Five Candles

Four Advent candles are now aflame...only the tall white candle in the center remains unlit, waiting for the spark of new life and love. We have come to the culmination of our period of preparation; that which we expected is indeed to happen. Our patience over the past four weeks is to be rewarded with the gift of God's presence with us.

That final candle, that central tall one still dark, is our last, best hope; for ourselves and for the world. It is the candle that will provide the light for a star in the night sky that will guide wanderers and wonderers, seekers and questioners, doubters and believers over centuries. It is the candle that will brighten shadowed corners of our world, if we will but share it. It is the candle that will inflame our hearts and ignite our souls with a message of love and grace for ourselves and for all humanity. It is the candle that will not extinguish, that burns eternally in spite of efforts to snuff it out throughout history. It is our candle of faith.

That is why it is the Christ candle.

A Blessed & Merry Christmas,
Gerry

21 December 2008, Advent 4

The painting to the right has been a favorite of mine for many years. I took the picture that you see at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on a visit there a few years ago, when I just happened upon the painting, after having really loved it for years previously. It's The Annunciation and was painted by Henry Ossawa Tanner in 1898. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. A better image of the painting is here: Tanner Annunciation.
Now on with this week's sermon. May the remainder of your Advent be one of discovery and joy.
Gerry

Luke 1:47-55, Luke 1:26-38 (Click the link to read the scriptures.)

There is something about the two passages from Luke that are set as today’s lectionary readings that really get to me. I am attracted to them in ways that I cannot fully explain, catapulting all of it into the realm of the spiritual, as far as I’m concerned. And I’m not really alone, I know; many artists and musicians throughout the ages have tried to express the mystery of this event between an angel and a young woman.

But why are we all drawn to this event that non-believers around us would scoff at and call yet more evidence of superstitious foolery? Why does a story which occurred thousands of years ago, the actual factual truth of which is really of no importance to me, still make some of us catch our breaths and stop for a moment to reflect about how the divine and creation interact? Why this fascination in art and music and imagination with a story that’s no more than a few lines of an interchange and the subsequent song that young girl sang in response?

I think that part of it is because it is such an unusual tale; it’s a narrative we’re not used to, not even in the bible. If you consider the other miraculous births that we have from scripture, they all involve old women…elderly women…barren women…women well past their childbearing years: Sarah laughing her head off at the thought of her and Abraham adding a nursery after all these years; Hannah, barren and childless, dedicating her baby Samuel to service to God in grateful response to the birth. Even Elizabeth, whose tale of bearing a son in her later years is told just prior to and intertwined with the words we heard this morning in Luke, precedes Mary in becoming pregnant by only six months.

But in those six months, that tiny space of time when you think of the entire scope of human history, God does a new thing, a different thing, a radical thing. God chooses a young woman to bear the Messiah, God’s anointed one. God selects a woman who is at the beginning of her childbearing years to be the mother of this most important gift.

Of course, women had little if any status or position in society throughout the many histories of humankind. What status they did have came most often because of the man to whom they were married or perhaps due to their age or sometimes due to what we would call their family of origin. So maybe these other women, the Sarahs and Hannahs and Elizabeths, did have some degree of standing, just a bit of stature in the community.

But Mary? She had none of that it seems. She wasn’t yet married. And the man she was going to marry in fact was just a carpenter—likely he wasn’t a landholder and he wasn’t a priest or any of the other vocations that carry a certain amount of standing.

And Mary was young. We all probably remember hearing for the first time someone saying that Mary was probably a teenager. I haven’t done the research myself so I have to rely on the scholarship of others as likely you do too. But it does make sense, doesn’t it, that Mary would be just a teenager? Thinking about it in market terms, if you have a commodity, such as a daughter, you’re going to make use of her by arranging a marriage to her while she’s young, while she can still provide the future husband, the buyer, with offspring, wouldn’t you? Plus you may want to get her out of your household as early as you can so you don’t have to provide for her anymore. So it seems to be logical that Mary was indeed young.

So we have a young woman, a lowly servant, as she describes herself; one without stature or standing or connections. That’s quite different from those who had been granted miraculous pregnancies up to this point. And that’s the point: this radical choice proclaims to the world that God is choosing a new route; this birth will be completely different from all the others. God is entering humanity from the very bottom of society, where God is needed the most.

And Luke, our gospel writer this morning, gets that. Luke’s gospel, Luke’s good news, is all about God’s preference for the poor; Luke’s emphasis is on Jesus’ ministry to the lowest of the low. And this emphasis doesn’t start with the angels announcing to those smelly societal outcasts, shepherds, though that certainly is another big hint from Luke about what we’re going to hear from his recounting of a miraculous birth and life and ministry. Luke gets to his emphasis on the poor earlier than those shepherds abiding in their field. He hits us with it in the care that he shows in presenting Mary’s story, especially in contrast to Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth’s tale, as wonderful as it is, is the way things used to be done. And her son, John the Baptist? Well, we know where he fits in here. For two week’s in a row this Advent, if you’ve been paying attention, we heard two different gospel writers recount him saying that he’s just not worthy to even lace up the sandals of the one who would grow up under Mary’s care. The former things are past and gone and over; the new things, God’s new-fangled ways, are what are important here.

This is indeed radical stuff. Don’t believe any of the prosperity gospel preachers who are so popular who preach that if God loves you, you will be rewarded with material goods and wealth. Luke would hear none of that and Luke tells us that Jesus wouldn’t either. Luke reminds us that Jesus not only came for the least among us, but indeed came from that very place of poverty himself in the fact that it was Mary who bore him.

Listen to Mary. Hear her story and let it fascinate and move you too. Give into any urgings that you might have to just sit with those few words of interchange between Mary and Gabriel, who was probably wondering, as he spoke aloud those words of comfort and surprise, just what God was up to this time. Let Mary’s story live in our culture. And watch for new ways in which God continues to act as you end your Advent preparations and at last celebrate that miraculous gift.

Bated Breath

Each week, I produce a newsletter for my congregation and begin it with a paragraph or two. This week I'll start putting those words here to add to the sermons which I already post. Hope you enjoy these too.

Gerry

"We wait with bated breath." As I sit here at my computer trying to come up with something clever, or thoughtful, or profound, or, at the least, worthy of your time to read these lines, that phrase came to me as I considered the fact that we're over halfway through Advent 2008.

Advent is a time of waiting; we all know that. But I began to wonder about that "bated breath" part. What does it really mean? Where does it come from? I wasn't even sure of the spelling but realized that spelling it b-a-i-t-e-d would only make us think of worm breath, rather than how to prepare for the Christ.

And so, without even moving from my desk chair, I did a little research on "bated breath" in an online dictionary. Indeed, I found out that my spelling instincts are correct and it is b-a-t-e-d. And then I learned that "to bate" means "to moderate, restrain." Bating one's breath, then, is breathing a bit more shallowly or with a more even pace in anticipation or hopes of what is to come.

What a perfect fit with Advent! We moderate not just our breath but our very being in anticipation of the One who is to come. We restrain the culture's attempts to get us to rush headlong into Christmas and instead savor the weeks that lead up to a God-with-us event. Our moderation stands against the excesses of the greed and materialism and consumerism that is all around us.

And so, with bated breath, we seek a star in the sky or strain to hear an angel's voice. With bated breath, we creep ever closer to a rough, straw-filled, impromptu crib to peek at a newborn baby. With bated breath, we look into the faces of everyone we encounter throughout our days and ask ourselves, "is this the Christ?"

Pace e bene,
Gerry

14 December 2008

Advent Table at Chalice

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

When I probably was about high school age, I was with my Mother at a small, local shopping center. We were walking from the parking lot to the sidewalk that ran along in front of the stores. I have no idea now of what came over me, but I broke out into a run and leapt over a low, backless bench that was firmly rooted in the concrete on the sidewalk. Well, I should say, I attempted to leap over the bench because I misjudged and, splat, went flat out onto the sidewalk. Mom, quickly figuring out that I wasn’t really hurt anywhere, laughed a bit as she picked up the heap on the sidewalk that was her second son.

I’m sure she laughed because it must have been quite a spectacle, because, you see, I was not the most coordinated of people, then or now. I was…am…always tripping over things or bumping into things or otherwise performing unintentional slapstick humor. I was no good at athletics, always the last chosen in gym class. The gift of athleticism was given to my sister and two brothers, but not me. They were the ones who could throw, kick, or hit balls and run gracefully while I stumbled my way through life. I do think that there were times they would all, all five of them including my parents, look at me and wonder just how I got in the family. The athletic-capability entrance exam must have been waived when I came along.

Of course, some 30-plus years later, I’ve gotten somewhat used to it by now. I don’t fall as often mostly because I’ve stopped trying to jump over shopping center benches. I’ve learned some tricks along the way that help me to stay upright and in one piece. But the truth is I was, am and evermore shall be a klutz. And that’s okay.

