrifices were rooted in the practices of nomadic hospitality, where in the harsh wilderness environment demands it for survival.

Then we went off on cannibalism for awhile.

My pal, Spaghetti Jim called us back to the text with the observation that the words translated ‘eating’ are really different words in Greek.  The ‘eating’ referred to before Jesus starts talking is the polite eating we do, whereas the ‘eating’ Jesus talks about is more like a pig at a trough, a glutton bone and finger-licker dribbling and slurping and chewing.  Marlin the Wizard didn’t think it was a big deal, but I had an opinion anyway:  “Aha!  Chewing on Jesus!  That’s what it’s all about.  And, by the way, that’s exactly what we’re doing here.  Now, anybody here wanna describe what you’re gonna do with the whole thing about ‘eternal life’?”

I’m glad I’m not preaching on this text today.  That doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore it.  Rather, I want to use a couple of central thoughts to talk about our life as a church, as the Body of Christ.  They are:  Jesus is the living bread of God from heaven, and he comes to bring life.

Now, your ‘mission identity’ is certainly an expression of that:  “Blessed by God, we welcome, feed, and love (like Jesus).”  And the new banner is a beautiful visual of it.

When I think about it, it’s all incarnational—from the words Jesus speaks to you as a congregation studying scripture and discussing and praying about it to your wordcrafters developing it to your artists making it visibly tangible; and then to the way it gets lived out in your life.

When I first got here last year it took me about a month to realize that you hadn’t spoken the truth about yourselves in the documents I first read.  They indicated that your ha nothing going in social ministry, and when I got here I saw all sorts of things going, from quilt-making to prisoner visiting to providing for college students to the Fair Exchange fair to Some Other place, to other stuff I can’t recall right now.

So I’m thinking, why is that?  Why can they not recognize that among themselves?  Well of course first there’s that old Lutheran terror of actually seeing and talking about ‘good works’; better just to keep moaning’ about what sinners we are, lest anybody be happy about doing good things.

And then sometimes it becomes such a part of the way of life that you can’t see for yourself what’s going on; if you remember Mt. 25, the sheep ask “Lord, when did we care for you?”  But because we don’t see it, we tend to underestimate its importance.  We miss the reality that what we do brings life to people.  We don’t realize how urgent our work is for folks in need.

So it seems like a good day to think about that a minute because the annual fund raising effort for Some Other Place is coming up.

Back in my heyday I helped develop a community assistance ministry in the northwest suburbs of Houston.  We took it from a little store-front office to the purchase of land and the construction of its building.  The last figure I recall was that 5,000 families had been assisted in the previous year.  While I worked with them, I learned that I don’t have the gifts to work directly with people who are poor or have fallen on hard times.  I can’t think in terms of the programs necessary to meet their needs, even something as simple as haircuts for folks going on a job interview.  But I did have the ability to organize and shape the policies of the board of trustees, those reps from the 25 churches teamed to provide the ministry.  And together we made it possible for a brilliant executive director to do that.

I mention that because our efforts in these areas are so much more effective when we undertake them together.  I learned some things while doing that work.  I learned that it is one thing to talk about ‘the poor’ as a political generality, and quite another to sit with the mother of three little ones whose father has taken off on them; think what you will about the unemployed, but when a middle-aged father of a solid family seeks help paying his electric bill after he’s been cut from his corporate management position it breaks your heart.  I’ve always admired the folks who do this work; and I thank God for them.

The other thing I learned is that when people are most in need, that’s when resources are also the least available.  I know without even looking at statistics that the demands are skyrocketing, even while there resources—from government grants to assistance from local businesses to support from congregations, decline.

So what I’m sayin’ is take part in the Some Other Place extravaganza—and blow a lot of money to make it happen; to ‘feed’, as you so nicely put it on your banner.

Besides, it’s a great way to practice the skill of welcoming, don’t you think?  Here’s what I’m thinking:  we are people with charitable hearts—we give to help others, and that’s a good thing.

But I don’t think we’re quite as good at welcoming the recipients of our charity.  How do we overcome the walls that divide us for each other?  Well, eating together is about the best and most biblical way to do that.  So there you go:  in one swell foop you are incarnating the Jesus life you claim and the banner you follow.

And now, a comment on another current event.  As you may know, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly begins tomorrow in Minneapolis.  This is the business session of the whole ELCA—4.5 million, 11,000 congregations, 15,000 clergy—that happens every two years.  That’s where policy decisions are made, among other things.

One of the major decisions being made this year is that of rostering gay clergy who are in monogamous relationships.  The recommendation from the study task force is that it be left to the discretion of the local synod as they address the needs of their mission.

This is a terrifically difficult decision for the church—for all of us as the Body of Christ.  I suspect that no matter how the decisions come out there will be those who are angry, so we’re gonna hear a lot of yelling.  I suspect we’ll also lose congregations one way or the other.  It will also be interesting to see how the ‘main stream media’ handles it, since they are notoriously inexpert at reporting church decisions.  You’re better off checking the ELCA website for what’s going on.

So I got to thinking about this:  what—if by some bizarre hideous twist the decision came out differently than God and I agree it should be—would I do?  And that took me to this question:  under these circumstances, what does it look like to love like Jesus?

I dunno.  The idea that the church might come to a different decision than God and I has never entered my realm of possibilities.  So I guess I’ll cross that bridge if I have to.  I might be pretty darn angry about it.  But I’m thinking I probably would not stop eating the Lord’s meal and welcoming somehow those who are so completely dumb.

And it is there we will find our reconciliation.  Because eating with and welcoming one another in Christ is the holy work of God.

Elijah’s Angels
1 Kings 19.4-8
8/9/09

He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

I’ve been caught all week by those words he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights.  In fact, I’ve been caught by the whole story of Elijah under the broom tree and how it was lived out around me.

A brief synopsis of how Elijah came to be there.  He was there following that famous confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel.  That’s where God refused to receive the Baalites sacrifice, but did receive Elijah’s.  So Elijah slaughtered those 500 prophets.  Those guys were Queen Jezebel’s men, and she was hacked and told Elijah she he was gonna be killed.  So Elijah took off and we find him here—alone, exhausted, and afraid: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”

So I’m thinking about those times in our lives when we find ourselves under Elijah’s broom tree—alone, exhausted, afraid, and powerless before the forces arranged against us.  And I don’t mean merely the religious, political, and economic forces ‘out there’, but as well as all the mortality forces in our lives, too.  Those times when we also lament like Elijah, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”

My dear old friend, Don Carlson, who is the Assistant to the Bishop for the call process among other things, called me from the hospital emergency room Monday night because out walking by his house he’d collapsed and been taken there by ambulance.  Of course, my demon-possessed cell phone didn’t feel like ringing, so I didn’t get the message until the next morning.  Sue and I hustled down to see him first thing, and learned he’d thrown a clot that landed in his pulmonary artery.

So I sent out a note about it telling my pals and commented, “What a dope.  That’s what you get for exercising.”  At least, when I’m laying in my death bed, I’ll know why.  Don’ll be there with a puzzled look:  “But I did everything right!”  Which is true: it’s part of the integrity of his faith that he takes good care of his body.  Besides, his dad’s still alive at 93, even if he’s not always tuned to the same station as the rest of us.

I haven’t gone to the hospital since, because like me, he’s such a raging introvert the last thing he wants is visitors.  But when he’s ready, I’m gonna ask him, “Is this your first taste of The Dread?”

The Dread is what I call the experience of your body telling you in no uncertain terms that your days are numbered.  You’re out for a casual stroll in the cool of the evening and you throw a clot.  Or—in my case—you go in for your annual and the cardiologist announces it’s time for bypass surgery.  All of a sudden you’re tasting your own death, and you know this in a painfully existential way:  I am no better than my ancestors.  My days are comin’ to an end.

The poet t.s. eliot puts it:  “I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker; and, in short, I was afraid.”  That’s what I call The Dread.

So it is that when the Jezebels come announcing our death we find our own selves under that tree with Elijah.  You gotta figure out what it means to live with the eternal Footman’s snicker.

But The Dread isn’t only about death.  It is also about when things are overwhelming and the forces against you are beyond your control.

Sue and I hustled over to Austin Friday afternoon; got back yesterday afternoon.  It was a pleasant trip except for the Austin traffic; I’m pretty sure we inched our way through Dante’s 4th level of hell before arriving at our destination.  The reason for the trip was to a attend a party for my friend Ray Pickett.  You might remember him from teaching here last year.  He’s since moved to Chicago to become the NT Prof at LSTC.  He got married a few weeks back in L.A., and he and his bride were blasting through Austin, so we all had a chance to meet them.

Ray’s a fine, gentle, and fun guy with a brilliant mind.  But his first marriage—which lasted 25 years—was a catastrophe; as if a demon of chaos had taken control.  And of course he still has to deal with the ongoing life of that in his children.  He says, “Things over which I have no control just keep beating me down.  They exhaust me.”

See?  Ray and Elijah sitting under the broom tree:  “It is enough, O Lord.”

But I’m thinking about the angel of the Lord, the one who brings the food to sustain the life.

And here’s what I’ve been thinking:  this week, “I are the angel of the Lord”.

I was hooked into the thought when Ray commented on the phone yesterday, “Thanks for coming so far for just the couple of hours we had.  It really meant a lot.”  I was disappointed that getting stuck in traffic hell had taken out our private meal together, so that the only kind of time we had were those private minutes you can grab at a gathering of 25 folks.  But like I told Sue, with Ray you gotta expect a certain amount of chaos.

Besides, the purpose of the party was to ‘sanctify’ as it were, their new marriage.  To put at ease the question of newly remarried couples, “How will we be received?”  So I went in order to provide a little cake for my friend Elijah, as it were.  Just a bit of our presence to strengthen them in our well wishes.  And friendship, each in our own particular way.

Same thing’s true with Don.  I am an angel in both my presence and my absence and my experience of The Dread.  So there I am—a little morsel of pattycake bread  What an angel of a guy am I!

And actually, I’m real intentional about doing that.

Because I, too, have sat under the broom tree.  I have lived The Dread.  I’ve been collapsed into the isolation and helplessness and rage and my own interior chaos.  I’ve known the terrified craziness of that broom tree moment at so many times along the way.

And I have been visited by angels; even, perhaps, angels unaware of themselves providing just enough bread for the next stage of the journey.  Indeed, still the angels visit me when I am caught by The Dread; their presence just enough to keep my going for another day, maybe a week.

That’s why I’m an angel when it’s my turn.

It is, apparently, how God designed the system.  If your days are days of The Dread and the only prayer of your heart is a mournful kyrie, God’s angels come to you, not with the final victory, but just enough food for the days to come.

And if it’s your turn to be an angel, do not ever underestimate the nourishment your presence can bring to a weary and frightened soul.
Not the whole feast, perhaps, but that morsel of God’s bread enough for another step.

I’m pretty sure this is what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the bread of life.”

The angel came to Elijah and left him a couple of pattycakes from the Lord, and that provided enough strength for Elijah to go the forty days and nights through the wilderness to Mt. Horeb.

Where he would crawl into a cave. . .and meet God.

Ordination of Aaron Richter
Bethlehem, Beaumont
8/2/09

Aaron and Sarah; Chris and Erma and Julie; Bishop Rinehart; and the rest of you saints and sinners gathered here today:  grace to you and peace. . . .

I’m delighted and honored to be doing this today.  I’ve preached in a lot of wondrous and bizarre situations, but never before at an ordination.  In my 30 years nobody from any of my congregations went to seminary, though a lot of them—especially teens—thought about it.  But then their parents would say, “If Keene is what it means to be a pastor, there ain’t no way I want you doing it.”  And that was in the days before I started sporting a pony tail.

So this is a new and delightful challenge for me.  It’s made a bit more intense because the bishop’s here.  Not because he’s the ‘almighty bishop’, but because he’s an excellent preacher.  Especially if the length of a sermon is any mark of excellence:  he preaches long—but good, if you can stay awake.

I’ve thought about what’s worth saying, and then how to say it.  I decided on the obvious:  what does it mean to be ordained?  Or:  ‘ordination:  now that I got it, what do I do with it?’  It’s the same approach I used when talking to my sons about the birds and the bees, though of course a different topic.

I thought of doing it by way of the old preachers’ model of three points and a poem.  But after going to bed last night I realized I didn’t like, so I dropped the poem and added a fourth point.  I want to do it in the context of this line from St. Paul:

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.

The first point is:  ordination is the party God’s people throw when we see God’s word taking on flesh among us.  Think about it:  in the thirty-five hundred year history of our faith God has always created priests and prophets from among the people to bring God’ presence to the people, to keep God’s eye out on the people.  To bring comfort in times of tragedy and misery; to mess with their minds in times of abundance and ease; a rod and a staff to whack ‘em back when they go chasing off into the brambles of materialistic anxieties or indifference bred by the ‘good life’ or idolatry.

3500 hundred years of God’s love and care for her children is revealed in the faces of priests and prophets.  And now, beginning with today, in you.  So on behalf of the other 16,000 pastors of the ELCA I say, welcome, rookies, to the big leagues.  This is a game like no other in town.  And if you last, you will come to know the fullness of a life with God that you can’t even imagine today—nor do you want to.

So we’re having this party celebrating God’s newest incarnation among us, and you start thinking, “Well, how odd is that?  How did this come to be?”  And it’s here that we begin to encounter the mysterious power of God.

First, in that seed that was implanted in your soul, or perhaps your dna, that inclines you this way from the inside.  And that seed is tended to and nurtured and helped to grow.  And this happens in the face of God’s love shown first by your family.  This is our fundamental experience of the love of God.  The seed blossomed in you because it, like you, was loved into life.  The call to service was witnessed when they changed your diapers.  So we’re here to say to them that all the crap they put up with was worth it.

And of course the spiritual work of your family is expanded by the faith community—the church—that raised you, and this is another mystery of God’s power.  There were all these ordinary sinners who told you stories about Jesus when you were a child, made you learn your catechism and took you seriously as you wrestled with the big questions of faith.  And week after week through the years they did their worship and formed the unknown song of your soul, the deepest prayers of your heart.  And we’re delighted to see the outcome.

And then there’s this:  when I was in seminary we followed the quarter system of three ten-week study periods.  The study periods were very intense, and after the end of each one, when the final papers had been written and the exams taken, we threw a big ol’ party with cheap wine and beer and pizza.  We did it of course to decompress and celebrate the end.  And so we also party today with you, acknowledging the enormously hard—and expensive—work both of you have done in order to prepare yourselves for this service.  So at this end of the term party we also note that from this day forward you will be hosting the parties God’s people throw every Sunday when we see God’s word taking on flesh among us.

That was the first point.  Here’s the second:  ordination means that more people will talk about you behind your backs than you ever dreamed possible.  In fact, people you don’t know—and who don’t know you—will nonetheless have an opinion about you:  “That preacher.”  And about half the time you’ll be amazed at what you said and did.

I called my friend, Dr. Duane Larson who’s president at the seminary and said, “Gimme something juicy about this guy.  Something I can embarrass him with.”

That’s why I’ve found it helpful to remember the writer Tom Pynchon’s admonition:  “Just ‘cause you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

Oh, Duane said,   “I got nothing.  He’s a decent, well-rounded good guy who’ll be a fine pastor.”  But don’t worry:  somebody will make something up sooner or later.

They’re gonna talk about you because you are carrying the mantle of the public office of the ministry of the church.  In a sense, this ordination is a parallel of Jesus’ baptism, though instead of the voice of God, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America says “This is our beloved pastor.  Listen to him.”  You speak not for yourself.  You speak for the witness of the church.  You vow your obedience to the church’s witness, not your own private revelations.

This is especially useful to remember when you’re called to preach things you personally haven’t been able to believe, yet.  It’s also useful to remember when you think you know better than the whole church.

You’ll speak, and they’ll listen ‘cause the church says you’re a pastor.  And they’ll watch you.  Even when they’re busy being friendly, they’ll watch you.  They’ll look for the integrity of the word that you preach with the life that you lead.  They’ll look not for perfection—well, some of ‘em will—but for consistency, for faithfulness, for honesty.  What they are looking for is your ability to trust the God your are preaching; and what you consider your ‘personal life’  of family issues like raising kids or your own growth and change are fair game.  Are you trustworthy in your trust of God?  And are you comfortable in the knowledge of your own buffoonery, ‘cause it’s going to be lived out there in front of everyone.

Ordination means that, like King David, you’ll be dancing naked before them all in the front of the ark of the covenant.  Try to keep your alb on.

And while we’re swimming in the public fish bowl of the office of ordained ministry we have to acknowledge that the whole family gets pulled into it.  Sarah, from today on you’ll be known to some degree as ‘the preacher’s wife’ or ‘the pastor’s spouse.’  Those phrases, as you know, carry baggage.

When we were just out of seminary Sue went to her first meeting of the ‘Ladies Aid’ society in that little rural church.  The Ladies Aid was first formed in 1920 and still attended by its charter members.  They asked the young new pastor’s wife to pray.  “No,”: she said, “I don’t do that public stuff.”  Then they demanded a Bible verse because that was required of everybody when they took roll.  “Jesus wept,” she said.  “It was the only thing I could come up with,” she told me later.

That sort of describes her style.  Sarah, you’ll be developing your own.   And should you have children, you will give birth to that notorious incarnation known as ‘preacher’s kids.’

As a family you’ll experience the love and concern and respect of the congregation in ways that few other families know.  And at the same time you’ll need to learn how to protect the integrity of your family from incursions by the congregation.  Because no matter how loving the Body of Christ is as a whole, there are always a few lunatics that don’t have any sense of proper boundaries.

Ordination means you hold a public office of the church, for which you are accountable to the whole Body of Christ.

The third point is:  ordination means that you will be engaging power, or I should say, powers.  With ordination comes a certain degree of authority.  It is, initially, the authority of the preaching and teaching office.  You have that authority because people trust the church, not because they trust you.  They do not trust you until you prove yourself trustworthy, until you’ve walked through your own crises faithfully and reliantly.  When you’ve proven your mettle, then they will trust you as a leader.

It’s important to be aware of this difference.  Because when you’ve pulled off a success—when you’ve led the church into a new program or carried out a great project—that happens because they’ve trusted you enough to follow you.  They have personally found you trustworthy.  Treasure that, and respect it as holy.  For they are trusting Jesus by following you.  But don’t mistake yourself for Jesus.

Ordination means that you’ll be engaging other powers as well.  I assume you’ve studied them in seminary.  These are human relationships, especially human systems—be they of families or political or economic or religious—which have been perverted from their God-given intention of serving the human community to the demonic lust for domination; from abusive relationships in families to the greedy manipulation of Wall St; from the public humiliation of the poor to the militarism of our whole society, and on with the list we can go.  It’s what Walter Wink referred to as ‘the domination system’:  those powers that seek not to serve, but to control and dominate through intimidation, and threat, and fear, and violence, if necessary.

These powers are sitting out there Sunday morning in the faces of their victims and their clients and even those enthralled by their self-serving rhetoric.

So you’ll try to say something about the gospel of Jesus to them; you’ll try to say that his holy spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, understanding, justice, and gentleness.  And, yes, a lot of folks will appreciate that, which will cheer you on.  But you’ll also be amazed when the powers react negatively to what you say about Jesus.  It’s breath-taking bedazzlement.  Then it’s good to remember what Martin Luther said about preaching:  “You throw a stick at a pack of dogs and the one that yelps is the one that got hit.”

And besides, half the time you won’t believe it yourself, since you are caught in the same old swamp of powers, and wonder what use you could possibly be.  And half the time you’ll be hitting yourself with the stick.  And the remaining time you’ll sit back in awe and wonder at the power of the word made flesh.  ‘Cause you’ll be seeing miracles among the people you serve, because the Holy Spirit’s alive and well among them, too.

Ordination empowers you by the church to engage these powers.  (But you better not try to do it alone.  That’s why we call it the Body of Christ.)

The fourth point is:  ordination means that you’ll be invited—and expected—to be present at the holiest times of people’s lives:  at the creation of a new family through marriage; at the birth of a child; you’ll be called on when people are in pain and afraid at the hospital; when people are suffering the miserable consequences of their own sin from marriages collapsing to people going to jail; you’ll be expected when people die, and occasionally invited to walk with someone through their terminal sickness.  You’ll be called to be present in the holiest moments of human lives, both in their breathtaking magnificence and their darkest horrors and just plain oddity; weird stuff.

