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.