But what doesn’t seem okay to me is my also ongoing spiritual klutziness. Spiritually, my world is filled with oughts and shoulds. I should read the Bible more than just for sermon preparation. I ought to be looking for God in the faces of people I see. I should pray more. I should. I ought. I should. Those shoulds and oughts plague me. And I feel like a spiritual klutz most of the time, tripping and stumbling my way through faith like a bad Chevy Chase imitation of Gerald Ford.

And then I get to the readings we had for today and I really feel like the faith family outsider. Yeah, I know that these readings are uplifting and joy-filled, but when I really look at them, I have to start to wonder where I fit in.

Take the Isaiah passage for instance. These words, which Jesus himself used to proclaim the start of his own ministry, cause me to look at myself and ask some question. I haven’t done that much good news bringing to the oppressed lately. I haven’t even talked to any prisoners or captives, none-the-less proclaimed liberty and freedom to them.

The Psalm wasn’t much help either. Sure I’ve done my share of sowing in tears in my time, but I think I’ve missed out on the reaping with shouts of joy somehow.

And Thessalonians…yikes! Pray without ceasing? Giving thanks in all circumstances? Holding fast to what is good? I consider myself lucky if I touch something good, without thinking about holding on. But those ‘without ceasing’ and ‘in all circumstances’ phrases really make me uncomfortable when I’m judging my spiritual self. More klutziness!

These scriptures pull out the measuring stick, stand me against the wall, and mark my spiritual height. And sometimes it looks like I’m shrinking rather than growing, using their yardstick.

But then I get to read John’s gospel. And in those first few verses of the passage which we heard today, in which John’s poetic writing reminds me about John the Baptist I find the comfort I need in my spiritual klutziness. John the Baptist wasn’t the light, I’m reminded. John testified to the light. John indicated the light. John pointed to the light. And I remember, in the midst of my faith trips, stumbles, and false starts, that I don’t have to light up the world myself. All I have to do is point.

I may be the worst spiritual mess on the face of the living earth at any given point in time, but I can usually still point. I can point to the light and say, “there it is, go get it.” And sometimes, I admit, that’s the most I can do for myself or for anyone else.

As these lectionary lessons for today percolated in my head over the past week, I was really drawn to the image of the light. I was preparing for all sorts of clever ways to talk about light, riffing on those couple of verses from John. For instance, we’re approaching the Northern Hemisphere’s winter solstice, when daylight becomes more and more scarce and thus precious. We’re celebrating Advent, in which we gradually increase the light in our world by lighting one more candle than we did last week. I knew we’d be discussing the Magi in our worship today and thought about how they relied on a light in the midst of darkness to guide them. All these ideas were tumbling about in my head.

But then I read something in preparation for our gathering last Tuesday on Handel’s Messiah. What I was reading was actually about another light-filled scripture, the one about “arise, shine for thy light has come,” but it seems just as valid here in the glow of John’s verses. I realized how light is so very important throughout our scriptures. Light is there at the very beginning in Genesis. It is the first thing created, in verse 3 of chapter 1. And light is at the end as the last chapter of the final book of our Bible, Revelation, proclaims, “And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”(22:5 NRSV) Throughout the Bible, in the Psalms, the prophets, and the epistles, light is used over and over again to help us understand God in some small way.

And, if you’ll notice, the light that is referred to is different from the sources of light that we know. In Genesis, God created light first off but didn’t get around to creating the sun, the moon, and the stars for a few more days. There’s a difference between them, you see. Even in the Revelation passage, God’s light shines separately from and over and above any other kinds of light. Those lights simply cannot compete with the divine light that has shone so brightly since before the beginning of time and came to earth in Jesus’ radiance.

So in the glow of the divine, I don’t really have to worry about my spiritual klutziness anymore. I can point. I can seek the light of which John wrote and be guided by it, be drawn to it, show it to others who live in the shadows. It’s really very simple when it comes down to it. Those other things…proclaiming release, and bringing good news, and praying without ceasing and the other things that make me feel spiritually uncoordinated…they will happen in and due to the pointing that I can do. Finding God’s light and letting it shine in your life is release and liberty; it is reaping with shouts of joy even when the seeds of tears are all too well remembered; it is lifting out of oppression the forgotten and broken ones of our world; it is rebuilding the shattered and broken foundations of our faith walls.

Advent is our time of expectancy of Christ’s coming and John reminds us that this coming, in this wonderful birth we wait for, is a shining in the darkness; in the darkness of night in an insignificant corner of a world far from us in time and geography, and in the gloom of humanity’s faith story. In your Advent preparations, as the December sunlight does become more rare and as a star over a manger rises higher in the east in the skies of our imaginations, seek that light that brings life and peace and righteousness to our world.

7 December 2008 ~ 2nd Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 40:1-11

I begin today, surely against the advice of good preachers and the instruction of homiletics professors, with a quote:

We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has conscience. Only when we have felt the terror of the matter, can we recognize the incomparable kindness. God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love. *

The author of that quote knew something about evil and death—he didn’t speak out of the safe confines of an ivory tower though he was an academic. Nor did he pen these words in a hermitage cave atop a lonely mountain, though again, he did spend many, many hours of his life alone and locked away.

This message to us comes across the decades from the years of World War II and was written by the German pastor, theologian, and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer, many of you may already know, was arrested by the Nazis for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler in March of 1943 and was imprisoned until his death at the hands of his captors in April 1945. His imprisonment did not stop him completely; he was a prolific writer and out of his imprisonment, in which he most assuredly would have known that he could be executed at any point, came words of hope and faith and comfort.

Ah, comfort, the word which begins the Isaiah reading this morning. Quite different from the opening words of last week’s Isaiah reading in which God was implored to “rip open the heavens.” From that violent image the lectionary moves us to comfort this week.

When we hear the word “comfort” though these days, we often think of ease: a soft sofa perhaps; a fuzzy bathrobe; a heated car seat. We sink into the word “comfort” and just relax, lying there and enjoying life and perhaps an excellent wine.

But the author of these words from Isaiah that we heard today, all those centuries ago, was probably not thinking of sofas or bathrobes and, unless he was extremely prescient, didn’t even envision car seats, heated or otherwise. No, he was had other things on his mind.

Those of you who attended our bible study this past week during which we are looking at the texts used in Handel’s great oratorio Messiah know that these comforting words are the very ones that begin that majestic work. Many of us can still hear it: a high tenor floating out above the strings quietly accompanying him with the refrain of “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.”

You may also remember that what we know as the book of Isaiah was written by at least two different people. The first 39 chapters of Isaiah are from the prophet Isaiah, who lived in the late 8th century b.c.e. The remaining chapters, which begin with the verses from today’s reading to the final 66th chapter, were the work of at least one other prophet; some scholars insist there is even a third one in there. Those who think hard about such things and often get paid to do so, generally refer to them as First and Second Isaiah, though sometimes you’ll hear Second Isaiah referred to as Deutero-Isaiah. (By the way, just a warning in case you go out of here and show off your new found knowledge about all these Isaiahs to our more conservative or biblically-literalist Christian brothers and sisters: this two and three author theory of Isaiah drives them over the wall. They will insist that it was all the same person who wrote Isaiah and that was Isaiah, pure and simple.)

So this prophet, whom we only know as Second Isaiah, begins his prophecy with this word “comfort.” While First Isaiah preached to the people of his time that they were doing wrong, that bad things were going to happen, and that God was peeved with them, to put it mildly, Second Isaiah lived a different circumstance. By his time, the big bad empires had indeed swept through and overrun their tiny countries, taking many citizens captive. Second Isaiah spoke out of the midst of captivity. Second Isaiah didn’t need to tell the people of impending doom anymore because it was now history; it had already happened. Second Isaiah’s message that he was called to preach was likely even harder; out of that pain of captivity, he was called to speak of comfort and of looking forward to people who were in the utmost depths of despair.

In fact, Second Isaiah used that same word ‘comfort’ thirteen times in the 26 chapters that make up the end of the book. The Hebrew word behind the English word ‘comfort’ comes from the verb nacham. Nacham is used all throughout the Hebrew Bible, about 108 times in all. Most of the time, its meaning is as we heard it today, translated as ‘comfort’ or some derivative, like ‘comforter.’ Sometimes though, it means ‘repent’ or even ‘sorrow.’ For instance in 1 Samuel 15 the reign of the first king of Israel, Saul, was coming to a sad and disastrous culmination. In that chapter we read, “Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.” God being sorry about making Saul king is that same word, nacham. God is repenting the choice of Saul as king. God is comforting Godself over a wrong move. That sense of nacham casts a different light on the whole ‘comfort’ thing, doesn’t it?

Centuries and centuries after Saul, the prophet cries “comfort, comfort” as the very first words out of his mouth to a people in exile, living as slaves in a foreign land far from home. But even in that situation, comfort comes with an understanding of repentance or turning back, of lamenting one’s state and one’s distance from God.

