Preached on December 24, 2007 at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Dedicated to my family: Betsy, James, and Saml; and always to the glory of God.
I want to tell you the story Mary and Joseph and their boy Jesus. I want to tell this story because this is the night to tell it, and also because I think that we may find ourselves in this story; I want to invite you to see if maybe you are on a journey to Bethlehem.
Mary
Our story begins with Mary, on an ordinary day during the time when she was betrothed to Joseph, before they were married. Suddenly, an angel named Gabriel stood appeared, and greeted her with strange words. He said “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” Mary was perplexed. She wondered what this could mean. Then the angel told her something amazing!
Gabriel said, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."
This was even more perplexing! Mary asked the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" The angel Gabriel replied, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. Even now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God."
Elizabeth was pregnant? Mary thought. How could that be?
Mary was astonished, and still perplexed, but something deep inside of her trusted these words, and trusted God. When she spoke next, the words came out of her mouth like a prayer: "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And then the angel left, and then Mary waited. She waited, with fear of what would happen when she told her family, when people found out. Would they believe her? What would they say? She waited with no idea what to expect next. She waited as the nights grew longer for this child to be born. She waited, a child yet herself.
I wonder what experiences in your life have made you feel perplexed or confused?
I wonder how God might do something unexpected that will completely change your life?
I wonder where in your life you might agree to help God? When you might also say “here am I, a servant of the Lord.”
Joseph
Our story continues with Joseph. When Joseph learned that Mary was pregnant, he was crushed. All his visions of a future with Mary and the life they would have had were shattered in this single moment. Of course, Joseph assumed that another man was involved, and that his betrothal to Mary was broken. Joseph decided to call off the wedding very quietly, because he did not want to humiliate Mary by exposing her to public disgrace.
But after he had made up his mind, it all changed on a dark night, when clouds covered the moon and stars, and Joseph lay in a deep sleep. He dreamed, and in his dream an angel of the Lord appeared and explained how Mary was pregnant, and that the child would be very important. The angel said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” The dream changed everything. Joseph was in awe as he wrapped his mind around the idea that this child could be from God and that he, Joseph, was the one chosen to name him. In that era, it was the father’s role to name the child, and naming was the official claim of fatherhood. By naming Jesus, Joseph would indeed become his father, and Jesus would indeed become a descendent of the house of David. It was incredible! But still, there were worries. What would others think? Could he handle all that was to come? What blessings and dangers would await a child born of God?
In the midst of these questions he waited. He waited with a trust in his wife Mary, a trust in what the angel had told him in his dream. He waited as the nights grew longer for our child to be born.
I wonder when you have felt surprised, even blindsided by something unexpected?
I wonder how God might be communicating with you in dreams, in experiences, or in the words and face of a friend or stranger?
I wonder what plan for your life you might have to give up for something more important?
Journey to Bethlehem
While they were waiting, the emperor Augustus decreed that everyone in the Roman Empire should be registered in a census. Everyone had to go to the town of their ancestors. Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth, a town in Galilee in the north of Israel, but Joseph was descended from the family of King David, and so they had to travel to the city of David, called Bethlehem. Bethlehem is in the south of Israel. They had to travel past Samaria, past Ephraim and Jericho, even past Jerusalem. It was a long journey, and Mary was soon to give birth. They left their home and all the preparations they had been making for their new family. It was hard to put everything on hold at such a busy time, just because a ruler who lived far away had ordered it.
As they traveled, they saw things they had never seen before. They traversed a land that was sometimes beautiful, other times treacherous, and often both at the same time.
When they finally arrived in Bethlehem, the city was full with people who had come to be registered. Every room in the inn was taken, and there was no one who would take them in to pass the night. The only shelter to be found was in a stable, where they crowded in with the animals who were eating from a manger filled with hay.
I wonder how events in the wider world affect your life?
I wonder what things have pulled you away from your home?
I wonder how you faced hardship along the way?
I wonder how God might be at work in your life, even in the midst of the things you have to do?
Joseph and Mary’s journey to Bethlehem was not something they chose or planned. It seems that life often goes that way for us. Sometimes I feel like I would be able to do more good in the world if things didn’t keep coming up. I could help more with the kingdom of God if my life wasn’t always caught up in unexpected work, demands, and journeys. But on this night, when I remember Joseph and Mary, it occurs to me that the things that keep coming up and getting in the way may be the very place where God is. It might be that when we find ourselves in a wholly unexpected place, it will be like Mary and Joseph finding themselves in a stable in another city. In that place, we meet God. Or, to say it another way: in that place, we help to bring God into the world.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The Golden Compass and its critics
You may have heard about a recent movie called The Golden Compass, which tells the story of a young girl’s adventure in a fantasy world filled with talking animals. The movie has been in the news because of the criticism coming from some religious quarters. The problem, say the critics, is that this movie and the novel by Phillip Pullman on which it is based (the first of a trilogy), are anti-religion and anti-God. I disagree. I thought the books were wonderful and the movie is a pretty good adaptation, and I think that these criticisms are misguided. Now, stay with me for a bit, even if you’re not interested in the movie, because there is a larger point to be made.
While it is true that Pullman is an atheist, let me tell you about how God and the church are portrayed in his fantasy world. The church is rigidly controlling, manipulative, and even violent in its pursuit of power. The church is against the free pursuit of knowledge and independent thought for fear that their claim to truth will be threatened. Pullman’s God is ineffectual, distant, and uncaring. It turns out that Pullman and I are in perfect agreement: that kind of church should be resisted and discarded. And I don’t believe in that kind of God either.
Pullman isn’t the only bestselling author recently to critique religion. The past years have seen a spate of new books with reasoned arguments that religion is unnecessary, destructive, and untrue. But we don’t have to be defensive. The existence of a loving and gracious God will not depend on the skill or volume of my defense.
Instead of being defensive, here’s what we should try: we can thank our critics for engaging important points and then we can continue the conversation. First, we need to recognize the truth from our critics. The Christian church has often acted very un-Christian. Being honest about it will build our credibility, and guard against it happening again. Second, we need to tell our good news. Religion also has a rich history of standing up for the poor, giving generously, and being the driving force behind social change that grants freedom and dignity to all people. Finally, we need to keep showing a different kind of God by our actions. We need to build relationships with people who disagree. I don’t think that any argument or any book will ever convince anyone of the reality of God’s love if they have never experienced it in the flesh.
While it is true that Pullman is an atheist, let me tell you about how God and the church are portrayed in his fantasy world. The church is rigidly controlling, manipulative, and even violent in its pursuit of power. The church is against the free pursuit of knowledge and independent thought for fear that their claim to truth will be threatened. Pullman’s God is ineffectual, distant, and uncaring. It turns out that Pullman and I are in perfect agreement: that kind of church should be resisted and discarded. And I don’t believe in that kind of God either.
Pullman isn’t the only bestselling author recently to critique religion. The past years have seen a spate of new books with reasoned arguments that religion is unnecessary, destructive, and untrue. But we don’t have to be defensive. The existence of a loving and gracious God will not depend on the skill or volume of my defense.
Instead of being defensive, here’s what we should try: we can thank our critics for engaging important points and then we can continue the conversation. First, we need to recognize the truth from our critics. The Christian church has often acted very un-Christian. Being honest about it will build our credibility, and guard against it happening again. Second, we need to tell our good news. Religion also has a rich history of standing up for the poor, giving generously, and being the driving force behind social change that grants freedom and dignity to all people. Finally, we need to keep showing a different kind of God by our actions. We need to build relationships with people who disagree. I don’t think that any argument or any book will ever convince anyone of the reality of God’s love if they have never experienced it in the flesh.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Sermon - Let Us Walk in the Light of the Lord
Preached on December 2, 2007, first Sunday of Advent, at the First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Dedicated to the Muslim leaders who signed “A Common Word between Us and You” and the Christian leaders who have responded; and always to the glory of God.
Isaiah 2:1-5 Romans 13:11-14
Advent means the arrival, or coming of God into the world. In our prophetic text this morning, the prophet Isaiah speaks of a future in which peace for all nations will be established by the presence of God in Israel. We understand this as a text about the birth of Jesus Christ when the angels proclaim goodwill and peace on earth. It is also about that future time when Christ will reign over a new heaven and earth, our hope that is yet to come. And so it is a text about Christmas past and about Christmas future, but for us, this is also a text about Christmas present: God coming into our lives today, to bring peace, and so Isaiah’s words are for you and me. “Let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
I am convinced that Jesus Christ is bringing peace into our world, peace into our lives, and peace into our souls. I also know that there are barriers to this peace, and that God will ask us to give up that which keeps us from peace.
Giving something up for peace is evident in what Isaiah says about the people beating their swords into plowshares. Now, let’s think about what this means. In ancient times, strong metal was difficult to come by. Perhaps the only significant metal in a family’s possession would be the plowshare, used by farmers to plow their fields. Plowshares were curved metal blades that turned over the earth as the edge sliced through the dirt. If a nation went to war, there was no extra metal for weapons, and so a farmer would take his plowshare and make of it a sword. He would make of his pruning hook a spear. But notice that now there is no way to till the fields, no way to prune the vineyards. A choice has been made to go to war. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, the prophet Joel said “Prepare war….beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears.”[1] But the prophets Micah and Isaiah both make the opposite claim on behalf of God: beat your swords into plowshares. Apparently, it was commonly known that these were the choices. You could farm and provide for your family and people, or you had to go to war. You couldn’t do both.
It seems to me that those were times when the consequences of our choices were clear and immediate. To choose one thing is to give up on something else. As the monks say, every choice is a renunciation. If I choose to do this, I have chosen not to do these other things. If I choose to spend my time here, I have renounced spending time anywhere else. To choose war is to give up on growing food, and to grow food is to give up on going to war. It seems to me that such a choice would affect our judgement about when war is necessary.
I think we have lost something that they had. They understood that you have to choose one or the other. We have forgotten that; we think that we can have everything. We think that we can go to war at the same time that we eat our fill and prosper. We think that we can increase our national spending on things like defense and care for the disadvantaged and at the same time reduce our taxes. We think that we can enjoy our vices and be healthy. I have seen advertisements that promise losing weight without effort, making money from the comfort of your home, five easy steps toward a better life. We can have our swords and our plowshares, because this is the age of plenty. But I believe that this is an illusion. Trying to choose everything costs us deeply, but the costs are hidden from us, as if in darkness, and we are not at peace. Sometimes the darkness is comfortable, because it hides the things to which we would rather not pay attention. If a room is a bit dirty, we turn off the overhead light and just light the lamp on the end table. Deficit spending, personal credit debt, long-term health risks, the gradual alteration of our atmosphere: these are costs that are easy to hide, to push off into the darkness of some future day. We don’t see them anymore, and we think that we can choose everything. But the light is coming. Let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Think of that in terms of your lives in these next weeks. We are told that while we carry on with our normal work and school and responsibilities, we can also give lots and lots of great gifts to many people, send cards, bake sweets, host grand dinners, throw parties, or go out to restaurants, parties, and concerts, pack, travel, return, unpack, hosts guests, change sheets, entertain, and sing carols. We can do all these things, and more that you might be thinking about right now, and we can also receive the gift of Christmas, the peace of the presence of God. Do we really have the energy for all that? Or is it like the swords and plowshares, must we choose one or the other? The light is coming. Let us walk in the light of the Lord.
We think that we can fill our lives with pleasure and comfort, and also with depth and meaning at the same time. I think that all the time! I think that I can balance both of those, but if I am honest, then I know that happiness cannot be sought directly. We don’t become happy because of the nice things we get, which is an odd thing to say at this time of year, especially when I’m adding things to my wish list. We can’t package happiness. Happiness only comes to us indirectly while we are pursuing meaning in relationships with family, friends, neighbors, with God. Happiness sneaks in the back door when we have given our lives and our resources away in service to others. Remember it was Jesus who said that those who try to save their lives will lose them, and those who give their lives away will save them. Let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Think about swords and plowshares in reference to the Middle East. This week we followed as peace talks began again between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Annapolis. I must say that I have read the news with hope tempered by skepticism. Both parties come to the talks with contradictory demands, which they cling to so tightly. It seems that all the world can clearly see the basic idea that for these people to find a way toward peace will demand that both sides will have to give something up. But it’s easier for me to say that than for them, who are holding onto the things that their ancestors have held dear for centuries. Instead of judging them for their stubbornness, I should ask myself, “what am I clinging to so tightly that keeps me from knowing the peace of God?”
What must we give up in order for God’s peace to reign?
You probably don’t know this, but you and the rest of the Christian church recently received an open letter from this Islamic world. It was signed by 138 Muslim clerics, intellectuals and scholars, representing all branches within Islam, and it was titled, "A Common Word Between Us and You.”[2] It is a letter written to initiate important dialogue between our faiths, and it comes not with demands or criticism, but with an emphasis on two things: our common faith in one God, and the centrality of the commandment to love thy neighbor. In November, a response was written by Christian leaders in this country, including John Thomas, the General Minister of the United Church of Christ. They wrote, “We receive the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians worldwide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbors.”
Establishing strong relationships among our faiths will require that we give up stances of superiority or exclusive claims to righteousness. We will have to make difficult choices and sacrifices. But isn’t it better to have our plowshares than our swords? Instead of staking our interests by the sword, we could put our plowshares to work and raise a crop of understanding, service, and peace. Let us walk in the light of the world.
Isaiah’s words paint for us the vision and hope of the Christ child, the prince of peace. Isaiah says:
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Come, O house of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the LORD.
Amen
[1] Joel 3:9-10
[2] See http://www.acommonword.com/ for the letter and Christian responses.
Dedicated to the Muslim leaders who signed “A Common Word between Us and You” and the Christian leaders who have responded; and always to the glory of God.
Isaiah 2:1-5 Romans 13:11-14
Advent means the arrival, or coming of God into the world. In our prophetic text this morning, the prophet Isaiah speaks of a future in which peace for all nations will be established by the presence of God in Israel. We understand this as a text about the birth of Jesus Christ when the angels proclaim goodwill and peace on earth. It is also about that future time when Christ will reign over a new heaven and earth, our hope that is yet to come. And so it is a text about Christmas past and about Christmas future, but for us, this is also a text about Christmas present: God coming into our lives today, to bring peace, and so Isaiah’s words are for you and me. “Let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
I am convinced that Jesus Christ is bringing peace into our world, peace into our lives, and peace into our souls. I also know that there are barriers to this peace, and that God will ask us to give up that which keeps us from peace.
Giving something up for peace is evident in what Isaiah says about the people beating their swords into plowshares. Now, let’s think about what this means. In ancient times, strong metal was difficult to come by. Perhaps the only significant metal in a family’s possession would be the plowshare, used by farmers to plow their fields. Plowshares were curved metal blades that turned over the earth as the edge sliced through the dirt. If a nation went to war, there was no extra metal for weapons, and so a farmer would take his plowshare and make of it a sword. He would make of his pruning hook a spear. But notice that now there is no way to till the fields, no way to prune the vineyards. A choice has been made to go to war. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, the prophet Joel said “Prepare war….beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears.”[1] But the prophets Micah and Isaiah both make the opposite claim on behalf of God: beat your swords into plowshares. Apparently, it was commonly known that these were the choices. You could farm and provide for your family and people, or you had to go to war. You couldn’t do both.
It seems to me that those were times when the consequences of our choices were clear and immediate. To choose one thing is to give up on something else. As the monks say, every choice is a renunciation. If I choose to do this, I have chosen not to do these other things. If I choose to spend my time here, I have renounced spending time anywhere else. To choose war is to give up on growing food, and to grow food is to give up on going to war. It seems to me that such a choice would affect our judgement about when war is necessary.