And half the time your gonna run into situations where you say, “Gee, they didn’t teach me this in seminary” (or, “I must have slept through that class”) and invent something on the spot.  And the other half of the time you’re wondering what in the world you’re doing here.  You don’t feel like you have anything to offer; just hanging around, as it were.  You spend a lot of time just being asked to hang around.  And to be honest, it’s uncomfortable to stand there and not have anything to say.  Maybe read a verse; maybe say a faltering prayer.

But it isn’t about you.  It’s about Jesus.  Somebody wants the assurance of the presence of God.  And you’re it; you’re the face of Christ—the Body of Christ—at this moment.  Not because you’re a nice guy—which you are; and not because you have such a grand education—which you do.  Not even because you know the Lutheran Confessions—which you’d better.  But because on this day God has made a promise to be with his people, and so sends you to them.

On this day you get the uniform of the diplomat:  we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.

God has chosen you for this holy work; to that the whole Body of Christ bears witness today. He will not abandon you.  His spirit will accompany and lead you.

Two Kinds of Security
Ex. 16.2-4, 9-15/John 6.24-35
8/2/09

There are two kinds of security in which we can live:  there is the security of bread, let’s say, a material security; and there is the security of faith, let’s say, the security of Christ.  That’s what the gospel reading is about today; and also the Exodus episode over food in the wilderness.  If I had an hour I could deal with both stories.  As it is, I’m going to be hard pressed to deal with just the gospel.

But in some ways it’s the clearer of the two, though, of course, nothing in John ever seems that clear.  Because the people show up where Jesus is, and he greets them with these mysterious words:  “You are looking for me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” It’s helpful to know that this takes place immediately after he feeds the 5,000 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.

Okay, that’s cool.  But what’s with this “signs” business: “You are looking for me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves”?  And then the immediate warning, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you”?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to catch at least one part of this.  We all know that our lives are not measured by how much “stuff” we have.  We can cluck our tongues with the best of them over those folks who spend their lives accumulating, who measure their lives in terms of their material and/or financial wealth.  I had to give up on Jimmy Buffet’s book, A Pirate Looks at 50, because I just couldn’t relate to a guy who is buying $10 million planes and $1 million boats while he suffers through a mid-life crisis.  See, we know the negative side of what Jesus is saying, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

We know what we shouldn’t do.  It’s the other side which is problematic:  if we’re not to work for the food that perishes, what are we to work for?  Same question they asked Jesus:  “What must we do to perform the works of God?”

And another one of those mystery answers John likes to put in the mouth of Jesus:  “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” Well, there you go:  it just doesn’t seem like anything is answered here.  Or, rather, that anything is different than what we already do:  that is, go ahead and work for the food that perishes, but remember to believe in Jesus.

That’s when they ask him for a sign.  Because they want him to prove himself:  “Prove that we should believe in you.”  What cracks me up about this is that he’s already shown them the sign when he fed the 5,000.  And he’s already pointed out that they missed it.  And they prove that they missed it by asking him for a sign.  Ha!

Then they recall the story about Moses feeding the people in the wilderness which we’ve heard, and then Jesus corrects them:  “It wasn’t Moses who fed them, but it is my Father who gives you true bread from heaven.”

It’s helpful to know here that when the gospel of John was written, the majority of the people lived off of the handouts some benefactor; off the handouts of rich people.  It was the way the society was structured:  your food and such really depended upon some rich guy throwing a feast for the town, and such as that.  And the rich people were, in fact, under obligation to do that, a kind of noblesse oblige.

So that what happens in this conversation with Jesus is that Moses is seen as the benefactor of those folks in the wilderness.  That is, Moses is seen as the one who fed them.  They mistake Moses for God.  And they come to Jesus looking to see him as the same kind of benefactor, as one who would guarantee their food and such.  Under this system, you see, your material security–such as it was–was taken care of by the benefactor.

So long, of course, as you gave him your allegiance.  So long as you gave him your life.  It’s pointed at most vividly in the Exodus story when the people are whining:  “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread.” See, you know what the deal was in Egypt:  they were slaves.  But at least they didn’t have to worry about where the next meal was coming from.  By golly, they were secure slaves.

And now it begins to meddle in our lives today, chucking questions at us:  what are you working for?  You get up in the morning and you do something during the day, and then you go to sleep, and then you get up the next morning.  And this keeps going until your time runs out and you die.  So that the question is, what are you doing with this time?  Quite literally, how are you spending your life?

Then it burrows a little deeper with who is your benefactor?  Who’s demanding your life in exchange for the promise of food, for security?  The Bible’s pretty clear that there’s a danger of losing our lives in the pursuit for security and comfort.  It’s laid out today in the Exodus story:  the people were called into the freedom of God’s future, which meant that they only had God to trust for their daily bread; or they could live in the security of slavery.  You may recall, too, that the devil tempted Jesus with the same thing:  turn these stones into bread.  And there is the question, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” Material security comes with the price of giving your whole life to your benefactor, whomever in this world you think that benefactor is.

And then it comes to the ultimate question:  who do you trust?  What do you trust?  It’s one thing to say we shouldn’t be materialists.  It’s quite another to trust that today’s bread (and tomorrow’s) comes from God alone.  It’s one thing to say we shouldn’t be materialists, and quite another to put 10% of our earnings in the offering plates.  See?

But it’s even more than that:  “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life. . . .Very truly I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.”

Here’s what we need to see:  there are two realities operating in the world.  There is a materialistic reality which says all that life is about is building your material security to get through it.  You work, you keep your  benefactor happy, you squirrel away a few shekels so maybe your can retire early (or even on time) and live in ease, if not luxury.  When you days come to an end you can say, “I had a pretty good life.  I did some things I wanted to do.  I was pretty comfortable, and I didn’t suffer a whole lot.”  And Jesus will receive you warmly and welcome you as one of his beloved children.

But there’s another reality operating behind this material one; a reality of which this material one is only a sign, as Jesus puts it.  It’s a spiritual reality; as my friend, Lynette put it, the tapestry which God is weaving; or, alluding to Shakespeare, the divine play in which we all have our parts.

In this reality our security is not based on the material, but on faith.  And for this reality we are not called to be comfortable, but to spend everything for our part in it.  To understand everything that we are and do as in the service of God and God’s creation.   There’s a chance we’ll lose.  We will be giving things away, no question about that.  There’s a chance we’ll suffer.  And there will be plenty of times when we are afraid and anxious—because living by this kind of faith is no easy thing; in fact, aren’t we rather  ambiguous when it comes to the choice?—so that, like the Israelites there will be plenty of times when we wish that we were back in the old slavish security of Egypt.

And when our days come to an end we’ll look back and say, “I had some pretty good times.  I did some things I wanted to.  And I could have done some other things I wanted to, had I not made this faith commitment to play my role.  But you know what, I made a difference.  The world is different—it is better—because I lived.”

And as we are welcomed to heaven, there’ll be this great crowd of other folks celebrating the same victory.  “Gosh, remember when. . .?”  “Yeah, shoot, I thought we were sunk.”  And on it will go with the high 5’s, while the children wonder what’s going on, what they missed.  That’s why Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Not because we no longer need food and water, but because these material things will matter so much less:  our fulfillment, our meaning, will come from doing the work of Christ, from playing the roles God has created us for.

And in the meantime we pray, “Give us today our daily bread,” understanding with Luther what is meant by daily bread:  “Daily bread includes everything needed for this life, such as food and clothing, home and property, work and income, a devoted family, an orderly community, good government, favorable weather, peace and health, a good name, and true friends and neighbors.”  These all come from the gracious hand of God.

On Grace

7/26/09

(John 6.1-21)

Today is the first of five consecutive Sundays when the gospel reading comes from the 6^th chapter of John.  It’s a whole chapter on the “bread of life”.  That’s a real cool topic—the bread of life.  But not for five weeks in a row.  I may be a gifted preacher, but I sure can’t pull that off.  Nor do I want to.

That’s why a couple of weeks back I invited y’all to come up with topics you’d like to hear a sermon about.  I never know quite what to expect when I do stuff like that, but the two requests I got caught me off guard.  Both of them asked, “What is grace?”   With one specifying, “What is cheap grace?”  I don’t know what I was anticipating, but it wasn’t that.

I can’t say I was initially thrilled with the topic.  I was thinking, “Dude!  That’s what I preach about every Sunday.  Every sermon I preach is rooted—somehow—in the grace of God.”

That’s the problem with trying to define ‘grace’ as some kind of abstract concept.  Grace isn’t conceptual, but existential—a living reality.  That’s why it takes the whole Bible to tell the story, and people like me to continue it into our days.  Grace ain’t a bumper sticker, you know.  The whole thing may indeed boil down to “God is love”, but it’s the nature of that love that we need to apprehend.  The question is, “What is this love that God is?”  That’s why we as the Body of Christ do our Bible work.

So I was thinking about these things, and was caught with the idea that it might be fun to try to address the general topic of grace.  After all, I can guarantee that at least two people will be interested—if they’re here.  And also with the caveat that there are more my own personal reflections on it than any ‘doctrinal’ positions, so take that for what it’s worth.

Let me start with this observation:  grace is a verb.  I used to drive my confirmation students crazy by telling them ‘God is a verb.’  It’s the same thing with grace.  In fact, I would say grace is the activity of God.  God loves; God graces.  Grace is the presence of God’s activity.

Now back in  the days of medieval Europe, in the days of old when nights were bold, there were also theologians like Thomas Aquinas thinking and writing and debating about grace as if it were some kind of thing that God gave the recipient, like, ”Here, buddy, have a cigar.”  See?  And then there were discussions about the types of cigars, and how do I get one?

Now that language might have back in the days of old when knights were bold, but Martin Luther later called them out on it.  Grace was not the gift of divine cigars, but the active presence of God in our life.  Or let’s out it another way:  grace is the activity of God that creates our lives in the beginning and re-births them every day.  So the theologian Paul Tillich talked about the “Ground of Our Being”; and St. Paul talks about God as “the one in whom we live and  move and have our being.”

In short:  “How do I know if I got ‘grace’?”  ‘Cause you’re standing here.  You woke u this morning.  And you have a memory of a life.  That’s the bottom line:  you’ve been graced by being alive.  Grace is this life force the activity of God

But wait!  There’s more.  ‘Cause then you have to ask about the nature of this grace, the nature of this life force.  After all, the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest is also a claim about the nature of some life force.  Martin Luther once said that if it weren’t for Jesus, God and the devil would look a lot alike.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. . .” we say at the beginning of worship.  At communion:  “The body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ strengthen you and keep you in his grace.”

What if we heard it like this:  may you live in the life force in which Jesus lived.  May his force be with you.

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God and the word became flesh and dwelt within us, and we beheld his glory, full of grace and truth.”

Jesus reveals God.  His life, teachings, and death reveal the way this life force operates in the world.  He graces the world in a particular way as the activity of God.  We all know, if you want to see God, you look at Jesus.  Jesus is the human image of God.  He’s how you live when you’re graced by God.  The grace that God works in our lives is this grace.

Now, you think about that—about Jesus’ teachings and his life and especially his death; you think about that as expressions of God’s grace, and you begin to wonder.  In the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” the Jew Tevye tells God, “If this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them.”

But there it is.  The grace of God is revealed not in magnificent palaces or conquering armies or corporate profitability but among and on behalf of the poor and powerless and outcast and alien.  God’s grace force flow for those who are neglected and oppressed and abused and starved by human forces beyond their control.  So that brings a pause, because so often it brings you to odds against prevailing social values, and sometimes even within your own self.

In Lutheran lingo, this kind of suffering grace is called ‘the theology of the cross.  It comes from Jesus’ words, “Whoever would be my disciple must deny himself and take up my cross and follow me.” And, “Whoever would save their lives will lose it, and whoever loses their life will save it.” It comes from Jesus command that we be servants—indeed, slaves—of one another, in seeing to the well-being of the other.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ—this life force in which we live—then, is the experience of being loved—and loving others; it is the knowledge of being forgiven—and forgiving others; and it is the command to give our lives away in service to others.  The suffering grace of God is the loving, forgiving, and serving taught and shown by Jesus.  This grace of God was not free:  it cost Jesus his life.

It’s at this point that the idea of ‘cheap grace’ pops up.

The phrase was coined by a Lutheran pastor and theologian in Germany during the 2^nd world war.  The churches in Germany—both Lutheran and Catholic—had also gotten caught up in the National Socialist Movement—the Nazis, and were supportive of the whole thing, flying Nazi Swastikas in their sanctuary and doing salutes to the fuhrer before the services.  The churches—which could have stopped Hitler, were instead taken in by him.

Not everybody, of course,  There came to be a small group of clergy and theologians who came to be called the ‘confessing church,’ and issued a statement called the Barmen Declaration disavowing the church’s idolatry of Hitler, declaring their allegiance to Jesus alone.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of their leading thinkers.  His allegiance to Jesus led him to join the plot to assassinate Hitler as the only morally responsible action he could take, in order to save others.  The plot failed, and Bonhoeffer was arrested.  He was executed just a couple of weeks before the end of the war, when Hitler knew it was all over, but wanted these guys, especially, dead.  They hung him on a meat hook with a piano wire around his neck.

He wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship in which he talks about cheap grace:  cheap grace is the thought that God loves me and forgives me and nothing further is required of me.  Cheap grace is the delusion that the universe exists to make me comfortable.  Cheap grace thinks ‘I owe nothing for my life, ‘cause Jesus did it all.’  Cheap grace is, in short, claiming the comfort of Jesus and ignoring the Lordship of Christ over the rest of my life.

It’s ‘cheap’ grace because it costs nothing—neither of me nor God.  It’s cheap because costing nothing it’s worthless.  Oh, yeah, and because there’s no such thing as cheap grace.  There’s only this lie we tell ourselves that we owe nothing in return for our lives.  We expect God to love us, while we despise others.  We claim God’s forgiveness while we refuse to forgive our neighbor.  We thank God for our many material blessings while ignoring—stepping over the hungry brother at our doorstep.  But there’s no such thing as cheap grace, only human pretense driven by self-interest.

But there is such a real thing as the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, this life force that creates us into being and gives us this day’s breath.  There is such a gracious energy that incarnates itself first in Jesus and then in each one of us to experience and reach out in love; to create communities of people caring for each others’ lives.  There is this river of the grace of Jesus following throughout history, beckoning us to come deeper into its ever-flowing waters.  Until our whole lives are taken by his grace into the service of the world.

Speaking Truth to Power

Amos 7.7-15/Mk. 6.14-29

7/12/09

Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her.  For John had been telling Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.”

Well, what we hear today are two stories of God’s heroes getting tangled up with the powers that be.  In the first, Amos comes up against Amaziah, the high priest of Israel—a kind of secretary of state for the king, with that kind of power.  Amos has the delightful task of announcing that God has had it with Israel and is cutting off his presence with them, leaving them to their own devices; to their own idolatry:  and it’s gonna be bad.  The plumbline imagery is the measurement that cuts them off.

The secretary of state—Amazaiah—ain’t too happy to hear that.  After all, Israel is under constant threat from the nations around them, especially the latest military empire, Assyria.  In times when war threatens, you can’t have holy men saying god is against you.  So he tells Amos, “Get out of town.  You’re not even from around here.”  And that was true:  Amos was from the southern kingdom of Judah, not the northern kingdom of Israel, where he shot off his mouth.

Too bad for Amazaiah that history proved Amos right when not long afterwards the Assyrians utterly destroyed the northern kingdom, and it was never heard of again.  This was around 720 years before Jesus.  I can hear Amos saying, “I tried to tell you.”

And then from Mark’s gospel we hear the story of John the Baptizer losing his head over the whole affair.  First, they put him in prison to shut him up.  Then at his birthday orgy Herod gets tricked by his own lust and pride into executing him by beheading.

So there you go.  Words matter.  “Speaking the truth to power” can be—and usually is—dangerous.
So I want to spend this time thinking about what it means to “speak truth to power.”  Because you hear that phrase a lot—especially in political language.  And because somewhere along the way, each one of us has had to speak the truth to a power that could do us harm.

I’ll start with this question:  what is this “power” to which we speak?

I’m thinking it’s this:  the power to which we speak is anyone or any human system who exercises authority over us.  So, for example, the power children speak to is their parents.  I remember worrying a lot as an all-powerful (in the eyes of my kids) father about providing  enough openness for my kids to speak to truths about me that I often didn’t want to know.  This is especially hard to do when they’re at that smart-aleck age and your basic attitude toward them is “I brought you into the world; I can take you out.”

But you gotta teach them to speak the truth to power as kids because when they get older they’re gonna encounter all kinds of different powers—teachers and schools and employers and all kinds of social and political structures.  And that includes the power of our friends, of the crowd we run with.  The powers we speak to are any persons or groups that have the ability to help or to harm us and/or others.  And so the speaking takes courage.

Some years back my friend Pat refused to sign a company finance report, telling the powers that the numbers were misrepresented.  It cost the company a lot of money.  They didn’t fire him, but restructured his position away and offered him a spot in another state out in the middle of nowhere.

When the topic came up at the pastors’ study, we got talking about how difficult it is to “speak the truth” to the congregation, a power in its own respect.  There are times when you climb into the pulpit and wish you were anywhere else but here, ‘cause you know you’re gonna get hammered.

See, speaking truth to power means addressing forces bigger than we are.  Like Amos and John, God calls his heroes to speak truth to powers that are bigger than themselves.
‘Course, then you’ve got this whole ‘truth’ thing you gotta deal with.  In the famous words of Pontius Pilate:  “What is truth?”

Now, for myself, I tend to believe that truth is a living energy like God rather than a static proposition.  It could be that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” but the reality of the world has changed so drastically even in my own short life that if there’s some kind of objective rock-hewn never-changing principle of  Truth with a capital T out there, it’s never been revealed to me.

What I have instead is the reality of the life I’m living and the god—this energy flowing through the universe—I seek to serve; this energy who is revealed in Jesus Christ and why I call him Lord.  So the “Truth” is not is not some fleshless principle I uphold, but the witness I bear to the way thing are or should as I have been taught by the stories of Jesus.

In my blog this week I wrote about a report from that National Council on Homelessness that ranked Texas as the 50th worst state in the country in terms of the well-being of homeless children—of which there are 337,000 kids living in cars, motels, campgrounds and the like with their usually single mother parents.  We’re 50th among all the states, even behind Mississippi.  When 89% of us claim to be Christian, to be following Jesus, how can this be?

So I heard from my friendly opposition asking, “How many of ‘em are illegals?”  I don’t know.  And here’s the problem for me:  when the judgment tale is told in Mt. 25—I was a stranger and you welcomed me, and hungry and you fed me, and so on—the moment of truth is right now at this moment for the strangers and the hungry and the homeless.  This is the moment of truth.

Jesus is the truth.  And here is the truth that he speaks:  we will be judged by how we treat the most vulnerable among us.  This is the truth we speak to power, especially as the church.

The truth we speak to power is about justice worked or brought about for our neighbor.  Think about that.  If you’ve had a time when  it was necessary to speak out against some injustice that’s been done to you,  for the disciple of Jesus that is to protect your neighbor from having the same thing happen to her.  That’s what Martin Luther said:  “You don’t go to court for your own  satisfaction, but on behalf of your neighbors.”

So speaking the truth to power has to do with calling for justice when injustice is taking place.  And it can be risky, as both Amos and John can attest to; oh, and Jesus, and Paul, and Peter, and Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. and my friend Pat.

I can’t hear the phrase “speaking truth to power” without also hearing St. Paul talk about “speaking the truth in love.”

The common understanding among pastors is that when a parishioner announces she’s gotta speak the truth in love, you’re about to be sliced and diced.  I always want to ask, what makes this time special?  Most of us have had these experiences, where the claim of love justifies the attack.  But of course it’s one thing to be truthful with another because your love and concern compels you to be, and it’s quite another to beat up on somebody in the name of love.  (That’s called abuse.)  Paul Simon was right when he sang, “There is no tenderness in your honesty.”