So here we are, 21st century North Americans, far removed from Bonhoeffer’s prison cell in Nazi Germany and even farther from the dire circumstances of the captives of Second Isaiah’s day. Do we need words of comfort or do we need someone prodding us into action this Advent 2008? As I said earlier, the comfort which comes to our minds is often ease without that sense of finding comfort by returning to God. We are all about sofas and bathrobes and heated car seats. We lack the urgency about which Bonhoeffer wrote; that before God-with-us is good news, it is terrifying and should shake us to our soles. (I wrote that word as soles with an ‘o’ as in the bottom of our feet. But this good news in fact should also shake us to our souls with a ‘u.’)

Being comforted then is not relaxing in the hot tub of life’s bubbling water. It is work, actually. It is making plains where there once were hills and filling valleys so they are level. Because God is sending a messenger, Second Isaiah tells us, a messenger who needs direct and easy access. We’ve got to clear out the brush and pave the desert so that there are no impediments to God getting through to us.

Now even to those exiles thousands of years ago who knew all too well about physical hills and valleys and deserts, these words that seem to us to involve backhoes and payloaders, were not to be taken literally and neither should we take them that way. We’re not going to turn un-ecologically pc all of a sudden. Advent is a time, however, for the clearing and paving that needs to happen within us. Too often we do feel like we are filled with hills and valleys that seem impossible to traverse; we carry inside deserts that appear too foreboding to cross; barriers to God’s messenger getting through.

But it is precisely there in that tough internal work that we find comfort, that we find release. Because God not only cares about what is going on around and outside of us, about what we are doing to make God’s creation a more comfortable place to be, God cares deeply about what is happening within us. And until we make an arrow-straight highway through the desert within and give God’s messenger half a chance at getting through, we are not going to find comfort.

This Advent, in the remaining weeks before we once again tremble to our very depths at the laughable, frightening premise of God-with-us, find comfort. Allow God to get a message through to you by stopping whatever it is that keeps you busy and distracts you. God’s messenger is seeking to get through; your work, your comforting repentance, is to find a way to allow that to happen.

*Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Coming of Jesus in our Midst,” from A Testament to Freedom, The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, edited by Geoffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995), 185; as quoted by Lindsay P. Armstrong, “Preaching the Advent Texts,” in Journal for Preachers, Vol. XXXII, No. 1, Advent 2008, p. 6.

30 November 2008~1st Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 64:1-9

“Tear open the heavens and come down” Isaiah implored God. “Rip the skies apart and get yourself down here,” he prayed all those years ago.

My oh my, a violent image with which to begin Advent, isn’t it? Isn’t Advent supposed to be the time in which we prepare for Christmas; for the coming of the Prince of Peace? Sure, Israel had its problems, chasing after other gods and ignoring God’s laws to name a few, but do we really need to think about all that now? Now, when we’re putting up sparkly decorations and humming seasonal songs along with the muzak in the stores? Now, when we’re picking out a pretty sweater for an aunt or the right toy for a youngster in our lives?

Why do we need to begin this season of joy with the image of God rupturing the firmament and doing something about what is going on on earth? Why do we need to consider God coming to earth at all right now? It’s the Christmas season, isn’t it?

Well, yes, the cultural calendar, whose monthly page we turn tonight, does say that it’s Christmas time. But the liturgical calendar tells us that this is actually New Years day and today, as we were reminded in the Call to Worship, we begin the four-week and a few days long period of Advent.

Now, I have no doubts who would win the cage match between the secular Christmas lead-up and Advent. Red and green are the colors we see, not the more subdued and reflective purple associated with the liturgical season. It’s all twinkly lights to brighten the ever-growing darkness, not a group of candles which are lit one by one over time. We’ll spend our time over the next 24 days shopping and dressing up for parties and decorating rather than meditating, praying, and getting ready for the coming of that Prince of Peace I mentioned.

No, compared to Christmas Incorporated, Advent is a weakly, pale opponent who is bound to lose each and every time. Personally, I tend to compartmentalize around this time of year, going along with the culture to a degree while trying to remember what Advent is all about. I allow myself to live in both worlds mostly because it’s almost impossible not to be taken in by Christmas Inc., while reminding myself that I really do want, and need, the more contemplative quiet that I associate with Advent.

So, yes, I’m a bit of a sell-out, if the truth be told, but I don’t think I’m alone in doing this; there are others who do exactly the same thing. And let’s get this straight, I’m not talking about the millions of people across the globe who celebrate Christmas Inc. and do so without any belief or faith in Jesus, or Christ, or even God. I’m referring to fellow, self-professed Christians who buy into Christmas Inc. while doing the balancing act with their faith life and trying to observe an Advent of preparation and expectation. They’re, um, you’re, out there, I know.

And so I know that I and you and all the others who try will find a way to integrate these two competing sides will do so, to varying degrees of success; varying from person to person as well as from year to year. And that’s pretty much okay, I guess.

But then…but then, something happens that throws things out of whack; that upsets the balance and makes me stop and wonder just what am I doing.

Just two days ago, at a Wal-mart store on Long Island, New York, the employees were preparing for the opening of the store at 5 a.m. for what has come to be known as Black Friday. Among them was 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour, who was a temporary maintenance worker from Jamaica, Queens. Of course most of you know what happened: The crowd at the doors, hundreds of people, rushed the store and Damour was actually trampled to his death by shoppers on their way to the bargains that were advertised. According to an article on the website of the New York Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html?page=0), four others, shoppers themselves including one pregnant woman, were also injured and taken to a local hospital. The Daily News article quotes Jimmy Overby, another Wal-mart employee who was at the store also, talking about the mob event:

He was bum-rushed by 200 people. They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down, too ... I didn't know if I was going to live through it. I literally had to fight people off my back.

According to the Daily News, a cop at the scene reported that even officers who arrived to perform CPR on Damour were stepped on by shoppers. Kimberly Cribbs, who witnessed the stampede, said, "When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, 'I've been on line since Friday morning!' They kept shopping." The Daily News reported that the Long Island store reopened at 1 p.m. that day…and was packed within minutes.

It’s all very well and good for us to sit here, 3,000 miles away and shake our heads as we mutter, “what a shame…isn’t it awful.” And frankly there’s not much we can do. I’m sure also that we all like to think that we would have acted differently; that we would have stopped; that we would have not trampled another human being. And, likely we wouldn’t if given the opportunity, but we weren’t in Long Island at 5 in the morning last Friday so those statements do ring a bit hollow.

But then I think about my own part in Christmas Inc.; there’s my own complicity in this secular celebration that is all about consumerism and advertising and bargain-hunting and greed. I can see myself, at least components of myself, as part of a mob that cares more about saving $10 than it does about someone else’s life and my “tut-tuts” at this particular incident seem a little too high-handed on my part.

So that violent image of God ripping open the heavens is nothing compared to the violence that Christmas Inc. has wrought. We’re not so different after all from those Israelites all those centuries ago who turned to other gods and turned away from the laws that called for care and concern for others. The gods they strayed to and began to worship had funny names to our ears but our contemporary are all too familiar sounding: the gods of money, accumulation, things, to name just a few.

It all makes Advent, the real Advent in which I penitentially prepare myself and pray for the coming of the Christ into our midst, seem all that more important. The Advent in which I implore God to rip open the heavens and just get down here, quick.

Jdimytai Damour has been offered up as a martyred sacrifice to these consumerist gods; needlessly, tragically. Christmas Inc. roles along, devouring anyone who might get in the way. Somehow, I need to work on that balance between the secular celebration and the holy one. I need to work on the ordering of importance and not get caught up on the wrong side of the cage match. And you know what? That’s what Advent is all about. Lucky, huh?

16 November 2008

Matthew 25:14-30

The twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew is unrelenting. If you’ve got one of those bibles that prints Jesus’ words in red (which of course is how he spoke; in red), the entire chapter, all forty verses, is in red. It’s all Jesus, all the time.

This chapter is divided into three sections. We heard the first section last week. If you remember, that was about the wise and foolish bridesmaids or virgins, some of whom didn’t have enough oil for their lamps and are then locked out of the wedding feast due to their lack of prudence. You might recall, if you were here or read my sermon online, that I said that that parable was about the endtimes; about the waiting of the church, especially the early Christian church in the later decades of the first century. They were expecting Jesus back and a good follower of The Way needed to be prepared.

The middle section is what we heard today. It too is a parable that speaks of the endtimes and how the faithful (or unfaithful) will be treated when that moment arrives. And just as last week’s parable was not an etiquette guide for those going to weddings in the ancient Near East, neither is today’s reading going to be helpful to anyone who seeks to understand economics (and I understand that there are actually people who do understand economics). This story from Jesus is not about how to invest and I doubt if it will help anyone out in the current fiscal, um, shall we say, ‘unpleasantness’ in which we find ourselves.