I think we have lost something that they had. They understood that you have to choose one or the other. We have forgotten that; we think that we can have everything. We think that we can go to war at the same time that we eat our fill and prosper. We think that we can increase our national spending on things like defense and care for the disadvantaged and at the same time reduce our taxes. We think that we can enjoy our vices and be healthy. I have seen advertisements that promise losing weight without effort, making money from the comfort of your home, five easy steps toward a better life. We can have our swords and our plowshares, because this is the age of plenty. But I believe that this is an illusion. Trying to choose everything costs us deeply, but the costs are hidden from us, as if in darkness, and we are not at peace. Sometimes the darkness is comfortable, because it hides the things to which we would rather not pay attention. If a room is a bit dirty, we turn off the overhead light and just light the lamp on the end table. Deficit spending, personal credit debt, long-term health risks, the gradual alteration of our atmosphere: these are costs that are easy to hide, to push off into the darkness of some future day. We don’t see them anymore, and we think that we can choose everything. But the light is coming. Let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Think of that in terms of your lives in these next weeks. We are told that while we carry on with our normal work and school and responsibilities, we can also give lots and lots of great gifts to many people, send cards, bake sweets, host grand dinners, throw parties, or go out to restaurants, parties, and concerts, pack, travel, return, unpack, hosts guests, change sheets, entertain, and sing carols. We can do all these things, and more that you might be thinking about right now, and we can also receive the gift of Christmas, the peace of the presence of God. Do we really have the energy for all that? Or is it like the swords and plowshares, must we choose one or the other? The light is coming. Let us walk in the light of the Lord.
We think that we can fill our lives with pleasure and comfort, and also with depth and meaning at the same time. I think that all the time! I think that I can balance both of those, but if I am honest, then I know that happiness cannot be sought directly. We don’t become happy because of the nice things we get, which is an odd thing to say at this time of year, especially when I’m adding things to my wish list. We can’t package happiness. Happiness only comes to us indirectly while we are pursuing meaning in relationships with family, friends, neighbors, with God. Happiness sneaks in the back door when we have given our lives and our resources away in service to others. Remember it was Jesus who said that those who try to save their lives will lose them, and those who give their lives away will save them. Let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Think about swords and plowshares in reference to the Middle East. This week we followed as peace talks began again between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Annapolis. I must say that I have read the news with hope tempered by skepticism. Both parties come to the talks with contradictory demands, which they cling to so tightly. It seems that all the world can clearly see the basic idea that for these people to find a way toward peace will demand that both sides will have to give something up. But it’s easier for me to say that than for them, who are holding onto the things that their ancestors have held dear for centuries. Instead of judging them for their stubbornness, I should ask myself, “what am I clinging to so tightly that keeps me from knowing the peace of God?”
What must we give up in order for God’s peace to reign?
You probably don’t know this, but you and the rest of the Christian church recently received an open letter from this Islamic world. It was signed by 138 Muslim clerics, intellectuals and scholars, representing all branches within Islam, and it was titled, "A Common Word Between Us and You.”[2] It is a letter written to initiate important dialogue between our faiths, and it comes not with demands or criticism, but with an emphasis on two things: our common faith in one God, and the centrality of the commandment to love thy neighbor. In November, a response was written by Christian leaders in this country, including John Thomas, the General Minister of the United Church of Christ. They wrote, “We receive the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians worldwide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbors.”
Establishing strong relationships among our faiths will require that we give up stances of superiority or exclusive claims to righteousness. We will have to make difficult choices and sacrifices. But isn’t it better to have our plowshares than our swords? Instead of staking our interests by the sword, we could put our plowshares to work and raise a crop of understanding, service, and peace. Let us walk in the light of the world.
Isaiah’s words paint for us the vision and hope of the Christ child, the prince of peace. Isaiah says:
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Come, O house of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the LORD.
Amen
[1] Joel 3:9-10
[2] See http://www.acommonword.com/ for the letter and Christian responses.
Monday, December 3, 2007
The Season of Advent
There is something about the seasons of Advent and Christmas that touches me very deeply. For me, the most meaningful affirmations of the gospel and of the Christian mystery are found in this season. At the end of the hymn “O Come, All Ye Faithful” when we sing “word of the father, now in flesh appearing,” and the voices all sing strong above the organ’s fullness, I am struck anew by the wonder of knowing God in so close a way as humanity. And the further mystery of the incarnation is that we believe that God is found not only in the flesh of Christ, but also in our own humanity, because the church is also the body of Christ. Suddenly, I’m looking for the famous “word of God” in everyone I meet, even when it seems unlikely. I think that this insight is a marker on the trail toward peace on earth.
I am also moved by the symbolism of light and darkness. Christmas is in the darkest week of the year. During all the weeks of advent, our nights grow longer and our days shorter. But we do not allow the darkness to overcome us! We dispel it by adding lights to our advent wreath, one more candle each week. We light our houses and our trees. Finally, we gather on Christmas Eve in the sanctuary, where no light shines through the windows, and we light our own candles. And all of this is to say that we will not stand by while darkness grows. We will bear light against the dark.
What I hope we are really saying is that when the darkness of hatred, fear, prejudice, war, and injustice grow, we will respond with the light of kindness, love, honesty, peace, and justice. The word of God will be made flesh, and as it says in the gospel of John, this is the light of the world, and the darkness shall not overcome it.
I am also moved by the symbolism of light and darkness. Christmas is in the darkest week of the year. During all the weeks of advent, our nights grow longer and our days shorter. But we do not allow the darkness to overcome us! We dispel it by adding lights to our advent wreath, one more candle each week. We light our houses and our trees. Finally, we gather on Christmas Eve in the sanctuary, where no light shines through the windows, and we light our own candles. And all of this is to say that we will not stand by while darkness grows. We will bear light against the dark.
What I hope we are really saying is that when the darkness of hatred, fear, prejudice, war, and injustice grow, we will respond with the light of kindness, love, honesty, peace, and justice. The word of God will be made flesh, and as it says in the gospel of John, this is the light of the world, and the darkness shall not overcome it.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Sermon - The Power of Goodness
Preached on November 4, 2007, All Saints Day, at the First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC.
Dedicated to my Uncle Tom Harper, and all the saints who have gone before us; and always to the glory of God.
Luke 19:1-10
A man was starving. In desperation, he stole some food, for which he was arrested, convicted, and jailed. After a failed escape, his sentence was lengthened, and he spent decades in prison doing hard labor. Finally released, he had no money or friends, and no one would hire a convicted criminal. This is the story of Jean Valjean, from Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables, and known to many by the musical we call Les Mis. If you know the story, you know that the only person who will take him in for the night is a humble country priest. The priest has converted his rectory into a hospital, and reserves only a small collection of rooms for his own lodging. He has no possessions to speak of, except for the silverware for his table, and two silver candlesticks, inherited from his great-aunt.
Jean Valjean is desperate once more. He doesn’t know any other way of survival. So, he steals the silver from the cupboard and runs off into the night, only to be arrested once again and brought back to the priest so that he can be charged and sent back to prison. But the priest doesn’t press charges. In fact, he tells the officers that the silver in Valjean’s possession was a his gift to him, that in fact Valjean had forgotten to take the two candlesticks, which were also gifts. When the officers have left, the priest says “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good.” This act changes Jean Valjean from a thief into a man who will spend his entire life in generosity to those who need his help, even to those who do not deserve it. There is a power in goodness.
In another part of the novel, the priest teaches that “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.” And the narrator observes: “he had a strange and peculiar way of judging things. I suspect that he acquired it from the Gospel.”[1]
Here’s a story that goes the other way. This is the story of Robert Hanssen, who spent his career in the FBI, specializing in intelligence, but meanwhile he was selling classified documents to the Russians. He was arrested in 2001 and pled guilty to acts of espionage over twenty-two years. His story is interpreted in the recent movie Breach, which shows us a man of great intelligence who works hard in the FBI but is overlooked for accolades and promotion, and is derided and ostracized by his colleagues for his grim demeanor. Although he handles high priority secrets, he is made to feel like a meaningless cog in the bureaucratic machine. He doesn’t sell secrets just for the money. He sells them in order to feel that he means something. He betrays his country and those whose lives depend on him because in a twisted way it proves that he is important. You might say that he lived in darkness.
We don’t know why Zacchaeus turned on his fellow Jews, but that’s what he did. When Israel was ruled by Rome, Zacchaeus collaborated with the Roman empire, collecting Caesar’s taxes from his poor and beleaguered neighbors. Tax collectors of that time would often travel with a team of Roman soldiers. Try telling them you didn’t have the money Rome demanded. And what’s more, his salary was made by what he collected above the Roman tax. The more he got from people, the richer he became. Corruption was built into the system. Tax collector became a synonym for sinner. Read through the gospels and see how often they refer to any group of undesirables as “tax collectors and sinners.”
We don’t know why Zacchaeus chose is path. Maybe it was because he was so short. When he shows up in the gospel, he can’t get a look at Jesus because he can’t see over the people in front of him, and what’s more, they all shove him out the way. He’s short, Luke tells us. Maybe he had a Napoleonic complex. Or maybe we should say that Napoleon had a Zaccheus complex. Maybe his power grab with the Roman guards was a reaction to all the times he had been abused and taken advantage of in his life. I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters.
What does matters is that he is a traitor and a cheat, a sinner, and now he’s up in a tree above the crowd, because that’s the only way he can get a look at the famous rabbi Jesus. But when Jesus walks through this crowd of people, and we can imagine that many of them are very nice, upstanding folks, it’s Zacchaeus that Jesus calls to. It’s Zacchaeus that Jesus wants to spend time with. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Zacchaeus is not laughed at, or reviled, but befriended. And wouldn’t you know that this simple act is the only thing that can change him, and in changing him, makes this village a more just and peaceful place for everyone.
Sometimes I imagine the story going the other way. I imagine that Jesus stopped in the road and said “I want to have a special meal with all of you who have been so faithful all these years and have come here early to get a good spot right on the road to see me. You’re all invited. Well, except you, Zacchaeus. You’re not on my list. But if you get your act together, maybe next time I’ll invite you too.” I wonder about that. But I don’t think that Zacchaeus would have changed at all.
I can’t name to you one time in my life that I became a better person as the result of someone telling me how bad I was. I become better when I am inspired by the light of goodness that I receive by the grace of God. Is that your experience? I think that the church has done much better for God and for the world when we have invited people to “come and see” with no strings attached. “Come and see” was what Jesus said to his first disciples in the gospel of John, and it has always been the best way to spread the gospel. When we have gotten it wrong in the church is when we start to fix the world by pointing out its flaws, become aggressive in our condemnation, and even trying to enact laws to enforce moral behavior. That didn’t work for the Puritans, or the Spanish Inquisition, and it will never work for us.
A church research team called The Barna Group recently completed a survey of young Americans, in which high school and college students were asked about their perceptions of Christians and the Christian church. What they found was the primary perception of this generation is that Christians are hypocritical and judgmental, and they are not interested in the church. I read that, and what I hear is people crying out to us: don’t tell us how awful we are, how badly we are spending our time, how we are hurting ourselves, other people, and the earth itself. Show us instead how we can mean something, how we can make a difference. Show us how we can find a sense of peace deep down that always eludes us. I think that’s a call that we can answer, as the body of Christ.
But here’s the catch. Every time Jesus shared his time and food with sinners, just to be with them and with no strings attached, people started to grumble and criticize from the sideline. Read through the gospel of Luke, and notice how many times Jesus heals someone, or associates with a tax collector, and gets blamed for being ‘soft on sin.’ The complaint is always the same. It’s the complaint of the older brother when the prodigal son comes home. He comes in from the field and sees the party in full swing. When he learns that it’s for his younger brother, who wasted half the family fortune, who broke his parents’ hearts, was gone for years and never even wrote, he refuses to even come inside.
When the father comes out to get him, the son complains that it’s not fair, probably just the same way the crowd felt when Jesus singled Zacchaeus out for some one on one time. “It isn’t fair,” he says. “I’ve been with you faithfully all this time and you’ve never thrown me a happy hour, and now this son of yours returns and it’s like New Year’s Eve! What kind of consequences are those? Don’t you realize that the party, the gifts, and the welcome home are all really just so much permission for people to go out and sin all they want?” To all of which the father says “cut that out.”
We have spent centuries trying to overcome the false theology that God is fair, that God punishes sinners and rewards the righteous. Grace isn’t about being fair; grace is about finding the lost, healing the sick, mending the broken. The priest who gave his silver to Jean Valjean knew it. The father of the prodigal son knew it. Jesus knew it.
I wonder where we find ourselves in this snapshot of Jesus, Zacchaeus, and the crowd gathered around..
Maybe we find ourselves in Jesus. I wonder if we are the ones who have an opportunity to show generosity to someone with no strings attached, but with trust in the power of goodness to transform.
Maybe we find ourselves in the crowd. Maybe we are sick of being unthanked while someone else is smiled upon. I wonder if we are holding so tightly to keeping score and bookkeeping that we can’t appreciate the grace of God for those who don’t measure up.
Maybe we are Zacchaues: closed out by others, driven into darkness. Doing things we don’t want to do. I wonder what might inspire us to come closer to Christ, just to get a better look? I wonder what trees we could climb to put ourselves in touch with the sacred? I wonder how God might call our name, might befriend us with no strings attached, and in so doing, might invite us to a new way of being fully human, more gracious, more loving, and more at peace?
I wonder.
[1] Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, trans. Carles E. Wilbur, Everyman’s Library edition, page 21.
Dedicated to my Uncle Tom Harper, and all the saints who have gone before us; and always to the glory of God.
Luke 19:1-10
A man was starving. In desperation, he stole some food, for which he was arrested, convicted, and jailed. After a failed escape, his sentence was lengthened, and he spent decades in prison doing hard labor. Finally released, he had no money or friends, and no one would hire a convicted criminal. This is the story of Jean Valjean, from Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables, and known to many by the musical we call Les Mis. If you know the story, you know that the only person who will take him in for the night is a humble country priest. The priest has converted his rectory into a hospital, and reserves only a small collection of rooms for his own lodging. He has no possessions to speak of, except for the silverware for his table, and two silver candlesticks, inherited from his great-aunt.
Jean Valjean is desperate once more. He doesn’t know any other way of survival. So, he steals the silver from the cupboard and runs off into the night, only to be arrested once again and brought back to the priest so that he can be charged and sent back to prison. But the priest doesn’t press charges. In fact, he tells the officers that the silver in Valjean’s possession was a his gift to him, that in fact Valjean had forgotten to take the two candlesticks, which were also gifts. When the officers have left, the priest says “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good.” This act changes Jean Valjean from a thief into a man who will spend his entire life in generosity to those who need his help, even to those who do not deserve it. There is a power in goodness.
In another part of the novel, the priest teaches that “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.” And the narrator observes: “he had a strange and peculiar way of judging things. I suspect that he acquired it from the Gospel.”[1]
Here’s a story that goes the other way. This is the story of Robert Hanssen, who spent his career in the FBI, specializing in intelligence, but meanwhile he was selling classified documents to the Russians. He was arrested in 2001 and pled guilty to acts of espionage over twenty-two years. His story is interpreted in the recent movie Breach, which shows us a man of great intelligence who works hard in the FBI but is overlooked for accolades and promotion, and is derided and ostracized by his colleagues for his grim demeanor. Although he handles high priority secrets, he is made to feel like a meaningless cog in the bureaucratic machine. He doesn’t sell secrets just for the money. He sells them in order to feel that he means something. He betrays his country and those whose lives depend on him because in a twisted way it proves that he is important. You might say that he lived in darkness.
We don’t know why Zacchaeus turned on his fellow Jews, but that’s what he did. When Israel was ruled by Rome, Zacchaeus collaborated with the Roman empire, collecting Caesar’s taxes from his poor and beleaguered neighbors. Tax collectors of that time would often travel with a team of Roman soldiers. Try telling them you didn’t have the money Rome demanded. And what’s more, his salary was made by what he collected above the Roman tax. The more he got from people, the richer he became. Corruption was built into the system. Tax collector became a synonym for sinner. Read through the gospels and see how often they refer to any group of undesirables as “tax collectors and sinners.”
We don’t know why Zacchaeus chose is path. Maybe it was because he was so short. When he shows up in the gospel, he can’t get a look at Jesus because he can’t see over the people in front of him, and what’s more, they all shove him out the way. He’s short, Luke tells us. Maybe he had a Napoleonic complex. Or maybe we should say that Napoleon had a Zaccheus complex. Maybe his power grab with the Roman guards was a reaction to all the times he had been abused and taken advantage of in his life. I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters.
What does matters is that he is a traitor and a cheat, a sinner, and now he’s up in a tree above the crowd, because that’s the only way he can get a look at the famous rabbi Jesus. But when Jesus walks through this crowd of people, and we can imagine that many of them are very nice, upstanding folks, it’s Zacchaeus that Jesus calls to. It’s Zacchaeus that Jesus wants to spend time with. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Zacchaeus is not laughed at, or reviled, but befriended. And wouldn’t you know that this simple act is the only thing that can change him, and in changing him, makes this village a more just and peaceful place for everyone.
