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.).