I suppose you’re wondering about the final third of this chapter. Well, it’s the lectionary reading for next week. I don’t want to give anything away therefore so you’ll just have to return to find out what’s next. I will say though that the relentlessness continues and again, no one is let off the hook.

No, if you are looking for the easy-way faith, don’t expect to find it in Matthew twenty-five. It’s not for the faint of heart really. I should think that any new converts to the faith, if they read this chapter right off, would turn on their heels and run, if they knew what was good for them and if they really understood what was going on in these verses.

You can’t really blame Jesus though. Chapter 26, the very next words after all this chapter, begins with Jesus telling the disciples that he’s going to be crucified when they get to the observance of Passover in two days. He’s got a lot on his mind, I would guess, and the thick density of his disciples and followers may have been utmost; and by thick density, I’m not saying that they were crowded together into a small room, if you catch my drift. They’ve been shown as needing way too much explanation…they were a little slow at times in the uptake.

Jesus needed to pack plenty in his teachings in these his last days with them and knew it. So he hit them hard with the cold hard facts of faith, unsettling as it might have been. And of course Matthew knew his audience too. He includes these parables because this need to grasp the difficult parts of faith was paramount in the minds of the original audience of his gospel.


So…we have these three servants…or slaves as they are called in the translation we heard. One is extremely trustworthy and is given five talents. Another is a little less dependable it seems, at least in his master’s eyes, and is given two talents. And then there’s the third one who’s barely trusted and is given the least amount of all: only one talent.

I read one translation of this passage in which the translator changed the amounts to $5,000, $2,000 & $1,000 but I don’t think that does it justice. For one thing, it takes away from us our imagination of just how much we’re talking about here. Evidently, this parable is referring to ridiculously large sums of money. No master is going to trust any slave with these amounts…no matter how trustworthy and reliable. It’s a ludicrous story to begin with, with preposterous amounts of money involved. But that’s exactly Jesus’ point and we lose that sense if we assign too small a value to what we’re talking about here. God’s grace and care and love for us are also ludicrously out of proportion to our own dependability and soundness. We, mere slaves as it were in the ongoing history of faith and the realm of God, are entrusted with enormous, massive amounts of talents ourselves by God. They’re just given to us, handed over, undeservedly and unconditionally.

That, in and of itself, is a pretty good sermon to hear and I could stop right here right now and hope that you go away a little more convinced of God’s grace and that you are a beloved child of God. That’s not a bad message to get for most of us. And if you’ve ever dealt with the more rigid faith proclamations from pulpits across Christianity that repeatedly remind you and everyone else just how worthless you and we are, then this is a good message to take away.

But, alas, there is more. And if we stop here, feeling all warm inside about ourselves, well then we don’t quite get the whole of it. So hold onto those warm feelings and remember that indeed you are loved; loved enormously, stupendously, beyond all reasonable expectations by God.

But let’s turn back to our parable for this morning. The master, this spendthrift, beneficent master, goes away. We don’t know why, we don’t know where but we do know it was for a long time. And in this absence these three slaves treat their talents differently. The first two trade and invest and are able to not only increase but double the amounts they were given. The third one though just buries his; he puts it in a safe place. He doesn’t want the responsibility or the work involved in doing what the other two are out doing.

We all know what happens next. The master returns and asks for an accounting of the money. The first two bring the original amounts that they were given (I guess we would call that the principal today) as well as the amounts that they got in return for their efforts. And they are handsomely rewarded as they are invited into the joy of the master. But our third slave…well, this third slave digs up the one talent that had been buried and returns it, and essentially tells the master that he’s not all that easy to deal with in the first place and here’s the money back but nothing more.

The master is outraged…infuriated…livid. From a theatrical point of view, I actually think he overplays this scene. “What’s the fuss?” I want to interject, “you got your money back. It wasn’t frittered away or spent on cheap booze, easy sex, or even the latest electronic gadgets. Relax, would ya?” Of course, part of that is my discomfort with conflict and my desire to help the underdog, but there’s 21st century therapy for that sort of thing.

But the master reacts as he will, as all masters and mistresses do, and takes the one lousy talent, gives it to the slave who originally had five and then orders that this third slave be thrown out; out into the outer darkness. There’s wailing there and there’s gnashing of teeth; it’s not a pretty place to be.


So, how’s that warm feeling inside you doing now? Has it chilled a little perhaps? I know mine has; it does everytime I hear this parable, from when I first remember hearing it in Sunday School in the basement of that rural Methodist church until this very day.

Then, back in the Orange Methodist Church Sunday School, a rather young Gerry Brague heard this story and felt badly for the third slave, thinking the master had done a great injustice to my new friend, this third slave. I didn’t get the fact then that parables meant more than they are. I wasn’t always perceptive of the line between fact and fiction (I thought cartoon characters were real people for quite a long time) and wasn’t very aware of the moral-to-a-story device.

Of course now I have a degree after my name; letters with periods. So I not only am able allegedly to dig deeper into the story but I get to stand here and expound on it, theologically of course. But frankly, I don’t feel much better, even with those letters and periods following my name and that young Gerry Brague’s reaction is not far off from this supposedly scripturally-astute one. Because if in fact the master is sitting in for God in the parable, I look at the rest of the story and at myself and find way too many similarities between me and that third slave than I do with the other two slaves and there goes that warm feeling.

I am much too quick to take whatever God has given me and hide it all away, thinking it’s mine to do with as I please and not an investment on which God expects, no, on which God demands a return. I am digging holes all over the place secreting away riches galore. Sure, I’ll return them, pretty much untouched and unused, some may even still be in their protective wrapping, but then it will be too late. Then I’ll find out that there was supposed to be more that I brought back; more than the original amount; more than what God gave me to begin with.

And if you think now that that warm feeling has dropped a goodly number of degrees, Fahrenheit or Celsius, just think what will happen to it in the cold, outer darkness. Brrrrr. It sounds worse than North Dakota in February and we all know how I feel about northern winters.

And so, like Ebenezer Scrooge, who awakes Christmas morning crying out something along the lines of “did I miss it, did I miss it?” I look around me and realize that I’m still here on this earth and I can dig up whatever has been given to me and that I’ve hidden and I can begin to use them and make them multiply, right here, right now.

If you’ve been hiding, squirreling away, veiling, burying, covering, or concealing the gifts, talents, and resources that God has given to you and continues to imbue in you, then I urge you to think about these final lessons from Jesus’ time on earth. And bring them out so that you’ll see a vast increase in your, no, in God’s investment.

9 November 2008

Matthew 25:1-13 (& 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)

Some irony, huh? The Sunday after the election, in which not only did we elect the first African-American to the presidency of this nation, but we, at least those of us here in California and a couple of other states, voted, by a slim majority here, but a majority to be sure, to ban same-sex marriages…isn’t it ironic that this is the Sunday a parable arises out of the lectionary that makes us think about wedding customs—in another land and another time sure, but still the idea of a wedding, a marriage is there. And, like all parables, it’s not really about what it’s about. This parable isn’t a reminder about how to behave at a first-century, ancient Near-Eastern nuptial. Jesus tells this parable as a reminder of prudence. Be prudent, like the wise bridesmaids (or virgins as they were called in earlier translations of the Bible that many of us know); don’t be imprudent and forget to stock up on oil like those foolish bridesmaids.

But there it is. The week when I learn that millions of people in this state would deny my right to marry and probably, most assuredly, will go on to insist that Allen’s and my marriage this summer be annulled, I must think about the one thing I don’t want to think about—marriage. I’ve heard quite enough over the past several months about what a marriage is and isn’t, what constitutes a “biblical” marriage and what doesn’t. I don’t want to think about anything to do with marriage right now, thank you very much. I have to tell you that the passage of Proposition 8 dealt a body blow to me and to many others. And the thing is, I find that the “Yes on 8” folks are actually enjoying the body blow. They are exulting in their victory as they stomp on their fellow citizens’ rights.

Believe me, they are exulting. I’ve gotten caught up in a blog on the internet lately. For those without computer connections, a blog is sort of an online journal that someone, a blogger, writes publicly, for all to read. I happened upon one late this past week in which the person writing the blog commented on the protests and riots that were occurring in Los Angeles following the passage of Prop 8 and stating his opinion that Prop 8 is wrong and misguided. He’s gotten many comments in the past few days about his entry (on many blogs, anyone can respond and comment, usually anonymously). He was lambasted for supporting those unnatural and evil homosexuals. (I have no idea of the sexual orientation of the blogger who posted the original entry.) But here is a small taste of some of the responses that he got: [Note: I have not corrected the spelling, punctuation, grammatical errors of the following posts. But there are so many, that I can't add "sic" after each one.]