Sometimes I imagine the story going the other way. I imagine that Jesus stopped in the road and said “I want to have a special meal with all of you who have been so faithful all these years and have come here early to get a good spot right on the road to see me. You’re all invited. Well, except you, Zacchaeus. You’re not on my list. But if you get your act together, maybe next time I’ll invite you too.” I wonder about that. But I don’t think that Zacchaeus would have changed at all.
I can’t name to you one time in my life that I became a better person as the result of someone telling me how bad I was. I become better when I am inspired by the light of goodness that I receive by the grace of God. Is that your experience? I think that the church has done much better for God and for the world when we have invited people to “come and see” with no strings attached. “Come and see” was what Jesus said to his first disciples in the gospel of John, and it has always been the best way to spread the gospel. When we have gotten it wrong in the church is when we start to fix the world by pointing out its flaws, become aggressive in our condemnation, and even trying to enact laws to enforce moral behavior. That didn’t work for the Puritans, or the Spanish Inquisition, and it will never work for us.
A church research team called The Barna Group recently completed a survey of young Americans, in which high school and college students were asked about their perceptions of Christians and the Christian church. What they found was the primary perception of this generation is that Christians are hypocritical and judgmental, and they are not interested in the church. I read that, and what I hear is people crying out to us: don’t tell us how awful we are, how badly we are spending our time, how we are hurting ourselves, other people, and the earth itself. Show us instead how we can mean something, how we can make a difference. Show us how we can find a sense of peace deep down that always eludes us. I think that’s a call that we can answer, as the body of Christ.
But here’s the catch. Every time Jesus shared his time and food with sinners, just to be with them and with no strings attached, people started to grumble and criticize from the sideline. Read through the gospel of Luke, and notice how many times Jesus heals someone, or associates with a tax collector, and gets blamed for being ‘soft on sin.’ The complaint is always the same. It’s the complaint of the older brother when the prodigal son comes home. He comes in from the field and sees the party in full swing. When he learns that it’s for his younger brother, who wasted half the family fortune, who broke his parents’ hearts, was gone for years and never even wrote, he refuses to even come inside.
When the father comes out to get him, the son complains that it’s not fair, probably just the same way the crowd felt when Jesus singled Zacchaeus out for some one on one time. “It isn’t fair,” he says. “I’ve been with you faithfully all this time and you’ve never thrown me a happy hour, and now this son of yours returns and it’s like New Year’s Eve! What kind of consequences are those? Don’t you realize that the party, the gifts, and the welcome home are all really just so much permission for people to go out and sin all they want?” To all of which the father says “cut that out.”
We have spent centuries trying to overcome the false theology that God is fair, that God punishes sinners and rewards the righteous. Grace isn’t about being fair; grace is about finding the lost, healing the sick, mending the broken. The priest who gave his silver to Jean Valjean knew it. The father of the prodigal son knew it. Jesus knew it.
I wonder where we find ourselves in this snapshot of Jesus, Zacchaeus, and the crowd gathered around..
Maybe we find ourselves in Jesus. I wonder if we are the ones who have an opportunity to show generosity to someone with no strings attached, but with trust in the power of goodness to transform.
Maybe we find ourselves in the crowd. Maybe we are sick of being unthanked while someone else is smiled upon. I wonder if we are holding so tightly to keeping score and bookkeeping that we can’t appreciate the grace of God for those who don’t measure up.
Maybe we are Zacchaues: closed out by others, driven into darkness. Doing things we don’t want to do. I wonder what might inspire us to come closer to Christ, just to get a better look? I wonder what trees we could climb to put ourselves in touch with the sacred? I wonder how God might call our name, might befriend us with no strings attached, and in so doing, might invite us to a new way of being fully human, more gracious, more loving, and more at peace?
I wonder.
[1] Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, trans. Carles E. Wilbur, Everyman’s Library edition, page 21.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Hope for Health Care for All
In the early days of Tallmadge, before the church was built on the north end of the circle in the center of town, there stood an Academy building, where the children and youth of the town came for education. The Academy was built and run with the resources of our church’s founders, notably Elizur Wright, Sr., Salmon Sackett, and Rev. Simon Woodruff, who, in addition to being the first minister to serve this church, was the first instructor when the Academy was built in 1815. The Academy building was destroyed in a fire, but was rebuilt in a different location, with classes held at the Wright house in the interim.
The high value of education is great tradition in our congregation, and in the United Church of Christ as a whole. It has always been important to us to provide for the education of the next generations. In many cases, education was provided by those in the community who had the time and resources available to support it, as it was here in Tallmadge. Eventually, our nation decided that the education of our children was of such importance both as a moral value to itself, and in the national interest to have an educated citizenry, that we couldn’t depend on the ability of individuals to provide for it. Once again, it was our Christian ancestors who made public education, then called common school, available to everyone. We recognized that we could do this together, and that it was worth doing for our country’s general welfare, which is what our Constitution says that the government was created to promote.
I want to remember this story, because I believe that the Christian church has a similar calling in our time. Churches have always worked for the health of others. Many hospitals have religious roots, and today our church hosts blood drives and health screening services. But just as education was once limited to those of fortunate geography or means, so is adequate health care limited today. I believe health care should be for all our neighbors. Everyone should be able to afford the outstanding treatment and care that is available in this country. As I remember our heritage in this church, I am inspired that good people of this generation can see this come to pass. I have great hope.
The high value of education is great tradition in our congregation, and in the United Church of Christ as a whole. It has always been important to us to provide for the education of the next generations. In many cases, education was provided by those in the community who had the time and resources available to support it, as it was here in Tallmadge. Eventually, our nation decided that the education of our children was of such importance both as a moral value to itself, and in the national interest to have an educated citizenry, that we couldn’t depend on the ability of individuals to provide for it. Once again, it was our Christian ancestors who made public education, then called common school, available to everyone. We recognized that we could do this together, and that it was worth doing for our country’s general welfare, which is what our Constitution says that the government was created to promote.
I want to remember this story, because I believe that the Christian church has a similar calling in our time. Churches have always worked for the health of others. Many hospitals have religious roots, and today our church hosts blood drives and health screening services. But just as education was once limited to those of fortunate geography or means, so is adequate health care limited today. I believe health care should be for all our neighbors. Everyone should be able to afford the outstanding treatment and care that is available in this country. As I remember our heritage in this church, I am inspired that good people of this generation can see this come to pass. I have great hope.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Sermon - The Longing For Home
Preached on October 14, 2007 at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Dedicated to Finley Marie O’Neal, on the day of her baptism; and always to the glory of God.
Psalm 137
Mark 1:1-3
Listen to the things that we say about home.
- Home sweet home.
- Home is where the heart is.
- “Homeward bound. I wish I was homeward bound.”
- Or, as Dorothy Gale said, clicking her ruby slippers: “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
These words are a part of our cultural language, and tell us what we already know, that we there is within each of us the longing for home. We long for a home where everything is just right; is just as we always dreamed. I can remember what it felt like when I was away at college in December, studying for exams in the dorm lounge with Christmas decorations on the wall which were only dismal echoes of the way Christmas felt at home. I ached to be on my way to the familiar sights and smells of home. We all know the homesickness that comes when we are far away and long to be back home again.
But there is another kind of longing that we need to talk about, the kind that we feel not when we are far from home, but when the place where we live doesn’t feel like home, or at least not like the home we want. We are often homesick in this way, and the symptoms are disappointment, fear, and anger, because what we long for is a Norman Rockwell painting of a family meal, perhaps Thanksgiving, with the food glowing on it’s platters and bowls, and the children and adults beaming with clean faces and fine clothes. We long for home where everything is just right. The problem is that we are longing for the wrong home.
Often the home we long for is the home of our past. We remember how we used to sing Grandma’s favorite carol at Christmastime, but in the years since she has died, that song has too many painful memories. I remember a friend of mine, a minister in another church, who was in worship one Sunday morning when she stood to sing the closing hymn of the service. She had chosen the hymn for that day, but when she opened the hymnal, found the page, and tried to start singing, tears came to her eyes and her throat closed shut. She couldn’t sing the hymn because the last time she had sung it had been at her father’s funeral. How can we sing the old songs when that home is gone?
It’s not just our own homes and families that have changed. The world that we called home has changed. The Biblical teacher Walter Brueggemann writes that we live at a time when “Our society is marked by a deep dislocation that touches every aspect of our lives. The old certitudes seem less certain; the old privileges are under powerful challenge; the old dominations are increasingly ineffective and fragile.”[1]
That rings true to me. Our nation, once so certain to protect its citizens, now seems vulnerable to a new kind of threat. Our workforce, once proud, is caught between cheap labor overseas and unaffordable health costs at home. Even the church might long for the past, when we had almost universal influence: keeping stores closed on Sundays and even Wednesday nights free of community events. Now it is no longer the norm to attend church on Sunday; no longer is it the norm to offer Christian prayers at public events because the public is no longer uniformly Christian as it was mid-century, in the boom years after the war. Those of you who have watched generations grow up must feel as though this church, this country, is a very different place.
We long for a home as it used to be, for home as we dream of it. And we are not the first.
In the year 578 B.C., six centuries before Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river, the nation of Israel was attacked by the large and powerful empire of Babylon, which lay to the east. Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple razed. The king and much of the population, including all the leading merchants, owners, priests and politicians were taken into exile far away in Babylon, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They lost their home. They were conquered. This great exile is the subject of much of the old testament prophets and psalms, although it is a story we seldom tell, which is too bad, because it is a story we need. We are a people in exile. We feel that we have lost our home, even those of you who have lived in the same place all your lives may feel that the place has changed around you, and the home you had is gone.
Brueggemann makes the connection: “For ancient Israel, it was the end of privilege, certitude, domination, viable public institutions and a sustaining social fabric. It was the end of life with God, which Israel had taken for granted. In that wrenching time, ancient Israel faced the temptation of despair—the inability to see any way out.”
Despair is the inability to see a way out. Or as my friend, the Rev. Craig Barnes puts it, the danger when you are lost in a dark wood is not that you will become more lost trying to get to the right place, but that you will grow accustomed to the darkness.[2] The Israelites in Babylon were full of despair. Here they were by the rivers of Babylon, and they wept, the psalm tells us. Some of the Babylonians, the nation that had taken them captive, wanted to hear their songs. They wanted some culture, apparently, from across the desert. They said “sing us those songs of Zion. Give us the flavor of old Jerusalem.” But the Israelites hung their harps on the trees. They said “how can we sing the Lord’s song when we are far away in a foreign land?”
So it is with us. We cannot sing the old songs, acting as if nothing has changed. The old songs are too painful, or they have simply lost their meaning. Maybe we have stopped believing that they can be true.
It was two generations later that the exile in Babylon ended. The prophet Isaiah records the words of their return home: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight a path in the wilderness.” God prepares a way for us to go home. In the wilderness God makes a way. Think of their joy, their relief, to be going home, and keep that story in mind as we turn to the gospels with new ears. This morning we heard the first words from the gospel according to Mark, and he begins with those lines from Isaiah about preparing a way in the wilderness for God. All the gospels begin with old words that are about going home, and what they mean by this is that the way home is the way of Jesus Christ.
Forget the Norman Rockwell painting. If you want to picture home, you’d be better off with Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. You know the painting, with the long table, and everyone sitting on the same side. On the edges you can see in the disciples images of grief, confusion, and betrayal, but in the center is the savior who bears all burdens.[3] Home is not the place where every pain is eased and everything is calm. Home is found in the midst of pain and discomfort when we find ourselves at home in God who can hold all things together. That is what we long for, even as we try all kinds of substitutions: a home with God in the midst of our loss and confusion.
We need to listen more to the Hebrews who were in exile. Their story is our story. We understand them when they say that they can’t sing the old songs in a foreign land because we feel that way too; we know that sense of loss. But they didn’t stay lost. Listen to what the prophet Jeremiah says to them about their time in exile, in the 29th chapter, he first tells them not to listen to false prophets who were telling them that God would fix it any moment and make everything just the way it was. It never works to wait for an instant return to the way things were. We do not worship a God of the quick fix. Jeremiah tells them this instead: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
This is a new theology! When you have lost your home, make home where you are, because God is not left behind in that other place or in that other time, God is in the midst of the confusion and fear where you are right now. Home can be found here, with Christ in the midst of us. Prepare a way for the Lord. Instead of anger or bitterness about the place we are stuck in, when we seek the welfare of this place and time, it will work for our welfare.
Isn’t that interesting about the spiritual life: that it always leads us to work and give for the good of others, and this always results in deep good for ourselves, but whenever we seek good things simply for ourselves, it brings shallow results.
We long for home but we too often search for the wrong home. Home will not take away the complexity or difficulty of our lives, but will give us a strength and purpose, will give us God’s spirit to be home right where we are. And we will be able to sing God’s songs again. Amen.
[1] From “Conversations Among Exiles.” The Christian Century, July 2-9, 1997, pp. 630-632
[2] Craig Barnes, Searching for Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 21.
[3] Craig Barnes, Searching For Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 29.
Dedicated to Finley Marie O’Neal, on the day of her baptism; and always to the glory of God.
Psalm 137
Mark 1:1-3
Listen to the things that we say about home.
- Home sweet home.
- Home is where the heart is.
- “Homeward bound. I wish I was homeward bound.”
- Or, as Dorothy Gale said, clicking her ruby slippers: “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
These words are a part of our cultural language, and tell us what we already know, that we there is within each of us the longing for home. We long for a home where everything is just right; is just as we always dreamed. I can remember what it felt like when I was away at college in December, studying for exams in the dorm lounge with Christmas decorations on the wall which were only dismal echoes of the way Christmas felt at home. I ached to be on my way to the familiar sights and smells of home. We all know the homesickness that comes when we are far away and long to be back home again.
But there is another kind of longing that we need to talk about, the kind that we feel not when we are far from home, but when the place where we live doesn’t feel like home, or at least not like the home we want. We are often homesick in this way, and the symptoms are disappointment, fear, and anger, because what we long for is a Norman Rockwell painting of a family meal, perhaps Thanksgiving, with the food glowing on it’s platters and bowls, and the children and adults beaming with clean faces and fine clothes. We long for home where everything is just right. The problem is that we are longing for the wrong home.
Often the home we long for is the home of our past. We remember how we used to sing Grandma’s favorite carol at Christmastime, but in the years since she has died, that song has too many painful memories. I remember a friend of mine, a minister in another church, who was in worship one Sunday morning when she stood to sing the closing hymn of the service. She had chosen the hymn for that day, but when she opened the hymnal, found the page, and tried to start singing, tears came to her eyes and her throat closed shut. She couldn’t sing the hymn because the last time she had sung it had been at her father’s funeral. How can we sing the old songs when that home is gone?
It’s not just our own homes and families that have changed. The world that we called home has changed. The Biblical teacher Walter Brueggemann writes that we live at a time when “Our society is marked by a deep dislocation that touches every aspect of our lives. The old certitudes seem less certain; the old privileges are under powerful challenge; the old dominations are increasingly ineffective and fragile.”[1]
That rings true to me. Our nation, once so certain to protect its citizens, now seems vulnerable to a new kind of threat. Our workforce, once proud, is caught between cheap labor overseas and unaffordable health costs at home. Even the church might long for the past, when we had almost universal influence: keeping stores closed on Sundays and even Wednesday nights free of community events. Now it is no longer the norm to attend church on Sunday; no longer is it the norm to offer Christian prayers at public events because the public is no longer uniformly Christian as it was mid-century, in the boom years after the war. Those of you who have watched generations grow up must feel as though this church, this country, is a very different place.
We long for a home as it used to be, for home as we dream of it. And we are not the first.
In the year 578 B.C., six centuries before Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river, the nation of Israel was attacked by the large and powerful empire of Babylon, which lay to the east. Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple razed. The king and much of the population, including all the leading merchants, owners, priests and politicians were taken into exile far away in Babylon, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They lost their home. They were conquered. This great exile is the subject of much of the old testament prophets and psalms, although it is a story we seldom tell, which is too bad, because it is a story we need. We are a people in exile. We feel that we have lost our home, even those of you who have lived in the same place all your lives may feel that the place has changed around you, and the home you had is gone.
Brueggemann makes the connection: “For ancient Israel, it was the end of privilege, certitude, domination, viable public institutions and a sustaining social fabric. It was the end of life with God, which Israel had taken for granted. In that wrenching time, ancient Israel faced the temptation of despair—the inability to see any way out.”