But I want to move on to a discovery I made some years back while studying the OT prophets, especially Isaiah.  Now, as you know, the prophets were the social critics of Israel; they brought God’s spoken judgment to bear on the behavior of the people.  The tradition, or say, the responsibility of this prophetic activity has been handed down through the office of the pastor.  You gotta preach it.  You gotta critique the society in the eyes of Jesus (as it were).

Prophets are not well-liked; they have a tendency as you know to get either fired or killed.  Besides, the guys at seminary who thought themselves latter-day prophets were all crazy as loons.  So it mattered to me what that was about, and I did some bible study.  And here’s what I discovered:  as angry as the prophets got, they did not despise their people, but loved them, and, in fact, lived among and with them.  The intensity of their emotion is not hatred and spite, but love for them.  Jesus wept over Jerusalem.  His passion was for their well-being.  That’s the deal with prophets.  Their words are wrenched out of the heart of God’s love and lament for her own creation; children who seem determined to reject her.
That means for me that when the time calls for speaking truth to power, that means I cannot speak it out of hatred and spite, but must speak it out of dignity and respect.  Even if I have to sing, “We shall not be moved” in the meantime.

The Sermon You Preach
Mark 6.1-13 (Ezek. 2.1-5)
7/5/09

Listen to this:

. . .he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief. . . . He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

I think it’s funny, the way Mark sets it up:  Jesus can’t even pull off his stuff in the place where he was raised, so now he’s sending out his teams, “Go spread the good news boys.”  I was at a theological conference where the presenting scholar said the basic message of the early church was, “Hey, we’re getting our butts kicked.  Wanna join us?”

As a pastor, I have been thrown out of places.  I’m not talking about public places, like bars.  I have never been thrown out of a bar as a pastor, though I was carried out of a few back in my military days.  I’m talking about private places, like people’s homes.  Homes to which I’d been asked to come for one pastoral reason or another.

It might not surprise you that people would toss me out, but it always did me.  Partly because it didn’t happen very often—just enough to keep me cautious in a stranger’s house.  And partly because you go into these things wanting to be of some assistance and grace and you get thrown out wondering “How in the world did I bungle that?”  I used to take it real hard when people in  the seekers’ class decided not to join.  I always took it as a personal failure.  Don MacLean sings a song, “Everybody loves me, baby, what’s the matter with you?”  That’s the way I evaluated myself.

So I had to learn a couple of things.  I had to learn that you can’t control another person’s reaction to you.  As one fellow put it, “You can work real hard to make yourself into a peach of a guy, but there are people who are simply allergic to peaches.”

I also had to learn that it was really not about me, anyways.  There’s mysterious stuff going on in people’s lives that we don’t know about, though on occasion we’ll get caught in it.  Somebody lashes out at you irrationally and you know that there’s a bigger show going on than your current moment.

From my seminary days comes the story of an intern accompanying the pastor of a rural parish while making calls on people.  They drive up to Bill’s place out in the country, and knock on the door.  Bill never went to church, being quite content in himself.  When he opened the door he launched into all kinds of verbal abuse and swearing at the pastor and tossed him off the property.

The pastor whistled a tune while they drove down the road, and the student, appalled over what had taken place, asked how he could be so serene.  The pastor said, “Nobody could get that angry at me just for showing up unless the Holy Spirit’s working on him.  Bill’s issue isn’t with me but with God.”  There’s bigger stuff going on there.

Think about this:  when I preach a sermon, the minute the words are spoken it is out of my control.  Some will hear it as brilliant insights with great wittiness.  Others hear it as a confusing rant.  And still others remember it as a decent 20-minute snooze.  However they hear it is largely out of my control.  Both artists and teachers know this reality, too.  There’s the reality of what you intend to say, and then there’s the reality of what is heard.

Likewise:  our lives are the sermon God speaks to those around us.

. . .he could do no deed of power there. . . . And he was amazed at their unbelief. . . .

We’ve been having a bit of a go-around at the pastors’ bible study the last couple of weeks about the nature of faith.  It was started last week by Jesus saying to the bleeding woman, “Your faith has saved you”, and continues this week in the lack of faith by the townspeople.

My pastor pals and I all gag at the suggestion that if you somehow have “enough” faith, you’ll be healed of, say, cancer.  Everybody knows where that notion leads—the cancer that does not go away or returns is my fault; because I didn’t believe enough in God he turned his back on me.  But that’s just baloney.  Faith isn’t something you believe so much as where you turn in your desperation.  And healing is far more mysteriously transcendent than my current disease.

Yet, you can’t just say that faith doesn’t matter, either.  Of course it matters how we are oriented to the world, how we understand the powers of the world and how we fit into things.  It matters whether we believe there is a God or not; and it matters whether we believe God is a vengeful tyrant heaping judgment and retribution on us, or a cosmic gardener growing and healing and restoring his creation from death into life.  It matters what we believe; our faith does have something to do with our overall well-being, especially when times are desperate.  That’s why it’s so very vital for the disciples of Jesus to be present with people in desperate times.

But “he was amazed at their unbelief.”

Here’s what I’m thinking about it:  they object because Jesus is simply too human.  Listen:  They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!  Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

See?  “The guy’s one of us.  There’s nothing divine about his power.  There’s nothing holy about him.”  They just tear him down like another loser; another loser like themselves.  “He’s nothing special.  He’s just like us, and God doesn’t work that way.”  They belittle all of us as human beings, saying we are not worthy of God’s presence working through us.  And sure enough it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because unable to see the divine in the human, they could not understand his grace.  Unable to see it, they could never experience it from Jesus.

That’s just flat wrong.  They forgot this:  you and I—and they, too—were created in the image of God, the holy imago dei. God does not disdain human flesh, but takes on human flesh.  God lives through human flesh—the word became flesh and lived among us. This was true for Jesus.  And it is true for you and me, too.  In the old days we used to call it the “indwelling Christ”—the Christ dwelling within us, guiding our actions and thoughts. God prefers to take on human flesh in the likes of Jesus and you and me.

But the folks in the village reject Jesus by belittling him as only human.  They tear him—and us—down:  “You’re nothing special.”

And if they don’t do that for us, we can sure enough do it to ourselves:  “Whatever ‘imago of God’ you’re talking about, preacher, sure don’t apply to me.  I know how deformed and distorted my life has been.  Ain’t no high-falutin’ imago dei there, buddy.”

Except, here’s the deal, from the imago-maker himself, this time speaking to Ezekiel:

He said to me: O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you. And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I heard him speaking to me.

When God draws near, God lifts us up to full human stature and dignity and life.  God does not belittle our humanity, but makes it holy, “Stand up.  We have work to do.  I need to live through you.  I want you as my face—my imago dei—in the world.  And I’ll lead you through your deformities to the love who I created you to be.”

See, that’s what it’s all about:  God’s creation of human dignity and community.  The holiness of our lives.  That’s the word for us, and that’s what we’re sent out to talk about:  you and me and “they” are holy.

But here’s the deal:  not everybody’s thrilled when it comes to talk about human dignity as the will of God because you get into matters of the justice of the reign of Jesus in matters both economic and political.  You are challenged with questions about forgiveness and mercy and peace with your enemies and caring for your neighbor and sharing what you have, and there are people who simply don’t want to hear it.

And so, the disciples do their best, but still gotta move on down the road, and Jesus prepares them for it.  Because there comes  times when not even God can get through, since God respects the dignity he crated us with, the dignity of choice.

So you live the sermon of your life understanding that the outcome isn’t under your control.  Nor is your life really even about you.

But the sermon you preach is a voice of God.

Apostolic Economics
2 Corinth. 8.7-15
6/28/09

Whenever I go sailing in Belize, as I did a couple of weeks back, I’m very much reminded of how wealthy I am compared to the great majority of people down there—and in fact in the whole world.  This gets me to thinking, “Why am I so wealthy and they so poor?”  And being someone who’s trying to follow Jesus, I wonder, “What shall I do about that wealth?”

So I was caught by the second lesson today, when Paul’s writing to the folks at Corinth about a church-wide fundraising project for the people of the church at Jerusalem which was undergoing a severe drought and famine.  This part of his letter is about the money.

At the same time I ran across an article about it written by Dr. David Tiede.  Dr. Tiede was one of my NT profs and the present of the seminary.  Now he teaches at Augsburg College.  His comments about these verses are well worth a listen—but even better a read.  So I give the sermon time to him. Here are his comments:

For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.  . . .For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have. I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

As soon as they say, “It’s not about the money!” you know the money matters.

And surely as the summer media will continue to obsess on the economy, the Pauline lesson for the fourth Sunday after Pentecost will talk candidly in church about the money. People may squirm in discomfort from the heat or the topic, and preachers may skip the subject. Or worse, they may indulge their personal views on economic policy.

When the experts discuss “Supply Side” or “Keynesian Macroeconomics,” or the talking heads on CNN criticize “trickle down” or “voodoo economics,” only a tiny number of preachers might know enough to comment without simply irritating their people.

Even if a small cadre of such expertise could be found among the clergy, a sermon on “monetary theory” would almost certainly be as inane as when the rationalists of earlier centuries reduced the 23rd Psalm to instructions in sheep herding.

Yes, “Apostolic Economics” are about the money. However, they do not authorize naïve or self-righteous attacks on bankers, brokers, and economic stimulus policies. Preaching about money is challenging both because people have strong, often informed, economic views, and most people know they are about to be asked for contributions yet one more time.

In a global economy where people’s fears and hopes rise and fall with the market, “Working Preachers” can help liberate their congregations to live in the abundant freedom of the Gospel by teaching a lesson in “Apostolic Economics.” The Apostle Paul does not develop an economic theory. Rather, he invites people to understand the proper meaning and power of their money in the light of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Paul’s second letter “to the church of God that is in Corinth” (1:1) is historically fascinating and theologically powerful for many reasons. Our lesson from chapter 8 is filled with the concepts of the Greco-Roman oeconomia, the “economy” of meaning and money of the dominant culture. This is often called the “honor-shame” culture where those in power were supremely confident of divine approval, as evident in their wealth.

Frederick W. Danker’s commentary on 2 Corinthians  astutely demonstrates how Paul used and transformed the philanthropic rhetoric of the Hellenistic Benefactor from an abundance of privilege to an evangelical generosity of divine mercy. Yes, it still is about the money, but watch how Apostolic Economics put wealth in a new light.

For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.  . . .For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have. I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

The last verse of our text shows Paul himself working from scripture. God’s distribution of the manna in the wilderness set the standard in Israel that “the one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

Apostolic Economics are grounded in scriptural convictions about wealth: “the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” (Ps 24). Humans are empowered as managers of the abundance of God’s earth. Whether they gain wealth by skill or stealth, their stewardship has accountability. In verses 12-14, therefore, Paul gives scriptural meaning to parlance of the Hellenistic economy. What makes a gift “acceptable” and “fair” is not merely a judgment by prevailing standards of benefaction. But how are these acts valued in the economy of God’s generosity?

Modern fiscal, legal, and tax economies are deeply protective of property rights. “Possession is nine points of the law!” We are now learning how powerful for good and ill these concepts are to the earth and its peoples. Financial advisors teach us to focus on wealth accumulation, and estate planning brings wisdom on inter-generational transfers.

Paul, however, redirects the entitlements of “rights” to the wisdom of stewarding God’s abundance. His lesson is for Christian disciples of Jesus’ reign, but even people who don’t believe in God can understand the mortal limits of ownership rights. A candid observer once stated, “Finally we are all 100% donors!”

Reading the first verses of our passage in the light of Paul’s scriptural convictions, we begin to grasp how profoundly Apostolic Economics transforms the world of money.

Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you —so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking. I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others  For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ,

But before entering into the apostle’s joy, remember that in his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul hit hard against the “prosperity gospel” of his opponents, the “super-apostles” or “false apostles” (11:5-15). Late-night media evangelists and prosperity preachers in Africa and Latin America still pull out verse 9 for the soul of their messages: “For your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich”.

Christian “get rich quick” schemes are the gospel of false apostles. They continue to dwell on our self-interest, turning God into our financial guarantor, and luring us into the illusion that our benevolence will begin when we have made it big in the market.

Human susceptibility to greed appears to be boundless as the wealthy get caught in Ponzi investment scams, and the poor are enticed to buy lottery tickets. The misery that follows those who made quick wealth from gambling is almost statistically certain. Preachers who bleed others financially in Jesus’ name may be the lowest scum of all.

This passage, however, is not a scold, but a joyful vision of God’s abundant love and an invitation into our freedom to be generous.

For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have. . . . “the one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

The logic tracks closely with the magnificent Christ hymn Paul recites in Philippians: “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself”. The Gospel of Apostolic Economics is still about “our Lord Jesus Christ:” “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor”. This is the theology of the cross in economic language, leading not to human privilege to possess our wealth, but to Christian freedom to put the well-being of the neighbor ahead of our own interests.

The work of the preacher is to invite people into God’s generosity, balancing the accounts of the needs of others against the column of their own abundance.  “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

On the spreadsheets of Apostolic Economics, “the gift is acceptable” as those who have more are able to give more. No one is in a lofty position as a big donor, certainly not compared with the generosity of Christ. But everyone is encouraged to join in the divine drama of giving.

Even “excellence” is now measured on God’s standard, or by the love the apostle has given to them, not by their own performance: “Now as you excel in everything – in faith, in speech, in knowledge in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you – so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking”.

It’s about God’s love, and the money is a powerful way to get in on the action.

The Injustice of God
Job 38.1-11
6/21/09

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know!”

The story of Job is one of my favorite books in the Bible.  It’s in the OT.  It’s a magnificent poem built on an ancient legend.  The ancient legend goes like this:

God is the chairman of a divine “church council”, so to speak.  The council is made up of God as well as other heavenly beings.  One of these heavenly beings is called “the Satan”.  Now, this is not “the Satan” we know as the source of evil; this Satan, after all, has a job  on the heavenly council.  He is “the Accuser”—that’s what “the Satan” means.  His job is to test the faithfulness of God’s people.  He is, as it were, the prosecuting attorney of faith.  He’s got a surly attitude about people, expecting the worst out of them.

So God says to him, “Well, think about Job.  He’s a good guy.  He lives righteously—in a right relationship with me and his neighbors.”

And The Accuser responds, “Sure, that’s ‘cause the guy’s rich and comfortable and loved by his family and respected by his community.  It pays to worship you in these circumstances.  But you take that away from him, and see how fast he turns on you.”

God says, “Bull pucky!  You can do whatever you want to him short of killing him, and he still won’t abandon me.  I’ll stake my divine reputation on it.”

So the bet between God and the accuser Satan is on, with Job as the hapless defender of divine honor.  Job becomes God’s hero.  And in short order he loses everything and is reduced to living in the town trash heap afflicted with skins sores that ooze puss which the wild dogs come and lick. Three of Job’s friends come to visit him.  They sit in silence with him for seven days, respecting his profound agony.  Then their dialogue begins; and it’s this dialogue which makes up the poem.  It starts with Job’s lament:  “I loathe my life and the day I was born.”  Job moves in and out of prayers to God:  “Why are you doing this to me?  I have done nothing to deserve this!”

Now Job’s friends are trying to be of help and comfort.  But they, like Job (at the beginning), believe that suffering is evidence of God’s condemnation.  And so they advise Job to search his soul and confess his sin.  Then he will put himself right with God and his suffering will end.

But here’s a problem:  Job obstinately maintains that he is innocent; that he has done nothing that deserves the suffering he’s experiencing.  That’s not to say that he has never sinned.  But it is to say that he has never sinned to such an extent that it deserves this.

But his friends keep insisting that the suffering itself is evidence of the sin, and the argument becomes more and more rancorous.  They go to the extremes of accusing him of invisible sins like not having done enough for others back in the days when he had something or of being proud.  Completely crazy stuff.  (Kafka:  The Trial)

Finally, after Job refuses to be convinced that his suffering has anything to do with justice, one of his pals tells him, “Look, it doesn’t matter whether you think you’ve sinned or not.  What God wants is for you to act like you have.  God wants you to kneel and scrape and grovel like the worm you are.  Then he’ll be happy and your suffering will be over.”

It’s the theology of Eddie Haskell, if you remember the old “Leave it to Beaver Series”—it doesn’t matter what you really do so long as you put on the show of deference.  Grovel publicly, mock privately.  Sell out for what you want, whether it be the end of suffering or the accumulation of wealth or even salvation.  Grovel, and it will be given to you.

Throughout the poem Job rebuffs all his friends’ arguments, mocking with vicious sarcasm all the old religious platitudes and even holy scriptures, and turns it all back on them.  And on himself, because he also believed in this God of just suffering—you get what you deserve—until his own experience told him otherwise.  And in his words he breaks into lament about his own life as if crying “Forget your theologies, your theories about God, look at my life.”  And from his laments grow Job’s prayers, pleading, raging, accusatory, spiteful:  “Why don’t you just kill me now, you divine thug?”

And throughout it all God remains notoriously silent.  As he seems to have a habit of doing when we’re suffering, almost like, “When the going gets tough, God takes off.”  So Jesus cries, “My God. . . .”  In fact, suffering has at least something to do with the absence of God, doesn’t it?  Especially when, like Job, you can no longer recognize the God you thought you knew, the God who has accompanied your life?  What if the God to whom you’ve always prayed suddenly disappeared and stayed hidden?  That is the misery of Job’s righteousness.

I don’t known about you, but I, too, have raged into a silent universe.

Until at last we hear today’s lines:

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

Think about this: Gird up your loins like a man. Stand up, Bud!

God doesn’t demand groveling out of Job, but rather the full human stature and dignity with which God created him and nurtured and grew his life.  Eddie Haskell is all wrong; God wants not so much our worship as our authentic dignity of those who are created in the divine image, the imago dei.  Even—and perhaps especially—in the midst of suffering.  As the story closes, God declares to the friends that Job has been right—his suffering was not connected with any sin.  Job had upheld the honor of God by insisted on the dignity of his integrity.

A friend sent me this saying “from (I think) a Rabbi back in the distant past [who] said that each person in the world is accompanied by a group of angels saying: “Make way! Make way for the image of God!”

Remember, Job is God’s hero, in this story; Job is upholding God’s honor against the Satan Accuser.  Sometimes it’s possible that our suffering is not the result of something we’ve done but rather of God’s faith and hope in us.

But then the rest of the picture is a tad on the ludicrous side, because you have a whirlwind—a dust devil, a tornado—telling him to stand up.  And yet, isn’t there something humanly noble about that picture—Job standing bravely before the holy storm?  Job about to be addressed.  The taunting of the storm is wonderful:  “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know!”

Now, you’d think that after all he’d been through, God would’ve given Job a pat on the back, told him to have a seat, take it easy.  But he doesn’t.  Because he has some personal business to finish with Job.  And so for the next two chapters God lays out the wonders of the universe and taunts Job for his wisdom and power—“Think you can do this?  Think you understand that?”

It’s actually pretty funny, but nonetheless it is a rebuke of Job, because Job has gotten, as it were, uppity in his suffering.  He has become self-righteous because of his suffering, doing lime what we all do when we’re suffering—seeing and judging God only through the eyes of our suffering:  God owes us an explanation.  In the words of “I Love Lucy”:  “You got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

And God says, “Oh yeah?  Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know!”

God will not justify himself to Job.  Suffering is only one aspect of an infinite creation.  The reason for some suffering is hidden in the mystery of the God beyond our sight though our behavior in the face of suffering might reflect to the honor of God.  Whatever.  God will not explain herself to Job.

What she does is draw near to him in the presence of Mother Nature.  When his rage is spent and his anger only a smoldering ash and he can hear beyond the pain she will draw near to him and hold him and comfort him.  And in his time, Job will come to forgive her.

And praise her magnificence.  Because she had been there even in her silence.

You Did Not Receive a Spirit of Slavery
6/7/09
Romans 8.12-17/John 3.1-17

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.

Some years ago I spent several weeks traveling up to my birth home in Johnstown, PA and back.  This was the “pilgrimage” I agreed to undertake when I joined an ecumenical prayer community of pastors.  Going to Johnstown was a second choice, because the sailing trip in Belize I was trying to put together fell through.  And, besides, my dear old pal, Seattle Suzanne the Spiritual Guruette told me, “That isn’t a real pilgrimage, Keene.”