One person wrote: You must be gay or brain washed in to believeing that this moral degradation is “normal”. The drop in moral standards that have kept this country on it’s feet has degraded due to liberalism but the fact of the matter is homosexuality is a choice and therefore not subject to “Equal Rights”. It is not a race of people which are deserving of equal rights, it is a choice. The majority of people in Califormnia have spoken so it should be left as it is. let them go to Vermont or some other unholy state that allows it and quit trying to shove it down everyone else’s throat. Now, go ahead and claim that the other groups are the ones trying to ram there morality down the gays throat but I can promise you, the “normals” were here first and have made this country giving it stability. You won’t get that with gay marriages. I believe it was the first gay marriage in Vermont has already ended in divorce due to infidelity, etc. I could go on and on but it is a waste of breath since the people have spoken. The outrage is your support for it.

Another wrote: Well, I am glad to see that America didn’t lose everything, on election day!! I suppose we had to choose between who should we allow to riot, huh? 2500 homosexuals or 25 million blacks! You can tell a corrupt cause when the supporters are willing to behave like animals and destroy their own. THAT is the outrage, not Prop 8!!

[Racism mixed with homophobia; are any of us surprised?]

A third wrote: I think a “marriage” as defined by ancient law, the Bible, and by GOD, should be the union between one man and one woman. This is not about freedoms, or rights, or whatever the heck else the bleeding heart liberals want to call the funny business between two people of the same sex. It should have stayed in the closet where it belongs, instead of in our faces on every other TV program on the air today. We just banned same-sex unions in Florida to the point that it is now written into the State Constitution. Don’t get me wrong… I don’t condemn these people, and count some among my closest friends., I just think that it should NOT enjoy all the EXTRA molly-coddling these people enjoy just because they’re different. Where is this country going??

And on it went. I’ve read only three of many comments here. There were some, of course, that I agreed with; they weren’t all so vitriolic. But others, most in fact, were venomous, fear-based, and exhibited any lack of comprehension that this is an extremely complicated topic, relying, I felt, on tired arguments and spoon-fed thinking. Somewhere along the line, I, perhaps foolishly, entered the fray. But creating my own user name, I wrote:

Wow, if reading the responses to this blog is to be believed, there is a lot more ignorance and hatred in our society than I thought there was. The majority is not always in the right: the majority of Americans believed in slavery; the majority of Americans thought women should be second-class citizens. The majority is merely strength and power…not right not morally correct. The rights of the minority (be it an ethnic minority, sexual minority, cultural minority, economic minority, etc.) needs to be protected and that is why there are constitutions and laws, ineffective as they often are, which attempt to do just that. This vote to make discrimination a part of the CA state constitution subverts the ethical right and mandate to protect the few from the many.

I then went on to talk about how even if “Biblical marriage” existed, we probably wouldn’t want it. There are examples of polygamous, misogynistic, and lust-induced marriages throughout the Bible. Women had no rights, of course; they were merely property being exchanged in “Biblical marriages.”

Of course, after my post, I got attacked too. In fact, someone tried to turn my opening statement about ignorance on me and called me “ignorant.” Ah well. I just pointed out in my reply that I said that I had found that there was ignorance in our culture and the person who answered me felt a need to label me as ignorant and then asked him why he felt the need to denigrate. I’m sure I haven’t won many friends here; at least not among Ernie, ontheroc, Art and the man who answered my post.

And through it all, through all of this chatter about the fait-accompli that is Prop 8, there I was thinking about ancient marital practices; practices and traditions that Jesus obviously knew about and in fact was able to use in his parable, but that are lost to us today. Why were those bridesmaids, those virgins, waiting around for the groom? Why does the bridegroom show up all of a sudden at midnight? Why are the lamps so important? They’re so important, in fact, that the foolish ones felt they had to go and buy more oil? And then they’re locked out? Why is the door locked and no one is admitted? I just admit that I don’t get it and I don’t think this is a hetero vs homo-sexual thing. It’s clearly a cultural thing.

But the point is that Jesus was trying to make a point. And if I get caught up in the details about cultural traditions and nuptial mores in a place and time so foreign to me that I can even begin to imagine it, none-the-less understand it, then I’m missing the forest for the trees. Jesus, that radical, was telling his listeners that we don’t know when God is going to be around noticing what we’re doing so we’d just better be always prepared for any eventuality, even a bridegroom showing up late and taking everyone by surprise.

We have to remember the original audience of Matthew’s gospel as well as those new Christians in Thessalonica who received the letter from Paul, part of which we heard this morning. They believed with absolute conviction that Jesus was returning to earth…soon. He had said it prior to his ascension. Jesus would come back. 1st Thessalonians was written before Matthew’s gospel; anywhere from a decade to five decades earlier perhaps. But the concern on every early Christian’s mind was about when Jesus would return. Jesus had died, resurrected, and ascended at least 20 years prior to either of these books being put down in black and white. Time was marching on and people were starting to wonder when this return was going to happen.

Paul was busy quelling concerns about those good faithful people who had died in the interim—between the ascension and the promised return. “What would happen to them?” loved ones wondered and Paul assured them that Jesus would gather all the faithful together. Matthew’s hearers also were certainly anxious for Jesus to come back and FINALLY show that nasty old Roman empire just who was in charge. And who can blame them? I probably do not need to recount here the difficulty of living under Roman rule, especially if you were a follower of the Way.

But with upturned eyes, followers across the geography over which this young, struggling movement had spread scanned the heavens. With upturned eyes, hopes were lifted and prayers ascended. With upturned eyes, early Christians expected relief from misery and oppression by the appearance of the one who would do it.

In the context of these hopes and expectations and hearts that yearned for release, that wedding story makes some sense. Be prudent, plan ahead, don’t get caught off guard. The end times will come, but when you least expect them, Matthew reminded.

We, in the mainline tradition, don’t tend to focus on the end times much. We don’t worry much about Jesus’ coming again. That thought, eschatology is the big word for it, has been completely subsumed by those with a more conservative bent among the Christian faithful. There are books, extremely popular books and book series, and video games and movies devoted to the end times. There is a fascination among fundamentalists with Jesus’ second coming, that we don’t consider much.

But that’s the only way to understand today’s readings from the Christian Testament, with upturned eyes and a knowledge, no a certainty, that Jesus will come and care for us, relieving heart ache and misery and oppression. And you know, that’s almost exactly what I need right now.

Admittedly the constitutional amendment that Proposition 8 brings into being will not likely affect most of your lives much at all. Life will go on. In fact, on the surface, it’s not going to affect Allen’s and my lives a lot. No one is going to come in, as happened to gay men and lesbians throughout Nazi Germany, and drag us apart and force us into concentration camps, wearing pink triangles on our outfits to identify us as sexual deviants. (There are those in our culture, I’m sure, who would do exactly that though.) But no one is going to force us into marriages with women. The worst of it, really, is that things will go back to how they were; how they were for the 18 years that we have been together as a couple and even further back than that. And I will aver until my dying day that I am indeed married.

But, as I said, the vote on this proposition was a body blow to many of us. The fact is the state is at the mercy of a majority that seeks to impose its will and beliefs. The passage of Proposition 8 brought to the surface once again, at least for me, the fear that every lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered person has felt in their life; a fear for safety and not just emotional safety. I’m talking about the fear for physical safety that most in our culture take for granted.

So with upturned eyes, I seek comfort and security and affirmation, not just for myself but also for all my brothers and sisters who are harmed by this voice of the majority. With those same upturned eyes that searched the heavens for the first glimpse of a returning, triumphant Jesus centuries ago, I too hunt for signs of hope in the midst of shock and oppression. And in the sweeping election of someone whose skin color would have prevented him from even voting not that many decades ago, I find that hope. And in the fact that the vote on Proposition 8 was won by a slim majority, reducing the difference between the yeses and the nos from a 20% spread eight years ago to just a few percentage points this past Tuesday, I find that hope. And as I stand with upturned eyes, Jesus does appear; but not in the heavens and not descending on a cloud. No, Jesus appears in the faces of those who have faithfully fought the good fight. Jesus appears to me right here in the midst of a community that embraces and cares. Jesus appears to each of us, personally and lovingly appears to each person here in the midst of whatever is going on; in your life or in the world. Make sure you’re prepared; be certain you’re ready. Be wise.

26 October 2008

Matthew 22:34-46

In the Hebrew scriptures, what we’ve come to commonly call the Old Testament, there are many, many laws, over 600 I’ve heard, though I haven’t counted them all myself. We don’t hear about most of them; they don’t often come up in our lectionary readings and few of us sit down to read through them. And I’m not convinced that’s not really a bad thing. I’m not going to try to convince you, for instance, to go home and read Leviticus, as I did recommend you do with Philippians a few weeks ago. These were laws given to the Israelites that ordered their society. Some of them we twenty-first century North Americans can make sense of; some we can’t. But that’s why we have Biblical scholars to help us along when we need them.