Despair is the inability to see a way out. Or as my friend, the Rev. Craig Barnes puts it, the danger when you are lost in a dark wood is not that you will become more lost trying to get to the right place, but that you will grow accustomed to the darkness.[2] The Israelites in Babylon were full of despair. Here they were by the rivers of Babylon, and they wept, the psalm tells us. Some of the Babylonians, the nation that had taken them captive, wanted to hear their songs. They wanted some culture, apparently, from across the desert. They said “sing us those songs of Zion. Give us the flavor of old Jerusalem.” But the Israelites hung their harps on the trees. They said “how can we sing the Lord’s song when we are far away in a foreign land?”
So it is with us. We cannot sing the old songs, acting as if nothing has changed. The old songs are too painful, or they have simply lost their meaning. Maybe we have stopped believing that they can be true.
It was two generations later that the exile in Babylon ended. The prophet Isaiah records the words of their return home: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight a path in the wilderness.” God prepares a way for us to go home. In the wilderness God makes a way. Think of their joy, their relief, to be going home, and keep that story in mind as we turn to the gospels with new ears. This morning we heard the first words from the gospel according to Mark, and he begins with those lines from Isaiah about preparing a way in the wilderness for God. All the gospels begin with old words that are about going home, and what they mean by this is that the way home is the way of Jesus Christ.
Forget the Norman Rockwell painting. If you want to picture home, you’d be better off with Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. You know the painting, with the long table, and everyone sitting on the same side. On the edges you can see in the disciples images of grief, confusion, and betrayal, but in the center is the savior who bears all burdens.[3] Home is not the place where every pain is eased and everything is calm. Home is found in the midst of pain and discomfort when we find ourselves at home in God who can hold all things together. That is what we long for, even as we try all kinds of substitutions: a home with God in the midst of our loss and confusion.
We need to listen more to the Hebrews who were in exile. Their story is our story. We understand them when they say that they can’t sing the old songs in a foreign land because we feel that way too; we know that sense of loss. But they didn’t stay lost. Listen to what the prophet Jeremiah says to them about their time in exile, in the 29th chapter, he first tells them not to listen to false prophets who were telling them that God would fix it any moment and make everything just the way it was. It never works to wait for an instant return to the way things were. We do not worship a God of the quick fix. Jeremiah tells them this instead: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
This is a new theology! When you have lost your home, make home where you are, because God is not left behind in that other place or in that other time, God is in the midst of the confusion and fear where you are right now. Home can be found here, with Christ in the midst of us. Prepare a way for the Lord. Instead of anger or bitterness about the place we are stuck in, when we seek the welfare of this place and time, it will work for our welfare.
Isn’t that interesting about the spiritual life: that it always leads us to work and give for the good of others, and this always results in deep good for ourselves, but whenever we seek good things simply for ourselves, it brings shallow results.
We long for home but we too often search for the wrong home. Home will not take away the complexity or difficulty of our lives, but will give us a strength and purpose, will give us God’s spirit to be home right where we are. And we will be able to sing God’s songs again. Amen.
[1] From “Conversations Among Exiles.” The Christian Century, July 2-9, 1997, pp. 630-632
[2] Craig Barnes, Searching for Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 21.
[3] Craig Barnes, Searching For Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 29.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Sermon - Lost and Found
Preached on September 16, 2007 at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Luke 15:1-10
Dedicated to Betsy; and always to the glory of God.
Last month, when the mine in Utah collapsed on those six miners, I remember following the news day after day about the efforts to find them, about the size of the holes they were drilling deep, deep into the earth to the places where they thought the miners might be trapped, with hope that they find signs of life. As it became ten and eleven days since the collapse, they were drilling yet another hole, and I wondered what hope they could still have? But everyone wanted to keep looking. When people are lost, we want to find them.
When someone is really lost and we know it, we will go to heroic efforts to find them. When there are climbers trapped on a mountain. Maybe they weren’t prepared, maybe they shouldn’t have gone up with a storm coming in, but it doesn’t matter, we will call forth great rescuers and resources. A child missing in a small town will have crowds combing the fields, parks, and woods. We post pictures and send them out in the mail, asking if anyone has seen them.
And we hope that if we are ever lost there will be no limit to the efforts made to find us, wherever we may be. The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin tell us that when we are lost in a spiritual sense, when we are buried deep and the weight of the world is upon us, God will search and search for us, will find us, will rejoice and bring us back. That is good news, and news that we need to share, because too often the message about God gets twisted, and we hear instead that if we are lost, then we did it to ourselves, and it’s up to us to get back, not God. That’s not the story Jesus told, and not the one we should tell either.
The story Jesus told was about a shepherd who, perhaps, is bringing the sheep from the hills to the village at the end of day, only to realize that one sheep didn’t make it back. In those days, all the sheep owned in the village were herded together, and the owners would take turns to stay with the animals. As the shepherd goes back to the hills, the rest of the town waits and watches in the failing light, not knowing whose sheep is lost, but together hoping for its safe return. Finally, the shepherd’s form can be seen in the moonlight coming over a hill, the lost sheep across his shoulders. He calls out to them with triumph, and everyone rejoices, and brings out the food and drink for a late night celebration. The gospel is told in that kind of story.
Or try this one on: A woman loses one of her ten coins, called a drachma, which is each equal to the wage for one day’s labor. But a single woman in that time and place was not in a position to easily earn such a wage. She was a widow, perhaps, or never married -vulnerable in either case. Those ten coins are all her wealth. It would be like someone on a small fixed income of social security having lost a check. She laments to her neighbor, and soon word spreads. People feel awful for her loss, and what it means to her security.
The story goes that she lit a lamp and swept the house, which in those days would have had a pounded dirt floor covered by thatch. Not an easy place to spot a coin, especially by the limited glow of a lamp. But she is persistent, and does not give up the search until the coin is found. When she spots the dull glint of metal, smudged with dirt, she cries with happiness and relief, and calls to her neighbors, who come with hugs and food and drink to help her to bask in the joy of the lost being found. And so it is with God. The lost is found. God will search, and search, and search. And when we are found, what joy there is. If you finish this chapter in the gospel, you will find that Jesus completes these two parables by telling one more story, this time about a son who is lost and thought to be dead, and about the great party his father throws when his beloved child comes home.
We rejoice when the lost is found. But what about the people who are lost even while they are right in front of us? What about the people who might be in the same room, but to everyone else they are lost because of the way they look, or smell; because they are bitter and mean, those long-applied defenses; or lost because of the shameful secret about them that everyone else knows, the one that is whispered in the other corners of the room. “He’s the one.” “Do you know what she did?”
Those people are the ones that Jesus sought out – the ones who were lost in plain sight. He shared his meals and conversation with them, and showed mercy to them, trusting that these acts of generosity, of grace, would be a way for these lost people to be found.
It is good news that God finds us when we are lost, but that’s not why Jesus told these stories. He told these stories because the uptight religious people were upset again about Jesus spending time with all those sinners. Righteous people shouldn’t get near them, they thought; they should maintain their dignity! And God’s holiness surely could not be compromised by the presence of these sinners.
In response, Jesus told these stories, telling them not to the people who were lost, but to the people who were not joining the party, which is another way of being lost, I suppose. If one way of hearing these parables is identifying with the lost sheep and lost coin, the other way is for us to identify with the neighbors who are invited to join the celebration. How will we respond? Will we rejoice? Will we celebrate that God loves the lost, and loves them just because?
Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, tells the story of a ten-day backpacking trip in the mountains that she and her husband took with eight strangers and a trip leader.[1] Each day they would pack up camp and hike over mountain ridges to a new place to camp for the night. They took turns in the lead, and some were fast hikers and some were slow, but eventually they always had to wait for the last person in line to catch up, and so realized that the group could cover ground only as fast as their slowest member, and that was Pat. Pat was always the slowest, partly because she spent much of her energy to maintain a running commentary of her complaints. The day was too sunny or too damp, we can’t stop for lunch here, it’s too rocky. She didn’t join in conversations, but she would listen in on them, and interrupt in order to correct someone’s grammar, geography, history, or botany. She hadn’t come with anyone, and didn’t particularly warm up to anyone.
At the end of one difficult day in which they had climbed three separate peaks, they finally arrived at their campsite with little daylight left only to find that Pat was not with them. They quickly discovered that no one had seen her since just after lunch, when she had told the person responsible for bringing up the rear of the group to just go on ahead and she would be there soon. He’d been only too happy to let her take the last spot by herself, and no one had thought of her since.
Everyone was tired and hungry, and no one could imagine going back to look for her, although they all felt a chill and horror at the thought of being lost, alone in the woods. The trip leader took a flashlight, blanket, and warm soup and went back for her, because it was his job. The rest milled about, trying to avoid the awful thoughts about what might become of her.
Hours later, very late at night, the leader emerged from the trail into the clearing, and with him was Pat. Everyone swarmed around them, giving her hugs and pressing food and hot cocoa into her hands. Everyone was genuinely, intensely glad to see her, and did not remember anymore all the ways that they had come to dislike her. She was lost and now she was found. She didn’t return the hugs very warmly, and acted as if she had never been worried or scared, but the next morning she was one of the first to roll up her tent and pack her things, and that had never happened. She no longer lingered far behind, slowing down the group, and although she never became exactly easy to get along with, the experience of being lost and found did seem to have changed her, just as it changed the attitudes of those around her.
The thing is, Pat had been lost long before the night she was physically lost. And I wonder: how can we do the same thing for each other without waiting for someone’s life to actually be in danger? We are lost, in one way or the other, and we need to find each other, to see in each other what is valuable. When the lost are found, that is what leads to the joyful celebrations, and rejoicing for the lost who are found is what God is all about.
[1] From the sermon “The Lost and Found Department” printed in The Preaching Life, Barbara Brown Taylor, 1993.
Luke 15:1-10
Dedicated to Betsy; and always to the glory of God.
Last month, when the mine in Utah collapsed on those six miners, I remember following the news day after day about the efforts to find them, about the size of the holes they were drilling deep, deep into the earth to the places where they thought the miners might be trapped, with hope that they find signs of life. As it became ten and eleven days since the collapse, they were drilling yet another hole, and I wondered what hope they could still have? But everyone wanted to keep looking. When people are lost, we want to find them.
When someone is really lost and we know it, we will go to heroic efforts to find them. When there are climbers trapped on a mountain. Maybe they weren’t prepared, maybe they shouldn’t have gone up with a storm coming in, but it doesn’t matter, we will call forth great rescuers and resources. A child missing in a small town will have crowds combing the fields, parks, and woods. We post pictures and send them out in the mail, asking if anyone has seen them.
And we hope that if we are ever lost there will be no limit to the efforts made to find us, wherever we may be. The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin tell us that when we are lost in a spiritual sense, when we are buried deep and the weight of the world is upon us, God will search and search for us, will find us, will rejoice and bring us back. That is good news, and news that we need to share, because too often the message about God gets twisted, and we hear instead that if we are lost, then we did it to ourselves, and it’s up to us to get back, not God. That’s not the story Jesus told, and not the one we should tell either.
The story Jesus told was about a shepherd who, perhaps, is bringing the sheep from the hills to the village at the end of day, only to realize that one sheep didn’t make it back. In those days, all the sheep owned in the village were herded together, and the owners would take turns to stay with the animals. As the shepherd goes back to the hills, the rest of the town waits and watches in the failing light, not knowing whose sheep is lost, but together hoping for its safe return. Finally, the shepherd’s form can be seen in the moonlight coming over a hill, the lost sheep across his shoulders. He calls out to them with triumph, and everyone rejoices, and brings out the food and drink for a late night celebration. The gospel is told in that kind of story.
Or try this one on: A woman loses one of her ten coins, called a drachma, which is each equal to the wage for one day’s labor. But a single woman in that time and place was not in a position to easily earn such a wage. She was a widow, perhaps, or never married -vulnerable in either case. Those ten coins are all her wealth. It would be like someone on a small fixed income of social security having lost a check. She laments to her neighbor, and soon word spreads. People feel awful for her loss, and what it means to her security.
The story goes that she lit a lamp and swept the house, which in those days would have had a pounded dirt floor covered by thatch. Not an easy place to spot a coin, especially by the limited glow of a lamp. But she is persistent, and does not give up the search until the coin is found. When she spots the dull glint of metal, smudged with dirt, she cries with happiness and relief, and calls to her neighbors, who come with hugs and food and drink to help her to bask in the joy of the lost being found. And so it is with God. The lost is found. God will search, and search, and search. And when we are found, what joy there is. If you finish this chapter in the gospel, you will find that Jesus completes these two parables by telling one more story, this time about a son who is lost and thought to be dead, and about the great party his father throws when his beloved child comes home.
We rejoice when the lost is found. But what about the people who are lost even while they are right in front of us? What about the people who might be in the same room, but to everyone else they are lost because of the way they look, or smell; because they are bitter and mean, those long-applied defenses; or lost because of the shameful secret about them that everyone else knows, the one that is whispered in the other corners of the room. “He’s the one.” “Do you know what she did?”
Those people are the ones that Jesus sought out – the ones who were lost in plain sight. He shared his meals and conversation with them, and showed mercy to them, trusting that these acts of generosity, of grace, would be a way for these lost people to be found.
It is good news that God finds us when we are lost, but that’s not why Jesus told these stories. He told these stories because the uptight religious people were upset again about Jesus spending time with all those sinners. Righteous people shouldn’t get near them, they thought; they should maintain their dignity! And God’s holiness surely could not be compromised by the presence of these sinners.
In response, Jesus told these stories, telling them not to the people who were lost, but to the people who were not joining the party, which is another way of being lost, I suppose. If one way of hearing these parables is identifying with the lost sheep and lost coin, the other way is for us to identify with the neighbors who are invited to join the celebration. How will we respond? Will we rejoice? Will we celebrate that God loves the lost, and loves them just because?
Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, tells the story of a ten-day backpacking trip in the mountains that she and her husband took with eight strangers and a trip leader.[1] Each day they would pack up camp and hike over mountain ridges to a new place to camp for the night. They took turns in the lead, and some were fast hikers and some were slow, but eventually they always had to wait for the last person in line to catch up, and so realized that the group could cover ground only as fast as their slowest member, and that was Pat. Pat was always the slowest, partly because she spent much of her energy to maintain a running commentary of her complaints. The day was too sunny or too damp, we can’t stop for lunch here, it’s too rocky. She didn’t join in conversations, but she would listen in on them, and interrupt in order to correct someone’s grammar, geography, history, or botany. She hadn’t come with anyone, and didn’t particularly warm up to anyone.
At the end of one difficult day in which they had climbed three separate peaks, they finally arrived at their campsite with little daylight left only to find that Pat was not with them. They quickly discovered that no one had seen her since just after lunch, when she had told the person responsible for bringing up the rear of the group to just go on ahead and she would be there soon. He’d been only too happy to let her take the last spot by herself, and no one had thought of her since.
Everyone was tired and hungry, and no one could imagine going back to look for her, although they all felt a chill and horror at the thought of being lost, alone in the woods. The trip leader took a flashlight, blanket, and warm soup and went back for her, because it was his job. The rest milled about, trying to avoid the awful thoughts about what might become of her.
Hours later, very late at night, the leader emerged from the trail into the clearing, and with him was Pat. Everyone swarmed around them, giving her hugs and pressing food and hot cocoa into her hands. Everyone was genuinely, intensely glad to see her, and did not remember anymore all the ways that they had come to dislike her. She was lost and now she was found. She didn’t return the hugs very warmly, and acted as if she had never been worried or scared, but the next morning she was one of the first to roll up her tent and pack her things, and that had never happened. She no longer lingered far behind, slowing down the group, and although she never became exactly easy to get along with, the experience of being lost and found did seem to have changed her, just as it changed the attitudes of those around her.
The thing is, Pat had been lost long before the night she was physically lost. And I wonder: how can we do the same thing for each other without waiting for someone’s life to actually be in danger? We are lost, in one way or the other, and we need to find each other, to see in each other what is valuable. When the lost are found, that is what leads to the joyful celebrations, and rejoicing for the lost who are found is what God is all about.
[1] From the sermon “The Lost and Found Department” printed in The Preaching Life, Barbara Brown Taylor, 1993.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Sermon - The Rule of Compassion
Preached on August 26, 2007 at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio UCC
Luke 13:10-17
Dedicated to Betsy, my wife, who teaches me compassion;
and always to the glory of God.