“Pilgrimage” is a great mystical sounding thing, huh?  My wife’s friend visualized me in a robe and bare feet dragging a cross on wheels up the road.  I wasn’t much help, either, when asked, “Well, what are you going to do?”  “You got me.  I’m just going to show up.”  Bottom line:  it’s a road trip.

Though with some kind of expectation of being re-engaged with God, in  this case, the God of my history back in Johnstown.  It was a road trip straight out of the gospel of John:  The Spiritwind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So I drove and thought and camped and wrote and half-listened to The DaVinci Code read on 13 cd’s.

And I was, of course, surprised. Because God likes to do that kind of stuff.

The night I left Houston aiming for the Smoky Mountains I stopped in a small town at the LA/MS border for gas.  I was leaning over the windshield, smearing the dead bugs around, when a guy pulled up beside me, said, “Hey!  Were you in Vietnam?”

And I instinctually stiffened.  Not that the question was unreasonable:  I have the Viet Vet bumper sticker on my pickup.  I let Fred put it there  because I wanted to fly a “Kerry for President” sticker and figured the Vet sticker might scare off some right-wing whackos thinking of vandalism:  “Better not.  This guy might be crazy.”

No, it wasn’t that the question was strange that set me off, but what it touched in me.  What it touched in me was a profound sense of shame for my participation in the war, and the isolation it brings.  No, I’ve joked about being a trombone player in Vietnam, about how bizarre that is; but this is a different story, because while I escaped the killing, I did not escape the shaming.

The first shame came when I obeyed the orders to go in 1969, knowing and believing in my conscience that the war was wrong and immoral.  My dad and I had argued over it even before I joined the army.  He was a WW2 Navy vet, and couldn’t believe his country would do something so monstrously wrong.  But that was before I had my orders.

When I was on leave before going we went camping together and talked about it.  I don’t recall us arguing.  I do recall us sitting in a rented boat pretending to fish.  I do recall him sitting on the bow and looking me dead in the eye and giving me one of the great blessings and curses of my life: “Larry, you are my son, and I will always love you, regardless if you go to Vietnam or Canada.  But it’s a decision only you can make, because you must live with it.”

I hope you hear the parallel here between what my dad said to me and what Paul says to you baptized folks:  For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. As my father spoke to me, so does God speak to you.

A great blessing.  And a great curse, for the decision was mine alone to live with.  And I chose against my conscience, and that was the first shaming.

And the second came with being in the war zone itself; with the discovery of who you are and what you are capable of when the veneer of civilization is wiped away and killing or being killed is the order of the day; when there is no tomorrow.

There is a myth about war veterans that they have seen such great atrocities and horrors that they can’t speak of them.  I think this is true.  I have a profound ache for all those veterans who have to join in the human butchery that is the reality of war.  It is too horrible to speak of, not only of what was happening, but of what you yourself did, as well.  And that is the other horror; the other shaming, to see within your own self what Joseph Conrad called “the heart of darkness.”

And the third shaming came when we returned, and nobody wanted to talk about it.  The country was too busy screaming and protesting about the war, and back at college we were called baby killers.  So you learn to live isolated with this shame of which you cannot speak.

And that’s why I stiffened that night—well, that and the ponytail—in that little town in Mississippi when a stranger asked me, “Were you in Vietnam?”  Truthfully, Vietnam was still in me, and so I expected no good thing.  I said a cautious “Yes” and turned to face him.

He was about 15 or 20 years younger than me, a business-dressed family guy driving a used Plymouth.  He smiled and said, “I want to thank you for that” and offered his hand.

And I said, “What?”  “Thank you for your service.”

And I stopped breathing a bit and stuttered “Nobody’s ever thanked me for that.”  “Well, you deserve it,” he said, “Take care,” and he drove off into the night.

But really he stayed with me for the next two days while camping in the Smokies, where I considered what it was to be thanked for that which was my shame, and let the thunderstorms wash me and make me think of God.

A couple of days later I was cruising Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park, where, thanks to the wind, it was too ripping cold to camp.  They have a bazillion scenic overlooks that overlook a bazillion equally scenic scenes, and are perfectly designed for drive-by viewing:  pull up broadside, oo and ahh for 20 seconds and move on to the next.  I stopped at one to stretch my legs and just to feel the view outside the windshield.

Some folks in a PT Cruiser were pulling out, and I stood staring over the Shenandoah Valley, where 10,000 kids had died in the Civil War.  Suddenly the Cruiser stopped, backed up, and a guy called out from behind me, “Hey!  I like your stickers.!”  And I said, “Which one?”

He was about my age, and after some initial chat with his mother and wife he said he’d been in the MP’s in DaNang and I said I’d been in the Mekong Delta and he stuck out his hand and said, “Welcome home.”

And I got wobbly in the knees, because I’d never heard it so personally before.  Because he was a survivor of the same insanity,  and he spoke for all the veterans who’ve lived in that horror of war; who know the shame, and honor the sacrifice of this service with each.  “Welcome home.  We know.  You’re safe.”

By the way, in case I wasn’t catching the message, it happened again in the exact same order about a week and a half later.  On Monday morning, the owner of the B & B where we were staying, an active pacifist Mennonite privately asked me if I had been in Vietnam, and said, “Well, I want to thank you for that.  I’m sure it couldn’t have been easy.”  And a couple of days later another vet at a scenic overlook welcomed me home, and was genuinely pleased with my welcome of him.  In 36 years I’d never heard a thank you for that service nor a welcome home after.  And suddenly I heard them four times in two weeks.

The Spiritwind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

Well, you can do what you want with this.  After all, it’s my pilgrimage, not yours; we all have our own trails to take.  I offer it only as a picture, a scenic overlook on your trip.

And as a background to this, again:  For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.

“I will always love you, regardless of what path your life might take.  It is your life.  The choices are yours to make.”

As the words have been spoken to and the choices have been for each one of us, veterans of our own personal brutal wars.

It is my prayer that we the church—the “y’all” to whom Paul writes—might be the place where the limping veteran of brutal and horrific personal wars might hear “Welcome home” and those who suffer in silence for sacrificing their lives to a greater good—however they have–hear, “Thank you for your service.”

Love Fearlessly
1 John 4.7-21
5/17/09

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.

One of the harder jobs Sue and I had to do as parents was to teach our kids to tell the truth.  That doesn’t come naturally, y’ know.  First you gotta teach ‘em the difference between imagination and reality.  And you have to do this without wrecking their imagination; they need to be able to delight in both—after all imagination has to do with both the ability to solve problems and the ability to feel compassion.  But they need to be able to tell the difference between what is “real” and what is imagined.

This was particularly the case when it came to some behavior which earned negative consequences.  It took a lot of effort to get ‘em to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”  In fact, In became quite proud of my ability to play prosecuting attorney in leading them to a confession.  Afterwards, when the sentence had been delivered and the judge considered the case closed I would sit and talk with them:  “why did you not tell the truth?”  Invariably, “I was afraid.”  So they tried to deceive us.

For a moment, y’ see, their fear blocked their ability to know and remember and trust our love for them.  And, since speaking the truth is an act of love—especially when it requires courage—that fear stifled their ability to do the loving thing of telling the truth.

‘Course, fear doesn’t influence just kids, does it?  Sue and I are coming up on 36 years in July and are finally getting to the point of just shrugging instead of getting all reactionary and fearful about each other.  For any number of years we feared each other as much as we loved each other.  Among other things, I used to think I was responsible for causing all her bad moods.  And I also thought I was responsible for curing them, and would get all anxious and paranoid.  And she, being in a bad mood to begin with, was only too happy to pin it on me, and things would escalate from there into arguments leading to smoldering resentments.  It took me a long time to realize that I am rarely the “real” cause of her bad mood (or she mine, for that matter); and an even longer time to say, “Well, it’s your bad mood, not mine.  You decide what to do with it.  Just because I’m in a good mood while you’re in a bad mood doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”  It took an equally long time for her to understand that.  At those times, our fear of each other disfigured our love.

And we’ve always had a relatively civilized relationship.  Think of the misery of women stuck in relationships with abusive men.

If fear distorts our most loving and intimate relationships—the family—think of what it does on a broader scale, where something like the mob mentality starts showing up.  I know it best from within the church, but it happens everywhere else, too.  We preachers like to call it with the polite phrase “anxious reactivity”.  My phrase is “fear makes people insane.”  And the more who are afraid, the crazier they get.

So, far example, when I saw the planes fly into the World Trade Center on 9/11 I knew I was going to get hammered for next Sunday’s sermon.  Regardless of what I said, the most fearful where going to react.  And sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed.  And when a few months later the ELCA announced the upcoming discussions about homosexuality, again the most fearful went nuts and started having secret meetings and all sorts of wicked stuff, and there was simply no way to reason with them.  That’s because they were being driven by fear, and fear quite literally shuts off the ability to reason.

That’s because fear dives us into the old “flight or fight” syndrome of self-survival.  It’s the unreasoning instinct of the “reptilian brain” to win at all costs.  Reptiles are not compassionate or loving, they are survivors.  Alligators are reptiles.  Alligators can’t love; and you can’t reason with an alligator.  Where there is fear, there is no love.

St. John says There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

So it seems to me that if we want to be better lovers we ought to pay attention to what it is we are afraid of.  Because fear smothers love.
I’ve started taking on more of the “women’s work” at home, especially in the kitchen.  I’ll admit that for years I knew how to get to the kitchen, but nothing more about it.  It seems the fair thing since I’m working only part time and she’s working full time.  But it’s taken five years to get around to actually doing it.  I was mulling over this verse while doing the dishes a few days ago and realized that one of the reasons I hadn’t taken up the task sooner was because I was afraid to mess in her kingdom.  I know women are territorial about their kitchen even with each other; ain’t no way I was stickin’ my nose into it.  But the effect of that fear was the inability to do the loving thing for her.

Think about what it is you fear, because as I said, that  fear cripples your ability to do the loving thing, to live the agape—the reaching-out-to-others love of Jesus.  And as you guys look toward your future as a congregation it’s also important to be aware of that, to ask “what is it that we’re afraid of around here?”  And for the same reason:  fear handicaps the ability to love.

But that also means that love requires courage; it requires the courage to go on in spite of the fear.  In fact, that’s exactly what courage is, isn’t it?  the refusal to be paralyzed by fear into lovelessness.  So I finally gathered the courage to fiddle in the kitchen despite my fear that she’d do that territorial she-bear thing.  Of course my fears didn’t pan out—she was delighted.  And on top of that I’ve also earned the right to say “Why do we have all this crap?”  Some day I might gather enough courage even to follow up when she says, “You don’t like it, get rid of it.”  (But no time soon.)

When John says perfect love casts out fear this is exactly what he’s talking about.  It is the effort to care for others, to agape them like Jesus even though I’m scared to death inside.  I will not let that fear stand between me and others; if it gets in the way of agape I will cast it aside.  As the Body of Christ, we’ll welcome the strangers in spite of our fear.  As it’s been said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

And the reason why is this:  We love because he first loved us. Or as Jesus puts it in today’s gospel:  No longer do I call you servants; now I call you friends. . . .I chose you.
So let me take it to the end with a little story I call “But for the fear, the song would be sweet.”  It goes like this:

I was one of the better trombone players in Los Angeles, back in the day.  I played well and knew the styles.  I could sight read in all the clefs and transpose into other keys with five-minutes’ warning.  Other trombonists loved it when I was playing because they could depend on me musically.  I was on the verge of joining the professional and studio musician ranks out there.  I lacked one thing:  I lacked the ability to solo.

It’s not that I lacked the desire to play solos.  It’s that I simply wasn’t able to do that.  I became so nervous, so fearful of something that I just fell apart:  I’d start shaking, my mouth would dry out, I’d lose control of my breathing and the intonation would turn to ugliness, and the experience was humiliating, so that, of course, the next time I had to solo, it would be that much more fearsome.  It was this that led me to understand I was not called to a living in music.  As a sympathetic pal put it, “Yep.  If it weren’t for the fear, your song would be so sweet.”

Now I’ve thought about that a lot over the years because it seems so at odds with the relative ease with which I approach preaching and the other solos of my spot.  I’ve been afraid in the pulpit on occasion, but never so paralyzed by fear that it has deformed the sweetness of the story.  I’m confident in what I do and confident that what I do is good.  Even a mess up becomes simply a matter of correction instead of a cosmic condemnation.  But you put a trombone in front of my face and say “play us a solo, Larry” and there ain’t enough valium in the world to prevent a nervous breakdown, musically speaking.  Go figure.

The only differences I can see is that when I played trombone solos it was all about me; it all had to do with me, and how well I played was a measure of what kind of person I was.  And so I became afraid.  But this preaching gig isn’t about me at all.  It’s about God and Jesus and then Holy Spirit and their people.  I’m just the mouthpiece of it.  I’ll make the sweetest sound I can pointing to that.  When I trust God I am no longer afraid.

Because Jesus said, No longer do I call you a slave; now I call you a friend. . . .I have chosen you.

The Cathedral Tree
May 10, 2009
John 15

“I am the vine, you are the branches. . . .Abide in me, as I abide in you.”

One of the last vacant fields in the county lay along a road which was a major artery through the area.  The field was of a substantial size, comprising many acres.  Cattle occasionally grazed there, but they seemed to come and go like phantoms.

It’s not known why this particular field was still vacant.  The county had seen an enormous population growth in the last twenty years, so that what had once been primarily farm land had been bought up for new homes, companies, stores, and schools—all those things that come with a population growth.  In fact, across from the field a whole new school complex had been built.  But this particular field—of a good size and a good location—had not been touched.

The only thing that set this field apart from any other parcel of land was that a great oak tree grew in the middle of it.  It was an ancient tree, the kind you see sometimes in Texas, where huge branches, big enough to walk on, grow out all over; some swing close down to the ground, while others travel upward toward the sky, and the leaves provide a magnificent canopy which forms almost a room inside them.  I don’t know the real name of this type of tree, and so just call it a “Cathedral Oak.”

That was the kind of tree in the middle of this field, but I’m not sure that this is the reason the field was still vacant.  Trees had not stopped the developers in the rest of the county.  But something happened, then, which left me wondering.  For around that field was a barbed-wire fence; this was necessary, of course, to keep the cattle in.  And it’s this fence that the story is about.

Because with the new school, naturally it was not long before kids discovered the tree and began to play in it.  The fence didn’t stop them—they simply climbed over it.  And it was marvelous in the tree—climbing out all over the branches.  On some days there were so many kids that the tree looked like it was covered by ants scurrying all over.

And the tree seemed to have something to offer everybody:  the leaves provided shade, and protection from the rain.  There were branches closer to the ground for the kids who needed a little more safety or who enjoyed acrobatics.  There were branches shooting skyward for the more adventuresome.  And there were branches arranged almost in a platform for the ones who liked to sit and talk.

Interestingly, since everybody had a place on the tree, there was not the kind of animosity and jealousy that so often develops among groups of kids.  Oh, you would hear shouts like, “Look at me!  Look how far I’ve come!” and such as that.  But it wasn’t to show anybody up; it was more like these kids were challenged from within themselves rather than having to compete with others.  In fact, it was really like they were challenged by the tree.  Because once they entered the sanctuary of its cathedral, the kids seemed to feel invited by the tree to grow and stretch themselves.

For some, this meant overcoming their fear of heights and maybe their lack of confidence, so that clinging tightly to the tree with shaking knees, they would work themselves up one branch higher.  And each time they did this, they lost a little of their fear and gained a little more self-confidence, so that the next time moving to a higher branch was a bit easier, and they began to wonder and dream about just how high they could go.

For others, it meant outgrowing their selfishness by sharing their food and their water or Kool-Aid.  Because sometimes, when they were playing all day at the tree, some kids forgot their food (and some kids actually didn’t have food to bring, but they would never admit this).  So the selfish kids shared their food begrudgingly at first because it seemed to mean less for themselves—and often they did it because the influence of the tree itself seemed to expect it of them.  But then they discovered it was more fun to eat with somebody than to eat alone, and they began to bring extra food, and in this way discovered that there could be enough, and plenty for everyone.

For others it meant growing beyond their prejudices and learning how to get along with playmates who were different than they were, for there were kids whose skin was a different color, and there were kids who spoke a different language than English.  And there were kids who had only one parent, and kids whose two parents were both mommies or daddies.

At first, the prejudiced ones would huddle on their own branch and say nasty things among themselves about the kids who were different.  But it never felt quite right to be in the beautiful cathedral the tree offered and say those kinds of things.  And so they’d go to playing on the tree.  While they played, of course, they would encounter these kids who were different, and eventually discovered that they were really not that different.  In fact, they discovered that some of these differences were really neat, so that you could always see kids of three or four different colors sitting on the platform branches, talking and learning each other’s languages.

For others, still, it meant stretching beyond their own self-centeredness and their fear of ridicule and rejection to becoming gentle and caring for others.  This happened most easily when someone fell and broke an arm.  But it happened, too, when the most confident climber would help the least confident one climb a new branch, and things like that.

One day a boy showed up whose father had come home angry from work and had beaten him up.  Another day a girl came who had been assaulted, and didn’t know what to do about it.  The kids who knew how to care listened to them and held hands with them while they cried and didn’t make fun of them.  Then they got them to people who knew what to do in these situations.  And the kids who knew how to care continued to care by being their friends—by listening to them cry and talking with them, by calling them on the phone, and continuing to bring them to the sanctuary of the cathedral tree.  So even the kids who didn’t quite know how to care learned by watching.

Such was the power of the Cathedral Tree that everyone within it was influenced to grow and stretch in their goodness.  And curiously, everyone who lived within the tree came to understand that each one of them had a good and special gift to offer.  Even newcomers had a gift, because they so enjoyed the tree that their gratitude pepped up the gratitude of the kids who had been coming to the tree for a long time and tended to take it for granted.

It was lovely to watch kids play on that tree, because it seemed that everybody simply assumed that everybody else was welcome there.  And it seemed to be common acceptance that each person would move around the tree according to that kid’s own sense of where he ought to be on the tree (or, according to the tree’s influence on him, if you are mystical about things like I am).  And it seemed to be quite respectable to ask for help and offer help.  You’d hear a lot of words of encouragement spoken in the Cathedral Tree:  “Come on up, you can make it!”  And, “Hold on to my hand, we can get there!”  It really was amazing stuff.

Well, life was like that for a long time.  Then something happened that got me wondering:  somebody moved the barbed-wire fence from along the road to behind the tree.  Nobody knows who did it; just that one day they woke up and the fence was gone.  This meant that the kids no longer had to climb over it to get to the tree.  And so it also became an open of invitation to come to the Cathedral Tree.  For up to this time, as long as that fence was there, even though they had never been bothered, nobody was quite sure if they were really allowed to be there or not.  They lived with the possibility that someone would come and chase them away, so they were careful about who they invited.  And some kids, of course, were scared off by the sight of the fence, so that they never had enjoyed the Cathedral Tree.

But when the fence was moved, why that seemed a clear invitation to them, and pretty soon they started inviting everybody they knew, and even kids that nobody knew started showing up.  It got really crowded in that tree, and it took some time to figure out how everybody could be there.  Eventually they got things organized, and they were surprised to discover that the tree had so many more branches than they ever dreamed of.  It was almost like the more people came, the more branches the tree grew.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. . . .Abide in me, as I abide in you.”

Resurrection Courage
Acts 4.32-35
4/19/09

Back in the days when I was in the army band, after getting out of Vietnam I landed in Hawaii for a year and a half.  If you had to be in the army, it was a good gig.  I shared an apartment in Honolulu with Mike, who was a pretty poor trumpet player, and an even worse soldier—he never made it past the rank of PFC.  He was, however, a wizard acoustic guitar player, which is how I learned to play:  Mike and I would sit around for hours strumming and finger-picking together.

By this time I had the rank equivalent to a sergeant, and made substantially more money than him.  I also had a part-time job as a bartender at the NCO club.  Mike tried to make extra money by singing and playing wherever he could scrounge some bucks.    We got paid by the army once a month, which meant that towards the end of the month Mike was flat-busted, and I usually wasn’t far from it.