Of course, and unfortunately, some notable laws get dragged out when it’s convenient to some people to do so, such as the thirteenth verse of the twentieth chapter of Leviticus. This one is certainly getting plenty of play at the moment, I’m sure. It’s the one that says: If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. (NRSV) In the past few weeks, I’m rather certain that this one has been quoted in churches around our state as good Christians are told how to vote, I mean of course urged to vote, on Proposition 8. [Note to non-California readers: Proposition 8 is the ballot initiative on which we shall be voting in less than two weeks which would take away the right of same-sex couples to marry.] Now, if you’re expecting me to launch into a defense of a liberal understanding of Leviticus 20:13 and the Holiness Code of the Israelites, it’s not going to happen today. But (and this is a blatant advertisement in the middle of my sermon) do be sure to attend the screening of the film “For the Bible Tells Me So” next Sunday, 2 November at four p.m. which we are hosting with Community UCC of San Carlos, CA in the sanctuary . It goes through the scriptures that are often used to justify prejudice and discrimination against lesbian and gay people and gives good answers about how we might read them in a different light.

There are many laws that called the Hebrew people to holiness. A few weeks ago, in our lectionary readings, we read the Decalogue: those 10 laws from which all the others sprang, which we know better as the ten commandments. Among them are laws about who can offer a food offering in the temple: no one who has a blemish, any physical condition could make one impure, even a broken foot or hand, can do so. There are laws about how to plow the fields and what kind of cloth one can wear. Laws about how to treat foreigners and sojourners. Laws that cover the highs and the lows, the grand and the mundane. And the Jewish faith, through the centuries we call b.c., kept these laws, writing them down; committing them to the written word.

And Jesus, our Jesus, was a good Jew. Though under Roman rule at this point in history, after being under various other conquering empires over the years, the rules purportedly given to Moses, the same great Moses whose death we heard of in the Deuteronomy passage today, carried on and were known by these Jews among whom Jesus taught and lived some 2,000 years ago. And Jesus knew them. As a teacher, a rabbi, he would have known them well and thoroughly.

So it’s not surprising that this is the tack that the Pharisees, those keepers of the faith, the ones who guarded the law zealously in their day, would use to try to trip him up with the question that we heard posed to him in today’s gospel passage. They had been after him with various questions before this and always Jesus confounded them with his knowledge and radical understanding.

So, out of all those laws, those rules, those regulations, the Pharisees wanted to know which single, solitary one did Jesus think was most important. And they sent their biggest guns to get him; someone who was clearly well-versed in the law and knew it in and out.

Jesus gave them his answer and then went on to give them the next one in line. And they were both about love: love God; love your neighbor. And, Jesus added, every other law in the scriptures hangs from them like clothes hang from a clothesline. And like a clothesline, those clothes won’t stay up without the support that a clothesline gives. All the laws need those two basic laws in order to stand.

And that’s the genius of Jesus. He pegs all the laws on love. Now, we’re not talking about what so often we think of as love here. Jesus was not referring to some warm feeling, a gushy emotion that is represented these days by lace hearts, cupids and chocolates. (Don’t get me wrong though—there’s absolutely nothing wrong with chocolates!)

No, Jesus’ love was all about commitment, which is why he pegged all those other laws to these: You have to be committed, to God and to your neighbor, in order to be faithful to those laws. Commitment, love, is needed to follow everything that God demands of us.


And that brings us to the twin emphases that we’re trying to remember in our worship today: the reformation and ministry. [Note to readers: This Sunday is Reformation Sunday when Protestants remember our roots. In the Disciples of Christ, our congregation's denomination, October is "Ministerial Appreciation Month" and this is the last Sunday of that. Instead of the congregation just appreciating their clergyperson (me), there will be a time later in worship in which we recognize and celebrate the ministries of everybody.] For the early reformers, those guys on the front of our bulletin this week, calling the church back to what they believed God called it to be was an act of love. The commitment required to stand up to a powerful institution, in this case the church, that had gone awry and astray was tremendous; commitment that could only be described and understood as love. It was a love and commitment that took Jan Hus, the Czech reformer who predated Martin Luther, to the stake to be burned as a heretic. It was a love and commitment that pounded Luther’s nails into his 95 theses on that castle church door in Wittenberg that challenged the status quo then and forever. It was a love and commitment that each person pictured, including our own Disciples of Christ founders Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone, and many others not pictured, to look at the church of their day and confess “we have gone off course and we need to be set right; let’s try something new, relying on God.” And love, in the truly, deeply religious sense of that word, is what impels any good person of faith of any age including ours to look seriously and critically at what we do in the name of God. And sometimes, that very same love moves us to action and voicing our critiques and seeking justice in the name of God.

And that is what ministers do; that is what we all do. For indeed, in the then new belief that Luther put forth and Campbell and Stone among others deeply affirmed, we are a “priesthood of all believers.” That is, we are all ministers. Each of us, sitting here today, is indeed a minister. Don’t try to hide and don’t attempt denying it. It’s not just me; I’m not the only minister in this place. It’s not just those of us who have found themselves in the midst of some special worship service during which hands have been laid and charges have been made who are ministers. It doesn’t take that. It just takes baptism; it just takes listening to God; it just takes love: love of God and love of neighbor.

Which brings us back to Jesus. Jesus silenced his critics in this interchange from Matthew that we heard this morning; they didn’t come after him again, we’re told. They stopped trying to trap and discredit him with their questions. We do know though that they didn’t stop there; they did come after him and, thinking they had won, got him put to death. But love won out in the end, didn’t it? God’s love for us, God’s commitment to us God’s creation, shines through and calls us to mirror that very same love, that very same commitment, to God and to our neighbor.

Thomas Merton, the great 20th century brother and mystic had some thoughts about love that I’d like to end with. He said:

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name. If, therefore, I do anything or think anything or say anything or know anything that is not purely for the love of God, it cannot give me peace, or rest, or fulfillment, or joy. To find love I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God. (A Book of Hours, Kathleen Deignan, ed.).

12 October 2008

Philippians 4:1-9

The book of Philippians is about two thousand two hundred and fifty (2,250) words long. That’s not really very long when you think about it. This sermon that I’m about to preach over the next few minutes will come in at about nineteen hundred seventeen (1,917) words; somewhat comparable in length. The Declaration of Independence, in comparison, has one thousand three hundred and twenty-eight (1,328) words; only 922 words shorter than Philippians. The Gettysburg Address is a short two hundred fifty-six words (256). The whole Bible, from Genesis all the way through to Revelation, contains about seven hundred eighty-three thousand one hundred thirty-seven (783,137) words in all. That means, if my math is correct, that Philippians takes up only about .3% of the whole of our scriptures. It’s not really very long. You can sit down with your Bible and read it quickly and easily. And I commend doing just that to you. You won’t be sorry or regret the few minutes it would take you. [Note: Word counts, except for the count of Philippians and this sermon, come from WikiAnswers at wiki.answers.com. The Philippians and sermon word count was done on my own. All are approximations of course.]

Today’s passage from Philippians is right near the end of the book. If you’ve followed along in the lectionary over the past four weeks, this letter of Paul’s has been the epistle reading during the course of that time; we’ve had a bit from each of the four chapters, a taste really, and today is the last time we’ll hear from Philippians for a while. So we have to catch it while we can.

If you do follow my recommendation and go home and read through this marvelous little book, you’ll find that a true sense of joy actually emanates from Paul’s words. Many of us are used to another side of Paul: his attempts to set some congregation aright or his lists of those things his readers aren’t supposed to do or his lovingly yet firm reproaches. And oh how he does reproach and reprimand and tell folks exactly how they should be living their lives. But that, admittedly, is the Paul who too often comes to our minds, to my mind at least.

In this letter to that church in Philippi, however, we catch a glimpse of a different Paul: relaxed, maybe; joyous, certainly. Throughout this letter, Paul uses the words joy or rejoice a total of fourteen times. That may not seem like much but those words are found every so often throughout the letter. It’s like he’s sprinkling it over his work as a baker might dust a cake with powdered sugar. ‘Joy’ in fact is the fiftieth word of Philippians and it comes only after he has dispensed with the standard greetings that you’ll find in chapter one; the “grace and peace to you through God” stuff. He dives right into joy from the start and stays on it.

And so all through this correspondence, Paul is dropping little bits of joy. And then, just near the end comes Paul’s entreaty to ‘rejoice’, not just once but twice: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, Rejoice!” A double-whammy of joy!

He doesn’t leave much to wonder about. It’s an order, really: Rejoice, gosh darn it, rejoice! Paul clearly seems to be in a good mood. He’s writing to a congregation that he obviously has strong affection for. They have supported him and his ministry not only in prayer but with their finances; they’ve put their money where their mouth (or should it be faith?) is. In fact, just after our passage this morning leaves off, he writes that this church in Philippi was the only one, the only one of all those early congregations, to support him with their money at one point. Paul is truly grateful for this group of people and doesn’t hesitate to show it through his joy.