The fourth of the ten commandments, which are the basis of Biblical law, reads like this:
“Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work: you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” (Exodus 20:8-11)
Jesus comes into conflict with his fellow Jews over and over again in the gospels when he heals on the Sabbath, and lets his disciples pick grain from a field when they are hungry. Jesus gets into arguments about the fourth commandment. But we need to remember what the argument is about. It’s not about whether to honor the Sabbath, but how to honor the Sabbath. And the larger question is this: What does it mean to be good? What are the ethics of the kingdom of God?
What we have here are two ways of understanding God’s commandments as we read them in scripture, and these two are argued by the synagogue leader and Jesus. But even as they argue, both Jesus and the synagogue leader believe that we must love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that this love is shown in our actions and choices. Their disagreement is about what actions and what choices?
The first way of understanding God’s commandments, the way that the synagogue leader understood them, is that we honor God by obeying God’s commandments. God is the one who deserves our absolute loyalty and service. And so we honor God by obeying the rules. Don’t work on the Sabbath. The woman has been afflicted for years - one more day won’t hurt. The synagogue leader is not opposed to healing; he just wants to be good by obeying God. His view is logical and consistent. But it is not the only idea of goodness.
Contrast his view with the way Jesus understands God’s commandments, and what it means to honor God. Jesus teaches us that God’s chief concern is not being obeyed. What is most important to God is to love and care for people and for the entire creation. The commandments, rules, and principles of scripture are all ways for God’s people to love and care for one another and for the world in their lives. When someone asked Jesus which is the greatest commandment he answered “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” And it’s important to remember what he says next: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40).
If God is primarily concerned with love and care for people, then to heal a long-suffering woman is to honor God’s commandments. And look what happens. The woman who is healed stands upright for the first time in years, and she praises God. And the people who were there celebrated with her and praised God together. Doesn’t that sound like a way to honor the Sabbath?
When we understand that God’s commandments are not tests of obedience, but are for our care, then we remember that the Sabbath is for us, a day when we need rest and time with God. God knows we need Sabbath, or else we will suffer exhaustion and will never benefit from any of the things we work so hard to accomplish on the other six days. We should honor the Sabbath, but we should do it as a way to honor God’s love and care for us, and not simply to obey the rule.
This is advanced ethics. It’s easier to be good if there are black and white rules and loving God is just a matter of obeying the rules as written. Like when we are young and we learn that it is wrong to walk out into the street. That’s black and white, and easy to know the right thing to do, even if we don’t always do it. But then one day your little dog is off the leash and out in the road and limping. There are no cars coming, but you know the dog is in danger and needs to be moved. But you’re not supposed to go out there. Suddenly you are in advanced ethics.
There’s a movie called The Village, made by M. Night Shyamalan after his big hit with The Sixth Sense. It’s billed as a scary thriller, but at its heart it is a movie about right and wrong. The setting is a small village isolated in a vast woods, which is completely self-sustaining. The people have isolated themselves away from the corruption and dangerous influences of “the town” or any other human contact. There isn’t even a path from the town, and the rules against leaving the village are strict, so that everyone may be kept safe. But then, a councilman’s son is wounded and becomes badly infected. A few of the elders know that out in the town there is medicine that would save his life, but most are willing to accept his death as the price they pay for keeping their town safe and holy and kept apart.
But what does the rule of compassion say? Compassion does not allow us to hold ourselves apart as holy observers of the law while people are in need. The commandments of God should lead to love for our neighbors, or they have been misused. The commandment to observe the Sabbath is for giving us rest, that we may have more strength and energy to love, and that we may have time to remember how much we are loved by God, how sacred is each life, and how holy is this world. Observing the Sabbath should increase our love.
When Jesus Christ healed the crippled woman on the Sabbath, he evaluated the word of God according to the greatest commandment, and now you and I must do the same. That is what we are called to, for we are followers of Christ, we are the people of “the way” as they were first named, which is the way of Christ, and later named Christians, because we seek to be Christ-like, and being Christ-like leads us to being ruled by compassion.
The rule of compassion is the final decision maker in advanced ethics. Sometimes it is difficult to know how to be compassionate. Does it mean giving someone yet another loan we never expect to be paid back or is it helping them to find a job or get treatment? Does it mean spending more on affordable housing and programs like head start and food stamps, or does it mean cutting taxes so that the upper class to stimulate the economy with their investment in jobs and demand for services? These are difficult questions, but my hope is that all of us who face hard questions will make the compassion of Jesus our rule, and follow the direction that it leads.
God knows there are enough people who are like this woman, bent over and weighed down. God knows that sometimes that woman stands for you and for me, when we are weighed down by hurt, trapped by our circumstances, bent over in pain and loss, and we do not need to find a God who will make us obedient; we need to meet a God of love and care who will heal us and change our lives. We need our lives to be changed by love that we may love back. As Christ has loved us, may we love one another.
Luke 13:10-17
Dedicated to Betsy, my wife, who teaches me compassion;
and always to the glory of God.
The fourth of the ten commandments, which are the basis of Biblical law, reads like this:
“Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work: you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” (Exodus 20:8-11)
Jesus comes into conflict with his fellow Jews over and over again in the gospels when he heals on the Sabbath, and lets his disciples pick grain from a field when they are hungry. Jesus gets into arguments about the fourth commandment. But we need to remember what the argument is about. It’s not about whether to honor the Sabbath, but how to honor the Sabbath. And the larger question is this: What does it mean to be good? What are the ethics of the kingdom of God?
What we have here are two ways of understanding God’s commandments as we read them in scripture, and these two are argued by the synagogue leader and Jesus. But even as they argue, both Jesus and the synagogue leader believe that we must love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that this love is shown in our actions and choices. Their disagreement is about what actions and what choices?
The first way of understanding God’s commandments, the way that the synagogue leader understood them, is that we honor God by obeying God’s commandments. God is the one who deserves our absolute loyalty and service. And so we honor God by obeying the rules. Don’t work on the Sabbath. The woman has been afflicted for years - one more day won’t hurt. The synagogue leader is not opposed to healing; he just wants to be good by obeying God. His view is logical and consistent. But it is not the only idea of goodness.
Contrast his view with the way Jesus understands God’s commandments, and what it means to honor God. Jesus teaches us that God’s chief concern is not being obeyed. What is most important to God is to love and care for people and for the entire creation. The commandments, rules, and principles of scripture are all ways for God’s people to love and care for one another and for the world in their lives. When someone asked Jesus which is the greatest commandment he answered “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” And it’s important to remember what he says next: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40).
If God is primarily concerned with love and care for people, then to heal a long-suffering woman is to honor God’s commandments. And look what happens. The woman who is healed stands upright for the first time in years, and she praises God. And the people who were there celebrated with her and praised God together. Doesn’t that sound like a way to honor the Sabbath?
When we understand that God’s commandments are not tests of obedience, but are for our care, then we remember that the Sabbath is for us, a day when we need rest and time with God. God knows we need Sabbath, or else we will suffer exhaustion and will never benefit from any of the things we work so hard to accomplish on the other six days. We should honor the Sabbath, but we should do it as a way to honor God’s love and care for us, and not simply to obey the rule.
This is advanced ethics. It’s easier to be good if there are black and white rules and loving God is just a matter of obeying the rules as written. Like when we are young and we learn that it is wrong to walk out into the street. That’s black and white, and easy to know the right thing to do, even if we don’t always do it. But then one day your little dog is off the leash and out in the road and limping. There are no cars coming, but you know the dog is in danger and needs to be moved. But you’re not supposed to go out there. Suddenly you are in advanced ethics.
There’s a movie called The Village, made by M. Night Shyamalan after his big hit with The Sixth Sense. It’s billed as a scary thriller, but at its heart it is a movie about right and wrong. The setting is a small village isolated in a vast woods, which is completely self-sustaining. The people have isolated themselves away from the corruption and dangerous influences of “the town” or any other human contact. There isn’t even a path from the town, and the rules against leaving the village are strict, so that everyone may be kept safe. But then, a councilman’s son is wounded and becomes badly infected. A few of the elders know that out in the town there is medicine that would save his life, but most are willing to accept his death as the price they pay for keeping their town safe and holy and kept apart.
But what does the rule of compassion say? Compassion does not allow us to hold ourselves apart as holy observers of the law while people are in need. The commandments of God should lead to love for our neighbors, or they have been misused. The commandment to observe the Sabbath is for giving us rest, that we may have more strength and energy to love, and that we may have time to remember how much we are loved by God, how sacred is each life, and how holy is this world. Observing the Sabbath should increase our love.
When Jesus Christ healed the crippled woman on the Sabbath, he evaluated the word of God according to the greatest commandment, and now you and I must do the same. That is what we are called to, for we are followers of Christ, we are the people of “the way” as they were first named, which is the way of Christ, and later named Christians, because we seek to be Christ-like, and being Christ-like leads us to being ruled by compassion.
The rule of compassion is the final decision maker in advanced ethics. Sometimes it is difficult to know how to be compassionate. Does it mean giving someone yet another loan we never expect to be paid back or is it helping them to find a job or get treatment? Does it mean spending more on affordable housing and programs like head start and food stamps, or does it mean cutting taxes so that the upper class to stimulate the economy with their investment in jobs and demand for services? These are difficult questions, but my hope is that all of us who face hard questions will make the compassion of Jesus our rule, and follow the direction that it leads.
God knows there are enough people who are like this woman, bent over and weighed down. God knows that sometimes that woman stands for you and for me, when we are weighed down by hurt, trapped by our circumstances, bent over in pain and loss, and we do not need to find a God who will make us obedient; we need to meet a God of love and care who will heal us and change our lives. We need our lives to be changed by love that we may love back. As Christ has loved us, may we love one another.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Sermon - The Problem with Having Too Much
Preached on August 5, 2007 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge
Dedicated to my Grandparents Nelson and Donna; and always to the glory of God.
Luke 12:13-21
A man becomes rich, and stores wealth far in excess of what he will ever need, and considers himself secure and happy for many years to come. But suppose, Jesus says, that his life is demanded of him, and suddenly all that wealth becomes as worthless to him as losing lottery tickets. So, you can’t take it with you? Is that the message of Jesus. The hearse never has a trailer? But we already know that. We know that one day this life will end, although we don’t often think about it, and then the things we have stored away will become someone else’s problem.
But we also know that we want people to have a home that is safe and secure, there’s surely nothing excessive about that. We want people to be clothed well, to have enough to eat. That’s why we send out mission tours, and give our resources so that people can have what they need. Last week this congregation supported the building of an addition for a family’s home in southern Kentucky. We didn’t go down there and say, well, they might die tomorrow, so there’s no sense spending our time and money to house them. Of course we didn’t say that, because while life is not a guarantee, long life is what we hope and plan for, and we want people to live with dignity.
The problem with the man in the parable is not that he was well housed and fed - that’s our hope for everyone. The problem is that he was rich to excess, and his riches stood in the way of being rich toward God. Jesus says it over and over again, and our experience tells us the same thing: material riches stand in the way of being rich toward God. That’s the problem with having too much.
Charles Dickens knew that this was true. He wrote about Ebenezer Scrooge, the richest man in town, and about Bob Cratchit, who worked for him even on Christmas Eve for barely enough money to feed his family. And yet, on that fateful night when Scrooge was forced to look clearly at his own life, and then to look at the life of the Cratchit family, he found that Bob was a much richer man.
Or think of that other Christmas classic, the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Jimmy Stewart’s character, George Bailey, watches as his childhood friends and younger brother move away from Bedford Falls to become successful and rich, while he remains at home, giving everything he has to make a modest living with the Bailey Building and Loan, ever on the watch for rich man Potter, who threatens to buy up the whole town. But in the end it is not Potter who prevails. When a mistake puts George in danger of losing his business and being sent to jail, he discovers just how rich he is, not in material wealth, but in relationships and good will with all of Bedford Falls. His brother returns and gives the toast “to George Bailey, the richest man in town.”
These two stories are ways that we remind ourselves about the difference between being rich and being rich toward God. And we need reminding, because there are enough reminders in the world about what it means to be rich. We also need perspective, because most of the time we do not think that we are rich. No matter who it is, everyone compares themselves up, and never down. “You think I’m well off, you ought to see what so-and-so is making. You should see their house.” The reality is that if you take a global perspective, we then recognize that half of the world’s people live on less than one dollar per day. We then recognize that to have enough money to put $10 in a savings account, or even extra change in a bowl, means that we are among the wealthiest people in the world. We always compare up. And so we need reminding and perspective.
I want to suggest three ways to be rich toward God, and perhaps you will identify others.
Firstly, those who are rich toward God are be rich in relationships. Instead of storing up more for themselves, they will add extra seats at the dinner table, they will invite someone who may be alone to the Thanksgiving meal. They will open their homes to foster children, exchange students, and homeless animals. They will plan a vacation, and invite other people to come with them. We have a number of vacation organizers in this church.
Tony Campolo tells the story of a very successful businessman he knew who was getting ready to buy a new car once, and really liked these high end BMWs. But then he asked himself, would Jesus spend that kind of money on a new car? And so he made a different decision. He bought a used car, and he took that money and signed up to send monthly payments to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic to house and feed a number of children. And now he goes to visit this orphanage, and he has gotten to know the children he is supporting, and it means so much more to him than a great car ever could.
We need to listen to the psychologists. There’s a book in our church library called Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert. It doesn’t mention Jesus or his parable about the rich man. But it tells us about the difference between shallow happiness and deeper, lasting happiness. Gilbert reminds us that things like a new car, new clothes or cd’s, all bring us a short-lived happiness. It’s great when they are new, but very soon what was new becomes what is expected. Our expectations change rapidly. At the end of World War II it was exotic to have strawberries in winter, and only the elite could afford it. Now it is expected. The shine of material riches fades fast. Lasting happiness, psychologists say, comes from our relationships with others. The more connected we are in relationships, the greater our riches toward God.
Secondly, those who are rich toward God are rich in meaningful work. Whether it is the work we are paid for, or the volunteer work given to ministries in the church, in our community, or in the world, when we are working for something that is important, that seeks to promote good in the world, then we will be rich toward God. I find that usually meaningful work has a way of choosing us. I remember attending the funeral of a young man who had been mentally ill and, tragically, had ended his own life. His mother was a retired teacher, and she told me that she had found her work for the next part of her life, to work for the care and support of those who suffer mental illness.
I think of the man I met in Atlanta, who was homeless and spent many years living at a shelter called the Open Door, and now he’s living in his own home, and working, but when he has a day off he comes back to this homeless shelter, and he stands at the pot of soup for over an hour at lunch time, filling the bowls one at a time, smiling and joking and meeting new friends. He says he needs to give back.
I want to tell a personal story about my grandparents. They were active in church, singing in choirs and volunteering in other ways. They volunteered at a hospital in retirement, just like so many in this church. And when they learned that three of their four grown children were gay, they helped to begin a group in their city for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and they would meet on the front porch with other parents, and they would give each other support, and they would work together to build bridges of understanding and an end to violence and hate toward their children. They are two of my greatest role models.
I think of all the business owners I have met who feel called to ignore the bottom line when someone can’t afford the supplies to repair their home, or needs groceries, or is unable to pay for the burial of a parent. And these people say “here, do me the honor of accepting a gift. Let me do this for you.”
Meaningful work has a way of choosing us, and it makes us rich toward God.
Finally, those who rich toward God will be rich with time. Sometimes we operate on the principle that time is money, and that every minute should be producing wealth. But what about the hour we spend here? What about the minutes that pass as we wait to receive the bread and cup? I believe that there is a richness in time that is set aside from doing, and is merely for being. We need time to simply be in the company of our spouses, our children, and our neighbors. We need time to simply be with God. That’s why we are here. We are not going to let our wealth get in the way of being rich toward God.
Dedicated to my Grandparents Nelson and Donna; and always to the glory of God.
Luke 12:13-21
A man becomes rich, and stores wealth far in excess of what he will ever need, and considers himself secure and happy for many years to come. But suppose, Jesus says, that his life is demanded of him, and suddenly all that wealth becomes as worthless to him as losing lottery tickets. So, you can’t take it with you? Is that the message of Jesus. The hearse never has a trailer? But we already know that. We know that one day this life will end, although we don’t often think about it, and then the things we have stored away will become someone else’s problem.