On this one particular afternoon late in the month I was called at the last minute to work at the club.  Mike wasn’t around, but I knew he’d stop in to change clothes before driving to the other side of the island for something or another.  So I left a note and a couple of bucks in case he needed gas.

Later at the bar, I answered the phone and it was Mike.  He was crying.  And through his sniffles he was saying thanks:  “Nobody has ever thought of me like that before.”  And he went on so that I became embarrassed.  I was relieved when somebody ordered a drink I actually had to mix.

It’s funny what a couple of bucks will get you.  For me it was nothing but some tips from my jar at the bar.  For me it was just a regular thing to do because “sharing” was simply how we were raised.

For Mike, this twenty-year-old from Detroit, it was something altogether different.  It was the embrace of being cared for, of feeling himself thought about by somebody else.  For a couple of bucks from a part-time bartender he experienced the love of God among us and through us.  It’s like the prayer “Thy kingdom come” was answered without him ever praying it.

This memory is stirred as I’ve been knocking around the story about the early church we hear in Acts:

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

Most everybody who thinks about these verses snap to the idea that the early church was a communitarian life of sharing everything.  They get all excited about it:  “Socialism!” they cry; and the liberals cheer and the conservatives hiss, and we all try to explain it away anyway as impractical; the same as we do when we hear Jesus tell the guy “go, sell everything you have and give the money to the poor.”

Of course, the story isn’t really about politics and economic systems.  What it’s really about is what happens when the resurrected Christ comes among his people.  What it’s really about is that power that releases us from those fears which drive us to cling so tightly to the things of this world.  What the story is about is the resurrected Christ working through his spirit among us to transform our hearts and minds to look ever more beyond ourselves and see the other with compassion.  To be clever:  that the story’s really about is a gang of part-time bartenders and guitarists sharing a couple of bucks without much thought because that’s what brothers and sisters do.

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them. . . .

That being said, I want to turn to your discussion about the opportunity to share your facilities with Abundant Life Cathedral through some kind of rental agreement.  I offered to do this at the last meeting of those beloved disciples I call the chief priests and elders because when the inquiry was put before them the anxiety in the room went up about, oh, 1000%.   Because they are a black congregation:  oh dear! What will “the congregation” think?  Because the work among the poor:  oh, dear!  Because they aren’t even Lutheran!  Because the are young and energetic.

I’ve seen this happen among congregational; leaders before.  You get into these meetings are pretty soon you’re talking and thinking like “the congregation” is some unknown “they”.  In fact what happens is that the congregation in your mind includes everybody you’ve ever known in the church—both living and dead and otherwise moved on.  So we end up worrying about a bunch of ghosts, instead of the real people who are the congregation.

So look around.  Because I want you to see the real congregation, those folks sharing the peace with you later, or studying scripture, or joining in meals and discussion.  You are together the household of Christ.  The leaders seek to discern the will of Christ among you (not to be your political representative).   And in the discernment of that will they must ask very difficult questions of you.  It takes real courage to wrestle with the will of Christ.

The unnamed elephant in our room of anxiety was, of course, a fear of racist and bigoted people; or better, people who appear to be racist and bigoted, because I’ve never heard anyone apply those terms to themselves.  Beyond mentioning it, I don’t have to say much because everybody knows anyway that racism and bigotry are a perversion of the image of Christ within us.  To paraphrase St. James, “You can’t love God, whom you can’t see, if you despise your differently-created brother whom you can see.”

I think the deeper issue is a fear of strangers, of strange people with different ways of doing things, sometimes even talking in foreign languages.  Isn’t that the reason why our Lutheran church ends up being a white oasis here in the midst of a multitude of diverse cultures and ethnicities?  It’s not so much because we are racist as it is that we are afraid of the stranger.  We are afraid of those who are so completely different than we are.

I’ve spent all my life trying to get over my fear of strangers.  I’m not just talking fear of physical harm, but rather that fear of rejection, of looking silly or saying something stupid; or in a large group of people different than me, that fear of being out of place.  Shyness is not a helpful attribute for a pastor, so I’ve had to learn things.

Of course, the only way to overcome shyness from talking to strangers is to start talking to strangers.  It turns out it’s actually pretty easy if you take an interest in who they really are, instead of who you think they are or ought to be.  It turns out that everybody has a story to be told about their life.  It turns out that everybody, like Mike, wants somebody to think of them.  And how do you get to know somebody?  You have a meal with them.  Maybe read some scripture.  Share the stories of your lives.  In Luke’s gospel, after the resurrection you may remember that for those disciples on their way to Emmaus, Christ was made known to them in the breaking of bread; in their fellowship meal together.

As it takes a degree of courage to wrestle with the will of Christ, so does it take a degree of courage to learn to welcome the stranger.  Because as the strangers are welcomed here at Bethlehem, after awhile you’ll feel like a stranger here at your own church.  You come in to the same old rooms where you’ve been meeting for thirty years only to find it already occupied by people you don’t know.  It takes a degree of courage to do that—to give up the comfort and familiarity of your own pew in order for someone else to know Jesus.  But that’s the power of the resurrected Christ among you.

It interests me that this opportunity comes to you now.  I’ve seen it happen before.  A congregation wrestles and studies and prayers and holds meetings and finally hears the mission statement they develop to reach out to the community around them.  And no sooner have they voted on that vision than some opportunity drops out of the clear blue to put the whole thing to a test; it’s like the Holy Spirit is saying, “Well, now, let’s see if you can put your money where your mouth is.  Let’s see just how far that welcoming and feeding and loving like Jesus really goes.  Here—give this a thought.”

Sometime these opportunities work out and suddenly you have a whole new and creative and lively community of ministries with whole new and creative and lively problems to tackle.  And sometimes after a lot of discussion among everybody involved the opportunities don’t flower directly into a new creation, but rather continue to prepare the soil in us.  Because the opportunity itself challenges us toward honest spiritual discernment about our own attitudes towards others.  Because, you see, the risen Christ never comes around just to leave us stuck in the same old baggage of our lives; he comes to transform hearts and minds.  He will never let us remain  who we were.  He’s going to make of us the bridge that spans the dividing walls of hostility between us, and he did with those first apostles:  “. . .great grace was upon them all.  There was not a needy person among them. . . . “

God is On the Loose!
4/12/09
Mark

I met Jerry soon after I arrived at seminary.  The first time Sue and I got together with him and his wife, Peggy, was at the Pizza Hut.  The pizza came and Sue and I started to dig in when Jerry and Peggy grabbed our hands and began to pray.  After the prayer he looked at her and said, “I love you.”  “And I love you!”  was the sweet reply.  And they kissed.  In spite of that, we were able to eat our pizza, and Jerry became one of my best friends during those years.

They had lucked out in finding a place to live with the Witherspoons, a fragile old couple somewhere in their 80’s.  Jerry and Peggy kept up their house and did other chores in exchange for a basement apartment.

Aside from the little outburst in the Pizza Hut, the only thing unusual about Jerry was that he kept a 6-foot boa constrictor as a pet in an aquarium.  He called the snake Balthazar.  Balthazar was well-behaved; in fact, some might even have called him lazy, since Jerry had to kill the mice before Balthazar would eat them.

One morning Jerry met me at the school coffee shop where I usually hid out during chapel.  He looked terrible:  “Larry, Balthazar got loose.  I was up all night, and still haven’t found him.”  Jerry was worried; and I became worried.  What was that snake up to?  Even though Balthazar was a nice snake in the aquarium, you don’t know what he’ll be like once he gets loose; and nobody really likes to be surprised by a 6-foot boa constrictor suddenly dropping in on them.

“Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.  But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”  So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

What an odd way for St. Mark to tell his Easter story:  an empty tomb; a stranger announcing Jesus has risen; and three women amazed and terrified, too scared to tell anyone.  By the way, the verses which follow these were added 50 or 60 years later; for Mark, the Easter story ends on a note of fear.

And yet, this element of the story does ring true to our own experience, does it not?  When we are confronted by the unexpected, when suddenly we are faced with an unknown world, with a wide-open future—even though that future bears new possibilities for us–is not our most immediate and natural reaction one of fear?  Yes, even though we may talk about the future as promise and possibility, still we find our security in the familiar and routine.

Think of how difficult it is to make a change.  Family therapists tell us that there is a power at work in families to keep them from making changes, even when the way the family itself operates is destructive to the persons in it, and everybody knows and agrees that it should be changed: so you try to make changes, and like a rubber band, get pulled back to the way you were.  Or think about the alcoholic, the addict.  Better the demons you know than the future you don’t; at least you know what to expect; at least you know where you fit; at least you know who you are.

These new possibilities are uncertain and unsure, and, finally, threatening:  what if I don’t like it?  What if it is even worse than what I know now?  Even in the case of death, the survivors know what to expect:  a time of intense pain and grief, eventually giving way to sweet memories.

We can understand the disciple’s reactions.  Indeed, even more so in their case, because with that empty tomb and that surprising appearance of some supernatural intrusion into the world, their whole understanding of reality is turned upside down; it’s simply torn apart.  They had been taught about God, they knew what to expect about the way nature functioned.  (As do we, taking comfort in those things which we can explain, thinking thereby to control them.)  And, yes, there was a belief in a resurrection at the end of time, and Jesus himself had even told them about his resurrection.  But to suddenly be confronted with it?

For now before their very eyes was evidence of a new power suddenly unleashed in this world.  Oh, amazement and joy, and a burning hope that it was true would be part of it.  But also at a deeper level a terrible fear:  what is the nature of this power suddenly come, suddenly let loose in the world?  And there it is:  “He is risen!” means, “God is on the loose.”  Whatever boxes we have tried to put God in cannot contain her, whatever controls we have tried to establish will not hold:  God is on the loose, and not even death will stop him.

Well, Jerry was worried about Balthazar on the loose, and so was I.  Indeed, the story gripped our whole seminary community, as these kinds of events do.  Not only was I worried for Jerry—he really loved Balthazar—but I kept thinking about old Mr. & Mrs. Witherspoon.  I kept picturing their house and their yard, and the neighbors’ houses around them.  Should Balthazar ever show up, how would it happen?  What would his impact on the neighborhood be?  See, it wasn’t simply a problem for Jerry and Peggy; it was, in a sense, everybody’s problem.

And so it is as we think of God on the loose this Easter season, that we must think, too about the whole world.  For this God, who cannot be boxed in by our own little thoughts about God; this God, who cannot be confined by death; this God, is loose not only in our lives, he’s out and about in the whole world; nobody knows where she might show up.

Yet, with the words, “He is risen!” the nature of God is announced to us.  For it is the nature of God to break the bonds of death in whatever forms of oppression and tyranny they might present themselves.  It is the nature of God to give life; not only life after death, but life in this world, as well.  And in this way God is on the loose in the world:  creating life, granting new life, bringing hope:  working to feed and clothe the hungry and naked; to provide homes and shelter for people living on the streets; to reconcile enemies and bring an end to war; building and rebuilding decent and humane governments and corporations which respect the dignity of God’s people throughout the world; working for healthier lives among people racked by disease and jobs for people riddled by unemployment, threatened with uselessness.
You know, after hearing the Easter story, after gazing into the empty tomb and hearing the announcement, “He is not here, he is risen,” after discovering God is on the loose, it’s difficult to read the newspapers and watch the tv reports and not ponder, “What is God doing in these places?  How is God going about this work of creating and recreating new life n this world?”

And so it was difficult for us at seminary not to ponder what it was that Balthazar was up to in those days.  But after a time, when no discovery of the snake was reported, the drama of Jerry and Balthazar faded, and we found new things to get excited about.  Until the day Jerry showed up in the coffee shop, looking even more shaken than the first time.

“We found Balthazar,” he reported.  “Well, that’s great news,” we all cheered.  “Not really.  Mrs. Witherspoon found him,” and I had pictures of this woman in her 80’s stumbling across a 6-foot boa constrictor.  “In fact,” Jerry continued, “the real truth is more like Balthazar found Mrs. Witherspoon.  She woke up this morning and found him curled up beside her in bed.  The Witherspoons aren’t too happy with us right now.”  “I’ll bet it put a new spring to her step,” commented Denny, who was in one of his efforts to see some good in everything.  And Jerry acknowledged that he’d never seen her move quite that lively before.

Yes, God is on the loose in this world, and he’s looking to curl up with you and me.  That’s the meaning of the whole episode of Jesus’ life, his death on the cross, and his resurrection:  that God is seeking out the likes of you and me, to curl up with us.  To curl up with us in the warmth of love; that’s the word of forgiveness spoken and delivered on this morning in Easter—of a power of love so great that not even the hatred which ruled Good Friday could drive him away.  For there is really nothing you and I can do, nothing in all creation, as St. Paul says, which can separate from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And then to wrap us up in the promise of the resurrection; not only that final and great resurrection at the end of history; but also in all the little resurrections of this world—we who come stumbling in here without a hope for tomorrow, simply clinging for fear to the misery of today, since that is all we have.  The great and fearsome promise of Easter is:  “Though this day be as black as the cross or as bright as the sun, I have a future for you.”

And finally, to put a new spring in our step, a new direction to our days.  And here we come full circle to those frightened and silent disciples:  for from among that handful of disciples, a new power came forth:  first experienced in fear and amazement; then encouraged by joy and strengthened by hope, it was a power which changed the world.  It is a power which changes lives—your life and mine; it is a power which even today works to bring about the world he intended from the beginning; it is a power which will not fail, because not even the last demon, the most powerful, not even death can stop him.  The Lord is Risen!  God is on the loose—keep your eyes peeled for the new life which he brings.

El Rio de Dios
A Baptismal Meditation
4/11/09

West of the Texas town of Del Rio a great river cuts through the massive barren and beautiful wilderness.  The land is a desert of rocks and cactus and scrub brush which can endure the glaring heat and searing dryness.  Lizards and rattlesnakes—and an occasional jackrabbit—are most abundant here.  Some say that small deer live in the area but, like phantoms, they are rarely seen.  It is a quiet place, speaking only the wind—the breath of God—and scratchings of something skittering across the sand.  Against a blue sky the predominant color is brown, except when the sparse rain adorns the land with orange, yellow, and purple jewels of prickly pear.

A valley winds quietly through this wilderness.  Hidden to the uninitiated eye, it can be reached only by those who know the way, who can navigate the wilderness.  The Great River runs, and by choices other than its own separates North from South, Smith from Vasquez, those who have from those who do not have.  Yet to the river, this is but a temporary arrangement.  It ran in the days before this division; it will run when the current boundary exists no longer.

To ride the river is to enter a different realm of time.  Wristwatches have no place here, for time is marked in other ways.  High above the river, on the cliffs that overlook it, are the marks where water once stood and carved out caves, lapping against the shores of another time.  Where the valley bottom broadens to a thousand yards or more, that dry land marks a different time, when the waters receded to expose a sandy base.  A sliding-board rock juts up in the middle of the river to mark yet another time when the water flowed over it and slowly scoured it smooth.  The Great River marks times past by thousands of years of slow, infitesimal change.

And of the time which is to come there are signs, too.  Scrub brush growing in the cracks of massive stone cliffs bear warning that some day, when the erosion of the sporadic rain and the gently persistent pressure of the roots have done their job, the cliff shall collapse, pouring its tons of rocks into the river.  Gravel bars built one pebble at a time point to the day when a new dry place will be exposed, and the river’s course shall change.  Dirt shorelines are undercut, eventually falling and forming a new corner to be navigated by the water.  Time is numbered in years and thousands of years.  The Great River is unhurried and incessant.  Life and death are simply different moments of a changing beauty.

This is God’s creation:  a river in the wilderness; hidden to the uninitiated eye.  Unseen water nourishing and nurturing life without end; flowing through time in years and thousands of years.

This is God’s River—El Rio de Dios; hidden to the uninitiated eye.  Hidden, but not secret.  Hidden only to those who cannot find their way through the wilderness; who cannot believe that there is, indeed, a river there, and so settle for life in the wilderness.  They live dry, parched days in the desert.  Oh, yes, they, too, receive the river’s water and are nourished; but so far from the source are they that they will never know its green and flowery abundance.

El Rio de Dios—hidden to the uninitiated eye.  Hidden, but not secret.  For the ancient legends talk about the water; they point the way to the river:  “When God began to create the heavens and the earth. . .the breath of God was moving over the face of the waters.”

“And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters above the firmament.  And God called the firmament heaven (that is, Sky).”

“And God said, ‘Let the waters under the skies be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’  God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together He called Seas.”

“And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures.’  And God saw that it was good.” And still today the life of the child is brought forth from the waters of the mother.

From the waters come creation and life; and in the waters is the presence of God; and over the waters is the Word of God:  “It is very good.” And this creation takes place over years and thousands of years; this river flows through time and history, even into our day:  creation, and presence, and the Word of God:  “It is very good.”

I have been to the Great River—the Rio Grande—and have been terrified by it, as well.  Usually the river is peaceful and serene.  But I have seen the waters suddenly rise and rage from an unknown storm.  I have struggled frantically in mighty currents threatening to carry me away.  I have been thrown against rocks in furious and frenzied rapids.  In shot, I have been tested by the waters; I have been tested by the river.

And it has seemed to me that the river claims its own freedom, its supremacy over me.  It has seemed to me that the river has judged me for the humility to accept its lordship when I enter its waters; that it has searched me for the wisdom to respect its power; and that it has tested me for the courage to continue in the face of my fear—that is, for my ability to trust.  It has seemed to me that the river has actually been my adversary at times, bent on destroying me.

Yet, the river is not malevolent.  In spite of it all, it has always yielded its blessing.  It has always given up its gift, and I take with me fish offered and caught; sights seen and cherished; friendships renewed and deepened; adventures lived and relived.  But greater than these all is the gift of time with the river itself;  of nurture and testing and growth.  But the river is not mine to control; it gives from its own freedom.

And the ancient legends, these histories, tell of this, as well—of El Rio de Dios.  They tell of Noah and his family riding out the flood of the river’s judgment for humility and wisdom:  how those who could not acknowledge its authority or respect its power were doomed.  They tell of the river testing the people of Israel for courage and trust, as death and slavery pursue them in the form of an Egyptian army, when the only possible escape is to plunge into the beckoning, demanding, and terrifying waters of the Red Sea.  The legends tell of how the river has seemed to be our adversary at times.

Yet, they promise that El Rio de Dios is not, finally, malevolent; that the blessing will be yielded; the gift will be given:  “The people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.”  And the people of the legends dance their song to the river:  “I will sing to God, for he has triumphed gloriously.  Yahweh is my strength and my song; and he has become my salvation.” For the river is always a victory; the river always gives its blessing.  But its blessing comes in its own time and out of its own freedom.  That’s the lesson of testing and judgment.

And, again, I have seen the death and destruction of the Great River, El Rio Grande.  I have seen whole river banks—this solid ground—torn away as the river cuts for itself a new course.  I have seen trees uprooted and carried like matchsticks by the river, and have witnessed ugly pictures of utter desolation left behind.  I have seen the bloated carcasses of sheep and cattle and once living things swept along by the current, and have shuddered.

But after the apocalypse, when this nightmare vision of the river has faded, I have felt a fresh and vibrant day; a dawn being born in brilliant sunshine, with warm and gentle breezes against a deep blue sky.  I have awakened to the peace and serenity of the river once again.  And so I have learned to look for this hidden birth by the river.  I have learned to say, “This is not the end.  This is yet another day, fair and beautiful.”  I have learned to hope; to trust the river.

And to sing the songs of the legends:  “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”  “His anger is but for a moment, his favor is for a lifetime.”

And the legends speak morel  “Do not be afraid; for I know you seek Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here; for he has risen as he said.” For the river flows on—El Rio de Dios—and nothing shall stop it:  “Neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, not things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation.” The river flows on, creating life; nourishing life; bringing forth new life.

And I have stood before the font like the thousands before me and the thousands who will come after me, and have splashed the river’s water on a child’s head with the ancient words, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” And I have seen their lives touched by the river; I have seen them caught up by the water; I have seen them washed in the river’s redemptive waters to be claimed as the children of God.

So come, my friends, yet again to the river.  Welcome, again, to this story which is so much bigger than you and I, but in which both you and I nonetheless have our places and our parts.  Take the place given you on the river.  Treat the river with humility and respect; trust it, and you will know its blessings and gifts.  For life on the river is of God, and God does not fail us.  On the river the Word is spoken:  “Behold, it is very good.” And it shall be very good.