All this rejoicing; it can really get to you, can’t it? I mean, sure, they were cheerful people who had just come into the faith and were joyfully spreading the good news. Why shouldn’t they be joyful?

Well, of course, the argument can be made that they did have reasons not to be joyful. Life was rough for them. They lived under the oppressive Roman Empire which cared little for the peoples it subjugated. And being a Christian at this point in history was dangerous: you could be arrested and killed for your faith, a concept lost to us in North America these days. Becoming a follower of The Way was not something to be taken lightly. But these new converts to the faith, God bless them, kept Christianity alive and going through all the perils they faced. Without them, we would not be here today.

And not only that, to top it all off, Paul was spreading all this joy from jail of all places. He wrote this letter while imprisoned for spreading the gospel, for preaching the good news, for converting and teaching and doing all the things that we take for granted, for being a thorn in the side of the Romans who ran things in those parts. And in the midst of that, in the midst of being in the lock up with the force of the entire empire breathing down his neck, from out of that situation flow these 2,250 words of joy and thanksgiving.

Now don’t get me wrong; Paul had plenty to be unhappy about. But this is joy we’re talking about here; not happiness. There is a difference, of course, between joy and happiness; a large difference, I think. Happiness is externally driven and comes from outside circumstances or things (oh, how things do make us happy). Joy, I believe, comes from within and is a spiritual matter rather than a material one. And I do like to think that Paul would agree with me.

There in prison Paul is, of all things, joyful. His life is on the line and he knows it. But that doesn’t concern him one bit. In fact, earlier in Philippians, he holds a mini-debate with himself about whether it’s better to live or die. If he dies, then he is with Christ and what could be better? If he lives, he can continue to support folks like these dear Philippians. Which is more desired? Who cares, Paul decides, he’s going to be joyful no matter what.

And that’s his advice, no, his charge, to them, to us too, in this letter. Rejoice. Rejoice through it all because you are in Christ. Rejoice because God loves you. Rejoice. The Lord is near. Rejoice. Whatever your situation, you should rejoice.


Well, of course, that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? We live in an era of fear and greed, both of which like nothing better than feasting on our souls and reducing our spirits to quivering blobs within us. The financial world is, to put it mildly, in turmoil and that’s going to affect us undoubtedly. Our nation is carrying on two seemingly unending, ostensibly unendable wars in far away places to where we send young people to the very real possibility of death while we argue whether there is really any effect in all this on terrorism. Citizens of the west, and our country particularly, have awoken, belatedly perhaps, to the reality that there are those who inhabit this same globe as us who would love nothing better than to do us harm; deep, culture-shifting harm as we experienced a little over seven years ago. We are overwhelmed by unfathomable poverty both here and abroad. We face foul facts, if we are brave enough, and discover that clean drinking water, hygienic sanitation, and access to food for survival and medical care for many in our world are unreachable, unattainable aspirations; things to be hoped for, dreams, phantasms.

Of course, I would be remiss, as one whose life has been greatly affected by it, if I didn’t mention the seeming epidemic of mental illnesses that pervade. Bi-polar illness and major depression alone affect approximately 18 million American adults. Since our understandings of mental health are vastly different from the knowledge of the first century, if indeed they had any knowledge what so ever about mental health, I do have to wonder what Paul would say to us now.

What would Paul write in his letter to a small but faithful group like ours? What words might he pen to us in the midst of these our issues, our problems, our foibles?

I’m far from an expert on Paul and Pauline theology. In fact, if you haven’t noticed, I usually do not preach from his writings. I admit I often don’t get Paul and thus tend to set him and his tangle of thoughts aside. And that’s too bad. Paul, I believe, is probably the single person who most changed the course of Western Civilization since it was he who spread the gospel outside of the tiny confines of a first-century Roman backwater Jewish territory. But I’m no Paul expert and you should take my following words with a grain of salt; I don’t know what Paul would write to us but I’m going to, based on these 2,250 words that he composed two thousand years ago to Philippi, take a guess.

I think Paul, in the midst of the terrorism, the economic upheaval, the depression, the questions about our future, the worries, and the angst of the 21st century, would write: “Rejoice in the lord, always; again I will say, Rejoice!” Yep, I think he would. Because joy, as I said earlier, is an inner, spiritual affair that is not dependent on our outward happiness or external circumstances. We rejoice, not because of what’s going on outside of us; in fact more often than not, in spite of what’s going on out there. We are called to rejoice and to do it again and again; to rejoice always.

Now don’t get me wrong; this is not some Pollyanna view of the world through rose-colored glasses. (Did you like the mixing of metaphors in that sentence?) No, rejoicing and finding joy does not make things all better. Nor are we to ignore the problems around us and go tra-la-ing along some idyllic pansy strewn path of life. Reality is, well, real. It can be way too real at times. And reality has a way of walking up to us and smacking us on the forehead, sometimes with a two-by-four.

But when that happens, we stop for a moment to rub our foreheads where it hurts. And then we reach inside of ourselves, if we are going to listen to Paul, we reach inside to find whatever resources we have, and we all have some. Then we pull out whatever we’ve got and we rejoice.

Many years ago, a very wise friend of mine taught me a motto that I have since adopted and have tried to live by over the decades: Celebrate anything you can. We could argue the semantic differences between ‘celebrating’ and ‘rejoicing,’ but I think the sentiment behind each verb is similar. There is always something, something, to cause you to rejoice. Because through all that life throws at you, in everything you encounter, when everything else fails, you still have God. Each of us, whether we can realize it or not in any given instance, is still cloaked in a blanket of the Divine. And that, my joyful friends, is cause for rejoicing.

21 September 2008

This sermon was delivered in the out-of-doors at a member's home. Their name and the name of the town where they live has been changed for their privacy.

Exodus 16:2-15 & Matthew 20:1-16

It’s my difficult job, in the wooded, sylvan beauty in which we find ourselves today, to remind you about the desert. Yes, here in the lush loveliness of the Johnson's pleasant Hillside home where we get to escape to for our worship at their invitation annually, I find myself in the unfortunate position of needing to draw your attention away from all this: away from the trees with their green leaves providing a dabbled shade for us; away from the plants, the flowers that surround us; away from the wee birdies chirping overhead and flying about as they go about their necessary chores.

Instead, I need you to think about the desert. Yes, the desert; that barren, arid, difficult place where existence is far from assured; the place where people seem to be driven to, rather than drawn into; the place where creatures and plants that do survive there have adapted to live a life that is harsh and demanding.

It seems a shame, doesn’t it? “Can’t we just revel in the greenery that surrounds us and pretend that deserts don’t exist?” I can hear many of you saying right now. Ah, how I wish we could do just that: just relax in the comfort of this inviting place and soak in the comeliness of trees and flowers and those wee birdies.

But somehow God has seen fit that we should deal with the contrasts between our setting today and the setting in which the Israelites found themselves in today’s Exodus passage. So, I ask you, put all this [indicating all that is around us] out of your heads and put yourself in a desert; a hot, sun-baked, food-free, waterless desert.

Why would we want to do that? Well, that’s almost exactly what that wandering bunch of Israelites was thinking all those thousands of years ago. “Why again, would you tell us,” they queried, “did we leave the comforts of Egypt for this? We’d truly rather die well-fed, contented and, okay, oppressed in Egypt than meet our ends hungry and thirsty out here in the middle of abso-freakin-lutely nowhere!”

Now Moses and Aaron, not to mention God, had a whining gang on their hands, for certain. I’m sure that Moses thought many times that he wished he had left that burning bush alone all those years earlier. Life would have been much easier. And, undoubtedly, this was one of those times for him.

The people didn’t even know what they were saying, if you think about it. They had yearned for freedom from the oppression of their Egyptian rulers. Pharaoh was the pinnacle of evil as far as they were concerned; the very embodiment of all that was wrong with their world. They labored and toiled under terrible working situations and all sorts of harsh requirements were heaped upon them time after time.

And now they had that precious freedom. They had escaped from the cold tyranny of their Egyptian overseers and at this point were early on in the journey to the promised land; that land pledged to their ancestors all those years ago, the stories of whom had been passed down generation to generation. They had had to work together for their liberation; they had to unite under a leader who seemed to come out of nowhere and they had traveled out of Egypt with one purpose in mind.

Except…well, except that now they wanted to go back. Maybe that liberation thing was overrated; maybe the Egyptian bosses weren’t all that bad, after all, they were human too. They missed the lamb stews and the homemade breads not to mention the roofs over their heads and the bed to sleep on at night. They hadn’t planned on this desert experience in their escape to freedom; they didn’t expect that things would go from bad to worse and then even worse before they’d get better.