But we also know that we want people to have a home that is safe and secure, there’s surely nothing excessive about that. We want people to be clothed well, to have enough to eat. That’s why we send out mission tours, and give our resources so that people can have what they need. Last week this congregation supported the building of an addition for a family’s home in southern Kentucky. We didn’t go down there and say, well, they might die tomorrow, so there’s no sense spending our time and money to house them. Of course we didn’t say that, because while life is not a guarantee, long life is what we hope and plan for, and we want people to live with dignity.
The problem with the man in the parable is not that he was well housed and fed - that’s our hope for everyone. The problem is that he was rich to excess, and his riches stood in the way of being rich toward God. Jesus says it over and over again, and our experience tells us the same thing: material riches stand in the way of being rich toward God. That’s the problem with having too much.
Charles Dickens knew that this was true. He wrote about Ebenezer Scrooge, the richest man in town, and about Bob Cratchit, who worked for him even on Christmas Eve for barely enough money to feed his family. And yet, on that fateful night when Scrooge was forced to look clearly at his own life, and then to look at the life of the Cratchit family, he found that Bob was a much richer man.
Or think of that other Christmas classic, the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Jimmy Stewart’s character, George Bailey, watches as his childhood friends and younger brother move away from Bedford Falls to become successful and rich, while he remains at home, giving everything he has to make a modest living with the Bailey Building and Loan, ever on the watch for rich man Potter, who threatens to buy up the whole town. But in the end it is not Potter who prevails. When a mistake puts George in danger of losing his business and being sent to jail, he discovers just how rich he is, not in material wealth, but in relationships and good will with all of Bedford Falls. His brother returns and gives the toast “to George Bailey, the richest man in town.”
These two stories are ways that we remind ourselves about the difference between being rich and being rich toward God. And we need reminding, because there are enough reminders in the world about what it means to be rich. We also need perspective, because most of the time we do not think that we are rich. No matter who it is, everyone compares themselves up, and never down. “You think I’m well off, you ought to see what so-and-so is making. You should see their house.” The reality is that if you take a global perspective, we then recognize that half of the world’s people live on less than one dollar per day. We then recognize that to have enough money to put $10 in a savings account, or even extra change in a bowl, means that we are among the wealthiest people in the world. We always compare up. And so we need reminding and perspective.
I want to suggest three ways to be rich toward God, and perhaps you will identify others.
Firstly, those who are rich toward God are be rich in relationships. Instead of storing up more for themselves, they will add extra seats at the dinner table, they will invite someone who may be alone to the Thanksgiving meal. They will open their homes to foster children, exchange students, and homeless animals. They will plan a vacation, and invite other people to come with them. We have a number of vacation organizers in this church.
Tony Campolo tells the story of a very successful businessman he knew who was getting ready to buy a new car once, and really liked these high end BMWs. But then he asked himself, would Jesus spend that kind of money on a new car? And so he made a different decision. He bought a used car, and he took that money and signed up to send monthly payments to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic to house and feed a number of children. And now he goes to visit this orphanage, and he has gotten to know the children he is supporting, and it means so much more to him than a great car ever could.
We need to listen to the psychologists. There’s a book in our church library called Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert. It doesn’t mention Jesus or his parable about the rich man. But it tells us about the difference between shallow happiness and deeper, lasting happiness. Gilbert reminds us that things like a new car, new clothes or cd’s, all bring us a short-lived happiness. It’s great when they are new, but very soon what was new becomes what is expected. Our expectations change rapidly. At the end of World War II it was exotic to have strawberries in winter, and only the elite could afford it. Now it is expected. The shine of material riches fades fast. Lasting happiness, psychologists say, comes from our relationships with others. The more connected we are in relationships, the greater our riches toward God.
Secondly, those who are rich toward God are rich in meaningful work. Whether it is the work we are paid for, or the volunteer work given to ministries in the church, in our community, or in the world, when we are working for something that is important, that seeks to promote good in the world, then we will be rich toward God. I find that usually meaningful work has a way of choosing us. I remember attending the funeral of a young man who had been mentally ill and, tragically, had ended his own life. His mother was a retired teacher, and she told me that she had found her work for the next part of her life, to work for the care and support of those who suffer mental illness.
I think of the man I met in Atlanta, who was homeless and spent many years living at a shelter called the Open Door, and now he’s living in his own home, and working, but when he has a day off he comes back to this homeless shelter, and he stands at the pot of soup for over an hour at lunch time, filling the bowls one at a time, smiling and joking and meeting new friends. He says he needs to give back.
I want to tell a personal story about my grandparents. They were active in church, singing in choirs and volunteering in other ways. They volunteered at a hospital in retirement, just like so many in this church. And when they learned that three of their four grown children were gay, they helped to begin a group in their city for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and they would meet on the front porch with other parents, and they would give each other support, and they would work together to build bridges of understanding and an end to violence and hate toward their children. They are two of my greatest role models.
I think of all the business owners I have met who feel called to ignore the bottom line when someone can’t afford the supplies to repair their home, or needs groceries, or is unable to pay for the burial of a parent. And these people say “here, do me the honor of accepting a gift. Let me do this for you.”
Meaningful work has a way of choosing us, and it makes us rich toward God.
Finally, those who rich toward God will be rich with time. Sometimes we operate on the principle that time is money, and that every minute should be producing wealth. But what about the hour we spend here? What about the minutes that pass as we wait to receive the bread and cup? I believe that there is a richness in time that is set aside from doing, and is merely for being. We need time to simply be in the company of our spouses, our children, and our neighbors. We need time to simply be with God. That’s why we are here. We are not going to let our wealth get in the way of being rich toward God.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Sermon - How To Talk About Prayer Without Making God Look Bad
This sermon was preached at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge on July 29, 2007. I am indebted to Richard Wing and Tony Campolo for their work on this subject.
Luke 11:1-13
Dedicated to the members of the Adult Mission Tour, who are on their way to Kentucky this morning; and always to the glory of God.
I remember the movie “Oh God,” in which John Denver played an unassuming grocery manager who was unexpectedly visited by God in the form of George Burns, which is probably about what a lot of people thought God looked like anyway. It’s kind of an old movie now, but it had some good theology in it. God is asks John Denver’s character to be a sort of messenger, and in one scene God asks him to go to a church where there is one of these television evangelist types. The service he walks into is very slick, very glitzy. John Denver walks up to him right at the pulpit and says “I have a message for you from God.”
Well the preacher says real loud to everyone “this man has a message for God just for me! Go ahead son.”
And so he gives him the message: “Shut up! You are embarrassing God!”
Sometimes I think that God must cringe at some of the things that are said in God’s name. Even when we mean well, we can end up saying things that make God look pretty bad. Especially when it comes to prayer.
Tony Campolo wrote a book called Following Jesus Without Embarrassing God, which is partly the inspiration for this sermon. In it he talks about a woman who came to him once and said “my washing machine broke the other day, and I prayed for it, and God made it work again!” OK So she is saying that God heard her prayer and caused her washing machine to be fixed, and that this is apparently the same God who has not done anything for people like the woman who is dying of cancer with three young children, even though hundreds of people are praying for her. When we say that about God, it makes God look bad. If this were a parent who was fixing one child’s broken toy instead of taking a dying child to the hospital, we would find that parent negligent! And yet that’s what we seem to be saying about God.
What is prayer all about? There was a study some years ago involving a number of heart surgery patients who were divided into two groups. One group was prayed for by others without them knowing about it. The other group was not prayed for, and the results showed that the group who was prayed for did better. Wow! That was good news for those who want to talk about prayer getting results. So then there was the follow-up study. Using a much larger group of heart patients, and done over the course of ten years with two million dollars spent, they finally concluded that the prayed for group showed no significant difference in health. The headline in the New York Times read "Prayer Fails Major Medical Test."
That headline makes sense because of the image that most people have about prayer, which is that prayer consists of asking for the things that we want or hope for, whether for ourselves or someone else, and then either God grants us what we prayed for, or we call the prayer unanswered. Now sometimes we’ll get a little sophisticated and say that perhaps God answered our prayer in a different way, and we need to figure that out, but the image remains: we ask, God delivers. I think the headline should have read "Prayer-As-Supernatural-ATM-Machine Fails Medical Test."
Real prayer is our conversational connection with God. That’s what it is, and it is a gift beyond our understanding, which most of the time we don’t recognize, myself included.
I think if we can begin to clear away some of these misguided notions of prayer, then we will be on the way to recovering prayer as a sacred practice in our lives.
#1 Prayer is not magic. The anthropologist Bronislav Malinowski, who studied religious traditions across cultures, gave the classic definition.
“Magic, he wrote, is an attempt to control supernatural powers so that people get what they want. Prayer, on the other hand, is a process wherein people spiritually surrender so that they might become instruments through whom the supernatural powers do their work.”
Another way to think about it is that too often we pray like the man who goes to the doctor, spends five minutes talking about everything that hurts, and then leaves before the doctor can say a word. And we expect God to answer the prayer we have asked for without otherwise having to changer our lives at all. In truth, prayer is a place where we surrender ourselves that God might work through us, so that God might help us to give up our focus on what we want for ourselves, and look instead to what God’s will is for us and for others.
Prayer is not magic.
#2 Prayer is not something that works if you are extra good or spiritual. There are too many places, too many churches, where someone will come in tears about the prayer that has gone unanswered, and will be told “I’m sorry, buy you just didn’t pray enough.” Or, “you didn’t pray in the right way.” Or, worst of all, “you haven’t been faithful enough in your giving to the church. God will bless you when you give.” As if God is like the power company, shutting off the lights until getting paid. The book of Job should have cleared up this rotten theology a long time ago. God does not sit up above blessing the good and cursing the bad. Sometimes bad people enjoy health and wealth, and good people suffer greatly. Prayer doesn’t work by merit.
#3 Prayer is not to be understood. Tony Campolo writes, and see if this sounds like you: “I do it every morning, but I don’t have it figured out yet. The more I’m blessed by it, the less I understand just what it is. The more God fails to give me what I desperately beg for, the more assurance I have that God understands me, suffers with me, and will carry me through.”
The truth is that if prayer were just getting whatever we ask for, it would soon becomes very shallow, and we would ache and long for a bigger God.
So, we’ve cleared away some bad images for prayer. But how do we get started?
I believe that prayer begins with being truthful. When we pray, in is our conversational relationship with God, and so we tell God things about our lives, but of course these are things that God already knows. We don’t think that when we pray for our sister Mary who is in the hospital that God says “Whoa! When did this happen, which hospital?”
We do it because we need to be truthful. We need to speak the truth about our lives and the things we care about to someone who is listening.
And doesn’t it already begin to change us? Lifting names in worship calls our attention to specific acts, and it reminds us that everyone in this room carries burdens and when we remember that then we are more likely to meet everyone with kindness, to be slow to take offense, knowing how much each other person is going through already.
These prayers help us to reach out in comfort, support, and healing. We pray for those at war, and then we show our support in packages sent oversea, and a new ministry for veterans. We pray for peace and then we seek ways to understand our enemies and we take our prayers to the voting booth. We pray for those who are sick, and then we give blood, or join the Relay for Life to help with treatment and research. When we are truthful about ourselves, then we are well on our way to surrendering ourselves to God’s will for us, and God’s will for the world. “Your will be done on earth” is what Jesus taught us to pray.
Prayer also involves listening, and a willingness to change.
The movie Shadowlands tells the story of C.S. Lewis, author of the Narnia books, Oxford professor, and a great writer on the Christian faith. The movie focuses on his marriage to Joy Greshem at a later age, and the cancer that afflicts her and finally takes her life. At one point during her struggle, he comes to a colleague and tells him that the cancer has gone into remission. He says to him
“I know how hard you've been praying; and now God is answering your prayers.”
But Lewis tells him: “That's not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God, it changes me.”
Finally, you don’t need to know how to pray to begin praying. Anne Lamott suggests that there are really only two kinds of prayers:
God, thank you.
And, God, help!
When Paul wrote to the Romans about prayer, he told them that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
Even when we don’t know what to say, just begin by saying “My God,” and let God’s spirit do the rest.
“My God… a child is hurt.”
“My God…more of our children died in Iraq.”
“My God…my friend is very ill. She’s had a long life and suffers so. I don’t know whether to ask for another five years or for a peaceful death. Help.”
“My God…I don’t know what to do.”
“My God.” That’s all you need to get started. And then listen, for the grace of God which passes understanding. Listen to be made new, to know that God will see us through, to know that God has the last word, and that word is love.
Luke 11:1-13
Dedicated to the members of the Adult Mission Tour, who are on their way to Kentucky this morning; and always to the glory of God.
I remember the movie “Oh God,” in which John Denver played an unassuming grocery manager who was unexpectedly visited by God in the form of George Burns, which is probably about what a lot of people thought God looked like anyway. It’s kind of an old movie now, but it had some good theology in it. God is asks John Denver’s character to be a sort of messenger, and in one scene God asks him to go to a church where there is one of these television evangelist types. The service he walks into is very slick, very glitzy. John Denver walks up to him right at the pulpit and says “I have a message for you from God.”
Well the preacher says real loud to everyone “this man has a message for God just for me! Go ahead son.”
And so he gives him the message: “Shut up! You are embarrassing God!”
Sometimes I think that God must cringe at some of the things that are said in God’s name. Even when we mean well, we can end up saying things that make God look pretty bad. Especially when it comes to prayer.
Tony Campolo wrote a book called Following Jesus Without Embarrassing God, which is partly the inspiration for this sermon. In it he talks about a woman who came to him once and said “my washing machine broke the other day, and I prayed for it, and God made it work again!” OK So she is saying that God heard her prayer and caused her washing machine to be fixed, and that this is apparently the same God who has not done anything for people like the woman who is dying of cancer with three young children, even though hundreds of people are praying for her. When we say that about God, it makes God look bad. If this were a parent who was fixing one child’s broken toy instead of taking a dying child to the hospital, we would find that parent negligent! And yet that’s what we seem to be saying about God.
What is prayer all about? There was a study some years ago involving a number of heart surgery patients who were divided into two groups. One group was prayed for by others without them knowing about it. The other group was not prayed for, and the results showed that the group who was prayed for did better. Wow! That was good news for those who want to talk about prayer getting results. So then there was the follow-up study. Using a much larger group of heart patients, and done over the course of ten years with two million dollars spent, they finally concluded that the prayed for group showed no significant difference in health. The headline in the New York Times read "Prayer Fails Major Medical Test."
That headline makes sense because of the image that most people have about prayer, which is that prayer consists of asking for the things that we want or hope for, whether for ourselves or someone else, and then either God grants us what we prayed for, or we call the prayer unanswered. Now sometimes we’ll get a little sophisticated and say that perhaps God answered our prayer in a different way, and we need to figure that out, but the image remains: we ask, God delivers. I think the headline should have read "Prayer-As-Supernatural-ATM-Machine Fails Medical Test."
Real prayer is our conversational connection with God. That’s what it is, and it is a gift beyond our understanding, which most of the time we don’t recognize, myself included.
I think if we can begin to clear away some of these misguided notions of prayer, then we will be on the way to recovering prayer as a sacred practice in our lives.
#1 Prayer is not magic. The anthropologist Bronislav Malinowski, who studied religious traditions across cultures, gave the classic definition.
“Magic, he wrote, is an attempt to control supernatural powers so that people get what they want. Prayer, on the other hand, is a process wherein people spiritually surrender so that they might become instruments through whom the supernatural powers do their work.”
Another way to think about it is that too often we pray like the man who goes to the doctor, spends five minutes talking about everything that hurts, and then leaves before the doctor can say a word. And we expect God to answer the prayer we have asked for without otherwise having to changer our lives at all. In truth, prayer is a place where we surrender ourselves that God might work through us, so that God might help us to give up our focus on what we want for ourselves, and look instead to what God’s will is for us and for others.
Prayer is not magic.
#2 Prayer is not something that works if you are extra good or spiritual. There are too many places, too many churches, where someone will come in tears about the prayer that has gone unanswered, and will be told “I’m sorry, buy you just didn’t pray enough.” Or, “you didn’t pray in the right way.” Or, worst of all, “you haven’t been faithful enough in your giving to the church. God will bless you when you give.” As if God is like the power company, shutting off the lights until getting paid. The book of Job should have cleared up this rotten theology a long time ago. God does not sit up above blessing the good and cursing the bad. Sometimes bad people enjoy health and wealth, and good people suffer greatly. Prayer doesn’t work by merit.