By the grace, and to the glory of God.

Not Even God Lives Alone
Mark’s Passion
4/5/09

I want to focus around two comments made in Mark’s crucifixion story.  The first is by the chief priests and scribes—the official religious establishment—when they are mocking Jesus:  “He saved others; he cannot save himself.”

They speak the truth here.  There is simply no way Jesus can get himself down off that cross.  The only way Jesus can be saved is if somebody else does it.  The one we call “Savior” himself needs a savior.  “He saved others; he cannot save himself.”

But then they go on:  “Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, [let him save himself] so that we may see and believe.”

“Prove to us you are God’s messiah by saving yourself.”  They expect the messiah to be all-powerful, defeating even the Roman army’s execution squads.  They expect the messiah to be self-sufficient, and above all able to save himself.  For what kind of savior is it who cannot save even himself?    What kind of savior is it who says, “I need you”?  We want God’s Superman.  We get Jesus dying helplessly on the cross.

Now when the centurion. . .saw that. . .he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

It’s interesting that a pagan Roman commander of the world’s mightiest army who was overseeing yet another crucifixion of the thousands that took place makes the declaration: “Truly this man was God’s Son!” How could a professional soldier see God in this defeated man?  God is on the side of the mightiest, is he not?

And then I hear this:  “Truly this was God’s Son.  He saved others, but he cannot save himself.”  And I begin to wonder what this says about God.  Because if Jesus is the Son of God, the incarnation—the very flesh—of God in the world, then he reveals something about the very nature of God.  “He saved others; he cannot save himself.”

Is this also in some way true for God?  That there is something about the nature of God that is only completed by others?  I’m thinking maybe divine love can only flow in one direction—that of care for the other, and must be somehow reciprocated by others in order to be complete.  This is the will and the way and the energy of God:  that we can only save others; we must depend on others to save us.

For it is said of God’s Son, “He saved others; he cannot save himself.” Not even God saves himself.  Not even God lives alone.  We’re all in this together.  Saving one another.

A Sign of Obedience

3/29/09

John 12.20-33

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. . . .Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say–’Father, save me from this hour’? No it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”

Today’s gospel is another one of those episodes in St. John where Jesus seems to launch into a sermon which has absolutely nothing to do with the story as it is introduced.

It’s set up this way: it is the Passover festival in Jerusalem, that great religious holiday when the Jews celebrated their deliverance from slavery in Egypt by the hand of God. The Passover remembered the final plague delivered against the Egyptians, when the angel of death killed all the firstborn of the Egyptians, but passed over the homes of the Jews, thus causing Pharaoh to finally let those people go. As a major holy time, the Passover brought many pilgrims from all over Israel to Jerusalem.

Among the crowds there were some Greeks. Not Greek-speaking Jews, that’s not who John is describing; but rather non-Jewish Greeks. Gentiles, who were apparently on their own spiritual search, and had come to Jerusalem to see if maybe Judaism had something to offer their hungry souls. They are searchers, looking to fill that spiritual void in their lives.

Some of these want to meet Jesus, so they approach Philip. This is natural enough, for many of us don’t have the nerve just to march up and introduce ourselves to someone who is different from us, especially somebody prominent. We look around for someone who can act as an intermediary for us, and we look especially for someone with whom we have something in common.

Boy, I remember how thrilled I was that first week in seminary up in Minnesota, to find another who was from Los Angeles. Among all those Midwesterners, it was such a delight to find someone who “spoke my language,” as it were.

So, too, with these Greeks: they go to Philip and tell him they want to meet Jesus. For Philip was a Greek name; he spoke their language. Philip goes to Andrew, another Greek name (they were probably bilingual in Greek and Aramaic, the language of Jesus). And these two approach Jesus.

By the way, that’s still the primary way in which people meet Jesus today—through somebody they know; through somebody with whom they have something in common: a friend, a coworker, a shared history or interest; even a spouse. So it’s worth thinking about in your life: among your acquaintances is there someone who wants to meet Jesus. And are you willing to take them to him?

But on with the story. Philip and Andrew approach Jesus with the request of the Greeks. And at this, Jesus launches into this oration we hear today; a speech which seems to have little to do with what is going on here. It reads, instead, like the inner thoughts of Jesus; and our immediate impression is that the approach of the Greeks serves as a kind of sign for Jesus: “Now the hour has come.” “Now the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

Indeed, that is exactly what it is—a sign. In John’s gospel it marks the end of the first half of the story of Jesus, and the beginning of the second half. In the first half of the gospel—dubbed by scholars as the Book of Signs—Jesus is a screaming success, with multitudes of followers, performing all sorts of miracles—the most recent of which is bringing back Lazarus from death—and culminating in the story just before today’s verses of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday.

And while this is going on, the chief priests and Pharisees, terrified of the ruckus he is creating, and filled with jealousy and rage, are plotting how to get rid of him. Their final ironic comment on witnessing his entry into Jerusalem, in verse 19 of this chapter is, “You see, you can do nothing about him. Look, the world has gone after him!” The entrance of the Greeks is the sign of the world, indeed, going after him.

And it is the beginning of the second half of John’s gospel, called by scholars the Book of Glory. This is the story of Jesus’ journey to the cross. That’s what John calls the crucifixion—the glorification of Jesus. So that when Jesus recognizes the moment and says, “Now the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” it is not a victory speech. It is a recognition of the nearness of the cross and death.

And so, the rest of his speech—really an agonizing prayer, struggling with the will of God: “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Yes, this is the anguished prayer other gospels report as taking place in the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus carries on a desperate struggle between his own desire to live, to rejoice, to be happy, and the will of God which will lead him down the path of hideous torture, suffering, and death. The time has come for him to make that choice; the time has come for him to declare.

If you have ever been in that position, facing a clear choice between your personal desires and the path of discipleship, then you know something of the agony our Lord faced. If you have ever been at that spot where you would like to do one thing, and yet the moment, and voice of God is calling you to another, then you know something of the struggle of our Lord. And at such a breathtakingly terrifying moment the one promise to be had is that our Lord, himself, went through it. He knows your struggle.

But there is more, and thanks be to God that there is. For in his great compassion for our world, in his profound love for us, his answer is yes: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

For this is the glory of God: that in his deep love for the world he would join with us, not only in our moments of victory and success, but also and especially in our moments of hideous and pathetic failure. That’s why the gospel doesn’t end with the book of signs and miracles, but goes on to the cross, where Jesus dies an apparent failure. For God does not only meet us on the mountain tops, but in the depths of our hell as well.

And this is the glory of God: that all people might be drawn to him. That’s why the Greeks drop out of this story today, and the gospel is not proclaimed to the non-Jewish world until after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. So that there might not be divisions among us any more—Jews, Greeks, righteous, unrighteous, any group claiming a special monopoly on God—for what we all face, and the one thing which is common to all human beings is death. And in his great compassion for us, in his deep identification with us, our Lord himself goes to death, faces death with us, that he might, indeed, draw us all to himself breaking down the barriers between us, revealing the truth: that we are all, basically and essentially, brothers and sisters.

The gospel is still the same: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. And the Son, in his love, obeyed, even to going to the cross. The sign of his obedience is the cross, the same sign under which you and I live. That we might come to understand that we are called to live with obedience of love for our brothers and sisters in this world.

John 3:16

John 3.14-21

3/22/09

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

Sue and I follow politics pretty closely.  Part of that is because we believe it’s our responsibility as citizens to know what our government is doing “for us” to others, not to mention what they’re doing to us “for our own good.”  That’s the deal with democracy:  each of us shares some responsibility for what is done in our name.  We the people are the government, and each of us have our part to play, even if it’s just staying informed and talking things over with our friends and families.

The other reason we follow politics is because it’s such great  theater.  Who needs a sitcom when you have marble mouth Barney Frank grilling one of the finance CEOs, “Just what part of your job would you not do if you didn’t get a bonus?”  Or when you have Chuck Grassley saying executives should quit or commit suicide?  We enjoy watching the righteous moral indignation regardless of the hypocrisy.  Because they say how we feel.

But the finance people don’t help their own case at all.  They have to pay retainer bonuses to some in an industry that’s laying off thousands?  I don’t get it.  The CEO of some crashed bank nobly announces he’ll work for a mere $1 this year, though nonetheless cashing his $38 million paycheck from last year.  These wizards of finance structured contracts with their own employees that require bonuses even when they crashed the company?  The president of Citibank announces he understands the public’s anger and now he “gets it” and they’re going to start doing things differently—beginning with a $10 million remodeling of their executive offices.

These people live in a different universe than I do.  It’s not merely that they make more money.  It’s that they live in a different reality altogether.  It’s a reality in which money is not merely a tool of commerce, but is the measure and meaning of all things.  The accumulation of money is its own end.   They worship—in a very literal sense—the almighty buck.They are, of course, driven by greed.  But they don’t know that. They can’t see their own greed because they’re following the moral rules of what they call the free market:  where every human transaction exists to make a profit.  According to these rules, greed is a virtue.  According to this god, people are to be used to make money.

And they do not understand that the god they worship has proven to be as false as any human idol.  They don’t understand that their golden idol has been stripped naked in the sight of all people.  I read a story this week telling of the death threats they’re getting and their need to hire body guards and security teams   And I thought about this verse from John:  For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.

They suffer in their own darkness.  And their darkness destroys the lives of those for whom they are responsible.

I get to wondering how they became that way, and recall the story of a church friend who I’d taught in confirmation.  He was active in the youth group, went to a church college and got an degree in business.  He went to work for a bank, started trading securities, and got caught doing some illegal finagling.  He lost his job and his trading license was suspended.  It took him a few years to redeem himself, but he did, and now is a good upstanding church-going family guy.  So, we’d say, a youthful mistake.  When I asked him how it happened he said everybody in the office was doing it, and these were the people he was also hanging with outside of the office.  Everybody was in to the easy money to be made.  He came to live in this community deceived by greed.

My assumption is that we all wrestle with our tendency to be greedy.  I’ve certainly said my prayers about it—“Lemme win the lottery, Lord, and I’ll give you 10—no 20%!—of it.”  Who of us has not grumbled about our wages?  Sometimes it’s justifiable; but sometimes it’s just the self-justification of greed.  I always disliked having to negotiate my salary with congregations because in addition to wrestling with their holy vow towards pastoral poverty—Lord, you keep ‘im humble, and we’ll keep ‘im poor—I have to question my own greedy tendencies.   I’ve talked with small business owners who must juggle the profitability of the company with decent and appropriate wages for their employees.   When is enough, enough?  When is fair, fair?

But who can help me see the difference?  In the midst of, in the grip of my selfish desires, how can I even see them?  Where is the line between the “just rewards of my labors” and the greed that demands more than is just?  Where is the light to be found in this darkness?

Here y’go:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already.

We make a mistake if we spiritualize these verses to mean that if you pledge allegiance to Jesus you’ll go to heaven after you die and if you don’t pledge you’ll go to hell.  Instead, let me try this:

As persons we are defined to a large extent by the god we worship.  We try to conform our lives to what we think this god expects of us, and we measure ourselves in the eyes of this god.  And furthermore, our understanding, our knowledge of this god comes from the company we keep.  For example, you know God through the Body of Christ here at Bethlehem.  So we gather here to worship and hear the sacred stories of God with his people and Jesus, and we study them and discuss them and look for our lives in them.  And they do bring some light in the darkness, don’t they?  Catching you up in you own self-justifications, maybe, or delivering a promise just when you need to hear it most.  How many times have I heard, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Larry, get a grip.  Your life with me is so much more than this?”  I gain a different perspective on my life among the people of faith.

But what if there is no Body of Christ to provide this perspective?  What if instead of getting together to talk about Jesus and the workings of God all we ever did was talk about Profit and the workings of the market?  Then there is nothing to challenge our self-delusions.  And there is no help to keep our baser instincts like greed in check.  When my young friend was lost in the darkness, he claimed he was a Christian, but his real god was Profit.

So he lived in fear.  He told me, “Finally I was glad I got caught, because I lived in fear of getting caught every day.”  He worshiped a false god that drove him in fear and destroyed his job and his marriage.  As John puts it:  those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

False gods lead us to fear and destruction.  They promise life and deliver death.

The God of our Lord Jesus shows us death, and gives us life:  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

This God comes in the life of Jesus to bring healing and reconciliation and forgiveness to his whole creation; and in coming in Jesus this Gold declared he would work through each one of us to conform this world to his holy image, where swords are beaten into plowshares  and we open our clenched fists to a handshake and we treat each other with the care and indulgence the Samaritan showed the beaten man in the ditch.God so loved the world to bring salvation among us; and to lift our lives to a far more transcendent dignity known by the false gods of this age.  We are created in the image of God.  We are the people of Jesus.

Cleansing the Temple
John 2.12-22
3/15/09

When I was an elementary school kid living in living in a little town in PA not far from Pittsburgh, St. Patrick’s Catholic church and school was just a few blocks from our house.  Our family passed by it on  our way to the church we attended, called Moxham Lutheran.  On Sundays, a little wooden stand was set up in front of St. Pat’s, on the sidewalk next to the curb where a couple of kids sold the Sunday paper that came out of Pittsburgh.  My Lutheran pals and I sneered at that:  “Just like them Catholics to have money-changers in the temple.”  It was the very thing that Jesus was against.

It never dawned on us that the news stand had nothing to do with the church, really; it was just a convenient location.  In those days, when you were ten years old, your church was as all-powerful and wise as your dad, and both were worth fighting for.  Your religion was right, and everybody else’s was wrong—‘specially them Catholics.  I knew the Catholics were wrong because they were selling papers in front of the church.  Jesus said,  “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”  Nyah, nyah, nyah.

But as childish as this thinking is, it does point to a reality of the world:  religion is big business.  Now, that’s obvious in our times.  Big bucks flow in the religion business, not only through our churches, but in our culture all around—from bookstores and trinket shops and religious conferences to television and radio programming and unending appeals for donations.  You’ve got billions of dollars floating around in just this country alone.  When you toss in the rest of the world and its religions—Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism and them all—the amount is unimaginable.  Religion is its own financial market.  You’ve got probably millions of jobs at stake, and, for the more enterprising, big bucks to be made.  Both Rick Warren of Saddleback church and Joel Osteen over in Houston became millionaires with their best-selling books.  Others, of course, have made their religious millions more dishonestly.

That’s not to suggest that I respect what they have to say—I actually haven’t bothered to read their books (nor do I want to).  But at least writing a book is honest.  Others will promise you the great rewards of god if you send a donation—and they’re getting rich.  Others will plead on the behalf of the helpless, then pocket the dollars.  Pat Robertson—himself a millionaire many times over—pleaded on his television show for donations to “Operation Blessing” to bring humanitarian aid to Africa and god’s blessings to the donor, while using the planes the group bought to carry out the business of the diamond mines he’d invested in in South Africa.

When Jesus said “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” I’m pretty sure he also meant check out who’s wanting you to give up your money—your life—in the name of some god.  Just because they say “Lord, Lord,” doesn’t necessarily mean that Jesus has anything to do with them.

Of course, religion was big business back in the days of the early church, too.  There’s a funny story in Acts about when Paul is in Ephesus and successfully drawing people to the living Christ away from the “dead idols” they’d been worshipping.  These conversions  were costing the silversmiths—the guys who actually made the figurines of the goddess Artemis—a bunch of money; they were losing customers.  So they stirred up a riot claiming Paul was speaking blasphemy against the great goddess of the city and of all Asia, Artemis, and he ended up having to leave that place.  I was in Ephesus and saw the ruins of these shops, right outside the ruins of the temple of Artemis.  And perhaps we ought not get too cynical:  the goddess Artemis provided their livelihood, the food and shelter for their families.

But they did so selling—and themselves buying into—an illusion, a bubble.  The system worked only so long as they kept it going.  Artemis had no life in herself.

And then there’s Jesus in the temple.  Here’s what’s going on:

Since the very earliest days of its history, the worship life of Judaism revolved around animal sacrifices.  The covenant between God and Abraham 1200 years before Jesus was by way of the sacrifice of an animal.  And it was an essential part of Jewish faith from then on:  getting right with God required a blood sacrifice.  And through the sacrifice you experienced the assurance of God’s presence.  It was part of the reality of an agricultural and originally nomadic people.  When the temple was built in Jerusalem, that became the place for sacrifices to be made, and it became the obligation of every good Jew to make a pilgrimage to the temple and make a sacrifice at least once in his life.  By the time of Jesus, millions of Jews were living all over the Mediterranean.  Hundreds of thousands of foreign Jews packed the streets of Jerusalem, especially during Passover, which is the holiest week of the Jewish year.  It was in every sense of the word a tourist and religious Mecca.

Here’s what Jesus might have seen on entering the temple complex.  Down a few steps and spread out before him is a courtyard, maybe the size of a city block.  Beside us and along both sides of the courtyard is a covered arcade lined with beautiful stone columns.  Those arcades are used by shopkeepers selling various religious articles.  At the other end, high above is the temple itself, glowing from all the gold covering the building in the afternoon sun.  At the top of the steps is the High Altar, seen by everyone.  Beyond that the dark and mysterious Holy of Holies, which none dare enter save the high priest.

The first things to strike you are perhaps the crowds and the chaos and commotion of thousands of people and animals coming and going.  Over here are the tables where the money changers are turning foreign currency into shekels, which is the official money of the temple.  You need it to pay your temple tax and to buy the animal for your sacrifice.  And then farther down the courtyard are the cages of the sacrificial birds and the temporary corrals of the sheep and goats and cattle and oxen to be sold for sacrifice.  The noise of the crowds is joined to the squawking and braying of animals.

The smell gets your attention next, first in the form of incense  Up by the High Altar you can see golden vessels pumping forth thick columns of the perfumed smoke.  But this doesn’t quite cover the squalid stink of animal dung and the blood and entrails of a thousand sacrifices drying in the blazing sun.  Blood runs down the front of the High Altar and over the steps leading to it.  Priests dressed in splendid garments laced with gold mucked about in the stuff, cutting the throat of one animal after another.  Assistants drug screaming animals to the altar slipping and falling in the filth, while others dragged the carcasses off.  Beneath the perfume of the incense dwelt the noxious fumes of the slaughterhouse, as if God were appeased by the odor of death.

But Jesus does not object to the slaughter of the animals.  He’d been raised in a culture which, for over a thousand years, had understood animal sacrifice as a communion with God.  His own parents had given thanks for his birth by sacrificing birds.  It was part of their religious faith; there are places in the OT that say God does, indeed, take pleasure in the order of burnt sacrifices; perhaps something like a holy barbecue.  The sacrificial meal was a gift given by God through the life of the animal.

What Jesus objected to was what it had become:  nothing but a marketplace.

Archeologists working around the ancient temple complex in  Jerusalem have discovered that the whole priestly class of the temple in unrivalled luxury.  It was darn good business being a priest at the temple; you lived in great wealth.  That wealth was made, of course, off of simple peasants who scraped together enough money to make their faithful pilgrimage.  The temple, rather than being the means of God’s blessing to all peoples had become the vehicle of economic and religious oppression.  God’s gift to the nations had become corrupted.

Instead of giving, the temple took—even down to the last two cents of the poor widow Jesus talks about.  Instead of God’s servants, the temple became a palace of kings to be served.  It was now nothing but a mockery of what God had intended.  This is what set Jesus off.  Because it was all a religious shell game; there was nothing of the substance of God to it.  That’s what Jesus saw when he talked about the destruction of the temple:  it had ceased to serve humanity.

And as is a matter of historical reality, the temple at Jerusalem—and in fact, all of Jerusalem with it—was utterly destroyed by the Romans some forty years after Jesus.  The sacrificial system in Judaism came to and end forever.

Because it no longer served God’s purpose.  Because it no longer served God’s people.  God’s people, God’s human institutions are created to serve.  Buildings will crumble and fall.  The people we love and care for live with us forever.