Hunger is very real. Hunger is a major driving force in the history of humankind. Hunger changes perspectives and makes priorities get reevaluated. And that’s just where this ragtag Hebrew group was when we drop in on their story today. Hungry. And scared. And really wondering if all this was actually worth it. Reevaluating priorities.

And so they longed for the good old/bad old days in Egypt. They looked back instead of forward. They griped and complained about very real issues and very real problems. Their bellies rumbled in the scorching hot midday sun.

And God did what God does; God took care of their needs. There were quail and there was manna. They ate their fill and learned to share and found out that God would even take care of them on the sabbath day.

But still there was that embarrassing, ungrateful moment in which they turned their backs on the future that had been laid out for them and to which they were called and they longed for the past, however bad it was.

How like them we are. In spite of thousands and thousands of years of change in civilization; in spite of the differences in the way we do something as fundamental as communicate; in spite of the fact that the nomadic culture of these early Israelites is as different from ours as possibly can be, how like them we are.

For here we are: God’s people in this day and this age; so often looking back and remembering; remembering the glory days of American Protestantism in the mid-20th century; looking back and remembering the ways we used to do things and adhering to them even though they are outmoded and no longer working; looking back and remembering when we were a defiant band leaving behind the oppression of dysfunction; looking back and remembering how good it was “then.” Looking back and remembering and glorying and reveling and celebrating and…well, forgetting, actually, that we can’t look back and look forward at the same time; forgetting that the good old days weren’t really all that good for some of us; forgetting that God is always, always ahead of us coaxing us onward.

God provides. God does indeed give us what we need, we learn from these verses from Exodus. And, if we are to believe the parable Jesus told in Matthew from today’s gospel reading, God is foolish to the point of excess in this providing. God doesn’t even know how to manage money and accounts; God just gives and gives and doesn’t really check your timecard or credentials when God is doling out the pay.

The people in the desert saw this stuff on the ground and said “manna.” Unfortunately, we’ve come to associate that word with the stuff that they found there that first morning and which nourished the whole congregation of Hebrew people in their desert. But actually, the word “manna” means “what is it?” “What the heck is this!?” they were saying either out of incredulity or astonishment or disbelief or just plain ignorance. They had no idea of the gift they had just been given. All they could say was “manna?”

We may neither recognize nor appreciate the gifts we have been given in our own desert experiences. Curses may be blessings; disappointments may be opportunities; setbacks may in fact be unsure steps inching ever forward. We may be saying “manna?” and all the time not know that we are being nurtured and fed on our desert journeys.

Manna? Why, it’s the One who calls us and prods us and goads us into ministry and mission feeding us and seeing to our needs.

7 September 2008

Exodus 12:1-14

My friend Marilyn often asks me, usually on Friday or Saturday, what the scripture is that I’m preaching on this week. Our conversation typically goes on to how I am going to treat the passage in my sermon. We sometimes have discussions about the passage that typically help me to clarify what I’m trying to get across. Time and again, naturally, this all occurs before I have actually plied pen to paper or, truthfully, pressed fingers to keyboard.

This week was no different. We had that conversation late in the week. But actually there was a difference this time. She couldn’t quite understand why I would want to preach from the Exodus passage for this morning from the lectionary; especially as I summed it up to her as being about the last of the plagues to be sent on Egypt, the one that killed all the first-born among the Egyptians, leaving out the majority of the passage which described the instructions about eating a lamb and having unleavened bread.
For some reason, this passage grabbed me though. And I wasn’t sure why; I couldn’t quite articulate it. Yes, it is the first celebration and instructions for that great Jewish festival of Passover which is celebrated every year with seders to this very day. And yes, it is the very edge of liberation and exodus for the Hebrew people, who had been enslaved in Egypt for decades and decades. But there was something more in those verses that was vying for my attention.

And then I realized that that something was possibly a something from my past; my distant past. I ruminated and figured out that I was remembering the scene from the 1956 movie, “The Ten Commandments” that recounts this very event that we just heard. The whole thing has been stuck in my head for all these years, ever since I saw it, undoubtedly on our black and white tv when the silver screen made it to the little screen and ended up in the Brague living room in the 60s.

Now of course, Cecil B. DeMille really drove home a point in this scene. If you remember, it was dramatically set. (Well, duh! DeMille and ‘dramatically set’ go together like horse & carriage, love & marriage, etc.) I recall especially the eerie mood with which he set up the scene. The Hebrew people had all received their instructions to put the lamb’s blood on their doorposts so the Angel of Death would avoid their homes.

Unless my memory is faulty, which we all know is an ever-growing possibility, there were shots of empty, shadowed streets with a mist or fog roaming ominously about, implying that this Angel of Death was on its route to do its job. The Hebrews were all in their homes, anxious but, finally, safe because they had done what they were told to do.

But, and this is the big but, in the background you could hear cries and shrieks in an ever-growing chorus; cries and shrieks of shocked and grieving Egyptian parents. Eventually, we saw Pharaoh, who had to this point been hard-hearted and immovable in the pleas of Moses to set the people free. But now we saw Pharaoh in pain, bent over the lifeless body of his eldest son, a young boy.

The formidable Yul Brenner (who was the Pharaoh to end all Pharaohs) gave way at this last plague and allowed Charlton Heston and the NRA, I mean, the Hebrew people, to go; which they did, but that is another reading from Exodus and another several scenes in the movie.

But those cries and shrieks; they live with me to this day. The cries of those broken-hearted Egyptian parents still ring in my ears. And, as a young boy, I undoubtedly found myself in Pharaoh’s son’s place: blameless except for the place of birth. (Of course, I was neither the oldest nor even the oldest son in my family, but that doesn’t stop me from empathizing.) But the pain portrayed in that eerie scene lives on. Why should these Egyptians suffer the most difficult thing that there is to suffer, the death of their child? In those days, of course, first-born sons were held in even higher esteem than they are today. So the grief would have been that much greater, though not for reasons we might want to acknowledge today.

And the worst of it is that God caused this to happen. God didn’t let this happen. God didn’t watch this happen. God, we’re told, made this happen. And yes, the liberation of God’s chosen people was at stake and this very event was the initial incident that, in succession, brought the people to the land that was promised to them and their ancestors.

But I’m stuck on that disturbing fact that God God’s-very-self came and caused the deaths of all those people, many of them innocent and likewise blameless and caused the grief that would have to be born. And frankly, I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t actually know where to go from here.

There are many lectionary preachers today who just ignored this passage, I’m sure. If it was even read, they just let it pass by, uncommented on. But for some reason, God help us, I can’t.
And God does indeed need to help us, because you’re along for the ride too, as it were. If you’re expecting me to tie this narrative up and explain it away in a satisfying and neat conclusion, you don’t know me as well as you thought. Because I can’t do that. And I can’t ignore it. And I can’t make it all better and soothe the pain of those guiltless Egyptian parents millennia ago. And another thing: don’t we believe that they are God’s people too? (Well, that’s actually a modern-day concept that really shouldn’t be applied in this situation, but I’m a modern-day preacher with all my concepts nicely intact and in place, right or wrong.)

So I struggle; right here, right now, right in front of you. What am I to do? Do I reject God because of this incident of which I disapprove? Do I try to convince myself that the God of the Israelites is different from the God of my faith? Do I focus on the liberation aspects of this tale, knowing that God’s ends finally did come about because of this, knowing how important liberation is to my theology? Do I wiggle out and put the blame on Pharaoh? He could have averted this tragedy which struck his people and his own family had he not been so hard-hearted and stubborn, you know.

Maybe, I’m not giving God enough credit though. Through the tears and cries and shrieks of those grieving parents, right up to and including the unsettled feelings and thoughts experienced by a young boy on the floor of the living room watching actors play their parts on the television and who grows up to be someone who, from time to time at the least, wrestles with this God; maybe, just maybe, through all of that pain and time, God was grieving and crying and wondering “why, oh why?” too. Perhaps God wanted to find a way around the stubbornness of humanity as brought to fruition in a ruler whose name is forgotten by most if not all of us and God truly desired to avoid all this. Perhaps God, having given God’s creation free will, recognized that things would go badly at times and wept at the very thought.

Because a small band of oppressed people received their freedom after years of toil remembered to tell their children and grandchildren about how God saved them; and because those children and grandchildren kept telling that story, over and over and over, year after year after year, generation to generation to generation; and because someone, somewhere along the span of history, had actually learned to write and decided that this story was vital enough to be painstakingly captured word by word; because of all of that and more, we today ponder the workings of God not only in history but also in our midst.

Because God still weeps, I think. God weeps at the hard-heartedness of our leaders and wonders what next to do. God, from an incomprehensible vantage point of eternity, looks at us and remembers ancient, oppressive Egyptians and wonders if anything has really changed. But I believe, if I may be so presumptuous as to try to fathom God’s mind, that God still remembers those cries and shrieks of grief-torn families. God remembers, I pray, and says “no more; I can’t do that again.”