#3 Prayer is not to be understood. Tony Campolo writes, and see if this sounds like you: “I do it every morning, but I don’t have it figured out yet. The more I’m blessed by it, the less I understand just what it is. The more God fails to give me what I desperately beg for, the more assurance I have that God understands me, suffers with me, and will carry me through.”
The truth is that if prayer were just getting whatever we ask for, it would soon becomes very shallow, and we would ache and long for a bigger God.
So, we’ve cleared away some bad images for prayer. But how do we get started?
I believe that prayer begins with being truthful. When we pray, in is our conversational relationship with God, and so we tell God things about our lives, but of course these are things that God already knows. We don’t think that when we pray for our sister Mary who is in the hospital that God says “Whoa! When did this happen, which hospital?”
We do it because we need to be truthful. We need to speak the truth about our lives and the things we care about to someone who is listening.
And doesn’t it already begin to change us? Lifting names in worship calls our attention to specific acts, and it reminds us that everyone in this room carries burdens and when we remember that then we are more likely to meet everyone with kindness, to be slow to take offense, knowing how much each other person is going through already.
These prayers help us to reach out in comfort, support, and healing. We pray for those at war, and then we show our support in packages sent oversea, and a new ministry for veterans. We pray for peace and then we seek ways to understand our enemies and we take our prayers to the voting booth. We pray for those who are sick, and then we give blood, or join the Relay for Life to help with treatment and research. When we are truthful about ourselves, then we are well on our way to surrendering ourselves to God’s will for us, and God’s will for the world. “Your will be done on earth” is what Jesus taught us to pray.
Prayer also involves listening, and a willingness to change.
The movie Shadowlands tells the story of C.S. Lewis, author of the Narnia books, Oxford professor, and a great writer on the Christian faith. The movie focuses on his marriage to Joy Greshem at a later age, and the cancer that afflicts her and finally takes her life. At one point during her struggle, he comes to a colleague and tells him that the cancer has gone into remission. He says to him
“I know how hard you've been praying; and now God is answering your prayers.”
But Lewis tells him: “That's not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God, it changes me.”
Finally, you don’t need to know how to pray to begin praying. Anne Lamott suggests that there are really only two kinds of prayers:
God, thank you.
And, God, help!
When Paul wrote to the Romans about prayer, he told them that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
Even when we don’t know what to say, just begin by saying “My God,” and let God’s spirit do the rest.
“My God… a child is hurt.”
“My God…more of our children died in Iraq.”
“My God…my friend is very ill. She’s had a long life and suffers so. I don’t know whether to ask for another five years or for a peaceful death. Help.”
“My God…I don’t know what to do.”
“My God.” That’s all you need to get started. And then listen, for the grace of God which passes understanding. Listen to be made new, to know that God will see us through, to know that God has the last word, and that word is love.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Doing the right thing
In this world there are many moral and ethical issues that are very complex, where it is difficult to discern the best choice, or best action to take. But most of the time, in most situations, we know how to do the right thing. We know how to show kindness, mercy, and even sacrificial love. It’s not too difficult to know.
There is a passage from the book of Deuteronomy (30:11-14) in which Moses is reminding the Hebrew people of God’s commandments. He says “Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”
Most of the time, we need only look inside ourselves for God to guide us toward showing loving kindness to others, even to those who do not love us back. That is not to say that it is easy to do. It can be a difficult journey from knowing something to acting on it, and we will surely take wrong turns along the way. But it is a journey worth making, because all the Biblical and theological knowledge in the world is worth nothing if we don’t act in love. All that we do as a church in worship, fellowship, and learning, we do in order to be moved by love to love. Without that transformation, without love, it’s not worth much.
There is a passage from the book of Deuteronomy (30:11-14) in which Moses is reminding the Hebrew people of God’s commandments. He says “Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”
Most of the time, we need only look inside ourselves for God to guide us toward showing loving kindness to others, even to those who do not love us back. That is not to say that it is easy to do. It can be a difficult journey from knowing something to acting on it, and we will surely take wrong turns along the way. But it is a journey worth making, because all the Biblical and theological knowledge in the world is worth nothing if we don’t act in love. All that we do as a church in worship, fellowship, and learning, we do in order to be moved by love to love. Without that transformation, without love, it’s not worth much.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Summer Reading
For me, reading is one of the best ways I’ve found to discover more about myself, my faith, and the world around me. Whether it is fiction or non-fiction, light reading or studious, the books I’ve read have allowed me in on someone else’s thinking and experience. I love those moments in a book when I think “I’ve had the same feeling, but never had words to express it before” or “so that’s what life is like for others.”
I also like to discuss the books I’m reading, and to hear about what other people are reading. I have discovered a number of great books by recommendation from this congregation. And so, to keep the conversation going, I’ll share my stack for summer reading this year.
Praying Like Jesus, by James Mulholland, is what we gave our high school graduates this year. It is an examination of the Lord’s Prayer by an insightful American Baptist minister.
The Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch, is a novel about a teenage boy who lives on the water of Puget Sound. I just finished this one, and I learned a lot about the fascinating sea life that lives in the ocean tides in this story about coming of age and responsibility.
Christianity For the Rest of Us, by Diana Butler Bass, is an examination of how old, mainline churches are thriving by exploring ancient Christian practices like hospitality and testimony.
The Emerging Christian Way is a collection of essays edited by Michael Schwartzentruber, in which a variety of writers describe and envision how the Christian church is moving into the third millennium.
Wicked, by Gregory Maguire, is a re-imagining of the land of Oz and the wicked witch of the west. I’ve heard great things about the musical and the novel.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, by J.K. Rowling. Our entire family is awaiting the release of the final volume in this series. They are wonderful books to read and talk about with all ages.
Finally, Thirst is Mary Oliver’s relatively new book of poetry. She is one of my favorite writers.
I also like to discuss the books I’m reading, and to hear about what other people are reading. I have discovered a number of great books by recommendation from this congregation. And so, to keep the conversation going, I’ll share my stack for summer reading this year.
Praying Like Jesus, by James Mulholland, is what we gave our high school graduates this year. It is an examination of the Lord’s Prayer by an insightful American Baptist minister.
The Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch, is a novel about a teenage boy who lives on the water of Puget Sound. I just finished this one, and I learned a lot about the fascinating sea life that lives in the ocean tides in this story about coming of age and responsibility.
Christianity For the Rest of Us, by Diana Butler Bass, is an examination of how old, mainline churches are thriving by exploring ancient Christian practices like hospitality and testimony.
The Emerging Christian Way is a collection of essays edited by Michael Schwartzentruber, in which a variety of writers describe and envision how the Christian church is moving into the third millennium.
Wicked, by Gregory Maguire, is a re-imagining of the land of Oz and the wicked witch of the west. I’ve heard great things about the musical and the novel.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, by J.K. Rowling. Our entire family is awaiting the release of the final volume in this series. They are wonderful books to read and talk about with all ages.
Finally, Thirst is Mary Oliver’s relatively new book of poetry. She is one of my favorite writers.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Sermon - Freedom
Sermon preached at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge on July 1, 2007
Galatians 5:1, 13-24
Luke 9:51-62
Dedicated to Isabella Christina Campi on the day of her baptism;
and always to the glory of God.
Freedom is what Paul proclaimed in the letter to the Galatians and freedom is what we are celebrating this week on our national holiday. Freedom is what this country is about. As Samuel Smith wrote in 1832: “My Country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”
And as Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We…declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.”
And seventeen centuries earlier, the apostle Paul wrote: “for freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Freedom comes to us in two forms this week, and we rightfully celebrate both of them. The question that I want to put before us is this: “what does the freedom that we celebrate on the fourth of July have to do with the freedom that Paul proclaimed in Jesus Christ?” I think it’s worth our consideration.
The declaration of independence, signed on July 4, 1776, proclaims that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is a philosophical claim, and a theological point as well. To be human is to be at liberty to choose one’s own actions. Our freedom to do good or evil is witnessed to in the book of Genesis, when Adam and Eve, who stand for all of humanity, eat – not from an apple tree – but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is often understood as the first sin and the fall of humanity, but many theologians interpret the tree as a way of describing what it means to be human. To be human is to know good and evil and to be able to choose, and the tree is a symbolic way of telling this basic truth. We are free to choose, and God will not force us one way or the other. God will not guide our lives like pulling strings on a puppet, or controlling a robot. God gives us freedom, “for freedom Christ has set you free.” But while God gives it to us as humans, sometimes humans will take it away, and it is up to us to stand up to Pharaoh, or to King George. It was up to our ancestors to form a new government to secure our freedom because being free is what it means to be human.
The freedom secured by this nation, the freedom we celebrate this week, is the freedom that God grants to all people. But, of course, the story is a bit more complex.
When our children are young we teach them about the declaration of independence and the writing of the Constitution in Philadelphia, and we celebrate Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams and all the wise and brave people who were there. And then, as they grow older and are able to think about complexity, we teach them that we have not always lived up the ideal that all men are created equal. We teach them, for instance that this didn’t apply to slaves, for whom there was no freedom, no right to liberty, the pursuit of happiness, or even life. In fact, the constitution considered them to equal 3/5ths a white man, which was a compromise intended to give their southern slave owners greater representation in congress.
Women had a higher status, but no more rights under the constitution. Women couldn’t even vote until 1920. There are some of you who remember that. Not all were equally free at the dawn of this nation, and this is not to criticize the founding fathers, for we are right to celebrate them. It is rather to give credit along the way to many others as well.[1] It is to give credit to those who spoke out in the name of freedom for all, those who received severe injuries and even died on the hallowed protest ground. Freedom has been an expanding project, building on the progress of those who have come before. Our closing hymn is an example of the ongoing project. “America, The Beautiful” is a greatly loved hymn, and rightly so, and as our understanding grows of freedom, and of freedom in Christ, people in recent years have added verses to recognize how we are growing. To compare the freedom celebrated on July 4th to the freedom in Christ, we find that our nation often looks to the ideal of freedom in Christ and finds that we are not yet there. God’s freedom calls us to change.
And there is more. Paul writes that for freedom Christ has set us free. But it’s important to keep reading, because we know that people must be free, but free for what? Paul continues: “for you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”[2]
“Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence.” I wonder about the dark side of freedom, when we push freedom to unhealthy extremes. Do we celebrate the freedom to say anything we want, no matter how crude, untrue, or damaging? Do we celebrate the freedom to amass more wealth than we could ever need while others are in want? Do we celebrate the freedom for corporations to do business without regard for their employees health or where their waste ends up as long as the bottom line is good? If we take seriously the freedom in Christ, then July 4th cannot be a day to celebrate just how far our freedom can go without any restriction or limit. It is not a question of what restrictions we are free from; it is a question of what we are free for.
Fred Craddock, who is one of the great preachers in this country, told the story about a little town in west Oklahoma where he pastored one of the four churches in town. Each church got about the same number in worship, but the most consistent attendance on Sunday mornings was the café, where many of the men set and talked about cattle and the weather, and would we get a good crop this year? The patron saint of this group was Frank, seventy-seven years old and set in his ways. He used to say “I work hard, I take care of my family, and I mind my own business. Far as I’m concerned, everything else is fluff.” He would say this to Fred when he saw him around town, and that was fine with Fred, he wasn’t trying to convert people in the post office line. Everyone in town and especially the guys at the café said that Frank would never step into a church. Well, it’s a free country, isn’t it?
Then one day, Frank showed up at Fred’s church, said that he wanted to be baptized. Well, the rumors started: “Frank must be sick, maybe it’s his heart, he must be scared to meet his maker.” But it wasn’t any of those. The day after his baptism, Fred said to him “Frank, you remember that little saying you used to give me so much: ‘I work hard, I take care of my family, and I mind my own business’?”
Frank said, “Yeah, I remember. I said it a lot.”
Fred asked “well, do you still say that?”
“Yeah”
“Then what’s the difference?”
Frank said, “I didn’t know then what my business was.” He had discovered his business: to serve human need.[3]
It’s a free country.
Jesus said it. Paul said it. Frank discovered it. The whole of God’s word can be summed up in one line: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And we remember from what Jesus said and did that our neighbors are both friends and enemies, next door or around the world. Love them as yourself. That’s why you’ve been set free. That’s’ what freedom is about. We are free from acting out of fear or hate. We are free from having to return evil for evil, an eye for an eye. We are free from being enslaved to our own comfort because we are free to make ourselves uncomfortable in the service of others.
Celebrate this week. Celebrate this nation in which we are blessed to live. This is a land of incredible gifts and goodness. But celebrate also that different kind of freedom, the freedom for which Christ has set us free.
[1] Peter J. Gomes, from the sermon “Patriotism” in Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living, 1998.
[2] Galatians 5:13-14
[3] Adapted from Fred B. Craddock, from Craddock Stories, ed. Graves & Ward, 2001, pg. 67.
Galatians 5:1, 13-24
Luke 9:51-62
Dedicated to Isabella Christina Campi on the day of her baptism;
and always to the glory of God.
Freedom is what Paul proclaimed in the letter to the Galatians and freedom is what we are celebrating this week on our national holiday. Freedom is what this country is about. As Samuel Smith wrote in 1832: “My Country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”
And as Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We…declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.”
And seventeen centuries earlier, the apostle Paul wrote: “for freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Freedom comes to us in two forms this week, and we rightfully celebrate both of them. The question that I want to put before us is this: “what does the freedom that we celebrate on the fourth of July have to do with the freedom that Paul proclaimed in Jesus Christ?” I think it’s worth our consideration.
The declaration of independence, signed on July 4, 1776, proclaims that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is a philosophical claim, and a theological point as well. To be human is to be at liberty to choose one’s own actions. Our freedom to do good or evil is witnessed to in the book of Genesis, when Adam and Eve, who stand for all of humanity, eat – not from an apple tree – but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is often understood as the first sin and the fall of humanity, but many theologians interpret the tree as a way of describing what it means to be human. To be human is to know good and evil and to be able to choose, and the tree is a symbolic way of telling this basic truth. We are free to choose, and God will not force us one way or the other. God will not guide our lives like pulling strings on a puppet, or controlling a robot. God gives us freedom, “for freedom Christ has set you free.” But while God gives it to us as humans, sometimes humans will take it away, and it is up to us to stand up to Pharaoh, or to King George. It was up to our ancestors to form a new government to secure our freedom because being free is what it means to be human.
The freedom secured by this nation, the freedom we celebrate this week, is the freedom that God grants to all people. But, of course, the story is a bit more complex.
When our children are young we teach them about the declaration of independence and the writing of the Constitution in Philadelphia, and we celebrate Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams and all the wise and brave people who were there. And then, as they grow older and are able to think about complexity, we teach them that we have not always lived up the ideal that all men are created equal. We teach them, for instance that this didn’t apply to slaves, for whom there was no freedom, no right to liberty, the pursuit of happiness, or even life. In fact, the constitution considered them to equal 3/5ths a white man, which was a compromise intended to give their southern slave owners greater representation in congress.
Women had a higher status, but no more rights under the constitution. Women couldn’t even vote until 1920. There are some of you who remember that. Not all were equally free at the dawn of this nation, and this is not to criticize the founding fathers, for we are right to celebrate them. It is rather to give credit along the way to many others as well.[1] It is to give credit to those who spoke out in the name of freedom for all, those who received severe injuries and even died on the hallowed protest ground. Freedom has been an expanding project, building on the progress of those who have come before. Our closing hymn is an example of the ongoing project. “America, The Beautiful” is a greatly loved hymn, and rightly so, and as our understanding grows of freedom, and of freedom in Christ, people in recent years have added verses to recognize how we are growing. To compare the freedom celebrated on July 4th to the freedom in Christ, we find that our nation often looks to the ideal of freedom in Christ and finds that we are not yet there. God’s freedom calls us to change.
And there is more. Paul writes that for freedom Christ has set us free. But it’s important to keep reading, because we know that people must be free, but free for what? Paul continues: “for you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”[2]
“Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence.” I wonder about the dark side of freedom, when we push freedom to unhealthy extremes. Do we celebrate the freedom to say anything we want, no matter how crude, untrue, or damaging? Do we celebrate the freedom to amass more wealth than we could ever need while others are in want? Do we celebrate the freedom for corporations to do business without regard for their employees health or where their waste ends up as long as the bottom line is good? If we take seriously the freedom in Christ, then July 4th cannot be a day to celebrate just how far our freedom can go without any restriction or limit. It is not a question of what restrictions we are free from; it is a question of what we are free for.