A Transfigured Church
Mk. 8 – 9
2/22/09

The story of the transfiguration of Jesus is one of those really mysterious tales in the Bible.  You’ve got Jesus and his closest friends Peter and James and John standing there on the top of a rocky mountain.  Fog swirls over everything, and a couple of dead guys show up; a voice comes out of no where, and Jesus takes on the dazzling appearance of a sun god.  In some ways, it sounds like a tale Edgar Allen Poe might write.  Or maybe Stephen King.

Of course, the point of the story is to tell us something about Jesus.  So Moses shows up. He’s been revered for 1500 years as the one who led them out of slavery into freedom.  He was God’s great giver of the law revealed to him on Sinai.  You may recall that when he came down from that experience, he too had been transformed into such dazzling brightness that people could not look on him directly.  Then up pops Elijah, about whom we heard a little in the first reading.  He was a powerful—and militant—prophet who was expected (by some) to return as God’s next messiah.  And to round out this little conference you have the voice out of nowhere—or rather the voice out of everywhere, the voice out of the universe, God’s keynote address:  “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

And Jesus’ best friends—remember them?  Peter and James and John.  They are there because they are Jesus’ closest friends.  They’re watching all of this and don’t know whether to wet pants or run.  Peter babbles because he’s terrified.  He doesn’t know what’s up with his best friend.

And here’s where I began to find myself in the story.  Because there are those moments when Jesus is not merely my friend; he becomes my Lord.  There are those moments when my buddy Jesus is revealed to be the son of God; the very flesh of the God who has created me  and gives me today’s life and to whom I owe my whole being.  This is my Lord Jesus Christ; beyond friendship, he also commands.  Beyond this world, he also meets me in the next.  The transfiguration take places when Jesus reveals himself to be my Lord.

Bit wait!  There is more! As they say on tv commercials.  That’s why I added those verses leading up to the story.  Because Jesus didn’t just willy-nilly take them up that mountain.  It isn’t like they were just sitting around one afternoon and Jesus said, “Hey I got an idea.  Let’s climb that mountain and I’ll get transfigured.”  No.  Check out how it goes:  first, Peter calls him the Messiah and Jesus tells him that this messiah’s gonna be executed.  Peter objects to that, and Jesus tells him he’s working on the side of the devil.  Then Jesus calls everybody around him and says, “You want to follow me, then deny yourself and pick up your cross.”  And then we hear the story of the transfiguration.

This isn’t accidental.  It has to do with the revelation that self-denial and cross-bearing are the way of Jesus—and the power of God.  It is a word of assurance to us disciples when we’re struggling with this whole business of what it means deny ourselves and pick up the cross of service to others.  That is the way of God.

Okay.  Sit with that for awhile, because I want to give you some news I was surprised to get on Thursday.  That’s when the ELCA Task Force on the Study of Sexuality published its reports and recommendations.  Specifically, they published their report and recommendations about our policies regarding the ordination of partnered homosexuals “who are in an faithful and monogamous relationship”.  At the churchwide assembly in August representatives from the 4 ½ million of us will make decisions about it.

I was surprised to get it because I haven’t been paying attention to that discussion.  Because, to tell the truth, I’m real tired of talking about sex in church, particularly homosexuality.  I spent 20 years studying the issue to come to some position, and then got my pummeling for it, as did so many in the great church battles.  I’m especially sensitive –you might say “keenely” aware—of your battles here.  In fact, I thought about just ignoring the whole thing.

But you’re going to hear about it sooner or later, so you might as well hear about it from whatever end of the horse you think I speak.  At least we’d all be having the same discussion.  But I want really to encourage you to go to the website, print out the documents, and study them, because I can hardly touch on it all here.  And I want also to say that there are time when I’m as  disgusted with the ELCA as I am with my wife; and there are more often times with I am proud of the ELCA; and the are occasions when I am awed by what they do, like a student before a professor.  This is one of those awing times.

The Task Force notes that we as a church are pretty much flat deadlocked on the issue of whether we ought to ordain a person otherwise qualified, who is in a same sex monogamous and faithful relationship into the public ministry of the church.  By deadlocked I mean we can’t solve the issue unilaterally one way or the other without doing great harm to the whole church.  The body of Christ doesn’t function by politics, where a one-vote majority inflicts the will of the winner on the loser.  The church functions—especially in so profound an issue—by seeking consensus in the mind of the Holy Spirit.

Here’s the point:  the task force notes that the deadlock is rooted in the consciences bound by faith of all the people.  That is:  for me, how I stand on this issue—where I come out—is profoundly rooted in what I believe Jesus commands.  I cannot be faithful to my lord without holding that position.  It’s the old Martin Luther “Here I stand, I can do not other” business.  My conscience is bound by it.

Listen to what the task force says:

The emphasis of “conscience-bound” is not on declaring oneself to be conscience-bound. Rather, we are bound in love by the conscience of the other—that is, we recognize the conscience-bound nature of the convictions of others in the community of Christ. For Lutherans, the reality that people hold convictions from deep faith that may be in conflict with the deep faith convictions of others is not merely a procedural or political difficulty. As sisters and brothers in Christ we bear one another’s burdens. For one member to suffer because her or his conscience has been offended is for all of us to suffer.

The task force understands the term “bound conscience” to describe the situation of those who hold a particular position because they are convinced of it by particular understandings of Scripture and tradition. For this church to move toward rostering Lutherans in same-gender relationships in a time of lack of consensus requires this church to find ways to respect the bound consciences of one another—even and especially when the other is conscience-bound to disagree with the action being taken.

So I’m thinking about this in terms of self-denial and cross-bearing and the transfiguration and this thought comes up:  it’s easy to see the goodness in my own position—my conscience is bound because this is my faithful response to Jesus.  It’s almost impossible to see the goodness in my opponents’ position.  How can they possibly be acting faithfully to my Lord?  How can it be possible that we are even called by the same Lord?   And beyond that, how in the heck do we live together anyway?  Do we really have to operate like “it’s my way or the highway”?

Here’s the conundrum the task force says we’re in as the ELCA:  if we simply change the policies to allow for the ordination of partnered gays, there will be a fracturing of the church.  And on the other hand, if we don’t change the policies allowing for the ordination of gays, there will also be a fracturing of the church.

The task force recommends answering four questions:

1)    “Should the ELCA commit itself to finding ways to allow congregations and synods that choose to do so to recognize, support, and hold publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships?”  Do we want to find a way to permit some congregations in some places support and encourage gay partners to live in life long faithfulness to each other, even when we don’t understand how one man could be attracted to another?

2)    “Should this church commit itself to finding a way for people in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church?”  If we agree that those mysterious relationships deserve encouragement and support, should we also find a way for folks in such relationships to be pastors?

3)    “As it implements its decisions to find ways to roster people in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships, can this church commit to doing so in ways that bear one another’s burdens, love the neighbor, and respect the bound consciences of those with whom they disagree?”  Here’s the deal:  when we start doing this someone’s bound conscience is going to be deeply burdened; my church is doing something that goes deeply against what I believe in.  See?  Knowing that, can we still go ahead together?

“So,” says the task force, “if you say yes to all three, then here’s our recommendation:  that we “consider structured flexibility in decision making to allow, in appropriate situations, people in publicly accountable, monogamous, lifelong, same-gender relationships to be approved for the rosters of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.”

In other words, shall we build in exceptions to the rule?  So that what might be wholly inappropriate in one place might be both appropriate and right in another?  What might be inappropriate in Beaumont might be quite appropriate in San Francisco.  Or Houston, for that matter.

Well, enough of that.  As I say, I encourage you to read the whole document.  Because in it I see the nobility of the church, my brothers and sisters in Christ working to lead us all into a new and profounder experience of the transfigured Christ, and together we pick up our crosses—the burden our of neighbor’s bound conscience—trying to live into his dazzling white brilliance.

Albert Schweizter put it like this:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not.  He speaks to us the same word:  “Follow thou me!”  and sets us to the tasks that He has to fulfill for our time.  He commands.  And to those who obey, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings that they shall pass through in his fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He Is.

The Restoring Touch
Mark 1.40-45
2/15/09

I want to think with you today about Jesus’ encounter with the leper.  And I want to fiddle with the experience of human touch and its power in our lives.  I’ve never actually done this in a sermon before, so it’ll be interesting to see where we end up.

But I got the thinking about how long it takes you guys to pass the peace, chugging up and down the aisle to hug and greet each other like long-lost friends, after just having had a cup of coffee together.  These are the sorts of things I think about on the drive home.  And the thought came, “You know, Larry, for a whole bunch of these folks this might be the only time during the week they get hugged.”  And what better time to do it than when gathered in this holy space?  How better to do it than in the name of Christ?  It is the very real and physical embrace of God.  So let’s hear the encounter again:

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with anger, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’

Now, we know that in Jesus’ day leprosy was any number of skin conditions that terrified the community.  They were afraid of infection.  And they saw the leper as being cast out by God, impure.  In a very real way lepers were social untouchables.  They were forced to live in the garbage dumps of the town, begging for their subsistence.  They were, quite literally, the refuse of humanity.

And they were required to warn anybody coming near by calling out “Unclean!  Unclean!”  Because any person who touched a leper also became unclean, impure.  That’s why Jesus can’t go into any of the towns.  Because he’d touched a leper.

(By the way, you could only be declared clean again after being examined by a priest and making the appropriate offering.)

So here’s my question:  knowing all of this, why did Jesus choose to touch the leper?  After all, Jesus had a whole assortment of ways to heal people, including, “Only say the word, Lord, and I shall be healed.”  So why this way?

I’m thinking that it’s because it’s only with touch that Jesus can reach through the leper’s isolation and thereby restore him to his full human dignity in his community.  The untouchable is restored by human touch.

Think about this:  our first experience of being alive is of being touched.  We are being held, hugged, and rocked before we’ve ever opened our eyes.  This is the fundamental experience of the rest of our lives, being physically loved like this.  And all of our loving relationships are expressed through touch, from holding hands to intimate wrestling.  It’s a deep thing within us.  I’m 60, and I still occasionally like to cuddle into Sue like a child; and, of course, vice versa.  This touch tells us—perhaps even in ways more fundamental than words—that we are loved and cherished; that we belong among people.

In fact, this is such a basic human need that I’ve heard of a condition called “failure to thrive”:  infants who are deprived of human touch will whither and die.  Cast out like some leper.

When Jesus touched that leper—and I don’t think his touch was a merely dainty tap; I tend to see it as a side hug, “You betcha.  You’re clean.”  When Jesus touched that leper he sanctified our human touch as the loving power of God.  Touch is the power of God to create and to restore life.  Whether we are touching another in order to love, or yearning to be touched by another in love, there’s something of the holy moving in us.

By the way, I don’t think Jesus was “moved by pity” like today’s translation has it.  One of the ancient Greek manuscripts says that he was moved by anger.  He was enraged at what had been done to this man.  And he took his side against all those forces that worked to deform and isolate the leper.  Jesus stood with him.

But of course there’s another side to touching, isn’t there?  Not all touch is loving and life-giving.  Not all touch is holy.  Some touch is sinister and self-serving, unilaterally using another to satiate private passions; some touch deforms human life.  And touch used to do violence to another—especially if that other is, say, a child or a wife—is simply an evil thing, drawing as well the outrage of God that Jesus expresses.  Because the victims of this evil brutality are left every bit as isolated as the leper.  My sister told me not long ago that after she’d been sexually assaulted by an uncle at the age of 10, she no longer felt part of our family; but like she’d become somehow unclean, an outsider.

This demonic use of touch of course needs to be condemned and restrained by laws.  But as well, and I think especially for us in the church, should we think of how will the victim of this evil be restored?  How will the one so profoundly deformed by this violence come to know herself as clean?

When you take your congregational vote about campus ministry, think about the little girl just two years out of high school on her on for the first time.  She’s making the party rounds, drinks herself silly, and is sexually assaulted, though she’s really not sure she wasn’t at fault.  All she really knows is that somehow now things are different; somehow, now she is unclean.  Where will she find the Jesus who restores her from leprosy?

Which, quite interestingly, brings us back to the passing of the peace, because what is such a marvelous gift of God to us can be a real uncomfortable experience for the stranger, like, say, our little college girl who just wants to sneak in and pray and see what you people are like, if you can be trusted, if she can be safe.  Now, I’ve been a stranger in a bunch of churches and most of them do a nice job of respecting my space.  But here’s the thing:  the longer you spend passing the peace, the stranger the stranger feels; the more out of place she feels.  So you always have to be aware of that.  Like good hosts anywhere, we celebrate our parties, but are respectful of guests.

Okay.  So I’ve touched on touching as the marvelous gift of love from God, and the evil use of touch with violence.  Okay, the one thing left here is raising children.  Because that’s where the violent touch can so often be applied in the name love, or discipline.  So when I was raising my own kids I developed a philosophy about it.  I could only ever who ‘em on the butt or the hand, and that only with my own hand.  I could never whop ‘em in anger, and could only whop ‘em if their life depended on it.  I could not hit ‘em as retribution for something they did.  So if the kid breaks loose and runs into the street you grab him and whop and generally make him think his life is in danger.  Generally it had to do with prerational kinds of behavior by them, where the experience of fear is more determinative of future behavior than gentle explanation.  First yeah scare them to death, them later you explain why.  By the time they were in kindergarten, any kind of corporal punishment was rare.  I figured I was an adult.  I could out think them.

But we all lose it once in a while.  So our family’s taking our driving vacation north one year when the three kids we’re in, whatever, 2nd, 3rd, 4th grades.  This is the third day on the trip that started out on the first with everybody singing and reading stories to each other and on the second with a little singing in the morning and a quiet sullenness with sparks of irritation as the day wore on.  And now we had piled again into that little Stanza hatchback, the kids squeezed in the back seat and beginning, first, to fight over territory starting with “you touched me” and escalating to “Stop hitting me!”  My wife made them sit on their hands for ten minutes, then freed them.  And the number one son just couldn’t resist one last slap.  Very bad timing on his part as I’d come to a highway junction that informed me I had another three hours of driving, so reached through the seats, slapped him much harder than I intended on the thigh and yelled, “How many times do you have to be told not to slap?”  That worked.  The boy was screaming his lungs out, the other two sat in terror, and Sue was very quiet.  Then she said:  “Need I point anything out here?”

That really was a violent touch; I just used the kid to vent my own frustration.  I was sick of the car, too.

So I had to apologize to the whole family, and especially to ask my son to forgive me.  Touch which uses the other—especially the weaker—one to quench my own passion is not loving.  My boy and I sat together, this 9-year-old cuddled into my lap, and I said I’m sorry and he said, “That’s okay Dad” and put his arms around my neck and I knew how the leper felt when Jesus touched him.

Isaiah’s Encouragement
Isaiah 40.21-31
2/8/09

Today I want to address you as a congregation.  Because next week we’re going to have another meal together, and you’ll make the formal decisions necessary to begin your future.  Y’all know that you can’t be the kind of congregation you’ve been for these many decades any longer.  The world changes.  That’s what we’ve been talking about for these past ten months or so.  And wrestling with the question, “Who, then, shall we be?”

And after considerable discussion, Bible study, and prayer the word came forth:  “Blessed by God, we welcome, feed, and love.”  Now this identity of the people of God is as ancient as Jesus and the disciples feeding the 5000.  In fact, it’s a theme all over the New Testament; so you have the apostles eating together and studying scripture and praying in Acts.  According to my friend, Ray Pickett, the NT prof, the gospel of Luke is all about eating together as the setting for reconciliation and redemption.  And the parables of the kingdom of God told by Jesus are all about feasts.  So if anybody ever asks, “Is Bethlehem a biblical church?” you can say, “You betcha.  We live according to the hospitality of Jesus.  And we keep trying to learn what that hospitality means.”

Of course, ‘blessed by God we welcome, feed, and love’ has been at the heart of your long history as a congregation, though perhaps disguised in various kinds of organizations and committees and gatherings and such over the years.  By why else would you have done any of that other than celebrating the blessings of God and sharing them?  So now it is suggested that this love be shown in a different form; your life together as the Body of Christ lived in a little different way.  The transition task force has recommended that you call a pastor who will spend half her/his time nurturing and developing your current congregation, and half of her/his time working with you to develop a campus ministry at Lamar.  This is the direction you’re being asked to make a decision about—and to support with your efforts, prayers, your hospitality, and your dollars.

Now, so you understand how this recommendation came to be:  I suggested the possibility to the transition folks—the chief priests and elders—after Bishop Rinehart’s timely visit here a couple of months back.  As I listened to him I began to makes some connections and see some possibilities and brought them up, which is what I’m supposed to do as an interim pastor.  The chief priests and elders have mulled it over since then.  I think they’ve come up with faithful and do-able recommendations.  But I have no personal stake in the outcome—by the time whatever is decided happens, I’ll be down the road.  So it is very much your decision; your discernment about your life as the Body of Christ in this place.

At the same time, however, I’ve talked to the bishop and others on his staff about what you’re thinking of doing, and they’re quite excited about it, and willing to help when they can.  There’s also the possibility that some grant money might be available to help with expenses.  But the initiative has to begin with you guys, because you’re the folks here in the trenches in Beaumont.

Okay.  Enough of that.  I want to focus on a question raised but never addressed at the last meeting of our task force.  It wasn’t answered because it came at the end of a long and arduous meeting.  The question was this:  what if we fail?

What if we fail?  The question stayed with me all the way back to Houston, and has visited me in the days since.  What if we fail?

My most immediate thought was, how can you fail?  What does it mean to fail?  You’ve studied the scriptures.  You’ve studied the neighborhood around you and talked with community leaders.  You’ve reflected on your own history.  You’ve discussed and debated and prayed for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in seeking the will of God.  The real issue is not about success or failure, but faithfulness, right?  Are we being faithful to Christ—that’s really the measure.  Or to put it another way, faithfulness is its own success.

But I think hidden within the fear of failure is the yearning for certainty.  How can we be certain that this is the will of God?  How do we know for sure?  But you know as well as I that there is no certainty to this business of living.  There never was any certainty and there never will be.  That’s why they call it faith.

In the early days of Christianity, when St. Paul and the other apostles were starting Christian communities all over the Mediterranean a huge debate broke out about whether or not men had to be circumcised in order to become Christians.  The fight was tearing up these Christian communities, so it was decided to get all the leaders together at a council in Jerusalem, make a decision, and then send out a letter.  Peter and Paul became the spokesmen for opposing sides, and it got real, real ugly between them.  The story’s told in the book of Acts.  The discussion and debate went on for days, then the council made a decision and wrote their letter.  The Ietter begins like this:  “It seems good to us and the Holy Spirit”.  So here they are, wrestling with the most momentous decision of Christianity, and here’s the best they can come up with:  “Eh, it seems like a good idea.”

We can only do our best to be faithful to the spirit of Christ.  After that it’s in the hands of God.

Of course, that never stopped me from pacing the house in the dark of night gripped by an almost paralyzing fear and wonder.  I’ve lived at the edge of failure in so many congregational endeavors from putting up buildings to starting new ministries, and in every case have wrestled with the failure demon.  But here’s the deal:  in every case, when all was said and done, there never was a failure.  Nothing we tried failed.

Though in an awful lot of them the results were radically different than what we anticipated, and we had to change our course a bit.  See, I don’t think you can fail when you are seeking to be faithful; though the spirit might blow you in directions you never anticipated.

And just because you’re living faithfully, of course, doesn’t mean things will be easy and certain.  In fact, that dark night of doubt and fear is part of the work, isn’t it, part of the faithfulness.  It’s the work of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane agonizing over the will of God:  does it matter?  Will it make a difference?  How can I by certain?
When I am pacing the floor at night, lost in fear and wonder and doubt, a song begins to take voice deep in my soul.  I don’t intentionally call on it, it just begins singing itself.  It’s a church camp song I’ve known for decade, using verses from today’s reading of Isaiah.

Now, Isaiah was writing to people who’d experienced failure beyond what I can imagine:  their country had been invaded by armies and destroyed; the people who survived had been taken into captivity and marched off to foreign lands; they were living there isolated from their communities, from then history, from their whole way of life.  They were defeated captives living among strange people with foreign gods.  They were without God, lost and alone, like at night when I’m pacing, thinking it all depends on me:

Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in.

Oh, yeah, you know, I’m not alone in this.  In fact, it’s not about me at all, I can only live faithfully.

To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.