Fred Craddock, who is one of the great preachers in this country, told the story about a little town in west Oklahoma where he pastored one of the four churches in town. Each church got about the same number in worship, but the most consistent attendance on Sunday mornings was the café, where many of the men set and talked about cattle and the weather, and would we get a good crop this year? The patron saint of this group was Frank, seventy-seven years old and set in his ways. He used to say “I work hard, I take care of my family, and I mind my own business. Far as I’m concerned, everything else is fluff.” He would say this to Fred when he saw him around town, and that was fine with Fred, he wasn’t trying to convert people in the post office line. Everyone in town and especially the guys at the café said that Frank would never step into a church. Well, it’s a free country, isn’t it?
Then one day, Frank showed up at Fred’s church, said that he wanted to be baptized. Well, the rumors started: “Frank must be sick, maybe it’s his heart, he must be scared to meet his maker.” But it wasn’t any of those. The day after his baptism, Fred said to him “Frank, you remember that little saying you used to give me so much: ‘I work hard, I take care of my family, and I mind my own business’?”
Frank said, “Yeah, I remember. I said it a lot.”
Fred asked “well, do you still say that?”
“Yeah”
“Then what’s the difference?”
Frank said, “I didn’t know then what my business was.” He had discovered his business: to serve human need.[3]
It’s a free country.
Jesus said it. Paul said it. Frank discovered it. The whole of God’s word can be summed up in one line: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And we remember from what Jesus said and did that our neighbors are both friends and enemies, next door or around the world. Love them as yourself. That’s why you’ve been set free. That’s’ what freedom is about. We are free from acting out of fear or hate. We are free from having to return evil for evil, an eye for an eye. We are free from being enslaved to our own comfort because we are free to make ourselves uncomfortable in the service of others.
Celebrate this week. Celebrate this nation in which we are blessed to live. This is a land of incredible gifts and goodness. But celebrate also that different kind of freedom, the freedom for which Christ has set us free.
[1] Peter J. Gomes, from the sermon “Patriotism” in Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living, 1998.
[2] Galatians 5:13-14
[3] Adapted from Fred B. Craddock, from Craddock Stories, ed. Graves & Ward, 2001, pg. 67.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Notes on the Youth Mission Tour
Here are some of the thoughts I've been having since I returned from the Youth Mission Tour to Atlanta, Georgia, with a wonderful group of high school students.
1. Atlanta, Georgia is a beautiful city. From our residence at Central Presbyterian Church, we could walk through the heart of downtown Atlanta, including Peachtree Street, the Underground, Woodruff Park, and my favorite, Centennial Park, which was built for the 1996 Olympic Games. On Thursday evening, we ate a picnic at Centennial Park, played soccer and played in the fountains, and shared a closing service and communion in the midst of the skyscrapers. It was a beautiful place.
2. Poverty is a harsh downward spiral. One day, we worked at a place that offers job assistance to people who are homeless. They help with resumes and the job process, and provide credit for public transportation to interviews and during the first weeks on the job. Imagine trying to find work without access to a telephone, computer, or even an address to put on your resume. Each setback makes it harder to make a move forward. The place where we served provided mail service, a voice mailbox, access to computers, and professional clothes to wear to an interview.
3. The faces of poverty are many. Some are harsh, but many are beautiful, delightful, and full of cheer. We met many people, adults and children, who lived in the poor areas of Atlanta, or who don’t have a home at all, who greeted us with infectious humor and goodwill. Many of the people with whom we volunteered were there to help because that place had helped them. They were formerly homeless, addicts, jobless, but now they were back on their feet, and on days off from work, they were volunteering to serve soup, run the showers in a shelter, or check people in for free clothing.
4. The faces we met were the faces of God. The organization that hosted us in Atlanta is called DOOR, and their guiding vision is to see the face of God in the city. In Matthew 25, Jesus says that when we feed the hungry, or offer clothes to the poor, we are doing it for him. It was Mother Theresa who said that she had seen Christ, seen him in the distressing disguise of the poor.
1. Atlanta, Georgia is a beautiful city. From our residence at Central Presbyterian Church, we could walk through the heart of downtown Atlanta, including Peachtree Street, the Underground, Woodruff Park, and my favorite, Centennial Park, which was built for the 1996 Olympic Games. On Thursday evening, we ate a picnic at Centennial Park, played soccer and played in the fountains, and shared a closing service and communion in the midst of the skyscrapers. It was a beautiful place.
2. Poverty is a harsh downward spiral. One day, we worked at a place that offers job assistance to people who are homeless. They help with resumes and the job process, and provide credit for public transportation to interviews and during the first weeks on the job. Imagine trying to find work without access to a telephone, computer, or even an address to put on your resume. Each setback makes it harder to make a move forward. The place where we served provided mail service, a voice mailbox, access to computers, and professional clothes to wear to an interview.
3. The faces of poverty are many. Some are harsh, but many are beautiful, delightful, and full of cheer. We met many people, adults and children, who lived in the poor areas of Atlanta, or who don’t have a home at all, who greeted us with infectious humor and goodwill. Many of the people with whom we volunteered were there to help because that place had helped them. They were formerly homeless, addicts, jobless, but now they were back on their feet, and on days off from work, they were volunteering to serve soup, run the showers in a shelter, or check people in for free clothing.
4. The faces we met were the faces of God. The organization that hosted us in Atlanta is called DOOR, and their guiding vision is to see the face of God in the city. In Matthew 25, Jesus says that when we feed the hungry, or offer clothes to the poor, we are doing it for him. It was Mother Theresa who said that she had seen Christ, seen him in the distressing disguise of the poor.
Witness
If you watched the Cleveland Cavaliers during the NBA playoffs, you will know what I’m talking about. First I saw the handwritten sign: “We are witnesses to this.” And then, during the final game against the Pistons to win their spot in the finals, I saw the professionally produced signs people held with just that one word: Witness.
I don’t know how these signs got started, but I understand what they meant. Almost nobody thought that the Cavs would do so well this year. And while everyone knows that LeBron James is a phenomenal player, his performance at the end of game 5 in the Eastern Conference Finals seemed, to basketball fans, miraculous. And so the signs go up: witness. We saw it. We were a part of it.
The word witness is powerful. It’s meaning is bigger than the idea of witnesses in a courtroom. It goes back to words of the New Testament. The people in the early church who wrote about Jesus used that word: witness. We were witnesses to these things. We saw it. We were a part of it.
Being a witness begins with being a part of a powerful, spiritual experience. It begins with the experience of God. You witness God in your life, and you share about that experience. The signs from the basketball games were in my mind in early June as the church gave its blessing to the high school graduates. Two of them spoke on behalf of their class, and they spoke as witnesses. They stood at the pulpit and told the congregation about their experiences of God. Of all the things that were said, one is sticking in my mind. Nate Rango had been thanking the congregation for the support and nurture that he has received and he said to all of us “we are paying attention.”
Sometimes it doesn’t seem as if people are paying attention to us, whether they are teenagers, children, or adults. But we have a witness who says otherwise. People are paying attention. They see. They are a part of it.
I don’t know how these signs got started, but I understand what they meant. Almost nobody thought that the Cavs would do so well this year. And while everyone knows that LeBron James is a phenomenal player, his performance at the end of game 5 in the Eastern Conference Finals seemed, to basketball fans, miraculous. And so the signs go up: witness. We saw it. We were a part of it.
The word witness is powerful. It’s meaning is bigger than the idea of witnesses in a courtroom. It goes back to words of the New Testament. The people in the early church who wrote about Jesus used that word: witness. We were witnesses to these things. We saw it. We were a part of it.
Being a witness begins with being a part of a powerful, spiritual experience. It begins with the experience of God. You witness God in your life, and you share about that experience. The signs from the basketball games were in my mind in early June as the church gave its blessing to the high school graduates. Two of them spoke on behalf of their class, and they spoke as witnesses. They stood at the pulpit and told the congregation about their experiences of God. Of all the things that were said, one is sticking in my mind. Nate Rango had been thanking the congregation for the support and nurture that he has received and he said to all of us “we are paying attention.”
Sometimes it doesn’t seem as if people are paying attention to us, whether they are teenagers, children, or adults. But we have a witness who says otherwise. People are paying attention. They see. They are a part of it.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Sermon - The Vision and the Gift
A sermon from June 3, 2007
I Chronicles 29:10-17 Romans 5:1-5
Dedicated to the high school graduates; and always to the glory of God.
“A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation
‘As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.’” (quoted in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, by Dianne K. Osbon, 1991, page 26.)
There are those times in our lives when the routine of month to month and year to year are interrupted by events that create a before and after. Time is divided into two periods, life before and after marriage, life after retirement, life after graduation. Or think of life after moving to a new place, life after taking an important risk, life after giving something important for someone else. There are life changing moments that feel to us like a chasm that opens up in the normal road of life. There are times when simply strolling along through life will not carry us forward. These times demand more of our attention, more commitment, and more courage. We must choose to jump, and trust that it is not as far as we think.
In our reading from the Hebrew scripture, King David and the people of Israel had such an occasion. During David’s reign the nation had come into it’s own. It had established a new capital in Jerusalem, and now, finally, this wandering nation that had come through the wilderness carrying the ark of the covenant in a tent found themselves settled and at home. And yet, even in Jerusalem, with the King’s palace built, their place of worship, the holy ground where the ark of the covenant stood was still this tent. It was time to build a Temple for God, a place to center and celebrate their faith in God in whom they had such great trust. It was a large project. It would mark change, and afterward life would be different before the Temple. They had a vision, and they met the vision with their gifts. The words of David from the reading we heard acknowledge that they were able to give because of what God had given them. “O Lord our God,” he says, “all this abundance that we have provided for building you a house for your holy name comes from your hand and is all your own.”
If that all seems like ancient history, let me take you to the more recent past, in 1819, when the members of this church found that the place where they were meeting for worship was too small. I read about that time in the words of a play that this church put on in 1925 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the completion of the church on the circle, a church that was only a vision back in 1819. Rev. Woodruff spoke of the growth in Tallmadge: “Our population is fast increasing and we need a meeting-house.” “Settlers are already coming to Tallmadge from other communities on the Western Reserve whose founders took less thought for church and school provisions.”
Some agreed immediately, but others raised valid concerns:
“It would be a big undertaking…. We are poor and building is expensive. Where would we get glass and paint and nails? It doesn’t seem practical to bring them from Pittsburgh until transportation is better.”
Another suggested that they could fit the growing congregation in Whitlesey’s barn, at least in the summer months, and later when a steeple was suggested, Reuben Beach objected that it would cost too much, and could be added later. But then the gifts began to come. Captain Oviatt donated four black walnut trees for pillars; Deacon Sackett gave a large whitewood for clapboard siding, and the Hine family gave stone for the foundation.
There was a vision in 1819, and the vision brought forth the courage of gifts, and the history of this church was written. “As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.”
Now, a faithful and courageous life does not promise a life free from setbacks. In fact, our trials have much to teach us. A colleague of mine still remembers a letter he received on graduating college. It was full of hopes, but not the usual kind, for success and happiness and such. Rather, the writer hoped that he would someday do something good and get no recognition or credit at all, so that he would learn that good is not done for reward, hoped that someday he would attempt something that just fell apart, so that he would learn that he is not loved for his accomplishments, and that life is not a test of our abilities.
I don’t want to wish our graduates 100 percent success. It was Woody Allen who said “If you don’t fail now and again, it’s a sign you’re playing it safe.” With that in mind, there’s a minister who has given his congregation a goal of failing twice a year. Now, if we gave that goal to some of you type A personalities, you’d go right out and look for the first opportunity. Maybe a neighbor says to you “I stopped going to church a few years ago. It was always the low point of an otherwise nice weekend.” You decide to invite them to church: “Where I go to church, we really look forward to it. It gives me strength for the week ahead and the people really care about each other. Would you like to come visit with us sometime?”
The neighbors say “no thanks.” Great! You’ve met half your goal for the year. It isn’t hard to do. If they say yes then you have to keep looking for your failure that tells you you’re not playing it safe. I do not hope for complete success for our graduates or for any of us. I hope for lives of jumping courageously. I hope for a vision that will inspire us to give courageously. I hope for a life that is not just playing it safe.
As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. We don’t know when this will happen. It will be a time of change, a time when we are able to create the shape of our lives, our communities, and even the world. It is a time that will shape how our histories are written. When you reach that time, jump. It is not as wide as you think.
I Chronicles 29:10-17 Romans 5:1-5
Dedicated to the high school graduates; and always to the glory of God.
“A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation
‘As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.’” (quoted in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, by Dianne K. Osbon, 1991, page 26.)
There are those times in our lives when the routine of month to month and year to year are interrupted by events that create a before and after. Time is divided into two periods, life before and after marriage, life after retirement, life after graduation. Or think of life after moving to a new place, life after taking an important risk, life after giving something important for someone else. There are life changing moments that feel to us like a chasm that opens up in the normal road of life. There are times when simply strolling along through life will not carry us forward. These times demand more of our attention, more commitment, and more courage. We must choose to jump, and trust that it is not as far as we think.
In our reading from the Hebrew scripture, King David and the people of Israel had such an occasion. During David’s reign the nation had come into it’s own. It had established a new capital in Jerusalem, and now, finally, this wandering nation that had come through the wilderness carrying the ark of the covenant in a tent found themselves settled and at home. And yet, even in Jerusalem, with the King’s palace built, their place of worship, the holy ground where the ark of the covenant stood was still this tent. It was time to build a Temple for God, a place to center and celebrate their faith in God in whom they had such great trust. It was a large project. It would mark change, and afterward life would be different before the Temple. They had a vision, and they met the vision with their gifts. The words of David from the reading we heard acknowledge that they were able to give because of what God had given them. “O Lord our God,” he says, “all this abundance that we have provided for building you a house for your holy name comes from your hand and is all your own.”
If that all seems like ancient history, let me take you to the more recent past, in 1819, when the members of this church found that the place where they were meeting for worship was too small. I read about that time in the words of a play that this church put on in 1925 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the completion of the church on the circle, a church that was only a vision back in 1819. Rev. Woodruff spoke of the growth in Tallmadge: “Our population is fast increasing and we need a meeting-house.” “Settlers are already coming to Tallmadge from other communities on the Western Reserve whose founders took less thought for church and school provisions.”
Some agreed immediately, but others raised valid concerns:
“It would be a big undertaking…. We are poor and building is expensive. Where would we get glass and paint and nails? It doesn’t seem practical to bring them from Pittsburgh until transportation is better.”
Another suggested that they could fit the growing congregation in Whitlesey’s barn, at least in the summer months, and later when a steeple was suggested, Reuben Beach objected that it would cost too much, and could be added later. But then the gifts began to come. Captain Oviatt donated four black walnut trees for pillars; Deacon Sackett gave a large whitewood for clapboard siding, and the Hine family gave stone for the foundation.
There was a vision in 1819, and the vision brought forth the courage of gifts, and the history of this church was written. “As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.”
Now, a faithful and courageous life does not promise a life free from setbacks. In fact, our trials have much to teach us. A colleague of mine still remembers a letter he received on graduating college. It was full of hopes, but not the usual kind, for success and happiness and such. Rather, the writer hoped that he would someday do something good and get no recognition or credit at all, so that he would learn that good is not done for reward, hoped that someday he would attempt something that just fell apart, so that he would learn that he is not loved for his accomplishments, and that life is not a test of our abilities.
I don’t want to wish our graduates 100 percent success. It was Woody Allen who said “If you don’t fail now and again, it’s a sign you’re playing it safe.” With that in mind, there’s a minister who has given his congregation a goal of failing twice a year. Now, if we gave that goal to some of you type A personalities, you’d go right out and look for the first opportunity. Maybe a neighbor says to you “I stopped going to church a few years ago. It was always the low point of an otherwise nice weekend.” You decide to invite them to church: “Where I go to church, we really look forward to it. It gives me strength for the week ahead and the people really care about each other. Would you like to come visit with us sometime?”
The neighbors say “no thanks.” Great! You’ve met half your goal for the year. It isn’t hard to do. If they say yes then you have to keep looking for your failure that tells you you’re not playing it safe. I do not hope for complete success for our graduates or for any of us. I hope for lives of jumping courageously. I hope for a vision that will inspire us to give courageously. I hope for a life that is not just playing it safe.
As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. We don’t know when this will happen. It will be a time of change, a time when we are able to create the shape of our lives, our communities, and even the world. It is a time that will shape how our histories are written. When you reach that time, jump. It is not as wide as you think.
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