And to our frightening isolation, our sense of being lost and overlooked he speaks the word of the Lord:

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel—and think, O Bethlehem—“My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

This God has his eye on us.  We are not lost to him.  The one we seek to serve is with us.

He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

And this becomes the song of our prayer and the encouragement of our souls, because God will not desert our faithfulness; his spirit will come and strengthen us:

They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.
Teach me, Lord, teach me, Lord, to wait.

A Meditation on Psalm 139
Ps. 139.1-18
1/18/09

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. . . .

Here’s something that probably won’t surprise you:  I don’t do daily devotions.  Oh, I do a lot of thinking about God and Jesus and religion and stuff every day; but sitting down for a spell to read scripture and pray isn’t on that daily agenda.  (And, of course, there is a difference between thinking about God and being in dialogue with God in prayer.)

I used to beat myself up for this lack of discipline—“Larry, if you were really a good pastor, a good Christian, you’d be doing this.”  Then I’d repent and make a resolution that it was daily devotions from here on out, buddy.  I once pulled it off for three weeks in a row; then one day it was postponed, and pretty soon was absent altogether.  And then I’d start the whole self-flagellation all over again, feeling guilty and asking for forgiveness for falling off the daily devotions wagon, especially the prayer time.  So in this way, prayer—that conversation with God or Jesus that includes not only our speaking to him but as well, listening for him; prayer became not a blessing but a burden.  And it wasn’t much fun because then I felt guilty and always had to start off with asking for forgiveness, like you’re pleading with the probation officer for failing to report in.

I’ve discovered over the years that my spiritual life flows on a different cycle, one which fluctuates between an active prayer time of conversation with God or Jesus or whoever shows up, to “I’m busy doing something else”; between intimacy and distance.  It fluctuates over periods of weeks and months.  It’s rather like being married to Sue:  she is never not part of me, and our life together revolves around our shared tasks and commitments; but the intimacy between us fluctuates between, say, the relaxed presence of doing things together to the distance of “Just leave me alone” to the intimate “Hey baby, let’s bundle!”  My relationship to God follows a similar pattern of intimacy and distance.

I’ve learned to recognize the different seasons of my prayer life cycle, this dance I do between distance and intimacy.  I’ve especially learned the call of the spirit when I have distanced myself too far for too long.  Then there comes this dawning disturbance to my days, something intruding, calling my attention; Jesus peeking in the window—“Hey.  Remember me?  Where’ve you been?”   The loneliness of my spirit calls me to return from the far distances I’ve been traveling.  Not as a demand that “you ought to be doing this today” but as a heartfelt desire to spend time in his presence.

I call that moment a “turning”; it’s when I decide that I’m being moved back into intimate prayer.  It’s that end point on the distancing end of the continuum where I turn and head back towards sitting with Jesus—or, as I said, whoever shows up—in silent attentive prayer.

Now, in that “turning”, when I decide it’s time once again to engage in intimate prayer, the question is not so much “How do I start?” as it is “With what prayer shall I begin?”  When you haven’t been praying for a couple of months or a couple of years, when it’s been a long time since you had a good heart-to-heart with God, what do you say?  Do you try to play it cool—“Hey, Buddy, here I am!”?  Do you do the “I’m sorry, mea culpa!” routine, or what?  How do you begin praying once again, not the formal stuff like we do in church, but the real and personal stuff?

For me, that prayer of turning has always been Psalm 139.  Throughout my life my prayer of turning has always begun with “O Lord, you have searched me out and known me. . . .” It turns me from my own narrow focus of the things of Larry and casts it’s light on the things of God:  “O Lord, you have searched me and known me” even when I was busy doing my own thing.

I think the psalm is a beautiful and uplifting prayer regardless of your spiritual circumstances.  I’d like to take us on a little meditation through it.  I’ll read the psalm in groups of verses, and allow silent time in between for your own reflection.  I’ll suggest a thought during the silence, but you can do what you want with it.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

You have taken interest in my life.  You know me better than I know myself.

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

There is no place In can go where you are not or will not be.  Even if I run from you and hide, still you are there to meet me.

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

I praise you.  For I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  I am a creation of your goodness.  You have created me with dignity.

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

You are the mysterious energy of my creation and birth.  You are the eternal one in whom I move and live and have my being.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me and loved me.

Children of the Light–Ray’s Sermon
John 1:1-18
1/4/09
(Ray Pickett)

The Christmas story in the Gospel of John begins not in Judea during the reign of Caesar Augustus, but rather in the beginning when, as Genesis 1:1 says, “God began to create”! This is what God does; this is God’s job description – God creates. Today’s Gospel says that “no one has ever seen God”, and yet the fruit of God’s creative activity abounds all around us, in us and through us. Where there is creativity, there is God. Where there is God, there is creativity.

Genesis tells the story of God beginning to create the heavens and the earth and then all living things with human beings created in the image of the Creator as the crowning achievement of God’s creative activity. However, we learn from today’s Gospel, and from other early Jewish texts, of the existence of Wisdom or the Logos, “the Word” in English translations, prior to the creation of the heavens and the earth. “In the very beginning was the Logos, or Wisdom, and this Wisdom was in relationship with God. In fact, this Wisdom was divine.” This Wisdom is itself the life-force that is part and parcel of the fabric of creation. All things came into being through this Divine Wisdom, John says, and to live in harmony with this Wisdom is to live in awareness of our deep connection to all living things and to the One who is the Source of life itself.

In this Wisdom was life – life as God intended it, and this life was the light of humanity. Would that everything was light and life, but the truth of the matter is that before there was light the cosmos was initially created in darkness. That is to say, darkness and light go hand in glove. When God created the heavens and the earth, the darkness (which God also created) was not dispelled but only divided from the light, and the day/night sequence began and has continued ever since. The day/night sequence continues not only in creation, but also in our own lives. Each of us knows both the joyous light of day and the long dark night of the soul. We are, every single one of us, bearers of both light and darkness.

To be sure, we are drawn to bright warmth of the light. . . . But, truth be told, we are also drawn to the darkness more than we care to admit. There are parts of our selves that dwell in the shadows that we intentionally and unintentionally keep hidden away from the light. Secrets we keep not only from others but from ourselves, and it is these deep dark thoughts and feelings, lost fragments of the One in whose image we were created, that disconnect us from others, from our selves, from God, and from life itself.

The Gospel of John’s tells the story of Jesus as a story of the in-breaking of the light of day after a long dark night. It is, as the healing of the blind man in John 9 attests, the story of women and men born in darkness who have the deep dark crevices of their lives illuminated by the Divine Light and Wisdom. The very Light that energized the darkness at creation takes up residence among us in the form of a Galilean Jew to reveal the truth of who we really are and empower us to become children of God, to live as children of light. There is no innocence, and really no guilt trip. Only a confrontation with the truth about our penchant for the darkness and an invitation to embrace the truth about our deep connection to creation, to one another, and to the One who is the Source of Life.

In the Gospel of John the Christmas story is the story of creation become new creation through Wisdom become flesh living among us and reconnecting us to the Source and Giver of life in order that we may have life abundant. In Judaism Wisdom was thought to be a feminine figure who sought companionship among human beings. In the Gospel of John Lady Wisdom finds expression through Jesus who creates a community of friends who love one another by sharing life and bread, and who devote themselves to walking as people of light and truth.

Each and every one of us has our own moments of darkness; moments of sadness and loss, moments of disappointment and failure. But just as a profound awareness of God’s presence in our lives is often preceded by an acute sense of God’s absence; just as the sorrow of the night deepens our appreciation of the joy that comes in the morning, so too the darkness provides occasion for the Divine light of creation present from the beginning to mend our hearts, our minds, our souls, our relationships – indeed to mend the world – the cosmos.

A Step (by Raja Sivaji)

On the other side of darkness, far away there shines a light,
A light to end all sorrow,
A light to be ever free,
A light for a new tomorrow
A light for you and me

On the other side of darkness, far away there shines a light,
A light which gives out joy,
A light which is made of love,
A light which minds employ,
The light in heaven above

On the other side of darkness, far away there shines a light
A light which bathes (hu)mans mind
In the wisdom of eternal flame
That which will redeem (hu)mankind
And make the highest truths plain

In this Christmas season Lady Wisdom, Jesus the “Man from Heaven”, bid us to step out of the shadows, to not be afraid of the dark, and to come play in the Light. In the beginning, “God began to create”. God continues to create in us and through us. Those who heed the call to become companions of Wisdom discover along the way not only the glory of the only begotten Son, but also the glory and majesty of every human being, yea every living thing, crafted in the image of the One who fashioned light out of darkness.

And it is only when we begin to glimpse the glory of our own being, as well as the glory of our fellow beings that the Divine light of God’s creative energy is reflected in us and through us into the deep dark crevices of this world to dispel the darkness and make all things new!

The Holy Family
2008
Luke’s Christmas Gospel

So, visions of Christmas:  the Holy Family.  A stable, insulated with straw like a down comforter.  A single candle illumines the scene with a golden peace.  Mary sits by the manger, mother holding a beautiful infant wrapped for warmth.  Joseph stands solicitously beside them, a father’s wisdom and concern showing in his eyes.  The child is innocence; the mother is love; the father is strength:  a Holy Family.

Just outside the shepherds have gathered to see, silent in their wonder, on their knees.  Above, angels hover, their mouths open in an eternal song of good will.  And over it all one star shines most brightly, its silver beam pointing for the wise men, who are on their way.  The Holy Family is there, and with them is love, security, and peace—the presence of God.  How agonizingly sweet is the vision, a promise, and inspiration for all families.

And then I remembered:  this year my sister was in jail, the drugs having led her there again.  The private tears of my mother were discovered as I roamed through the kitchen; the far-away gaze of my father was caught from time to time, as he sat on the couch present, but not fully there;  six places set at the table instead of the family’s seven—“at least we won’t be crowded this year,” was the gallows humor.  Every now and then the festivities rang hollow with the echo of that empty place.  All this bore the excruciating proclamation that there was no holiness about this family.

So it was that the very sweetness of the Christmas vision condemned us:  the manger scene was the way it should be, the way God intended it to be—the holiness of the family.  And here’s the way it really was for us—anything but holy.

And the way it is for ex-husbands and wives bickering over who has the children this year; for children of blended families resenting these strangers they’re forced to live with; for newly divorced and recently widowed persons spending their season without a partner, wondering where they fit in; for gay partners forbidden from joining their lover’s families at the holiday meal; for brothers and sisters living out on the streets.  The Christmas vision of the Holy Family deepens the pain, or hardens the heart, with an acute reminder of our situation.

And of families who fit the norm, where husband and wife and children have managed to stay intact, what shall we say?  Shall we speak of the man desperately trying to forgive his wife’s unfaithfulness, or of the woman living in fear and loathing of her husband’s abusiveness?  Shall we think of the times we have screamed at one another, or been stunned by our children’s loss of innocence?  Shall we recall the hurt, as children, of  parents too busy with other things to much bother about what is happening in our lives, caring only that we behave well?  Shall we speak of the power plays, and feet of clay, and loveless days?

The Christmas vision of the Holy Family—how desperately we want it to be true in our lives.  And yet how painfully unholy we know our own families to be, lacking in innocence, love, and peace.

But look again!  Beyond the walls of the stable the Christmas vision grows, and there is Joseph struggling over what to do with a fiancée who has suddenly shown up pregnant.  There are the parents without enough money to tip the innkeeper for a room.  And there is Herod threatening to destroy this family—they have to run homeless into Egypt.

And later, there is Mary the single mother as her first-born becomes a teenager:  scholars surmise that Joseph had died, but the reason for his absence might be otherwise.  And there is the family trying to bring their religiously fanatical child home, who subsequently rejects them.  So there is the child, being pounded into a cross, to be hung like any criminal or revolutionary.

The Holy Family is not always innocence, love, and peace.  It is also strife, stress, and separation.  What we see in this Christmas night vision is one moment, one precious moment when the peace of God has broken into our fractured and frantic families; the kind of moment which, rare as it might be, undergirds all else in our lives and makes it possible to endure and hope; yes, even to change and improve—a light that has not yet been overcome by the darkness.

It’s the kind of moment our family received awhile back when, in the midst of dash-around schedules and frayed nerves, a quick dinner became a time of joking and laughter.  It’s the kind of moment when life partners sit quietly together, their hearts warmed with true gratitude for one another; when brother and sister genuinely and without prompting thank one another, or apologize, or stand up for the other, or work hard to find just the right gift for the other.  It’s the kind of moment when exes begin to see each other as human beings again; when the abuser vows to suffer whatever is necessary to change and follows through with it; when the child realizes his parents need to be loved, too; or when the widowed recognize that they belong and are loved.

These are the gifts of Christmas:  moments of God’s reality which make all else possible.  This is the mercy of Christmas:  that God chooses to come to us, to people who know strife, and stress, and separation.  This is the mercy of Christmas:  that the gift of love is given in the midst of all this.  This is the gospel of Christmas:  that it is okay to be human, for God finds delight in his people, even to the extent of coming to live among them.

The Holy Family was not holy because of some intrinsic virtue of innocence, love, and peace they had or somehow had accomplished, or because of some human notion of what “normal” families ought to be.  Look again at the Christmas vision.  The shepherds befriend them; the angels of God protect them; and the star—the eye of God—watches over them.  The Holy Family is holy because God is there, holding them in his holy hands.  And into the midst of their strife and stress and separation Christ is given, the gift of God’s love.  The Holy Family is holy because they are touched by a holy love.  And for just a moment it shines through the darkness of everything else announcing, “God is here.”

May you know, during these brief, sweet hours of Christmas, that your family—whatever it looks like—is holy and wholly acceptable to God.  May you know the rest and contentment of his love, and the words of his angels spoken to you:  “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to you, in whom he takes delight.”

And may you, then, become his angels, singing his song to other families who so desperately want to taste of this holiness in their lives.  Amen.

Enjoying the Feast (After the Election)

12/9/08

Amos 5.18-24/Mt. 25.1-13

I want to reflect a bit today about the spiritual meaning of Tuesday’s election. I’m doing that with a bit more than the usual preaching anxiety because, first, I known that the minute you mention politics from the pulpit folks get pretty edgy. My own anxiety was increased considerably when at Wednesday’s lectionary study I mentioned to the other pastors that I intended to preach about this and they all looked at me like I was out of my mind; in fact, a couple of them even voiced that—“Geez Keene, you’re crazy.” But I think that when momentous and historic things happen, we preachers ought not to ignore them.

So let me start this way: God doesn’t care whether you’re a Democrat or Republican or independent. For that matter, God doesn’t care whether you’re a socialist or even a communist. These are simply human attempts to try to live together. All these political systems are human creations, and human creations are ambiguous in both nobility and sin. To say that one party or organization uniquely captures the good and gracious will of God is simply arrogant and ridiculous. We all know that.

Amos speaks of what God cares about: . . . let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

The justice of God’s reign comes about anytime people have food enough a clothes and a home. The righteousness of God’s reign happens when we live in right relationships with each other—treating each other with mutual dignity and respect and living together in peaceful and safe communities, caring for each other and each other’s children. In the Bible, justice and righteousness are synonymous: the one means the other. Wherever justice and righteousness are, there is God. So when we pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” Martin Luther explained it like this: “In fact, the good and gracious will of God comes about without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come about in and among us.”

As a pastor I‘ve always been hesitant to get too specific in claiming this or that as the will of God, particularly in the realm of politics. Partly that’s because I am infected with the same ambiguity of being both saint and sinner as everybody. And partly because everybody here knows about the hatred and slaughter that gets carried out as the “will of God.” Yet there are also times when God displays the work of the Holy Spirit in such a way that the whole world can see it; when we can see ever so clearly the direction in which the arc of history is bending.

Such a time came when the Israelites were released from slavery in Egypt and led to the freedom of the promised land. That event is recalled in our baptismal liturgy, and our communion meals are also anchored in that: it was during Passover—the Jewish remembrance and celebration of that saving act of God—that Jesus ate his last supper with his disciples. I believe that the founding of our country—especially the ideals of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution was also rooted in this will of God with these words of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” These ideals have touched the whole world. That’s why the nations all watch us. They hope.

Of course, we know that there’s a pretty good distance between our ideals and the reality we live. Even while we said at our founding that “all men are created equal” we held slaves with no right to vote. It took a hundred years and a hideous Civil War even to change the law about it. It took another hundred years and a brutal civil rights struggle to break the legalized racism of segregation, and we still struggle with the ancient human curse of fearing and despising those who are of a different color than us. So it’s been a long, bloody and lurching battler to live up to our ideals as a people. (That’s also been true, by the way, for the rights of women.)

But this week, as a people and as a nation we elected a black man to be our president. And the whole world rejoices, because something good and noble has happened among us: we have lived into the reality of our founders’ dreams. We are seeing the spirit of God at work.

Now, each of us comes today out of the experience of our own lives. I was not raised in the South, but in Pennsylvania and California. I cannot know your experience here in Beaumont. But in my reading of history, I have come to have profound respect for the social and spiritual upheaval you have lived through. I assume that some of you can remember life under segregation. I assume some of you were formed by this environment, and because of that may be baffled and bothered and not quite as ecstatic over what has taken place as others. You scratch your heads and ask “what does this mean” just like good Lutherans do.

Well, I’ll go ahead and say that life is strange; and life with God is even stranger. We all have to make peace with God through our own consciences.

I came of age as a teenager in an all white suburban neighborhood of Los Angeles watching the struggles of the 1960’s on television. In Luther League at church we discussed it among ourselves and with our elders. My dad said “they” were pushing too much, and was horrified at the thought of one of his daughters marrying—or even dating—a black man. We saw that movie, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” where a white woman brings her black fiancée home to meet her parents—and they kissed each other on the screen, and it was really controversial. It was easy to be self-righteous about all this—“Of course there’s nothing wrong here.” But I was in an all white neighborhood, and from that perspective it’s easy to declare how other people should behave and think.

Last year my daughter, Deborah married my now son-in-law Wil, who is black. Well, he’s really of mixed pedigree including Filipino and I don’t know what else. My darling granddaughter is biracial. Now, I like to think of myself as Mr. Equality and Inclusivity, but I have to admit I was thrown for something of a loop. All of the old racial anxieties of my youth came bubbling up and showed themselves in suspicion of him and fear for them as a family. But he’s a loving husband and father, and a fine son-in-law. And since our society has changed so drastically during my lifetime, I don’t hear many stories from them about being socially spit upon. But I was a little bit rattled by it. My ideals were challenged by the reality. It strikes me that when God acts magnificently it throws all of us off.

Jesus tells this parable we heard about the wise and foolish virgins attending a wedding feast. We pastors had a long and loud discussion about the meaning of it, especially about the “foolish” virgins who hadn’t brought enough lamp oil and so missed the party. But then it dawned on me that the parable is really not about the foolish maidens as it is the wedding banquet itself. The bottom line there to my way of thinking is that they were so worried about things that they missed the party. So when Jesus says, “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” he’s talking about watching for the party of God’s presence in bringing all people together. Look for God’s activity in the world, and every now and then you can celebrate with him. That the United States of America has done this thing is the work of the spirit leading the whole world to see how we are all created in the image of God. It is a time of exaltation for the whole human race.

Of course, Obama isn’t the messiah—he’s a politician. I’m pretty sure that when we get past the hoorah’s and into the reality of the decisions and deals he has to make I’m going to be pretty aggravated with him, too.

In fact, one of the more sensible statements that bombastic prophet the Reverend Jeremiah Wright made that caught my attention was this: “And Barack, if you become president, I’m coming after you, too, because now you are the system that holds my people down.” A favorite saying among us preachers is “You can change the king, but the empire goes on destroying people.” For the powers and principalities of this world always create victims; even the most well-intentioned of them oppress people and create outcasts. It is these people—the oppressed, the outcast, the marginalized—upon whom God casts his special eye, and for whom he has particular care. Indeed, as parents, is our joy not somehow limited by the suffering of our most vulnerable child.

So it seems right and good to me to celebrate this moment in our country’s history. It seems right and good to me to give thanks and sing hallelujah for this revealing of then work of God’s spirit. And when the hallelujahs have faded, to recommit ourselves to work together so that justice will continue to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream.